I personally heat up the pan first, then put the oil in and after it's heated up add the ingredients. I go with the line of reasoning that doing it this way gives the oil less time to burn, thinking that if you do it the other way, by the time the pan and oil has heated up, the oil could already be starting to burn.

I've never experimented, but I think this is more of an issue with electric stoves since you can modulate the heat more quickly with gas, ie turn it off if the oil's starting to smoke.

Asked by Ward - Reinstate Monica to cooking/stackexchange