How do you deglaze a pan, and what is the purpose?

I tried a recipe that said to deglaze the pan. I tried to follow the directions, but I had no browned bits on the bottom to scrape up. Does it add flavor, thicken the sauce, both?

The "glaze" is the residue on the bottom of the pan after browning, so to deglaze is to remove those bits. This is generally done over heat by adding wine or stock to the pan, and stirring to bring those bits off of the pan and into the liquid that you added. The resulting liquid can either be added to a sauce, or used as a sauce with the addition of butter, or by reducing it to a sauce-like consistency.

Those bits have alot of flavor as they are the caramelized residue of whatever you were cooking in the pan. If you had no such residue, perhaps you used a non-stick pan, or insufficient heat to sear the meat well. To avoid that, do not use a nonstick pan, and heat the pan well before adding dry meat. Turn the meat only after it has developed a change in color and a dry crust.

its for cleaning dirt at the bottom of your pan after you saute some ingredients, but deglazing also may add more flavour if you making a sauce. Sometimes they use liquor for deglazng when they make a sauce.

It adds tons of flavor.

chefchen is right. You can't use a non-stick skillet if you need to develop a fond.
You also need to be aware of the fact that if you are de-glazing a pan with wine and you are using a gas flame , you need to remove the pan from the heat . The alcohol can and will ignite.
Be especially of aware when you are required to de-glaze with a fortified wine such as marsala
which contain about twice the alcohol as regular wine. Whoosh!!
What de-glazing does is it incorporartes some of the essential flavor of what was just sauteeed or roasted cooked into the sauce.
Wine it also acts as a solvent to help extract those flavors in addition to adding it's own flavor components.

It most definatley adds flavor. Usually done after frying meats, you pour a small amount of liquid into the pan, like wine or stock, and scrape up the bottom. That gets all the fat or cooked juices flowing again. That's sort of the essance of the food.

Deglazing a pan is one of those kitchen techniques that sounds easy enough that many of us trick ourselves into thinking we know how to do it when we actually don't. I didn't really know until I went to culinary school.

After saut茅ing or roasting a piece of meat in a pan, remove it and pour off any extra fat (as in the case of roasting something large in the oven). There will be little bits of food stuck to the bottom; usually quite cooked. These are the caramelized droppings from the juices of the meat. These little bits are packed with flavor, and only need a liquid, such as wine, stock, or juice to release their flavors.

Pour in a few tablespoons or so (enough to cover the bottom of the pan 1/4" or less), with the heat still under the pan, and scrape the bottom with a wooden spatula vigorously as the liquid comes to a boil. Do not let it boil for more than a few seconds and you make sure you've released all the particles from the pan. You have deglazed the pan and can now use the resulting liquid to make a sauce or gravy.

You usually use some type of liquid substance to deglaze the pan, usually to make some type of sauce. Usually it is because there are brown bits on the bottom of your pan, and you want to get those bits in the sauce because they have a lot of flavor in them.

If you had no browned bits, you were likely using a nonstick pan. To deglaze, you'll need stainless steel.

When you put the meat in the pan...DON'T push it around with the spatula, you will want med hi heat and to leave the steak alone, so a fond can form and the meat can sear.