The Secret To Searing
As I’m sure you’ve heard from us a billion times, we’re all about flavour… so if there are any flavour enhancing cooking techniques or products, we’re all over it. Searing is an epic way to add flavour to your cooking. There is a certain art to managing your excitement with techniques like searing though as you could quite easily take it too far and ruin a dish.
WHAT EXACTLY DO WE MEAN BY SEARING?
Searing essentially means cooking something over high, dry heat. Searing is the result of a chemical reaction that only takes place around 140 to 165C. The posh name for this is the Maillard Reaction. Water that exists on the exterior of the meat evaporates when you begin to sear, which is what leads to that awesome browning effect on the exterior of food. As an example, you’d never get that colour when you boil chicken... BUT if you are still boiling chicken, what are you even doing? It’s all about the sear.
WHY WE THINK YOU SHOULD SEAR YOUR FOOD
Besides the obvious aesthetic enhancements of a brown, seared bit of meat over a limp, dull version (no offence to our chicken boiling gang out there), searing helps to create an intensity of flavour that you’ll never get with some other cooking techniques. Searing will help to increase the sweetness, bitterness and umami of foods such as veg, fish and meat. If you're cooking meat, it creates an amazing base for you to apply sauce. The crisp, caramelised coating is begging to be glazed with your favourite barbecue or hot sauce. We might have a few that we could vouch for…
STEADY ON THOUGH...
If you go too extreme with your temperature when attempting the sear, you could end up with a lump of dry meat your primary school dinner lady would be proud of, so watch out for that; aim for 140-165C. On another note, don’t go telling all your mates that searing locks in the juices of meat… we didn’t say that! Searing technically makes meat less juicy, although your brain will see and taste a seared bit of meat as juicier. Besides that minor fact, it’s still well worth it.
