How To Master The Maillard Reaction & Sear Meat Perfectly | Epicurious 101

I'm Frank Proto I'm a professional chef and culinary instructor and today I'm going to show you how to sear s I'll go over how to sear your protein to make it crunchy and caramelized on the outside and juicy in the center and that contrast is what makes seared Foods so delicious this is searing 101. searing basically means we're cooking over high heat with some fat in order to caramelize something in our case it'll be proteins the equipment that I like to use when I'm searing is a heavy cast iron skillet or a nice stainless steel saute pan the cast iron holds onto heat really well and stays hot for a long time whereas the stainless steel transfers heat really quickly this allows us to cook at a fairly high temperature without burning I have three different types of proteins here generally we sear thicker pieces of meat because we want to get that nice crust on the outside and the nice juicy interior you really don't want this to be ice cold when it goes in the pan the inside's not going to be cooked what I like to do is take it out 10 to 15 minutes before I sear and then cook it I don't think it necessarily needs to be at room 10 temperature you're kind of getting into this sketchy area where it's sitting out for too long especially with a thick piece of meat and the prep for these is almost identical for every single one first thing we want to do is take a towel and make sure that there's no moisture on the outside it doesn't start to sear until that moisture is cooked off so the less moisture on our protein the quicker we get that nice caramelization my chicken has the skin on that's great I want the fat I want the crispiness for the skin so I leave the skin on I have two pieces of salmon here one that's not marinated with the skin on because crispy fish skin is delicious and then we have another piece of salmon that has a marinade marinades tend to burn if they have a lot of sugars if you've marinated long enough the flavor is going to be inside the fish so you don't need a lot of excess stuff on the outside so keep it as dry as possible dab It Off foreign my pork chop is ready to go my cast iron skillet is preheated if it's not hot enough it just kind of goes flat and nothing happens if it's too hot and you put the pork chop in it sputters and we get Flames so we want to try and find that happy place in between the way that I can tell that the pan is hot enough is I'm going to put some oil in and I want to cover the bottom of the pan fairly well basically what I'm looking for is a little Haze of smoke like I have now my oil is kind of ripply and flows freely in the pan I'm using canola oil which has a high smoke point smoke point is basically the point at which the oil starts to smoke anything with a high smoke point doesn't burn too quickly it holds the Heat and that makes it a great oil for searing so my pan is nice and hot I'm getting a little Haze of smoke I'm going to season well heavily you can see that I season fairly high up because I want my salt to disperse really well I'm seasoning now because if I season earlier the salt draws out moisture from the meat and that will end impede us from searing well okay and then we're gonna go into the pan drop away from you so the oil splashes away from you you notice how I'm hearing sizzling right away if you hear snap crackle and pop that's when you know you're starting to sear I'm gonna let this cook until I have a nice brown crust on it you just want to leave it be for the first two to three minutes so that if it does stick it'll basically unstick itself after a while let the pan do the work let this get nice and brown before we flip it so it's been a few minutes here I'm just going to take a look if you look at that we're getting some nice brownie I'm going to leave it on this side for another like minute minute and a half and then we'll give it a turn for the most part what I'm watching for is that this oil is not burning and smoking up the room you need to watch the Pan and adjust the heat the cast iron pan takes a long time to heat up and cool down if you feel like it's not hot enough go up in measures if you crank it and it gets too hot it's going to take an equal amount of time to cool down we're ready to go here I can give it a good turn and look at that the culinary term for Browning is the my yard reaction and you can see right here the proteins the sugars in the meat and the salt and pepper or have brown to give us a nice golden brown crust and that's what we want that is Flavor now that I put my meat over I'm going to wait for the other side to get brown and now what I'm going to do is I'm going to hold it up on its side I want to make sure that that fat gets nice and crispy as well and this will cook a little quicker just because there's less surface area this pork chop is super thick it's fully seared I got some nice brown on it I like the finish in the oven just for the fact that I don't want the oil to start to burn before my pork chop is done I'm gonna go throw this in the oven for about five to seven minutes and then we'll let it rest foreign chicken thigh is basically the same method as the pork chop except for the fact that the chicken has skin and nothing is better than crispy chicken skin I'm starting out with a fairly high heat in my pan I'm using the same canola oil my chicken gets some salt and pepper both sides and I'm gonna start my chicken skin side down the presentation side is the most important side fish skin chicken skin anything with skin you want to make sure that's beautiful before you start moving anything around and once that skin starts to get nice golden brown we want to turn it over and cook the rest of the way on the flesh side it's going to Brown nice and evenly it's not like the pork chop where you need to hold it up on its side all I'm really worried about is that skin getting nice and crisp the great thing about chicken thighs is that they are juicy no matter how much you cook them so I'm going to take this chicken thigh put in the oven about 350 let it finish cooking through let it rest and then we'll taste it I have a piece of salmon here not marinated and it has the skin on I'm not using a cast iron here I'm using a stainless steel saute pan same procedure as the pork chop and the chicken I want a nice coating of oil in the bottom of the pan and then I'm going to see salt and pepper and then it goes in the pan skin side down dropping it away from you if your salmon skin starts to stick leave it alone turn your heat down to a little bit of a medium and the skin will unstick itself eventually I still need like a minute before I turn this over I want that skin to be nice and crisp and brown if you have spots that don't have oil you're going to have hot spots that burn your protein so make sure that you have a nice covering of oil on the bottom of your pan I'm going to turn it over I have a nice crispy skin if you feel like your skin didn't get enough color on it you could flip it back but I usually like to get it done on the first turn lower heat down a little we're not too worried about getting the flesh side super brown I like to cook my salmon to like a medium rare medium still pink in the middle this salmon kind of has the thick Edge just like the pork chops I'm not too worried about it I want that edge to be kind of nice and pink kind of show the color of the fish and not really be brown I'm not going to put in the oven it Cooks fairly quick I'm gonna take the salmon out right now and I'm gonna let it rest and come up to temperature and hopefully we'll have a nice medium rare interior so this is my piece of marinated fish the marinade has some sugar in it and sugar tends to burn really quick so I'm not going to go quite as hot as the other proteins I'm gonna get my pan covered with oil pretty well I'm gonna season up lightly just for the fact that this has some sugar and some salt in the marinade so we have water boiling off I think my oil is ready right now I don't need to be too high and you'll notice with this one what happened right away because of the marinade in there it's sticking to my pan I turn my heat up just a little and I'm gonna leave it alone it will unstick itself eventually I also grabbed a fish spatula this is a spatula with holes in it it's super thin and bendy and if you need to we can easily just get under this and give it a turn I'm going to take this out and put it over here I would tend to finish in the oven just like the pork chop and the chicken just because you're dealing with some sugar and it caramelizes really quick so here you can see the difference really clearly between the marinated and the unmarinated the marinated salmon gets dark really quickly that sugar caramelizes really fast and the unmarinated salmon kind of gets a nice golden brown crust when it comes to salmon and fish I really don't rest them I kind of just cook them plate them send them out when you sear something the meat tenses up and then you let it rest and the juices redistribute and you get a nice juicy end product so let's get our pork chop give it a slice close to the Bone you can see that we have some nice glisteny juices the outside is still nice and crunchy and nice and brown same thing with our chicken it's nice and brown on the outside and nice and juicy on the inside and for the unmarinated salmon we just break it open it's nice and caramelized on the outside beautifully pink and juicy on the inside if your proteins are seared properly you're going to get a nice crunchy salty outside and a juicy interior and that's the whole point of doing this beautiful presentation juicy end product

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 600,579

Keywords: best way to cook steak, cast iron cooking, cast iron steak, chef instructor, cook steak, epi, epicurious, epicurious 101, epicurious cast iron, epicurious frank, epicurious steak, expert chef, frank proto, how to get maillard reaction, how to sear, how to sear meat, how to sear steak, maillard, maillard reaction, protocooks, sear meat, sear meat like a chef, sear meat with cast iron, sear steak, sear steak like a chef, seared steak, what is maillard reaction

Id: Sm2Lrc4HEmc

Length: 9min 4sec (544 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 11 2022