Chef Gordon Ramsay of Hell's Kitchen, MasterChef and several other television cooking shows, is best known for his blustering, profanity laced tirades at novice chefs who have made errors. It's hard to see how that really helps people improve, but I did actually learn something useful from Gordon Ramsay.
On the show MasterChef, Ramsay takes a group of home chefs and, through a series of challenges, teaches those who survive the gauntlet to become restaurant quality chefs. As you might expect when the average home cook is asked to prepare restaurant dishes with which they may or may not be familiar, mistakes are made. While the contestants are trying to cook, Gordon Ramsay and the other two MasterChef judges Graham Elliot and Joe Bastianich, walk around the cooking stations pointing out obvious errors and asking the cooks such confidence-building questions as "Are you sure that's what you want to do?"
At any rate, getting to the point of this post, on one particular show, one contestant was greasing a stainless steel pan in preparation for searing off a steak. Gordon Ramsay came over and asked "What are you doing?" When the amateur cook told him that she didn't want the steak to stick to the pan. Gordon Ramsay told her that with stainless steel, when the meat is done and ready to be flipped, it unsticks itself.
I didn't know that, but, in fact, it's true and it works. I use this technique every time I'm pan-searing meat now. It's time to flip a piece of meat over when it frees itself from sticking to a stainless steel pan. That's for searing off a steak prior to roasting or further cooking, not to say that it is ready to serve.
Searing meat is the process of placing it in a very hot skillet or frying pan until the outside surface is seared off (cooked at a very surface level). Searing adds flavor to the surface layer of the steak. The taste difference between a steak that has been seared off before roasting, grilling or otherwise cooked and one that hasn't is absolutely night and day. It is especially important for steaks that are going to be served rare, medium rare, or medium. Once you get into medium well or well done, it's debatable whether searing can make the steak even dryer than just cooking it to those extremes without searing.
MasterChef is on the Fox network at 9:00 ET/ 8:00 CT on Monday evenings. Right after Hell's Kitchen which premiers on Monday, July 18.
On the show MasterChef, Ramsay takes a group of home chefs and, through a series of challenges, teaches those who survive the gauntlet to become restaurant quality chefs. As you might expect when the average home cook is asked to prepare restaurant dishes with which they may or may not be familiar, mistakes are made. While the contestants are trying to cook, Gordon Ramsay and the other two MasterChef judges Graham Elliot and Joe Bastianich, walk around the cooking stations pointing out obvious errors and asking the cooks such confidence-building questions as "Are you sure that's what you want to do?"
At any rate, getting to the point of this post, on one particular show, one contestant was greasing a stainless steel pan in preparation for searing off a steak. Gordon Ramsay came over and asked "What are you doing?" When the amateur cook told him that she didn't want the steak to stick to the pan. Gordon Ramsay told her that with stainless steel, when the meat is done and ready to be flipped, it unsticks itself.
I didn't know that, but, in fact, it's true and it works. I use this technique every time I'm pan-searing meat now. It's time to flip a piece of meat over when it frees itself from sticking to a stainless steel pan. That's for searing off a steak prior to roasting or further cooking, not to say that it is ready to serve.
Searing meat is the process of placing it in a very hot skillet or frying pan until the outside surface is seared off (cooked at a very surface level). Searing adds flavor to the surface layer of the steak. The taste difference between a steak that has been seared off before roasting, grilling or otherwise cooked and one that hasn't is absolutely night and day. It is especially important for steaks that are going to be served rare, medium rare, or medium. Once you get into medium well or well done, it's debatable whether searing can make the steak even dryer than just cooking it to those extremes without searing.
MasterChef is on the Fox network at 9:00 ET/ 8:00 CT on Monday evenings. Right after Hell's Kitchen which premiers on Monday, July 18.
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