The food lab better home cooking through science ( PDFDrive ) 475

those wonderful crusty, roasted aromas only take
place to a significant degree at temperatures well
above300°F,agood170degreeshotterthannormal
sous-vide cooking temperatures—which means that
you still need to pull out the sauté pan to finish it.
Thekeyistosearthemeatasquicklyaspossible,to
prevent overcooking. Get your skillet or grill ready
and ripping hot, dry the meat thoroughly before
addingittothepan(wetmeatwillcoolthepandown
faster than dry meat), and leave it in the pan only
longenoughtocolor.
There’s some debate over whether or not meat
should be preseared before bagging and cooking it
sous-vide.The idea is that the flavors created by a
presear will penetrate the meat as it cooks in the
bag, giving it a deeper, roastier flavor. I cooked a
fewsteakssidebysidetoseeifthiswastrue.
Visually, there’s not much distinction.
Flavorwise? In a blind tasting, tasters were split
acrosstheboardoverwhichonetheypreferred,and
when asked to identify which steak was which, they
farednobetterthanwithblindchance.
Conclusion: Don’t bother with the presear—you
develop plenty of flavor with just a single, postwater-bathsear.
And what is the best method of searing?These are
threethatIemployoften.
Pan-Searing


Advantages: Easy and done indoors. Drippings stay
incontactwithmeat.

Disadvantages: Without an ultrapowerful burner,
crustcantakeawhiletodevelop,leadingtoslightly
overcookedmeatunderneath.
Grilling
Advantages: High heat leads to fast char and good
flavordevelopment.
Disadvantages: Requires an outdoor grill. Steak
losesmoistureandflavortodrippings.
Torching
Advantages:Very high heat makes it easy to char.
Youlookbadassdoingit.
Disadvantages:Charringcanbeuneven,resultingin
some blackened bits before the rest of the steak has
evenbrowned.Ifyou’renotcareful,itcanalsoleave
yoursteaktastinglikeuncombustedfuel.