If You Can't Control the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen

Surprisingly, the importance of heat control when cooking, first occurred to me when I was teaching my teenage son how to cook scrambled eggs. At first, he attempted to make them for me as a surprise while I was in bed. And guess what-he burned them! Being the dutiful dad, I ate every burned morsel so as not to hurt his feelings.

I realized the impetuousness of youth wanted to cook the eggs as quickly as possible. What I realized is that scrambled eggs will cook consistently and without burning at one particular temperature range. Enter the other variable in our correct cooking formula: Time. As you might guess, there is a direct correlation between heat and time when cooking. Whether you are sautéing, searing, simmering or blackening, there are two variables that must meet in perfect harmony: Heat and time.

One day, while watching "Hell's Kitchen" on cable TV, I noticed that many of the "wanna be chefs" made one consistent mistake-they overcooked, undercooked or burned the food-summoning the ire of host and head chef Gordon Ramsay.

When cooking, many of us are confronted with a variety of heat sources, be they electric or gas ranges, gas or charcoal grills, campfires; and complicating these many different heat sources is that they may not be the same one every time. For example, if you are a personal chef and cook on site, you may use a different heat source, as well as a mix of different heat sources, the first time you cook at that site.

Before you can set out to control cooking temperatures, it is important to understand what the temperatures are that are necessary to accomplish a certain cooking task. So, we will focus our discussion of cooking temperatures on those needed to cook in a pan on the top of a stove or range. We will cover the six most common pan cooking methods in order of temperature range, starting from lowest to highest. They are: Poaching; Simmering; Sautéing; Boiling; Searing; and Charring.

Poaching

The first technique we will discuss is "poaching." Foods poach at temperatures between 160 degrees Fahrenheit (F) and 185 degrees F or between 70 degrees Centigrade (C) and 82 degrees C. Many chefs consider 180 degrees F or 82 degrees C to be the ideal poaching temperature. For the uninitiated, poaching is the fine art of slow cooking a certain food item submerged in liquid, water, wine, broth, etc. at a heat point that's about 20 to 30 degrees F or about 18 degrees C below boiling.

Simmering

Next on the cooking heat scale is "simmering." Simmering is perhaps the most hotly debated heat levels in cooking-with the true simmering point ranging from 185 degrees F (82 degrees C) to 205 degrees F to 96 degrees C depending on which chef you are asking. By definition, simmering is the act of cooking a food in a liquid at a point just below the liquid's boiling point. Simmering is a gentler and slower form of cooking than sautéing, which ensures that foods that are prone to breaking apart, such as fish, stay intact and foods overall finish to be tenderer then if they were sautéed. Foods that are simmered in cream or milk are otherwise referred to as "creamed."

Sautéing

The next method of pan cooking, as well as the next temperature level on our cooking heat scale is "sautéing," which in French means "jumping." American Southern-style cooking frequently uses the term "pan fried"; in America, this term is synonymous with sautéing. Whichever term you use, when you sauté, you brown food using a very small amount of fat, oil or butter-about 1 to 1-½ tablespoons for meat fillets or cutlets and ½ to one tablespoon for fish fillets. Your shortening should never come up the sides of the food you are cooking; too much fat, oil or butter and you're now frying!

The word sauté or its native meaning of jumping, refers to how the food is moved or tossed about in the pan to prevent burning while it is being cooked. Sautéing differs from stir frying in that stir frying involves higher, constant temperatures and continual tossing and moving of the food being cooked.

Sautéing food is where we separate the true chefs from the wanna be cooks. Of the six forms of pan cooking we are discussing, sautéing is perhaps the most used and most difficult technique to nail down. There is no generally accepted temperature for sautéing-it is therefore done by technique.

The generally accepted method of sautéing is to preheat your pan to 180 degrees or 82 degrees C. Once your pan is preheated, add the oil or fat you intend to use. Do not heat the shortening starting in a cold pan as it will cause the oil to break down and cause you food to stick to the pan later in the sautéing process. Also, adding the shortening to a cold pan will require your undivided attention to avoid scorching your oil or butter.

When sautéing, it is important to remember that every cooking pan has hot spots and the oil or butter will therefore heat unevenly. Rolling the pan while it is off the burner will blend the different temperature spots in the oil or butter caused by these hot spots. Caution should be used when rolling the pan over the burner is any oil or butter that spills onto the burner can cause a fire or flare up.

Once your oil or butter has melted, it's time to move into the sauté mode. First, crank up the heat to a medium-high setting. Your pan is ready to sauté when your oil or butter almost starts to smoke. Since there is no generally accepted temperature for sautéing, an estimated temperature is somewhere between 200 degrees F and 212 degrees F or 93 degrees C or 100 degrees C.

When sautéing, there is a certain amount of skill and experience that will be needed to find the "sweet spot" on the heat dial for sautéing. Many accomplished chefs sauté at the highest heat possible-this may not be a wise choice for those cooks who have not already mastered sautéing, unless they are willing to experiment and practice while taking a chance on burning dinner.

Sautéing is the ultimate blending of heat control and cooking time to produce the desired result. Following the sautéing guidelines listed above along with lots of practice will help you master this most crucial pan cooking skill.

Boiling

Boiling occurs at approximately 212 degrees F or 100 degrees C and varies depending on the altitude. In cooking, boiling is most often used to cook foods immersed in water, milk or stock. Any liquid being cooked is boiling when it produces bubbles. Food cooked at a vigorous, constant boil is referred to as being cooked at a "rolling boil." Many recipes call for cooking temperatures to be reduced to much lower temperature after they initially reach their boiling point.

Boiling is also used to evaporate or "reduce" the liquid contained in a pan to produce a thickened sauce. Boiling often produce a soapy or foamy scum that floats on top of the liquid in the pan. This scum should be skimmed of from the pan and discarded as it can adversely affect the final taste of the food being cooked.

Searing

Searing uses high heat to lock in a meat's or a fish's natural juices and flavor. When you add a coat of seasoning to the outside of your food and sear it, it is referred to as "Blackening." There is some debate amongst chefs as to what the correct temperature is for searing-it ranges from 300 degrees F to 700 degrees F or 148 degrees C to 371 degrees C.

For those who cook at home, 300 to 350 degrees F will suffice for searing. Some extreme cooks use blow torches to sear food; I do not recommend this method for home use. When searing food, it is not necessary to cook the food for long periods. Seared food is considered done when it has a thin crust formed on both sides and the internal temperature of the food being cooked reaches the desired temperature. If you've never seared-beware! Searing food can cause a lot of smoke and set off your smoke detectors or fire alarm.

Charring

Charring is the last pan cooking method that we will cover. When food is charred, you are essentially giving it third degree burns. Food coming from a barbecue grill frequently has charred meat or skin on it. Charring of food usually takes place at temperatures in excess of 500 degrees F or 260 degrees C.
When charring food, extra care must be taken not to overcook food past the point of charring as doing so will render the food inedible. Properly charred food takes on a sweet taste and crispy texture that can be very pleasing to one's palate. Here again, as with searing, many accomplished chefs use a blowtorch to char food-it is not a method I recommend for novice cooks.

How to Master Heat Control

Now that we know the temperatures we need to properly accomplish the six methods of pan cooking, we'll discuss ways that you can properly control cooking heat. Possibly one of the most obvious ways to control heat is by using a pan thermometer, which comes in both analog and digital models.
These thermometers allow you to touch the cooking surface or liquid in your pan and immediately determine what the temperature is and in many cases a heating trend-that is at what rate your pan's temperature is changing. By using a pan thermometer, you can also determine what settings on the range dial equal what temperature on your stove top. Once you have these temperatures pegged, you can make a note for future use and obtain better overall heat control.

Another method of heat control is the "ramp up" method. Here, you start at a low temperature and keep bumping it up slowly (ramp it up) until you achieve the desired results in your pan. This is a surefire way to avoid accidentally burning your food.

Yet another way you can achieve greater heat control is to use a pan with a thicker bottom. These types of pans are less prone to hot spots and respond to heat changes more evenly, thereby lessening the chance of a meal falling prey to poor heat control.

The last technique for controlling heat has nothing to do with the stove. The French call it mis en place, which literally translates to put in place or set up. This simply refers to having everything you'll need to cook a meal at the ready so that you can concentrate on cooking and therefore heat control and timing.
So, now that you are armed with the knowledge you'll need to master heat control, with some practical experimentation and a fair amount of hands-on practice, you should be able to conquer proper heat control, which will result in more appealing and properly cooked meals.