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 gonna show you how to sear .

I'll go over how to sea your protein to make it crunchy and caramelized on the outside and juicy in the center .

And that contrast is what makes seared food 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 protein .

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 on to 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 see our thicker pieces of meat because we wanna 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 is not gonna be cooked .

What I like to do is take it out 10 to 15 minutes before I see her and then cook it .

I don't think it necessarily needs to be at room 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 wanna 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 and dab it off .

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 gonna put some oil in and I wanna 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 RPP and flows freely in the pan .

I'm using 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 impede us from searing .

Well , ok .

And then we're gonna go into the pan drop away from you so that the oil splashes away from you .

You notice how I'm hearing , sizzling right away .

If you hear snap , crackling 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 wanna leave it be for the 1st 2 to 3 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 gonna take a look and if you look at that , we're getting some nice browning , I'm gonna 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 and measures if you crank it and it gets too hot , it's gonna 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 ard reaction .

And you can see right here the proteins , the sugars in the meat and the salt and pepper have browned to give us a nice golden brown crust and that's what we want .

That is flavor .

Now that I flip my meat over , I'm gonna wait for the other side to get brown .

And now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hold it up on its side .

I wanna 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 to 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 5 to 7 minutes and then we'll let it rest .

My 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 wanna make sure that's beautiful before you start moving anything around .

And once that skin starts to get nice , golden brown , you wanna turn it over and cook the rest of the way on the flesh side , it's gonna 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 gonna take this chicken thigh , put it in the oven about 3 50 .

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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna turn it over .

I have a nice crispy skin .

If you feel like your skin didn't get enough color on it , you can flip it back , but I usually like to get it done on the first turn , lower our 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 a thick edge just like the pork chops and I'm not too worried about it .

I want that edge to be kind of nice and pink , kind of show the color the fish and not really be brown .

I'm not gonna put it 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 gonna 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 bending .

And if you need to , we can easily just get under this and give it a turn .

I'm gonna 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 unm marinated .

The marinated salmon gets dark really quickly .

That sugar Caramelizes really fast .

And the unm marinated 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 see 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 glisten 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 unm marinated 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 gonna get a nice crunchy salty outside and a juicy interior .

And that's the whole point of doing this beautiful presentation , Juicy and product .