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What does "high heat" mean in a recipe?
OK, I know this may a classic dumb newbie question, but an experience
yesterday leads me to believe I need an answer to it... So I'm attempting to pan-sear a tuna steak in a cast-iron skillet. The recipe said to heat it to the point that a drop of water "jumps." Crank the burner to "HI," wait about three minutes, throw a drop of water on the skillet, it scatters like mercury...ready to go. Hit the pan with a couple sprays of canola oil. It worried me a bit when the oil immediatedly smoked and seemed to evaporate. Anyway, with some trepidation I went ahead and dropped in the steak. According to the recipe, two minutes per side would yield a medium rare steak, and that's what I did. The result was white through, medium-well maybe. I also burned the seasoning off the skillet. On the other hand, the steak wasn't too bad. Clearly, too hot. I realize your stove and mine may differ, but obviously "high heat" in a recipe doesn't mean the "HI" setting on my stovetop. However, a lot of recipes that I read instruct me to heat something to high heat. What exactly are the recipes implying? I don't have an infrared thermometer so I guess I can't really check it, but what temperature range constitutes "high heat" in recipe parlance? I see a lot of recipes that call for sauteing on high or medium-high. If I do that I wind up with smoking oil and black butter (assuming it doesn't burn up completely). I realize that I could answer this myself through trial-and-error. A sufficient amount of black tuna steaks, evaporated butter, discolored stainless, and stripped cast iron and I should be able to figure out which setting on my stove is appropriate. I'll have to anyway, to a lesser degree. However, I'm hope you nice folks can get me pointed in the right direction, or maybe tell me where I can buy smoke-detector batteries in bulk... Thanks, Dan |
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" > wrote:
>OK, I know this may a classic dumb newbie question, but an experience >yesterday leads me to believe I need an answer to it... If you're using a wok, high heat means put the sucker on "HI" and move the pan on and off the heat if you need to regulate it - a doubtful occurance, since most any home stove burner doesn't produce the amount of heat necessary for wok cooking. For a pan-seared tuna steak, or anything in a cast iron pan, like you said, every stove is different. Cast-iron cookware really holds the heat. I don't know what to tell you except that now you know what you "shouldn't" do and next time you'll try it with the burner turned down to a 7-1/2 or 8, somewhere in there. Unless I'm using a wok, that's about where I set the burner control for anything that calls for high heat. YMMV. -- The Doc says my brain waves closely match those of a crazed ferret. At least now I have an excuse. |
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On 25 Sep 2005 00:47:27 -0700, "
> wrote: >Crank the burner to "HI," wait about three minutes, throw a drop of >water on the skillet, it scatters like mercury...ready to go. Hit the >pan with a couple sprays of canola oil. It worried me a bit when the >oil immediatedly smoked and seemed to evaporate. Um. DON'T spray when the pan's hot. Spray before heating. Though with properly seasoned cast iron, you shouldn't need cooking spray, imo. Spraying on a hot pan is flat-out dangerous. -- -denny- "I don't like it when a whole state starts acting like a marital aid." "John R. Campbell" in a Usenet post. |
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Like from the sun, as opposed to a fire pit ',;~}~ Shaun aRe |
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