Popular Mechanics - USA (2019-09)

Your dad probably told

you the first step to grill-

ing a great steak is to

sear it over high heat to

“lock in the juices.” If not,

countless cookbooks have

taught that method. But

searing first doesn’t lock

in juices. Experiments

have shown that very lit-

tle moisture is lost when

grilling meat properly. In

fact, searing at the end

of cooking produces a far

better result. Here’s why:

Meat cooks less evenly

when it’s seared first.

High heat overcooks the

outside surface before

the inside of the steak has

warmed up. When you

reverse sear, you flip the

sequence, cooking your

steak under lower heat so

it cooks evenly and, when

it’s nearly done, quickly

sear both sides over high

heat to get that delicious,

crisp dark-brown crust.

GET

DOWN

WITH

BROWNING

MASTER

THE

REVERSE

SEAR

RAW MEAT HAS little flavor. The
savory taste comes as a result of
heat, which produces hundreds
of volatile compounds in the pro-
teins and sugars. Some pretty
technical chemistry is happening
here, but the outcome is the beau-
tiful browning on the exterior of
meat. The browning process—
which can occur in many types
of food, including pan-fried fish,
toasted bread and marshmallows,
baked goods, and roasted coffee
beans—is the result of something
called the Maillard reaction. Dis-
covered by French physician and
chemist Louis Camille Maillard
in 1912, the process is a chemi-
cal reaction between sugars and
amino acids in protein.

The Maillard reaction begins at low heat but really

gets going at around 250° to 300° F when proteins and

sugars transform into more complex molecules that are

responsible for the characteristic smells of roasting and

searing. “Because of the Maillard and caramelization

reactions, steaks develop their rich, f lavorful mahog-

any crust or bark, bread turns golden in a toaster, fried

potatoes put on a crunchy coat, and dark beer gets its

darkly mysterious f lavor,” says Meathead.

Molecules from fat oxidation and other compounds

are also involved, writes cookbook author and James

Beard Award finalist David Joachim in his book The

Science of Good Food. This creates such f lavors as

savory peptides, sulfur compounds, toasted f lavors,

chocolate f lavors, and earthy components. The Mail-

lard reaction also triggers another chemical process,

the Strecker reaction, in which a compound called a-di-

carbonyl combines with the amino acid methionine

found in meat cells to create a f lavor compound called

methional, one of the main aromas of cooked meat.

Caramelizing is yet another chemical process

driven by heat that imparts enticing depths of f lavor

to foods. Think of the sweetness of grilled vegeta-

bles, especially onions, corn, and peppers, or fruits

like pineapple and peaches. This happens when

fructose molecules burn at around 230 0 F, c r e a t i n g

undertones of caramel or butterscotch. Some sugars

caramelize quickly and can burn—like the sugars in

barbecue sauce (16 grams in just two tablespoons)—

so you want to caramelize ribs slathered in sauce

slowly at low temperatures.

Temperature control is the

secret to cooking a deli-

cious meal outdoors. The

best way to get the ver-

satility of both very hot

direct radiant heat and

ovenlike indirect convec-

tion heat is to create the

two-zone system. In the

cooler, indirect zone, you

can roast chickens or ribs

slowly until they are com-

pletely cooked before

transferring the meat to

the direct zone to crisp the

chicken skin, or caramel-

ize the dry rub or sugary

barbecue sauce without

burning. You can use the

same technique on char-

coal and gas grills.

On a gas grill, turn off

all the burners except for

one. This creates a cooler

zone and an adjustable

hot zone. Manipulate that

burner until you achieve

that 225° F sweet spot for

convection cooking. For

searing later on the hot

zone, you can crank the

burner all the way up.

On a charcoal grill (as

illustrated at left), push

all the coals into a pile on

one side of the grill, creat-

ing a hot zone for searing,

and start your meat on

the lower-temperature

no-coal zone. Add wood

chips to the pile of char-

coal and a water pan above

the radiant heat and you’ve

just turned your charcoal

grill into a smoker.

THE BEST

WAY TO

CONTROL

TEMPERATURE

❶

Indirect

Convection

Heat

Zone

❷

Direct

Radiant

Heat

Zone

THE TWO-ZONE SETUP

40 September 2019