Searing best practices?

Hi all,

In my sous vide experiments so far, I found the searing step to be the most challenging one. So far I've never achieved the sort of uniform, deep brown crust that's shown in the ChefSteps videos.

I've used a stainless steel pan, remembering having read that this is favored over non-stick pans. I used clarified butter, and I heated the pan until the butter started to ripple.

Usually the meat would stick to the pan, and the crust therefore remained in the pan, and not on the meat where it belonged. I read somewhere that it's normal that it first sticks, but even when I waited it would never get “unstuck”.

Are there any best practices? How hot does the pan need to be? Is butter or oil the preferred fat? Put the fat on the meat or in the pan?

Any advice from the seasoned pros is greatly appreciated!

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Comments

FrankM_3301

I really like a ripping hot, well-seasoned, cast iron pan for something I want a deep crust on. For a steak, I use a small amount of oil, wiped out with paper towel, before the sear.

Matt_67991

I have had great success with the "tender cuts" advice. I rub oil some cold, dry product (par freezing on a rack, and then paper towel works well), and put it in a hot, heavy nonstick pan. Pressing down with a weight, like a pot (possibly filled with something heavy, like water or rice) is nice too, and helps get an even crust.

With sous vide, I find that presearing, and then drying the product well when it comes out of the bath works pretty well.

Surface Moisture really is the enemy of a good sear.

Emmett_Barton_12803

1. Drying your food off first so integral to a good sear. If your steak is wet on the outside, that moisture has to boil off before the meat has direct contact with the heat, which in turn generates steam, cooking your steak without searing it.

2. Super hot non-stick with lots of fat. Oil or butter, depends on your tastes. Temperature? So high , your pan is smoking. If you heat your pan to smoking first, without fat, then add, you might get a faster rise to temperature and lower your risk of burning your fat. We use Scanpan nonsticks here at ChefSteps, for the most part.

3. Evenness of sear. I've seen Grant simply use a bar towel to press the meat with his hand. You can also buy grill weights to do the same thing. Don't forget to sear the sides! (Use tongs).

4. Final pro tip: lower your meat into the super hot pan full of burning fat so that the end facing you touches first, followed by the rest of it. This will prevent the risk of spraying oil on yourself.

kleiner

Thanks to all for the useful input. No surface moisture, that is understood and makes sense. Regarding the pan type: the current standings are Non-Stick: 2 vs. Cast Iron: 1.

Now the scientist in me is asking: Why are non-stick pans (or cast iron, respectively) better?

Brendan_Lee_56950

the proponents of cast iron will talk about its ability to hold heat due to its physical heft. I don't own any non stick so I can't help there but I imagine the non sticking aspect has something to do with it.

Marc_34938

Like Emmett pointed out, high temperatures and surface dryness are the main factors for a good sear. The kinds of temperatures required pose a few problems, though.

First, I would be reluctant to use non-stick pans for searing because Teflon coatings begin to break down at the high temperatures that are required for a quick sear. DuPont's website (the inventor of Teflon) indicates that Teflon coatings begin breaking down at 500 F. As a rough estimate, most cooking oils begin to smoke somewhere between 350 F and 450 F. Heating a pan past the smoke point of an arbitrary cooking oil could put you close to the range where Teflon begins breaking down.

More generally, though, heating oil past its smoke point in any pan produces some unhealthy byproducts. Here is a page from the Cleveland Clinic that mentions this fact in passing. Here is a research paper that discusses formation of volatile organic compounds when cooking oils are heated.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has a more informed scientific assessment of these two risks. Of course, humans have been searing food over fires for centuries, so the health risks from burning fats must not be extreme. Perhaps the largest threat, as hinted by the research paper I linked to, is indoor air pollution. If your kitchen does not have a good ventilation hood, it may not be possible to get a good sear without filling your kitchen with smoke.