Can you please back-up what you've posted with some relevant references and translate it to layman's terms?
Thanks!
Would love to, but that requires you to have a degree in Spectroscopy or we are going to be here for a long time. As far as amylase and Maillard, just look em up. You will be surprised what you learn doing a little research to educate yourself on something someone said. Then ask questions if you don't understand something.
But basically all cooking is thermodynamics. More specifically the exchange of energy in the infrared spectrum. Everything has a resonant frequency.
To "see it"
Watch this video of Galloping Gertie
This is an example of an oscillator going into a resonance mode. Here the wind represents the heat (infrared wave of your cooking source) and the bridge represents the meat you are cooking.
As you watch the amplitude of the wave (the bridge bucking harder and higher) you will see a close up of the cable (looks like a pipe line but it is actually the casing of the bridges suspension cables) moving in a countable pendulum pattern, (This is the frequency, in this case very low frequency) as the wind (your heat source) adds energy you watch the bridge rise and fall harder and harder. All resonance oscillators gain in amplitude if you add more power. The bridge is shifting the energy from side to side. Finally you see complete mechanical failure of the steel when the amplitude exceeds the strength of the steel. Causing the energy to be released in a violent mechanical failure.
That is an oscillator. Much much much faster the water inside you meat is doing the same thing. If one could tune the wind to a specific speed the bridge would oscillate at the same rate forever if the loss matched the energy the wind was putting into it. This is what happens with a water activity stall when resonance is reached. (This is what the stall is, nothing magic, just science.) In most case the energy coming into the meat is equal to the heat loss leaving the meat and the cooker happens to be adding and losing the same amount of heat. Adjustments will change this, opening the damper will cool the meat (bad) increasing the temperature will start a new resonance pattern (what we would do in the Southern Pride smoker if we stalled as we know the stall is not magical but a pain since we have to serve on time.) Or you could disturb the oscillator by flipping it with a good squashing, or stabbing it with a fork. (if the bridge had steel added to it the amplitude of the wave would change.) Anyway point is a stall is nothing...... you don't have to wait just crank the heat for half an hour or so, or stab the meat or flip the meat... but don't just wait there, backyard lore says oh you just have to wait it out. That is BS spread by people that subscribe to magic, not science. Kill the stall and move on.
Change the function of the oscillator stops the stall. Most commonly people will watch a stall for a long time thinking it is some kind of magical moment. Stab the crap out of it with a fork, or pull it and mash on it a little and you can skip the stall. In the commercial world this is no we will feed you tomorrow sometime since the meat stalled, there is get it done on time. So we don't wait for a stall to stop, we either stab it or kick the heat up from 250 to 325 for about an hour and it is over. In the backyard realm there is reverence for the stall, but it is just since and a pain in the butt!
If you pick up a college text on thermal dynamics you will become a much better cook IMO. Even if you just read the beginning stuff on energy transfer.
Been a chef for 35 years now, started as one, been a practicing engineer for 28 years now. One pays the bills one relieves the stress! Cooking relieves the stress and has lots of interesting science in it.
