I am very new to smokeing.But I have been cookin fer a while. And I think that most of you from what I have read have taken this art of smoking to a level I have not seen most any place else. makes it feel that I have tons to learn and experiment with. which I am going to do.
On this post about searing... several months ago I was invited to attend a promotion ceremony and party for a good friend. I was asked if I would make the Rice, salsa, wings and a brisket. now, I have never made a brisket and have only tasted them and thought they tasted like crap nothing but fat and grease, so I have never fooled with them.. ( I never tasted one that a good cook did.)
I looked on the internet to find a recipe and kinda get an idea how to cook one. ( I had not seen this forum as yet) I have cooked very little meat in my oven, but tons of animal parts on my grills. I found one of Emeril's recipes for brisket and it was cooked in the oven. I did a little modifications to it and pretty much followed his directions.
One of which was
searing the brisket. which I normally do to all the beef meat I grill. emeril's searing was pre heat the oven to 500 then stick the meat in untill brown on top the turn it over and and brown the other side.
any way at the party there were over 12 briskets brought in some cooked by experts that have been smoking for years.
mine was the 1st one gone and every one wanted to know who cooked it. and said it was the best they ever eaten. (thank you emeril) I like searing as i like the crust that it gives to the meat on the outside..I found this and copied and pasted. hope it helps with the cornfussion..
Searing
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Cheese-topped
sushi is seared using a
blow torch
Searing (or
pan searing) is a technique used in
grilling,
roasting,
braising,
sautÃ[emoji]169[/emoji]ing, etc. that
cooks the surface of the
food (usually
meat,
poultry or
fish) at high temperature so that a
caramelized crust forms. A similar technique,
browning, is typically used to sear or brown all sides of a particular piece of meat, fish, poultry, etc. before finishing it in the oven. To obtain the desired brown crust, the meat surface must exceed 300 °F (150 °C), so searing requires the meat surface be free of water, which boils at around 212 °F (100 °C).
[1]
It is commonly believed that searing locks in the moisture or "seals in the juices" of the food. However, it has been scientifically shown
[2] that searing results in a greater net loss of moisture versus cooking to the same internal temperature without first searing. Nonetheless it remains an essential technique in cooking meat for several reasons:
- The browning creates desirable flavors through caramelization and the Maillard reaction.
- The appearance of the food is usually improved with a well-browned crust.
- The contrast in taste and texture between the crust and the interior makes the food more interesting to the palate.
Typically in
grilling the food will be seared over very high heat and then moved to a lower-temperature area of the grill. In
braising, the seared surface acts to flavor, color and otherwise enrich the liquid in which the food is being cooked.
[edit] Sealing in the juices
The belief that searing meat "seals in the juices" is widespread and still often repeated. This theory was first put forth by
Justus von Liebig,
[2] a German chemist and food scientist, around 1850. The notion was embraced by contemporary cooks and authors including
Auguste Escoffier.
Simple experimentation can test the theory: cook two similar cuts of meat, searing one first and not the other. Weigh the end results to see which loses more moisture. (The
Food Network program
Good Eats carried out such a test in
episode EA1H22,
Myth Smashers.) As early as the 1930s, such experiments were carried out; the seared roasts lost the same amount of moisture or more. (Generally more, since searing exposes the meat to higher temperatures.)
In short, the meat created by searing is in no way waterproof. Moisture in liquid and vapor form can and does continue to escape from a seared piece of meat. For this reason, searing is sometimes done at the end of the freezing process to gain the flavor benefits of the caramelization as well as the benefits of cooking for a greater duration with more moisture.
