Why Take Time to Brown?

Why do we love grilled meat?

You put a piece of meat with an open fire, with a very, very hot iron to grill. The moment the meat is in contact with the heat, you can almost hear the meat begin to talk to you.

Even if you know nothing about cooking, if you hear the meat spit, splatter and yell at the top of the lungs, "A-A-A-Ouch!", most likely you would immediately smell something wonderful and your mouth starts to water. If you hear nothing but a whimper, "so what", you know something isn't right ...

When you cook your food on high heat and see it turn darker, two miracles happen - caramelization and Maillard reaction (both are forms of non-enzymatic food browning).

To the eyes, both processes appear as the food gets brown and darker. In many contexts, "caramelized" have become a catchall culinary term meaning the food should be cook to darken until it's caramel-brown. However these two processes are not the same.

Caramelization

Caramelization is a process of cooking sugar (carbohydrates) until it melts and darkens. The sugar undergoes chemical changes through different stages as the temperature keeps rising. The sugars break apart and reform hundreds of new compounds. These complex compounds are highly desirable with their rich, buttery, nutty, acidic, slightly bitter and rounder softer sweet notes.

Maillard Reactions 

Baked goods and meat that develop a nutty, slightly sweet richness when browned undergo a process called "Maillard reactions" and it's named after the French chemist who identified the process in the early 1900s.

Maillard reactions is a chemical reaction between an amino acid and a reducing sugar, usually requiring the addition of heat and this process accelerates in an alkaline environment because the amino groups do not neutralize.

Maillard reactions also create caramel-like flavor developing in foods that contain carb (sugar) and protein as they brown on high heat. The reactions are similar to classic sugar caramelizing except they involve a series of complex reactions between proteins and sugars, as opposed to caramelization happens to just sugar. Another thing is that Maillard reactions occur at much lower heat than true sugar caramelization.

This reaction is the basis of the flavouring industry, since the type of amino acid determines the resulting flavour. In the process, hundreds of different flavour compounds are created. These compounds in turn break down to form yet more new flavour compounds, and so on. Each type of food has a very distinctive set of flavour compounds that are formed during the Maillard reaction. It is these same compounds that flavour scientists have used over the years to create artificial flavours.

Wait, don't throw away those brown bits!

How to brown tips!

Notes:

• Browning of foods can be either non-enzymatic (caramelization or maillard reaction) or enzymatic.
• Enzymatic browning in fruits and vegetables is usually not desirable but it is essential in developing flavors in tea.
• Different sugar types have different temperatures for caramelization to happen. In general, it starts above 160°C (320°F).
• Maillard Reaction can happen as low as 100°C (212°F) but it happens very slowly. It progresses at a faster pace at higher temperature, such as at 150°C (300°F) it can cause noticeable browning within minutes. However, above 180°C (355°F), a different set of reactions occur to char foods and too much of that would cause foods to burn and taste bitter.
• Pat meat and fish dry before browning to speed up the Maillard reaction process since the presence of water will keep the temperature at the boiling point until it's all vaporized. (More...)