Managing heat is a crucial and oft-overlooked technique for novice cooks. While recipes will tell you to preheat to this temperature or that, or to reduce the heat to medium-low, they don’t tell you much about what heat is or how to control it on the fly. Mastering heat control lets you control texture, flavor, moisture, and time, rather than just making an educated guess.
To expand on this point: too much heat and the outside gets burnt and the inside stays raw. Too little and it steams instead of sears, and flavor is sacrificed. Getting the heat right makes the exterior crispy, the interior tender, the sauces smooth, and the inside fully cooked.
Understanding how to control heat takes cooking from a task of execution to one of judgment. It allows you to compensate for shifts in ingredients, equipment or amounts.
Cooking heat is divided into three categories: conduction, convection, and radiation. Knowing the differences between them and how they are applied in various cooking methods can help you become a better cook.
We tend to think of heat for cooking in terms of three main divisions: low, medium, and high. None of these are defined temperatures, just a general “band” that has specific outcomes.
Low heat is used for low-temperature cooking, to lock in moisture, and for the low-and-slow process. It’s great for simmering, reducing sauces, and for cooking light proteins. Low heat lets the item cook from the inside, without the outside burning.
Medium is the multipurpose temperature. It’s good for sautéing, even browning, and consistent cooking. A majority of recipes are best cooked at medium temperature, with some tinkering.
This is the highest temperature. It is for fast browning and searing and for cooking quickly. It gives a very dark surface, but it should be used with care as it can burn food.
It’s not about memorizing names so much as knowing what visual and auditory cues to look for at each temperature setting.
How Does Heat Get Into The Food?
Food can be heated by conduction, convection, and radiation. This is important to understanding why different devices and techniques yield different results.
Conduction: This is the heat transfer that occurs when food comes into direct contact with a hot surface, such as the bottom of a pan. The material that the pan is made of, as well as its thickness, will influence the rate and evenness of conduction.
Convection involves air or liquid (such as boiling water) that moves around, thus moving heat around, and usually results in faster and more uniform cooking than direct conduction, but may be slower than direct conduction.
Radiation heat comes from waves, think grilling or broiling. Brown and a lot of flavor.
All cooking techniques are combinations of the above. Understanding which method is most prominent will give you a clear idea of the outcome and where to tweak your cooking process.
Pan temperature (measured using an infrared thermometer) against burner setting:
The first of these is a major amateur error. A lot of people seem to think the temperature setting of a burner is the same as the temperature of the cooking surface. They are not. Different pans absorb heat differently, and the surface temperature will vary with the type of pan, as well as the time the pan has been on that burner.
A thin pan will heat up and cool down very quickly, whereas a thick pan will take longer to heat up, but will maintain the temperature. A cast iron pan will maintain heat like a son of a gun, but a light pan will react much quicker to temperature changes.
Don’t add the food when the pan is cold. That will prevent browning and may make it stick. Also don’t add the food when it is too hot, that will make the food burn. The pan should be hot for the technique but not smoking too much unless you are searing.
If you’re not sure, you can always do the water drop test or add a minuscule amount of whatever you’re using to see if it’s ready.
Here’s a good starting point: Moisture, Browning, and Heat Balance
A major obstacle to browning is surface moisture. Water will always boil away first and absorb a lot of heat energy in the process, and this prevents browning.
High heat and dry surface area produce browning and flavor. Hence the need to pat ingredients dry for pan searing. Over crowding causes moisture retention and heat reduction.
Adding too much food at once causes the pan to lose a lot of heat. Instead of searing and browning, you’ll get steaming and the food will be bland and gray. You can achieve more even heating and a better final product if you cook in batches.
Keeping moisture under control is also a matter of controlling heat outcome.
Searing vs Sautéing vs Simmering
Different methods have different temperature requirements.
Searing is cooking at a very high temperature to rapidly produce a crust on the surface of the food. It’s common to let the food sit for a while without stirring so the surface will react – if you stir it too soon, the crust won’t form.
The sauté: Heat is medium to medium-high. Food is cut into smaller pieces, and you stir often. You are looking for browning, but also aiming to cook through the food, so it’s not just about the crust.
Simmer is low heat that creates a soft boiling in liquid. It cooks ingredients without stirring. Boil is too harsh for sauces and delicate food.
These visible signals — smoke, crackle, simmer — are more trustworthy than anything on a dial.
Managing Oven Temperature
While the heat of an oven doesn’t act like a pan on a stovetop (it envelops food rather than hitting it from one angle), we control it using temperature, the placement of shelves, and sometimes circulation.
High oven temperature gives browning and a crust, but can fail to penetrate and cook the interior of the food properly. Low oven temperature yields even cooking throughout without browning or crisping. There are often advantages to using both. For example, you can start roasting at a high temperature to brown the surface of the roast, then lower the temperature to finish cooking the roast more gently.
Different rack positions make it hotter. The top rack gives you more top heat. The bottom rack makes it cook cooler. Convection adds air flow and makes things cook faster and more browned.
Constantly opening the oven will cause the temperature to fluctuate, and affect the overall time. If you can, try to use the oven window to take a peek.
Carryover Cooking (Residual Heat)
When you take food off of the heat, it will still continue to cook. This is known as carryover cooking. This can cause the internal temperature of thick cuts of meat to climb several degrees after removal from the heat.
A common mistake that novices make is to wait until the target temperature is fully realized in the pan or oven, resulting in the overcooking once the food is allowed to rest. Undercooking by just a bit permits carryover to do its thing.
Residual heat also happens with pans. A hot pan will stay hot even after the heat is lowered. Sometimes you need to remove the pan from the heat to quickly lower the heat.
Carryover should be planned to ensure accuracy and texture.
Following Heat Adjusting Heat
A recipe tells you what to do, but you still need to adjust. Your stove isn’t the same as the recipe author’s. Your pan isn’t the same. You might be using more or less of any ingredient. You have to pay attention and observe.
If food is browning too quickly, lower the heat or agitate more. If it isn’t browning at all, raise the heat some. If your oil starts smoking heavily and it isn’t supposed to be, you’ve got the heat up too high.
Sound is helpful. If you hear a constant sizzle, you know the food is still cooking. If you don’t hear anything, you know it’s not hot enough. If it’s crackling wildly, you know it’s too hot.
Understanding how to manipulate the heat is a big part of learning to cook independently.
Fat as a Heat Indicator
Here’s where fats can help guide us. They will always give us a visual cue to let us know something about their heat status. Butter will start to foam and then brown. Oils will spread out and start to ripple. All of those things mean that the fat is ready for something.
When butter sizzles, you know the pan is too hot for butter. When oil doesn’t flow, you know it’s too cold for sautéing.
Not all fats are created equal when it comes to heat. Certain oils are better suited for high heat than others. Selecting the proper fat will help with temperature regulation as well as taste.
Observing the fat is one of the best ways to figure out pan readiness.
Heat Control Blunders
A big mistake people often make is to always use high heat. High heat is not instant gratification, it is instant mistake when you use it wrong. Most things cook fine on medium.
The second mistake is that he uses the same heat for the entire cooking time. Most recipes will require you to adjust the heat half way through the recipe.
Impatience as well. Not allowing food to sit long enough can cause it to never brown. Stirring when it isn’t needed keeps the surface from forming.
Not accounting for differences in equipment results in frustration. You must figure out how your particular stove and pans react.