Q: So why do we bother searing at all? It’s simple: flavor The high heat of searing triggers the cascade of chemical reactions known as the Maillard reaction I’ve referred to this elsewhere, but here’s a quick recap Named after Louis-Camille Maillard, the scientist who discovered it, the Maillard reaction is the complex series of chemical reactions that causes foods to brown It’s often confused with caramelization (“That steak has a beautifully caramelized crust!”), but in fact the two reactions are distinct Caramelization occurs when sugars are heated, while the Maillard reaction occurs when sugars and proteins are heated The places you’re most likely to see it are when searing or roasting meat (meat contains natural sugars), when baking bread or making a piece of toast (flour contains carbohydrates built with sugars and proteins), or when roasting coffee beans Although Maillard reactions can occur at relatively low temperatures, they are glacially slow until your food reaches around 350°F That’s why boiled foods, which have an upper limit of 212°F (determined by the boiling point of water), will never brown With high-temperature searing, frying, or roasting, however, browning is abundant First a carbohydrate reacts with an amino acid (the building blocks of protein), which then continues to react, forming literally hundreds of by-products that will in turn react with each other to form still more by-products To this day, the exact set of reactions that occurs when Maillard browning takes place has not been fully mapped out or understood What we do understand is this: it’s darn delicious Not only does it increase the savoriness of foods, but it also adds complexity and a depth of flavor not present in raw foods or foods cooked at too low a temperature That’s why your steak tastes so much meatier when it’s properly browned, and that’s why for most people, the outer crust of the meat is the tastiest part Q: I’ve read that letting your meat come to room temperature before cooking gives you better results Any truth in that? Let’s break this down one issue at a time First, the internal temperature While it’s true that slowly bringing a steak up to its final serving temperature will promote more even cooking, the reality is that letting it rest at room temperature accomplishes almost nothing To test this, I pulled a single 15-ounce New York strip steak out of the refrigerator, cut it in half, placed half back in the fridge, and the other half on a ceramic plate on the counter The steak started at 38°F and the ambient air in my kitchen was at 70°F I then took temperature readings of its core every ten minutes After the first 20 minutes—the time that many chefs and books will recommend you let a steak rest at room temperature—the center of the steak had risen to a whopping 39.8°F Not even a full two degrees So I let it go longer 30 minutes 50 minutes 1 hour and 20 minutes After 1 hour and 50 minutes, the steak was up to 49.6°F in the center—still colder than the cold water that comes out of my tap in the summer, and only about 13 percent closer to its target temperature of a medium-rare 130°F than the steak in the fridge ... York strip steak out of the refrigerator, cut it in half, placed half back in the fridge, and the other half on a ceramic plate on the counter The steak started at 38°F and the ambient air in my... properly browned, and that’s why for most people, the outer crust of the meat is the tastiest part Q: I’ve read that letting your meat come to room temperature before cooking gives you better results Any truth in that?... After 1 hour and 50 minutes, the steak was up to 49.6°F in the center—still colder than the cold water that comes out of my tap in the summer, and only about 13 percent closer to its target temperature of a medium-rare 130°F than the steak in the fridge