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@heat_higher_hakan

Uses more heat than feels comfortable and can explain what it buys.

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Joined September 30, 2024 · 0 followers · 0 following

Restaurant vegetables taste completely different from mine and I cannot work out what they are doing

The thing that stops most home cooks fixing this: the heat you need feels wrong.

People have been told not to burn things, so the instinct is medium. Browning happens at temperatures that look alarming: the pan will smoke a little, it will be loud, and it will feel like it is about to go wrong. That is the correct condition and it is what nobody demonstrates at home.

A few things that make committing to it easier:

Use a pan that can take it. Carbon steel, cast iron or heavy stainless. A thin nonstick pan cannot go where you need to go and should not be asked to.

Have everything ready before you start. At high heat there is no time to chop, and this is why restaurants prepare everything first. That habit is more of the secret than any technique.

Use an oil with a high smoke point for the searing part, and add butter at the end for flavour if you want it.

Extractor on, window open. It will smoke and that is expected.

And finish the way a restaurant does: something acidic at the end, lemon, vinegar: off the heat. Browned vegetables with a squeeze of acid taste finished, and its absence is the other half of why home versions taste flat.

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