Cooking Technique- Heat

If your mother raised me like mine you probably have a healthy respect for the heat you use when cooking on the stove. From a young age it was beaten into me that you never go above medium heat unless you are boiling water. This rule is not really wrong nor right, but instead simply limited. If you are going to leave a pan cooking on the stove it certainly makes sense to not turn the heat up to high- if you leave food unattended on high it will burn. However, as long as you can pay attention to whatever it is you are cooking oftentimes you will get a better result with high heat. Oftentimes this comes down to just a question of stirring. Take the classic sauté. If you watch professional chefs sauté some vegetables they will toss it frequently. Way more often than the average home cook would stir. Tossing frequently on a higher heat will produce vegetables and meat that taste better- cleaner and more crisp- than stewing them at a lower temperature. There is a lot of science (linked below) you can look into behind this, or you can just take my word for it.

In the recipes here I will usually assume you are paying attention to what you are doing. So when I say “sweat the onions” I am assuming you are using medium high heat and stirring or tossing frequently. Especially for quick and dirty recipes where the goal is speed you don’t want to spend 12 of the 20 minutes sweating aromatics when the same result (or better) can be achieved with a higher heat in ½ the time.