The Maillard reaction has become a fixture of the new cross-cultural, science-inflected culinary Esperanto.
Last year, “Maillard makeup” became a viral trend on Chinese social media platforms: a soft color palette of tan, taupe, and umber, inspired by the reaction but not exactly capturing its intensity.
The scientification of home cooking has been in the works for a while, especially since publishers have realized that “kitchen science” is a marketable theme, in the same way Italian or microwave cooking is.
Maillard has basically become the new umami,… shorthand for ‘I know wtf I’m talking about, bow to me.’
It seems that a process once known as “browning” has been co-opted by an Internet-inflected school of culinary machismo, where the primary function of cooking isn’t necessarily feeding people but, rather, proving a point.
Perhaps he had a longer smoke break that day?
Seriously, though, my guess would be a new cook that got distracted.
Med Rare is the “factory setting” for steak prep in the States. I have a hard time getting a Rare steak and my SiL can not seem to get one Medium.
When i ask for Rare i usually get something just a tad closer to Rare than Med Rare.
I wonder if people who ordered Rare have sent it back as being too close to Blue?
It’s interesting, Kenji gets most of the credit for science-y-fying cooking for lay people, but wasn’t it really Cooks Illustrated that first (popularly) broke down the science of cooking for home cooks?
I know everyone loves to hate on Chris Kimball and loves Kenji, but still.
The non-browned lamb and rice meatballs in my yourvarlakia look very ugly, but taste great. I don’t know how I could brown them (maybe briefly in the air fryer?).
“I cooked a handful of dishes side by side with onions cut with various methods and found that unless I went out of my way to produce wildly uneven dice, most of the little differences ended up washing out in the mix.”
Lots of stuff get new names, especially after social media drives it…and then at some point someone calls out the excess use of the term or history. Seems to be a social media cycle.
Call it browning or maillard, either way it does the same thing. It makes it look more appetizing, but it doesn’t work with every meat or protein, or need to. I didn’t read the opening article but wok hei is similar or the same…and that adds flavor IMO.
If I cook an expensive steak, I sous vide and brown it, if for no other reason than appearance but I believe it adds flavor on streak but how much, can’t say. It just looks more appetizing or like a traditionally or conventionally cooked steak. And as the saying goes, you eat with your eyes before you mouth. For stuff like beef stew, browning tends to hold a cube of meat together instead of getting like pulled pork or pot roast that gets stringy. So there’s other reasons…or is that a “sear”. (haha)
Other stuff with new names…dry brining. My mom use to simply call it salting, i.e., salt or salting the turkey the day before, rubbing salt on a bird or roast 12 to 24 hours before cooking. If I said something like “hey should we dry brine the turkey”, she’d say what’s that, or might confuse it with a wet brine, or pickles. Of course you sound way more sophisticated using an obscure or “insider” term…so there’s that.
