Back to Amazon.com

The Debunker: Does Searing Meat "Seal In the Juices"?

by Ken Jennings

Ah, July, season of the backyard barbecue. If you're a vegetarian, we'll throw some kind of veggie burger on the grill and quietly pity you, but for most of us in the summer, meat is where it's at. But how much do you actually know about the flesh of the dead animals that you're consuming? Jeopardy!'s Ken Jennings is here all month to chew the fat with us about some particularly stubborn meat misconceptions. Are you ready to work on your protein proficiency? Let's see what Ken's cooked up today.

The Debunker: Does Searing Meat "Seal In the Juices"?

The German chemist Justus von Liebig was the Alton Brown of his day. In 1847, he published his landmark Researches on the Chemistry of Food to great international acclaim, influencing chefs like Auguste Escoffier and cookbook pioneers like Britain's Eliza Acton. One of Baron Liebig's most successful innovations: the idea that meat should be quickly seared, so as to form "a crust, or shell, which no longer permits the external water to penetrate into the interior of the mass of flesh. . . . The flesh retains its juiciness, and is quite as agreeable to the taste as it can be made by roasting."

sizzle

Prior to Liebig's time, most people preferred to roast their meat gradually, and the idea that a quick sear would keep moisture in or out of a roast was a shockingly new one. It was such a game-changer that even today, over 150 years later, it's passed on as common knowledge by TV chefs and backyard barbecuers alike. Unfortunately, it's not remotely true. The hardened surface created by searing meat may be delicious—you can thank the Maillard reaction, a complex chemical interaction between sugars and amino acids that gives browned foods their flavor—but it ain't waterproof.

In 1930, experimenters at the University of Missouri proved the "searing in juiciness" theory to be definitively wrong: roasts that were seared à la Liebig actually lost more liquid than ones that were cooked at a lower, more even temperature. Today, the trend in high-end steak is sous vide cookery, a newfangled technique in which food is vacuum sealed and cooked for a period of days (!) at a relatively low temperature. The result: tender, velvety perfection. That rumble you hear from Munich is Baron Liebig rolling over in his grave.

Quick Quiz: Justus von Liebig is also called "the father of the fertilizer industry" because of his revolutionary experiments to increase the "fixation" of what gaseous element in soil?

Ken Jennings is the author of six books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.