Corduroy Orange

When a recipe calls for cooking something at ‘high heat’, does that mean that I should turn the knob on my gas stove as far as it can go?  Does ‘high heat’ equate to ‘maximum heat’?  And is ‘low’ the point at which I can first see the gas flame?  I always seem to have a very difficult time regulating the temperature, mainly for cooking things at ‘medium-high’ or ‘medium-low’, but I’m not sure if it’s my gas stove or if I’m just an idiot!

Cheers,
Heather

Heather—

No need to feel embarrassed or inept; while it seems like a simple question, it really is one that has so many shades of gray, depending on what equipment you’re working with.  If you’ve got a Vulcan or a Blue Star Range, for instance, you’ll have the possibility of much higher heat in your kitchen than I have with my 20-year old Kenmore stove.  And, really, with most average stoves, you’ll have a bit more control over the flame than I’ve got with mine because for some inscrutable region, though the knobs are round, I’ve only got about 90 degrees worth of the circle to control my flame with, so I wind up spending a few minutes whenever I turn it on bent down looking under the pot and tapping the knob with my finger trying to get it to move just a nudge in one direction or the other.

I know you didn’t ask me about the shortcomings of my home kitchen, but I mention them to underscore the point that what one person’s stove says is “high” might be another’s “medium-high” and you can’t really go by the markings on your dial.  Instead, bring all of your senses into the cooking process.  If you’re sauteeing over high heat, for instance, listen to how loudly the stuff in the pan is sizzling.  If it’s so loud that you can’t hear yourself speak over it, your heat is too high.  If it’s barely sizzling at a whisper, your heat is too low.  Instead, seek a conversational tone to the sizzle.

Where your dial points for that will depend on a number of factors, including how long your pan has been heating up on the range, how big the pan is, what the pan is made out of, how much stuff you have in the pan, and how cold the stuff was before you added it.  Every time you put something new into the pan, you cool it down just a bit, and will likely have to nudge the heat slightly higher, at least briefly, to make up for that.

I also trust my senses of sight and smell.  Golden brown=good; black=bad.  If the stuff on the bottom of the pan starts looking too dark, I’ll add a bit of water to the pan and deglaze the fond from the bottom so that nothing gets burnt.  If I smell something starting to burn, I remove the pan from the heat immediately so that it cools down as quickly as possible, and often add a bit of water to the pan at that point, too.
If you’re cooking rice, on the other hand, high heat sort of means as high as it will go.  I mean sort of in a general, kind of fuzzy, and far from definitive sense.  On the one hand, you want to bring the water to a boil relatively quickly.  On the other, you don’t want to scorch the rice to the bottom of the pan.  So, what I wind up doing is starting with the heat at its maximum, and then nudging it down slightly as the water shows signs of approaching a boil.  When the water really does boil, I stir the rice once or twice with a wooden spoon to make sure nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pan, turn the heat down quite low (approaching the lowest) and put the lid on the pan.  To make absolutely certain, i set the timer for 5-10 minutes less than the instructions on cooking the rice tell me to and turn the heat off when the timer goes off, but leave the lid on the pan so that the steam continues cooking the rice but avoiding the application of gross amounts of heat to the bottom of the pan as the last of the water evaporates.

I wish I could give you more specific instructions, but adjusting the height of the flame is one of the key areas where the art comes into the culinary arts.  Nothing ever really cooks the exact same way twice on top of the stove because there are so many factors that contribute to the progression of the dish—not only the height of the flame, but the exact amount of ingredients used, the stage at which additional ingredients are added to the pan, the percentage of water in the specific ingredient you’re using (no two turnips/ carrots/ onions/ etc. are exactly the same), how much attention you’re paying to it, and so on.  One pf the most difficult aspects of cookery to master is knowing when a pan of food needs your attention, and when prodding at it with a spoon or a spatula is unnecessary “tickling” that will disrupt the process of its cooking.

In short, if it’s burning, turn the heat down; but if it’s starting to simmer in its own juices, turn the heat up.  I hope that’s at least some help.  If not, feel free to fly me (first class) to your home and house me for the weekend for some private cooking and knife skills lessons….