"Peter Aitken" > wrote in message
news
> There are many "kitchen myths" that you hear regularly - ideas about
cooking
> and food that are known to be false but seem to have a life of their own.
> For example, "searing meat seals in the juices." I thought it would be fun
> and perhaps useful to create a web page that debunks these myths. If you
> have any favorites I'd love to hear them. If possible, please include some
> information or references to back up your "myth-busting" opinion. I want
> this web page to be objective with research and citations backing it up.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Peter Aitken

Not a bad idea however one should offer a plausable explination why a
particular action is advisable or a full explanation.

Dimitri

From Americas test Kitchen:

What is the Maillard Reaction?
Browning is very important when cooking meat, but not for the reason that
you might think. For at least a hundred years, cooks have been taught that
searing, or browning, seals in juices. But it doesn't. Harold McGee, the
author of On Food and Cooking, demonstrated conclusively that meat loses
about the same amount of juice during cooking whether it is seared or not.
So why brown meat? Because it creates a tremendous amount of flavor. This
happens through a process called the Maillard reaction, named after the
French chemist who first described it in the early 1900s. The Maillard
reaction occurs when the amino acids (protein components) and sugars in meat
(or almost any other food) are subjected to heat, which causes them to
combine. In the process, literally hundreds of different flavor compounds
are created. These compounds in turn break down to form yet more new flavor
compounds, and so on and so on and so on. It's kind of like rabbits
multiplying.
As it turns out, each type of food has a very distinctive set of flavor
compounds that are formed during the Maillard reaction. In fact, it is these
same compounds that flavor scientists have used over the years to create
artificial flavors.