For Optimal Browning, Heat the Oil Until It Starts to Smoke Without Flickering
You may have noticed that many meat recipes require heating the vegetable oil until it starts to smoke. It can take a few minutes longer to get this hot, but it turns out that this is an absolutely necessary step and that shimmery oil just won’t cut it.
To see if there are any huge differences between a meal cooked in shimmery oil and a meal cooked in butter that has reached its smoke point, Cook’s Illustrated pan-fried a couple of steaks:
We cooked two tenderloin steaks in matching 12-inch pans. For one steak, we heated 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil until shimmery, which took about 2 minutes. In another skillet, we heated 1 tablespoon of oil to the smoke point, which took 6 minutes. We cooked both steaks until browned on both sides.
Not only did a steak cooked in oil cooked faster than a steak cooked in shimmering oil (6 minutes versus 10), it also browned more evenly and had a smaller area of overcooked gray meat. This is not surprising, as it makes sense that hotter oil cooks food faster, but the difference in temperature can be greater than you think. The shimmery oil only reaches 275 ℉, whereas the smoking of vegetable oil is around 400, and this difference can greatly affect the outcome of your meal. If you are anxious about burning oil, just relax, oil that has just reached its smoking point is hard to miss. In the words of CI, “you’ll see a few lights coming out of the pot,” so go outside and don’t add food until you spot them.
Science: flicker and smoke | Illustrated chef