Blow Torch and Off (Non-fuel-)Tastes

[Anonymous Modernist 2030]

Hello,

I didn't realize that maybe the reason there was no answer to my posts on the blog may be that I should probably post them here instead... Here is my problem:

It seems to me that there is more to torching food that the oxidizing flame. One aspect, which I haven‚’t seen mentioned in MC or MCAH -but I may be mistaken- is the coating of the surface. I recently purchased a MAPP torch, which on the same night did extremely well on the instant swiss meringue, and gave my barely-medium-rare salmon the taste of burnt hair. And videos I have seen on the net of chefs torching nigirizushi, for instance, give me the impression that their searing was not much different from mine.

Hence my questions:

-does searing with a blowtorch always work as well as hot-as-hell-pan-searing ?

-should we coat some meats/fishes (with oil ? yakitori sauce ?) before torchearing them ?

-light touches with a back-and-forth movement to raise the temperature slowly but evenly in several passes, or constant medium speed to reach the desires level of crustiness in one pass ?

Let‚’s imagine a piece of pork skin, with hair on it. It seems to me that, no matter how hot the torch, how skilled you are at searing, it WILL taste off because of the burnt hair.

Now although I don‚’t see why people would want to sear hairy pork skin, it also looks like some surfaces may have the equivalent at the microscopic level, such as cellular membranes that will produce off tastes when heated with a flame. These tastes would not be of fuel, obviously…

That‚’s the only explanation I see to the difference between meringue and salmon which I mentioned above. So if anyone had either an explanation or a way of preparing the surface of the food to avoid these problems, I‚’d be delighted.

[Anonymous Modernist 16119]

Dave Arnold tackles that issue with a creative setup in this blog post by Paul Adams: http://www.cookingissues.com/2013/03/17/patent-pending/

[Anonymous Modernist 2030]

Wow, that's right on target! Interesting to see all the creative debate and how we can put state-of-the-art analysis techniques to use in our basic kitchen activities!

Thanks...

Nick.

PS: Probably this post would be better off in "Modernist Techniques", thanks!