When you think cooking you undoubtedly think of fire. From it simply coming out of your gas stove’s burner to even the hand-held blow torch you’ve seen chefs use to caramelize the sugar on top of a crème brûlée, fire is something you’ll find in every kitchen. Ever since we were kids, the idea of fire has always fascinated us, from roasting marshmallows over a campfire to just even lighting a match, there’s always that spark within all of us, telling us that we want to play with this; we need more fire in our life. Well, your dreams have been answered and it comes in the form of the Searzall.
Photo courtesy of www.eater.com
What the Heck is a Searzall?
You’d never guess it but the Searzall actually started out as a Kickstarter a while back. Dave Arnold, the cocktail master of Booker and Dax in New York City, and innovator in the culinary field, has created the next best thing when it comes to hand-held tools in the kitchen. Backed by David Chang, the mind behind the Momofuku Empire and a number of other investors by way of Kickstarter, the Searzall has made its way to the public.
For those wondering what this thing actually is, it’s basically an attachment that you put on the end of your kitchen blow torch, transforming it into a hand-held broiler. Where a traditional blow torch has a very concentrated flame, the Searzall allows for that high heat to be distributed over a more even surface area. It not only creates a better cooking tool for things like searing a steak, but it also eliminates that unwanted fuel taste one can experience when using a blow torch. The Searzall is the answer for chefs on the go who may be cooking at a catering event, or even cooks in the final stages of preparing a meal who want a nice finish to their dish without the need to put it under the salamander.
Photo by Daniel Schuleman
The Search for the Perfect Steak
As you can see, the term “sear” is in the name of this new invention. So the obvious thing would be that the Searzall would be a beast at searing a nice piece of steak and that’s exactly one of the things it does amazingly well. With a traditional sear, you’d want to get a pan screaming hot in order to give it that magnificent browning effect. The thing is that when doing this, the result isn’t perfect. You’ll definitely be able to achieve the intended medium-rare doneness, but the meat itself will be done in layers of gradients where the outermost parts of your steak will be more done layer by layer until it reaches the center most area where it is actually medium-rare.
Today, chefs have been able to achieve the perfect medium-rare through the use of sous-vide, a cooking method that uses a temperature-controlled water bath in order to create a steak that has a medium-rare doneness throughout the entire piece of meat, rather than in gradients of doneness, which is established in the traditional way of searing. While sous-vide seems to have solved doneness issue, the downside of the sous-vide method is that one doesn’t get that nice brown and meaty finish on the outside of your steak. That’s where the Searzall comes to save the day. The Searzall is able to create that same searing effect, aka the Maillard Reaction, and the best part is that because it is essentially a broiler in the palm of your hands, you’ll get a really nice sear without affecting the rest of your steak.
Photo by Lauren Kaplan
What Else Can This Baby Actually Do?
While the Searzall is an ideal solution for cooking the perfect steak, it can do so much more. Remember those crème brûlées you’ve seen in your dreams? The Searzall is a great tool for that as well. By replacing the use of a traditional hand-held blow torch you won’t get that nasty fuel taste while munching on your decadent dessert anymore. The Searzall not only gets rid of that acrid taste but it caramelizes that sugar like it’s nobody’s business. Apart from being able to caramelize sugar, it can also crisp up the skin on the outside of a luscious piece of salmon, or even just melt that slice of American cheese atop that juicy, delicious burger. But, for us novice cooks out there, the Searzall would make some killer s’mores as well.
So if you can’t figure out what to get that chef in your family or you just really want to have a fun time playing with fire pick up a Searzall. Who the heck doesn’t want to play with fire?