Heat Control: The Pan Is Not the Hob, and It Does Not Follow the Dial

Heat the empty pan before anything goes in. A pan that starts cold is still heating while the food is cooking, so the food's early minutes happen at a temperature nobody chose. Judge readiness by a test. A drop of water skittering across the surface in a ball rather than boiling off means the pan is well above 100 degrees — the Leidenfrost effect, and a reliable free thermometer. Oil that shimmers and flows like water is another. An infrared thermometer settles it in a second if you have one, and it is worth doing once with your own pans just to learn what the tests correspond to. That is calibrating a judgement against an instrument, which is the measurement batch's habit applied to a kitchen.

HIGH is for browning and for boiling. It is the only setting where the surface gets past 140 degrees quickly, and the only one that will keep a big pot of water boiling with pasta in it. MEDIUM is for cooking things through — the setting where the inside has time to reach temperature before the outside is ruined. Most things people burn were cooked on high when they wanted medium. LOW is for sweating onions without colour, for reductions, and for anything with dairy or egg in it that will split or scramble if it gets hot. A simmer is occasional bubbles, not a rolling boil, and holding it there is what the last two rungs of this batch are about.

A pan is an instrument you can hear. A loud, sharp, continuous sizzle means water is leaving fast and the surface is above 100 degrees — browning is happening. A quiet pan with a soft bubbling means liquid, and steaming. Silence from a pan that was loud means either the food is done and dry, or it is burning. Both need attention immediately and they sound the same, so look. Smell is the other channel, and it leads sound by about a minute: nutty and sweet is the Maillard reaction working; acrid and sharp is past it. A cook who is listening and smelling does not need a timer for most things, and that is a skill built by paying attention rather than by being told.