For Optimal Browning, Heat Oil Until It Just Starts Smoking, Not Shimmering

Illustration for article titled For Optimal Browning, Heat Oil Until It Just Starts Smoking, Not Shimmering

You may have noticed that many meaty recipes call for heating cooking oil until it begins to smoke. It may take a few minutes longer to get it that hot, but it turns out it’s a completely necessary step, and that shimmering oil just won’t cut it.

To see if there were any huge differences in food cooked in shimmering oil versus food cooked in oil that had reached its smoke point, Cook’s Illustrated pan-fried a couple of steaks:

We cooked two sirloin strip steaks in identical 12-inch skillets. For one steak, we heated 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil until shimmering, which took about 2 minutes. In the other pan, we heated 1 tablespoon of oil until it reached the smoke point, which took 6 minutes. We cooked both steaks until well browned on both sides.


Not only did the steak prepared in smoking oil cook more quickly than the one prepared in shimmering oil (6 minutes versus 10), it also browned more evenly, and had a smaller region of overcooked, grey meat. This isn’t particularly startling, as it makes sense that hotter oil would cook food more quickly, but the difference in temperature may be larger than you think. Shimmering oil only reaches about 275℉, whereas smoking vegetable oil is around 400℉, and this difference can greatly affect the outcome of your meal. If you’re worried about burning you oil, just relax, oil that has just reached its smoke point is hard to miss. According to C.I., “you’ll see multiple wisps rising from the pan,” so hang out and don’t add your food until you spot them.

Science: Shimmer and Smoke | Cook’s Illustrated

Photo by Taryn.


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A good idea would be to read the Cook’s Illustrated article and then click on their link to their discussion of various oils at the bottom of the page. Depending on what you’re planning, it might be worthwhile to have a few small bottles of different oils for certain purposes. Corn oil was awful for mayonnaise, but great for frying, etc. When I walk into a restaurant and I smell overheated olive oil, I know I’m not going to have a great meal.