When Prudhomme introduced blackening, home cooks were just adding spices and burning meat, so he had to do something about it. Black or burned is not the goal. "Bronze" is. So he changed his approach and introduced Bronzing, a more accurate depiction, to help teach the method.
"Professional chefs looked at my recipes and figured they could master the cuisine by throwing on the red pepper and turning up the heat. They blackened the foods so hard they burned them and made them bitter," said the star attraction at a recent food show for restaurant owners and chefs assembled at Split Rock Lodge, Lake Harmony, Carbon County.
"People who had never been to Louisiana opened `Cajun' restaurants. I was glad when they started going broke.
"One morning when I was on a radio show, a woman called in to tell me how she had bought my book, `Louisiana Kitchen,' and planned to make blackened redfish for a special dinner. Her husband was bringing home an important client. At any rate, she wound up filling the house with smoke. They had to take the client out to dinner.
"The `Cajun monster' I had created made me feel almost suicidal," said the soft-spoken chef raised in the swampy bayous of southern Louisiana.
Philosophical about the "Cajun" experience that catapulted him to culinary fame, Prudhomme said, "I learned from it. I knew I had to develop a technique that was more easily understood and could be done easily in home kitchens. And I decided I would devote myself to teaching. That way, I could convey my messages about food and still get in my messages about blackening."
"Bronzing" is his newest answer to "blackening." It's the art of browning food to bring out its natural sweetness, but, as Prudhomme cautions, "There's a huge difference between browned and burned."
The chef, who revels as much in techniques as he does in new ingredients, believes there is an optimum temperature for cooking every food. Many meats, he has discovered, cook best at 350 degrees. At that temperature, juices brown on the outside, sealing the meat and keeping it from sticking to the pan. At the same time, the remaining juices are driven to the center of the meat so that it is very moist.
But bronzing won't work if the pan isn't hot enough. It also won't happen if the pan gets too hot (higher than 375 degrees). "If that happens, the food will taste bitter," the chef said.
The most accurate way to make sure meat is cooked at Prudhomme's optimum temperature is to use an electric frying pan with a temperature gauge. "I've been trying to convince pan manufacturers to create other pans with some kind of built-in temperature gauge, but no one has listened to me so far," he complained.
YES YES YES! Medium high and golden brown is how I do it. Now I know it's aka bronzing.
