Shellfish
Scallops
A very short cook, and the expensive thing about getting them wrong is the price.
What it does in fast-moving hot air
A scallop is a muscle that spends its life snapping a shell shut, which makes it dense, sweet and almost entirely water and protein. Heat sets the protein and squeezes the water out, and past that point it goes rubbery in the way a prawn does but from a much higher starting price. The sugar content is high enough to brown quickly, so the whole technique is to get colour on the flat faces before the centre passes through. Patting dry is not optional — a wet scallop spends its short cook evaporating instead of browning.
Why the cut matters
Scallops are the shortest cook in the catalogue after king prawns, and the least forgiving relative to their cost. Everything about them argues for a hot surface and a short time.
Cooking pages
- Scallops — One manufacturer grills thirty-eight scallops weighing 600g for three to four minutes, patted dry and seasoned; it does not say fresh or frozen.
This page gives no cooking answer of its own. A food does not have one — a cut, at a thickness, in a state, at a loading, in a particular appliance does. Any figure mentioned above is one manufacturer’s, and the page for the cut says which machine, quantity and state it was printed for, or that the manufacturer named no state.