Shellfish
Scallops
Three to four minutes, 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 three minutes 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 — Three to four minutes, patted dry and seasoned — and dry is the operative word.
There is deliberately no cooking time on this page. A food does not have one — a cut, at a thickness, in a state, at a loading, in a particular appliance does. That is what the pages above are for.