There aren't any horror movies about broilers. There aren’t any famous, best-selling novels about mysterious broiler happenings in the 1880’s, no podcasts about broiler true crime. So why is everyone so terrified of them? It seems people have some deeply-ingrained fear of turning the knob all the way to the left, until the tiny “Broil” hits the arrow. But you don't need to be scared. Use your broiler. Because it’s the easiest way to make crispy, beautifully-browned food a reality.
What is a broiler though? And where is it? Well, the broiler is a part of your oven that functions as a direct, super-concentrated heating element. While your oven normally produces ambient heat that goes all around the food you're cooking, the broiler heats from above—an immediate delivery system for high heat. It’s basically (heh) the closest thing you can get to a grill in the comfort of your home, with open flames (if you have a gas-powered stove) coming extremely close to the surface of your food. It’s positioned either on the top (ceiling?) of your oven, or in a drawer on the bottom. The latter option on the bottom is more commonly found in older ovens and is definitely not a good place to store cook books—not that we know anything at all about that. Definitely not.
So it’s hot. Awesome. We can use that heat for plenty of things, namely achieving an unparalleled crispy texture on some of our favorite foods. Right off the bat, we associate a broiler with turning a cheesy topping into mind-bendingly melty, stretchy, bubbly goodness. We like finishing anything from lasagna to nachos to pizzas under the broiler for just a couple of minutes (we don’t want to completely char this stuff). Speaking of pizza: If you’re doing a pie with cured meat like soppressata in the oven at home, you best be hitting it with the broiler at the end. The flames will crisp the edges of that pork in the same way you’d find them at your favorite wood-fired pizza joint.
But wait, there’s more to a broiler than making cheese cheesier. It also gives texture to meat in a way that can only be described as beautiful. Finishing a thick steak under the broiler provides an added layer of crispy caramelization to contrast the fattiness of the meat, and finishing a whole roasted chicken under the broiler for a few minutes gives the skin that perfect, burnished, golden-brown color you’ve seen in old issues of cooking magazines at your grandma’s house. It works the same way with chicken wings, too. The easiest way to get the skin on chicken wings as crispy-crunchy as they are when they're deep-fried at a restaurant without, you know, deep-frying them? The broiler. Duh.
But fair warning: With great power comes great responsibility. This intense heat has to be monitored. You can’t just throw a raw steak under the broiler and forget about it. The best way to get to know your broiler is to use it for finishing things you’ve already cooked. Keep an eye on what you choose to finish, making sure you remove it from heat when it reaches the desired color and texture. It happens pretty quickly.
Once you start using your broiler, you won’t stop. You’ll look at Old You with a pity-filled smile. The naivety, the childish innocence. Broiling will become a quintessential part of your kitchen existence. You’ll find yourself saying a phrase we’re pretty fond of in these parts: “I’ll just finish it under the broiler.” And then you’ll do just that, pulling your crispy, juicy, salty chicken wings from the oven and living the life you’ve always dreamed of.