Not every dish that you prepare has to be made fast or on the hottest temperature setting. There are times when it's beneficial to the food that it's cooked at a lower temperature. When you take the time to think about your food and to prepare your meals, you can often see a difference in the quality, especially if you're marinating meats or roasting vegetables.
If possible, you should try to use a combination of cooking methods instead of only cooking fast all the time at the highest temperature on the oven. When you're cooking outside on a grill, you need to think about the exterior of the food and the interior separately. The exterior should have a nice caramelized texture and taste while the inside should still be juicy and tender, making it easy to cut and chew. These details are something that you want to remember whether you're cooking a steak or corn on the cob.
When you're cooking, you need to keep in mind that the heat that is on the exterior of the food actually helps in the cooking process of the inside of the food. This is why the areas should be cooked in two different manners instead of focusing your efforts on making sure that your temperature settings are the same for the entire time. It doesn't matter whether you're cooking fast and slow, you need to imagine what your food will look like as a final product.
While it might make sense that thicker meats require a higher temperature, the opposite is often true. If you cook thicker meats at a higher temperature, you're going to get the outside done much faster than the inside. Focus on trying to get the interior thoroughly cooked before turning up the temperature a little to finish cooking the exterior. You'll have a nice juicy interior with a crisp exterior on your meat.
Foods that are skinny do well with higher temperatures and shorter cooking times so that you can lock in the flavor of the meat. Shrimp, asparagus, and skirt steak are examples of the foods that are best prepared in a short time and on a higher setting. Try to cook the food right above the source of heat if you want it done in a short time. Position the food to the sides of the grill so that it's out of the way of the direct heat source if you have time to wait for it to get done and if you want to keep as many of the natural flavors of the food as possible.
A tip to use when you're cooking on a higher temperature is to turn your food often so that the hot side cools down quickly and so that it doesn't get completely burnt. If you're fixing thinner types of meat or vegetables, you can freeze them for about 30 minutes before cooking them. The inside of the food won't get done too fast, but the exterior will have a nice char. Keep in mind that you shouldn't leave foods in the freezer long enough for ice to form on them because moisture will be released while heating, causing the food to have an odd taste or to become soggy instead of keeping the natural juices. Larger foods need more time to cook and at lower temperature settings. When the outside of the food gets hot too quickly, the heat doesn't have a chance to evenly get to the interior of the food, which means that the meats you're cooking will have uneven temperatures.
Still not sure of the best way to cook using heat? Why not consider taking a cooking class? Cooking marketplaces such as Cozymeal have various options to choose from. Either alone or as a date night, you can learn to use heat as your friend when making fantastic meals.
