I FINALLY understand the Maillard reaction

I cannot have been the first one to read "MALLARD" on the thumbnail thinking this was gonna be about ducks

As a French person it took me some minutes to understand the duck pun. And I would pronounce it "Mayar", the D (in this type of situation), is often silent

Well-done! I wrote the Serious Eats article you reference in your citations and use in the video. As a scientist, I was frustrated that there was no good general explainer for the food-curious, so I wrote it myself. So excited to see it used so effectively on screen. Thanks for sharing my work and spreading better awareness for not only what the Maillard (I do say the 'd') is, but also how to practically alter it. Bonus points for including the section on how it differs from caramelization and starch degradation. Keep it up!

I’ve been self studying food science for about 5 years now and a lot of my knowledge has been hard won, looking everywhere for understandable explanations, attending college classes, or otherwise just improving my baseline so that I can read more technical content. I’m both amazed and a little mad at this channel for condensing so much of what I’ve learned into such easily accessible videos 😅 I’ve even learned a few things I didn’t know before!

OK, gimme your favorite examples of GBD-liciousness...I need them in my life!

My milkshake brings all the boys to maillard

When it comes to steaks in particular, salting them with coarse kosher on both sides then setting them on something that lets air touch both top and bottom (I use an old air fryer basket that I don't use for anything else) and leaving it like that in the fridge for an hour before searing creates fantastic Maillard effects. You can get a nice Chicago rare going without those expensive presses that heat up to like 1200 degrees which steak houses use. Can't take credit for that though, learned it from Alton Brown.

Praise be to the algorithm. I'm a Helen Rennie / Adam Ragusea / J. Kenji Lopez Alt content consumer, so I'm fairly familiar with the information presented, but I *love* the humor, the production, and I'll never tire of hearing (or rambling at anyone who will listen) about food science. Basically this is gold to me, thank you!

The blood glucose A1C test is also based on the same concept. It is a measure of the browning of blood cells from rubbing against blood serum glucose over the 120 day lifespan of the cells.

I live in Montreal, Québec. And I went to school in French my entire life. And as an anglophone, I feel the pain of trying to pronounce French stuff. There's a learning curve, and it's exponential.

With the baking soda reccomendation, it's important to point out that baking powder will not work, because baking powder has acid(s) mixed in to balance it's pH. Often, bread recipes that call for only baking soda will also have an acidic ingredient, and ones that call for a mixture, might have a weaker acid/less acid that doesn't fully react with the soda required, or perhaps they want the final product to be more acidic than pure baking soda would give, and more basic than only baking powder would give. Anyways, the difference between the ingredients baking soda and baking powder, is that soda is a base, while powder is soda neutralized with a weak acid, so only soda will work to raise the pH of a neutral food.

When I was little, I hated onions. I still hate *raw* onions, because they bite me (I accept that bite as part of salsa, but nowhere else -- and adding raw onions is the fastest way to ruin comfort food like potato salad), but it took me *ages* to realize that *cooked* onions are a whole different creature! And now I love adding cooked onions to just about any savory dish. Also: Mushrooms. I went to Buzz Inn Steak House and ordered mushrooms and they brought me mushrooms that had been cooked, but *not* brought to the point of deliciousness (they looked like those canned mushrooms only heated up -- no color, no crispness), and I've never been more disappointed with a meal I was expecting to be delicious 😭

Great, now I feel hungry again. The thing about pH got me thinking though, a lot of Chinese-style food uses baking soda etc. for meat velveting, which I guess could also improve the delicious browning too. Not that you would notice with most things stained with soy/oyster sauce, but I'm getting hungry either way.

Love these videos! Please keep them coming :)

i have wondered if caramelizing sugar reduces the calories in it? it's certainly changing it...and in a general hand wavy thought experiment i figured taken to the extreme the sugar would turn into black carbon which doesn't seem like a high energy food, so my guess was it would reduce it along the way...but i never saw anything definitive saying so.

for the record, bog bodies could be delicious but we may never know

Yes through 0:14 Trail and Errrr indeed 😂

There is one important thing to keep in mind! Maillard Reaction can also cause the production of cancerous substances such as Acrylamide! My Prof used to tell us that the best way of cooking healthy while enjoying maillard products is to cook golden but not burned brown

amazing video, been waiting for a thorough explanation on this for a long time from you. i was hoping you'd have dived deeper into caramelization and dextrinization; but i'm satisfied with the basic (hehe) explanation, too.

4:23 is that why lye boiled soft pretzels are so much better than others Edit: 4:47 yes it is.