1,605 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 77 videos

Thermal inertia or "out of the fire"

When you're cooking, you need a lot of heat to cook, and most of the time it's on the fire, literally if you're on gas, more indirectly if you're not.

An expression that comes up quite often is "Off the heat", but what does it really mean?

12 K 4.6/5 (16 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Cooking Heat Inertia Thermal Pan Fire

Last modified on: December 12^th 2020

For this post Comments Lasts posts Follow

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

When it comes to saucepans (in the broadest sense of the word: saucepans, sauté pans, frying pans, etc.), you'll find the full range of quality, and therefore price, in the shops.
From the cheap, cheap stuff that's often lightweight, but won't last very long, to the rather chic, heavy, stainless steel pans that will last you a lifetime or more (yes, it's a bit weird to say and consider, but your pots and pans might just outlive you).

sur le feu 1

The quality saucepans I was talking about have a very thick bottom, around 1 cm of solid steel, which is welded to the pan itself.
The role of this bottom is thermal inertia, i.e. when you put it on the fire, the bottom "loads" with heat first, and separates the flame from the food being heated/cooked, which means that the contents of the pan take longer to heat up, but in the other direction, same inertia, it cools down less quickly.

sur le feu 2

So there's a "certain time" between the moment you turn off the heat, and the moment your preparation stops heating or cooking.
As a general rule, this is very practical: no sudden bursts of heat, less risk of burning, less sensitivity to false settings. It's not for nothing that all chefs' kitchens are equipped with these pans.
Note that this applies to both gas and induction, although induction is much smoother anyway (it seems to me).

Right, and?

Well, from all this, it's clear that you need to be very careful, especially if you're cooking a delicate food like fish, with the thermal inertia of your pans.
It's quite easy to overcook a food, without necessarily burning everything, because even though you've turned off the heat, it's still cooking a little.

That's why you'll find the expression "hors du feu" (off the heat) in many recipes, for example "hors du feu, ajoutez les œufs battus" (off the heat, add the beaten eggs), and it's to be applied strictly: remove your pan from the heat before continuing, otherwise, due to the thermal inertia of your pan + the residual heat of the stove (even if it's less with induction), you'll overcook and perhaps miss your recipe, which would be a great pity...

hors du feu

In practice, if you cook at the green arrow, "off the heat" is at the red arrow.

In short: When you come across the expression "off the heat" in a recipe, it's not just a matter of turning off the heat, it's also a matter of moving your pan away from the heat so as to stop cooking relatively quickly.

Lasts posts

Serving Temperature for Wine

When it comes to serving wine, you may (like me) have a fairly simple rule of thumb: red wine at room temperature, and white, rosé, and yellow wines in the fridge until it’s time to serve them. It’s very easy to remember, but it’s a bit simplistic, and you’ll see that there’s a much...
September 23^th 20268145

Hot Emulsified Sauces

In French cuisine, sauces are a very important part of a recipe—not just a side dish. In fact, they’re so important that, especially since the time of Auguste Escoffier, they’ve been classified into categories. And among these categories are “hot emulsified sauces,” or lukewarm ones. ...
September 9^th 20261,2335

Hot Dishes and Cold Dishes

When plating or serving a dish—whether hot or cold—on a plate, it’s very important to make sure they’re both the right temperature; in other words: if the dish is hot, the plate should be hot, and conversely, if the dish is cold, the plate should be cold. Is this really important? Let’s...
September 2^nd 20269713

In baking, cold is your friend

When you bake at home—especially when making pie crusts—you’ve probably noticed that it’s quite difficult to work with the dough when it’s hot. It gets soft, is hard to roll out, and breaks or crumples very easily. And this doesn’t just happen when it’s hot—even in a comfortable...
August 26^th 20269995

With vinegar?

When you buy a jar of pickles labeled “in vinegar,” you’re looking for their tangy, crunchy flavor to go with cold cuts, sandwiches, or salads. You expect to find small gherkins preserved in vinegar, with salt and herbs, but is that really the case?
July 15^th 20261,9544.8

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other articles you might also like

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20259,7355

Butter doesn't make you fat, unless you eat too much of it.

Whenever I'm discussing cooking and recipes, there is one idea which comes up frequently, like this: "Oh no! But that's got butter in it" (I should add, for the sake of accuracy, that this is something I hear more frequently from women, who are almost all concerned with keeping their figure). ...
March 26^th 201247 K4.5

The so-called "nervous" meats

You've probably heard this before, we're talking about "nervous" meat, or meat with nerves, to describe what is indicated by the blue arrow on the left. This is a piece of beef, and what we call a nerve is not a nerve, it is in fact collagen (chemists sometimes call it a "collagen sink"), a...
April 16^th 202142 K4.5

Sauce and salad: When and how to mix them?

When dressing a salad, there's a kind of golden rule: add the dressing very shortly before serving, especially if your salad contains crunchy elements such as croutons or fresh vegetables, which will retain their crunchiness or crispiness. But, as is often the case in the kitchen, there are...
November 29^th 20248,9655

Parsley stems

Parsley, whether curly or flat, is a delicious ingredient in many recipes, where it is used both raw and cooked. When used raw, in a salad for example, where it always provides, alone or with other herbs, a remarkable freshness, only the leaves are kept. And when used cooked?
July 28^th 202511 K 13