Braising: White, Brown, Long, and Short

In the loosest sense, braising simply means cooking with a small amount of liquid. Poaching, on the other hand, is cooking with a lot of liquid, enough to completely cover what’s being poached. Roasting is cooking with no liquid at all. Vegetables, seafood, and of course meats all lend themselves to braising, but braising in ways that are often subtly and sometimes radically different from the methods used for pot roast. Seafood (except octopus, cuttlefish, and sometimes squid), is braised only until it cooks through—a method I call short braising. Tender meats and poultry can also be cooked this way, and need only be cooked to the proper internal temperature. You determine their doneness in the same way you would a roast. Long braising requires that the inside of the meat remain at a relatively high temperature—around 175°F[79°C]—for a prolonged period in order for sinew and tough muscle tissue to break down; measuring the temperature with a meat thermometer will not tell you if the pot roast is done or not. The doneness of long-braised dishes depends on texture, determined by sticking a skewer into the meat to see if it slides freely in and out.