Toasting

What it does

Two things happen at once. Water leaves, which concentrates what is left and changes the texture from soft to brittle. And browning reactions run in the surface — the same reactions that brown bread crust and seared meat — generating nutty, roasted aromatic compounds that were not present before.

The second is the point. A raw almond and a toasted almond do not taste like the same thing at different intensities; they taste like different ingredients. The same is true of cumin, sesame, breadcrumbs, oats and desiccated coconut.

Because the compounds created are volatile, toasted things are best used soon. Toast what you need rather than a jar to keep.

What to toast, and roughly how long

Times are indicative and everything varies with quantity and pan. The nose is the instrument, not the clock.

Whole spices

Dry pan, medium heat, 30 to 90 seconds. Until fragrant and a shade darker. They burn extremely fast.

Nuts, in a pan

3 to 6 minutes, shaken constantly. Uneven, and quick.

Nuts, in the oven

8 to 12 minutes at 160 to 180°C, shaken once. More even, and better for a large quantity.

Sesame seeds

1 to 3 minutes. They pop and jump when ready.

Breadcrumbs

5 to 8 minutes in a pan with oil, or in the oven. Stir often.

Desiccated coconut

2 to 4 minutes. Goes from white to burnt with almost no warning.

Oats, rice and grains

3 to 5 minutes dry, before liquid goes in. Adds a nutty base to porridge, pilaf and risotto.

How not to burn things

• Stay at the pan. There is no toasting task long enough to leave and short enough to come back to in time.
• Medium heat, not high. High heat browns the outside before the inside dries, and the result is scorched and raw at once.
• Single layer, and shake constantly.
• Use your nose. Everything on this list announces itself with a smell a few seconds before it is ready.
• Take it out of the pan immediately. A hot pan keeps cooking, and this is where most burnt nuts happen — in the thirty seconds after you turned the heat off.
• Toast light nuts and dark nuts separately. Blanched almonds and walnuts do not brown at the same rate.

Where it makes the biggest difference

• Spices before grinding, which transforms cumin, coriander, fennel and cardamom.
• Nuts on a salad or a pasta, where raw nuts contribute texture and almost nothing else.
• Breadcrumbs, which go from filler to a genuine topping — pangrattato on pasta is little more than toasted breadcrumbs with garlic.
• Rice for a pilaf, toasted in fat until it smells nutty before the stock goes in.
• Flour for a roux, taken to blonde or brown, which is what separates a béchamel from a gumbo base.
• Bread for a soup or a salad, where croutons should be genuinely crisp through.

What is worth toasting, and what it does

• Whole spices, before grinding. The largest single improvement available in spice cooking.
• Nuts and seeds, which go from bland to sweet and aromatic in a few minutes. Do it just before use; toasted nuts go stale quickly.
• Desiccated coconut, which becomes a different ingredient entirely.
• Flour, for a roux or for a sauce, which loses its raw taste and takes on a nutty depth.
• Breadcrumbs, in butter or oil, until golden. One of the best cheap toppings there is.
• Rice and grains, briefly in fat before the liquid — the first step of a pilaf, and it keeps the grains separate as well as adding flavour.
• The universal rule: everything burns in the last thirty seconds. Stay with the pan, and tip it out the moment it is done.

Common questions