A few years ago my father discovered scallops, not that he didn’t know about them before, it’s just that some light bulb went off in his head one day and he decided that he had to cook them. So for a time he would madly attack any scallop recipe that seemed half-way interesting. The problem was that he just couldn’t get them right. He had a hard time getting them browned, and more often than not, they were overcooked. So when the-man-who-knows-more-about-seafood-than-I-ever-hope-to Hank Shaw was here the other day cooking scallops, both dad and I circled Hank like hawks, watching to see how he did it. Here’s what we learned. You need a screaming hot pan. Scallops have a lot of moisture in them, which means you have to get the pan really hot to dry the outer edge of that moist scallop so that it can actually get hot enough to brown. When the scallops brown, the meat pulls back a bit (contracting proteins) making them easier to turn. Now theory doesn’t always translate to practice, you might still have some sticking. But when the scallop is seared enough, it should move more easily.

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