The Best Spot In Your Oven To Broil Food For Maximum Char

If you're newer to cooking, you may have failed to realize yet that not all parts of your oven are created equal. When a recipe specifies a certain oven rack position, you ignore it at your peril. The heating element of your oven is located at the bottom, and certain foods need to be positioned closer or further from the heat in order to cook properly. A common example is how a cake should always be baked on the center oven rack. But what about your oven's broiler?

The broiler can seem a little scary to amateur chefs. It's temperamental — walk away from it too long, and your food will be burnt to a crisp. It doesn't even cook most foods through! Why is it hot on the top instead of the bottom?

Mastering broiling is a cooking skill that pays big dividends, however. Broiling is the key to color and texture on a lot of dishes, and is the ideal step for putting the finishing touches on your dinner. Here's the first thing you need to know about broiling: You need to place your food on the top rack, as close to the ceiling of the oven as possible, to broil effectively and get even, crispy char.

If you're looking to take your broiler game up a notch, you need to know how your oven works. While the normal settings on your oven generate heat from the bottom that you can control with the thermostat, the broiler generates a blast of intense heat from the top. Some ovens allow for high or low broiling; others simply have one broil function. The broiler on high runs much hotter than baking or roasting, typically at 550 degrees Fahrenheit.

Broiling gives that crispy topping on casseroles and puts a final char on the external part of a dish. Unless a food item is quite thin — like a grilled cheese sandwich, for instance — the broiler is going to heat it up too high and too fast for thorough cooking. As a result, the exterior of your hypothetical dish would burn long before the heat penetrated the inside of it. But for those particular foods that generally benefit from the broiler, it works really, really well.

Use your broiler for getting the Gruyère toasty on a crock of French onion soup, quick-cooking delicate seafood like scallops and salmon filets, or even roasting indoor s'mores when the weather isn't conducive to starting an outdoor fire. Cozy those foods up to the broiler on the top rack, and keep a close eye on them through the oven door — the difference between achieving perfect color or singeing (or even catching fire!) can be a matter of moments.