Cooking means so much more than just heating up. When you grill a piece of meat, roast coffee beans, or sautée vegetables, the taste, smell, and appearance of the ingredients change, right? But why? When you grill, roast, or sauté, your delicious meals are actually the result of a chemical reaction called Maillard. It is a result of a series of reactions between amino acids and sugars.
Doctor Michael Mosely expands on this further in this clip of BBC’s Food-Delicious Science.