When it comes to food, what does "blackened" mean?

Blackened in cooking is a style of cooking the food. Typically it shows up in cajun style food. You take your meat, dip it into a butter sauce, cover it with a variety of spices, and cook it on a very hot skillet. The result is a dark brown/black crust on the meat that is usually a little spicy. I love tuna steaks cooked this way!

It’s a group of spices. You can buy blackened seasoning in the supermarket. It’s most commonly used on fish. It’s almost like a dry rub, because typically the fish is coated fairly well in the seasoning. I don’t rub it in, it just lays on top, and usually has a blackish color. When I make blackened fish I usually pan fry it. Sometimes I bake it.

Something like this:
4 tablespoons paprika
3 tablespoons dried granulated onion
3 tablespoons dried granulated garlic
¼ cup cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons white pepper
3 tablespoons finely ground black pepper
1½ tablespoons ground thyme
1½ tablespoons ground oregano
2 tablespoons ground New Mexican chile
1 tablespoon ground chipotle chile

Then put used as a seasoning on a piece of meat; put into a “Screaming hot Cast Iron pan”

Delicious

The blackening craze gained popularity in the 1980’s with chef Paul Prudhomme.

It’s super yummy!

Depends, if you are talking about my cooking it means it is normal and that I, once again, forgot to pay attention to what I was doing.

I’m concerned that the food ends up somewhat charred. Extra carcinogens are generated when food is charred.

^^My guess is a lot of restaurants just use the seasoning (like I do at home) and aren’t actually charring the fish more than any other pan fry/sauté, or however they are cooking it for the customer. I’d be curious to know what the reality is, and not just my guess.

After salivating over this thread the other day, I picked up some tilapia today, along with some of Paul Prudhomme’s Blackening Magic spice mix.

Cooking in a cast iron skillet at very high heat (I preheated in the oven to 500: then put on a burner set as high as possible), and putting some melted butter over the fish as it cooked, it did not char, although spices “blackened”.

I did throw some chopped bell peppers and some mushrooms into the skillet with fish, they got a little charred from the heat.

Delicious dinner!

Wow! 500 degrees??
How is it possible to use such high heat and not getting any charring? At least the spices got charred, no?

(I’m sure it was delicious, by the way!)