Broil, Broil, Toil and Trouble

I've heard the term broil for a long time, but never quite knew what it was. It sounds like boil, but sound-alike isn't the same as being alike. I know there's a setting on the oven for it, but what does it mean?

And why do I care?

It turns out I have a recipe for chicken tikka masala, which, apparently, is a Westernized version of an Indian dish, something like Chicken Hunan is a representative Hunan chicken dish.

I don't mind that's it's not perfectly authentic, since I'm trying this for the first time. Here's the issue though. It requires-you guess it-broiling.

It turns out broiling is kinda like the inverse of grilling. When you grill, you are cooking meat with direct radiant heat, typically from charcoal. Ovens, on the other hand, use convection heat, i.e., heat from the air getting hot.

It's easier to understand broiling with an electric stove. At the top, there are coils. You move a broiling pan which is typically two very flat pans. The top pan has slits and lets the juices fall through to the bottom pan, which serves to catch this so it doesn't fall to the bottom of the oven.

You typically stick the pan as high as it will go, so it's near the radiant parts. The direct heat, unlike grilling, comes from above, instead of below, but otherwise behaves much the same as grilling.

Some ovens have a separate chamber below the main oven which is much smaller (so the heat is more direct) and serves the same purpose.

Here's a good article on the subject.

The key to broiling is to keep an eye on it, as you will only spend a few minutes heating it, as opposed to 20 minutes to several hours with conventional baking.

The things you learn on the Internet. It's really quite an invention.