TRUTH OR MYTH: Always brown meat at the beginning of the cooking process, to ‘seal in’ the juices.

Historians like to argue about when humans discovered cooking (anywhere from 2 million to 70,000 years ago), but they do agree on this: Roasting meat (or poultry, fish, reptiles or amphibians) over an open flame was our first step toward home cooking.

But it wasn’t until a century ago that French scientist Louis-camille Maillard identified the source of the delicious aromas and flavors produced by cooking proteins and sugars over high, dry heat. Maillard reactions are what make dry-roasted things like bread crusts, dumpling skirts, coffee beans and chicken skin taste and smell so good.

A lot of cooking is about generating those reactions, from tossing beef in a wok over high heat to coaxing a Thanksgiving turkey to achieve crisp skin. But that browned surface doesn’t actually keep the juices — a combination of blood, fats and collagen — in the meat.

If you’ve ever spent an hour patiently browning chicken thighs in batches, only to move to the next step and find you’re about to submerge them in liquid that will reduce the skin to flab, you may have wondered what all that work was for. Many traditional stews are built without it: a Central American jocón, a West African mafe and a Provençal daube all skip browning and rely on other ingredients to deepen their flavors.

Many stew recipes from European traditions call for a first step of browning the meat — sometimes “all over” — a process that creates extra mess and tedium. It isn’t about keeping the meat juicy or tender; it’s about building those delicious cooked bits at the bottom of the pan, the fond, to flavor the cooking liquid.

There are many other ways to make meat succulent — poaching it as in Hainanese chicken or braising it as in Indian curries — but browning isn’t one of them. Skip it if you wish, and try letting your stews rest overnight instead to deepen the flavors.

VERDICT: False. Browning is great for dry-heat dishes like steaks and roasts, but unnecessary for stews and braises.