Searing meat doesn’t seal in the juices. It just tastes better. Some advice is right for the wrong reason.

Techniques can work beautifully while the story attached to them is nonsense. Searing does make meat taste better, through browning rather than through any seal, and the explanation survived for decades because the result kept confirming it. That happens all over the place: a practice that works, carried along by a reason that does not.

When something you do works, it is worth knowing why occasionally. Look up the mechanism behind one habit you follow because somebody told you to. You may well keep the habit and drop the explanation, which is a perfectly good outcome.