charred

adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,242 of 15,258neutral

Charred means blackened at the surface by fire. Charred remains, charred wood, charred and bitter.

In cooking a little char is wanted and a lot is not — the black is carbon and it tastes bitter, which is the line between grilled and burnt. Charring the outside of timber is a real preservation technique and protects the wood beneath. Note char, and charcoal, which is wood charred deliberately.

Definitions of charred

1adjectivecharredBlackened at the surface by fire.B2+
“Only the charred remains of the barn were left after the fire.”

charred is a quality of burning.

Where it comes from

char a back-formation from charcoal.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Smell & Taste

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charred in the wild

The dish can be grilled outdoors on a grate until charred and soft or may be cooked whole directly on glowing coals and then peeled.
Escalivada
The characteristic brown-black color of the crust results from a combination of browned milk solids from the butter and charred spices.
Blackening (cooking)
Acronicta brumosa, the charred dagger moth, is a moth of the family Noctuidae.
Acronicta brumosa
The Salmon August Complex Fire was a large complex wildfire in Northern California that originally consisted of 11 separate wildfires, and charred 65,888 acres in Siskiyou County.
Salmon August Complex Fire

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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