salamander

A long, slender, chiefly terrestrial amphibian of the order Caudata, superficially resembling a lizard.

[…]and most plainly Pierius, whose words in his hieroglyphicks are these: "Whereas it is commonly said that a salamander extinguisheth fire, we have found by experience that it is so far from quenching hot coals, that it dyeth immediately therein."

Devils Lake is where I began my career as a limnologist in 1964, studying the lake’s neotenic salamanders and chironomids, or midge flies.[…]The Devils Lake Basin is an endorheic, or closed, basin covering about 9,800 square kilometers in northeastern North Dakota.

A creature much like a lizard that is resistant to and lives in fire (in which it is often depicted in heraldry), hence the elemental being of fire.

“Not a chance, Ranger,” Bob Mason was speaking. “This little cuss is a salamander. He's been travelling through fire all day and there isn't a blister on him. …”

"There is a vulgar error," says the author of the Brief Natural History, p. 91, "that a salamander lives in the fire. Yet both Galen and Dioscorides refute this opinion; and Mathiolus, in his Commentaries upon Dioscorides, a very famous physician, affirms of them, that by casting of many a salamander into the fire for tryal he found it false. The same experiment is likewise avouched by Joubertus."

A metal utensil with a flat head which is heated and put over a dish to brown the top.

The salamander, a fairly long metal utensil with a flat rounded head, was left in the fire until red hot and then used to brown the top of a dish without further cooking.

A small broiler (North America) or grill (Britain) that heats the food from above, used in professional cookery primarily for browning.

The chef first put the steak under the salamander to sear the outside.

Overfired grills, or salamanders, can, in addition, be used for making toast and salamandering. They have the heat source above the food[…]. This may comprise sets of burners firing below refractory or metal frets, or surface combustion plaques.

A pouched gopher (Geomys pinetis etc.)

To use a salamander (cooking utensil) in a cooking process.

When cold, sprinkle the custard thickly with sugar and salamander it.

Overfired grills, or salamanders, can, in addition, be used for making toast and salamandering. They have the heat source above the food […]. This may comprise sets of burners firing below refractory or metal frets, or surface combustion plaques.