US:
Usually, "scorched" would imply burning with an incredible amount of heat. If someone told me that something was "scorched" I would think that it was not just lightly burned, but really, really, really burned. Painfully burned. Destructively burned.
If you said you had "scorched your dinner" last night, I would assume that you burned it so bad that you couldn't eat it. But, if you said "I had 'scorched rice' for dinner," I'd assume it was some kind of rice dish - because English is strange that way. You could also say "I had tahdig for dinner - it's a rice dish where you brown the rice," I would get a pretty decent idea of what you had actually eaten.