Methods of Cooking

“Cooking is the art of preparing food for consumption commonly with the appli-cation of
heat”
Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely across the world, reflecting unique
environmental, economical, cultural and traditional trends. Art of skill and training are
needed for effective cooking.

Steaming
This means cooking your food in water vapor over boiling water.
For this, it’s handy to have a steamer, which consists of a vessel with a perforated
bottom placed on top of another containing water.
Steam rises as the water boils, cooking the food in the perforated vessel above

Grilling
This is a fast, dry and very hot way of cooking, where the food is placed under an intense radiant
heat.
You can use various sources of heat for grilling: wood burning, coals, gas flame, or electric heating.
Before grilling, food can be marinade or seasoned.
A similar method to grilling is broiling, where the heat source originates from the top instead of the
bottom.
 Blanching
Here the food is part-cooked, and then immediately submerged in ice cold water to stop the
cooking process.
All sorts of vegetables can be blanched, including green beans, asparagus and potatoes.

Frying
This means cooking your food in fat – there are several variations of frying:

 Deep-frying, where the food is completely immersed in hot oil

 Stir-frying, where you fry the food very quickly on a high heat in a oiled pan
 Pan-frying, where food is cooked in a frying pan with oil; and
 Sautéing, where the food is browned on one side and then the other with a small quantity of fat or oil.
Frying is one of the quickest ways to cook food, with temperatures typically reaching between 175 –
225ºC.
 Baking
This involves applying a dry convection heat to your food in an enclosed environment.
The dry heat involved in the baking process makes the outside of the food go brown, and keeps the
moisture locked in. Baking is regularly used for cooking pastries, bread and desserts.

Roasting
Roasting is basically a high heat form of baking, where your food gets drier and browner on the
outside by initial exposure to a temperature of over 500F.
This prevents most of the moisture being cooked out of the food. The temperature is then lowered to
between 425 and 450F to cook through the meat or vegetables.
 Poaching
This involves a small amount of hot liquid, ideally at a temperature between 160 and 180F.
The cooking liquid is normally water, but you can also use broth, stock, milk or juice.
Common foods cooked by poaching include fish, eggs and fruit.

Stewing
Again, the food is saluted or seared first, and then cooked in liquid, but normally uses smaller
ingredients such as chopped meats or vegetables.
 Broiling
Similar to grilling, the heat source comes directly from the top.
You should be able to adjust your oven setting to broiling, but be careful, as this
cooking methods works quickly and your meal could easily become burned.
Favourite dishes for broiling include chicken, beef and fish

ROTISSERIE

Rotisserie is a method of spit roasting in which meat is skewed on a spit

and cooked slowly. Most of the extra fat drains into the tray from the
vertical spit and the meat develops a lovely roasted flavor.
 BRAISING
Braising is cooking in which meat is cooked in very little liquid on slow
heat in a tightly covered container.
In the contrast, when you cook meat at higher cooking temperatures like
when you cook beef in boiling water; the muscles shrink and make the
beef tough and chewy.

SEARING
Searing literally means to cook on high heat. The purpose of this sort of cooking
is to make crusts of meat like steaks and intensify food flavors and color.
 PIERCING
Piercing is usually combined with marinating technique to allow the
juices of the marinade to reach the inner flesh. You can use different
utensils to pierce the meat, the most common is a fork to make a hole
on the meat surface and let the marinade seep in easily.

Sautéing
Sautéing or sauteing is a method of cooking that uses a relatively
small amount of oil or fat in a shallow pan over relatively high heat.
Various sauté methods exist.
 Basting
Basting is a cooking technique that involves cooking meat with either its own
juices or some type of preparation such as a sauce or marinade. The meat is left
to cook, then periodically coated with the juice

Stir frying
Stir frying is a cooking technique in which ingredients are fried in a small
amount of very hot oil while being stirred or tossed in a wok.