Cooking: Encyclopedia - Cooking

Cooking

Techniques - Utensils
Weights and measures

Spices and Herbs
Sauces - Soups - Desserts
Cheese - Pasta - Bread
Other ingredients

Africa - Asia - Caribbean
South Asian - Latin America
Middle East - The West

Other cuisines...

Famous chefs
Kitchens - Meals
Wikibooks: Cookbook

Cooking is the act of preparing food for consumption. It encompasses a vast range of methods, tools and combinations of ingredients to improve the flavour and/or digestibility of food. It generally requires the selection, measurement and combining of ingredients in an ordered procedure in an effort to achieve the desired result. Constraints on success include the variability of ingredients, ambient conditions, tools and the skill of the person cooking.

The diversity of cooking worldwide is a reflection of the myriad nutritional, aesthetic, agricultural, economic, cultural and religious considerations that impact upon it.

Cooking frequently, though not always, involves applying heat in order to chemically transform a food, thus changing its flavor, texture, appearance, and nutritional properties. There is archaeological evidence of cooked foodstuffs (both animal and vegetable) in human settlements dating from the earliest known use of fire.

Cooking - Effects of cooking

Cooking - Food safety

If heat is used in the preparation of food, this can kill or inactivate potentially harmful organisms including bacteria and viruses. The effect will depend on temperature, cooking time, and technique used. The temperature range from 4°C to 60°C (41°F to 140°F) is the "food danger zone." Between these temperatures bacteria can grow rapidly. Under the correct conditions bacteria can double in number every twenty minutes. The food may not appear any different or spoiled but can be harmful to anyone who eats it. Meat, poultry, dairy products, and other prepared food must be kept outside of the "food danger zone" to remain safe to eat. Refrigeration and freezing do not kill bacteria, but only slow their growth.

Cooking - Proteins

Much edible animal material is made of proteins including muscle, offal, egg white etc. Almost all vegetable matter also includes proteins although generally in smaller amounts. When proteins are heated to near boiling point they become de-natured and change texture. In many cases this causes the structure of the material to become softer or more friable - meat becomes cooked. In some cases proteins can form more rigid structures such as the production of stable foams using egg whites. These are beleived to be formed through the partial unravelling of the albumen protein molecules in response to beating with a whisk. The formation of a relatively rigid but flexible matrix from egg white provides an important component of much cake cookery and also undepins many desserts based on meringue.

Cooking - Fats

Fats and oils come from both animal and plant sources. In cooking, fats provide tastes and textures but probably the most significant attribute is the wide range of cooking temperatures that can be provided by using a fat as the principal cooking medium rather than water. Commonly used fats and oils include butter, Olive oil, Sunflower oil, pork fat (lard), beef fat (dripping or tallow), Rape seed oil (Canola), peanut oil (groundnut oil) etc. The inclusion of fats tend to make many dishes more tasty even though the taste of the oil on its own is often unplesant. This fact has encouraged the popularity of high fat foods many of which are classified as junk food (hamburgers, convenience fried cereal snacks etc.) Fats can also be blended with cereal flours to make a range of doughs and pastries. Roux made with heated fat and flour can also absorb large volumes of water based liquids (water, milk etc.) to form smooth sauces. This relies on the properties of starches to create simpler mucilaginous saccharides during cooking (the familiar thickening of sauces}

Oils are commonly emulsified with water based fluids such as vinegar or lemon juice to make mayonaises. In this the fatty content of egg yolk is used as the emulsification agent.

Cooking - Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates used in cooking include a variety of sugars and starches including cereal flour, rice, Arrowroot, potato etc. Long chain sugars such as starch tend to break down into more simple sugars when cooked or made more acid (as with lemon juice or vinegar}. Simple sugars can form syrups or jams when heated in a controlled and measured way although the setting properties of jam are provided by pectin. If sugars are heated so that all water of crystalisation is driven off, then caramelisation starts with the sugar undergoing thermal decomposition with the formation of carbon and other breakdown products producing caramel.

Cooking - Cooking techniques

Some major hot cooking techniques:

• Baking
  • Baking Blind
  • Broiling
  • FlashBake

• Boiling
  • Blanching
  • Braising
  • Coddling
  • Double steaming
  • Infusion
  • Poaching
  • Pressure cooking
  • Simmering
  • Steaming
  • Vacuum flask cooking
  • Steeping
  • Stewing

• Frying
  • Deep frying
  • Hot salt frying
  • Hot sand frying
  • Pan frying
  • Pressure frying
  • Sautéing
  • Stir frying

• Microwaving

• Roasting
  • Barbecuing
  • Grilling
  • Rotisserie
  • Searing

• Smoking

Cooking - Other cool preparation techniques

• Brining
• Drying
• Grinding (e.g. sesame seeds to produce tahini), chopping, slicing finely, grating, etc..
• Marinating
• Mincing
• Pickling
• Salting
• Seasoning
• Sprouting

See also

Specific techniques and ingredients are often regional. See Cuisine for information about the many regional and ethnic food traditions. Please see food writing for some authors of books on cookery, food, and the history of food.

• Cooking weights and measures (includes conversions and equivalencies common in cooking)
• International food terms - useful when reading about food and recipes from different countries
• Food and cooking hygiene
• Food preservation
• Food writing
• List of cookbooks
• List of food preparation utensils including saucepans, frying pans, woks and many others.
• Cuisine
• Recipe
• Nutrition

For recipes, see the list of recipes and the list of cocktails. Also see staple (cooking).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Cooking", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki