Methods of Cooking
The act of cooking is relatively simple; applying heat to food. It is not the act so much as what changes take place to your meats, vegetables, breads or fruits while using different types of heat. Two basic methods exist for food preparation. Dry heat cooking and moist heat cooking.
Examples of dry heat cooking are roasting, broiling or sautéing. Frying is also a form of dry heat cooking, as you do not use any water. You might consider vegetable oil a type of liquid and not dry but when you think about it, oil and water don't mix; in fact they are complete opposites. Hence, using oil to cook is considered dry heat.
Baking is also a form of dry heat although the oven is used as the heat source. Close to roasting that also takes place in an oven, the two terms apply to different types of food. You roast a chicken but you bake a pastry.
Moist heat cooking can be anything from braising, poaching, boiling or steaming. Anything that requires water to cook your food is considered in this category of moist heat cooking.
Many health conscious people prefer this method of cooking to stay away from oils that are high in saturated fats. Steaming your meats and vegetables can be just as delectable as pan fried when seasonings are carefully balanced.
Cooking is a form of relaxation for some with the pleasure of creating a dish from a host of ingredients. Others take it all the way to cooking school and becoming chefs that make them an artist in the subject of foods, cooking, nutrition and presentation.
Learning new recipes for outings, parties or your family are a great way to show off your skills and earn well-deserved praise.
Knowing what is happening to your food through the different methods of cooking is also important to learn. Starches soak up water like a sponge. Notice how noodles grow when boiled in water. This is the starch expanding from the presence of water. The protein in meat breaks down when braised or baked but also loses moisture like when you fry a hamburger.
Food must be cooked above 140 degrees in order to kill bacteria. Anything lower than this just attracts and grows the bacteria already present since it likes warm, moist areas.
Some people think that refrigerating food will kill all types of germs and bacteria but this is untrue. It does slow the growth but does not destroy.
Ever since man first learned how to build a fire, cooking has been a favorite past time and enjoyable treat for humans around the world.
With the millions of recipes that have been created you would think that we would eventually run out of different ways to cook our food but it is highly doubted that we ever will.
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