Braising (from the French “braiser”), is a combination cooking method using both moist and dry heat; typically the food is first seared at a high temperature and then finished in a covered pot with a variable amount of liquid, resulting in a particular flavour. Braising of meat is often referred to as pot roasting, though some authors make a distinction between the two methods based on whether additional liquid is added.
Braising relies on heat, time, and moisture to break down the tough connective tissue collagen in meat, making it an ideal way to cook tougher cuts. Many classic braised dishes such as coq au vin are highly evolved methods of cooking tough and otherwise unpalatable foods. Pressure cooking and slow cooking (e.g., crockpots) are forms of braising.
Braised pork spare ribs with preserved mustard greens
Techniques
Most braises follow the same basic steps. The food to be braised (meat, poultry, but also vegetables or mushrooms) is first seared to brown its surface and enhance its flavor (through a process known as the Maillard reaction). If the food will not produce enough liquid of its own, a small amount of cooking liquid that often includes an acidic element, such as tomatoes, beer, or wine, is added to the pot, often with stock. The dish is cooked covered at a very low simmer until the meat is fork tender. Often the cooking liquid is finished to create a sauce or gravy.
Sometimes foods with high water content (particularly vegetables) can be cooked in their own juices and no extra liquid is required.
A successful braise intermingles the flavours of the foods being cooked and the cooking liquid. This cooking method dissolves collagen from the meat into gelatin, to enrich and add body to the liquid. Braising is economical, as it allows the use of tough and inexpensive cuts, and efficient, as it often employs a single pot to cook an entire meal.
Braised baby artichokes
Barbecue-braising
It is possible to braise meat and vegetables in a pot on top of a grill. A gas or electric grill would be the best choice for what is known as barbecue-braising, or combining grilling directly on the surface and braising in a pot. To braise on a grill, put a pot on top of the grill, cover it, and let it simmer for a few hours. There are two advantages to barbecue-braising: the first is that this method now allows for browning the meat directly on the grill before the braising, and the second is that it also allows for glazing the meat with sauce and finishing it directly over the fire after the braising, effectively cooking the meat three times, which results in a soft-textured product that is very tender.
Chinese braised pork
Braised foods
Familiar braised dishes include pot roast, beef stew, Swiss steak, chicken cacciatore, goulash, Carbonade Flamande, coq au vin, sauerbraten, beef bourguignon and Moroccan tajines, among others. Braising is also used extensively in the cuisines of Asia, particularly Chinese cuisine, where soy sauce is often the braising liquid.
braised pot roast
Dry roasting can be done in a frying pan or wok (a common way to prepare spices in some cuisines), or in a specialized roaster (as is used for coffee beans or peanuts). Dry roasting changes the chemistry of proteins in the food, changing their flavor, and enhances the scent and taste of some spices. It is done with adding various herbs, spices and sugars into the frying pan and roasting until brown.
Common dry roasted foods include peanut butter, which is made from peanuts that have been dry roasted, tea, which is made from tea leaves that are dry roasted, either immediately after picking or after fermentation, and coffee and chocolate, which are made from roasted coffee beans and roasted cocoa beans, respectively.
Hot salt frying is a cooking technique used by street-side food vendors in China/India.
Coarse sea salt is placed in a large wok and heated to a high temperature. Dry food items, such as eggs in shell, are buried in the hot salt and occasionally turned with a spatula.This technique is also seen in India, where street vendors sell shelled peanuts or popcorn cooked in salt heated in an iron wok.
Hot sand frying is a common cooking technique for street-side food vendors in China and India to cook chestnuts and peanuts. A large wok is filled with black sand and heated to high temperature. Nuts are buried in the hot sand and occasionally turned with a spatula, then the sand and nuts are separated through a wire-mesh screen.
Searing (or pan searing) is a technique used in grilling, baking, braising, roasting, sautéing, etc., in which the surface of the food (usually meat, poultry or fish) is cooked at high temperature so a caramelized crust forms. Similar techniques, browning and blackening, are typically used to sear all sides of a particular piece of meat, fish, poultry, etc. before finishing it in the oven. To obtain the desired brown or black crust, the meat surface must exceed 150 °C (300 °F), so searing requires the meat surface be free of water, which boils at around 100 °C (212 °F).
The belief that searing meat "seals in the juices" is widespread and still often repeated. This theory was first put forth by Justus von Liebig, a German chemist and food scientist, around 1850. The notion was embraced by contemporary cooks and authors, including Auguste Escoffier.
Simple experimentation can test the theory: cook two similar cuts of meat, searing one first and not the other. Weigh the end results to see which loses more moisture. (The Food Network program Good Eats carried out such a test in episode EA1H22, Myth Smashers.) As early as the 1930s, such experiments were carried out; the seared roasts lost the same amount of moisture or more. (Generally more, since searing exposes the meat to higher temperatures.)
Moisture in liquid and vapor form continues to escape from a seared piece of meat. For this reason, searing is sometimes done at the end of the cooking process to gain the flavor benefits of the caramelization, as well as the benefits of cooking for a greater duration with more wetness.
Although often said to "lock in the moisture" or "seal in the juices", searing has been demonstrated to result in a greater net loss of moisture versus cooking to the same internal temperature without first searing. Nonetheless, it remains an essential technique in cooking meat for several reasons:
The browning creates desirable flavors through caramelization and the Maillard reaction. The appearance of the food is usually improved with a well-browned crust. The contrast in taste and texture between the crust and the interior makes the food more interesting to the palate.
Typically in grilling, the food will be seared over very high heat and then moved to a lower-temperature area of the grill to finish cooking. In braising, the seared surface acts to flavor, color and otherwise enrich the liquid in which the food is being cooked.
Eel sushi is seared using a blow torch
Baking is the technique of prolonged cooking of food by dry heat acting by convection, and not by radiation, normally in an oven, but also in hot ashes, or on hot stones. It is primarily used for the preparation of bread, cakes, pastries and pies, tarts, quiches, cookies and crackers. Such items are sometimes referred to as "baked goods," and are sold at a bakery. A person who prepares baked goods as a profession is called a baker. It is also used for the preparation of baked potatoes, baked apples, baked beans, some casseroles and pasta dishes such as lasagna, and various other foods, such as the pretzel.
Many commercial ovens are provided with two heating elements: one for baking, using convection and conduction to heat the food, and one for broiling or grilling, heating mainly by radiation. Meat may also be baked, but this is usually reserved for meatloaf, smaller cuts of whole meats, and whole meats that contain stuffing or coating such as breadcrumbs or buttermilk batter; larger cuts prepared without stuffing or coating are more often roasted, a similar process, using higher temperatures and shorter cooking times. Baking can sometimes be combined with grilling to produce a hybrid barbecue variant, by using both methods simultaneously or one before the other, cooking twice. Baking is connected to barbecuing because the concept of the masonry oven is similar to that of a smoke pit.
The baking process does not require any fat to be used to cook in an oven. Some makers of snacks such as potato chips or crisps have produced baked versions of their snack items as an alternative to the usual cooking method of deep-frying in an attempt to reduce the calorie or fat content of their snack products.Baking has opened up doors to businesses like cake making factories and privatised cake shops but the baking process is done in a more larger mass in bigger and open furnaces.
Roasting is a cooking method that uses dry heat, whether an open flame, oven, or other heat source. Roasting usually causes caramelization or Maillard browning of the surface of the food, which is considered by some as a flavor enhancement.[citation needed] Roasting uses more indirect, diffused heat (as in an oven), and is suitable for slower cooking of meat in a larger, whole piece. Meats and most root and bulb vegetables can be roasted. Any piece of meat, especially red meat, that has been cooked in this fashion is called a roast. In addition, large uncooked cuts of meat are referred to as roasts. A roast joint of meat can take one, two, even three hours to cook - the resulting meat is tender. Also, meats and vegetables prepared in this way are described as "roasted", e.g., roasted chicken or roasted squash.
Smoking is the process of flavoring, cooking, or preserving food by exposing it to the smoke from burning or smoldering plant materials, most often wood. Meats and fish are the most common smoked foods, though cheeses, vegetables, and ingredients used to make beverages such as whisky, Rauchbier and lapsang souchong tea are also smoked.
In Europe, alder is the traditional smoking wood, but oak is more often used now, and beech to a lesser extent. In North America, hickory, mesquite, oak, pecan, alder, maple, and fruit-tree woods, such as apple, cherry and plum, are commonly used for smoking. Other fuels besides wood can also be employed, sometimes with the addition of flavoring ingredients. Chinese tea-smoking uses a mixture of uncooked rice, sugar, and tea, heated at the base of a wok. Some North American ham and bacon makers smoke their products over burning corncobs. Peat is burned to dry and smoke the barley malt used to make whisky and some beers. In New Zealand, sawdust from the native manuka (tea tree) is commonly used for hot smoking fish. In Iceland, dried sheep dung is used to cold smoke fish, lamb, mutton and whale.
Pork ribs beng smoked
Grilling is a form of cooking that involves dry heat applied to the surface of food, commonly from above or below.
Grilling usually involves a significant amount of direct, radiant heat, and tends to be used for cooking meat quickly and meat that has already been cut into slices (or other pieces). Food to be grilled is cooked on a grill (an open wire grid with a heat source above or below), a grill pan (similar to a frying pan, but with raised ridges to mimic the wires of an open grill), or griddle (a flat plate heated from below). Heat transfer to the food when using a grill is primarily via thermal radiation. Heat transfer when using a grill pan or griddle is by direct conduction. In the United States and Canada, when the heat source for grilling comes from above, grilling is termed broiling. In this case, the pan that holds the food is called a broiler pan, and heat transfer is by thermal convection.
Direct heat grilling can expose food to temperatures often in excess of 260 °C (500 °F). Grilled meat acquires a distinctive roast aroma from a chemical process called the Maillard reaction. The Maillard reaction only occurs when foods reach temperatures in excess of 155 °C (310 °F).
Studies have shown that cooking beef, pork, poultry, and fish at high temperatures can lead to the formation of heterocyclic amines, benzopyrenes, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are carcinogens. However, proper marination may reduce the formation of these compounds. Grilling is often presented as a healthy alternative to cooking with oil, although the fat and juices lost by grilling can contribute to drier food.
Rotisserie is a style of roasting where meat is skewered on a spit - a long solid rod used to hold food while it is being cooked over a fire in a fireplace or over a campfire, or roasted in an oven. This method is generally used for cooking large joints of meat or entire animals, such as pigs, turkeys, goats or historically, entire cattle. The rotation cooks the meat evenly in its own juices and allows easy access for continuous basting if desired.
In medieval and early modern kitchens, the spit was the preferred way of cooking meat in a large household. A servant, preferably a boy, sat near the spit turning the metal rod slowly and cooking the food; he was known as the "spit boy" or "spit jack". Mechanical turnspits ("roasting jacks") were later invented, first moved by dog-powered treadmill, and then by steam power and mechanical clockwork mechanisms. The spit could also be powered by a turbine mounted in the chimney with a worm transmission for torque and speed conversion. Spits are now usually driven by electric motors.Rotisserie can also refer to a mechanical device used for rotisserie cooking, or to a restaurant specializing in spit-roasted meat and chicken. The word comes from French where it first appeared in Paris shops around 1450. Additionally, in restaurants employing the Escoffierian brigade de cuisine, the rotisseur is the chef responsible for all spit-roasted, oven roasted, grilled and in some cases fried foods.
Blanching is a cooking process wherein the food substance, usually a vegetable or fruit, is plunged into boiling water, removed after a brief, timed interval, and finally plunged into iced water or placed under cold running water (shocked) to halt the cooking process.
The meaning of blanching is "to whiten", but this is not always the purpose of blanching in cooking. Food is blanched to soften it, or to partly or fully cook it, or to remove a strong taste (for example of bacon, cabbage, or onions).
When almonds or pistachios are blanched, the skin of the nut (botanically the seed coat surrounding the embryo) softens and can be easily removed later.
The technique of blanching vegetables is best illustrated by the requirement to stop cook asparagus, otherwise it would become soggy due to the asparagus continuing to cook after it is removed from the boiling water. To cook asparagus using the blanching method, the shoots are boiled for 30 seconds, and then to stop the cooking instantly they are dipped into cold or ice water. Note: the term "blanched asparagus" is also used for white asparagus, which is produced by a special gardening technique.
Parboiling (or leaching) is the partial boiling of food as the first step in the cooking process.
The word is often used when referring to parboiled rice. Parboiling can also be used for removing poisonous or foul-tasting substances from foodstuffs. The technique may also be used to soften vegetables before roasting them.
parboiling peaches
Coddling In cooking, to coddle food is to heat it in water kept just below the boiling point. The term comes from the English verb to coddle, meaning to treat gently or pamper.
coddled egg on hash
Poaching is the process of gently simmering food in liquid, generally milk, stock or wine. Poaching is particularly suitable for delicate food, such as eggs, poultry,fish and fruit, which might easily fall apart or dry out. For this reason, it is important to keep the heat low and to keep the poaching time to a bare minimum, which will also preserve the flavor of the food.
Sous-vide ( French for "under vacuum") is a method of cooking food sealed in airtight plastic bags in a water bath for a long time—72 hours is not unusual—at an accurately determined temperature much lower than normally used for cooking, typically around 60 °C or 140 °F. The intention is to cook the item evenly, not overcook the outside while still keeping the inside at the same 'doneness' and to keep the food juicier.
Stewing A stew is a combination of solid food ingredients that have been cooked in liquid and served in the resultant gravy. Ingredients in a stew can include any combination of vegetables (such as carrots, potatoes, beans, peppers and tomatoes, etc.), meat, especially tougher meats suitable for slow-cooking, such as beef. Poultry, sausages, and seafood are also used. While water can be used as the stew-cooking liquid, wine, stock, and beer are also common. Seasoning and flavourings may also be added. Stews are typically cooked at a relatively low temperature (simmered, not boiled), allowing flavors to mingle.
Stewing is suitable for the least tender cuts of meat that become tender and juicy with the slow moist heat method. This makes it popular in low-cost cooking. Cuts having a certain amount of marbling and gelatinous connective tissue give moist, juicy stews, while lean meat may easily become dry.
Stews may be thickened by reduction or with flour, either by coating pieces of meat with flour before searing, or by using a roux or beurre manié, a dough consisting of equal parts of butter and flour. Thickeners like cornstarch or arrowroot may also be used.
Stews are similar to soups, and in some cases there may not be a clear distinction between the two. Generally, stews have less liquid than soups, are much thicker and require longer cooking over low heat. While soups are almost always served in a bowl, stews may be thick enough to be served on a plate with the gravy as a sauce over the solid ingredients.
Sautéing is a method of cooking food, that uses a small amount of fat in a shallow pan over relatively high heat. Ingredients are usually cut into pieces or thinly sliced to facilitate fast cooking. The primary mode of heat transfer during sautéing is conduction between the pan and the food being cooked. Food that is sautéed is browned while preserving its texture, moisture and flavor. If meat, chicken, or fish is sautéed, the sauté is often finished by deglazing the pan's residue to make a sauce.
Sautéing is often confused with pan-frying, in which larger pieces of food (for example, chops or steaks) are cooked quickly, and flipped onto both sides. Some cooks make a distinction between the two based on the depth of the oil used, while others use the terms interchangeably. Sautéing differs from searing in that searing only browns the surface of the food. Olive oil or clarified butter are commonly used for sautéing, but most fats will do. Regular butter will produce more flavor but will burn at a lower temperature and more quickly than other fats due to the presence of milk solids, so clarified butter is more fit for this use.
Pickling, also known as brining or corning is the process of preserving food by anaerobic fermentation in brine (a solution of salt in water) to produce lactic acid, or marinating and storing it in an acid solution, usually vinegar (acetic acid). The resulting food is called a pickle. This procedure gives the food a salty or sour taste. In South Asia, edible oils are used as the pickling medium with vinegar.
Another distinguishing characteristic is a pH less than 4.6, which is sufficient to kill most bacteria. Pickling can preserve perishable foods for months. Antimicrobial herbs and spices, such as mustard seed, garlic, cinnamon or cloves, are often added. If the food contains sufficient moisture, a pickling brine may be produced simply by adding dry salt. For example, sauerkraut and Korean kimchi are produced by salting the vegetables to draw out excess water. Natural fermentation at room temperature, by lactic acid bacteria, produces the required acidity. Other pickles are made by placing vegetables in vinegar. Unlike the canning process, pickling (which includes fermentation) does not require that the food be completely sterile before it is sealed. The acidity or salinity of the solution, the temperature of fermentation, and the exclusion of oxygen determine which microorganisms dominate, and determine the flavor of the end product.When both salt concentration and temperature are low, Leuconostoc mesenteroides dominates, producing a mix of acids, alcohol, and aroma compounds. At higher temperatures Lactobacillus plantarum dominates, which produces primarily lactic acid. Many pickles start with Leuconostoc, and change to Lactobacillus with higher acidity.
Marination is the process of soaking foods in a seasoned, often acidic, liquid before cooking. The origins of the word allude to the use of brine (aqua marina) in the pickling process, which led to the technique of adding flavor by immersion in liquid. The liquid in question, the 'marinade', can be acidic with ingredients such as vinegar, lemon juice, or wine or enzymatic (made with ingredients such as pineapple or papaya.) Along with these liquids, a marinade often contains oils, herbs, and spices to further flavor the food items.
It is commonly used to flavor foods and to tenderize tougher cuts of meat. The process may last seconds or days. Different marinades are used in different cuisines. For example, in Indian cuisine the marinade is usually prepared with a mixture of spices.
Food safety is a scientific discipline describing handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent foodborne illness. This includes a number of routines that should be followed to avoid potentially severe health hazards.
Food can transmit disease from person to person as well as serve as a growth medium for bacteria that can cause food poisoning. Debates on genetic food safety include such issues as impact of genetically modified food on health of further generations and genetic pollution of environment, which can destroy natural biological diversity. In developed countries there are intricate standards for food preparation, whereas in lesser developed countries the main issue is simply the availability of adequate safe water, which is usually a critical item. In theory food poisoning is 100% preventable The five key principles of food hygiene, according to WHO, are:
· Prevent contaminating food with pathogens spreading from people, pets, and pests.
· Separate raw and cooked foods to prevent contaminating the cooked foods.
· Cook foods for the appropriate length of time and at the appropriate temperature to kill pathogens.
· Store food at the proper temperature.
· Do use safe water and cooked materials.
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