If you’re taking your first steps into cookery or you’re just keen to know what it’s all about, understanding the various cooking methods or techniques is a great place to start. Think of cooking (and baking) as science. Whilst it’s not science in the true sense of the word, many of the processes that take place during various cooking stages or methods cause scientific reactions to take place. It’s actually a pretty fun lesson to learn about. If you can understand what happens to food when it is cooked in different ways, you will likely be able to wing it with your own recipes, because you fundamentally understand the processes involved in each cooking method. Like we said, it’s just like science. But we can’t cover all the cooking methods in one blog so instead; we’ll start with some of the common ones and then blog a few more down the line.  Watch this space…

There are two important types of methods to cook food 1) Dry-heat cooking which involves no water but can involve liquids like fats and oils and 2) Moist-heat cooking which involves cooking with water or steam.  We will look at 4 dry cooking techniques and 3 moist cooking techniques in this blog.

Dry-Heat Cooking

Roasting

Roasting and baking are essentially one in the same thing. That is, to cook foods using a closed oven and dry heat. The only difference between the two is that typically roasting refers to meat and veggie dishes, and baking refers more to cakes, breads and so on. Roasting can caramelise the natural sugars found in meat skins causing them to brown.

Baking

Again, baking is all about cooking something in a closed space with dry heat. Many ovens offer a dry heat that is stagnant and simply ‘hangs around’ in the closed oven space where your dish is placed. It’s an effective method and commonly used, however this doesn’t ensure that your product (say cake) is baked evenly, only that it is baked. When you use convection ovens, they come with a fan which circulates the dry air around your cake, giving it an even bake. Oven types however cannot be solely blamed for uneven bakes.

Frying

Frying refers to cooking food by using fat. This can either be in a shallow pan for pan frying or in a deep pan or pot for deep frying. Whilst liquid is used to cook the food in both cases, it’s fat and not water. Pan frying is done with very shallow oil, allowing the food to brown quite well as it is turned in the pan. Deep frying is where you submerge the food in oil to cook through for a period of time.

Grilling

Think of your flame grilled burger or steak….that’s grilling. When food is cooked over direct heat such as an open flame, it is grilled. Another example of this for us South Africans is braaing. Grilling can also take place in your oven or salamander, under an extremely hot heat (the max your oven will go) and fairly close to the heat source.

Moist-Heat Cooking

Blanching

A method of boiling a food item such as spinach leaves, and then rapidly cooling the item in ice water to halt the cooking process. This is useful in order to partially cook a food product so that you can finish the cooking process later, and to ensure that the food keeps it shape (such as vegetables) it’s crunch or crispiness and usually it’s colour.

Poaching

Poaching is a very slow and gentle process of cooking food on the stove top in a pan with a small amount of liquid. This liquid can be water, stock, wine and so on and this liquid used for poaching is called court bullion. Never let the liquid boil, instead let it simmer slowly in the pan at a gentle heat until the food product is fully cooked through. Poaching can also be used to infuse flavours for example poaching a pear in wine.

Steaming

The most gentle form of moist cooking, steaming is done in a steaming pot (on a stove or in a steamer that you plug into the wall), with water in the base section, a middle section that sits above the water and has small holes through it and finally, a lid on the pot. The most important point to remember about steaming is that the pot must be completely covered to allow the steam to cook the food inside slowly and delicately. This helps to retain the shape of the food being steamed. For example boiling potatoes may reduce them to a mush. Steaming potatoes will keep the shape of the potato. Making potato salad just got easier.

These are just a few basic cooking techniques that we hope you will try at home. Steaming is often overlooked because people image the food to be very bland – however it’s how you season the steamed food that will make this healthy option a tasty one. The same goes for poaching – the liquid contains the flavour…get the liquid right and you’ve got all the flavour you need. So try something new and let us know how you got on, or send us your questions for our Culinary Arts students to answer.

Image credits

Image credit 1: Copyright of IHS
Image credit 2: www.buzzle.com
Image credit 3: www.livestrong.com
Image credit 4: www.wholefoodsmarket.com