Common Cooking Terms

If you are just learning how to cook or planning on expanding your cooking vocabulary, there’s some common cooking terms you might want to become familiar with.

Many types of foods and dishes can be prepared in a variety of ways each resulting in a different taste.

Grilling

When you grill a piece of meat or vegetables, you cook it over an open flame. Whether this be outside on your hibachi or inside on your jenn air grill, it is the same method. This method usually involves some sort of marinade and calls for careful watching so the flames do not reduce the food to burnt shoe leather.

Broiling

Broiling means the food is directly exposed to a heating element - usually barely an inch away from it. Broiling is usually done in the oven on a special setting. The broiler is usually found at the top of the oven and you place the food on the top rack close to it. You must watch the food carefully as it will cook very quickly with this method.

Frying

Frying and deep frying are often confused but are really two separate methods of cooking. Frying can be done in a pan with butter or oil but deep frying calls for the food to be totally submerged in the oil which usually requires a special pan or cooking device. When you deep fry something you might batter it in the case of chicken or leave it along in the case of French fries, but either way you usually place it in a basket and submerge the basket in the oil. This is rather messy and not very healthy either!

Sauteing

Sauteing is similar to frying as the food is cooked more quickly whereas frying lets the food sit in the oil. When you saute you use a small amount of olive oil or butter in a fry pan.

If you will be cooking a lot you will want to make sure you know the difference of the basic cooking methods so that you can prepare the recipes as they are intended. It won’t do to take a recipe for deep fried chicken and cook it by sautéing, so you must know the difference. Before you try any new recipe, read it first and make sure you know how to cook the meal for best results.