Whether it’s baking a single tier cake, stewing lamb, or how to cook eye of round roast, cooking is certainly an art. Cooking is the step by step process of prepping food and meals, including its plating, which is served to and eaten by people.
Cooking As An Art
The term “culinary” is described as something associated to or related to cooking. Individuals working in the field of culinary arts are called culinarians, whereas a person who works in a restaurant is generally called a cook. Food and meals that are skillfully prepared to be visually attractive and palatable is the mission of Culinary artists. They necessitate a lot of familiarity regarding the science of meal and food preparations well as a good grasp of how nutrition and diets have an effect on meal preparation.
Culinary art encompasses of numerous categories. Several of which are methods, tools, spice combinations, as well as ingredients that enhances the taste of food. It most often requires and involves the correct measurements, right choice and precise blend of ingredients to achieve that desired outcome.
The multiplicity of the culinary arts across the world emulates numerous considerations like Artistic, Cultural and Traditional, Religious, Nutritional as well as Economic.
Basic Methods of Cooking
Regardless of these considerations, food and meals are cooked in certain ways to achieve that perfect cooking, texture, flavor, and aesthetics, which makes cooking a form art. Below are a few of the basic cooking methods:
-
Baking
Baking entails making use of a convection heat (dry) to food in a sealed off environment. The dry heat used in the process of baking browns the outer layer of the food, and retains moisture within the food. This method is frequently applied in cooking bread, pastries and desserts.
-
Frying
This entails cooking food in fat or oil. There are numerous variants of frying including deep-frying, sautéing, stir frying, and pan frying. Each has a certain amount of oil, heat and time of cooking.
-
Roasting
It is essentially a form of baking but with higher heat, where the outside of food becomes browner and drier by preliminary contact to a temperature of above 500F. This averts most of the food moisture within from being cooked out.
-
Grilling
This method is a quick, dry and extremely hot manner of cooking, wherein the food is put on an strong radiant heat, either over burning wood, coals, electric heating, or gas flame.
-
Steaming
This is a way of cooking wherein food is cooked in water vapor on top of boiling water. As the water boild, steam emerges cooking the food in the vessels that are perforated vessel.
-
Simmering
This process entails cooking liquid on a stove top in a pan or pot. It must be done on a low heat, and as food cooks bubbles start to show on the surface.