Culinary terminology

Cooking technique

thumb|A selection of dégustation dishes and wines Dégustation is the careful, appreciative tasting of various food, focusing on the gustatory system, the senses, and high culinary art. Dégustation is more likely to involve sampling small portions of all of a chef's signature dishes in one sitting. Usually consisting of many courses, it may be accompanied by a matching wine degustation which complements each dish.

thumb|Parboiling peaches to remove their skin

thumb|right|200px|Flank-steak roulade being browned thumb|right|200px|Sliced-beef roulade filled with bacon, onion and pickled cucumber thumb|right|200px|Cooked flank-steak roulade thumb|right|200px|Salmon and dill mini-

thumb|right|200px|Green tea leaves steeping in a gaiwan (type of tea cup) Steeping is the soaking of an organic solid, such as leaves, in a liquid (usually water) to extract flavours or to soften it. The specific process of teas being prepared for drinking by leaving the leaves in heated water to release the flavour and nutrients is known as steeping. Herbal teas may be prepared by decoction, infusion, or maceration. Some solids are soaked to remove an ingredient, such as salt, where the solute is not the desired product.

Brining is treating food with brine or coarse salt which preserves and seasons the food while enhancing tenderness. Flavor can be further developed with additions such as herbs, spices, sugar, caramel or vinegar. Meat and fish are typically brined for less than twenty-four hours while vegetables, cheeses and fruit are brined in a much longer process known as pickling. Brining is similar to marination, except that a marinade usually includes a significant amount of acid, such as vinegar or citrus juice. Brining is also similar to curing, which usually involves significantly drying the food, and

cooking technique

cooking technique that dissolves browned food residue from a pan

Crudités (, ) are French appetizers consisting of sliced or whole raw vegetables which are typically dipped in a vinaigrette or other dipping sauce. Examples of crudités include celery sticks, carrot sticks, cucumber sticks, bell pepper strips, broccoli, cauliflower, radish, fennel, baby corn, and asparagus spears. Sauces used for dipping include bagna càuda and pinzimonio.

system of hierarchy found in restaurants

thumb|Seared tuna thumb|Searing a steak after smoking for 2 hours

thumb|A pile of carrots brunoise

eggs that have been baked in a flat-bottomed dish

250px|thumb|Spherification of tea 250px|thumb|Spherification of apple juice Spherification is a culinary process that employs sodium alginate and either calcium chloride or calcium glucate lactate to shape a liquid into squishy spheres which visually and texturally resemble roe. The technique was documented by Unilever in the 1950s and brought to the modernist cuisine by the creative team at El Bulli under the direction of chefs Ferran Adrià and Albert Adrià.

[[File:BasilChiffonade.jpg|thumb|Chiffonade [cut] of basil]]Chiffonade () is a slicing technique in which leafy green vegetables such as spinach, sorrel, or Swiss chard, or a flat-leaved herb like basil, are cut into long, thin strips.

A sous chef is a chef who is second-in-command of a kitchen, ranking directly below the head chef in the Kitchen Brigade system developed by Auguste Escoffier. In large kitchens, sous-chefs are typically left in charge of managing members of the kitchen on behalf of the head chef, who may often be preoccupied with other tasks such as purchasing, staffing or developing dishes.

This method of cooking is usually associated with roasting.

cook with management responsibility

thumb|A cheesemaker checks the set of milk curd after vegetable rennet was added to milk Curdling is the breaking of an emulsion or colloid into large parts of different composition through the physio-chemical processes of flocculation, creaming, and coalescence. Curdling is purposeful in the production of cheese curd and tofu, but undesirable in the production of a sauce, cheese fondue or a custard.

thumb|A dish seasoned with picada sauce Picada () is one of the characteristic sauces and culinary techniques essential to Catalan cuisine. The technique is typically found in Catalonia and Valencia and subsequently Catalan cuisine and Valencian cuisine. It is not an autonomous sauce like mayonnaise or romesco, but it is added as a seasoning during the cooking of a recipe.

cooking technique

thumb|Diced green bell peppers, [[tomatoes and mushrooms (left to right)]] Dicing is a culinary knife cut in which the food item is cut into small blocks or dice. This may be done for aesthetic reasons or to create uniformly sized pieces to ensure even cooking. Dicing allows for distribution of flavour and texture throughout the dish, as well as a somewhat quicker cooking time. Dicing usually applies to vegetables prepared in this way but it can also apply to the preparation of meat or fish and fruit. Brunoise is an especially small size, produced from further cutting of julienne-style food.

meal with grilled meats

thumb|upright=1.35|Squab (food)|Squab forcemeat with [[cepes, anise, and combava juice]]

foodstuff whipped with air

Baeksuk () is a Korean culinary term referring to dishes made by boiling or steaming meat or fish to be cooked thoroughly without seasonings. Baeksuk is made with chicken or pheasant with plenty of water for several hours. However, the term generally indicates dakbaeksuk (닭백숙, chicken baeksuk), or chicken stew, whose recipe and ingredients are similar to samgyetang. While samgyetang is made with ginseng, various herbs, chestnuts, and jujubes, dakbaeksuk consists of simpler ingredients, such as chicken, water, and garlic. The chicken can be stuffed with glutinous rice.

A potée is a French culinary term which, in general, refers to any preparation cooked in an earthenware pot. More specifically, it refers to a soup or stew made of pork and vegetables, most frequently, cabbage and potatoes of which choucroute is the most characteristic.

cooking technique

light gravy made from the juices given off by the meat as it is cooked

thumb|Butterflying pork loin Butterflying is a way of preparing meat, fish, or poultry for cooking by cutting it almost in two, but leaving the two parts connected; it is then often boned and flattened. Spatchcocking is a specific method for butterflying poultry that involves removing the backbone, and spatchcock as a noun may refer to a bird prepared in that way.

the process by which a yeast-leavened dough rises, also called "proving"

kitchen worker in a restaurant

Taiwanese culinary term for the ideal texture of chewy foods

In shallow frying, food is cooked in a frying pan with a little amount of oil or fat.

thumb|Meat grinder in operation. Mincing is slicing, not grinding/extruding|alt=table top machine with handle, meat is inserted in a top aperture and emerges minced from the side aperture thumb|Minced carrots thumb|Minced Lamb and mutton|lamb Mincing is a culinary technique in which ingredients are cut into small, uniform pieces. Mincing was originally a manual process using knives or mezzalunas. The invention of the meat grinder or mincer in the 1850s made mincing faster and easier.

thumb|Lemon juice is a natural fruit-based acid. Souring is a food preparation technique that causes a physical and chemical change in food by exposing it to an acid. This acid can be added explicitly (e.g., vinegar, lemon juice, lime juice, etc.), or can be produced within the food itself by a microbe, such as Lactobacillus.

softening or breaking of food into pieces using a liquid

thumb|right|180px|Sauciers-in-training A saucier () or sauté chef is a position in the classical brigade style kitchen. It can be translated into English as sauce chef. In addition to preparing sauces, the saucier prepares stews, hot hors d'œuvres, and sautés food to order. Although it is often considered the highest position of the station cooks, the saucier is typically still tertiary to the chef and sous-chef.

thumb|Skin chips of pernil should be crispy Crispiness or crispness is one of the most common food texture attributes. Crispiness refers to a hard food that emits a sound upon fracturing. Foods described as crisp tend not to show signs of deformation prior to fracture. Crispiness and crunchiness are often used interchangeably, however crispiness tends to be associated with a higher pitched sound, while crunchiness is associated with lower pitched sounds.

variation on pressure cooking

thumb|350x350px|Part baked baguettes in a Waitrose store. Parbaking (also known as part-baked in the UK ) is a cooking technique in which a bread or dough product is partially baked and then rapidly frozen for storage or assembled into a final product. It has been used to increase the mass manufacture and distribution of bread products, including bagels.

process, generally used in cooking, in which the egg yolk is removed from the egg white

thumb|Mushimono with cherry leaf

alcoholic drink normally served before or after a meal

cooking technique

someone well known in the culinary industry

thumb|right|250px|Coddled egg In cooking, to coddle food is to heat it in water kept just below the boiling point. In the past, recipes called for coddling fruit, but in recent times the term is usually only applied to coddled eggs. Coddling differs from poaching in that the coddled ingredient is not placed directly in hot water, but instead in a small dish placed in a hot water bath. The process is either done in a regular pan or pot filled with water, either on the stovetop or placed in the oven, or through the use of a special device such as an "egg coddler" (originally known as a pipkin).

thumb|Tomato concassé

garnish

method of covering of an ingredient, e.g. fish, in a sandlike mix of egg whites and salt; the salt insulates and helps cook the food evenly and gently; after baking, the golden-brown shell is cracked, resulting in moist and evenly cooked food