An Italian expression applied in all western kitchens to pasta cooked just until enough resistance is left in it to be felt “by the tooth.” Fresh pasta can never by cooked al dente as it is too soft. The expression is also applied to vegetables that have been cooked crisp by steaming, boiling, or stir-frying.
Bake
Cook in oven surrounded by dry heat. Bake uncovered for dry, crisp surfaces (breads, cakes, cookies, chicken) or covered for moistness (vegetables, casseroles, stews).
Barbecue
A cooking method involving grilling food over a wood or charcoal fire. Usually some sort of rub, marinade, or sauce is brushed on the item before or during cooking.
Baste
Spooning liquid over food (pan juices over turkey) during cooking to keep it moist.
Batter
An uncooked mixture of flour, eggs, and liquid with other ingredients; thin enough to be spooned or poured (muffins, pancakes).
Beat
To agitate a mixture with the goal of making it smooth and introducing as much air as possible into it.
Boil
To cook in water or other liquid heated until bubbling vigorously. Few techniques cause as much confusion as boiling, simmering, and poaching. Boiling is, in fact, often a technique to be avoided. Most foods—meat and seafood, for example—are poached instead (cooked in liquid held just below the boil so it just shimmers slightly on the surface), because boiling turns them dry or stringy, and it can cause the liquid to become murky or greasy.
Braise
To cook in a small amount of liquid (also called stewing or pot roasting). In contract to poaching, in which the food is completely submerged in simmering liquid, braised dishes use a relatively small amount of liquid. Usually, the purpose of braising is to concentrate the food’s flavors in the surrounding liquid so that it can be made into a sauce, or allowed to reduce so that it coats or is reabsorbed by the foods being braised.
Broil
To cook with a direct heat source—usually a gas flame or an electric coil—above the food.
Caramelize
The flavor of many foods, including vegetables, meats, and seafood, is often enhanced by a gentle browning that caramelizes natural sugars and other compounds and intensifies their flavor. Meats for stews, for example, are usually browned to caramelize juices that if not caramelized are much less flavorful. Chopped vegetables, especially aromatic ones such as carrots and onions, are often caramelized—sometimes with cubes of meat—in a small amount of fat before liquid is added to enhance the flavor of soups, stews, and sauces.
Chop
To cut into irregular pieces. Foods can be chopped from very fine (minced) to coarse.
Deep-fry
To cook completely submerged in hot oil. Deep-frying at the proper temperature, foods absorb little oil and are surprisingly light. But if the oil is too hot, foods will brown too quickly and stay raw in the middle. If the oil isn’t hot enough, the foods will sit in the oil too long and absorb too much oil. You can judge the oil by how certain foods behave. When the oil is too cool for frying, foods sink to the bottom and stay there. In somewhat hotter oil (but still not hot enough) foods sink to the bottom and then slowly rise to the top. The oil is at the proper temperature when the food doesn’t drop all the way to the bottom when it is added and then bobs back to the surface within a second or two. When the oil is too hot, foods immediately float, remaining on the surface, surrounded with bubbles. These are not necessarily hard and fast rules. French fries, for instance, require oil that’s hot enough to immediately surround the potatoes with bubbles.
Deglaze
To add liquid to a pan in which foods have been sautéed or roasted in order to dissolve the caramelized juices stuck to the bottom of the pan. The purpose of deglazing is to make a quick sauce or gravy for a roast, steak, chop, or a piece of seafood fillet or steak. To make a pan-deglazed sauce, first pour out any fat left in the pan, and make sure that the juices clinging to the bottom of the pan haven’t blackened and burned. Add a few tablespoons of flavorful liquid, such as wine, broth, or, in a pinch, water, to the pan. Gently scrape the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen the caramelized juices. You can use such a sauce as is, or you can turn it into something richer and more elaborate by adding reduced broth, swirling in a few pieces of butter, adding a little heavy cream, or thickening it with a vegetable puree, such as garlic or tomato, and then reducing the sauce to the consistency like. You can add nuance and flavor to the sauce by adding chopped herbs or ingredients such as green peppercorns.
Dumpling
A small lump of soft leavened and seasoned egg, milk, and flour dough, shaped with two spoons or piped out of a pastry bag fitted with a nozzle. Usually it is poached in simmering water, but can be steamed over a stew.
Dutch oven
A cast-iron pot used for the preparation of stews, braises, and pot-roasts.
Egg wash
A mixture of egg or egg white, oil, and water brushed over floured items, which are then deep-fried or pan-fried in clarified butter or oil.
Emulsion
An emulsion is a smooth mixture of two liquids, such as oil and water that normally do not mix. Mayonnaise, beurre blank, hollandaise, cream sauces, vinaigrettes, and béchamel sauce are examples of emulsions.
Flambé
To ignite a sauce or other liquid so that it flames. Most of the time flambéing has no real function other than to delight your guests. If you are going to flambé a dish keep in mind that it is impossible to flambé a cold dish by sprinkling it with spirits and trying to light it—the spirits only release their flammable fumes when hot. Do not pour flaming spirits.
Fold
To incorporate an egg-white foam into an egg yolk foam or a flour batter without deflating it so that it retains its full leavening power.
