Sitting down to eat or share a good meal that
you’ve just made in the kitchen can feel
like getting a gold medal in adulting.
But getting to that point can be tricky, and often requires a bit of knowledge in the
language of cooking.
Learning that language can be overwhelming,
so we put together a short glossary for a
few of those tricky cooking terms to get you
fired up for crafting your own culinary masterpieces!
[INTRO MUSIC]
First off, it seemed important to start with
the basics: what does
‘cooking’ really mean?
Well, it’s simple.
Cooking just means applying heat.
But before you can apply heat, you need an
understanding of what it is you’re trying
to accomplish, which ingredients to choose,
and how to prepare those ingredients.
So let’s start with looking at some tricky
ingredients.
Like, what’s the difference between baking
powder and baking soda?
So when you put baking soda or powder into a
recipe, you’re probably trying to get some
sort of baked good to puff up.
The difference between the two is that baking
powder has an ingredient that activates
the chemical processes that make your cakes
and breads fluffy, whereas baking soda needs
an additional ingredient to get that fluff.
Powder’s got power to rise, soda will result
in something sodarn flat.
When we asked around the office for ideas,
we found one common ingredient conundrum involved
garlic.
Okay, so this is definitely garlic.
Yes.
Um, there’s the little bits inside–I’m
just going to break one out.
And I–this is a clove, and this is a head,
but there’s a third word: a bulb.
And I’m like, I’m always like, ‘which
one is that?
Do you want a bulb?
Or do you want a bulb?’
Well, a bulb is just a head.
So the bulb is this.
Yes.
This–the big thing.
The mothership.
Condensed and evaporated milk are both just
milk with the water taken out.
The difference between the two is that condensed
milk is sweetened and evaporated milk is not.
Knowing how much of an ingredient to put
in, is just as important as what the ingredient is.
There are three main ways to measure your
ingredients: by count (like two eggs), by
volume, or by mass.
A cup, tablespoon, teaspoon, pinch, milliliter,
fluid ounce, pint, liter, quart, and gallon
measure volume, or how much space an ingredient
takes up.
An ounce, lb, gram, or kilogram are measures
of how much mass an ingredient has, or how
much physical stuff exists and can be measured
with a zeroed-out scale.
Sometimes a recipe will ask for just a 'pat' of butter.
And it's like... what is that?
It's like a single serving... like when you're at the diner.
And it varies from country to country, but roughly this.
Finally, a recipe calling for a scant tablespoon
or scant cup is calling for an amount just
shy of the specified measurement.
So: a little less than a full tablespoon or
cup.
There’s another thing that’s like scant,
except when they say ‘heaping’.
It’s a ‘heaping teaspoon’, and it’s
like a teaspoon, but a little bit more than
a teaspoon.
And I’m like, ‘are you kidding me right
now?
Just tell me how much!’
After you know what your ingredients are,
and how much of it you need, you’ve gotta
do stuff to it to change its chemistry and
make it taste the way you want it to.
Baking Blind means baking or partially baking
the crust of a pie before putting the filling in.
You’d do this for pies that you don’t
want to bake the filling in, like a meringue,
or for a pumpkin pie that could potentially
get the soggy crust.
Blanching is exposing food to boiling water
for a brief period, then (usually) putting
it in a cold water bath.
You might blanch something in order to loosen
or remove skin, soften veggies, preserve nutrients
for canning, or to extract liquids or undesired
flavors.
Okay, so boiling makes sense.
It’s when liquid starts transitioning to
steam.
Bubbles bubbling up and all that jazz.
Well, next time you boil water, note that
not all boiling is the same.
As you heat up the water, you’ll notice
that it’s starting to kind of twitch.
There’s no bubbles, but something’s going
on.
This is the temperature where you’ll want your
liquid to be when poaching, which we’ll
talk about later.
After that you’ll get bubbles that reach
the surface, but don’t break.
That’s a simmer.
If you wait a little longer, a few bubbles
will start to break the surface.
A couple bubbles escaping the pot every once
and awhile is a low boil.
A Roiling (or rolling or full) boil is when
your water is enthusiastically spitting up
bubbles every which-way, and you can’t make
it go any faster.
Braising means cooking a thing in a small
layer of liquid in a pot with a snug lid.
If it’s a big piece of meat, sometimes it’s
called a pot roast.
Broiling means cooking with dry intense heat
on one side.
Your oven manual will have more information
on how your particular broiler works.
In most cases, though, the broiling element
is in the top of your oven, and can be used
kind of like an upside-down grill, except
the food doesn’t actually touch the heating
element.
You know when you’re done cooking your steak
or chicken and there’s a bunch of stuff
left in the pan?
Well, after removing any fat from the top,
deglazing is when you add a liquid (usually
a wine or a stock) to those leftovers and
heat to a brief boil to make a delicious pan
sauce.
It’s like scrumptious recycling!
When you’re cooking something really sensitive
like eggs, cream, or chocolate, double-boilers
protect your ingredient by indirectly heating
it.
A double boiler looks about what it sounds
like, a bottom pot for the water, and a top
pot for the ingredients.
The top pot is nested inside the bottom pot,
which has a small layer of water in it.
When you heat the water to a boil, the steam
heats the thing inside the top pot.
You can make a double boiler at home out of
a sauce pan and a bowl made out of pyrex,
glass, or metal like this!
Dredging also known as breading!
In places other than the kitchen the word
dredge sounds kind of gross.
Like scraping up the mud at the bottom of a river bed,
or bringing up
(again) the story about that time that Cousin
Ben left potatoes behind the microwave and
no one found them until New Years Eve.
But this dredging is the good kind.
Dredging in a cooking-sense is coating a wet
or moist ingredient with a dry powder.
It’s like coating a piece of meat in flour
before frying it.
Mise en Place is a french term for getting
your stuff all in place before you cook.
Get your veggies washed and chopped, your
ingredients measured out, your butter room-temperatured,
your oven pre-heated, and so on.
Nothing is worse than starting into a recipe
and then having to run around the kitchen
trying to gather your ingredients while your
pot boils over or something catches on fire.
If you prep your kitchen before-hand, you’re
more likely to get all of the portions correct,
and you’re less likely to burn something.
Poaching is a gentle method for cooking food
in a liquid that is just under simmering-
that twitchy water we talked about earlier.
Poaching is good for delicate meats that easily
break apart like fish, or for eggs that still
have their yolks intact and runny.
Sautéing is a method of cooking where your
ingredients, in constant motion, are heated
over high heat in an open pan with some fat.
Sifting is a way to prep flour for use by
lightening it up, getting rid of clumps, and
sometimes mixing it up with other dry ingredients.
You can use a fancy sifter that will force
the flour through a fine mesh, but you can
also just use a strainer to help remove clumps.
Flour these days is a little better at not
clumping than the flour of yore, so don’t
sweat it if you don’t have a sifter.
I don't have a sifter.
That's beautiful.
It does look nice. So soft.
Sous vide is a method of cooking with ingredients
in a vacuum seal submerged in hot water or
heated with steam
Finally, sometimes a recipe will call for
just the egg yolk or the egg whites.
We’re going to try and demonstrate one way
to separate the two.
[laughing]
Try.
[Hank]
I have no confidence in my ability to do this.
I think the trick to this, is to get, like, a thousand eggs.
[Rachel makes a suspenseful noise]
[Hank]
Oh, did I do it?
Ah, oh—
I just go back and forth—I broke the yolk.
I did break the yolk. But I feel like I—feel like I did pretty good.
[Laughing]
I didn't do great.
[Rachel]
All right.
Oh fudge...
[Hank]
Do you have a different way than I do?
[Hank]
Good... good... good...
Pretty good...
[Hank]
I think you did better than me.
[Rachel chuckles]
[Hank]
You did WAY better than me!
This is really, like, the only thing that I know what to do is practice.
Like, get... three dozen eggs...
[Hank]
Oh! It's so beautiful! Look at you!
[Rachel, delighted]
Oh, it's so cute!
Ah, I feel like a failure...
[Rachel, laughing]
I am more adult
[laughing]
[Hank]
Oh my god, it's gorgeous.
Thanks for joining us on this tasty journey!
We hope we cleared up a few tricky cooking
terms, and fired up the ovens of your imagination.
There were many great suggestions for cooking
terms that we didn’t have enough space for,
so let us know in the comments if you liked
this glossary, and we'll make another one!
So much to cover!
So much.
[Hank makes an eating noise]
[Rachel makes a grossed-out noise]
Noooo
Do you not like butter?
Well... I don't like the idea of putting a giant thing of it...
I love butter SO MUCH.
Needs to be spread.
[Sniffs]
OH MY GOSH I WANT A BAGEL
You know how, like...
Oh no. Never mind. Just kidding.
[Laughter]
Good outtake, Rachel.
For pumpkin pie that could potentially get suh—get the soggy crust.
You want to put the salt...
On the butter and eat it? Uh huh.
[Rachel shudders]
Oh boy.
It doesn't help that my sharp tooth is like...
[soft dinosaur hiss?]
Is it like a chip?
No, it's just a really sharp molar.
I only just realized why cookies are called cookies.
Why are they called cookies?
'Cause you cook them.
I mean...
They should be called bookies.
They should be called bakies.
We should make our own cookie dough.
Bakie dough.
[laughter]
Hank & Rachel's Bakies!
