Fast Food and Traditional Food
The term “cooking” includes a wide range of methods, tools and combination of ingredients to create the flavor and digestibility of food. Cooking technique, known as culinary art, generally requires the selection, measurement and combining of ingredients in a controlled procedure in an effort to achieve the desired result. Constraints on success include the variability of ingredients, ambient conditions, tools, and the skill of the individual cooking. The diversity of cooking worldwide is a reflection of many nutritional, artistic, agricultural, economic, cultural and religious considerations that impact upon it. Cooking requires applying heat to a food which usually chemically transforms it and changing its flavor, texture, appearance, and nutritional properties. There is archaeological evidence that the primitive human being used to cook their food with fire that was the most important thing discovered by the primitive human being. Cooking food and cuisine culture vary from country to country and from one culture to another and each cuisine has its specific particularity. Nowadays, because of the modern life that changes everything around us and influence our life style and eating habits, people are less preparing their own food. Eating habits tend to unify people from different society. The food production and the process of eating obtain new characteristics. Food available around us seems to be very different from the one that we used to eat.
Eating habits and modern life
Cooking Guide – Some Cooking Tips
Cooking is an act of preparing food by heat application. It is a great combination of cooking techniques and tools. It needs right selection and measurement of ingredients to improve flavor and digestibility of food. The person who is going to cook should have sufficient skill of cooking.
Cooking normally changes flavor, texture, appearance and nutritional properties of food. People generally learn cooking from their parents or grandparents while some people do their own with help of cookery books or cooking shows. Best cook gives an experience of cafeteria or restaurant at home. Here are some tips to cook delicious as well as healthy food.
Whenever you’re going to start cooking food, collect all essential ingredients at one place.
You can buy a potato ricer for mashed potatoes and give a beautiful look to your kitchen.
Preheat the oven at the time of baking steaks because a really hot oven will blister just outer part of the meat and keep the juices in.
Use salad spinner to prepare soggy lettuce. These are quite expensive but works well.
Use drinkable wine to cook certain foods.
Whenever you’re using a roasting pan apply some olive oil on the surface.
Hand blender can be used to puree the soup.
Mushrooms should be wiped off with a piece of cloth instead of washing under a tap.
Check the size of roasting pan before preparing meal.
You can use carrots to sweeten your sauces.
Cooking Guide For Meat
Meat should be cooked according to the cut. The more expensive cuts of tender meat require very little cooking and can be fried, grilled or broiled to develop a rich flavor. The tough cuts of meat are juicier and contain excellent food value but must be cooked more slowly. Slow cooking in water softens the fibers and dissolves the connective tissues, making the meat tender. Tough meat should be cooked by simmering, stewing, steaming or pressure cooking. All meats can be tenderized to a certain extent by any of the following methods:-
1. Wrap the meat up in crushed papaya leaves. The juice from the papaya leaves contains an enzyme that will tenderize meats.
2. Chop or mince the meat to break up the fibers, thus tenderizing the meat.
3. Pound or beat the meat with a rolling pin to break up the connective tissues.
4. Cut or slice meat across the grain to shorten the fibers.
Heat coagulates protein, so if meat is cooked at a high temperature for a long time, the meat becomes tough and difficult to digest. Meat should be cooked at a high temperature for a few minutes to coagulate the outer surface and seal in the meat juices, then the heat should be reduced to cook the inside of the meat slowly. Cold water draws out the juice from the meat. Soups are tastier if the meat is cut into small pieces and soaked in cold water which is then slowly brought to the boil. The meat in stews is juicier and tasty if it is fried to cook the outside first and then stewed slowly in water until the meat is tender, a process which takes from 1½ to 2 hours.