Cooking

Cooking is the art, science, profession, and hobby of preparing food for human consumption. The term is often used in the narrower sense of applying heat to chemically transform a food to change its flavor, texture, appearance, or nutritional properties. Heating food has several uses. It can sterilize the food (depending on temperature, cooking time, and technique used), in addition to softening the food by turning collagen into gelatin. A room equipped for cooking is called a kitchen.

Because eating is a universal human drive, cooking is a nearly universal cultural feature. Specific techniques and ingredients are often regional. See Cuisine for information about the many regional and ethnic food traditions. Please see food writing for some authors of books on cookery, food, and the history of food.

Some major cooking (in the sense of transforming raw food with heat) techniques:

• Baking
  • High tech baking
• Barbecuing
• Boiling
  • Blanching
• Braising
• Broiling
• Frying
  • Deep frying
  • Hot salt frying
  • Hot sand frying
  • Pan frying
  • Pressure frying
  • Sauteeing
  • Stir frying
• Grilling
• Infusion
• Poaching
• Pressure cooking
• Roasting
• Simmering
• Smoking
• Steaming
  • Double steaming
• Vacuum flask cooking

Other preparation techniques:

• Brining
• Marination
• Seasoning
• Pickling
• Drying
• Coddling
• Microwaving (colloquially known as "nuking")

Vessels for cooking include saucepans, frying pans and woks.

Other information:

• Food and cooking hygiene
• Food preservation
• Cooking weights and measures (includes conversions and equivalences common in cooking)

For recipes, see the list of recipes and the list of cocktails. Also see staple (cooking).