Outline of food preparation

Cooking with dry heat

• Baking – the technique of prolonged cooking of food by dry heat acting by convection, normally in an oven, but can also be done in hot ashes or on hot stones. Appliances like bread machines also allow automatic baking.

• Blind-baking – baking pastry before adding a filling.

• Barbecuing – method of cooking meat, poultry and occasionally fish with the heat and hot smoke of a fire, smoking wood, or hot coals of charcoal.

• Grilling – a form of cooking that involves dry heat applied to the surface of food, commonly from above or below. May involve a grill, a grill pan, or griddle.
• Maillard reaction – a chemical reaction that occurs when amino acids and reducing sugars are exposed to heat which gives browned food its distinctive flavor
• Roasting – cooking method that uses dry heat, whether an open flame, oven, or other heat source. Roasting usually causes caramelization or Maillard browning of the surface of the food, which is considered by some as a flavor enhancement.
• Rotisserie – meat is skewered on a spit - a long solid rod used to hold food while it is being cooked over a fire in a fireplace or over a campfire, or while being roasted in an oven.
• Smoking – the process of flavoring, cooking, or preserving food by exposing it to the smoke from burning or smoldering plant materials, most often wood. Hot smoking will cook and flavor the food, while cold smoking only flavors the food.
• Searing – technique used in grilling, baking, braising, roasting, sautéing, etc., in which the surface of the food (usually meat, poultry or fish) is cooked at high temperature so a caramelized crust forms.

Cooking with wet heat

Chemical techniques

• Brining – a process similar to marination in which meat or poultry is soaked in brine before cooking
• Ceviche
• Drying
• Fermentation
• Marinating

• Saikyoyaki

• Pickling
• Salting
• Seasoning
• Souring
• Sprouting
• Sugaring

Mechanical techniques

• Cutting
  • Cutting board
  • Dicing – cutting an ingredient into cubes of a consistent size.
  • Grating – using a grater to shred an ingredient, for instance, vegetables or cheese.
  • Julienning – the process of cutting an ingredient into very thin, long pieces, such as the thin carrots in store bought salad mix.
  • Mincing – cutting an ingredient into very small pieces.
  • Peeling – removing the outer skin/covering off of an ingredient, commonly a fruit or a vegetable.
  • Shaving – the process of planing off thin strips of an ingredient.
  • Chiffonade – cutting an ingredient into ribbons.
• Kneading
• Milling
• Mixing – incorporating several different ingredients to make something new; for instance, mixing water, sugar, and lemon juice makes lemonade.
  • Blending – using a specialized machine called a blender to grind or puree ingredients together.
• Vacuum filling – a mechanized method of creating filled items, for instance, for filling pastries.

Appliances

• Microwave oven – type of oven that heats foods quickly and efficiently using microwaves. However, unlike conventional ovens, a microwave oven does not brown bread or bake food. This makes microwave ovens unsuitable for cooking certain foods and unable to achieve certain culinary effects. Additional kinds of heat sources can be added into microwave ovens or microwave packaging so as to add these additional effects.
• Oven
• Stove or cooker

Utensils