Cooking Glossary

Italian for 'to the tooth.' Pasta (and sometimes vegetables) cooked just past raw but with a firm bite remaining at the center. Drained at this stage so the residual heat and any sauce can finish the cook without going mushy.

A hot-water bath. A container of food set inside a larger container of hot water, so heat reaches the food gently and indirectly. Used for custards, terrines, melting chocolate, and keeping sauces warm without breaking them.

Plunge into rapidly boiling salted water for a brief moment (often 30 seconds to 2 minutes), then drop into ice water to halt cooking. Used to set color in green vegetables, loosen tomato skins, and parcook firm vegetables before a saute.

Sear a piece of meat to build crust, then cook it slowly in a covered pot with a small amount of liquid (just enough to come up the sides, not cover) at low heat for hours. Tough cuts (chuck, shoulder, shank) become tender; collagen melts to gelatin.

A very fine dice -- about 1/8 inch (3 mm) on a side. The reference cube of classical French knife work; harder than it looks. Smaller than small dice, larger than mince.

The browning of pure sugars under heat (about 320F / 160C and up). Different chemistry from the Maillard reaction. The reason onions slowly cooked low and slow go sweet and amber.

A knife cut: stack leafy herbs or greens (basil, mint, sorrel), roll them like a cigar, and slice across to produce thin ribbons. Used for finishing rather than cooking; preserves color and aroma.

Add liquid (wine, stock, water, vinegar) to a hot pan after searing, then scrape up the browned bits stuck to the bottom. Those bits -- the fond -- are concentrated flavor; deglazing dissolves them into the start of a pan sauce.

Bind two ingredients that normally separate (oil and water are the canonical pair) into a single stable mixture. Mayonnaise, vinaigrette, hollandaise, and a finished pan sauce are all emulsions. The trick is usually a third ingredient -- mustard, egg yolk, lecithin -- and slow, steady mixing.

A mixing technique: cut a spatula through the batter, lift, and turn -- repeatedly, gently. Used when one component is light (whipped cream, beaten egg whites) and would deflate under stirring.

The browned bits stuck to a hot pan after searing meat or sweating aromatics. Pure concentrated flavor. The foundation of pan sauces -- see deglaze. From the French for 'base.'

Work a dough by pressing, folding, and stretching to develop gluten -- the protein network that gives bread its chew and structure. Done by hand or by stand mixer.

The chemical browning that happens when amino acids and reducing sugars meet heat above roughly 280F / 140C. The reason a seared steak, a crusty bread, and toasted coffee all smell like dinner. Not the same as caramelization, which is sugars browning alone.

French for 'everything in its place.' A cook's pre-cook ritual: prep every ingredient (chop, measure, peel, mince) and lay it out in bowls before turning on a single burner. The discipline that lets a fast saute go right.

(1) Let a yeasted dough rise in a warm place until it has roughly doubled and a finger-poke leaves a slow-springing indent. (2) Dissolve dry yeast in warm sweetened water to confirm it is alive before adding it to a dough.

Simmer a liquid uncovered to evaporate water and concentrate flavor. Reducing a cup of stock to a quarter cup intensifies it fourfold; reducing wine evaporates the alcohol while leaving the fruit.

Cut shallow slashes in the surface of a dough, fish, or roast before cooking. On bread, it controls expansion; on fish, it lets fat render; on a roast, it lets seasoning penetrate.

Cook the surface of a piece of meat or fish over very high dry heat until a deep brown crust forms. Does not 'lock in juices' (a myth) but does build serious Maillard flavor and texture. Pat the surface bone-dry before searing; wet surfaces steam instead of brown.

Two meanings. (1) Add salt, pepper, and aromatics throughout the cook to develop flavor (not just at the end). (2) Build a non-stick polymer layer on cast iron or carbon steel by repeatedly heating thin coats of oil until they bond to the metal.

Cook in liquid just below the boil -- small bubbles break the surface lazily, never a rolling boil. Heat moves through the food gently. The default for stocks, beans, stews, and most braises after the initial sear.

Cook aromatics (onion, garlic, celery, leek) gently in fat over low heat, with salt, until soft and translucent -- without color. The opposite of browning; the goal is to draw out water and concentrate flavor without Maillard.

(1) Gradually warm a cold ingredient (often eggs) into a hot one to prevent scrambling -- whisk a ladle of hot liquid into the cold first, then stream the warmed mixture back into the hot. (2) Bring chocolate to a controlled crystal state by precise heating and cooling so it sets glossy and snappy.

The fifth taste, identified by Kikunae Ikeda in 1908 -- savory depth, distinct from sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. The lingering richness in a long-simmered stock, a cured anchovy, a ripe tomato, parmesan, soy sauce, mushrooms, miso. The taste this publication is named for.