Skill 08 of 08
Kitchen terms
Read any recipe and know exactly what it is asking.
Recipes assume you know the words. Most of them are simple once someone tells you. Here are the ones that come up on this site and in every cookbook, in plain English.
This lesson is free, start to finish. So is every other one.
Prep
- Mise en place
- Everything cut, measured and in its place before the heat goes on.
- Dice, mince, julienne, chiffonade
- Cubes, very fine, matchsticks, ribbons. See Knives.
- Zest
- The colored outer skin of citrus, grated off with a microplane. Not the white underneath, which is bitter.
- Deseed, devein
- Remove the seeds from a pepper; pull the dark line out of a shrimp.
- Spatchcock
- Cut the backbone out of a whole bird and press it flat, so it roasts fast and evenly.
- Temper
- Bring something up to temperature slowly so it does not shock: eggs into a hot sauce, meat out of the fridge before cooking.
- Marinate, brine, dry brine
- Soak in a seasoned liquid; soak in salt water; salt it and leave it uncovered in the fridge. All three season deeper than salting at the pan.
- Room temperature
- Out of the fridge 30 to 60 minutes. Meat cooks more evenly, butter creams, eggs whip.
Heat
- Sear
- A hard, fast brown crust in a very hot pan.
- Sauté
- Cook small pieces fast in a little fat, keeping them moving.
- Sweat
- Cook onions or other vegetables gently in fat until soft and translucent, without browning.
- Caramelize
- Cook slowly until the natural sugars brown. Onions take 40 minutes, not 10.
- Deglaze
- Pour liquid into a hot pan and scrape up the browned bits.
- Fond
- Those browned bits. Flavor.
- Reduce
- Simmer a liquid until there is less of it and the flavor is stronger.
- Simmer
- Just below a boil: a few small bubbles.
- Blanch
- Boil briefly, then plunge into ice water to stop the cooking. Keeps vegetables bright.
- Braise
- Sear, then cook low and slow in a little liquid with the lid on.
- Render
- Melt the fat out of something slowly: bacon, duck skin, the fat cap on a steak.
- Rest
- Leave cooked meat alone for a few minutes before cutting, so the juice stays in.
- Carryover
- Meat keeps cooking after it leaves the heat. Pull it early.
- Sous vide
- Cook in a sealed bag in water held at an exact temperature.
Sauces and texture
- Roux
- Butter and flour cooked together to thicken a sauce.
- Slurry
- Cornstarch stirred into cold water, used to thicken.
- Emulsion
- Fat and liquid forced to stay mixed: vinaigrette, mayonnaise, beurre blanc.
- Mount (monter au beurre)
- Swirl cold butter into a sauce off the heat for gloss and body.
- Gastrique
- A sweet-and-sour sauce from caramelized sugar and vinegar, often with fruit.
- Nappe
- Thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
- Al dente
- Pasta or vegetables cooked with a little bite left.
- Fold
- Combine gently with a spatula, turning from the bottom, to keep air in.
Measures
- Pinch
- What you can hold between thumb and finger. About an eighth of a teaspoon.
- Knob of butter
- About a tablespoon.
- Glug
- A quick pour of oil or wine, roughly a tablespoon or two.
- To taste
- Add, taste, add more until it is right. The recipe cannot know your ingredients.
- Heaped, level
- A spoon mounded over the top; a spoon scraped flat.
Practice on these