Steaming is a method of cooking using steam. This is often done with a food steamer, a kitchen appliance made specifically to cook food with steam, but food can also be steamed in a wok. In the American southwest, steam pits used for cooking have been found dating back about 5,000 years. Steaming is considered a healthy cooking technique that can be used for many kinds of foods.
Blanching is a cooking process in which a food, usually a vegetable or fruit, is scalded in boiling water, removed after a brief timed interval, and finally plunged into iced water or placed under cold running water to halt the cooking process. Blanching foods helps reduce quality loss over time. Blanching is often used as a treatment prior to freezing, dehydrating, or canning vegetables or fruits to deactivate enzymes, modify texture, remove the peel and wilt tissue. The inactivation of enzymes preserves colour, flavour, and nutritional value. The process has three stages: preheating, blanching, and cooling. The most common blanching methods for vegetables/fruits are hot water and steam, while cooling is either done using cold water or cool air. Other benefits of blanching include removing pesticide residues and decreasing microbial load. Drawbacks to the blanching process can include leaching of water-soluble and heat-sensitive nutrients and the production of effluent.
The black-eyed pea or black-eyed bean is a legume grown around the world for its medium-sized, edible bean. It is a subspecies of the cowpea, an Old World plant domesticated in Africa, and is sometimes simply called a cowpea.
Chinese noodles vary widely according to the region of production, ingredients, shape or width, and manner of preparation. Noodles were invented in China, and are an essential ingredient and staple in Chinese cuisine. They are an important part of most regional cuisines within China, and other countries with sizable overseas Chinese populations.
Pilaf, pilav or pilau is a rice dish, or in some regions, a wheat dish, whose recipe usually involves cooking in stock or broth, adding spices, and other ingredients such as vegetables or meat, and employing some technique for achieving cooked grains that do not adhere to each other.
A slow cooker, also known as a crock-pot, is a countertop electrical cooking appliance used to simmer at a lower temperature than other cooking methods, such as baking, boiling, and frying. This facilitates unattended cooking for many hours of dishes that would otherwise be boiled: pot roast, soups, stews and other dishes.
Coddle is an Irish dish which is often made to use up leftovers. It most commonly consists of layers of roughly sliced pork sausages and rashers with chunky potatoes, sliced onion, salt, pepper, and herbs. Traditionally, it can also include barley.
Parboiled rice, also called converted rice, easy-cook rice, sella rice, and miniket is rice that has been partially boiled in the husk. The three basic steps of parboiling are soaking, steaming and drying. These steps make the rice easier to process by hand, while also boosting its nutritional profile, changing its texture, and making it more resistant to weevils. The treatment is practiced in many other parts of the world.
Puffed rice and popped rice are types of puffed grain made from rice commonly eaten in the traditional cuisines of Southeast Asia, East Asia, and South Asia. It has also been produced commercially in the West since 1904 and is popular in breakfast cereals and other snack foods.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the preparation of food:
Boiled eggs are eggs, typically from a chicken, cooked with their shells unbroken, usually by immersion in boiling water. Hard-boiled eggs are cooked so that the egg white and egg yolk both solidify, while soft-boiled eggs may leave the yolk, and sometimes the white, at least partially liquid and raw. Boiled eggs are a popular breakfast food around the world.
Jollof, or jollofrice, is a rice dish from West Africa. The dish is typically made with long-grain rice, tomatoes, chilies, onions, spices, and sometimes other vegetables and/or meat in a single pot, although its ingredients and preparation methods vary across different regions. The dish's origins are traced to Senegal.
Pinakbet is an indigenous Filipino dish from the northern regions of the Philippines. Pinakbet is made with a variety of mixed vegetables flavored with bagoóng. The word is the contracted from the Ilokano word pinakebbet, meaning "shrunk" or "shriveled."
The banana leaf is the leaf of the banana plant, which may produce up to 40 leaves in a growing cycle. The leaves have a wide range of applications because they are large, flexible, waterproof and decorative. They are used for cooking, wrapping, and food-serving in a wide range of cuisines in tropical and subtropical areas. They are used for decorative and symbolic purposes in numerous Hindu and Buddhist ceremonies. In traditional homebuilding in tropical areas, roofs and fences are made with dry banana-leaf thatch. Bananas and palm leaves were historically the primary writing surfaces in many nations of South and Southeast Asia.
Instant rice is a white rice that is partly precooked and then is dehydrated and packed in a dried form similar in appearance to that of regular white rice. That process allows the product to be later cooked as if it were normal rice but with a typical cooking time of 5 minutes, not the 20–30 minutes needed by white rice. This process was invented by Ataullah K. Ozai‐Durrani in 1939 and mass-marketed by General Foods starting in 1946 as Minute Rice, which is still made.
Matta rice is an indigenous variety of rice grown in Udupi and Dakshina Kannada districts of Karnataka, and Palakkad district of Kerala, India. It is known for its coarseness and health benefits. It is popular in Kerala and coastal Karnataka in India and Sri Lanka where it is used on a regular basis for idlies, appams and plain rice; it is different from brown rice.
Bánh bột lọc is a small, clear-looking, chewy tapioca dumplings in Vietnamese cuisine that can be eaten as appetizers or small snacks. They are usually filled with shrimp and pork belly, often being topped with fried shallots and served with sweet chili fish sauce. It is said to have originated from Huế, as the city was once the imperial capital of the Nguyễn dynasty and known for having simple, yet sophisticated dishes.
Gado-gado is an Indonesian salad of raw, slightly boiled, blanched or steamed vegetables and hard-boiled eggs, boiled potato, fried tofu and tempeh, and lontong, served with a peanut sauce dressing.
Rice-cooking utensils are tools used for cooking rice and similar foods.
