Cooking Glossary
Essential cooking terms, techniques, and concepts — explained clearly for home cooks.
Featured Terms
Techniques Mise en Place
Mise en place is the French culinary practice of preparing and organizing every ingredient and tool before cooking — typically 10–20 minutes of setup that prevents mistakes during the heat of service.
Concepts Maillard Reaction
The Maillard reaction is the chemical browning between amino acids and reducing sugars that happens above 140°C — responsible for the crust on seared steak, baked bread, and roasted coffee.
Techniques Braising
Braising is a two-step cooking method: sear food at high heat, then simmer it in liquid at 150–160°C in a covered pot for 2.5–4 hours until fork-tender.
Concepts Fermentation
Fermentation is the metabolic process where bacteria, yeast, or molds convert sugars into acids, alcohol, or gases — the basis of bread, yogurt, kimchi, beer, and hundreds of other foods.
Ingredients Sourdough Starter
A sourdough starter is a live culture of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria maintained with regular flour-and-water feedings — used to leaven bread, takes 7-14 days to create from scratch.
Tools Dutch Oven
A heavy, thick-walled cooking pot with a tight-fitting lid — essential for braising, baking bread, and slow cooking.
All Terms
Techniques
Al Forno
Al forno is an Italian cooking term meaning "in the oven" — food baked or roasted at high heat (200-220°C / 400-425°F), often with a golden, bubbling crust on top, used for pasta al forno, lasagne, and gratins.
Autolyse
Autolyse is a bread-making technique where flour and water are mixed and rested 20-60 minutes before adding salt and leavening, allowing gluten to develop naturally and reducing kneading time.
Bain-Marie
A bain-marie is a cooking technique that uses a water bath (max 100°C) to apply gentle, indirect heat to food — essential for custards, cheesecakes, melting chocolate, and emulsion sauces like hollandaise.
Biga
A stiff Italian pre-ferment with 50-60% hydration, used to add structure, flavor complexity, and a nuttier taste to bread and pizza doughs.
Blanch and shock
Blanch and shock is a two-step technique: briefly cook food in boiling salted water (30 seconds to 4 minutes), then plunge it into ice water to stop cooking — locks in color, texture, and nutrients for meal prep, freezing, peeling, or brightening dishes.
Blanching
Blanching vegetables is a brief boil (30 seconds to 5 minutes) followed by an ice-water shock — used to set color, deactivate enzymes, and prep produce for freezing.
Braising
Braising is a two-step cooking method: sear food at high heat, then simmer it in liquid at 150–160°C in a covered pot for 2.5–4 hours until fork-tender.
Brining
Brining is the technique of soaking food in a saltwater solution (typically 5-8% salt) to season it deeply, improve moisture retention during cooking, and produce juicier results — especially effective for lean proteins like chicken breast and turkey.
Bulk Fermentation
Bulk fermentation is the primary rise of bread dough after mixing — the dough ferments as a single mass at 24–26°C for 1–4 hours (yeasted) or 4–10 hours (sourdough) before shaping.
Chiffonade
Chiffonade is a French knife technique for cutting herbs and leafy greens into thin, uniform ribbons 2-3 mm wide — by stacking, rolling, and slicing across the roll for clean basil, mint, or spinach garnishes.
Cold Fermentation
Cold fermentation is the practice of retarding dough in the refrigerator (2–5°C) for 24–72 hours — slowing yeast activity while enzymes break starches into sugars for deeper flavor and better texture.
Confit
Confit is a French cooking technique where food is slowly cooked submerged in fat at low temperature (90-150°C / 200-300°F) — originally a preservation method from southwest France, it works for duck legs, garlic, potatoes, tomatoes, and even egg yolks.
Curing
Curing is a preservation technique that uses salt, sugar, nitrates, or smoke (typically 2-3% salt by weight) to draw moisture from food — primarily meat and fish — inhibit bacterial growth, and develop concentrated flavors.
Deglazing
Deglazing is adding 120-240 ml of liquid (wine, stock, vinegar) to a hot pan after searing to dissolve the browned bits stuck to the bottom — the foundation of every pan sauce in under 5 minutes.
Duxelles
Duxelles is a finely chopped mixture of mushrooms, shallots, and herbs, sauteed in butter until dry and intensely flavored. A cornerstone of French classical cooking, it's a filling for beef Wellington, a base for sauces, a spread for crostini, and a versatile flavor concentrate.
Emulsification
Emulsification is the process of mixing two liquids that normally don't combine (like oil and water) into a stable, uniform mixture — used to make mayonnaise, vinaigrette, hollandaise, and pan sauces.
Folding
Folding is a gentle mixing technique that preserves air in delicate batters by cutting through and turning the mixture rather than stirring — used for soufflés, mousses, macarons, and high-hydration bread dough.
Gluten Window Test
The gluten window test (or windowpane test) is a hands-on technique for checking gluten development — stretch a small piece of dough thin enough to see light through it without tearing, the dough is ready.
Julienne
Julienne is a classical French knife cut that produces thin, uniform matchstick-shaped strips about 3 mm wide and 5-7 cm long — used in stir-fries, salads, garnishes, and any dish where even cooking of vegetables matters.
Lacto-Fermentation
A preservation method where lactic acid bacteria convert sugars into lactic acid, creating the tang in sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles, and yogurt — no vinegar required.
Marinade
A marinade is a seasoned liquid mixture of acid, oil, and aromatics used to flavor food before cooking — it denatures surface proteins and infuses flavor, but only penetrates 1-2 mm deep, so it works best for thin cuts marinated 30 minutes to overnight.
Mise en Place
Mise en place is the French culinary practice of preparing and organizing every ingredient and tool before cooking — typically 10–20 minutes of setup that prevents mistakes during the heat of service.
Poaching
Poaching is a gentle cooking technique that submerges food in liquid held at 160-180°F (70-82°C) — below boiling, with no visible bubbles — to preserve the delicate texture of eggs, fish, and poultry.
Poolish
A wet pre-ferment made with equal parts flour and water plus a small amount of yeast, fermented 8-16 hours to develop flavor and improve dough extensibility.
Proofing
Proofing is the final rise of bread dough after shaping (30 minutes to 16 hours), where the shaped loaf expands with carbon dioxide from yeast before baking — produces a light, airy crumb instead of a dense brick.
Reduction
Reduction is simmering a liquid uncovered to evaporate water — typically reducing volume by half in 5-15 minutes — to concentrate flavor and thicken consistency without adding starch.
Resting Meat
Resting meat is letting cooked meat sit 5-30 minutes before cutting — muscle fibers relax and reabsorb juices that were pushed to the center during cooking, producing juicier, more evenly cooked meat.
Risotto Technique
The Italian method of gradually cooking short-grain rice in broth while stirring to release starch, producing a creamy, flowing dish without any added cream.
Roasting
Roasting is a dry-heat oven cooking method (usually 350-450°F / 175-230°C) that caramelizes the exterior through the Maillard reaction while keeping the interior moist — used for meat, poultry, and vegetables.
Roux
A roux is a cooked mixture of equal parts fat and flour by weight used to thicken sauces, soups, and gravies — three types (white, blond, brown) differ by cook time (2 to 45 minutes), producing different flavors and thickening power.
Searing
Searing is high-heat cooking (230–290°C surface) that builds a deeply browned Maillard crust on meat, fish, or vegetables — for flavor and texture, not to seal in juices.
Sous Vide
Sous vide is a precision cooking method where food is vacuum-sealed and cooked in a temperature-controlled water bath at 50-85°C for 30 minutes to 72 hours — produces edge-to-edge even doneness impossible to achieve with conventional cooking.
Tempering
Tempering is the technique of gradually changing an ingredient's temperature to prevent unwanted reactions — eggs (to prevent curdling at 85°C) or chocolate (to control cocoa butter crystals for gloss and snap).
Concepts
Al Dente
Al dente is Italian for "to the tooth" — food cooked so it offers a slight resistance when bitten, most often applied to pasta with a faint white starchy core still visible in the center.
Baker's Percentage
Baker's percentage is a notation system that expresses every bread or pizza ingredient as a percentage of total flour weight (flour = 100%) — making any recipe infinitely scalable.
Brew Ratio
Brew ratio is the proportion of coffee grounds to water when brewing, typically 1:15 to 1:18 for filter coffee (1 g coffee to 15-18 g water) — the single most important variable for consistent, great-tasting coffee.
Caramelization
Caramelization is a non-enzymatic browning reaction where sugars break down under heat (110-160°C for sucrose), producing new flavors, aromas, and golden-to-dark color — unlike the Maillard reaction, it involves only sugars and no proteins.
Carryover Cooking
Carryover cooking is the temperature rise (typically 3-8°C / 5-15°F) that food continues to gain after being pulled from heat — pull meat below your target temperature to land on it after resting.
Crumb Structure
Crumb structure is the internal texture of bread defined by the size, shape, and distribution of air pockets (alveoli) — ranging from tight and uniform (sandwich loaves) to open and irregular (ciabatta, sourdough).
Dough Ball
A dough ball is an individual portion of pizza dough shaped into a smooth sphere after bulk fermentation — each becomes one pizza, with weights of 200-250g for Neapolitan, 280-350g for New York, and 400-600g for Detroit or Sicilian styles.
Fermentation
Fermentation is the metabolic process where bacteria, yeast, or molds convert sugars into acids, alcohol, or gases — the basis of bread, yogurt, kimchi, beer, and hundreds of other foods.
Fond
Fond is the caramelized browned bits that stick to the bottom of a pan after searing meat or vegetables — a product of the Maillard reaction, the French word means "foundation" and fond is the foundation of pan sauces and gravies.
Freezer burn
Freezer burn is the dry, discolored patches that form on frozen food when moisture escapes from the surface into the freezer's air. It's a quality issue, not a safety one. Proper wrapping, airtight containers, and keeping the freezer at 0°F prevent it.
Gluten Development
Gluten development is the process of building a stretchy protein network in dough through kneading, folding, or time — required for bread to rise, hold structure, and develop chew.
Hydration (Bread)
Bread hydration is the ratio of water to flour in dough, expressed as a percentage of flour weight (700 g water + 1,000 g flour = 70%) — higher hydration means a more open crumb.
Leavening Agents
Leavening agents are substances or techniques that produce gas in dough or batter, causing it to rise — three categories: biological (yeast, sourdough), chemical (baking soda, baking powder) and mechanical (whipped eggs, creaming).
Maillard Reaction
The Maillard reaction is the chemical browning between amino acids and reducing sugars that happens above 140°C — responsible for the crust on seared steak, baked bread, and roasted coffee.
Meal Prep
Meal prep is the practice of cooking and portioning meals or meal components in advance (typically 2–3 hours for the week ahead) to save time, money, and reduce food waste by 40–60%.
Mother Sauces
The mother sauces are the five foundational sauces of French cooking — bechamel, veloute, espagnole, hollandaise, and tomato — from which hundreds of daughter sauces derive, codified by Auguste Escoffier in 1903.
Recipe Import
Recipe import is the ability to save recipes from websites, photos, cookbooks, or other apps into your recipe manager automatically — with ingredients, quantities, units, and steps properly parsed for scaling, shopping lists, and cook mode.
Recipe Scaling
Recipe scaling is the process of adjusting ingredient quantities in a recipe to serve more or fewer people — most scale linearly, but seasonings (75% rule) and leavening (80-90%) don't.
Smart Shopping List
A smart shopping list is an automatically generated grocery list that combines ingredients from multiple recipes, merges duplicates, converts units, and organizes by store aisle.
Umami
Umami is the fifth basic taste — a savory, mouth-coating depth triggered by glutamate found in aged cheeses, soy sauce, mushrooms, ripe tomatoes, and fermented foods.
Ingredients
Kosher Salt
Kosher salt is a coarse-grained salt with large, flat crystals and no additives — preferred by chefs because it pinches easily, dissolves cleanly, and seasons more evenly than fine table salt.
Olive Oil
Olive oil is a cooking fat pressed from olives, available in grades from extra virgin (smoke point 190-210°C, best for finishing) to refined (smoke point 240°C, best for high-heat cooking).
Sourdough Starter
A sourdough starter is a live culture of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria maintained with regular flour-and-water feedings — used to leaven bread, takes 7-14 days to create from scratch.
Stock vs. Broth
Stock is made from bones and connective tissue (simmered 4-24 hours) for gelatin-rich body; broth is made from meat (45 min-2 hours) for direct seasoned flavor — use stock for sauces, broth for soups.
Yeast Types
The 3 types of yeast for bread — active dry, instant, and fresh — are all the same organism (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) processed differently, and convertible between each other.
Tools
Bench Scraper
A bench scraper is a flat metal or plastic blade (typically 6×4 inches) used to cut, portion, and handle dough — also called dough scraper or bench knife — and to keep your work surface clean.
Cast Iron Skillet
A cast iron skillet is a heavy 2-4 kg pan made from molten iron poured into a sand mold — prized for its heat retention, oven-to-stovetop versatility, and the natural non-stick surface (seasoning) that develops with use.
Dutch Oven
A heavy, thick-walled cooking pot with a tight-fitting lid — essential for braising, baking bread, and slow cooking.
Instant-Read Thermometer
An instant-read thermometer is a probe thermometer that displays the internal temperature of food within 2–5 seconds — the most reliable way to check doneness on meat, bread, and frying oil.
Kitchen Scale
A kitchen scale is a digital tool for measuring ingredients by weight (1g precision) — eliminating the 30–50% variability of cups and spoons, especially in baking.
Mandoline
A mandoline is a precision slicing tool with an adjustable blade that produces uniform thin cuts (down to 1 mm) — the tool behind paper-thin chips, gratins, and restaurant-quality vegetable presentation.
Mortar and Pestle
A mortar and pestle is a traditional grinding tool — a bowl (mortar) and club-shaped tool (pestle) — used to crush, grind, and blend spices, herbs, and pastes; the oldest food processing tool still in everyday use.
Recipe Manager
Software for storing, organizing, and accessing recipes digitally — replacing physical cookbooks, bookmarks, and scattered notes with a searchable, scalable collection.
