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Cooks Terms

A Glossary of Cooking Terms


When you first start cooking and reading recipes, you may find some words known as cooks terms that you may not recognise know what they mean.
On this page you will find a list of cooking terms that will help you and your kids when cooking together.

Baking
To Cook Food in the Oven.

Beating
To soften an ingredient or mix it with another ingredient, usually using a wooden spoon or a fork.

Chopping
To cut food into tiny pieces.

Chunks
Pieces of food that are larger pieces then diced food (See Dicing).

Creaming
To beat butter or margarine together with sugar using a wooden spoon of electric whisk until light and fluffy and very smooth.

Decorating
To finish off the top of a cake or cookies attractively.

Dicing
To cut food into small cubes about the size of your fingernail.

Draining
To pour off the liquid from food through a sieve or colander.

Drizzling
To spoon wiggly scribble-like lines of icing or melted chocolate over the top of a baked cake or cookies, or to sprinkle a little oil over bread dough before cooking.

Folding In
To mix ingredients together with a very gentle stirring action to keep the air in the mixture, for example when mixing in whipped cream for a filling,or folding flour into a cake mixture.

Grating
To make ting pieces, by rubbing an ingredient such as an orange, lemon, lime or block of cheese against a grater.

Greasing
To coat a cooking utensil such as a cake pan with a little cooking oil or softened butter, to prevent food from sticking during cooking.

Grilling
This is a form of cooking that involves dry heat applied to the surface of the food from either above or below.

Kneading
To smooth the outside of a dough when making shortbread cookies, scones, pastry and bread.

Lining
To put greaseproof or nonstick baking paper into the base or the base and sides of a cake tin so that the cake does not stick when cooked.

Sieving / Sifting
To remove lumps from dry ingredients such as flour,cocoa powder,brown sugar & icing sugar by pressing or shaking through a fine mesh sieve.

Simmering
To cook liquid in a saucepan over a gentle heat so that bubbles just break the surface.

Squeezing
To press the juice from a lemon, lime or orange, using a lemon squeezer.

Whisking / Whipping
To beat air into ingredients such as egg whites, whole eggs and sugar, or cream (whipping) using a balloon, rotary or electric whisk, until they become very thick.

As often as I can I will update this page with more cooks terms.

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