Basic Cooking

Introduction:

Before you can begin cooking, you need to know some basic information.

Measuring your ingredients accurately and following recipe directions is essential if you want your food to turn out well and tasty.

Cooking is an essential life skill that can be learnt any stage in life. Whether your just embarking on cooking for yourself or a young adult transforming into a budding chef, we’ll teach you how to cook with confidence.

Through this webquest You will learn fundamental skills such as chopping, slicing and dicing, get to know your brunoise to your batons and confidently use knives to make cooking easy. You will make a number of delicious yet simple dishes to create a selection of recipes you can use on a weekly basis.

You will be cooking with a variety of meats, vegetables, pulses and grains to broaden your experience of all food types and flavours. You will learn a range of techniques, such as boiling, poaching, frying, roasting and steaming. You will learn to cook perfect rice in 10 minutes – steamed, boiled or stir-fried.You will also learn to cook other dishes such as a sizzling stir fry, chilli con carne with perfectly cooked rice, a tomato, olive, garlic pasta sauce and a tasty chicken dhansak. Alternative recipes will be included for any dietary needs.

Task:

In groups of 5 you are going to do arole play performing a cooking situation.you will reproduce a cooking show situation.

* Focuses of every group of what they are going to do.

*Culminating performance or products that drives this activity

*It should be collaborative

*Students work within pairs of group

*Each has her/his own task or role

Process:

Methods of Cooking

Here are the most basic cooking techniques to help you survive your first culinary year as a university student.

#1 Baking

This involves applying a dry convection heat to your food in an enclosed environment.

The dry heat involved in the baking process makes the outside of the food go brown, and keeps the moisture locked in.

Baking is regularly used for cooking pastries, bread and desserts.

#2 Frying

This means cooking your food in fat – there are several variations of frying:

Deep-frying, where the food is completely immersed in hot oil

Stir-frying, where you fry the food very quickly on a high heat in a oiled pan

Pan-frying, where food is cooked in a frying pan with oil; and

Sauteing, where the food is browned on one side and then the other with a small quantity of fat or oil.

Frying is one of the quickest ways to cook food, with temperatures typically reaching between 175 – 225ºC.

#3 Roasting

Roasting is basically a high heat form of baking, where your food gets drier and browner on the outside by initial exposure to a temperature of over 500F.

This prevents most of the moisture being cooked out of the food. The temperature is then lowered to between 425 and 450F to cook through the meat or vegetables.

#4 Grilling

This is a fast, dry and very hot way of cooking, where the food is placed under an intense radiant heat.

You can use various sources of heat for grilling: wood burning, coals, gas flame, or electric heating. Before grilling, food can be marinaded or seasoned.

A similar method to grilling is broiling, where the heat source originates from the top instead of the bottom.

#5 Steaming

This means cooking your food in water vapour over boiling water. For this, it’s handy to have a steamer, which consists of a vessel with a perforated bottom placed on top of another containing water. Steam rises as the water boils, cooking the food in the perforated vessel above.

#6 Poaching

This involves a small amount of hot liquid, ideally at a temperature between 160 and 180F.

The cooking liquid is normally water, but you can also use broth, stock, milk or juice. Common foods cooked by poaching include fish, eggs and fruit.

#7 Simmering

This involves cooking liquid on top of a stove in a pot or pan. It should be carried out on a low heat, and you will see bubbles appearing on the surface of the liquid as your dish cooks.

#8 Broiling

Similar to grilling, the heat source comes directly from the top.

You should be able to adjust your oven setting to broiling, but be careful, as this cooking methods works quickly and your meal could easily become burned. Favorite dishes for broiling include chicken, beef and fish.

#9 Blanching

Here the food is part-cooked, and then immediately submerged in ice cold water to stop the cooking process.

All sorts of vegetables can be blanched, including green beans, asparagus and potatoes.

#10 Braising

First the food is sauted or seared, and then simmered in liquid for a long period of time until tender.

Pot roasts, stews and casseroles can be cooked in this way if they contain larger food items such as poultry legs.

#11 Stewing

Again, the food is sauted or seared first, and then cooked in liquid, but normally uses smaller ingredients such as chopped meats or vegetables.

Need some inspiration for using these techniques? Take a look at our Student Recipes, filled with tasty dishes for you to try at breakfast, lunch, dinner or any other time of day!

We also have lots of information and advice on the different herbs and spices you can use in your cooking, how to keep your kitchen clean, budgeting for food, healthy eating, and a checklist of handy utensils you might need.

Evaluation

KITCHEN EVALUATION FORM

Name Period ___________

Directions: Answer yes or no to the following questions as you evaluate each

Kitchen.

1. Is there counter and storage space next to the refrigerator?

2. Is there counter space, cabinets and/or drawers next to the range center?

3. Is there lots of counter space on both sides of the sink?

4. Look at the traffic pattern. Will traffic flow away from the work centers?

5. Is the work triangle nearly perfect?

6. Is the sink between the refrigerator and range?

TOTAL the YES ANSWERS TOTAL the NO ANSWERS _________

** A kitchen is considered to be efficient if it receives mostly yes answers to the above

Comment:

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Conclusion

Cooking was a lot of fun and We personally learned a lot. We learned skills to use in the kitchen. Everyone enjoyed different parts of each class. We think everyone tried at least one new food. Cooking is something everyone should do.

We learned to do a lot of things. We learned how to communicate in the kitchen so nobody gets hurt. Everything we learned from appliance skills to preparing food was important. Our favourite skill is knife skills. Sometimes the big knives can be a little bit scary so learning how to properly use them is very important. All in all a great experience of basic Cooking is a beautiful phenomenon for us.

MEMBERS:

Melanie Aviso

Alfred Lucenario

Beverly Niebla

Julie Peña