Food preparation

Baking is a way of cooking food with dry heat, usually inside an oven. Baking is very similar to roasting, but generally bread and cakes are baked and meat and vegetables are roasted.

A banquet is a very large formal dinner, usually with several courses, that is served to a large number of people at once. A less formal large dinner for many people is called a feast.

Basting is a way of keeping meat moist while it is being cooked slowly, such as when it is being baked. You baste something when you pour a little liquid over it while it is cooking. Meat is usually basted with its own juices from the bottom of the pan, or with marinade.

Something is browned if it develops a brownish tint as it is baked. Browning is the very first stages of something being burnt, and usually means that the food is just cooked enough.

You chop something up by cutting it into pieces with something sharp like a knife or axe.

Dicing food is a way of chopping food up with a knife into cubes of roughly equal size. Cutting food up this way makes the food cook more evenly, and is also nice to look at.

You dissolve a solid in a liquid by mixing the solid around until it seems to disappear. Once the solid is completely dissolved, the resulting solution behaves exactly like a liquid. Solids won't dissolve in any liquid, they must be soluble in them. For example, table salt is soluble in water but not in oil.

Solids that do not dissolve in a liquid but are mixed into a liquid can be removed with a filter. Filtering is an effective way to remove very fine particles of dirt from water.

Dough is a soft substance made mostly from flour mixed with things like butter, water, eggs or milk. Dough is what things like bread and pastries are made from before they are cooked and can be eaten.

A feast is similar to a banquet but is less formal. A feast is a very large, extravagant meal for any number of people. You can prepare a feast just for yourself if you want to.

Frying is a way of cooking food in a shallow pan over heat. Most things are fried in fat or oil.