Baking, Roasting, Braising, and?Reheating!
Words (Cooking Terms) are important!
When you’re working primarily with ovens as is often the case in school food service settings, it’s really helpful to understand the words used to describe some of the ways you can cook in ovens.
Let’s look at some main oven cooking terms and methods.
Bake:
So often this term is applied to most oven cookery.
“I baked some cookies.”
Let’s have Baked Potatoes” for dinner.
“I baked some frozen Burrito for a quick dinner.”
Technically speaking
“To Bake” refers to the cooking of breads, pies, cakes, muffins, cookies, pastry doughs, scones, bagels, pizzas, cinnamon rolls, etc. from their raw dough state.
Roast:
Roasting is a dry heat cooking method. Roasting can be done at very high, medium or lower temperatures.
Often times the “right”temperature would be decided upon based on the size of the food item being “roasted”.
For Instance:
A Steak?
?or Roasted Veggies = very high temps! 450- 800 degrees
An entire Turkey?
?or a 10 pound “Prime Rib” Roast
Or a Half Chicken?
= 170 - 350 degrees
Braise:
Braising is a moist heat cooking method. Generally, low oven temperatures, tougher cuts of meat, and some sort of flavorful cooking liquid is involved, such as, water, stock, broth, tomato products, veggie purees, scratch or packaged sauces, etc.
Beef Chuck and Pork Shoulders are both excellent cuts to braise, producing very tender and succulent results.
An example of braising is cooking a piece of meat in your crock pot. Like the classic “Pot Roast” in European culture or Birria in a Latin American context.
Key points to understand when braising:
Place the meat in a cooking pan that has a fitting lid or can be covered with foil.
Add the cooking liquid of your choice about ? way up the side of the meat.
Cover tightly and place in a slow oven. If you don’t have any time pressure, I’d go 225 degrees. And plan on 3-5 hours of cook time.
If you need the meat more urgently, you could push it by going up to 300 for about 2hrs, but slow and low is always better and makes for the best results!
For a “pull-able” texture, cook to an internal temperature of 208 degrees.
Reheat:
Reheating is exactly what it sounds like. That is using an oven or other cooking implement to warm up previously cooked items to the proper temperatures for good sanitation, and eating acceptability, generally 165 degrees. We do a good amount of reheating foods in school kitchens.
These terms are just some of the ways to describe the specific ways foods can be Cooked and I just thought you should know!
Most importantly remember this:
The Birria recipe that was so generously shared with me by Chef Juan Zamorano from San Diego Unified is in my Facebook Group,
More and More Scratch Cooking Everyday!
The video shows how the meat should respond when it’s cooked slow, low and to the target temperature of 208 degrees.
Happy to answer any of your questions!
