Glossary
76 terms from "Cooking basics: from prep to a finished dish." Look them up when you get stuck; the first mention in the text carries a hover definition.
| Term | Definition | Source |
|---|---|---|
| mise en place | The setup completed before cooking starts: every ingredient washed, cut, measured, and arranged within reach; French for "putting into place". | Wikipedia: Mise en place |
| timed sequence | The property of stovetop cooking that once heat is on, the food keeps changing whether the cook is ready or not, so steps have deadlines rather than an open-ended order. | Wikipedia: Stir frying |
| point of no return | The moment the burner goes on, after which every remaining task inherits a deadline; all interruptible work belongs before it. | Wikipedia: Stir frying |
| post-heat step | Any recipe step that happens after the burner is on; a correctly prepped recipe has no cutting or measuring left in one. | HowToCook (程序员做饭指南): repository overview |
| three lists | The extraction a cook performs on any recipe before cooking: ingredients with quantities, tools, and the numbered step sequence. | HowToCook (程序员做饭指南): repository overview |
| ingredients with quantities | The first of the three lists: every ingredient paired with a measurable amount in grams, milliliters, or spoons rather than a mood word. | HowToCook (程序员做饭指南): repository overview |
| step sequence | The third of the three lists: the numbered order of operations plus how fast each one runs, which is what reveals where the deadlines are. | HowToCook (程序员做饭指南): repository overview |
| per-serving calculation | The recipe section that states amounts per serving so the cook can multiply for the number of eaters instead of guessing a scale-up. | HowToCook (程序员做饭指南): repository overview |
| numbered operations | The action section of a quantified recipe: discrete numbered moves, each with a stated outcome, rather than a narrative paragraph. | HowToCook (程序员做饭指南): repository overview |
| landing zone | A plate or bowl staged in advance to receive food that must leave the pan mid-dish or at the end. | The Woks of Life: Chinese Tomato Egg Stir-fry |
| pinch bowl | A small container holding one pre-measured seasoning, so adding it mid-cook is a one-handed pour instead of a jar-opening operation. | HowToCook: 西红柿炒鸡蛋 (tomato and scrambled eggs) |
| arm's reach | The spatial requirement of mise en place: every prepped container sits close enough to grab without stepping away from the stove. | Wikipedia: Mise en place |
| burned-onion failure | The canonical beginner failure mode: stove on first, then chopping, so the food already in the pan overcooks during the prep that was never scheduled. | Wikipedia: Stir frying |
| pinch grip | The chef's-knife hold in which the thumb and the side of the index finger rest on the flat of the blade near the bolster, stabilizing the knife so the edge lands where aimed. | Wüsthof: The Best Way to Hold a Knife |
| claw grip | The guiding-hand position with fingertips curled back toward the palm and knuckles facing the blade, so the knuckles fence the knife away from the fingertips. | Wüsthof: The Best Way to Hold a Knife |
| bolster | The thickened junction where a chef's knife blade meets its handle; the pinch grip is formed just in front of it. | Wüsthof: The Best Way to Hold a Knife |
| flat of the blade | The broad side of the knife, as opposed to its edge; both the pinch-grip thumb and the claw-grip knuckles make contact here. | Wüsthof: The Best Way to Hold a Knife |
| hammer grip | The untrained hold — whole fist on the handle, as far from the blade as possible — which lets the blade wobble and reduces control. | Wüsthof: The Best Way to Hold a Knife |
| knuckle fence | The barrier the claw grip's forward knuckles form: the blade's flat side rides against them while the fingertips stay tucked behind. | Wüsthof: The Best Way to Hold a Knife |
| guiding hand | The non-knife hand, whose job is to hold the food still in the claw grip and set where the next cut lands. | Wüsthof: The Best Way to Hold a Knife |
| even pieces | The graded outcome of knife work: pieces close enough in size that they finish cooking at the same time. | Wikipedia: Stir frying |
| counted pattern | Cutting by a fixed subdivision — halve, halve, halve again — so even pieces come out of the geometry rather than out of judgment. | HowToCook: 西红柿炒鸡蛋 (tomato and scrambled eggs) |
| flat face | The first cut made on any round food, creating a flat side to stand it on so it grips the board instead of rocking. | Wüsthof: The Best Way to Hold a Knife |
| even-cook test | The board-inspection question that grades a cut: if all of this hit hot oil at once, would it plausibly finish together? | Wikipedia: Stir frying |
| damp towel | A cloth placed under the cutting board to stop it sliding, since a moving board turns into a moving blade target. | Wüsthof: The Best Way to Hold a Knife |
| dull knife | A blade that needs extra force to cut, which is what makes it more dangerous than a sharp one — force is what slips. | Wüsthof: The Best Way to Hold a Knife |
| hot pan, cold oil (热锅凉油) | The anti-stick sequence of heating the empty, dry pan first, then adding cold oil and swirling; the oil heats in seconds against the hot metal and food releases more readily. | HowToCook: 学习炒与煎 (stir-frying and pan-frying guide) |
| dry pan | The required state of the pan interior before oil goes in: no residual water, because water under hot oil flashes to steam and ejects the oil. | HowToCook: 学习炒与煎 (stir-frying and pan-frying guide) |
| residual water | Leftover moisture in the pan or on food that flashes to steam under hot oil and throws the oil outward. | HowToCook: 学习炒与煎 (stir-frying and pan-frying guide) |
| ready window | The visible state of oil that is hot enough to sear but not yet smoking: thinned, flowing quickly on a tilt, shimmering, with faint vapor movement above it. | HowToCook: 学习炒与煎 (stir-frying and pan-frying guide) |
| shimmer | The optical cue of oil inside the ready window: the surface visibly moves and glints as convection starts. | HowToCook: 学习炒与煎 (stir-frying and pan-frying guide) |
| vapor movement | The faint disturbance visible just above hot oil, given as the sign that the oil has reached working temperature. | HowToCook: 学习炒与煎 (stir-frying and pan-frying guide) |
| steady smoke | The overshoot cue: continuous visible smoke means the oil itself is breaking down, past the searing window and one stage before ignition. | HowToCook: 学习炒与煎 (stir-frying and pan-frying guide) |
| visual thermometer | The practice of judging pan and oil readiness by cues you can see rather than by a dial number, because dial numbers do not transfer between stoves. | HowToCook: 学习炒与煎 (stir-frying and pan-frying guide) |
| never pour water | The absolute rule for an oil fire: water thrown on burning oil explodes the fire outward; instead turn off the heat and cover the pan with its lid. | HowToCook: 学习炒与煎 (stir-frying and pan-frying guide) |
| Maillard reaction | The chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that creates the brown compounds and deep flavors of seared food; it proceeds rapidly at roughly 140-165 °C. | Wikipedia: Maillard reaction |
| melanoidins | The brown compounds produced by the Maillard reaction, which give browned food its characteristic color and flavor. | Wikipedia: Maillard reaction |
| 140-165 °C | The temperature range in which the Maillard reaction proceeds rapidly; below it food stays pale, far above it surfaces char before centers cook. | Wikipedia: Maillard reaction |
| seasoning | Supplementing food with salt, herbs, or spices to enhance its own flavor; done well, the seasoning itself cannot be tasted as a separate note. | Wikipedia: Seasoning |
| cannot be tasted | The professional standard for correct seasoning: when seasonings are used properly they are not tasted separately, their job being to heighten the original ingredients' flavors. | Wikipedia: Seasoning |
| tastes vividly like itself | The working target of the taste-adjust loop: the point where the food's own flavor is at maximum and no salt note is separately audible. | Wikipedia: Seasoning |
| baseline | The measured starting amount of salt a dish begins from, replacing the blind pinch; corrections are made upward from it by tasting. | HowToCook: 西红柿炒鸡蛋 (tomato and scrambled eggs) |
| 1.5-2 g per serving | The published salt baseline for a savory stovetop dish, measured rather than shaken, taken from a quantified recipe. | HowToCook: 西红柿炒鸡蛋 (tomato and scrambled eggs) |
| level 1/4 teaspoon | The volume approximation of roughly 1.5 g of fine salt, useful when no scale is available. | HowToCook: 西红柿炒鸡蛋 (tomato and scrambled eggs) |
| taste-adjust loop | The seasoning procedure: add the measured baseline, taste, and if flat add a small fraction more with each addition smaller than the last. | Wikipedia: Seasoning |
| smaller than the last | The step-size rule of the taste-adjust loop: each correction is a fraction of the previous one, because salt goes in and does not come out. | Wikipedia: Seasoning |
| reduction | The cooking-down of liquid, which concentrates the salt already present so a correctly seasoned sauce tastes saltier at lower volume. | Wikipedia: Seasoning |
| salt-to-water ratio | The concentration framing of saltiness: how salty a bite tastes depends on salt per unit of food, not on total salt added. | Wikipedia: Seasoning |
| unsalted volume | The only real fix for an over-salted dish: adding unsalted liquid or ingredients so the same salt seasons a larger batch. | Wikipedia: Seasoning |
| raw potato | The best-known seasoning folk remedy: a potato dropped into over-salted soup, which absorbs salty liquid rather than salt selectively and so barely changes the ratio. | Wikipedia: Seasoning |
| sugar to cancel | The other common over-salting folk fix: stirring in sugar, which adds a competing taste but does not remove or offset sodium. | Wikipedia: Seasoning |
| doneness | The gauge of how thoroughly cooked food is, judged by color, juiciness, and internal temperature; for safety, only the internal temperature is a reliable judge. | Wikipedia: Doneness |
| safe minimum internal temperature | The center temperature a food must reach to destroy pathogens: 74 °C (165 °F) for poultry, 71 °C (160 °F) for ground meat, 63 °C (145 °F) plus rest for whole cuts. | CIDRAP (University of Minnesota): USDA — 165 degrees is magic number for safe poultry |
| 74 °C | The safe minimum internal temperature for poultry, whole or ground, at which Salmonella is destroyed. | CIDRAP (University of Minnesota): USDA — 165 degrees is magic number for safe poultry |
| 71 °C | The safe minimum internal temperature for ground meat, set higher than for whole cuts because grinding distributes surface bacteria throughout. | Wikipedia: Doneness |
| 63 °C | The safe minimum internal temperature for whole cuts of beef, veal, pork, and lamb, valid only with a rest of at least three minutes afterward. | Wikipedia: Doneness |
| Salmonella | The most heat-resistant pathogen of public health concern in raw poultry, and the reason poultry's number is 74 °C. | CIDRAP (University of Minnesota): USDA — 165 degrees is magic number for safe poultry |
| grinding | The processing step that mixes surface bacteria through a meat's interior, which is why ground meat's safe temperature is higher than a whole cut's. | Wikipedia: Doneness |
| carryover cooking | The continued rise of a food's interior temperature, typically 3-5 °C, after it leaves the heat, as heat from the outer layers travels inward. | Wikipedia: Doneness |
| thickest part | Where a probe thermometer goes, away from bone, because the thickest point is the last to reach temperature. | Wikipedia: Doneness |
| danger zone | The roughly 4-60 °C (40-140 °F) temperature band in which bacteria in food multiply rapidly; food left in it beyond two hours should not be eaten. | Wikipedia: Danger zone (food safety) |
| 21-47 °C | The middle of the danger zone, where bacterial growth is fastest — a band that includes ordinary room temperature. | Wikipedia: Danger zone (food safety) |
| two-hour rule | The standing limit on time in the danger zone: food that stays in the 4-60 °C band for more than two hours should not be eaten. | Wikipedia: Danger zone (food safety) |
| discard rule | The framing of the two-hour limit: food past it is thrown away, not reheated, because reheating does not undo growth that already happened. | Wikipedia: Danger zone (food safety) |
| two-stage method | The tomato-egg dish's structure: scramble and remove the eggs, cook the tomatoes into sauce, then return the eggs — two non-overlapping trips through one pan. | The Woks of Life: Chinese Tomato Egg Stir-fry |
| standby plate | The plate staged beside the stove to receive the eggs at their doneness window while the tomatoes take their longer turn in the pan. | The Woks of Life: Chinese Tomato Egg Stir-fry |
| doneness window | The span of time in which an ingredient is correctly cooked; for eggs at stir-fry heat it is tens of seconds, for tomatoes several minutes. | The Woks of Life: Chinese Tomato Egg Stir-fry |
| choreography | The dish-level plan that gives each ingredient its own trip through the pan at its own timing, so they meet only when both are ready. | Wikipedia: Stir frying |
| set solid | The egg-stage doneness cue: the scrambled eggs have firmed through and turned faintly golden, which is when they leave the pan. | HowToCook: 西红柿炒鸡蛋 (tomato and scrambled eggs) |
| faintly golden | The color half of the egg-stage cue: barely golden, not browned, marking the moment to remove the eggs. | HowToCook: 西红柿炒鸡蛋 (tomato and scrambled eggs) |
| soft and collapsed | The tomato-stage doneness cue: the tomatoes have broken down into a loose sauce rather than remaining intact wedges. | The Woks of Life: Chinese Tomato Egg Stir-fry |
| loose sauce | The target consistency of the tomato stage: spoonable, neither intact wedges nor cooked-down paste. | The Woks of Life: Chinese Tomato Egg Stir-fry |
| splash of water | The corrective for a tomato stage that dries out before the tomatoes soften: a little added water to let them finish collapsing. | The Woks of Life: Chinese Tomato Egg Stir-fry |
| toss to coat | The recombine step: the eggs return for a few seconds of tossing in the sauce, long enough to coat and no longer. | The Woks of Life: Chinese Tomato Egg Stir-fry |
| tough little knots | The signature defect of the dish: rubbery egg pieces, caused by the eggs staying in the pan through the tomato stage. | The Woks of Life: Chinese Tomato Egg Stir-fry |
| success criteria | The stated, observable standards a finished dish is graded against — egg texture, sauce consistency, seasoning, color — each traceable to the mechanism that produces it. | The Woks of Life: Chinese Tomato Egg Stir-fry |