Tinfoil Chef

After a post I wrote recently about some food & cooking terms it occurred to me That there’s a lot of these terms that, most people haven’t heard of or just don’t really know what they mean. I also think that, like me, most people don’t like feeling like some kind of an idjit for not knowing a term that somebody’s using as if everybody on Earth should know it from the cradle.

Therefore, I’m going to start doing a series of posts in which I will take two or three of these terms at a time and talk about them a little.

I’m going to start with one that I’ve never heard before: Bain marie

It turns out that this is a pan of water used to help mixtures like custards bake evenly and to protect them from direct heat. This sounds to me like the function of a double boiler

You’d think that most people already DO know the term Bake (to cook in the oven) but a lot of people use “bake” and “roast” interchangeably and they’re not really the same thing. The main difference is that roasting implies cooking at a higher temperature, at least for the first part of the cooking process, in order to brown the surface of the foods (usually meats).

I suppose most people are familiar with Barbecue. This is a cooking method that involves grilling food over a wood or charcoal fire. Often it’s marinated, coated in a spice rub, or a sauce is brushed on it before and / or during cooking.

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