Working Food Terms List

Hey guys
This will be an updated post that will include general cooking terms. I will explain what they mean and how to do them. This will facilitate you once the recipes start going up.
Blanching:
 This is one of the first things that you are though in cooking school. It is a very simple process of making food last longer sealing in the nutrients and increasing the color of your food item. When you blanch something it is simply bring a pot of water to boil with salt in it. Add whatever vegetable to this boiling water, and once it becomes crisp on the inside and a bit soft on the outside your are finished. Don't forget to run your vegetables under cold water afterwards as to stop the cooking process, otherwise your vegetables will continue to cook from the heat.

Mire Poix:
This is a mixture of Carrots Onions and Celery. It is usually even parts and cut into big cubes. Mire Poix is used from stocks to a base for braising a meat to soups. To give color to your Mire Poix you would roast them in the oven.

Bain Marie:
This is a very simple process of using a pot, water and a bowl to heat things up. Place about an inch of water at the bottom of your pot, place your bowl on top of the pot so that the bottoms aren't touching.
Place on top of the stove top and let the steam heat up your bowl. This is used so that you can melt chocolate without burning it or cooking a sabayon for example.

Clarified Butter:
Butter in it's regular form burns at a relatively low temperature since it contains milk solids. In order to be able to Saute something at a high temperature you must separate the different elements of the butter in a bain marie see above. On a low heat start melting the butter. You will start to notice that the butter separate. Once all melted you can remove the top layer with a spoon this will be much harder then the rest of your butter. The middle layer is what we are after you can start pouring this into a a squeeze bottle but make sure to leave the bottom layer in the bowl. The difference will be in color and consistency as the middle one will be very liquid and the bottom one will be jelly like and white.