Cooking

Cooking food involves making it hot.

We can cook food in a variety of ways. We can cook food by baking, grilling, roasting, frying, cooking in steam, boiling, stewing or cooking in the microwave. It is always useful to ask for help from grown-ups when cooking so you don’t make a mistake.

We cook food to kill germs to stop us from getting sick. It also makes food easier to eat, makes it last longer and makes it taste yummier. Cooked food also warms us up on a cold day.

Baking and Roasting

If we bake or roast food we are cooking food in an oven of hot air or on a stick called a spit which is put over a fire.

Grilling

We can grill food by putting it under heat or putting it over a fire, which is called barbecuing.

Boiling

We can boil or stew food by putting it in some water in a pot. The pot is put on a stove until it boils. You can always tell if something is boiled if it starts to make bubbles.

When you boil water or another liquid, you make it really hot so that bubbles and vapour come from it. Boiling something makes it change from a liquid you can touch and see to a gas that you cannot see. In science this is called a change of state.

When you boil water, you make it so hot that it's temperature is over 100 degrees Celcius so that it starts to turn from a liquid to a gas. Getting grown-ups to help you boil water is a good idea so that you don't burn yourself.

Steaming

When we put food over some boiling water we can cook it with the gas, called steam, that rises from the pot.

Frying

If we put food in a pan of hot fat or oil it is calle frying food. Food that is cooked by frying is not very healthy so we shouldn't eat too much of it.

Microwaves

A microwave is a special type of oven that makes food very hot very quickly. If you cook food in a microwave you can cook it in seconds or minutes instead of minutes or hours like in a normal oven. One example is a small meat pie which might take about four minutes in the microwave or half an hour in the oven.

There are many things even grown-ups forget or don't know about using a microwave. Try not to stand in front of the microwave or not for very long. Do not start the microwave when you do not have something in it. Do not put metal in the microwave as it is extremely dangerous. Your microwave uses more energy when it is not being used than when it is being used to turn it off at the plug in the wall.