Cooking carp recipe Spruce Eats: What Is Cooking? Cooking, at its most basic, refers to the ways in which food is transformed by applying heat. Different foods respond differently when cooked. Danilo Alfaro has published more than 800 recipes and tutorials focused on making complicated culinary techniques approachable to home cooks.

In scientific terms, cooking is transferring energy from a heat source to the food. That’s because heating food does more than just make it hotter. When you cook an egg, the interior turns from liquid to solid. Interestingly, other proteins, namely the collagens that make up cartilage and other connective tissues in meats, can be made to break down by cooking.

Cooking also causes proteins to lose moisture, typically via evaporation in the form of steam. This loss of moisture then causes protein-rich food to shrink, as we see with burgers that shrink when cooked on the grill. Cooking food causes other, less obvious, changes, too. Nutrients like vitamins can be destroyed or leached out, literally cooking away. Any time you boil vegetables, some nutrients naturally dissolve into the cooking water or into the air via steam. Conversely, certain vitamins are made available to the body for absorption during cooking, such as thiamin and folate.

Flavors can be lost in this same way. When you smell the aroma of food cooking, you’re smelling the flavor compounds evaporating into the air. Cooking often affects the color of foods as well. Carbohydrates like sugars and starches are also transformed by heating. Sugars turn brown, as seen when we caramelize the tops of a crème brûlée.

The browning of bread when we bake it is caused by the caramelization of the carbohydrates. Fats, such as butter and oils, liquefy, and eventually start to smoke when they get too hot. The fibers in vegetables and fruits soften and break down, which is why a cooked carrot is softer than a raw one. Some foods are not safe to eat without first being cooked. Cooking not only heats the food, but it can also help kill harmful bacteria. What Is Connective Tissue in Meat?