Food preparation, cooking and manufacture

Food preparation

While some food can be eaten without preparation, many foods undergo some form of preparation for reasons of safety, palatability, or flavour. At the simplest level this may involve washing, cutting, trimming or adding other foods or ingredients, such as spices. It may also involve mixing, heating or cooling, pressure cooking, fermentation, or combination with other food.

In a home, most food preparation takes place in a kitchen. Some preparation is done to enhance the taste or aesthetic appeal; other preparation may help to preserve the food; and others may be involved in cultural identity. A meal is made up of food which is prepared to be eaten at a specific time and place.

The preparation of animal-based food will usually involve slaughter, evisceration, hanging, portioning and other operations.

Cooking

The term "cooking" encompasses a vast range of methods, tools and combinations of ingredients to improve the flavour or digestibility of food. It generally requires the selection, measurement and combining of ingredients in an ordered procedure in an effort to achieve the desired result. Success greatly depends on the variability of ingredients, ambient conditions, tools and the skill of the individual cooking.

The diversity of cooking worldwide is a reflection of the myriad nutritional, aesthetic, agricultural, economic, cultural and religious considerations that impact upon it.

Cooking requires applying heat to a food which usually, though not always, chemically transforms it, thus changing its flavour, texture, appearance, and nutritional properties. Cooking was practiced at least since the 10th millennium BC with the introduction of pottery. There is archaeological evidence of roasted foodstuffs at Homo erectus campsites dating from 420,000 years ago.

Food manufacture

Packaged foods are manufactured outside the home for purchase. This can be as simple as a butcher preparing meat, or as complex as a modern international food industry.

Early food processing techniques were limited by available food preservation, packaging and transportation. This mainly involved salting, curing, curdling, drying, pickling and smoking.

During the industrialisation era in the 19th century, food manufacturing arose. This development took advantage of new mass markets and emerging new technology, such as milling, preservation, packaging and labelling and transportation. It brought the advantages of pre-prepared time saving food to the bulk of ordinary people who did not employ domestic servants.

Nowadays advanced technologies have come to change food manufacture. Computer-based control systems, sophisticated processing and packaging methods, and logistics and distribution advances, can enhance product quality, improve food safety, and reduce costs.

3.Answer the questions.

1.What processes can food preparation include?

2.What are the reasons of food preparation?

3.What does the term ‘cooking’ mean?

4.What determines the diversity of cooking in the world?

5.Does cooking require heat?

6.What did early food processing techniques include?

7.What technologies did the industrialisation era bring?

8.What technologies are used in food processing nowadays?

4.Read the following proverbs and sayings. Try to give the Ukrainian (Russian) equivalents.

FOOD AND MEALS

v A hungry belly has no ears.

v I am as hungry as a wolf.

v Hunger is the best sauce.

v Tastes differ.

v Don’t live to eat, but eat to live.

v Appetite comes with eating.

v Eat at pleasure, drink with measure.

v Hunger breaks stone walls.

v The proof of the pudding is the eating.

v Too many cooks spoil the broth.

v Who has never tasted bitter, knows not what is sweet.

v You can’t eat your cake and have it too.

5. a) Match the methods of cooking with their definitions.

bake boil fry grill roast steam

cook in very hot oil cook over hot water cook under/over a flame cook meat, etc. in an oven cook in hot water cook bread, etc. in an oven

b) Match the foods with the items you would need to cook them, then write sentences as in the example.

FOODS: sausages, fish, bacon, potatoes, rice, carrots, turkey, spaghetti.

ITEMS FOR COOKING: barbecue, saucepan, frying pan, oven.

e.g. I would grill sausages on the barbecue, or fry them in the frying pan.

6.Fill in the table using the following words which describe taste.