Browse Techniques

Ginger appears in Vietnamese cooking in three distinct applications requiring three distinct preparations — each producing a different flavour and texture contribution. The same piece of ginger bruised whole in a broth, minced in a stir-fry, or charred for pho produces three entirely different flavour profiles.

Gochujang — the fermented chilli paste that defines Korean cooking's character — was developed after chilli arrived in Korea from the Americas through Japan in the late 16th century (following the Imjin War, 1592–1598). Within a century, chilli had become so deeply integrated into Korean fermentation tradition that it now seems ancient. The synthesis of the Mesoamerican chilli with the Korean soybean fermentation system produced something entirely new and distinctly Korean.

Japan — Okinawa Prefecture; goya introduction through Ryukyuan Kingdom trade with Southeast Asia; American influence through post-WWII military occupation introduced Spam as an ingredient; champuru style from Okinawan culinary tradition

Gregory Gourdet — born in Queens to Haitian immigrant parents, trained at the Culinary Institute of America, Jean-Georges Vongerichten's kitchens, and then Departure in Portland — opened Kann in Portland, Oregon in August 2022. Kann won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in 2023. In 2024, Gregory was honored as Best Chef: Northwest and Pacific by the James Beard Foundation. La Liste named it one of the world's best restaurants for 2025. In 2025, Kann was named the 27th best restaurant in North America on the inaugural North America's 50 Best list — the first Haitian restaurant to receive this level of international recognition.

Griot (pronounced "gree-oh") — fried pork shoulder marinated in sour orange and épis, slow-braised until tender, then deep-fried until the exterior is deeply caramelised and crispy — is the dish most Haitians name as their national dish. It is always accompanied by pikliz (pikliis) — the vinegar-pickled shredded cabbage, carrot, and scotch bonnet condiment that is to Haitian cooking what kimchi is to Korean cooking: not optional but structural.

Korean gui (grilling) — practiced over charcoal at tabletop grills in the distinctive Korean BBQ format — is one of the most socially embedded cooking techniques in any culture. The communal table grill, the shared experience of cooking meat, the specific accompaniments (ssam wraps, ssamjang, raw garlic) — these form a complete social and culinary system that is inseparable from Korean culture.

Gulab jamun (गुलाब जामुन — rose berry, from gulab = rose and jamun = a small dark berry that the fried balls resemble) is the most widely eaten Indian mithai — present at every celebration, every wedding, every festival, and every sweet shop across the subcontinent. Its origin is debated: some trace it to the Persian gulab (rose water) and jamun tradition, brought to India by Persian-speaking Mughal cooks; others trace it to the medieval Arabic dish luqmat al-qadi (judge's morsel — fried dough soaked in honey). The preparation reached its current form (khoya-based dough, fried, soaked in rose-saffron syrup) during the Mughal period and has not fundamentally changed since.

Korean cooking distinguishes carefully between different categories of broth — guk (국 — soup), tang (탕 — richer broth, often bone-based), jjigae (찌개 — thick stew), and jeongol (전골 — hot pot). Each has a specific flavour profile, consistency, and role at the table. The Korean broth tradition is the most specific and category-conscious of any Asian cooking tradition.

Épis — the Haitian green aromatic paste — is to Haitian cooking what sofrito is to Puerto Rican cooking, what curry paste is to Thai cooking, what mirepoix is to French cooking. But it is more than a technique. It is the flavour fingerprint of a culture that survived the most extreme conditions in Caribbean colonial history. Every Haitian cook who maintains their épis recipe is maintaining a direct line of culinary continuity from the kitchens of Saint-Domingue.

Halva (حلوى — from the Arabic for "sweet") is a word that covers an enormous family of confections across the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia — unified by the principle of sweetened fat-based paste cooked with sugar to a set consistency. The most globally recognised form is sesame halva (tahini cooked with sugar syrup to a crumbly, slightly fudgy consistency), but the family includes flour-based halva (Iran, India), semolina halva (Turkey, Greece — known as helva), vegetable halva (carrot, pumpkin — India and Persia), and countless regional variations. This entry focuses on the technique of sesame halva, which has a specific and demanding sugar science at its centre.

Hangwa — traditional Korean confectionery — is among the most visually elaborate and technically demanding confectionery traditions in Asia. Developed through the Joseon court tradition, hangwa encompasses grain-based preparations (yumilgwa — fried), paste-based preparations (jeonggwa — candied), and pressed preparations (dasik — pressed rice cakes). The visual artistry of hangwa rivals Japanese wagashi — both are court-derived confectionery traditions that prioritise seasonal beauty alongside flavour.

Korean food culture (hansik) is grounded in a philosophical framework that predates modern nutrition science by millennia — the concept that food, medicine, and daily life are inseparable (식약동원 — sigyak dongwon: food and medicine have the same origin). This principle, derived from Chinese medicine and adapted through the specific Korean climate and ingredient palette, produced a cuisine that is simultaneously pleasure, health practice, and cultural identity.

Hawaiian

Hawaiian cooking is the most diverse food culture in the United States — a synthesis of Native Hawaiian (Polynesian), Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Portuguese, and Anglo-American influences that has produced a specific Hawaiian culinary identity. The plantation system (sugar and pineapple, 1850–1950) brought workers from Asia and Portugal, and their culinary traditions merged with the indigenous Hawaiian tradition to produce the specific "local food" culture of Hawaii.

Hawaiian

Higashi (干菓子 — literally "dry confection") are the low-moisture wagashi served at tea ceremonies for the temae (full tea procedure) — not the main confection eaten before the thick matcha (that is the namagashi, the moist confection) but the sweets offered with thin matcha (usucha). They must be completely shelf-stable, completely dry, and completely dissolve on the tongue within seconds of placement. They are among the most technically demanding preparations in wagashi because their stability requires precise sugar crystallisation, and their dissolution requires that the same crystals be of a specific, controlled size.

Classical Malay literature — including the Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa and the Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals) — documents food traditions of the Malay maritime world through references to court feasts, trade goods, and cooking practices. The Malay culinary tradition represents a sophisticated synthesis of Indian (Tamil and Gujarati), Arab, Chinese, and indigenous Southeast Asian cooking traditions, producing a flavour vocabulary unique to the maritime world.

Hojicha (ほうじ茶 — roasted tea) is made from bancha (coarse green tea) or kukicha (stem tea) that has been roasted over charcoal at high temperature (200°C+) until the leaves develop a brown colour and a complex, smoky-sweet aroma through Maillard reaction and pyrolysis. The roasting destroys most of the catechins (the bitter, astringent compounds of green tea) and most of the caffeine, producing a tea with low bitterness, low caffeine, and a new aromatic profile — caramel, toasted grain, a faint smokiness, and a warmth that distinguishes it from all other teas. Its use in Japanese patisserie has grown enormously since the mid-2010s, driven in part by its compatibility with dairy and sugar in ways that matcha is not.

The specifically American culture of hot sauce — the table condiment applied liberally to everything from eggs to pizza to fried chicken — is a direct descendant of the West African pepper tradition transplanted through the slave trade. The specific American hot sauce industry (Tabasco 1868, Crystal 1923, Frank's Red Hot 1920, Louisiana Hot Sauce 1928) developed primarily in the South and primarily from ingredients and techniques associated with African American cooking.

Nigella Lawson's How to Eat established a philosophy that was radical at its time of publication: that cooking should be driven by appetite and desire rather than technique, and that the goal of a dish is pleasure rather than correctness. This is not a rejection of technique — Lawson's recipes are technically precise — but a reordering of priorities that produces a different relationship to the kitchen.

Hawaiian

Hummus bi tahini has been eaten across the Levant — Palestine, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Jordan — for centuries. Its deep roots in Palestinian cooking are inseparable from the chickpea's cultural significance: a legume cultivated in the region for over 10,000 years.

Hawaiian

Hawaiian

The Igbo people of Southeast Nigeria (the Bight of Biafra region) were transported primarily to the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Virginia and Maryland, making them one of the most significant African ethnic groups in the formation of African American cooking in the upper South. The Igbo culinary tradition — with its specific emphasis on yam (not sweet potato — the true African yam Dioscorea rotundata), its palm oil foundation, and its specific egusi and okra soup traditions — shaped the cooking of Virginia and Maryland plantations.

Ikan peda is the hybrid preservation of Jawa's north coast (pesisir utara Jawa — locally "Pantura") — neither purely salted nor purely fermented, occupying the space between ikan asin and terasi. The primary species is *Rastrelliger kanagurta* (Indian mackerel, locally kembung), though *Scomber* and other schooling pelagic species appear in regional variants. The fish is salted, left to ferment at ambient tropical temperature for 3–7 days, then sun-dried. The resulting product carries a controlled funky depth that differentiates it sharply from simple dried fish. Betawi cuisine (Jakarta's indigenous food culture) uses ikan peda as a defining flavour ingredient — ikan peda with sambal matah variants, in nasi goreng, alongside bubur, and in preparations unique to the Betawi table.

Île flottante (floating island) — poached meringue islands floating on a sea of crème anglaise — is among the oldest surviving preparations in the French dessert canon. Menon described a version in the eighteenth century. It is simultaneously the most technically forgiving of the classical French desserts (no precise temperature window, no assembly precision, no fragile structural elements) and the most revealing of ingredient quality — egg whites that are fresh will produce billowing, light meringue; stale whites produce flat, weeping masses. The skill is in reading the whites before the technique begins.

Hawaiian

Indian mithai (मिठाई — sweet, sweets, confection) encompasses hundreds of regional preparations unified by a common technique at their foundation: the reduction of milk. Full-fat buffalo milk (or cow's milk in many regions) is cooked in a wide, heavy pan (a kadhai) over sustained heat, stirred continuously, until it loses 50%, 60%, 70%, 80% of its volume — the degree of reduction producing different materials with different properties. This reducing-milk system has no parallel in any other confectionery tradition and produces textures and flavour compounds that no other technique can replicate. The Maillard reaction between milk proteins and lactose during prolonged heat produces a flavour that is simultaneously caramel-sweet, slightly grainy, intensely dairy-rich, and faintly savoury — the foundational flavour of most North Indian mithai.

Indonesian cuisine is the most geographically diverse food system on earth. The archipelago spans 5,100km from the westernmost point of Aceh (which faces India across the Andaman Sea) to the easternmost edge of Papua (which borders Papua New Guinea and shares food traditions with Melanesia). Between those two points lie 17,000 islands, 700+ languages, six major religions, and culinary traditions that range from the coconut-drenched Minangkabau curries of West Sumatra to the sago-based earth-oven cooking of Papua — preparations so distant from each other in technique and philosophy that calling them "Indonesian food" is like calling French, Turkish, and Norwegian food "European food." Yet there IS an architecture. Sri Owen — born in Padang Panjang, raised between Minangkabau and Javanese traditions, and the single most authoritative English-language voice on Indonesian cuisine until her death in October 2025 — identifies three structural elements that connect the archipelago's thousands of distinct preparations: **1. Rice as the organising principle (nasi).** The Indonesian meal is not built around a protein or a "main dish." It is built around rice. The word for "eating" in Bahasa Indonesia is *makan*, but the word for "having a meal" is *makan nasi* — literally, "eating rice." A table without rice is not a meal; it is a snack. Everything else on the table — the curries, the sambals, the vegetables, the fried items — are *lauk-pauk* (accompaniments to rice). The rice is the meal. The accompaniments are the seasoning. This is structurally identical to the Vietnamese *ăn cơm* (eat rice = have a meal) and the Japanese *gohan* (cooked rice = meal). But Indonesia takes it further: Mustikarasa, the national cookbook commissioned by Sukarno in 1960, was explicitly created to document alternatives to rice (sago, cassava, taro, yam, corn) because Indonesia's rice dependence was a food security crisis. The book is simultaneously a celebration of rice culture and a manual for surviving without it.

Irish cooking has the most complex historical relationship of any European culinary tradition — a cuisine shaped by colonial dispossession (the enclosure of Irish farmland by British landlords), the catastrophic potato famine of 1845–1852 (which killed one million and displaced two million more), and the specific poverty of subsistence living on limited ingredients. From this history emerged a cooking tradition built on extraordinary restraint and specific ingredient knowledge — and, more recently, a renaissance of Irish food culture that has reclaimed the tradition's depth.

Israeli cooking — which emerged from the 20th century — is simultaneously the newest culinary tradition and the synthesis of the oldest. The specific combination of Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi, Palestinian Arab, and subsequently Ethiopian, Russian, North African, and Yemeni immigrant cooking produced a culinary tradition of extraordinary diversity that is now being codified and celebrated by chefs like Michael Solomonov (Zahav), Yotam Ottolenghi, and Eyal Shani.

Elizabeth David's Italian Food (1954) was the first serious English-language treatment of Italian regional cooking — published before Italian food became fashionable, before the Ottolenghi phenomenon, before Italian cuisine was understood in Britain as anything beyond spaghetti bolognese. Her central technical observation, repeated throughout the book: Italian cooking succeeds through restraint. Too many ingredients, too many techniques, too much intervention — all are the enemy of the Italian dish.

Italian meringue — egg whites whipped to soft peaks, then stabilised with hot sugar syrup poured in a thin stream while the mixer runs — is one of the three meringue types (French: uncooked whites and sugar folded together; Swiss: whites and sugar beaten over a bain-marie; Italian: whites and hot syrup). It is the only one that is heat-stable, the only one that can be piped, brûléed, and left at room temperature without weeping or collapsing. It is used as the base for buttercream, for chiboust, for macarons in some interpretations, for tart toppings, and for parfait glacé. The technique that separates the trained pastry chef from the amateur is not the formula but the timing.

Jalebi (جلیبی) — a deep-fried fermented batter piped in interlocking spirals and immediately soaked in hot sugar syrup — is among the oldest surviving confections in the world with a documented recipe. The Arabic text "Kitab al-Tabikh" (The Book of Dishes, thirteenth century CE, by Muhammad bin Hasan al-Baghdadi) contains a recipe for zalabiya that matches modern jalebi in technique if not in scale. The preparation is documented in Persian, Arabic, and Indian culinary manuscripts from the medieval period and remains among the most widely consumed street foods in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, and the Arab world. The name and the preparation spread through the Islamic culinary tradition across the medieval Silk Road.

The history of American culinary achievement cannot be written without acknowledging the specific enslaved people whose skills, creativity, and labour produced it. Two figures in particular represent the full scope of what was demanded of and achieved by enslaved cooks at the highest level of American society — James Hemings, who trained as a chef in Paris under Jefferson's supervision, and Hercules, Washington's cook at Philadelphia and Mount Vernon, who was acknowledged by contemporaries as one of the finest cooks in America.

Jangajji — vegetables pickled in soy sauce, vinegar, or doenjang — is the Korean pickle tradition distinct from kimchi. Where kimchi is fermented (lactic acid bacteria), jangajji is preserved (salt, acid, or umami from soy). The tradition encompasses hundreds of preparations and represents a completely different flavour principle from kimchi — deeper, richer, more umami-forward, and generally less spicy.

Japan — amazake documented Nara period (8th century); Tumulus-period ceremonial drink; modern production from sake breweries; health drink positioning from Edo period medical tradition

The Japanese cheesecake (also known as "cotton cheesecake" or "jiggly cheesecake") was developed in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s as a specifically Japanese modification of the Western cream cheese cake — lighter, less dense, less sweet, with a texture closer to a soufflé than to a New York cheesecake. It became a global phenomenon from the 2010s onward through the spread of Japanese bakery chains and the viral propagation of the "jiggly" quality — a baked cheesecake that wobbles dramatically when removed from the oven, a property no Western cheesecake possesses.

Japan — fuki harvesting documented since Man'yoshu poetry (8th century); sansai mountain vegetable culture integral to Japanese highland communities; spring bitter philosophy from Buddhist vegetarian tradition

Kanten was discovered in 1658 by Mino Tarozaemon of Fushimi, Kyoto, who left leftover tokoroten (traditional algae jelly) outside overnight in winter — the freeze-and-thaw cycle created a dried, concentrated form that could be stored; this serendipitous discovery created a shelf-stable gelling agent that enabled the development of Japan's entire confectionery tradition around the new substrate; kanten production centres developed in the cold regions of Nagano and Shizuoka where winter freeze-drying was reliable

Japan-wide seafood tradition — surumeika from Pacific and Sea of Japan waters; yariika from Suruga Bay and Sea of Japan winter fishing; hotaruika specifically from Toyama Bay spring season; dried surume production historically centered in Hakodate and northern Pacific ports

Japan — nationwide traditional home cooking

Japan — amazake throughout Japan; koji amazake (shiro amazake) distinct from sake lees amazake (kasu amazake)

Japan (primary global cultivation); koji cultivation fundamental to Japanese fermentation for over 1,000 years; contemporary direct applications from 2010s innovation wave

Kōya-san, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan — legend of monks accidentally freeze-drying tofu in mountain winter; documented production from 12th century Buddhist monks; industrial production from Meiji era

Japan-wide — tokoroten documented from the Heian period as one of Japan's oldest preparations; mizu yokan developed during the Edo period as a summer confection; anmitsu created in Meiji-era Tokyo at Wakamatsu-an in Ginza; warabimochi ancient mountain food of spring

Japan (Hiroshima Bay primary cultivation; Akkeshi, Hokkaido; Matoya Bay, Mie Prefecture for wild/premium varieties)

Matsuda, Kanagawa prefecture (primary production); Yamanashi; annual spring harvest during peak sakura bloom (late March–April)