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Basting is a 
To prevent this, the easiest solution is to place the meat in a closed
How Stuff Works - Basting
Cooking techniques Culinary terminology {{cooking-stub
Basting is a cooking
Cooking, cookery, or culinary arts is the art, science and craft of using heat to Outline of food preparation, prepare food for consumption. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from grilling food over an open fire to using electric ...
technique that involves cooking meat
Meat is animal flesh that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted, farmed, and scavenged animals for meat since prehistoric times. The establishment of settlements in the Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of animals such as chic ...
with either its own juices or some type of preparation such as a sauce or marinade. The meat is left to cook, then periodically coated with the juice.
Prominently used in grilling
Grilling is a form of cooking that involves dry heat applied to the surface of food, commonly from above, below or from the side. Grilling usually involves a significant amount of direct, radiant heat, and tends to be used for cooking meat a ...
, rotisserie
Rotisserie, also known as spit-roasting, is a style of roasting where meat is skewered on a spit – a long solid rod used to hold food while it is being cooked over a fire in a fireplace or over a campfire, or roasted in an oven. This metho ...
, roasting
Roasting is a cooking method that uses dry heat where hot air covers the food, cooking it evenly on all sides with temperatures of at least from an open flame, oven, or other heat source. Roasting can enhance the flavor through caramelization ...
, and other meat preparations where the meat is over heat for extended periods of time, basting is used to keep meat moist during the cooking process and also to apply or enhance flavor. Improperly administered basting, however, may actually lead to the very problem it is designed to prevent: the undesired loss of moisture (drying out) of the meat.
If not compensated by countermeasures, the opening of the oven door and the resulting loss of temperature and moisture content of the air circulating inside can lead to increased evaporation from the meat surfaces.
To prevent this, the easiest solution is to place the meat in a closed oven bag
An oven bag, cooking bag or roasting bag is a bag used for the roasting of meat or other food in an oven. They may be made of heatproof nylon or sometimes with food grade polyethylene terephthalate (PET). A bag helps to keep the food being cooked m ...
, which traps evaporating moisture and does not let it disseminate into the oven space and then out to the kitchen. The meat is "auto-basted" when the air trapped inside the bag reaches the point of its maximum possible moisture content, and the resulting precipitate forms into drops on the surfaces of the meat or the wall of the bag. The drops roll down to the lowest point of the closed space, where the meat sits and cooks in the resulting juices. This technique often requires minimal or no added liquids other than what the meat already contains, for loss of moisture is virtually negligible from inside the bag. Perhaps even better, some oven pans are designed to carry a lid.
Other alternatives include allowing extended cooking time, administering increased amounts of juices, coating the meat with moisture rich fruits or fat-rich cuts, such as bacon, or actual fat, place moisture rich fruits and vegetables around the cooking meats, and if possible, using a convection oven.
This is a type of cooking usually recommended for dishes that generally taste mild, but are served with sauces that provide complementing or overpowering flavor to them, for example chicken chasseur
Chicken chasseur (; french: poulet chasseur, and ) is a chicken dish that is a part of French cuisine. The primary ingredients in hunter's chicken are sautéed chicken and a reduced chasseur sauce prepared using tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, wh ...
.
Basting is a technique generally known to be used for turkey, pork, chicken, duck, and beef (including steak), but may be applied to virtually any type of meat.
See also
* Kitchen utensil *Pastry brush
A pastry brush, also known as a basting brush, is a cooking utensil used to spread butter, oil or glaze on food. Traditional pastry brushes are made with natural bristles or a plastic or nylon fiber similar to a paint brush, while modern kitchen b ...
References
External links
How Stuff Works - Basting
Cooking techniques Culinary terminology {{cooking-stub