Why is cooking a food item method called different things by what the item is, or what is the criteria?

SnausagesinaBlanket@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 120 points –

On the Food network they boil potatoes, but they poach carrots. They poach turkey, but they boil eggs. They sauté' onions, but they fry eggs in the same pan. Likewise, they fry hash browns, but they sauté' onions in the same pan before adding the potatoes.

I can go on for days.

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Yep, 80C or 180F. I'm not sure if you can actually boil oil on a stove, but I do know that would be a bad idea. If you ever end up wanting to poach you might be able to do it in your oven on a very low setting rather than the stovetop.

Yeah, no boiling oil! Unless you need to defend the castle.

In fact, I don't think oil by itself can boil, it just smokes and then bursts into flame. The boiling effect when deep-frying is from water in the food becoming steam.

I looked it up and cooking oil definitely can boil in a physics/chemistry sense of the word. That temp is well above the smoke point. I agree that in a practical sense boiling oil is a fire ball before you'd ever have to worry about breathing too much oil vapor though.