Batter (cooking)

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Batter (cooking)

Batter is a liquid mixture, usually based on one or more flour

Flour

Flour is a powder made of cereal grains. It is the main ingredient of bread, which is a staple food for many civilizations, making the availability of adequate supplies of flour a major economic and political issue at various times throughout history....
s combined with liquids such as water

Water

Water is a common chemical substance that is essential for the survival of all known forms of life. In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or States of matter, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam....
, milk

Milk

Milk is an opaque white liquid produced by the mammary glands of female mammals . It provides the primary source of nutrition for newborn mammals before they are able to digestion other types of food....
or beer

Beer

Beer is the world's oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and Fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cereal?the most common of which is malted barley, although wheat, maize , and rice are widely used....
. Egg

Egg (food)

An egg is a round or oval body laid by the female of many animals, consisting of an ovum surrounded by layers of membranes and an outer casing, which acts to nourish and protect a developing embryo and its nutrient reserves....
is also a common component. Often a leavening agent

Leavening agent

A leavening agent is any one of a number of substances used in doughs and batter that cause a foaming action which lightens and softens the finished product....
is included in the mixture to aerate and fluff up the batter as it cooks (or the mixture may be naturally fermented

Fermentation (food)

Fermentation in food processing typically refers to the conversion of sugar to alcohol using yeast under anaerobic conditions. A more general definition of fermentation is the chemical conversion of carbohydrates into alcohols or acids....
for this purpose as well as to add flavour).

The viscosity

Viscosity

Viscosity is a measure of the Drag of a fluid which is being deformed by either shear stress or extensional stress. In everyday terms , viscosity is "thickness"....
of batter may range from very "stiff" (adhering to an upturned spoon) to very "thin" (similar to single cream, thin enough to pour or drop from a spoon and sometimes called "drop batter”).

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Encyclopedia

Batter is a liquid mixture, usually based on one or more flour

Flour

Water

Milk

Beer

Egg (food)

Leavening agent

Fermentation (food)

Viscosity

Frying

Frying is the cooking of food in oil or fat, a technique that originated in ancient Old_Kingdom around 2500BC. Chemically, oils and fats are the same, differing only in melting point, but the distinction is only made when needed....
, baking

Baking

Baking is the technique of prolonged cooking of food by dry heat acting by Heat convection, and not by Thermal radiation, normally in an oven, but also in hot ashes, or on hot stones....
or steaming

Steaming

Steaming is a method of cooking using steam. Steaming is considered a relatively healthier cooking technique and capable of cooking almost all kinds of food....
, in order to cook the ingredients (thus rendering them palatable) and to "set" the batter into a solid form. Batters may be sweet

Sweetness

Sweet is one of the five basic tastes and is almost universally regarded as a pleasure experience. Foods rich in simple carbohydrates such as sugar are those most commonly associated with sweetness, although there are other natural and artificial compounds that are much sweeter, some of which have been used as sugar substitutes for those wi...
or savoury

Umami

is one of the five Taste#Basic taste sensed by specialized receptor cells present on the human tongue. Umami is a loanword from Japanese language meaning roughly "delicious flavor", although "brothy", "meaty", or "savory" have been proposed as alternate translations....
, often with either sugar or salt being added (sometimes both). Many other flavourings such as herbs, spices, fruits and vegetables may also be added to the mixture.

The word 'batter' comes from the old French word 'battre' which means 'to beat' , as many batters require vigorous beating or whisking in their preparation.

Usage

Batters may be used to make crepe

Crêpe

A cr?pe is a type of very thin, cooked pancake usually made from wheat flour. The word, like the pancake itself, is of France origin, deriving from the Latin crispa, meaning "curled." While cr?pes originate from Brittany, a region in the northwest of France, their consumption is nowadays widespread in France and it is considered...
s, dosais, idli

Idli

The idli , also romanized "idly" or "iddly" and plural "idlis", is a savory cake popular throughout South Indian cuisine. The cakes are usually two to three inches in diameter and are made by steaming a batter consisting of fermented urad s and rice....
s, vadais, Yorkshire pudding

Yorkshire pudding

Yorkshire pudding is a dish that originated in Yorkshire, England and has attained wide popularity. It is made from batter and most often served with roast beef, chicken, or any meal in which there is gravy served with it, or on its own....
, fritter

Fritter

A fritter is any kind of food coated in Batter and deep fried. The word comes from the Latin *frictura by way of Old French and Middle English....
s, doughnuts

DONUT

DONUT was an experiment at Fermilab dedicated to the search for neutrino interactions. Even though the detector operated only during a few months in the summer of 1997, it was largely successful....
, hushpuppies

Hushpuppy

Hushpuppies or Hush puppies are a southern American food consisting of small cornmeal breads that are deep fried or baked in a spherical, oblong, or ring shape....
, tempura

Tempura

is a classic Japanese cuisine dish of deep frying Batter vegetables or seafood....
, cake

Cake

Cake is a form of food that is usually sweet and often Baking. Cakes normally combine some kind of flour, a sweetener , a binding agent , fats , a liquid , flavoring and some form of leavening agent , though many cakes lack these ingredients and instead rely on air bubbles in the dough to expand and cause the cake to rise....
s, some bread

Bread

Bread is a staple food prepared by baking a dough of flour and water. It may be leavened or unleavened. Edible salt, fat and a leavening agent such as yeast are common ingredients, though bread may contain a range of other ingredients: milk, Egg , sugar, spice, fruit , vegetables , Nut or seeds ....
s, to coat meat

Meat

In modern English usage, meat most often refers to animal biological tissue used as food, mostly skeletal muscle and associated fat, but it may also refer to offal, including livers, skin, brains, bone marrow, kidneys, in some countries lungs, and a variety of other internal organs as well as blood....
or vegetable

Vegetable

The term "vegetable" generally means the Eating parts of plants. The definition of the word is traditional rather than scientific, however, and therefore the usage of the word is somewhat arbitrary and subjective, as it is determined by individual cultural customs of food selection and food preparation....
s when frying

Frying

Pancake

A pancake is a thin, flat cake prepared from a batter and cooked on a hot griddle or frying pan. Pancakes exist in several variations in many different local cuisines....
s, waffle

Waffle

A waffle is a Batter -based cake or dough-based bread cooked in a waffle iron patterned to give a distinctive and characteristic shape. There are dozens of European regional variations based on the type and shape of the iron and the recipe used....
s or some cookie

In the United States and Canada, a cookie is a small, flat-baked treat, containing milk, flour, eggs, and sugar, etc. In most English-speaking countries outside North America, the most common word for this is biscuit; in many regions both terms are used, while in others the two words have different meanings?a cookie is a plain bu...
s.

Batter is also very commonly used in some parts of the world to coat fish before frying. Batter makes up a critical component of the famous British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
dish Fish and chips

Fish and chips

Fish and chips is a popular take-away food which originated in the United Kingdom. It consists of deep-fried fish in Batter or breadcrumbs with French fried potatoes potatoes....
for instance.

Non-alcoholic beers can be used to batter foods which is common in family restaurants. Often, the purpose of battering foods with beer is for the bubbles in the beer to make the batter lighter. The concept of beer battering is popular in America, Europe, Russia, and the Middle-East. When foods are beer battered and fried (fish, chips, onion rings, etc.), the heat generated by the frying process evaporates most of the alcohol.

Batter (cooking)

Usage

Quotes

See also

External links