Cooking methods compared: a guide to using cooking tools

With an induction cooker you can boil pasta, rice, legumes and vegetables. This method also allows you to prepare large quantities of food quickly, without using any fat. Unfortunately, boiling also causes partial loss of the vitamins and nutrients contained in the liquid. To overcome this obstacle, you can opt for a more gentle boil– cooking in hot water kept at a temperature of around 95°C, without reaching a full boil, allows you to better preserve nutrients, especially for cooking fish and vegetables.

In a pan you can sauté and brown with a little olive oil, maintaining colors and textures in a short time. A great compromise between health and taste. If you’re craving slower cooking, you can switch to wet foods, braised meats and stewed dishes: these are preparations that take longer, but at the same time they deliver rich flavours and soft textures.

In this type of preparation, induction demonstrates its strength: the possibility of calibrating the cooking process depending on the time available, the result you are looking for and the balance you want to find between taste and lightness, always ensuring a reduced consumption of energy.

Cooking with an electric oven takes longer, but it pays off with even cooking and easier handling when you need to prepare multiple portions together. Heat comes through radiation from the oven walls and conduction from the pans, while in the ventilated mode, hot air also comes into play, helping to create a drier, crispier surface. If we focus on taste, baking allows remarkable results.

When it comes to health, it is an interesting solution because it allows you to use few added fats and, if temperatures remain well managed, it better preserves healthy fats and some vitamins.

The problem lies elsewhere: we recommend to avoid pushing the cooking too much, because dry parts and burns worsen both the result in the dish and the health profile due to the formation of harmful substances.

In terms of yield, the oven is perfect for roasts, baked dishes, gratins and complete dishes: it concentrates the flavors and also cooks well on the inside, allowing a pleasant crispy crust to form on the outside. It’s not the quickest method, but when you’re looking for a balance between taste and lightness, it remains one of the most reliable tools in the kitchen.

Traditional frying is unbeatable for certain recipes, such as homemade French fries and cordon bleu, if we think about the full, golden and irresistible crust. Talking about health, however, it requires more attention than other methods.

The Veronesi Foundation explains that, when done correctly, the outer crust helps to retain some of the food’s nutrients; the problem arises when the oil reaches a high temperature and oxidizes- the risk is that it could form toxic substances such as acrolein.

Even a poorly fried food changes the end result radically: the food absorbs more oil, becomes heavier and increases the caloric load. For this reason, it is recommended to choose an oil suitable for high temperatures, to maintain constant heat and to immerse food only when the oil is ready- do not reuse it. An electric fryer can be useful to control all these aspects without making mistakes.

For certain foods, traditional frying remains hard to beat, but precisely because of its impact, it should be kept as an exception, not as a daily habit.

The air fryer is the meeting point between crunchiness and lightness. It works thanks to a high-speed flow of hot air that envelops the food and dries its surface, creating a pleasant browning with very little oil, and in many cases even without adding any oil.

The most obvious advantage is that, compared to traditional frying, it reduces fat a lot and creates less mess, while maintaining a delicious result. On a practical level, it is fast, simple to use and often more efficient than the oven in terms of consumption when cooking small quantities.

The end result is crispy and dry, although certain preparations require some care to achieve a result similar to a traditional fryer. For example, it is important not to overlap food too much or overfill the compartment, to allow the flow of hot air to reach all surfaces.

 For everyday cooking, it is a truly practical and versatile solution, which allows, thanks to the regulation of temperature and air flow, to obtain different results. Over time, many special airfryer models have emerged, boasting specific advantages and features: firstly, the window air fryer allows you to save money, secondly, the two-bay fryer allows you to cook multiple dishes at the same time, thirdly, the multifunction fryer allows you to grill and to cook to air-fry.

Cooking on a hotplate or grilling shows a great advantage: it allows you to use few seasonings and, in the case of fattier foods, some of the fat drips off during cooking. However, we cannot stop there and simplify it to such an extent that it is defined as light cooking without any clarification.

The Veronesi Foundation reports that high grid temperatures favor the formation of heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), substances that in laboratory studies have proven to be a potential health risk factor. No scaremongering- the risk increases when food chars or when fat drips onto the heat source and generates smoke, so you just need to pay attention to high temperatures.

On a practical level, it remains a quick, simple and beloved cooking method for a tasty end result. It’s excellent every now and then for its bold flavor, but less suited to becoming the daily norm: like fried or processed foods, grilled ones should also be consumed in moderation.

The microwave is one of the most convenient tools in your daily routine, because it heats and defrosts in just a few minutes. As far as health is concerned, there are no grounds for alarm: microwaves used for cooking are low-energy electromagnetic waves and have nothing to do with radiation harmful to DNA. In fact, precisely because it doesn’t take a long time, the microwave helps to preserve a part of the nutrients better and does not require the use of fats.

Its limitation lies more in versatility than safety: it works well on simple cooks and small portions, while larger or thicker foods can heat less evenly. This is why it is an excellent choice when you are looking for speed and practicality, less so when you want to obtain a browning or a more complete processing of the dish.

Steaming is one of the most delicate techniques: it requires no added fat, helps to maintain the nutritional properties of foods and does not expose food to the risk of burning or charring.

On a practical level, it is also convenient, because it has a fairly quick time and can be easily managed, especially with dedicated tools such as electric steamers or rice cookers, with which you can prepare many light recipes with great ease.

The end result is soft and light, ideal for rice, vegetables, fish and simple preparations, less so for red meat. It remains a great choice when you want to serve healthy and balanced dishes to the table.

Sous vide cooking is a more recent technique that is increasingly being introduced into home kitchens as well. The food is closed in a suitable bag, deprived of air and then cooked at temperatures between 50 and 100 degrees.

It’s an interesting solution when you want softer meat, fish that doesn’t dry out, or evenly cooked vegetables. Its strong point is that it retains the texture, juices and flavor of foods well.

If you want to use it at home, you first need a vacuum sealing machine with the right bags, suitable for cooking at high temperatures. More than a direct alternative to oven or pan, it can be regarded as a complementary technique, which proves to be useful for particular preparations and undoubtedly healthy, because it does not use fat and maintains nutrients.