What is the difference between baking, roasting, shallow frying and deep frying?

Nowadays everybody is health conscious and we do not want to eat fried food because of health issues and want to switch to oats, ragi etc. Others who do not eat healthier grains and cereals, switch to healthier cooking options like baking, roasting etc. Let us understand these cooking techniques one by one.

Baking

When one cooks in an oven such that soft mixture or batter mix, hardens upon cooking, it is called as baking. For example - baking a cake in an oven or making 'khaman dhokla' in an oven.

Roasting

Preparing garam masala at home involves collecting all the needed ingredients and then dry roasting them to later grind them in a mixer grinder. Now, dry roasting here means stirring the ingredients continuously without adding any oil or ghee to let the spices cooked a bit, and let the aroma emanate out of it.

While in the oven, when you cook any dry ingredient say potato, you are nothing but roasting it (although some people may mistake it to be baking). Some common examples of roasting would be to roast groundnut, peanuts or almonds etc.

Frying

How does 'Tikki chaat' wala make crispy tikki? He shallow fries the tikki to make it crispy golden brown. The technique of cooking wherein very little oil is added, post which the food ingredient is cooked in that oil is called shallow frying.

It is a healthier alternative to deep frying which involves the addition of a lot of oil and it makes us fat. Example - mummy making crispy poori for aloo poori uses the technique of deep frying. The bhature served with chole are actually deep fried to make them fluffy.

In the era of health-conscious freaks, healthier options such as baking, roasting have definitely stepped in. But all this will be possible only when it is implemented on a regular basis.