🍳 Cooking and the kitchen

Yes, hold a spoon and move it around in a circle to mix the food together.

Heat changes food at a tiny level you cannot see, it softens tough plant fibres, turns runny egg white solid, and helps flavours mix together in ways raw food cannot. Cooking also kills germs that might be hiding in raw meat, eggs or some vegetables, which is one big reason cooked food is often safer to eat. Not every food needs cooking though, plenty of fruits and vegetables taste best and stay full of nutrients eaten completely raw.

A pot holds food on the stove so it can heat up and cook until it is ready to eat.

Bread dough rises because yeast, a tiny living organism mixed into it, feeds on sugar in the flour and breathes out tiny bubbles of gas as it works. Those gas bubbles get trapped inside the stretchy dough, puffing it up bigger and bigger the longer it sits somewhere warm. Once the dough goes into a hot oven, the gas bubbles expand even more before the heat finally sets the bread's shape in place.

Yes, rub soap and water on your hands and rinse until they feel clean.

A fridge keeps food cold, and cold slows down the tiny germs that naturally live on food and would otherwise multiply fast enough to make it spoil. That is why milk left out on a warm counter turns bad within hours, while the same milk stays fresh for over a week inside a cold fridge. Some foods, like bread or bananas, actually do not need a fridge at all, and can even taste better kept out at room temperature.

The oven gets very hot inside and bakes food, like bread or cookies, until it is ready.

Each popcorn kernel holds a tiny drop of water locked inside a hard shell. When it heats up, that water turns to steam. The steam pushes hard against the shell from the inside. Finally the shell cannot hold it anymore and bursts open all at once, turning the kernel inside out into a fluffy white puff. Only a few special kinds of corn have shells strong enough to build up that much pressure, which is why not every corn can pop.