Both involve dry-heat cooking in ovens, at a great variety of temperatures.
Is the only difference a sematic one? Sweet/savory? As in “baking a cherry pie” and “roasting a leg of lamb” ?
But you can prepare potatoes by baking (sticking whole into a hot oven) AND by roasting (peeling and cutting and rubbing with oil and herbs and putting in a roasting pan and sticking in a hot oven).
And you talk about “baking” savory casseroles and gratins.
“Baking sheets” are shallow; “roasting pans” are deep. Is it roasting when the thing in the oven puts out a crapload of grease?
The term roasting is probably used loosely in a lot of contexts but properly means cooking by radiation plus convection (i.e., direct heat plus hot air). Broiling is direct heat only; baking is hot air only; roasting is a combination. It will give you more browning. But a lot of people who bake meat say they roast it.
Wikipedia disagrees with me, saying it’s cooking meat in dry heat.
It’s called a pot roast as a back-construction from calling the cut of meat a “roast” due to the intent to roast it. So it’s cooking a “roast” in a pot. In actuality the process you describe is properly called braising, or cooking a meat in water (or other water-based liquid like stock or wine).
Other then a pot roast, my understanding is that roasting usually involves burning, at least to a point. As in roasted vegetables (slightly burned, to give it a crunch and a roasted taste) or roasted red peppers (which have the crap burned out of them).
Roasting involves caramelization. Baking involves even heat distribution thoughout the item. Yes, there is some overlap.
Chicken can be roasted or baked for instance. When you think about a roasted chicken, you generally picture a whole bird and the skin getting brown and crispy. Of course it is also going to be baked so the inside is hot as well. When you think about baked chicken, you generally picture chicken parts in a casserole or smothered with bacon and cheese. It gets cooked evenly through. There may be some caramelization though.
I didn’t know the derivation, but knew it wasn’t really “roasting”. I got into a discussion with my Mom the other day because she had eaten at a restaurant where the “roast beef” was not what she expected, and well done to boot. She was expecting something like a rib roast and got something more in the line of a pot roast. She wasn’t happy.
This is one of my peeves. Meat cannot be caramelized. Only sugars can be caramelized, and meat does not contain sugar. Meat can be browned, but it’s a different set of chemical reactions from caramelization. I would post the names of the different reactions, but my copy of On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee is loaned out right now.
CookingWithGas has it right: true roasting works both by convection and radiation, while baking works only by convection. The difference is in how the heat reaches the food, not in whether the cooking browns the food. You can roast meat on a covered BBQ grill, for example - the meat cooks both by radiation from the coals and also by hot air convection. Most ovens won’t do true roasting.
I’m sure it does - lactose and glucose probably. Not that this is necessarily responsible for browning, but I’m sure it’s false to assert that meat doesn’t contain sugar(s).
Then there’s “broast,” which is not considered a real word in English, but is the most ubiquitous “English” word seen in parts of the Middle East. “Chicken Broast” signs are on every corner in Jeddah. I’m guessing it’s a portmanteau of broil and roast. Perhaps it was originally a trademark of some sort, a commercial name like Pollo Campero. This is an example of what linguists call “World English” – the English language detached from its moorings, like a wind-blown seed taking root in a foreign soil and growing new produce.
The browning of meat, and many other things, is due to the Maillard reaction. It involves both an amino acid (protein) and a sugar interacting in the presence of heat. So you’re both right. Stop bickering.
Carmelization,OTOH, is due to the oxidation of sugars, no amino acids needed.
Broasted chicken is chicken that is fried under pressure, in a pressure cooker. The process is claimed to have been developed by Flavor Fast Foods, Inc., in Rockton, Illinois, and trademarked in 1954 by the Broaster Company.
