Other forms: basting, basted
To baste is to spoon fat over meat as it roasts. Baste the turkey, basted in butter, baste every twenty minutes.
Whether it does much is disputed — it browns the surface and it also cools the oven every time the door opens, so many cooks have given it up. There is a separate baste meaning to sew with long loose stitches to hold cloth in place, which is the older word. Note basting.
1verbbasteTo spoon fat over meat as it roasts.
“Baste the turkey with its juices every half hour so it doesn't dry out.”
2verbsewTo sew with long loose stitches.
“Baste the two pieces of fabric together before you sew them on the machine.”
baste is a cooking or sewing step.
Late Middle English, probably from Old French bastir, to sew up or build. The sewing sense and the cooking sense may be the same word.
Old French
bastir — build, construct, sew up (a garment)
English, today
baste
Late Middle English -, from Old French bastir (“build, construct, sew up (a garment)”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire