Parcooking is a general term for a cooking technique in which either a component of a dish or an entire dish is partially cooked separately before the final cooking process. This is usually done to ensure even cooking – if one part takes longer to cook than others it might be cooked separately, or for denser items to make sure the inside is cooked before the outside burns. An entire dish could also be partially cooked and then finished later for a fresh tasting meal that doesn’t take long to prep since it was mostly cooked already.
Parboiling is the original method of doing this – boiling something such as a root vegetable in water before adding to the rest of the receipe.
Parboiling is great, but it also takes awhile to boil the water. I’ve experimented with doing the same in the microwave for things such as crispy air-fryer potatoes. I call it parmicrowaving or parzapping and it works well – pop potatoes in the microwave for 5 or 6 minutes and they’re ready to go, rather than taking 20 or 30 minutes to boil water, then boil the potatoes.
You can also parairfry or parbake things if you want them crispier vs. the softness you get from the microwave or boil. For example, air fry your meat strips for stirfry – nice and crispy.
You can even combine the two for a quicker stirfry – start onions and aromatics in the pan, parzip the veg in the microwave, parairfry the meat in the airfryer. Then combine them all in the pan with the sauce to finish.