Sweating (cooking)

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Sweating in cooking is heating vegetables in a little oil or butter, without any watery liquid. Sweating vegetables usually results in tender, sometimes translucent, pieces and is used further in various culinary preparations. Sweating is often a preliminary to further cooking in liquid; onions, in particular, are often sweated before including in a stew. This differs from sautéing in that sweating is done over a much lower heat so that the flavors of the vegetables are extracted instead of sealed in.

Heat (without watery moisture present) starts a chemical change that dissolves the sugars in the vegetable. This either whitens it, or makes it translucent.