What are the factors to consider when choosing cooking methods?

First consider what you have at your disposal. For instance, not everyone has a microwave or a convectional oven. Let's narrow the myriad options for cooking to the basic methods of frying, baking, and boiling. Frying often tastes the best (with many many exceptions), but is the highest in fat and calories and is generally considered the least healthy method. Baking usually takes the most time, and often the most energy usage. But, it also has the tendency to brown and crisp the tops of dishes, which is related to the browning that is so tasty in fried foods, but without necessarily the higher amount of fat (of course, if you poor oil and cheese and bread crumbs into a casserole, that calorie-count goes up quickly). Boiling often dulls down the tastes of things, but starts out as the healthiest. The problem comes in when you add a ton of salt to make up for the lack of flavor.