In both cases you’re heating up food to change it in some form, but cooking changes it in a good way that maintains (or enhances) its flavor and nutritional value, while burning destroys the food.
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You should be aware that water boils at 100 C, 212 F, and while it boils the heat from the flame under the pot goes into making it boil, not into raising the temperature of the water. So water has the effect of keeping the food from heating up so much that it burns; as long as there’s (a decent amount of) water present in whatever you’re cooking, the temperature will go to 100 C and stay there.
So that’s the difference between cooking and burning food; in general there’s water in the food and it keeps the food at 100 C, 212 F and basically prevents it from being burned.
Even deep-frying things in oil (which boils at much higher temperatures), for example chicken or fries, there’s enough water in the pieces of chicken and in the fries that boils first, to keep the temperatures from getting too high.
Same thing happens with ice; water freezes (and ice melts) at 0 C (32 F), and as long as you have *some* ice left in your drink, the temperature of the whole drink will stay at roughly 0 C despite all the heat from the room and from your hands on the glass. All that heat energy goes into melting the ice, not into raising the temperature of the drink.
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