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When getting Chinese takeaway, We never eat much of the normal cooked rice that goes with it, always opting for an extra dish of fried rice and/or noodles. My mother usually makes a cold salad the day after with some Cocktail sauce (with ketchup as the tomato sauce), a few varieties of canned fish (mackerel, sardines and anchovy) and some boiled eggs. The problem is that this rice always turns out somewhat dry, somewhat detracting from the overal quality of the product. It's still edible and tastes good, but the textures are somewhat lacking in my opinion. I have read "Instant" leftover rice? Making leftover-like rice without the wait? (as in for fried rice), but that's not what I need: I don't have control over the cooking process, and it's not for reheating afterwards. I also don't think this falls under the generic shelf live question, because this isn't about how long it will last, but how to store it short-term so certain negative effects don't occur, for which I cannot find a question (nor a tag). I'm looking for a method to cool the rice without it turning dry that doesn't involve special attention immediately afterwards or changing the cooking process. With "doesn't involve special attention", I'm talking about something someone can do while unpacking the rest of the food and maybe putting a bit of the rice aside for those that don't like the fried kind.

Don't put it in the fridge, that makes rice hard. Pack it in individual servings (sandwich or snack sized zipper bags are great for this) and put them in the freezer. When you reheat the rice (microwave or boil in the bag), the rice will be almost as good as freshly made. See: Safe to wash rice the night before and leave overnight before cooking? And: Rice gets burnt and watery - Basmati is just the same (should usually be rinsed though).

I don't always want my garlic to taste the same way. Sometimes I want only the deep umami flavor without the bite (so I let it cook more) and sometimes I look for a strong garlic bite presence in the dish. I know it depends on how you slice and cook it, but I would like to know the science behind it. My questions: If you want to have a strong garlic bite, how should you dice the garlic, at what temperature to fry it and for how long? Same as above, only without the bite. What "signs" (the smell, the look etc) can cue you in on what "stage" the garlic is right now (strong bite, mellow bite etc)? Are there general guidelines that you should always follow (like always saute garlic on low heat)?

Garlic strength is mainly down to how much you cook the garlic, and how finely you chop it (different varieties of garlic notwithstanding). Simply put, the less you cook it and the finer you chop it, the more bite it will have. So you can alter those variables to achieve the effect you want. If you want super punchy garlic, chop it finely and use it raw. If you want mellow, rich garlic, cook it slowly, whole, and it will turn sweet and sticky. If you want something in between, slice and saute until light golden brown. Garlic burns very quickly, so a very high heat is generally a bad idea, unless you are very careful to keep the garlic moving. There is a fine line between nicely toasted garlic and blackened, bitter garlic.

I don't want buy any thing from China because of politics. Korea Japan are OK. But Toronto got just black bean and black bean sauce made in China. Can I just skip black bean sauce for 豉椒炒蜆 ? If not, what substitute? Stir-Fried Clams in Black Bean Sauce | The Woks of Life 1 1/2 pounds fresh manila clams, scrubbled/washed thoroughly 2 tablespoons oil 4 slices ginger 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced 1 scallion, cut into 2-inch pieces 1 long green pepper, sliced (you can seed the peppers if you like) 1 long red pepper, sliced 1 tablespoon fermented black beans, rinsed and drained 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine 1 teaspoon sugar 1 teaspoon sesame oil 1/8 teaspoon white pepper 1 teaspoon soy sauce (optional) 2 tablespoons cornstarch and 2 tablespoons water, mixed into a slurry 3 tablespoons chopped cilantro Madame Chu's Clams in Black Bean Sauce Recipe - NYT Cooking 18 to 20 littleneck clams (about 2 1/2 pounds) 2 cups liquid, preferably the juice of the clams 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 4 thin slices fresh ginger 2 cloves garlic, crushed 2 tablespoons crushed fermented black beans (see Tips, below) 2 tablespoons oyster sauce 2 ½ tablespoons cornstarch dissolved in 3 tablespoons water 2 tablespoons chopped scallion, green part

Since no one more knowledgeable has come along, I'll go ahead and put together an answer. Based on the recipe, it looks like you're actually intended to make your own black bean sauce using fermented black beans, or douchi. It seems that Chinese douchi are made and known as "hamanatto" in Japan as well. Searching online, there are retailers that you could purchase Japanese dried hamanatto from, but I have not done so myself. It looks like that would be the best direct substitute for douchi. As a substitution for the resulting black bean sauce, I would personally recommend Korean chunjang. Chunjang, which also translates to black bean paste, is the major flavoring component in Jjajang sauce in Korea, and you can even find Jjajang (or "chajang") sauce premade. I have Lee Kum Kee brand Chinese black bean sauce on hand as well as Assi brand Korean chunjang, so my mother and I did a small taste test (and included some other bean sauces, like doubanjiang, akamiso, and some zhajiang I prepared a while back.) We agreed that we of the options we had on hand, Korean chunjang would be the best substitution for a Mongolian beef recipe we love that also calls for Chinese black bean sauce if we ran out. The black bean sauces were both predominantly salty, with some pleasant bitterness to them and a little sweetness. The Lee Kum Kee reminded me a little of bitter chocolate, but it was very mild. The chunjang on the other hand was much more aggressive all around, which makes sense since it's a paste rather than a prepared sauce. The bitterness and sweetness were both stronger, and it also had more acidity. It was also saltier, being more concentrated, but the other flavors seemed stronger proportionately. I might describe it as a little smoky, rather than chocolatey, which makes sense if black caramel color is added. But other than the acidity we both detected in the chunjang, the flavors were very similar. Both are complex flavors and can't be fully described, but while certainly different, I think chunjang would work well in a pinch, potentially with some extra salt, to taste. My only other suggestion would be to look into fermenting your own douchi. You can buy black soy beans online, and you should also be able to purchase an aspergillus starter. It seems the basic process is to inoculate the steamed black soybeans with the aspergillus spores to create koji. After a week, the koji is washed (to remove bitterness), then dried and combined with salt (I saw references to a 15% brine as well as 15% salt by weight.) and then aged for several weeks or months. Again, I have not done this myself, and would recommend doing significantly more research before attempting. But based on what I've read it should be quite doable. Good luck!

I will go hiking for 10 days, and the food I get in the lodges on the way is practically all starch, wtih < 15 g protein per day. I did this once and felt terrible. So this time, I want to take my own protein, but in the logistically best way. Normal foods are out of question, even beef jerky doesn't breach 40% protein, and I don't want to lug such a low density on my back for several days. Protein bars are in the area of jerky. So my ingredient of choice seems to be the protein powder used to make workout shakes (82% protein). I don't want to take the powder as-is, because it is hard to handle on the road. What I want to do is to make my own protein bars with this powder, but with a much higher density than the store-bought ones. I want to mix it with the least possible amount of a gluing agent. The end result should present no spilling danger (no liquid or powder) need no special utensils to eat have a long (at least 2 weeks) shelf life in a backpack under strong sunlight preferably not require special packaging (so not too sticky, but this can be relaxed if the solution meets the other criteria) not require any special equipment to produce (I don't have a dehydrator or such) not cause me to gag (I don't insist on a pleasant taste, but I should be able to get it down) have a really high protein density, in the best case over 70% (there are no other nutrition criteria; I am not worried by lots of carbs, E numbers, or lack of other essential nutrients) can be conveniently prepackaged as single portions (maybe 30 g protein per portion) It is OK if the stuff is so concentrated in taste and dry matter that I have to gulp down half a bottle of water with it. Any ideas what ingredients and techniques can be used for a solution which comes closest to fulfilling above criteria?

What about simply baking meringues? They're basically dried egg white with mostly consists of protein (Egg white nutrition data). You can simply take with a few as long as you can manage to keep them dry.

I've never seen anything with both yeast and baking powder. What's the reason for that? Shouldn't e.g. muffins get even more fluffy by adding some yeast? Or bread by adding baking powder? I know there are differences in flavor, but there are cakes with yeast as also non-sweet things with baking powder. So that shouldn't be the problem...

The existing answers already explain why yeast and baking powder won't work together. But even if they did, you wouldn't have a reason to use them. You seem to think that fluffiness depends on the amount of gas produced by the leaveners. In fact, it depends on both the gas and the ability of the dough to trap that gas. If you produce too much gas (no matter whether through yeast or through baking powder), then the fluffiness will be less than when using the optimal amount of leavener. This happens because your dough cannot hold the gas and the bubbles break, resulting in the dough deflating like a punctured tire. So even if combining two leaveners would have resulted in more "blowing big" action (which it doesn't, see the other answers), you would not end up with a fluffier end product. If you want fluffy muffins, you have to use a recipe and a technique which is best capable of retaining the gas produced by the baking powder. The amount of gas production is not a bottleneck.

Is it possible to make puffed rice at home like the rice used in breakfast cereals? I have a hot air popcorn maker and have experimented with that with little success. I imagine the problem is to do with the moisture content of the rice, so far I've only tried with dried Basmati. Does it need moisture to expand to create the puffed effect? If so does par boiling the rice work? If so how long would I need to do it to get the ideal moisture content.

Interesting question. Did search 'how do I make puffed rice'. Came up with some interesting information. There are some writings that suggest that puffed rice can be made like popcorn; get the moisture in the grains of rice to the correct level (no idea what the level should be, experimentation should guide you I suppose) and then (depending on what source you read) put in a popcorn popper, put it on sheets in the oven or fry it in oil. The history indicates that the first puffed rice made in the U.S. was actually shot from a cannon, after, I presume, being thoroughly soaked to some level of softness; there was a cereal advert in the '60s that bragged "this is the cereal that's shot from guns". Am thinking that the softening of the rice, probably by cooking, and then putting it into a pressure vessel in which the pressure is allowed to rise to a certain PSI (pounds per square inch) and explosively releasing the pressure, causes the grains to boil or fizz or effervesce, gives them the light puffiness we see at the market. If I'm reading the information correctly, the devices to make puffed rice are available Here is a link to a video showing the explosive creation of puffed rice by a traveling puffed rice manufactury on a bicycle in Taiwan; http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3915559836111131480#docid=-4928826327589404249 Here are some other links, kind of vague, regarding non explosive puffed rice: http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/question393.htm http://www.cheftalk.com/t/20752/how-to-make-puffed-rice http://www.indiamike.com/india/indian-recipes-f108/how-to-make-puffed-rice-at-home-t94003/ This last link has some history & speculation of how puffed rice has been made non explosively using hot salt, or sand...didn't read all of the ideas. Have fun, and be safe.

My hand skin is extremely dry due to exposure to water. But when cooking, it is inevitable to submerge my hands in water, for example, to wash food. So I was wondering generally how to protect my skin during and/or after preparing food? I saw there are gloves sold in the supermarkets, but they look like for cleaning things such as dishes and counters. For example, I have this pair it is made of "Premium gloves specially blended with natural rubber latex and durable synthetic Neoprene". I was wondering if such gloves are safe for food handling? What kinds of material for gloves are safe? Thanks and regards!

I wouldn't wear the medical type gloves recommended in the other answers. They are disposable, and once you get them off, you can't put them back on because they cling to themselves on the inside. So if you were only to wear them when you are working with water, you'd go through 4-5 pairs while preparing a dish. This is not only wasteful, but they also contain a layer of talcum on the inside, and coating your sensitive skin with drying talcum 4-5 times in the time needed for cooking is probably a bad idea. You are probably thinking that this is nonsense and you were planing to wear them throughout the cooking, not taking them off. The problem is that they are sealed from air circulation, so they get hot on the inside. Your hands sweat and sweat and sweat. The talcum helps a little, but it is used up quickly. After 5 to 10 minutes, your hands are immersed in a permanent sweat bath. Which means that they are actulally much moister than if you are submerging them in water for a quick unprotected wash and then drying them. So this is practically worse than no gloves. The transparent gloves used for petrol or hair coloring don't cling to the skin and don't have talcum, but still make you sweat just as bad as the medical ones. The cleaning gloves you linked are a better solution. They are non-toxic, so they are safe for handling food. Practically any material used for washing gloves is food safe. You just need to wash them on the outside with soap as often as you'd wash your hands. They won't make your hands sweat as bad, because they don't cling to your hands. There is air between them and your skin. The good ones have a very thin layer of some kind of fuzz on the inside, which absorbs sweat, but is not as drying as talcum. Also, they are reusable and keep for a lot of wears. You can put them on for washing, then remove them, and only put them on again for the next washing. They also have their disadvantages. First, you must take care that no water comes on the inside, because then you'll have a permanently wet glove. Second, they are not especially thin, so tactile input and dexterity are impaired. Third, when they are wet, they get slippery on the outside. Most producers reduce this by covering them with a thin raised pattern, like an inverted tire profile. This worsens the problem with the missing feel and also makes them somewhat worse from a food safety point of view, as the structured surface gives pollutants more oportunity to cling to (but is probably still safer than your fingers with the ridges of your fingerprints). Fourth, they are very easily punctured - a touch with a knife which you probably wouldn't have felt with your skin can puncture them - and useless once they are punctured. But still, if you want to wear gloves, this is probably the way to go. If you want to go gloveless, you need to find a moisturizing agent which does not impair your food even if a significant amount is transferred to it. Some organic hand creams, a homemade hand cream, or pure oil should all do the trick. Then you have to keep a thick fluffy towel nearby (a normal muselin kitchen towel is probably not good enough). Apply the moisturizer before starting the cooking. Then apply it again, thick, before washing the food, wash the food, dry immediately with the towel, and apply moisturizer again. An interesting thing to try out would be to use the medical gloves together with oil or a deep conditioner for skin, or something like a facial mask. Sometimes people condition their hands by keeping them immersed in a warm bath of either. You could try applying a very generous dose to your skin, much more than it could absorb, and then put the gloves on, eventually adding some more oil/conditioner (you'll probably with a syringe without a needle for that, as there won't be enough space for pouring). The sweat will still develop, but it will disperse in the big amount of oil or conditioner, so your skin will be kept in a fatty conditioning environment instead of a moist drying out one, which means that you can keep them on for the duration of the cooking. You will still experience the disadvantages I listed for the washing gloves, some of them even stronger (e. g. slipperiness). You may wish to use an edible conditioner or oil, because a puncture could result in everything leaking over your food.

I am planning on baking Macarons. The recipe requires whisking egg whites in an electric whisker but I don't have one. It is bit expensive to buy a good one for me right now and I do not have space in my kitchen to actually keep a machine like that. I was wondering if there was any other way of doing it. I don't know if beating eggs by hand would get the same result as it is supposed to be very fluffy. Also I have an electric mixer in which I usually whisk eggs for a cake. My mixer is the one where I can press the button to create short pulses so it does not overdo the process. Does anyone know if I can use the same mixer to beat egg whites to the same consistency as an electric egg beater? Any advice is appreciated.

Yes, you can whip egg whites (or whipped cream, or....) by hand. There are a few things you need: a reasonably large bowl a good, sturdy whisk, again not too small proper technique a good amount of ellbow grease patience It will typically take longer than when using a mixer (for beginners, I've seen pros that could keep up with any measly old mixer, especially taking cleanup time into account) but lets you control the outcome better: less chance of overmixing or uneven results. I myself have done it several times, either because I had no mixer at hand or because I was working in the middle of the night and didn't want to wake everyone and the neighbours. For motivation, see this video and this video for technique and this video for fun or any other tutorial on the web.

I just harvested some scallions from the garden, where it's getting bit chilly (late November in Seattle). After chopping them, I realized that their insides were covered in a gelatinous, slippery, viscous goo! What is it? Is it safe to eat?

Normally, people associate slime with "inedible" because some bacterial colonies can build up slime on spoiled food. But there are plants which naturally produce slime, and it is as edible as any other part of the same plant. Slimes are most common in algae, but I have also seen them in other plants such as hyacinth greens, and scallions have it too, although in normally not that much. But if you mash a "dry" scallion or the greens of a typical yellow onion, they still feel slimy, while other alliums become slimy on cooking, for example leeks. Physically, slime is just a special kind of gel. As long as it is not of bacterial origin, it is not a sign of spoilage, and it is highly improbable that a living green plant without signs of sickness will be full of colonies of spoilage bacteria. So, I would declare it good to eat.

We got 2 tuna steaks from a grocery store, and we are pretty sure they they are NOT sushi grade. We cooked them tonight for a bit, and left the middle of the steak pretty rare. How safe is this? I should've asked this question before cooking obviously but hindsight is 20-20. Everything I have read on other sites states that there is "some" risk of parasites but it's hard to get a straight answer as to how safe this food was. We got the stakes at our local H-mart, an Asian market.

Relevant US and Canadian food authorities all recommend that undercooked (i.e. seared but red in the middle) tuna should only be eaten if it was properly deep-frozen to kill any parasites first. And even that isn't completely risk-free. Studies of the current tuna supply shows it to be widely infected with parasites, to the point that the majority of tuna you're likely to buy had at least one parasite that could affect your health. Most of the time, though, health effects are mild (although uncomfortable at the time). However, most tuna is flash-frozen at sea when caught, whether sold as "fresh" or not. As such, your odds of getting tuna with viable parasites is still low, whether or not it's labelled "sushi-grade". In my non-expert opinion, you're more at risk from bacterial contamination introduced at the grocery store than you are from fish parasites.

When cooking on a charcoal grill, does it matter how far the grate is positioned above the charcoal? If so, how high should it be?

Distance from charcoal isn't really the issue (some steak recipes, in fact, call for the meat to be cooked directly on the coals). It's the temperature at the grate you ought to consider. Granted, distance is one factor in grate temperature. The amount of lit coals you have is another. As for proper temperature, it all depends on what you are cooking. I like cooking my steaks on high heat, about 500-600F. Burgers at around the 450 range. Poultry closer to 400. Look up the "Mississippi Test," often referenced by Steven Raichlen, as a good way to measure your fire temperature.

I was at the supermarket today and noticed that the 2 brand of Jasmine rice that they sold had very different cooking times. Tesco own brand. 75g rice with 113ml water. Simmer for 20 mins, drain, rinse in boiling water and serve. Tilda brand. 60g rice in boiling water. Simmer for 10-12 mins, drain, cover, stand for 3 mins and serve. Is this just a different cooking method (ie the first aims to use exactly the right amount of water so there is am element of steaming, whereas the 2nd uses excess water, and is thus simply boiling) or would it be a reflection of the way the way the rice was processed ? Also, in the first method, what would be the best method to rinse ? E.g. pour it all into a fresh pan of boiling water for a few seconds, pour boiling water into the pan after draining; put it in a sieve and poor boiling water over it, or somthing else?

Based on your description of being more solid, I think you might actually want palm shortening. Shortening is 100% fat and doesn't contain any water, making it more solid at room temperature. Palm shortening does look a little closer to butter A quick google search shows that Amazon does sell palm shortening.

Can I cool off the manicotti noodles completely before stuffing them?

What is your method for cooling the pasta? Is the goal to have it cool enough to work with? Or to stop the cooking process, keeping in mind it's going in the oven later? My opinion is that the only cases when you should rinse pasta after cooking is if you're making a cold pasta salad, or if you're going to serve it plain. The reason why you should avoid this method of cooling it in virtually every other case is because in a great majority of the time you'll be adding a sauce to your pasta and you want the starch that's covering the surface of the pasta to help the sauce stick. This way all of the ingredients in your dish will be well incorporated and just give it that little nudge that makes all the difference. Ultimately if you end up with overcooked pasta out of the oven you can always reduce the cooking time in the pot and if your sauce has enough moisture the pasta will keep cooking through in the oven (which would most likely be the cause of your problem in the first place, but we're clever, we'll work around it, take advantage of that!!).

This has been discussed briefly elsewhere (e.g. here), but it doesn't seem to have been asked generally. In the USA, there are a variety of dates printed on foods. Unfortunately, there seems to be little convention. The list includes at least the following (feel free to add more!): Best by [DATE] Best if used by [DATE] Best before [DATE] Expiry date: [DATE] Expiration date: [DATE] Expires by [DATE] Use by [DATE] Use before [DATE] Freeze by [DATE] Eat fresh or freeze by [DATE] What meaning is implied/conveyed by each of those? For example: What do each of those mean in terms of taste, quality, safety, etc? Are any of them firmer deadlines than another, and are any intended to be mere guidelines? Common sense tells us that "expires on [DATE]" means it's assumed to be unsafe after [DATE]), but does it say anything more -- or less -- than that, and what of the others?

Here is a fairly extensive and generally accepted write-up http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/do-food-expiration-dates-matter The only federally mandated expiration date in the US is infant formula, but some states do have others especially on dairy. Most of the labeling in the US is through voluntary programs, while some are strictly marketing gimmicks like beer "born on" dates. In general, most of the regulations are metered out by state, not federal rules and can mean slightly different things in different states. For example, milk is generally considered still usable for 5 to 7 days after the labeled date. But that date may be different in different states. In most places, sell by date is in the 21 to 28 day range from pasteurization. Montana though, the rule it 12 days, which would mean on the surface that milk should last an additional week or two past the label date in Montana. Not necessarily though, as in Montana the milk may be allowed to sit in storage for longer before it is pasteurized. Eggs in some states may get a 21 day sell by date while other states are 28 days or more and different states have very different rules on how those eggs are handled. Having been licensed in one state for eggs myself, I can tell you their rules included any egg collected in that state had to be labeled for 28 days from collection, but if the egg was from out of state no labeling laws were applied at all, the egg could be of any age. Yeah, how crazy was that rule? It allowed old eggs from other states to be blindly dumped into that state. In most states, as long as it has been correctly stored, most food is still fine beyond the label dates, though quality will be dropping more rapidly after that date. Many states do however have regulations stating that items beyond those dates cannot be sold or even donated after the date in some categories of foods even if the food would still be considered good.

I believe that it's better to store glasses/cups right-side-up in the cupboard, but at work everyone stores them upside-down. Which is safer/more sanitary?

Where did this urban myth start? Storing a cup upside down has few real advantages. The usual story is that it prevents cockroaches from crawling all over the cups. If this is the problem, then why don't people store their plates and bowls upside down, which roaches etc would definitely crawl over. I might be wrong, but, my experience is that roaches that fall into a cup, stay there. Evidenced by the poor woman who discovered an upturned roach in the bottom of her parfait glass under the trifle, at a wedding reception where I was working. The trifle was brilliant up to that point. I'll never forget the muffled squealing! Sorry. I do store glasses or mugs upside down, sometimes, if the base is small and the rim large, to avoid them toppling over. Storing cups, glasses, mugs upside down: Pros May save some airborne dust, but, in a cupboard and used regularly, dust rarely has time to accumulate. I swill out my cups with left over boiling water (in the case of tea) anyway. Would stop roaches etc from entering the cup but, negated by the fact that the rim is definitely exposed to a dirty surface. Prevents cups toppling if base is significantly smaller than the rim. Incidentally, if none of this matters to you, cups/mugs stored alternatively, in both orientations, may allow for more efficient storage. This allows people the option of both preferences. Cons Rim of cup exposed to dirty, unhygienic dirt and cockroach surface, rarely cleaned. Traps remnant moisture possibly allowing the dirty cupboard surface particles to stick to the rim of the cup much like the salt on a margarita glass.

I know organic = non-GMO + no pesticides (source); non-GMO = pesticides possibly used; pesticide-free = possibly GMO. Do non-GMO foods actually have more pesticides in them?

No. "No-GMO" means exactly that. There is no Genetically Modified Organism in the content of your purchase. In general you GMO your veggies and wheat (and others) so you don't need to use pesticides on them because they are designed to be more resistant. So yes, your question Do non-GMO foods actually have more pesticides in them? come from that logic. You need to spray food from outside because it's not resistant on it's own. So the amount of chemicals per tone (or hectare) is higher in "non GMO" than it is in GMO. Organic thought it totally depended on law. In EU to call something organic you need to stay below certain quota of pesticides per hectare (in big generalisation, you can read more here EU law on organic production) BUT There is doubt about what you call PESTICIDE. Because you can use synthetic one (Like the one Monsato is making) or natural one (like tobacco). The first one is more to be used in big industrial farms, while natural can be easily made in small farms where it's more financially better to have their own plot of natural pesticide.

I am aware that this question is somewhat subjective, so I did my best to ask a good subjective question, instead of "What popcorn machine should I buy?". I recently shared my popcorn-related troubles and got several suggestions on how to improve my microwave popcorn experience. After a discussion I had today, I was suggested to invest in a popcorn machine, as, supposedly, it would make my popcorn better than a microwave. When looking at some available machines, I saw a vast difference in price, ranging all the way from 20€ up to 100€ (ignoring the professional machines). This made me wonder what determines the quality of a "good" popcorn machine? Is it only about size? Are there different internal mechanisms? What should I look out for when choosing a popcorn machine for home use?

There are three non-microwave ways to pop popcorn: an air popper a plug-in dome popper a stovetop popper Each of these makes different popcorn. The air popper uses no fat, though if you're going to add melted butter you probably don't care. In fact the absence of fat means salt and other powdered flavours don't stick well. You can't burn the popcorn. My air popper also used to blow unpopped kernels all over the kitchen. We eventually repurposed it as a coffee roaster. The plug-ins require a plug, you add a little oil, and you need to pay attention or you might burn a few kernels. I use coconut oil in mine, and add less butter than I used to add to air-popped corn. The stovetops are apparently terrific if you want to melt a coating (eg caramel corn) onto the popcorn. I haven't used one. === ETA: Two additional options. If one already has an electric skillet, such as: With a bit of oil and corn it will hold a steady temperature and do the job without a separate space eating devise. This option takes a little practice to get the temperature that works best for you, and shaking the skillet a couple times while hot is a pain, but this was always my grandparent's preferred popper. If you do not wish to eliminate the microwave option, several makers produce these: These dry pop for those who are concerned with oil. Or for those of use who prefer, we dry pop it, then dump on the butter after. This gives the option though of using spices and such after much like an air popper, but in my experience had a higher pop rate that air poppers of packaged microwave popcorn and was much less prone to burning. They do require little concentraters that are inserted and would each hold up for 4-6 batches though.

I'm originally from the Michigan thus i don't know much about barbeque due to the lack of barbeque establishments. From my understanding (correct me if i'm wrong), there are several regional variations or styles of BBQ in the US. Each of type is defined by a BBQ technique or method: Texas (Brisket style), St. Louis, etc. Thus my question; what other types of BBQ currently exist and what defines it?

There's a great YouTube video by Rhett & Link called the The BBQ Song (A Review of BBQ in the Southern United States) that is actually a really good starting point for answering this question. Here are the lyrics to the song: In the mountains of Tennessee, they like a smoky sauce; But over there in ol' Memphis, a dry-rubbed rib is boss. The folks down in Georgia can't make up their mind. You can give it to 'em sweet or spicy, and they'll say "that tastes alright." You might think that South Carolinians are just a little bit off. Would you believe their barbecue's yellow—with a mustard sauce? Pork shoulder is the cut of choice in Mississippi And they pride themselves on barbecue that's totally vinegary. And Louisiana, them Cajuns, They like to spice it up. They like to spice it up. This is our review of barbecue, In the southern United States. And when my life is through, Bury me in barbecue, But make sure it's vinegar-based, 'Cause you know that slows decay, And it's the style from our home state—North Carolina! (Solo!) Mutton is big in west Kentucky, that's a fancy name for sheep. But in the rest of the state, sliced pork butt is what they eat. Arkansas is kinda like Georgia, a barbecue meltin' pot, And when you ain't looking, them good ol' boys'll make that barbecue hot! Alabama's got the strangest thing I've seen in my barbecue days, 'Cause their barbecue sauce is white, made out of mayonnaise! Down in Texas, where the long-horn steer roam free, They love to smoke their brisket—that's a big ol' slab of beef. And down in Florida . . . Is Florida a southern State? No, it ain't. This is our review of barbecue, In the southern United States. And when my life is through, Bury me in barbecue . . . People not from the South Think barbecue means "cookout," And that's something they're wrong about. (Spoken outro:) Barbecue is NOT a verb, barbecue is NOT a grill. Barbecue is MEAT prepared in a very special way, Which varies depending on where you go.

In yesterday's Game of Thrones episode ("Stormborn"), Arya Stark compliments the young character Hot Pie's most recent pie. He replies The secret is browning the butter before making the dough. Most people don't do that 'cause it takes up too much time. For context, this is a double-crust meat pie. Game of Thrones is set in a world that is technologically similar to our European Middle Ages. I've always heard that one of the most important elements of making a flaky pie crust is keeping the fat as cold as possible right up until the pie goes into the oven. Is there any technique for pie dough that includes browned butter that would make a great crust? Notes: I thought at first that the browned butter must be an ingredient in the filling, but the reference to dough makes me doubt this. Also, Game of Thrones has had recipe advice in the past that sounded crazy but is actually based in real culinary practices, namely, Hot Pie's Cherry Crumble topped with ground cherry pits. Finally, in looking around for an answer, I came across this technique for making crust with a mixture of flour/fat paste + more flour, which sounds promising but doesn't mention anything about browned butter. Added: This isn't part of the question, but I was originally interested in what makes such a technique work compared to a cold butter crust.

Any kind of crust that doesn't use cold fat could be made with brown butter easily. You can make crust by melting butter (with water and oil) then adding flour, and it's flaky - though not exactly the same texture as you get with cold fat. So just do that, except brown the butter first. Or you could brown the butter, cool it til solid, and make a crust with a more normal recipe. I don't know if I've seen a pie crust calling for that, but I've seen it in cookies. I doubt it'd be exactly the same texture as with unmodified cold butter, because you lose some of the fat crystal structure in the butter, but it'd probably still be fine, and it'd taste like brown butter, which I assume is the goal.

I've made paprika jelly before (combined with raspberry flavour), and I quite like the novel flavour. It kind of reminds me of chili chocolate, but more water based - in a sorbet over ice cream kind of way. I don't think I would eat it by itself though, as it didn't feel like it could hold up on its own. My question is if anyone has any ideas for how to combine it, or use it in a dish/complete meal? Some ideas I have are: An inbetween dish to clear the palate - I found that the spiciness of the paprika and the watery-ness of the jelly was good in clearing the palate of meaty tastes Some savoury jelly, like on the top of pate

This would probably be good as an ingredient in a barbecue sauce, assuming the jelly will mix into the other components.

I use my pressure cooker a fair bit but sometimes I struggle in translating a regular recipe to it and I get a charcoaled underlayer at the bottom of the pressure cooker. Some of the time the rest is still edible, sometimes it has to be thrown away. For example, with a split pea soup recipe I ended with some extremely burnt bottom layer which gave a nasty chemical smell that took a while to clear from the apartment. Obviously the whole thing had to be thrown out. Not all recipes will necessarily turn out well in a pressure cooker, I get that, but at least I would like to find ways to minimize this particular problem. I guess I should watch cooking duration and also turn down the heat once the pressure's up. But ideally I would like something that kept the ingredients from contacting the bottom of the pan and allow only water to circulate there. Does something like steam wok bottoms exist for pressure cookers?

When we use a pressure cooker, we do so with separate pans inside the cooker - flat round tins, in our case - that can be kept off the bottom by adding something underneath. Or stack up cook several things at the same time, if the size allows. I recall seeing these largish round metal rings like an inch high that I think were for that, or (inverted) small steel plate or bowl. Since there's no (or little) direct contact the bottom doesn't overcook. I imagine some kind of rack or other insert would also work.

What are some of the alternatives in vinegar for making sushi rice? I know it's best to use rice vinegar, but has anyone ever tried it with white wine vinegar, or apple cider vinegar for example? Follow up on that question, would you put or more less vinegar? What are some rice combinations that someone can use? I'm thinking for a next batch, I might do 80% sushi rice, 20% basmati, or 70% sushi rice and 30% arborio. Has anyone tried any such combinations, and if so how did it turn out?

I make a pretty large quantity of homemade mayo and have never had a problem keeping it longer than that -- Good Eats uses a week for their recipe and for me it lives a month, easy, with no detectable reduction in quality. There really is enough acid and salt to deter most bugs if you like it strongly flavored (and let's be honest, mayo should be strongly flavored because it's a sauce made of fat and you might want to minimize the quantity applied). I'd also take the advice of stilltasty.com that while color, flavor, or texture may change it's generally still safe to eat refrigerated mayo even after it's notional "use-by" date. In short, I strongly advise more salt and acid if you're worried (and also because it's tasty), but I also strongly advise a lack of worry.

I've home-canned some pickled vegetables recently and there is a cloudy sediment in the brine. I'd like to know what causes it and how to prevent it. It is not spoilage. It only seems to affect the visual aesthetic of the pickles. Here is an image that shows the sediment near the bottom of the jar The recipe I'm using is "End of Garden Pickles" on page 323 of Ball's Complete Book of Home Preserving. The ingredients are zucchini, green beans, carrots, pearl onions, bell pepper, vinegar, sugar, dry mustard, mustard seeds, pickling salt, ground cinnamon, ground ginger. I've seen it with other recipes too though. It seems like the cause is probably hard water or starch in the vegetables from this document's mention of "white sediment". Also, this document on judging pickles acknowledges the occurrence of sediment and suggests it's preventable. Unfortunately, neither document shows a picture to compare against and neither gives a tip to prevent it if the problem is starch. Does anyone recognize this sediment and know how to prevent or reduce it?

"Fresh, whole spices are best to use for pickles. Powdered spices may cause the product to darken and the brine to become cloudy." https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/prevent_pickling_problems

Say, for example, I eat a very spicy jalapeno and I have a burning sensation in my mouth and throat. Are there any foods or drinks to wash that away?

The chemical responsible for "the burn" is Capsaicin. The main reason you and everyone else has trouble with the lingering burning sensation is that it's not water soluble (which means it doesn't dissolve in water). So, flooding your mouth with water-based liquids doesn't loosen up those Capsaicin molecules on your tongue and throat. Like @Iuls says, the most common and effective relief comes from full-fat milk or cream. That's because, while Capsaicin isn't able to be dissolved by water, it is fat soluble. It's also why more than a few people have been upset that the "milk solution" didn't work, when they tried it with skim milk. If you're looking for a more "fun" solution, it's worth noting that Capsaicin is also alcohol soluble, which might explain all of that tequila and beer they sell at Mexican restaurants.

I have a packet of fresh tilapia filets from the grocer, and I'm planning to broil them with BBQ sauce. How long should they stay under the heat and how far should they be from the heating elements? My broiler is the "under-the-oven" kind which re-uses the gas flame that pre-heats the main oven. Edit: Are there any additional preparation steps I should be aware of? I'm a novice when it comes to cooking fish.

Broiling fish is extremely easy, although I would recommend saucing the fish after it is cooked as your BBQ sauce will most likely burn under the heat from the broiler. Your food should be about 8 to 12 inches away form the heat source, but most under oven broilers have a fixed height away from the flame. You need to make sure that your fish is fully scaled before cooking and you should season it with salt and pepper as well. Lay the fish on a pan, making sure that you lay it skin side down and that there is room on each side of each piece. Turn on your flame and slide the fish under the broiler, remove when the fish is flaky, white and lightly browned on top. If you are unsure if it is done, take a fork and twist it in the flesh of the fish and it should flake away fully white, it's done. Then add your sauce and serve. Additionally, BBQ sauce will mostly overpower the flavor of your tilapia, you might find that whipping up a butter sauce or a white wine sauce will suit you better. Also, alot of fish does well with just a little salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

I just read on the side of a Cranberry Juice pack that one of its ingredients was Cranberry compound? What does it mean?

I honestly cannot think of anything they'd be referring to other than a chemical compound, which, in layman's terms, is basically anything more complex than a pure element like oxygen. A cranberry - and any other food - contains an enormous number of "compounds", so I'm pretty sure that the phrase "cranberry compound" just means that it's not made from fresh/whole cranberries. It either uses some kind of artificial flavour or concentrate. If it says "from concentrate" then it is almost definitely the latter; if it says "no artificial flavours" and nothing else then it might be the latter, and if it says "not from concentrate" (but doesn't say anything about artificial flavours) then I'd guess it to be the former. I'd love to post some kind of citation, but as I said, I don't think it refers to any specific thing, it sounds more like a weasel word to avoid listing one or more "chemical" names like "proanthocyanidin".

I love clam and mussel broth, but they're always replete with grit and sand! I've been pouring it over a Stainless Steel Coffee Filter, but this takes way too slow if I'm cooking for many people and have much broth to filter! Don't recommend anything with a pore size > 10 micrometers. There must be bigger versions of these Stainless Steel Coffee Filters? This isn't my direct question, but what do coffee shops and breweries use? They can't be using these teeny filters, because customers can't wait that long. Can I use what cafes use to filter mussel broth?

They can't be using these teeny filters, because customers can't wait that long. Specialty coffee shops that offer 'pour-over' (drip) coffee definitely make coffee to order using small filters like the one you show (although in my area, they usually use paper filters). Customers are fine waiting the 2-4 minutes this takes. For larger quantities, what a coffee shop might call 'batch brewing', larger filters such as these are commonly used: These come in sizes ranging up to 12 cups, but might be tricky to find. Alternatively, you could experiment using one or more layers of cheesecloth, which is perhaps more easily available and scalable, although it might not filter as well as you'd like. As a final note, I think your demand for pore sizes <10 micrometers might be a little too stringent. The filter you link to lists a .2mm mesh (i.e., 200 micrometers). I found this page with an analysis of the pore sizes in various coffee filtering products, if you're interested.

I have somewhat recently bought a house that has a cutting board as a part of the counter. I have had no experience with this and haven't found anything online really. I know that there are ways to season a wooden cutting board, but I don't know if that applies to this. There are a few gaps between the boards - can this be fixed with regular wood filler? Do I just season the counter top as if it was a regular cutting board? If not, how would I go about protecting it?

I wouldn't use that board any further. Some of those gaps where the block laminate is separating go right the way through. I don't see how you could realistically sanitise it, even if the other side looks a bit better. Not only would I replace it, I'd also seriously consider replacing the counter top. The chipboard is swollen due to repeated wetting & is not going to be anything like hygienic any more. If you do consider only changing the chopping board, at least make sure the chipboard is properly sealed before you replace it, & consider mounting the new board with silicone sealant around the edges. Perhaps this may not apply world-wide, but in the UK that style of square-edged countertop hasn't been in use for at least 30 years. Pretty much everything since then is bullnose or semi-bullnose (half-round or quarter-round) - meaning there is no separate mica piece on the front edge, it's all made in one continuous, watertight, piece. In consequence that chipboard could have more than 30 years of contamination in it.

A few weeks ago I made some homemade bread pudding. We had a few servings of it, the weather got hot and humid, and I soon learned that mold really likes bread pudding too. The pan is a stoneware pan. I rolled up my sleeves, got some really hot water, and scoured it as best as I could but it still has dark spots and a moldy "funk" to it. I don't really want to use it like this. Is there a way that I can clean this pan or is it a lost cause?

I use bleach to remove mold and mildew stains from my bathroom and while the process would be gross, I would think that once thoroughly washed the bleach wouldn't cause any harmful effects to the pan or to future snacking humans.

I recently purchased a carbon steel pan (DeBuyer Mineral B Element), and have attempted to perform pre-seasoning on it. I checked out a bunch of videos on the process, and ended up doing the following steps: Warm up pan Coat pan in a thin layer of canola oil Heat pan until oil begins to smoke Take pan off heat when oil stops smoking Cool to room temperature I repeated the process around 6 times, and the flat surface of the pan still felt pretty smooth. Sides of the pan were slightly sticky though. I proceeded to cook bacon, which immediately stuck to the pan (I added about a tablespoon of oil before cooking too). Any idea what I'm doing wrong, and why no seasoning layer is forming on the carbon steel frying pan? It's getting discolored but not turning black. Sides are turning brown, albeit slightly gummy.

Induction hobs (cooktops/ranges) use magnetic fields to heat the pan directly, only metal that is directly in contact with the hob gets heated by the hob, the rest gets heated through conduction. On a large gas hob burner the flame goes up the sides, heating them. On my induction hob (not my choice, there when I moved in) I find that the heating area does not range as far as the lines on the hob indicate that they should, so you may not be getting direct heating on the entire bottom of the pan. My recommendation would be to season it in the oven rather than the cooktop presuming the handle and other parts are oven safe. That way the whole pan gets heat evenly. The answer to this question will be of interest to you as it's about induction and metals.

New to this site, and new to cooking, well cooking properly. I have in my possession a George Foreman grill, not because of the advertising hype, but because I have a very limited space for cooking in my apartment. My question is, just how effective is the George Foreman grill (or any other grill like it) in draining the fat off meat while cooking?

There are a couple of fluff pieces on the web that appear to indicate the George Forman Grills remove fat from foods, due to the tiled bed allowing draining: Chron.Com Disabled World In my opinion, both have the feel of echoing press releases from the manufacturer. Neither compares the effectiveness of the tilted bed grill to a more traditional grilling method. Consider griddling a hamburger on a flat griddle or in a flat style panini press, with or without raised grooves. Even without the grooves, as the hamburger cooks, it expresses fat and other liquid as the proteins in the meat tighten. With a fatty hamburger, this can be a considerable amount, even though it is not draining away. The issue in expressed fat is not the tilt, but rather the squeezing effect the cooked proteins have, forcing the fat out of the food. This happens regardless of the angle of the bed. Consider also that it is the contraction of the meat that is important in expressing the fat. If the fat were simply liquefied but the proteins not fully tightened, less or no fat is expressed. This can be seen in low temperature sous-vide cooking. Adhesion and capillary action would keep the fat in the meat otherwise. The logical conclusion is that the tilt of the bed is irreverent in expressing the fat, but does help clear it away and collect it. This may have some minor effect on the amount of fat adhering to the outside of the food item, but is not the major effect. You can argue whether the clearing of the fat away during cooking is a positive or negative for culinary quality, but it doesn't affect the amount of fat.

There are some recipes that insist that you have to cover the pot when cooking. For example, in this video recipe for Bolognese sauce (at 7:36). I understand that this might save gas or electricity by reducing heat loss. But does it serve any other purpose? I do not consider it to be essential for the food not drying up, since you can leave the pot uncovered and just add a bit more water at the beginning, or add water at the end if you notice that too much has evaporated. The only thing I can think about is that this might increase the humidity inside the pot, and perhaps the steam will help cook the food or change the flavor somehow. If this is true, what types of food would benefit from cooking with the lid on in terms of flavor? PS: This is related to Why not cover the pot? but not the same.

It retains heat & steam pressure, so you achieve a simmer or even a boil with less power input & less water loss. Great for long-cook sauces. Not so good for starchy things which may boil over if you're not careful, or have the pan too full. As with most things, familiarity with how your stove/pan/lid combination reacts to a slow simmer will determine how well this works for you. If your stove won't drop low enough, you'll burn things, or need to get a simmer ring to reduce the risk. If you tend top make things too wet, you need to adjust over time. Making anything to an online recipe needs you to be fully aware of how your own kitchen responds to wet/dry/timings. I don't think I ever blindly follow a recipe, I modify to how it needs to turn out based on my own experience with similar ingredients/quantities. If I guess wrong, then I'm reducing sauce in a flat panic over the last 10 mins… not a good feeling, but familiarity breeds content ;)) There was at one time folk wisdom that said, "if it grows above ground, lid off, if it grows below ground, lid on"… which I have pretty much ignored for most of my adult life. Sure, potatoes boil best with the lid on, as you obviously retain the heat, but I'm pretty sure I've never boiled a leafy vegetable in 20 years, I steam them… incidentally using the 'spare' steam from my lid-on potatoes.

Whenever I cook sausages in the oven, they cook evenly. The issue is that sausages take about forty minutes in the oven. However, whenever I use a pan, they do not take an age to be cooked but they never seem to be cooked thoroughly (some appear to be raw in the centre as well as not being evenly brown). So, how do I cook sausages in a pan? EDIT: Adding water with the olive oil really does work.

Whenever I have cooked sausages in a pan, I have always added some water in the pan that way they cook through on the inside. Once they are cooked through and the water has evaporated, I keep them in the pan to crisp up the outside.

Hi I have some frozen tomatoes and I would like to blend them in my Vita mix and make sauce. My question is can I re-freeze the sauce once it's been cooked.

Probably. Depends on your sauce; some sauces do not tolerate freezing (e.g., they "break"). The fact that your tomatoes were frozen at one point doesn't matter. Mostly warnings about not re-freezing foods are due to quality loss. For example, each time you freeze a vegetable, it will turn closer to mush. Safety warnings are primarily about quick thawing (e.g., in the microwave) where the food may get into the danger zone (between 4°C–60°C/40°F–140°F); the recommendation is to cook it before freezing (if you thaw in the fridge, this is avoided). You've already got a cook step between the thaw/freeze, so even with a quick thaw method, there aren't any extra safety concerns.

Background I am making a sweet recipe of Baklava, which calls on ghee or clarified butter. So the butter substitute would be used to paint on the layers of filo pastry before baking. My problem When reading the ingredients list I instinctively substituted butter for sunflower spread as an acceptable dairy free alternative, not realising the process I would have to expose it to. Question Now given what is the desired outcome of clarified butter, I’m assuming this wouldn’t work by using sunflower spread? .. Or would it? If not, any suggestions to how I can get around this mess without butter? The instructions I have for making clarified butter Melt the 1 1/2 cups (340g/ 12oz) butter slowly over medium low heat until the milk solids have separated from the butterfat. and collected on the bottom of the saucepan. Remove the pan from heat, let the butter settle for 10 minutes, then carefully skim the foam from the surface with a spoon. Slowly pour the clear butterfat into a bowl, leaving all the milk solids behind in the saucepan. You should end up with about 1 1/8 cup (255g/ 9oz) clarified butter. Any thoughts, suggestions or workarounds much appreciated! I'm making baklava, so the butter substitute would be used to paint on the layers of filo pastry before baking.

The clarifying process of the butter is irrelevant here, what is relevant is the recipe in which you will be using the fat. Baklava is absolutely forgiving. Use any fat you want - butter, liquid oil, or a spread. I have made it and eaten it with all kinds of fat, it works. The only thing to keep in mind is flavor, you don't want to use some kind of highly flavored oil that doesn't fit the taste profile. Use either a low-flavor fat or a nut oil, especially one that matches the nuts in the baklava itself (typically walnuts) and all will be good.

I only needed a few more tablespoons of flour, but I had run out. Instead I substituted half the amount of cornstarch. Will my bread still have the right texture when baking? Here is the recipe: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/132319/sweet-challah/ Below are the ingredients: 1 tablespoon active dry yeast ⅓ cup white sugar 2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C) 3 cups all-purpose flour 4 eggs ½ cup vegetable oil 1 tablespoon salt 1 cup white sugar 6 cups all-purpose flour, or as needed 1 egg 1 teaspoon vegetable oil 2 teaspoons white sugar 1 teaspoon water

I have conflicting experience to @Benjamin. I often add a little extra starch to my bread actually, specifically potato starch or sweet rice flour. While all starches gelatinize a little differently, I would not expect you to have any issue shaping the bread, or with rise. What I would expect is a little extra chewiness to the crust and perhaps a bouncy quality to the interior, and maybe a tighter crumb with finer bubbles. The first time I added starch to a bread as an experiment (and far more proportionately), I joked that I had successfully invented storebought bread at home, because that's what the texture reminded me of. That said, I would not expect the textural differences to be huge in your case because you added very little. Since percentages and math are on the table (I'm sorry but I love math), let's break down the amount of gluten and starch in here. The recipe calls for 9 cups of flour total, and there are 16 Tablespoons in a cup. So how much gluten is in one of those cups? If we say it's ~12% (I asked Google), then in one cup of flour, there are about 1.92 T gluten, and about 14.08 T starch. If you round, that means about 2 T gluten, 14 T starch. That's a proportion of 1:7.... and I'm rounding up the gluten. So what difference does a few tablespoons of corn starch make, proportionately? Well, for every T of corn starch you added instead of AP, you were missing one-seventh of a Tablespoon of gluten, or less than a half-tsp, but more than a quarter-tsp. And that amount counts up with every T you added. So, if you added a quarter-cup of corn starch, then you're "missing" almost 2 teaspoons of gluten. If you added a whole half cup, you're missing a little over a Tablespoon of it. But again, we rounded the gluten up before, so... you aren't even missing that much. This is an overestimation. In the recipe as a whole, you have 144 T in those 9 cups of flour. That means you have 17.3 T of gluten total, and 126.7 T starch. Even if you added the whole half-cup of corn starch, changing the amount of starch to 134.7 and the total amount of "flour" to 152 T.... You've only changed your gluten content from 12% to 11.4%, which would still be within range for all-purpose. Some brands have higher gluten. Some have less. King Arthur brand's all-purpose flour has as much gluten as some other brand's bread flours. And again... I'm assuming you added significantly more than a few tablespoons. That drop from 12% to 11.4% represents a worst-case scenario. So while there will be a difference, I'm guessing it will be subtle, maybe even undetectable if you aren't looking for it. One thing I noticed reading the recipe is that they don't call for resting the dough. A short rest (often called "autolyse") after adding, say, two-thirds of the total amount of flour will give the flour a chance to hydrate and soak up some more moisture. That way, it will require a little less flour to get a workable dough, and your final product will be just a little softer and moister as a result. IF you make this recipe again, it might be helpful. I'll be curious to hear how your experiment turns out (hopefully okay!)

Last night, I made a Peperonato pasta sauce. It was delicious, but when I added the balsamic vinegar at the end of the dish and then cooked it off (leaving a sweet reduction) it left the whole sauce a rather disgusting brown color. It was just me and my wife, so it didn't matter too much, but it wasn't appetizing to look at it, and I'd have balked at serving it to guests, even though it tastes great. How could I have fixed this dish? More generally, how can I correct unpleasant coloring in dishes?

There are things you can do to tweak the colors, but generally it's easy to move towards brown and dark, and hard to move towards a pure shade and light. You can use food coloring, spices with a lot of color (like turmeric). You can lighten with cornstarch, flour, and dairy. (thanks satanicpuppy) If presentation is important to you, you can buy ingredients that make it easier to get the colors you want in the final product. For instance, next time you make the dish you could use white balsamic vinegar and a little more sugar.

What words and dimensions are used to describe bread and their recipes? I realize describing bread is subjective, I'm only looking for common words to describe bread.

This is a very general question, but I can see some use in it. If (for example) you have a recipe that says "shape into bâtards", that might not make any sense to the amateur. So if you're looking for a straight definition of bread related terms; check out the baking glossary at the fresh loaf As for the shapes of breads, this link from recipetips seems to be a good start. Lifted from the first link: Banneton: a woven basket, sometimes lined with linen, used to hold a shaped loaf while it is proofing. Batard: a loaf that has an oval or oblong shape. Biga: a term used variously as a very stiff (~50% hydration preferment), or as a generic term for preferment. Boule: a round loaf (French for "ball"). Brotform: a coiled cane basket used to hold a shaped loaf while it is proofing. Couche: heavy linen fabric used to hold formed loaves for proofing. The fabric can be pleated around the loaves to help them hold their shape. Crumb: When a baker talks about the crumb they are talking about the pattern of holes inside of a loaf. Fermentation: (1) the process by which yeast metabolizes sugars to produce carbon dioxide and alcohol (2) (aka bulk fermentation, first fermentation) the period of time the dough rests after mixing and before dividing/shaping. Folding: one of the best ways of encouraging gluten development in slack doughs. Folding the dough consists of taking a wet dough out of the bowl, spreading it out a little on a clean, well-floured surface, folding it in thirds like a letter, rotating it 90 degrees and folding it up again, picking it up and dusting the loose flour off of it, and then returning the dough to the bowl and covering it again. Like punching down, folding degases the dough some, but it also encourages gluten development. Gluten: "A tenacious elastic protein of wheat flour that gives cohesiveness to dough." Gluten is what allows bread dough to develop those long, beautiful strands and create large open pockets of air (think about the inside of a loaf of Ciabatta compared to the inside of a muffin). Bread flours tend to be made from hard wheats that are higher in protein than regular flour, providing more gluten. Hydration: the ratio of liquid ingredients (primarily water) to flour in the dough. A dough with 500g of flour and 340g of water has a hydration of 68% (340/500). Lame: a thin blade on a handle, used to score (slash) loaves before baking. Levain: usually used as a synonym for sourdough. Pâte fermentée (aka prefermented dough): a type of preferment in which the ingredients (flour, water, yeast, salt) are mixed in the same proportion as (usually) a basic white bread dough at about 65% hydration. Poolish: A type of sponge. Typically quite wet, an equal weight of water and flour with an extremely small amount of yeast. For my batch of two French Bread loaves, I typically use 8 ounces of water, 8 ounces of bread flour, and 1/8 teaspoon a instant yeast. Mix it, cover the bowl, and leave it at room temperature overnight. Proof: (1) the final rise of the shaped loaves before baking (2) the hydration of dry active yeast in water before it is added to the dough Score (aka slash or dock): to cut the surface of the loaf prior to baking. This provides for controlled expansion of the loaves during baking so they do not “break” undesirably. Scoring is also used to enhance the appearance of the bread. Sourdough: a preferment that is a culture of wild yeast and bacteria that is perpetuated by the periodic addition of flour and water, or a bread leavened in whole or part by this culture. sponge: Also known as a "preferment," a sponge is a portion of the ingredients that is mixed ahead of time, typically overnight. Using a sponge extends the fermentation process longer and generally releases more complex flavors in your loaf. It can also be used to soften dry ingredients (such as whole grains) and release sugars from the grains.

I was at the supermarket just now, and there were 2 types of refined canola oil, with very different pricing. Is there any reason to believe that the cheaper one is of different quality? I mean both are oils refined from canola seeds, so I'm wondering if the pricing is only as a result of different brands. I'm aware that for non-refined oils which are valued for taste, such as olive oil, then the answer is obvious - different olive oils give very different taste, and usually the higher the price the better the quality. As canola oil should (theoretically) be more or less tasteless, I'm wondering if this is still the case.

In practice, the major refined oils are commodity products, and the two different brands may even come from the same factory, but with different labels applied. Still, it is possible that they are from different producers, and have a different quality standard of refining applied; one may be more aromatic than the other (which is a defect in a refined neutral oil). The only way to know for sure is to try the less expensive brand. If it has no off-putting aroma, you have a good value.

So I bought some Lean Organic Ground Beef about a week ago, went straight into the Freezer. Used 3/4 of it for Hamburger helper, cooked all the way through...smelled fine and looked fine. However I noticed on the Uneaten ground beef (was gonna save it in the freezer) (of course after i had eaten and was putting something in the freezer). That there was a black...small spot on the ground beef. I've seen spoiled meat/beef before and it's brown, however this was very dark and black and was very small. Now the rest of the meat I looked at/smelled and it was fine. And the meat wasn't past due or anything and it went STRAIGHT into the freezer. What could this dark spot had been. It was QUITE dark and very small (maybe about the size of a match head). if so....do you think the rest of the meat was ok? considering I did cook it thoroughly, im just curious what the black spot was. Obviously I don't want to get mad cow disease or something lol

Obviously hard to know for sure. The laws and guidelines dictate use of food grade equipment so if a piece falls off and ingested, it does little harm. If you cooked it, then you have even less to worry. As a precaution, I suggest taking it to the store and asking about it so other customers don't trip on the same issue. Harmless or otherwise. If they don't know for sure, then suggest to them to send in for a lab test. In descending likelihood, it could be: a piece of buna rubber broken off from a gasket (grinding machine, or other). Not a hazard. It's not far from chewing gum ;) a piece of meat that came in contact with the lubricant oil in the machine. Also usually food grade. They turn dark after a while. sometimes the meat branding ink on the outside ends up in the grind (also food grade). Though they are usually dark blue. piece of old blood clot, liver or other organs. not likely here, but I have heard Listeria shows up black. Though i'd imagine it would spread and look more fuzzy/furry. Most bacterium die during proper cooking.

Why would a vidalia onion be purple? It smelled felt and looked normal otherwise.

As Wikipedia states (with good sources): A Vidalia onion (/vɪˈdeɪliə/ or /vaɪˈdeɪliə/) is a sweet onion of certain varieties, grown in a production area defined by law of the U.S. state of Georgia and by the United States Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The varieties include the hybrid yellow granex, varieties of granex parentage, and other similar varieties As far as I understand, there are varieties with puprlish tint in the mix. The most defining thing about onion being accepted as Vidalia is taste, capability of growing well and not developing sharp taste when grown on low sulfur soil around Vidalia, Georgia. If taste is sweet and mellow as you would expect it to, then color is probably OK and onion is within what state of Georgia allows to call an vidalia onion. It is also possible that what you got was unplanned crossbreed with red onions from near field. This can happen if onion is grown from seeds, especially seeds gathered by the farmer himself, as seed selling companies tend to be very careful about that. In that case, these onions should not be sold as Vidalia onion - but if they are half-Vidalia-accepted-variety and grown in proper soil, taste should be pretty close to what you paid for.

While shopping the other day, I purchased a cast iron pan that has ridged griddle lines in it. I thought "oh, this might be nice for cooking meat!" but I'm not actually sure that's the case. How to use a ridged cast iron griddle? Or rather, is meat the only thing I can use with such ridges built in? It seems like food will just get stuck in the deep ridges and be annoying to clean off / not that helpful when cooking. Did I make a silly purchase, or is there some sort of benefit to the ridges that I'm not seeing?

If your alternatives are an oven or non stick pans, these sit perfectly in the middle. They really shine at high temperatures, and with marinated foods. I personally mainly use mine for meat, as my SO is vegetarian, and doesn't like their vegetables cooked in a meaty pan. However it also works nicely for bread products. I toast my burger buns in it before making burgers, my flatbreads when making kebabs, wraps, naans, all these get a nice toast with grillmarks when I use them. It adds a nice partial char to the food that you can't get another way without burning larger parts of your bread. You can use it with vegetables as a low-fat solution to frying, or use it to make nice smokey gravies. However where it really sings is indeed with meat. It can go up to soaring high temperatures, where non-stick pans tap out long before. This is ideal for cooking steak in particular, but also smash burgers (they are thin and need the outside cooked fast if you want any kind of darkening). It is also ideal for cooking anything marinated. If you use a pan or broiler, it could char and burn large parts of your marinade, especially if you use herbs. With this grill pan, it will only burn (char) the lines, and steam in between leaving the dynamic of your marinade intact. The only downside I have found for this kind of pan is the maintenance. It should be kept well seasoned like all cast iron pans and woks. After cooking, clean it by adding one or two pints of water and a teaspoon of salt, and simmer for 15 minutes to an hour. This will dissolve the non-oil particles and leave the non stick seasoning intact as opposed to using soap. Then dump out the water and wipe the pan with paper towels. (Note: I have found that different foods need different simmer times. Breads need next to no cleaning, and fatty means tend to clean up quite quickly. Leaner meats like chicken etc. tend to get charred more and stick to the pan, and will need longer simmer times - yes, up to an hour - to loosen up, even in a well seasoned pan.) It also gives off large amounts of smoke and steam for an inside pan, and you will need to have your extraction fan on high and preferably a window open as well.

What type of a grarlic press would require the minimum amout of force to operate? (for people with hand problems) Would this one where the pressing part is pivoted require less force than one with a fixed pressing part? Any other designs which requires less force? (one could extend the handles attaching something to them to get more leverage obviously)

Not really an answer to your question, but a possible alternative - why not frozen garlic? I use a lot of fresh, but there are 2 different sorts of frozen I use too - one is Indian in origin & comes as a bag of 'cubes' of frozen paste. It loses some of the punch of fresh, but you can simply add more if required. UK pricing maybe £1.10 for 500g. The other type is 'european' & is finely chopped & loose in a bag. This is more expensive but still retains the full flavour & aroma. It doesn't cook down quite as well as the cubes. Even though the aroma is better for a short cook, if I'm doing a long cook where the garlic should 'vanish' I will use the cube-paste instead. UK pricing closer to £1.50 for 100g. Either is close enough that no-one could tell once it's cooked into a dish. Effort required == zero in both cases. I found a fairly random supermarket link with both alternatives - Tesco UK Re comments on the question... Both of these are significantly closer to fresh than anything you can buy in a jar.

I want to make dulce de leche by boiling it. As the store bought cans leach plastics like BPA into the food, I want to avoid using it. What are jars/cans, preferably reusable that you can put inside some food, close it and boil for several hours and are made from safe for humans material?

Is the meat cooked or not ? it's not clear. I would prepare the stuffing, cook it all and cool it down and stuff the cannelloni and put that in the fridge. Personally, I would bake it all, sauce included the day before and cool it down and put that in the fridge. (I treat that the same as a lasagna).

When making yogurt with Yogourmet yogurt starters it is recommended to boil the milk, bring it down to 110 degrees F, then take out a cup of milk and mix the starter, then add that mixture back into the main batch of milk and let it culture. What is the reason for not just adding the starter directly to the batch of milk?

Dry powders are easier to mix if you make a slurry first with a small amount of liquid and then mix the slurry in. If you skip this step you will have clumps of dry powder floating on top of the milk and it will take a lot more effort to mix in. When you are using yoghurt as a starter for a new batch this step is not necessary and the starter can just be mixed in directly.

I have a Pit Barrel Cooker. I have made hamburgers on it before but I keep running into several issues. When it comes to anything else, brisket, ribs, chicken, etc. everything turns out great! But hamburgers, even with the provided online videos, my burgers always come out like I just fried them on the stove. I try to regulate the heat by closing the circular air vent on the front but then my fire dies down too fast and it doesn't seem the burgers are being cooked properly. I use 80% ground beef and my burgers also always shrink up like crazy. Does anyone have a proper method of using the Pit Barrel Cooker to get slow cooked, bbq tasting burgers?

There is no method because you cannot do it. Ground meats lose moisture rapidly when cooked as much of the fat is not contained within the meat itself, but mixed in. This mixed in fat melts rapidly and runs out. The fat that is marbled within the meat itself is lost faster as the ground strands have much more surface area. Therefore, if you cook a burger low and slow it will end up dry. Slow cooking and long roasting is only good when a piece of meat has enough marbled fat so it will still be juicy when cooked, and a low surface area to slow moisture loss (ie it's fairly big). Burger cooking on the other hand is a race to get a good crust and to the right temperature before losing all moisture. As for shrinking up this is normal for burgers and you cannot prevent the process from happening. You can, however, shape them flatter and thinner to compensate. I make a flat, thin-ish burger patty, then I use my palm to make the middle slightly thinner than the outside. The result is a burger that has the right shape after cooking. If you start with a thick burger patty you'll more often end up with a meatball shape at the end.

I bought a carbon steel paella pan. I've looked up if people season it (link) but on Wikipedia I've read: As with other cast iron vessels, a seasoned pan or dutch oven should not regularly be used to cook foods containing tomatoes, vinegar or other acidic ingredients, as these foods will eventually remove the protective layer created during the seasoning process. I think paella is pretty acidic food, so is it a good idea to season the pan?

They're meat spots, and safe (though unpleasant) to eat.

I marinated chicken five days ago in lemon juice, seasoned salt, and garlic powder, is it still safe to cook in the oven?

This would be a bad idea. Chicken should be cooked 1-2 days after refrigeration according to the USDA and other food safety agencies, and will tend to get noticeably slimy and pungent after 3-4 days in my experience. 5 days is really pushing it. I understand the rationale for the question - lemon juice can kill the surface bacteria - but that's just the problem, salmonella bacteria don't only exist on the surface of chicken, they're crawling around the interior as well. In order for this to be considered safe, you would need to be absolutely sure of all the following: The entire marinade had a pH of significantly less than 4. Lemon juice is considered to have a base pH of 2-3, but that is fresh lemon juice and undiluted. Unless you actually used a pH tester, you cannot be 100% positive of this. The marinade completely penetrated every part of the chicken that may have been contaminated. This is literally impossible for you to measure. The chicken itself was relatively fresh before it went into the marinade - unless you got it farm-fresh, you don't know this for a fact, so even if the marinade completely penetrated the chicken, the interior bacteria may have already left behind some nasty protein toxins (which the marinade can't kill because they aren't alive). If you had said 3 days, maybe 4, I would say, practically, that you'd probably be OK. But any more than that and you're playing with fire. As the old chef's saying goes: When in doubt, throw it out. If you are intent on eating it anyway then please, at least be responsible and don't serve it to any guests.

https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/33892/6168 For longer storage, keep white flours in the refrigerator in an airtight container. All-purpose and bread flour will keep up to two years at 40 F in your refrigerator, according to the Wheat Foods Council. They can be stored indefinitely in the freezer. What is the best way to store the whole wheat flour for daily usage? Should it be stored in the fridge and taken out daily for usage and then kept back?

At home I use bail closure jars (for flour, and all dry beans, lentils, pasta,...). They open and close easily, are airtight, and (most importantly) look sexy in the pantry or on the counter top ;-)

Context: I'm a poor and lazy college student. I have breaded frozen pieces of cod from costco. I like to bake them in my toaster-oven on aluminum foil to avoid having to clean the baking dish/tray. This brand (janes) is the only kind they have at costco and the problem is the center of the breading sort of sticks to the alumnium foil. How can I avoid this? I've thought about applying a small quantity oil , but rather put the effort and money immediately into trying that, I'd like to consult the experts.

Parchment paper is much less prone to food sticking to it. I use it for lots of sticky or fragile food, such as fish or sticky chicken wings. If you usually have your fish entirely covered in aluminum, you can do the same with parchment paper, this is called a papillote. Example

How to squeeze a whole lemon so that as much of the juice as possible is extracted. And as a second priority none/not many of the seeds? What alternatives do exists for properly squeezing lemons? Differences to that question: whole lemon/s, not just a slice, I know the trick with the fork no lemon crusher, I don't do that often enough to motivate the investment.

Roll the lemon on a surface, squashing it slightly, before cutting it in halves. It will be easier to release the juice using hand pressure. Beyond that, accept that your hands will get covered in juice and press it until you can't get more juice out. You can apply more pressure by applying it to a small area and working around the lemon's circumference. If you want to avoid the seeds, you can remove some of them before you crush it. To be certain, squeeze it through a filter or into a container before adding it to your food.

I'm making some Korean chicken and am out of rice wine vinegar. Would a diluted lemon juice work The recipe only calls for a tablespoon of vinegar so it doesn't form a large part of the dish.

The difference between gluten and gliadin is the one already explained in your question: Gliadin is a precursor to gluten. You could say that gliadin is to gluten what grains are to porridge. Gluten is the result of glutenin reacting with gliadin in the presence of water, just like porridge is the result of grains "reacting" with milk in the presence of heat. I don't understand why you are asking for separating them. It would be hard to do, and will achieve no good purpose. First, I don't know if there is a way to extract the gliadin from wheat. There are industrial processes for extracting "gluten" out of wheat, but I don't know if they produce a mixture of glutenin and gliadin (which could be further purified) or if they already cause the glutenin and gliadin to bind a gluten. But note that the remaining flour will not be gluten-free, as these methods cannot extract every last molecule of glutenin and gliadin. So you cannot remove the glutenin from flour and stay with gliadin-containing flour. Second, assuming that you can extract the gliadin, you can add it to some gluten free flour like cornflour. But there is absolutely no reason doing so. The definition you cited only says that gliadin is "essential" for rising, but not that it alone produces rising. It is the gluten itself that produces rising, and the gliadin is essential only because without it, there would be no gluten. Gliadin alone does not have any benefits. Third, if you add gliadin to a gluten free flour, you will not have removed any of the problems inherent in using gluten. People who are allergic to gluten will still be allergic to the gliadin. To sum it up, gliadin is a structural part of gluten, and if you can find a method to extract it without the glutenin, you will experience no benefits of baking with it, or prevent any undesired side effects like triggering allergies or celiac.

I'm planning to do a lobster broth for New-Years. Lobster shells, browned in oven Shallots, parsley root, carrots and other suitable veg Seasoning, tomato paste, I think I have a reasonable slurp of Cognac avaliable. Boil for about 15 minutes. When I strain this, it will be cloudy. I was thinking whisking in egg-whites and straining it again to make it clear. Is this possible? Will the procedure change the taste? I have about 4 hours to make it on saturday. Any suggestions are welcome. I want it as consommé-like(clear) as possible.

Allow me to describe what happened. (TLDR; complete success) I started out with The regular lobster soup starter pack. About 1.5 liters of water, half a bottle of white wine. This isn't clear at all. Eggwhites. Really slow boil. Siphon to test. I'm ok with this. The end result was fantastic What really surprised me was that I started with well over 2 litres of broth. In the end I had about 7 dl of clear stuff. About 1/3 of the original tasty broth.

When I cut chili-pepper, it takes more then a day for the chili to disappear from my fingertips. It is particularly hurtfull when I put in my contactlenses. Is there a way to get rid of this chili more quickly?

Capsaicin, the active compound in chillies, isn't soluble in water so it's hard to wash off. As a contact lens wearer you might prefer to wear disposable gloves to prepare them. It is soluble in fats so my wife's approach (she wears lenses, I don't) is to rub olive oil into her hands, then wash with soap and water. It seems effective, and we've seen it recommended online (maybe even here) but we only use fairly mild chillies.

I often use bought puff pastry to make a topping for a chicken pie. However, I tend to find that the pastry is fully cooked on the top but the underside of the pastry remains almost raw. How can I avoid this?

A few points to consider... Try docking the pastry. Docking means to pierce lightly with a fork, or a docker (looks like a spiked paint roller), to make small holes in dough that will let steam escape during baking. This helps the dough to remain flat and even. ref: http://powerhungry.com/2009/02/puff-pastry-docking/ In general, to cook food more evenly, one should cook longer at a lower temperature. The problem is that the dough on the bottom of your crust is not reaching a high enough temperature by the time the top of your crust is done cooking. Puff Pastry is notoriously finicky. Be sure to handle the dough according to puff pastry best practices to ensure the layers do not collapse and stick together. Pepperidge Farm has a tutorial website (http://www.puffpastry.com/videos-and-tips#howto-demos) to help people with puff pastry issues, but it doesn't appear to cover much detail. You must be very gentle when rolling out the pastry because it is multiple layers of dough with fat between each. Do not mangle the dough, cut clean lines and try not to apply pressure except where the knife is cutting Do not let the dough get warm before you are ready to cook. The fat melts and the layers will stick and not puff properly.

When making a thick simple syrup (1 part water, 1 part white sugar), how can I know when I've cooked the sugar for long enough? Is it possible to overcook this?

You aren't actually trying to cook anything. When you heat a solution, it makes dissolving a solid in to that solution much easier. So you can dissolve more sugar in to hot water than cold water. With a 1:1 ratio, you wouldn't be able to get all the sugar in to solution with cold water. So, you heat the water to allow more sugar to become part of the solution. So the answer is, as soon as there is no visible sugar in the water, you are done. If you were to cook it for longer, you would reduce the syrup, increasing the concentration of sugar in the solution. You'd have to reduce it an awful lot before you burnt this. However, if you reduce it too much, then the liquid will become solid when it is cooled. Both of those would probably qualify as "over cooked". Here's a nice science description of sugar solubility. Interestingly, they say that sugar has such high solubility in water that you can get 1800g in to 1L. Using this volume to weight conversion site, that's approximately 7.5 cups of sugar in 1L of water. 1L = 4.2 cups, so you can get ~1.8 Cups of sugar in to 1 cup of water (under ideal circumstances). So, if you are actually interested in cooking your water off to get a more sugary syrup, you can't reduce the water to less than 1 / 1.8 = or 55% of the original volume. However, if you do want a ratio higher that 1:1, then I would suggest introducing the appropriate amount of sugar in the first place and stopping when the sugar is dissolved rather than using less sugar and cooking the liquid down, as the first approach is much more precise. (for purposes of this answer, I have ignored the possibility of super saturating the syrup, as that would be essentially useless for cooking....although it would be funny)

My child ate some pepperoni that was sticky, but didn't smell or taste bad, and was before the expiration date. Is that a sign that it might've spoiled early, or was it likely still safe?

Pepperoni has quite a bit of fat in it, and it's going to break down over time as it ages in the fridge (just like the meat that went into it). That can result in a sort of tacky feeling to it. You get this in things like beef summer sausage, too. It's always rather dry by the time it spoils, which takes quite a while. Sticking an uncovered sausage in the back of the ref for a day or so is something many folks do to bring out the spices it contains a bit more prior to cooking. It also tends to come out a little tacky, depending on fat and preservative content. I do this with store-bought Italian sausage to get the fennel and anise a bit more pronounced. If it doesn't smell acrid or rancid, and feels like pepperoni despite being a little tacky, it's probably fine. When preserved meats go bad a few parts of it start to have an acrid sort of odor, quickly followed by the rest. It's harder to spot initially in chorizo and similar, but bad pepperoni really gives itself away pretty quickly. Also, taste a small piece. If it's rather sour, you probably don't want to use it. Source: Me always being given the job of cleaning out and rotating stuff in the walk-in in at a place I used to work that made a lot of pizza.

How do I interpret the second item in the ingredients list in this recipe? 1 cup Grape Tomatoes, Halved Do I measure out 1 cup of grape tomatoes and then cut each one in half? Or should I start cutting them in half and put all the half pieces into my measuring cup until it's full? I can certainly fit more grape tomatoes into my measuring cup if they are all chopped in half than if they are whole. I realize of course that most of the time the difference is probably too small to matter. But what if it did matter?

It probably doesn't matter. I bet the difference isn't more than a few grape tomatoes. The way I read it, if the author wanted you to cut first, it would state "1 cup halved grape tomatoes," indicating that you should measure the halved tomatoes. When it is important, a good recipe would specify in the procedures section. If accuracy of this sort is necessary, a good recipe would be even more useful if it listed ingredient weights, rather than volumes.

I always found my popcorn a bit soggy and noticed the microwaved packets aren't. So yesterday I made a little experiment with a friend of mine. I took popcorn kernels and microwave popcorn sets then conduct these experiments : Microwaved popcorn (900W, 2'20'') Air popper machine (the cheap one you find on all Chinese store) Stovetop without oil Stovetop with oil Stovetop with butter Stovetop with microwave popcorn (at this step I discovered that this kind of popcorn is completely coated with palm oil) Air Popper machine with microwave popcorn Here the results : Crisp perfect Very soggy and quite small Burned, they didn't really popped A bit soggy same as 4 but with a better taste Very soggy Almost same as 6. Eventually I still don't understand why I can't make popcorn as good as the one I can eat in theaters. Any idea?

Not truly and answer, but I am trying for an explanation of what likely you are seeing: Popcorn pops because there is a small amount of water it those try kernels that when heated goes from liquid to gas and because it is contained it does so explosively. Key is getting the proper amount of heat to go boom. Too much, burned. Too fast, incomplete boom. Too little, no boom. Poor corn, be it too dry or too wet, no boom or incomplete. Now, sogginess? Well, the boom releases that water as steam. If it gets trapped, soggy popcorn. Also, many applications as you noted use oil. Too much and soggy popcorn. Why oil? Because it helps distribute the heat more efficiently and uniformly for a better boom. Some think it also helps trap the water for a more complete explosion, I will just say maybe, but not the prime reason if so. It also flavors and helps any seasoning stick. Air popper: I have never had soggy from it though those cheap models are notorious for uneven heating, kicking out unpopped kernels, overloading and burning, etc. I could see the soggy issue though if it is not properly exhausting the vapor especially if overloaded, but I find it odd because their claim to "fame" is specifically dry popping os that one if a bit odd. Dry stove-top, that is usually going to burn due to uneven heat. I have heard of people being able to pop on a stove with little to no oil, but I have never seen it. Normally need oil to have a chance on the stove to get even heat. Microwave: The pre-packaged stuff has a ton of oil. In addition, the microwave works by vibrating the water molecules, to popping corn in a way is almost what it was designed for. Know, you can also pop corn without the oil quite nicely especially with gadgets to help focus the microwaves well, but the pre-packaged bags are convenient and the companies make more selling those than the gadgets. ;) Note though the bag is vented. It is actually a key thing. Also, you typically will open the bad fairly quickly when done, which lets out the steam. If you fail to do this while still fairly hot you may find the microwave corn can get soggy too. Key things for stovetop tends to be even heat and venting. Theaters use a larger version of a popper on which the device @moscafj mentioned is designed. Those designs stir the corn which increases the uniformity of the heating, so less chance of scorching, fewer inclomplete pops, but also they have hinged lids. This lets steam escape and is important to your experiment. Tight fitting lids on the stove equal trapped vapor which condenses and dumps water back onto the corn, instant soggy. On popping in butter, there you are dealing with a lower smoke point so getting the right temp for popping without scorching the oil may be tough, and the butter itself will release some of its water so may produce some good tasting, but soggy mess.

If I microwave a piece of bread until all the water is evaporated and then weigh what is left, is the caloric content estimated by finding the calories in the same weight of flour?

Conventionally, drying is only the first step. The second is burning it and seeing how much energy is given off. But this isn't always the best way to determine the calories that your body gets from the food, as it doesn't deal with bio-availability - basically, can your body extract that energy from the food? Diet foods often cellulose or other fiber added to them -- which can burn and have heat, but your body can't absorb. So for nutritional reasons, they're considered 0 Calorie. For the case of unenriched bread, we basically have only a few ingredients ... water, flour, yeast, and maybe salt. Once we remove the water, the yeast and salt are lower percentages, so we can estimate (stress estimate), but we also need to know what type of flour was used. whole wheat flour : ~339 kCal / 100 grams white flour : ~364 kCal / 100 grams (but this is likely for American whole wheat, which is white flour with bran mixed back in, not ground up whole wheat berries) Of course, it's also worth mentioning that calorie counts on menus and food packaging in the US are only estimates. There are tables of calories per item, and they just add them up in the amounts used to get a number. (so all wheat bread is considered to have the same kCalories/gram, no matter how it was made) Some of those values might just be estimates based on the ratio of carbohydrates, fat, and protein in the ingredient. But how something is cooked, and the particular person (their gut biome, how well they chew, etc.) can affect how much energy they can get from the food, so it's always going to be a really rough estimate

My daughter asked me if I could make her red bowtie pasta in honor of Matt Smith as Dr. Who. I'd rather not use an artificial dye. Either way, how would I go about coloring the pasta itself? Assume that I am starting from store-bought dry pasta. Would I have to add the dye to the water in large quantities, or would adding some to melted butter and tossing work?

You are not stating whether you are making the pasta yourself or if you are using premade pasta. I am going to assume it is the former. For red pasta, I would recommend substituting some of the liquids with beetroot juice. You will need to experiment with it to get the color right. I would also recommend trying it in pasta both with and without egg, as the yolk will play a role in how the color develops.

I've heard mention of cold-pressed honey - what does that actually mean? Would it make the honey any different? Honey isn't pressed like olive oil.

This is most likely referring to honey processed without any heating, often simply called raw honey, or possibly cold-extracted or cold-processed. It likely has more flavor and color preserved than commercially-processed honey (which uses plenty of heat), but it may not be much different from gently heated honey. It's not actually cold (honey flows really slowly when cold), just not heated. There are two primary ways honey would have been heated during processing. First and most common, most commercially sold honey has probably been heated substantially (perhaps up to 165F - 73,89ºC) to help melt crystals, allow impurities to separate, and to make sure everything's dead and safe. This definitely does affect the honey - it makes the flavor a bit more mild, and the color a bit lighter. If you're getting honey from a very small producer (maybe someone with a hive in their yard), it's also possible that they actually heated it in order to separate the honey from the beeswax. The most effective way to get honey out of the comb is to remove the caps and use a centrifuge to spin the honey out of the frames, but for hobbyist beekeepers without access to an extractor who don't want to just crush and strain it, another method is to heat the comb, letting the melted wax (it melts around 145F - 62,78ºC) float the top for easy separation. This is pretty gentle heating, and doesn't have nearly as strong an effect as the commercial processes.

Many people say you have to slow ferment your bread after shaping to give it better flavor, but I can never understand that. Why not just slow ferment the whole batch then shape it when it is done fermenting? This way is way safer as you can't ruin the proofing if you forget it a bit longer than intended and it has been giving me the desirable results I am after. Are there any advantages in slow fermenting individual breads instead of the whole batch? I am talking about crusted white bread. After the slow fermentation for the whole batch, I will just shape the bread, put it in a dutch oven and let it proof for 10-20 minutes, slash it then pop it in the oven to bake. For the other method (which I don't use) they just get it out of the fridge, slash it and pop it into the oven.

Is the meat cooked or not ? it's not clear. I would prepare the stuffing, cook it all and cool it down and stuff the cannelloni and put that in the fridge. Personally, I would bake it all, sauce included the day before and cool it down and put that in the fridge. (I treat that the same as a lasagna).

Is it a good idea to keep make a lot of them and keep them in the refrigerator? I like them for breakfast but I don't like cooking every morning. For how long I can keep them?

What Tim said. Eggs just don't hold very well, and they are very sensitive to temperature--reheating them basically will mean re-cooking them. I would never store eggs in this manner, because the texture and flavour degradation will make them unpleasant to eat. However, to actually answer your question--and again, I urge you not to do this because stored and reheated eggs will taste like garbage--cooked eggs should keep for up to 72 hours in the refrigerator. Remember to chill them as rapidly as possible after cooking, and you may wish to undercook slightly in order to minimize problems when reheating. I would use 72 hours as an absolute maximum, particularly if you are undercooking. 48 hours is probably wiser.

Tonight, the main course is: Red Baron's Chicken Alfredo. The problem is that it's a little bland so I'm trying to figure out what the best seasonings will give it more spice, or at least a more intricate taste. I'm already throwing a lot of salt and pepper in there, what else could one use?

Well, an Alfredo sauce is supposed to taste mostly buttery, with the addition of the umami taste that comes from Parmesan. You could always add spicy stuff to it, but that will change the taste into something completely different. If you want to stay true to the basics of an alfredo dish, try adding a handful of freshly grated Parmesan and (to add to the rich umami taste) some chopped sundried tomatoes. Herbs that go well with this dish are oregano and sage.

I'm very new to cooking. I bought a second-hand deep fryer, without a user manual. The dial has these numbers on it: What do the numbers mean? Do they refer to wattage, or temperature (degrees C/F?)? How do I find out what types of foods are best suited for each of those numbers, or what settings are appropriate for each food? For example, to which setting should I set the dial for fried chicken?

I am pretty certain these are degrees in Celsius. They cannot be degrees in Fahrenheit, that wouldn't deepfry a thing if they were. Similarly, unless you have a fryer which can only fry a single nugget at a time, they can't be watts, they're an order of magnitude too low for that. I have no idea what the settings "Temp" and "Min" could mean. Had they been on two different dials, I would have assumed that one sets the temperature and the other the times of heating in minutes (but the second makes only little sense since you can't leave deep frying stuff alone and come to it later after it has turned itself off). A guess would be that "Temp" is not a setting, but the label of the whole scale, and the designer erroneously added a dot like in the scale positions. Then "Min" would be keeping the oil barely warm. The degrees you choose will depend not just on the type of food, but on the exact recipe. The starting temperature of the food, the size of the food, the batter type etc. all make a difference in the choice. If your recipe doesn't tell you, you are stuck experimenting. I would suggest starting from 190 and changing from there. If you do find temperature suggestions, be sure to check with a thermometer if the setting is accurate. Most appliances outside of the sous vide niche are wildly wrong about their temperature.

Looking for a bit of inspiration for an idea I have. I want to serve 3 courses of pizza: starter, main and dessert. It's a gimmick, I know, but a fun one I think. Got the starter and main nailed, but as neither of these will look much like a standard pizza, I wanted the dessert to look just like a pizza. My (as yet untested) idea is to make a slightly sweeter base (not too sweet, toppings will add sweetness) and for toppings I am thinking: Rasberry Jam (as the red base) Mascarpone and peanut butter (as the cheese, peanut butter to add a little crunch) Caramelised Sugared banana slices (hopefully, these will come out brown enough to look a little like pepperoni) Will the above work? If so, do you have any suggestions for the execution? If not, what should I do instead?

If you make the base neutral - a typical Neopolitan dough would do - you could use white chocolate shavings to give an appearance of cheese as well. I would keep the amount light. While looking to verify this idea, I found a recipe that gave me a few more pieces of inspiration. Instead of carmelized sugar banana slices, try dried fruits (strawberries, sweetened cranberries, raspberries, etc.) for your toppings. These will look like sausage bits or pepperoni. You can also use pineapple and make it look like a Hawaiian pizza. You could also use almond cream as a white sauce or as some of your cheese for a richness that is not too sweet.

I am making chilli oil using light olive oil, crushed chilli, dried garlic, dried fennel seeds and parsley. I have been making this for years. I am concerned about this Botulinum business. Should I be concerned? And what can i do to avoid this? Currently, I heat the olive oil before putting it into the mixture, jar it, and normally keep it in the cupboard for months, with no problems with taste. Another thing I am wondering is, how does one measure the expiry date on homemade chilli oil? Can someone help?

Yes, you should be concerned. Botulism is obviously very rare, and most people never get exposed to dangerous amounts of it even if they follow unsafe practices. Nevertheless, simply heating/boiling a mason jar does not sterilize it, it only pasteurizes it, so this is an unsafe practice, especially when you add the element of room-temperature storage. Low-acid food needs to be pressure-canned. Period. It's been discussed on this site and it's covered by the FDA. Here's a relevant snippet: What is the Best Way to Prevent Botulism? The control of foodborne botulism is based almost entirely on thermal destruction (heating) of the spores or inhibiting spore germination into bacteria and allowing cells to grow and produce toxins in foods. To prevent foodborne botulism: Use approved heat processes for commercially and home-canned foods (i.e., pressure-can low-acid foods such as corn or green beans, meat, or poultry). Discard all swollen, gassy, or spoiled canned foods. Double bag the cans or jars with plastic bags that are tightly closed. Then place the bags in a trash receptacle for non-recyclable trash outside the home. Keep it out of the reach of humans and pets. Do not taste or eat foods from containers that are leaking, have bulges or are swollen, look damaged or cracked, or seem abnormal in appearance. Do not use products that spurt liquid or foam when the container is opened. Boil home-processed, low-acid canned foods for 10 minutes prior to serving. For higher altitudes, add 1 minute for each 1,000 feet of elevation. Refrigerate all leftovers and cooked foods within 2 hours after cooking (1 hour if the temperature is above 90 °F). One of the most common causes of foodborne botulism is improperly home-canned food, especially low-acid foods such as vegetables and meats. Only a pressure cooker/canner allows water to reach 240 to 250 °F, a temperature that can kill the spores. To summarize, in order to do this safely you need to do any or all of the following things (preferably all. in case you accidentally don't do one of the others correctly): Acidify or pressure-can the low-acid ingredients. Refrigerate the jars. Boil it again before consuming. (You don't need pressure-canning temperatures at this stage). (Note that I am assuming "crushed chilli" is coming from fresh chillies and not dried ones. If you are using 100% dry ingredients then it is probably safe although not 100% risk-free - see the answer to dry garlic in oil --> botulism risk?) P.S. Regarding expiration, the oil is either safe or it isn't. It's safe if it's been properly pressure canned, otherwise you should assume it isn't safe and boil it as per #3 above. If it's been properly pressure-canned, then it should be good until/unless the oil goes rancid, which is more of a function of storage conditions (temperature, light) than time, and which you'll definitely be able to taste and probably be able to smell.

I regularly make Chocolate Mousse with an egg yolk, sugar and dark chocolate base folded into whipped egg white or whipped cream (or both). It's tastes pretty good and has a nice mouth-feel. Now I want it to look good. What I have looks something like this: Instead I want it to hold a form and have a delicate velvety texture like in the image below. The recipe associated with this picture uses a lot of butter. I've seen other recipes include gelatin. What are my best bets?

The dessert pictured above definitely, definitely has gelatin in it. That will change the mouth feel on the mousse slightly, but it might be what you are going for and will provide some of the stability that you are looking for. To have it hold a form like this you will need a recipe that requires gelatin; I would recommend gelatin sheets if you can find them at a local baking/cooking supply store or order them online. The fluffiness will also be determined by several things. How were the whites whipped (too much, too little) or how was the cream whipped (again too much, too little)? There are recipes that call for both. How you incorporate all of the ingredients into one another really matters and in what order, this is called tempering. You want to fold until the mixtures are just combined; no more. Temperature is of key importance for all of the ingredients - some you want very cold while others (ie chocolate) you want to be room temperature but not too cool or it will seize up the mixture and the mousse will taste grainy. Also chocolate mousse texture can definitely be affected by the percentage and quality of chocolate you are using. If is is of a higher percentage it can create a denser mousse and deflate the whites and cream more easily.

After enjoying many of the recipes out of The Bread Baker's Apprentice I moved on to Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads to learn about how to make hearth-style 100% whole grain bread. Unfortunately my first loaf reminded me of the total flops I used to make before reading through BBA and using its recipes. It was like a bread brick. I ended up deciding that croutons were the only suitable use. Since then I've made more recipes from the book, but always using his "transitional" variant of half bread flour, half wheat flour. These have risen and proofed perfectly. The technique from Whole Grain Breads involves pre-doughs. Flour, a very small amount of yeast, and water make up one dough ball that is placed in the refrigerator overnight. More flour, salt, and water are left as another dough ball on the counter overnight. Both enzyme activity and the rise in the fridge contribute to the texture and taste of the resulting bread, at least as far as I understand the theory. The next day the final dough is formed, allowed to rise once and proof once, and bake. With my first loaf I attempted a free-standing boule. I know that surface tension is critical to getting a boule to rise up and not out, but I am pretty sure that my surface tension on the boule was correct. For the transitional loaves since I've used a loaf pan and a sandwich shape, which may have helped them to rise. I've also done transitional pitas which seemed to puff up just fine during rising, even during proofing as small boules before rolling out. I don't want to try the 100% whole grain recipe again without knowing that it will work. I know that some bakers add vital wheat gluten to 100% whole grain recipes to ensure that they rise, but it seems like Reinhart's recipes should work without the additional gluten. Any other ideas for what may have gone wrong?

You said that the dough rose but then didn't proof. Lightly textured whole wheat bread is difficult for two reasons- 1- There isn't as much gluten. 2- The gluten that is there tends to get cut up by sharp wheat fragments. The result is, as with all poor gluten development, that the loaves have trouble maintaining their structure, don't rise as well, and the result is the dense, tough, or doughy bread that most people think of with horror when they think of whole wheat. There are a couple ways to deal with this problem- 1- Use very very finely ground wheat flour. If you can feel gritty shards then it will have trouble rising. 2- Add vital wheat gluten. This may be seen as cheating and is similar to the transitional recipes that you said you had success with. Many whole wheat recipes call for extra gluten. If you don't add more gluten in some form you can make a successful boule but don't expect it to be as light and open as one made with white flour. What you might lose in delicateness you will more than make up for in flavor and nutrition.

If I make a loaf and slow proof it in the refrigerator, I find that sometimes it will collapse in the middle. I know this is happening because there is a large air pocket in the cling film above the bread. Is there anything I can do to rescue a loaf once this has happened? The objective is to let it rise overnight so that I can bake it first thing in the morning without having to knock it back and do a second rise.

Normally, you would not be doing a final proof overnight—that is, the proof that you have done to form the loaf. Instead, you would do the first ferment or proof overnight, then form the loaf, let it have its final proof, and then bake it. The dough won't be wasted, but you don't want to bake a formed loaf that has over-proofed and fallen. This is because the gluten network will have collapsed and you will have a very poor structure and strange texture. You will need to reknead the dough, form the loaf, and reproof it: Per The Fresh Loaf, you can almost certainly just punch the dough down, and let it proof again. It may actually have an improved flavor. Cook's Illustrated concurs: Using your fingertips, gently punch down the over-proofed dough and reshape it into a ball, then allow it to proof again for the recommended amount of time although it warns your final loaf may be about 20% smaller.

When cooking with wine or other booze does the alcohol have an affect on the cooking process? Example: deglazing a pan or making a wine-based sauce. My understanding is that the alcohol evaporates quickly, so the booze is mostly there to add flavor and act as a liquid medium, and thus substitutible by another liquid, e.g. stock. Is there more going on than this?

Milk contains several components, most notably fat, sugar, and protein. These all add to the browning effect when cooked at high temperature (proteins cooked together with either sugars or fats undergo the "Maillard reaction"). The browned bits do have significant extra flavor, but it does not taste like milk. Egg white, by itself, is pure protein. It is typically used in pre-baked ("blind baked") pie shells because the dense protein creates a water-resistant coating when it cooks, so that the crust won't get too soggy when a liquid filling is added later on. Quiche is a great example of this application. Like milk, the egg white will add no flavor of its own, just the flavor associated with browning. Egg white is also used in low-cholesterol cooking. Egg whites will brown some, but not as much as milk unless the pastry itself provides extra fats and sugars for the proteins to react with. Egg wash -- beaten whole eggs, usually mixed with a little water -- is more typically used to get pastries to brown.

In the movie, "The Sunset Limited" Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson eat a dish which I'm dying to know what it is. They say it has molasses, rutabaga, bananas and mangoes in it, and it's sort of liquid. Can anyone try and say what that is, and where I can find a complete recipe to make such a recipe? (If you are up for the challenge, maybe you can create one yourselves to include the ingredients above.) This is the bit I am talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfH9SclYNVg&t=13m20s. Also including a readable text link to the novel transcript.

A synopsis of the play says this about the dish: In the second movement, White agrees to eat a meal of multi-cultural soul-food Black prepares for him, relishing it and Black's stories of prison life. In Black's description in the clip you linked, he says that he learned to prepare it "right here in the ghetto" and that "there are a lot of different influences" from people that come from all over the world. It sounds like the dish is a metaphor for Black's world, or perhaps for his view of the world. Black also says that it gets better after a couple days, that you have to heat it up a few times to get the flavors right, "like chilli." This may be a continuation of the food as life metaphor, but if you take it literally you'd have to guess that the dish itself is a kind of stew. So, given those clues, if you wanted to make something similar to what Black prepared, I think you'd start by thinking of stew recipes. Ingredients include molasses, banana, rutabaga, and mango, so you've got a mix of starch and sweet. Black and White share this as a meal, not a dessert, so I think you'd want to balance that sweetness with something savory and salty, maybe a ham hock. Onion would also add a savory-sweet flavor that could work with both smoky ham and the sweet ingredients. From there you could add other ingredients, probably whatever you have on hand -- corn, okra, carrots, raisins...

A mille-feuille (or tompouce) is a pastry, consisting of layers of puff pastry with pastry cream in-between (see this if you don't know it). If you buy it in a pastry store, I find that the glazed top is unique for this pastry. Recipes online tell me that it's confectioner sugar and egg whites, but I think it's something else. It's solid, yet soft. You can see your tooth print in it. It's white and sweet. I can't exactly explain how it differs from regular egg white/sugar icing, but in my opinion it does. Does anybody have a clue what I'm talking about? Do you know what's in it? Or is it just a basic egg white/sugar icing, and is my mind playing tricks on me?

Mille feuille (Napoleon), eclairs and petit fours, to name but a few, are definitely iced with fondant pastry - also known as poured fondant. Not a royal icing. There are 3 types of fondant: Pastry Fondant - known as poured fondant Confectioners Fondant - can be interchangeable as poured fondant. Rolled Fondant Both poured and confectioners are identical to the naked eye. The difference being the addition of cream of tartar for the sugar inversion. "Paul Bras" was absolutely correct in his answer. As a semi-retired pastry chef I still make Fondant at home. No longer using a marble slab and spatulas. A modern twist, a food processor will work the hot paste 50C (120F) to a perfect smooth finish in much less time. Poured and stored in zip lock plastic bags.

I find it hard to figure out how much salt to add to dishes. I'm always afraid I'll make it too salty. Recipes always call for salt to taste, but what does that mean? Is there a good rule of thumb?

I've noticed that salty food has somewhat of an addictive quality; people who eat a lot of it (i.e. fast food or other processed food) tend to bury their meals under a mountain of salt, whereas people such as myself who do a lot of home cooking hardly use (or want) any. "Season to taste" means pretty much what it sounds like; add however much salt (and other spices) that you, personally, like the taste of. If you have a habit of eating a lot of salty foods, then you might want to add a little less than that, for the benefit of people like me who gag at heavily-salted foods. If you use a lot of other spices, you won't need much salt - a few shakes of the shaker is enough. If the food is basically bland aside from the salt (and maybe pepper), then you'll need to use more. The best thing to do is add a little, then taste, and repeat as many times as it takes to get the flavour you want. If the food you're seasoning is still raw (and can't be eaten raw), then just put in a small amount the first time you make it and keep track of how much table salt you needed to add. Just remember, you can always add salt later, but a dish that's too salty is permanently ruined.

Most noodle soup recipes that I see call for boiling and draining the noodles separately, then adding them to the broth already cooked. Is there any reason that I can't just add the dry noodles 10 minutes before the soup is done, and add a little extra water or broth to compensate for that the noodles take? Doing it this way would allow the noodles to take up some of the broth's flavor, and also save dirtying an extra pot and a colander.

similar to what julio said, the main reason is that typical wheat-based noodles release a lot of starch into the water, which changes the consistency of the soup. the starches can add a dirty colour to the water, but more than that, they can also thicken the soup undesirably (think of making a roux). Finally, if there are leftovers, the noodles can sometimes become completely water logged, making eating it the next day a bit of a soggy experience. That said, with all these considerations there are times when you might add the noodles directly in-- non-starchy noodles (eg. like rice noodles) seem to do ok. also parboiling regular pasta before hand seems to help a lot with the starch and can still help you achieve the flavour integration you mentioned.

I use coconut milk for a pasta dishes, then put the carton back in the fridge. I may use some of it for a coffee additive, the use plenty more for another pasta dish or recipe. Alas, I do not cook at home all that often, and sometimes the stored coconut milk tastes bad, so I toss it and go to the store for a fresh carton. What is the shelf life, in a fridge, of coconut milk? Is it actually bad if it tastes bad, or could it still be used at least for some purposes? How to tell if it's about to go bad even if I can't smell anything out of line?

Refrigerated coconut-based milk substitutes like Silk Pure Coconut or So Delicious Coconut Milk have a stated lifespan of 7-10 days after opening. I've had cartons last longer than that without any change in taste or smell, but if it started tasting bad or smelling funky I would toss it. Unfortunately, this type of coconut milk product does not reconstitute well after freezing.

I recently tried unflavored yoghurt with a teaspoon of cinnamon, and for some reason, the combination tasted sweet. Are there any food combinations that accomplish this? The yoghurt was non-fat; I'm assuming that because both ingredients contained carbs consequently any other combinations that also work would perhaps need to be 'carby' ingredients. The nutrition facts of the yoghurt per 100 ml: energy: 21 kcal protein: 1.8 g carbohydrates: 2.8 g fat: 0.3 g sodium: 0.25 g

I've imported a dragon beard candy product from Hong Kong in the increasingly-distant past. The company I worked with used a maltose-based solution that had been boiled (wheat germ sugar). They'd typically heat the puck in a microwave or hot water bath before shaping the dragon beard candy so that it would be soft enough to work, but still have the tensile strength to hold together while stretching and pulling. I would seriously doubt that uncooked honey, even fermented, would be sufficient to obtain the structure required for dragon beard candy. What honey does provide, though, assuming this is 100% honey, is a good mix of fructose, maltose and glucose to help control crystallization as it cools. It's not clear to me whether that vendor (I presume you're referring to the one in Insadong) "ferments" the honey before or after boiling, but I expect they would have fermented it beforehand. This is likely to affect the ratio of sugars present and maybe result in a bit of alcohol, but there are several mechanisms possible to ferment honey, including raw honey. I'm not sure how critical the fermentation step is for a honey-based dragon beard candy; for a wheat germ based or barley-based sugar, the amylase reaction is essentially what yields the maltose (since otherwise you're just eating the grain germ). In any event, ultimately the boiling step is what controls the crystallization needed to produce dragon beard candy. Thanks to some combination of trade secrets and language issues, I never learned with absolute certainty whether traditional dragon beard candy is boiled to soft crack to hard crack stage, though I'm inclined to believe the versions for which storage is possible reach something very close to hard crack stage and therefore need the softening step. For what it's worth, I've done the hand-stretching process with the guidance of the master confectioner of the dragon beard candy company and it's quite stiff. Attempts at duplicating it at home with my own sugar solution had mixed results; it does take some experimentation (or training) to get it right.

If I am making an egg pasta, can I substitute quinoa flour for wheat flour (semolina, durum, all purpose, etc)? Or will the presence of the eggs not be enough to offset the absence of gluten, and I would need to add another binder (I am thinking xanthum gum or potato starch)?

I have never tried making pasta with just quinoa flour, but use a mix of potato starch and corn flour. So my pasta contains a lot of starch. The issue is that the pasta gets really short and need to be handled quite carefully after rolling it. I have used it to make tagliatelle, ravioli, spaghetti, lasagna and tortellini with great success (my comparison is store bought pasta, not normal pasta as I haven't eaten that in 10 years when I found out I was allergic). I don't really have a recipe, as I never follow them. But for one person I add two egg yolks, one whole egg, ~1 tablespoon of olive oil and some random mix of the flour until it feels smooth and nice to work with. I have found the resting time of this pasta to be essential, and I always allow it to rest for at least 20 minutes.

Two nights ago, I made a roast. Not wanting to waste anything I kept most of the left over beef broth (about 3-4 cups). My current idea is to turn this beef broth into a soup or a stew. Here's what I was thinking: Skim the fat chucks off the top of the broth (left there by the roast) For a stew I would add in carrots, celery, onions, garlic, and use a potato to naturally thicken the broth as it cooks. For a soup, I would probably just add the vegetables mentioned above minus the potato and then thicken a bit with some cornstarch. Is this the best way to go about it? Is this a good use of the left over broth?

The broth can be used for pretty much any soup...if the soups says to add in stock, use the broth instead. I use broth from ham for making lentil soup, and from a roast use it in pretty much any kind of soup! Sounds tasty :) Enjoy!

When you make sourdough bread, you usually want more sourdough if you are using a flour with a low percentage of gluten ( minor strength ) and less sourdough if your flour has a good strength . Now there is a clear connection between the acidity of the sourdough and the gluten ( or protein ) in order to achieve the perfect balance: what is the actual link ?

The link you are looking for is the balance between structure provided by gluten and structure provided by starch. When there is a lower percentage of gluten, starch has to remain intact to give the bread structure. So, when using a lower gluten flour to make bread you use more sourdough starter so that you can develop a higher level of acidity. This acidity reduces activity of the enzyme alpha amylase and leaves more of the starch intact. Not developing significant acidity quickly enough will lead to a gummy dough that will collapse during baking.

I'm making Kimchi for the first time and I have two questions about air bubble removal. First, all the recipes I've seen say to press the Kimchi down to remove air bubbles. My batch had a few small bubbles lower in the jar, probably the size of a lentil or less, and when I tried pushing down deep enough to get them out, it tended to just introduce more air bubbles around the muddler I was using to press it. Short of putting the jar in a centrifuge, I don't see how I could get these small bubbles out. How strict should I be about initial air bubble removal? Is it ok to have a few very small bubbles like the one highlighted below? Second, I see after the first day that some larger bubbles have formed lower down in the jar. This picture shows a larger bubble after 24 hours of fermentation which was definitely not there when I initially jarred and packed the veggies down: Recipes I've seen tell you to push the solid contents down below the surface of the brine periodically as it ferments. Should I also try to remove new/larger bubbles as they form during fermentation? I.e. by pushing deeper into the jar with a muddler. Or does doing so risk contaminating the environment with new external bacteria?

Small air bubbles are normal and make no difference to kimchi fermentation, nor do larger bubbles that form during fermentation. As long as the kimchi remains more or less submerged in the liquid, there’s no need to remove the trapped gas. Kimchi is an extremely difficult thing to mess up - once established, the lactic acid bacterial culture will murder any microbes that get in its way - so i think that manually degassing it would probably be okay, but it would serve no purpose.

Every time I make a 100% rye sourdough, it sticks to the knife when I cut it even after letting it sit for a day before cutting. Is this normal? I have tried to vary the hydration ratio a bit, but it still behaves the same way. Is there some "additive" to make it less sticky? Is it a must to add wheat for that? The sourdough starter I maintain is simple: 2 cups of flour and 2 cups of water. I dissolve malt syrup, molasses, salt, and spices in a warm .5-1 cup of water. Then I add starter, 4 cups of flour, mix it and transfer right away into loaf pan. AFAIK there is no need to fold 100% rye bread and it raises fast. I bake it at 350˚F for slightly over an hour. I sometimes use Nu Wave infrared oven (40 min), but the very bottom is not quite crispy. The final bread looks and tastes good. But that stickiness on the knife and rolled "crumbs" are driving me crazy. Is there something I can do to minimize it? I heard that an over-proofed starter can help lower pH; helping pentosans keep bread structure and making them absorb less water. I tried making the bread with a well proofed starter, but it made no difference. Do I have not enough starter for that amount of flour? Shall I move some flour there to prevent pH from raising much? Here is the pic to get an idea. It is not the best one to show the issue. The bread is almost a week old and the issue is not as acute. For 1 day old bread, it sticks incredibly.

One cause of gumminess in 100% rye breads is excessive starch degradation related to amylase enzyme actions. Amylase action is slowed down by increasing acidity. You can increase the acidity by adding a small amount of lemon juice or cream of tartar to your dough as described here. In his books "Whole Grain Breads" and "Crust and Crumb", Peter Reinhart comments that you can use ascorbic acid (1/8 tsp / 125 mg per loaf) to increase acidity and inhibit both amylase and protease activity. Since rye bread doesn't have significant gluten for structure, but instead relies completely on starches and pentosans, it is imperative to let the loaf cool completely before cutting it so that the starches crystallize and the gums solidify.

I've heard about people eating escargot, but are slugs just as edible? I live in MN USA, and came across some all tan ones, but had no camera at the time.

Slugs are not poisonous, but in the wild can pick up the parasite Angiostrongylus cantonensis, also known as rat lungworm, from rodent scat. The parasites can produce a toxic reaction that causes eosinophilic meningitis in humans.

I'm a reasonably competent home cook: I can roast a chicken, bake bread, improvise a dinner with what's in the fridge, etc, but I'm looking to step up my game a bit. How do I look at a recipe and decide if it's a good next step in learning to cook? I would like to make good use of my time and energy; for example some things might be too ambitious, or some things might not teach me much.

In my view this is pretty simple: make things you want to eat. As long as you cast your net wide enough as you look for recipe ideas, there will always be new things that you'd love to eat and will learn something from making. And as long as you want to eat the food, you'll be motivated enough to actually follow through and do it. Most of the time, this will mean making things where you're mostly comfortable with the recipe, but there are some new parts you haven't tried before. It might be new combinations of ingredients and flavors, which will broaden the creative side of your cooking. It might be new techniques, which will enable you to make more things in the future. To oversimplify, when you look at a recipe, if practically every step sounds new or difficult, maybe save it for later; if most of it gives you an "I can do this" feeling, go for it! It's fine to take on bigger projects too, of course, as long as you go into it with the understanding that you might want to try parts of it by themselves first (or that things might fail the first time). Either way, be sure to cast a wide net: skim cookbooks, read food blogs, browse recipe database sites or food photography sites, and so on. There's always a lot out there that you'll surely want to try and just don't know it yet. But above all, just seek out things that look good to you (or your friends/family). The rest will follow.

I plan to cook a thai dish this weekend and I search for drinks to serve along to that. In particular it will be a chicken dish with lemon gras. This is forked from another question of mine.

I know you're looking for likely alcoholic drinks, but the ever popular Thai Iced Tea is great because the cream in the Thai iced tea cuts the heat from the Thai spices. So even in that vein, I would suggest creamy drinks. I know the cultures are not similar, but it seems like white russians would taste great with Thai food. Here's a link of creamy drinks: http://www.cocktailsonline.tv/cream.html

Are there tricks for baking thick and fluffy pita bread? The ones I make come out fine, with an even puff and nice pockets, but they are on the thin side. I would really love to be able to make thicker ones, like those common in the Middle East.

I accidentally made a thick pita by simply rolling my pitas thicker. In my experience, technique is king with pita. The temperature of the oven (I bake at 450 degrees) and making sure to roll smoothly without any punctures in the dough, then place directly on the rack make perfectly puffy pitas every time. The thickness of the dough surrounding the pocket is entirely dependent - in my case - on how thick I roll. I use the lavash cracker recipe from Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice as my dough.

I'm trying to stay low on sodium so I limit salt intake to minimum wherever possible (most of it comes from bread, fermented vegetables or a tiny dash here and there for seasoning) For vegetables I use 2% salt to water ratio brine as most fermentation recipes call for Why the 2% and why at all? Is the salt just for seasoning or does it have anything to do with safety? If I get it right, the whole point of fermentation is for the good bacteria to grow, out-crowd the bad bacteria, and act as a natural preservative; So what purpose does salt serve in the ferment other than flavor? How much of the salt/sodium is soaked into the vegetable during fermentation and storage? (7-10 days at room temp and then in the fridge for consumption in about a month)

The salt is very important from a safety perspective, yes. The good, desirable, lactobacillus bacterial cultures that will produce a safely fermented product don't always or naturally overwhelm "bad" or undesirable cultures. You have essentially no control over the mix of bacteria in and on whatever you're fermenting; all you can control is the starting environment. The purpose of the salt is to make that environment more favorable to lactobacillus, and less favorable to other stuff - mold, spores, potentially harmful bacteria that is inhibited by salt. Lactobacillus can tolerate a saline environment; another place it lives is in your own gut (it's a major part of the human digestive microbiota) which has a fair amount of dissolved sodium. Adding salt to your ferment helps create an initial environment in which primarily lactobacillus thrives, giving it time to rapidly take over, crowd out other bacteria, and eventually produce enough lactic acid to prevent other salt-tolerant cultures from growing. Why 2%? Much less won't inhibit other bacteria enough; too much will also impede the desirable lactobacilli. The good cultures simply "like" that salt concentration. As far as absorption, I would expect that through osmosis the salt balance would roughly equalize inside and outside the vegetables. There will be some initial water weight inside the vegetables not included in the 2% ratio of your brine; how much depends on the vegetable and quantity. The water ratio in the brine may also increase slightly due to evaporation; it's probably conservative to say that this effect will be no larger than the water drawn out of the vegetables, and that the maximum salt content of the final fermented vegetables will be no higher than 2% by weight.

Noticed a few spidery lines in this pie plate before using in the oven, then many more appeared after use. The glazing on the outside is still solid and smooth and the lines aren’t seen from the bottom. Is the plate going to crack apart? Still safe to use?

TL;DR: that's just surface crazing, it's probably fine, but ... Potter of 30 years experience here. What you're seeing there is called "crazing". It happens because the glaze doesn't "fit" the underlying clay perfectly, and as a result it has hairline cracks all over the plate. This is very common with high-silica clear glazes, and pretty much universal with celedon. Those cracks were always there from when the plate was made, and you're just seeing them now because they got stuff into them (more on this below). Surface crazing is generally considered harmless, except that it can lead to other problems in foodware. First, the crazing weakens the underlying clay, and can lead to cracking while in use. The second problem is that liquid from food can seep into those cracks, and into the clay body if it's porous even after firing (non-vitreous). Given the "bleed" you seem to be getting around the cracks where the plate has had pie in it, I'd be concerned about this. Bacteria can grow in those cracks and even in the clay body during storage, making the pie plate unsanitary, particularly if then used for low-temperature pies (like key lime). So, this is a case of "use it if it's the only pie plate you have, but if you have others, switch to them".

I have some deer bones I would like to cook into broth. All the recipes I found call for slow cooking many hours. Is it possible to fast cook it on a stove top (1-2 hrs max)?

Yes, you can, if you use a pressure cooker. You can easily create stocks and bone broth in less than an hour. I prefer this method. I make all my stocks in a pressure cooker. I save a lot of time, and the flavor extraction is excellent. I ramp up the alliums, because their flavor tends to get muted in the pressure cooker. Otherwise prepare as if you were cooking your stove the traditional way. Then, cook at the highest setting for 20 minutes to an hour. Let the pressure come down naturally. Strain.

When cooking quick breads in foil pans should they be placed on a cookie sheet or set on oven rack?

There's no reason you have to put foil pans on a tray, they can be put directly on the rack if you like. There's no reason not to either, it's a matter of convenience. If you want a scientific answer a tray will interfere with air circulation a little, but not enough it makes a real difference to baking times or the end result. Using a tray can be a good idea if the pans are too flexible to handle easily, and also if you are baking many of them at once putting many on one tray makes it faster to get them in and out.

I just made Hervé This' Chocolate Chantilly and it didn't taste anywhere near as good as I had hoped. The consistency seemed almost right, though very slightly grainy, but the taste was, well, what you might expect: watered down chocolate. Does anyone know what, if anything, might have gone wrong? I'm using Weiss chocolate with 57% cocoa solids. I was expecting it to taste something like chocolate mousse. Do I need to alter my expectations?

This dish should taste like the chocolate you use and have the texture of a mousse. I'm not familiar with Weiss chocolate, but I don't think 57% is adequate. I would suggest at least 70%. Perhaps you should try a different brand? Again, I'm not familiar with Weiss, but is it any good? Do you like the taste of the chocolate alone? You should. If you try a different brand, I'd suggest Valrhona. Update The graininess is a result of over whisking. If you over whisk you can simply return it to the pot and start again. Also, I looked up Weiss chocolate with 57% cocoa solids, and I'm more confident that this is the primary cause of your flavor problems. The breakdown for this is: 57% Cocoa, 42% Sugar, 36% Fat (the fat is included in the cocoa solid). Cocoa butter (the fat) is what carries the chocolate flavor (provided by the non-fat cocoa solids) and provides the richness and body of the chocolate. Chocolates with 57% Cocoa typically contain 33-36% fat content. Whereas chocolate with 70% cocoa solids typically have a fat content in the range of 40-42%. This lack of fat can lead to a "blander" taste in the finished dish. Another thing to keep in mind is that this dish gives you a fair amount of wiggle room. If you whip it up and it feels like it's still lacking in some fat, then melt it, add more chocolate and start over. If you end up with something that isn't light enough, you can simply start over and add a little more water. As long as you don't burn anything you can do this indefinitely. Finally, if you feel like experimenting you can use something besides water. In the original article Herve This recommended orange juice or blackcurrant puree. Another Update I found a video that uses tea in place of water. It also demonstrates how to do it without whisking, using a N₂O siphon.

In a recipe I am trying to make this weekend, I saw the following: "2 cups dried Great Northern Beans, soaked, cooked and drained" Where can I find these? I could not find them at my local grocery store. Are there any substitutions that would work well?

They are a small, white, mildly flavored bean. You can use cannellini or navy beans instead.

What is with chicken that it is used most of the time as the "main" product of most fast foods, specially in the US? Is chicken easier to prepare? to cook? What is with chicken?

In a global view, chicken is the meat product least likely to be objectionable to various sub-groups (other than vegetarian/vegan sub-groups.) Beef and pork are taboo foods for various religions and this will presumably alter the menu in locations where those religions predominate. I'm presently not aware of any group which eats meat that deems chicken unsuitable. KFC, previously known as "Kentucky Fried Chicken" will, of course, be chicken-centric. They have other sub-brands (i.e. Taco Bell) which sell other meats. Chicken is hardly the predominant meat product in USA McDonalds. They sell mostly ground beef patties.

There are many "foil" meal recipes online that are quick and easy. http://www.bettycrocker.com/menus-holidays-parties/mhplibrary/recipes/15-foil-pack-favorites However, they all have cooking times based on the ingredients being thawed. I would like to make these meals and then freeze them for later use. Is there a good method for determining the proper cook time in an oven for frozen ingredients compared to thawed?

I think your best solution will be to thaw them before you cook them and then follow the same time and temperature settings (unless the contents start out hot, which they do in some cases). As long as you remember move them to the fridge in the morning or the evening before, they should be defrosted enough by the time dinner comes around. Cooking raw meat from frozen is not (in my opinion) a good idea. The outside will start defrosting and cooking long before the inside even defrosts, which means you're likely going to have issues with very undercooked centers of your food... which is particularly an issue with chicken. And, even if you do wait to take it off the grill until the chicken is fully cooked through, the outside will likely be overcooked and unpalatable.

Often in baking, instructions say to mix wet and dry separately, then add wet to dry. Chemically, shouldnt mixing it all into one single mushy lump produce the same mixture of ingredients as mixing dry and wet separately and then combining? Why bother separating the two (and dirtying more bowls along the way)?

It's easier to mix a small amount of ingredient such as salt or baking powder uniformly into a dry mixture than it is to mix it uniformly into a dough. If you mix everything at once, the these ingredients will tend to clump in a small amount of dough instead of mixing uniformly in. It's rather unpleasant to eat the few cookie(s) with all the salt. You can still mix everything thoroughly once wet, but most people do not have the patience to do so.

Fresh bought chicken, marinated for about 3-4 hours in fresh cream and spices when baked in the oven comes out as chewy at times. We have also tried marinating using yoghurt and changing the cooking time but its not as soft as it should be. What could we be doing wrong?

There are two main causes of chewiness in chicken when cooked this way: Overcooking. Overcooked chicken is chewy, possibly stringy, and dry. Dried out on the outside. Especially if the skin is removed, the outside may dry out (as well as overcook, even if the inside is not overcooked), leaving a leathery and unpleasant aspect to the chicken. The solution for the first is not to overcook. Use an instant read thermometer to know when chicken is done (approximately 155-160 F for white meat, 165 F - 180 F depending on your preference for dark meat). The solution to the second is to cover, either with the sauce or braising liquid, or aluminum foil or similar so that it cannot dry out.

I semi- regularly make my own dried, aged meat. As the first step, I keep it for 24-48 hours in sugar. Sugar sucks water out beautifully and when I'm done with it, it's dripping wet. So I have 10kg of dripping wet sugar that cannot go into compost bin (meat byproduct, not allowed by law where I live), and cannot be put in the general trash bin (trash should be dry). How can I get rid of it, without using large amount of water and risking pipe clogging? Environmentally friendly ways preferred.

There are a couple options, in increasing order of effort: Pour it down the sink. Sucrose forms a saturated aqueous solution at ~200 g sucrose per 100 g water at 15C/~60F - for 10 kg of dry sucrose, you'd need a minimum ~5 L tap cold water to dissolve it - without accounting for the water it's already absorbed. You can add this water to the sugar before pouring down the drain to dissolve it first, and if you knew the mass of water absorbed you can subtract that amount. There's low risk of clogging since sucrose readily dissolves in water - and if it does, add hot water. Added clarification for dissolving sugar: ~5 litres of tap-cold, 15C water is the minimum amount physically required to dissolve ~10 kg sucrose for energy and water-saving purposes. More water can be used to dissolve this. Dissolved sucrose flows easily and further dilutes very readily. The same cannot be said for other types of fluid sugars, i.e. high-fructose corn syrup, honey, caramel - these flow and dissolve very differently, and in the case of honey, may rapidly crystallize before dissolving. The experimental solubility of sucrose in water (grams per gam) is 1.94 @15C, 1.89 @10c, 1.85 @5C, 1.81 @0C. Given a worst-case scenario with 10 kg sucrose saturated solution at 15C being instantaneously chilled and ignoring the enthalpy of crystallization: At 10C, 258 g sucrose will precipitate, requiring an additional 138 mL of water (slightly more than half a cup) to remain dissolved; At 5C, 464 g sucrose will precipitate, requiring an additional 251 mL of water (one cup) to remain dissolved; At 0C, 671 g sucrose will precipitate, requiring an additional 371 mL of water to remain dissolved - if your indoor pipes are at 0C, you've got bigger problems to worry about. The kitchen sink and not flush toilets is the preferred disposal receptacle for both efficiency of water use and ease of addressing clogs. Both should have p-bends/air traps to stop sewer gases entering the home, though the kitchen sink will 1) be more easily accessible with the trap normally in a vertical line under the sink drain, 2) the toilet's thermal mass may rapidly cool any added hot water, and 3) some toilets may feature multiple bend traps, leaving undissolved sugar stuck in harder to reach areas. Regardless, both sinks and toilets will clog if enough solid sugar is dumped in as it settles. Figures of toilet cross-sections from Wikipedia. Graph from The Engineering Toolbox. Store the sugar in the fridge uncovered and allow it to slowly desiccate before disposing in garbage. Requires space, preferably at the bottom for food safety, and a larger surface area for faster drying. Air dry the sugar outside and then dispose in garbage. There is a risk that it may generate odours and attract pests during drying. For future projects, would you consider reusable silica dessicants? Dehydration time would be longer and you'd need a larger volume container, but you would also not need to have it in direct contact with the meat. Unconventional option: heat the sugar to boil off the water and make meaty caramel. If you enjoy salted caramel flavours, this might add extra Maillard browning complexity from the dissolved meat proteins and other compounds.

I often sea sea salt sold in grinders to be used at the table, with comments about how it tastes better. What sort of taste differences would I notice using sea salt vs table salt, and what other differences might using one over the other impart? I've also noticed people say that regular table salt is unhealthy, but that sea salt is somehow healthier for you.

I can say, as a salt snob, that sea salt is a far more flavorful product. I can't even use regular table salt anymore. Sea salt is salt formed from evaporated sea water, is not iodized, and because it doesn't come from salt mines requires very little processing. Some people will say that because it's "natural", sea salt must be better for you. The mayo clinic seems to disagree: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/sea-salt/AN01142

I like to preserve as much as possible from my cooking and trash as little as possible. With that in mind: can chicken skeleton be made edible? or is there a way for the bone marrow to be extracted and cooked? Or does it exist a reason for why it is a bad idea to consume chicken skeleton?

Chicken bones have a tendency to 'splinter' when 'mashed' (as in chewed upon), which is why you never give chicken bones to a dog. This applies equally to humans, if we gnaw on a chicken bone it is more like to create a harmful splinter that may find itself lodged in any number of places in your digestive system. That said, as has been commented above, extracting the flavorful marrow and those 'last little bits' from the carcass can be achieved by making stock. If you are wanting to reduce the waste, I would then recommend drying and grinding the remaining bones to provide calcium into your compost. [Edit] Interesting comments from @JohnEye & @Molot prompted a bit of research. Here is an article from WebMD that supports my original statement. Is Eating Chicken Bones Bad For Our Health Other articles suggest that some people do this, but I would still conclude that it is not safe to do so, though apparently it can be done.