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And how can I avoid them? This happens a lot when I make just regular white bread and almost every time I make cinnamon swirl bread. The top swirl creates a really big gap no matter how tight I roll the dough. Thoughts?

It's typically a problem with large pockets of air in the dough before you bake it. For the cinnamon swirl bread, try to make sure that you're not getting air trapped when rolling it. For other loaves, you want to make sure to punch it down well after the first rise, and make sure you aren't trapping air in it if you're doing a stretch and fold when shaping it.

Duck is high in fat, so when roasting a whole duck you can end up with a lot of fat left with the duck inside the skin and soggier skin. How should the duck be prepared to avoid this?

Among poultry, duck is exceptionally fatty, and a lot of its fat is directly underneath the skin. This can present a challenge when cooking, because we want the fat to render out and the skin to become crispy and delicious. The most common way to do this, classically, is to: Dock (or less commonly, score) the skin all over, to permit the fat an exit path (when doing this, be careful to cut through the skin into the fat layer, but hopefully not into the meat itself) Roast at a relatively low temperature for to permit the fat time to melt and drip away; many recipes then finish on a higher temperature for crisping and browning Like all poultry, salting the duck a day ahead, and then letting it sit in the refrigerator will also promote crispiness, but it is far less of a factor with duck which cooks and renders for a longer period of time.

I am trying to create a few new recipes and I am stuck on what other ingredients (flavours) would go well with espresso in a baked item.

Diane, You may want to consider flavors that are existing compliments to coffee. Think of the many syrups that are available at your local coffeehouse. Things that easily come to mind are chopped hazelnuts or almonds, caramel frosting/icing, cinnamon and nutmeg as spices, chocolate chips or cherries.

This is a common pack of Lavazza ground coffee: but at the bottom there is this symbol: What does it mean? And what is specific about France here?

I think it's a recycling vs. trash thing. If I understand the imagery, the coffee bag should go in the trash in France and it should go in the recycling bin in other EU (mostly) countries.

I read from wiki that: Assam (Assamese: অসম, Hindi: आसाम, and also Hindi: असम) is a black tea named after the region of its production, Assam, in India. Assam tea (Assamese: অসমীয়া চাহ, Hindi: असमिया चाय) is manufactured specifically from the plant Camellia sinensis var. assamica (Masters).1 This tea, most of which is grown at or near sea level, is known for its body, briskness, malty flavor, and strong, bright color. Assam teas, or blends containing Assam, are often sold as "breakfast" teas. English Breakfast tea, Irish Breakfast tea, and Scottish Breakfast Tea are common generic names. [3] Is it true? I need Assam tea for brewing a good cup of Chai Tea. If they are the same stuff, then I don't need go down to Chungking Mansions' indian store for it. ( I live in Hong Kong ) I can just grap one English Breakfast Tea in supermarket. However, in this wiki about English Breakfast Tea, the tea leaves could also come from Ceylon and Kenya: English Breakfast tea is a traditional blend of teas originating from Assam, Ceylon and Kenya. It is one of the most popular blended teas and the most common form of British tea culture. It was initially known simply as Breakfast Tea, and was popularised by Queen Victoria.

I believe that 'English Breakfast Tea' is a very broad definition and doesn't refer to an exact blend; each manufacturer has their own version of it. I would say that English Breakfast Tea often includes Assam, but as your Wiki source suggests it also contains other teas. Therefore Assam is a separate tea.

I am using the spatchcock method of roasting a turkey breast. I have found cooking time per pound for a whole turkey. I thought roasting a turkey breast was less time per pound vs. a whole turkey. So bottom line, what is the roasting time per pound for a spatchcock turkey breast?

The answers duck the question. No, you don't determine doneness by time, only by temperature, but when you're planning a meal, you don't want to have the potatoes done and still have to wait two hours for the turkey. So, you CAN estimate cooking times based on research/experience. I smoke my turkeys so I'm smoking at about 250F. I also spatchcock the birds to even cooking and speed cooking times. But I know I can figure ROUGHLY 15 minutes per pound for whole turkey or breast. If you cook a whole bird or a whole breast not spatchcocked estimate ROUGHLY 30 minutes per pound. If you're roasting at higher temps, cut your estimate to probably 12 minutes per pound spatchcocked, and 20-25 minutes per pound not spatchcocked.

I'm new to baking in general, and I've been recently trying to make a simple pizza bread. But the problem is that after I bake the bread in the oven, it seems like the bread isn't as elastic as I want it to be.. I use the basic ingredients which are: Flour Yeast Sugar Water The bread is fine.. it rises and it looks good.. but you can barely stretch it, a very little of pulling is required to tear it apart and it forms cracks very easily.. I'd love to know how I could change that and make the bread stronger and more elastic? Thank you!

Gluten is a protein that gives bread elasticity. Water makes gluten spirals relax, and kneading helps stretch the gluten and connect with other gluten strands. Bread that lacks stretchiness: may not have enough gluten to start with. If you are using a low gluten flour then you won't get and elasticity. In general any plain white flour will have enough, but for best results use bread flour, also known as strong flour may be too dry. Gluten needs water to relax and stretch, if your dough is too dry, or "tight", then you won't get good elasticity may have not been worked enough or worked in the wrong way. Kneading mechanically stretches gluten, if it isn't kneaded enough, or the technique isn't right, then no elasticity may not have been risen enough. Yeast actually improves the dough, it really works on the gluten. Rise isn't just about leavening, it makes a big difference in elasticity. You should notice a big difference if it's been risen enough If I had to put money on it I'd say it's probably your dough being too dry. This is an easy mistake to make, you turn your dough out on the counter and it's really gooey, must not have enough flour right? But as gluten get worked it uses up some of the extra moisture, so adding too much flour at the beginning will rob the gluten of the water it needs to relax. Kneading with oil instead of flour may help there. As an aside, I generally add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to my pizza dough to improve flavor and texture although that's totally optional. Also, you didn't list salt as an ingredient, bread needs some salt, many bakers recommend 10g per 500g of flour, although I usually cut that down some.

This post is an attempt to keep track of the terms that differ between dialects of English or exist in some dialects but not others: British (UK) / Australian (AU) / Canadian (CA) / American (US) / New Zealand (NZ), etc. Please note that Canada may be difficult to classify, as some regions (especially near the southern border) use US terms, while others may use UK terms. It's a community wiki, so feel free to edit and clarify or add additional items. The comments are getting long, so use answers for discussion of specific concepts if necessary. If you're not sure what a term means, ask it as a new question and tag it with language) For similar terms in other languages or terms that do not translate cleanly, see What international cooking terms sound similar but have different meanings? . Fruits & Vegetables: Eggplant (US, CA, AU) is an aubergine (UK). Zucchini (US, CA, AU) is a courgette (UK) when harvested young or a marrow (UK, AU) when allowed to mature further. Summer Squash (US) are members of the squash family with a short storage life typically harvested before full maturity; typically available starting in the spring and summer; includes zucchini, yellow and crookneck squash. Winter Squash (US) are members of the squash family that are allowed to reach full maturity before harvesting; typically available in the fall; includes pumpkin, acorn and butternut squash. also note that squash may refer to a drink (see "cordial") Arugula (US, CA) is rocket (UK, AU). Rutabaga (US, CA) is swede (UK, AU), but also called turnip, Swedish turnip or neep in some parts of the UK, particularly Scotland. (Wikipedia) Endive (US) is chicory (Belgium, perhaps others). Capsicum (AU) / bell pepper (US, CA) is a pepper (UK). Note that for people with a biology background 'capsicum' also includes hot peppers (aka chilies or chili peppers) Peppers (US, CA) (note the plural), is typically short for chili peppers unless qualified as sweet peppers or bell peppers, or specified as peppercorn. Colored peppers (US, CA), (eg, red peppers, green peppers), typically refers to bell peppers unless qualified (eg, 'hot red peppers', 'small red peppers') Pepper (US, CA) (note the singular) refers to black peppercorns unless otherwise qualified. Red pepper (US, note the singular) refers to dried, red chilies (typically cayenne) that has been dried and ground or crushed. Seaweed (US) has many names based on type of plant, including Kombu (Japan), Nori (Japan), Laver (Wales), and many others. See (edible seaweed) Snow peas (US, CA, AU) are mange tout (UK) (word borrowed from French meaning 'eat everything'). Mange tout (UK) also includes sugar snap peas (US). Peanuts (US, CA, AU) may sometimes be sold in the UK as monkey nuts, especially if unshelled. And Peanut Oil may be known in the UK as groundnut oil. Legumes (US, CA) are pulses (UK, CA). 'Legume' may refer to the plant and not the seeds (lentils, beans, etc). Boiling potatoes (US) are waxy potatoes (UK, US). This refers to low-starch potatoes that don't fall apart when cooked. Sometimes called roasting potatoes (US, CA). New potatoes behave like waxy potatoes, even if they come from a variety used for baking. Mealy potatoes (US) are floury potatoes (UK) or baking potatoes (UK, US, CA). This refers to high starch, low moisture potatoes that result in significant softening when cooked (useful for mashed potatoes or using for thickening; the opposite of waxy potatoes). Runner Beans (UK) are green beans or string beans (US, CA) (Farmhouse Cookery). UK also has green beans and stringless beans, but neither is the same as runner beans. Broad Beans (UK, AU) are fava beans, butter beans or lima beans (US, CA) (Farmhouse Cookery) Sultanas (UK, AU) are seedless golden raisins (Farmhouse Cookery) Spring onions (AK, AU, CA), Scallions (US, CA), and green onions may not always be the same thing, but can typically be substituted for each other. (more details). Corn (US) always refers to maize. Most Americans don’t even know what maize is. Corn in other countries may refer generically to grain. Herbs, Spices & Seasonings: Kosher(ing) salt (US, CA) is flaked salt (UK). Refers to the Jewish dietary practice of salting meat to remove blood. It has become a standard salt used in cured meat products as it is coarse and often without additives that may lead to off tastes when used in cures. Some sea salts may be appropriate substitutes (ref). Cilantro (US, CA) is known as Coriander (UK, AU, CA), and it tends to refer to the leaf, unless qualified as coriander seed. May be qualified as fresh coriander or green coriander. Ground coriander is always the seed. Coriander (US, CA) refers to the seed. Celeriac (UK, AU, US) is celery root (US) (Farmhouse Cookery) Stock cubes (AU) are bouillon cubes (US, CA). May be Maggi cube or Oxo cube (UK; brand name issues) or simply stock cube (UK) Mixed Spice (UK) aka pudding spice (UK) is roughly equivalent to Pumpkin Pie Spice (US, CA) (aka pie spice or pumpkin spice). Both are spice blends heavy in cinnamon and nutmeg, likely to have allspice and possibly other similar spices. Either one may have ginger and cloves as well. Mixed spice may contain coriander (seed) or caraway. Pumpkin spice (US) is the spice for adding to pumpkin pies (usually a blend of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and such) and doesn’t contain pumpkin or any other squash. Chili powder (US) is a spice mixture for seasoning chili con carne. Chili powder contains mainly ground chili peppers (eg, cayenne), onion powder, garlic powder and cumin. Mixtures vary, and often include oregano, black pepper, paprika and/or salt. Chili powder (UK, CA) is pure ground chili peppers. In the US, it is usually qualified with a variety of chili and includes an "e" such as "New Mexico chile powder" or "Ancho chile powder". (See also "red pepper", above.) (see also 'peppercorns' for a discussion of 'black pepper', under the discussion of 'pepper' in Fruits & Vegetables) Baked Goods: Cookies (US, CA) are biscuits (UK, AU, NZ). Biscuits (US, CA) are similar to a scone (UK, AU, NZ), and usually neither sweet nor savory. Graham Crackers (US, CA) are roughly analogous to Digestive biscuits in the UK (both may be used to make a crust or dessert base, for example). Muffin (US, CA, AU, NZ) is a quick bread (typically using the 'muffin method') baked in forms used for cupcakes. It increasingly has this meaning in the UK too, with the prevalence of American-style coffee-shop chains. Muffin (UK) is english muffin (US, CA, AU, NZ), a yeast leavened flat-ish bread, cooked on a griddle with a ring form. Scone (US, CA) tends to be sweeter than a scone (UK). Sponge cake is a term for the lighter range of "typical" cake in both US and UK. However, since the range of cakes typically baked varies between the US and UK, in British usage one finds "sponges" that are heavier and denser than what an American would call a "sponge". See this answer for further discussion. Pancake (US, CA) Pikelet (AU, NZ) generally refers to puffy items made from a thick leavened batter but generally smaller than an American pancake. (AU may use 'pancake' for items larger than "silver dollar pancakes"). Pancake can go by a number of names in the US, including hotcakes, griddlecakes, flapjacks and hoecakes. Pancake (UK, AU) is made from a thinner unleavened batter, with a result a little thicker than a french crêpe. Drop scone (or scotch pancake) (UK) is similar to a (US, CA) pancake Flapjack (US) is the same thing as a (US) pancake. But flapjack (UK) is a baked square usually consisting of sugar/honey, butter, and oats, vaguely similar to a granola bar (ref) Frosting (US, CA) is icing (UK, CA, AU, NZ). In the US, frosting typically has air whipped into it, while icing (US) doesn't and dries harder. Turnover (US, CA) or hand pie (US, CA) is pasty/pastie (ˈpas-tē) (UK, NZ, CA). (Pasties (ˈpās-tēz) in the US are coverings to comply with nudity laws in strip clubs.) Turnover (UK) is a puff pastry shell, usually triangular, filled with fruit and whipped cream. In Australia, pasty is usually a meat and vegetable filled pastry, while a similar fruit-filled items is a turnover Flan (US, CA) is créme caramel (AU, CA). (ref) Flan (AU) is a sweet pastry tart, usually containing custard and fruit. Coffee Cake (US) is spiced cake often served for breakfast or occasionally as a snack with coffee. They often have a streusel like topping. Coffee Cake (UK) is a cake that is flavored with coffee. Flour: plain flour (UK, AU) is all-purpose flour (US, CA) (aka 'AP flour' or just 'AP' on cooking shows) unless otherwise qualified (eg, 'plain, strong flour') in which case it just means 'not self-rising'. Note that AP flour in the US South (eg, White Lily brand) tends to be softer than northern and national brands of AP flour (eg, King Arthur, Gold Medal, Pillsbury). soft flour (UK) is lower gluten than AP flour, such as pastry flour (US, CA) or cake flour (US, CA) strong flour (UK) aka. hard flour (UK, CA) is higher gluten flour, such as bread flour (US, CA) self-rising flour (US, CA) is available in the US, but less common. It is referred to as self-raising flour in the UK, AU and NZ. Although it has baking powder in it, it does not have fat in it such as Bisquick or other 'baking mixes'. UK Self-raising flour does not contain salt. Apparently US self-rising flour does. wholemeal flour (UK) is whole wheat flour (US, CA) Meats: Ground beef (US, CA) is minced beef (AU, UK) or simply mince (UK, AU, NZ). Canadian bacon (US), peameal bacon (CA) is also back bacon (from the loin). Canadian grocery stores may have multiple brands that use both names. Bacon (CA, US) is streaky bacon (UK) (from the belly). In the UK, bacon is most likely back bacon. Green Bacon (UK) is "unsmoked bacon cured in brine" (Farmhouse Cookery) Gammon (UK) is "ham-like bacon from the pig's hindquarters" (Farmhouse Cookery) Pork rinds (US, CA) are scratchings (UK, when dry) and crackling (AU,NZ & UK when fresh from a roast). Brawn (UK) is head cheese (US, CA) (Farmhouse Cookery) Names of cuts of meat in the US may differ from other countries. See Wikipedia for images of US and British names of regions Prawns (AU, UK) and shrimp (US) are technically different animals, but are frequently labeled by the more common one in that country, and are often substituted for each other. In Canada, shrimp may be used to refer to smaller sizes and prawn for larger. Dairy: (ref, ref) Light Cream (CA) has 5% butterfat. Light Cream (US) is 18 to 30% butterfat. (Lite Cream (AU) is roughly 18% butterfat) Table Cream (CA) is 15% or 18% butterfat. Single cream (UK) is 18% butterfat. Equivalent to Lite Cream (AU), Thickened Cream - Reduced Fat (AU), Table Cream (CA), Coffee Cream (CA). Extra Thick Single Cream (UK) contains stabilizers. Cream (US) with 5% butterfat is Single cream (UK), while cream with 48% butterfat (US) is double cream in the UK. Half-and-half (US) is a mix of half cream, half milk (about 12.5% butterfat in the US, but 10% butterfat in CA). May be called blend cream (CA). Cooking Cream (CA (Quebec)) is either 15% or 35% butterfat, thickened with stabilizers and emulsifiers Country-Style Cream (CA (Quebec)) is either 15% or 35% butterfat, with stabilizers and emulsifiers Whipping Cream (CA) is 33 to 36% butterfat, and may have stabilizers. Equivalent to Thickened Cream (AU), Pouring Cream (AU) or Single Cream (AU). Whipping Cream (US) may be from 30 to 36% milkfat. Heavy cream (US) aka heavy whipping cream (US) = cream with more than 36% fat, and often has stabilizers Regular Cream (AU) or Pure Cream (AU) are roughly 40% butterfat without thickening agents. Double Cream (UK) is 48% milkfat. Extra Thick Double Cream (UK) contains stabilizers. Rich Cream (AU), Thick Cream (AU), or Double Cream (AU) is a spoonable cream with 48% butterfat or more. Clotted Cream (UK, CA) or Devon Cream (UK), has been heated to evaporate liquid, resulting in a spoonable cream with about 55% milkfat. Buttermilk (US, CA, modern usage, aka 'cultured buttermilk') is a fermented product, basically a runny yogurt, while historically buttermilk is the liquid left over after churning butter. Historic buttermilk made with fresh milk is closer to today's skim milk, but if made with sour milk is closer to cultured buttermilk. Sour cream (US, CA) = soured cream (UK) Sugar: powdered sugar or confectioners sugar (US, CA) is icing sugar (UK, CA, NZ) or icing sugar mixture (AU) or 10X (US Chef slang); contains cornstarch (~3%) as an anti-clumping agent. icing sugar (AU), aka pure icing sugar does not have starch in it. superfine sugar (US, CA) is caster sugar (UK, NZ, AU); may also be called berry sugar (CA), fruit sugar (CA), bar sugar, castor sugar, instant dissolving sugar, ultrafine sugar, fondant sugar, or extra fine sugar. sanding sugar (US) is pearl sugar (CA). (size between coarse sugar & granulated sugar) unless otherwise qualified, sugar (US, CA) is granulated sugar Other Food / Ingredients: entree (US, CA) is the main course. Entree (AU, NZ) is a starter course, or appetizer (US, CA) course. (ref) dessert (US, CA, AU) is pudding, sweets, dessert or afters (UK, depending on region and social class). Pudding is always a cooked item, while dessert may be fresh fruit or other non-cooked item. pudding (US, CA) is roughly equiv. to custard (UK, CA) jello (US, CA; brand name issues) is jelly (UK, AU) jelly (US) is seedless jam (UK, NZ) (see answer below for details) fries (US, CA, abbr. for french fries) are chips (UK, NZ, CA for 'fish and chips'); both terms work in AU, as does hot chips. chips (UK) are steak fries (US, CA), rather than the typical American shoestring fries chips (US, CA, NZ) are crisps (UK). AU has mixed usage. cornstarch (US, CA) is cornflour (UK, AU, NZ) corn flour (US; aka fine corn meal) is maize flour (AU), a finer ground version of cornmeal (US,UK) or polenta (US,UK). Cornflour (UK) is the extracted starch derived from the raw corn kernal, not the dry ground flesh of the whole kernal. Also called masa harina (US) if made from nixtamalized corn. cornflour (AU) is a powdered starch, but not necessarily made from corn, as there is also 'wheaten cornflour'. (ref) cider (US) is unfiltered (cloudy) juice, commonly from apples, while cider (UK, NZ) is an alcoholic beverage made from apple juice (aka. hard cider (US) or scrumpy (UK) for stronger dry ciders). cider (AU) refers to both the alcoholic beverage and any non-alcoholic carbonated apple juice. cider in Canada refers to hot spiced apple beverages and both non-alcoholic and alcoholic apple and pear beverages, carbonated or fermented. cordial [US] is a flavored alcohol, while cordial [UK, CA, AU] is a liquid drink flavoring that is intended to be diluted with water. (ref) liquid smoke (US, CA) is condensed smoke, used as a flavoring. black beer (UK) is a malt liquor/fortified wine containing malt. black beer (US, Germany), also called black lager or schwarzbier is a type of lager brewed with extremely dark malt. tomato sauce (UK, AU, NZ) is ketchup (UK, US, CA). Also catsup and other spelling variants. tomato sauce (UK, US, CA) is a tomato based sauce typically for pasta or pizza. It may refer to canned tomato sauce which is thinned tomato paste possibly with herbs or spices, or a more complex Italian style cooked sauce of tomatoes, onions, garlic, and other spices and ingredients typically served over pasta (sometimes called marinara or jarred tomato sauce) tomato paste (US, CA, AUS) is tomato purée (UK), a thick, concentrated tomato product. tomato purée (US, CA, AU) is unreduced tomatoes (possibly stewed) with the skin and seeds removed. Also called crushed tomatoes (although crushed tomatoes may still have seeds). tomato passata (UK, CA) (sometimes just 'passata') is strained tomato purée (US). golden syrup (UK, NZ) is dark cane sugar syrup (US, CA); corn syrup is an acceptable substitute (Farmhouse Cookery) rapeseed oil (UK) is Canola oil (US, CA, AU, NZ). (abbreviation for "Canada oil, low acid") vegetable oil (US, CA, AU) is any flavorless oil with a decent smoke point. It may be soy, corn, or a blend, but you can use peanut (groundnut (UK)), canola (rapeseed (UK)), or extra light (not extra virgin) olive oil. EVOO (US cooking show) is “extra virgin olive oil” oats (US) unless qualified are 'old fashioned' or 'rolled oats', not groats (which are sold as 'pinhead oats'), 'Steel cut oats' (cut up groats but not flattened, aka. 'Irish oatmeal'), nor 'instant oats' (flattened & parcooked). granola (US, CA) is a cooked sweetened oat dish that may include nuts or dried fruit, and may be pressed into bars. It looks similar to muesli (UK) which is raw oats, nuts and fruit. trail mix (US, CA) is a mixture of nuts and dried fruit. It may include granola, seeds (eg. sunflower) or chocolate (typically in the form of M&Ms) Smarties (UK, CA, AU) are similar to the candy M&Ms Smarties (US) are compressed sugar pellets (similar to PEZ tablets, but round with concave sides, packaged in rolls with twisted ends) Candy (US, CA) is sweets (UK) or lollies (NZ, AU) Fried egg in the UK is what Americans/Canadians call sunny-side up unless otherwise qualified. The US/CA terms over-easy, over-medium, over-well and over-hard are typically unknown in the UK. For a definition of the 'over' terms, see Can someone please give an explanation of different egg preparations? . (more details ) Casserole (UK) is a stew, a mixture of bite-sized chunks of (typically) meat and vegetables that is cooked submerged in liquid at low heat for a long period of time. Casserole (US, CA) is a bake (UK,US) or hotdish (US), and refers to any mixture of food baked in a casserole dish (sometimes shortened to simply casserole), an oven-safe, relatively deep, typically ceramic vessel. A casserole (US) is typically not as wet as a stew. It includes dishes that are composed of pre-cooked ingredients and then mixed or layered in a suitable vessel and baked to finish. (ref) Cooking methods: broiling (US, CA) is grilling (AU, UK) which is cooking with heat from above as in some ovens or restaurant salamanders. grilling (US, CA) is barbecuing (AU, UK, CA) which is cooking with heat from below, typically on a metal rack over a vessel of burning wood or charcoal, or a gas burner. barbecuing (US) is slow cooking using wood or charcoal to impart smoke to the food. This sense is also sometimes used in AU. barbeque (US, CA) (sometimes abbreviated BBQ) may refer to the either food cooked through barbequeing, or the device on which it is cooked. Tools / Equipment / Non-food items : parchment paper (US, CA) is greaseproof paper (Ireland/ UK, NZ) and baking paper (AU) stove (US, CA, AU, NZ) is also range (US, CA) and hob (UK). Hob can refer to both the stove as a whole, or an individual burner (aka. heating element). crock pot (US, CA; brand name issues) is a slow cooker (US, CA, UK, AU). Also slo-cooker (UK; brand name issues) food processor (US, CA, AU) is sometimes a magimix (UK; brand name issues) canned items (US, CA) are tinned (UK, AU). Items 'canned' in glass jars would be described as either preserved or pickled (if in vinegar) in the UK. recipe (US, CA) is sometimes called a receipt in other areas and in older usage (until early 20th century; more info). receipt (US, CA, modern usage) is "a written acknowledgment of having received a specified amount of money, goods, etc." aluminum foil (US), aluminium foil (UK, AU) is often referred to as tinfoil (US, UK, NZ), which had previously been in use for similar purposes. It is usually shortened to foil or al-foil in AU. plastic wrap (US, CA), cling film (UK), cling wrap (AU) is often referred to as Saran™ wrap (US brand name) or Glad™ wrap (NZ, AU brand name) (although no one bothers to say the '™') liquidiser (UK) is a blender (US, CA) (Farmhouse Cookery). blender in AU refers to both a food processor and a liquidiser. skillet (US, CA) is a frying pan (US, CA, UK, NZ). (a type of low-sided round cooking vessel with handle (pan (US)), with angled sides.) paper towels (US, CA) are kitchen towels or kitchen roll in other countries. dish towels (US), aka kitchen towels (US) or tea towels (UK, AU, NZ), are reusable cloth towels. Kitchen bench (AU) is the kitchen counter (US, CA), worktop (UK). a slice (UK) is a slotted metal spatula (US, CA). Specifically a ‘fish slice’ or ‘egg slice’ spatula (US, CA) is any tool with a flat, typically wide working surface. It may refer to a scraper (rubber spatula; silicone spatula), a tool for spreading (offset spatula), or a tool for flipping/turning food (typically plastic or metal), or a tool for stirring (wooden spatula) Units of measurement & sizing : teaspoon (US,UK, CA) is 5 mL (note: abbreviated 't' or 'tsp') dessert spoon (UK) is 10 mL (although may have historically been closer to 15mL) tablespoon (US, CA) is roughly 15 mL (note: abbreviated 'T', 'TB', or 'tbsp') but a tablespoon (UK) is 17.7mL and tablespoon (AU) is 20 mL. Historical British cookbooks may use an ~25mL tablespoon. (more details). A stick of butter (US, CA) is 1/4 lb (113 g); the physical stick is marked into eight "tablespoon" divisions [slightly larger than an actual tablespoon, roughly 14g each] A knob of butter (UK) is somewhere around 2 TB (US), but is an inexact measure. A pat of butter (US) is between 1 and 2 tsp (5 to 10 mL), most commonly 48 per lb, or ~1.5 tsp. (~9.5 grams, 7.5mL) A cup (US) for cooking is a fixed measure of ~236mL (8 fluid ounces, 16 TB, 1/2 a US pint); A British Imperial cup is 1/2 of an Imperial pint (~284mL) Other countries may use a 225mL 'cup' or 250mL 'metric cup' (AU, and some regions of CA) A cup of coffee or tea (when measuring electric kettles) may be based on 5 or 6 oz 'cups'. Always look for the volume in mL or L when buying such items. A cup of uncooked rice (for rice cooker instructions) is 175mL, roughly 3/4 of a US cup. A pint (UK, AU, CA) is 20 Imperial fluid ounces (568.261 mL), while a pint (US) is 16 fluid ounces (473.176 mL). A gas mark (UK) refers to the dials on some British gas ovens (Farmhouse Cookery). The marks from 1 to 9 correspond roughly to 275 - 475 °F (at 25 °F intervals) or 140 - 250 °C (at 10 °C intervals) (more detail below) A tin (UK) of tomatoes is the sized tin can (in US, just called a "can") that it's typically sold in. For many vegetables, this is a 400mL / ~14oz container, but is not a constant (for example, anchovies or tomato paste). (ref; see below) Unless otherwise qualified, assume an egg is about 60 grams. (a 'large egg' (US,CA), but a 'medium egg' in Europe). (ref)

US : jam/jelly/preserves/etc In the US, there are specific definitions from the Food & Drug Administration on what can be labeled as jam, jelly, etc. From CookingLight.com, but preserved here in case of link rot: Jelly is a clear, bright product. It is generally made by cooking fruit juice and sugar with pectin as a jelling agent and lemon juice as an acid to maintain a consistent texture. Jelly is firm and will hold its shape (it 'shakes'). Generally, jelly contains no pieces of fruit, although specialty jellies, like pepper jelly, may include pieces of jalapeño or other pepper. Jam is made from crushed or chopped fruit cooked with sugar, and often pectin and lemon juice. Jam can be a purée of fruit or have a soft pulp, but it does not contain chunks of fruit. Preserves are fruit cooked with sugar to the point where large chunks of fruit or whole fruit, such as berries, are suspended in a syrup base. The texture of preserves is not smooth like jelly or jam. Marmalade is a soft jelly, often citrus-based, that includes both the flesh and peel of the fruit suspended throughout the jelly base. The bitterness of the peel offsets the sweetness of the jelly. Conserve is a mixture of more than one fruit, often with added nuts and raisins, that is cooked until it becomes thick. It is used as a spread for breads, pastries and meats, and in the latter use is closest to chutney. Chutney is a spiced condiment of Indian origin (chatni is the Hindi word for strongly spiced) made of fruit or vegetables. It is typically served as an accompaniment to food, not as a spread. The spice level can range from mild to hot, and the consistency from a fine relish to a preserve or conserve. Fruit chutney consists of chopped fruit, vinegar, spices and sugar cooked into a chunky sweet-tart-spicy mix: according to one explanation, it 'blurs the Western distinction between preserves and pickles.' Fruit Butter, such as apple butter or prune butter, is fruit purée or pulp combined with sugar, lemon juice and spices, slowly cooked down to a smooth consistency. The 'butter' refers to its spreadability: there is no actual butter in the product. Fruit Curd is a creamy spread made with sugar, eggs and butter, generally flavored with citrus juice and zest. Fruit Spread is generally a reduced-calorie product made with fruit juice concentrate and low-calorie sweeteners replacing all or part of the sugar.

In this video: Cheese Soufflé that NEVER Falls! - Chef Jean-Pierre, Chef Jean Pierre proposes an interesting method for making cheese soufflé; instead of folding in beaten egg whites to his custard, he uses diced bread cubes (with crust removed) to provide the air that will make the soufflé rise. His reasoning for using bread is that the soufflé will not fall (only slightly) and could thus be fully cooked in advance (hence making a foolproof recipe for beginner cooks). This method relies on 2 key aspects: The bread is broken down in the heated custard environment and The soufflé will not fall because of the bread Could someone explain from a chemistry perspective why 1) and 2) occur? For 2), my guess is the broken down bread provides better structural integrity than egg whites, though I am not sure why.

There is nothing to explain here - the claim is simply wrong. You can certainly put bread in custard and subject it to heat. It is traditionally done in French toast, for example. I could even buy that under some circumstances, you won't notice that you are chewing on what used to be bread - the inside of a French toast is quite soft, and if you don't know what it is, you might not recognize it. But first, I don't believe that the bread in this recipe will disintegrate fully to the point where it is completely mixed with the custard. (And if it did, it wouldn't turn "into flour"). You can see in the video how, before sticking it into the oven, the bread cubes swim on the surface, even after he purposefully wets them on top at around 10:20. And after he takes it out, the surface is rather uneven with a few lumps, and while he does have cubed shallots and dried tomatoes in there, the shapes look awfully like bread cubes - see for example the closeup at 11:50. You could, in theory, mix the bread fully. For that, you would have to wait until it is soaked well, and then physically mix it, with a fork or with the blender he praises so much. But in the video, it is implied that no such mixing happens. The second claim is that the souffles don't fall. This is entirely wrong. When he puts the souffles in there, the ramekins are filled "all the way to the top" (quote from 10:28). When he takes them out, they are risen slightly, I'd say less than two centimeters - you can see a good shot at 11:19. That's expected, since there are no egg whites to rise during baking. And then, while he plates them, they fall back to the rim of the ramekin. He even mentions it at 11:29 "Eventually, they're gonna fall. A little bit. They're gonna fall right at the rim." Don't be fooled by the "little bit" - if you remember, they were filled to the rim when they went to the oven. So, even in his own video, you can see that the soufflés cannot hold any of the expansion they got in the oven, and fall to their original size once they cool. This is exactly how any soufflé behaves, with bread or otherwise.

I have a number of recipes that call for pork. Am I able to substitute with beef? And when it calls for chicken stock, do I use beef in place?

You can almost always adapt recipes to use other meats, but, obviously, the flavors are going to be different, so it might not turn out as you expected. I'd be very careful about substituting beef stock or broth instead of chicken. Beef broth is generally more assertively flavored, and usually carries a bit more salt as a counter-balance to that, so changing that flavoring might do a lot more than just alter the flavors slightly. To illustrate my point, America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Illustrated, in their "best beef stew" recipe wound up using chicken instead of beef broth, because the beef broth was a bit too much. And that was for a beef stew (the recipe is fantastic. They were looking for more rich flavor than just using water, but using beef stock/broth wound up being too much). EDIT/Addendum - What I was originally going for and lost track of is this - If you have a dish that has a lot of other seasonings or flavors that define the dish, you will probably have better success with a substitution. If you have a dish where the other ingredients compliment the pork or the pork flavor is the key to the dish, you probably won't be as happy.

I want to remove the bread after it is kneaded and then bake it in the oven. When will I know that it is fully kneaded? I have a rosewill 2 pound bread maker

On a practical basis? 40 to 45 min. That is, bake it for 40 min and then check it to see if it's done (or otherwise check it 5 minutes earlier than you otherwise would). The difference between 350F and 375F in actual cooking is generally dwarfed by the temperature inaccuracy of home ovens.

Our oven is broken and we can only use a frying pan. We have started to defrost a full chicken with the skin on it. We are a little new to cooking. How can I still prepare it?

If you are intent on cooking the bird whole (as opposed to butchering it into pieces which you can fry in a pan), then your only option would be to braise the bird in a large pot, preferably a Dutch oven. There are myriad recipes online; search for "Chicken in a Pot" or "Braised Whole Chicken". As ElendilTheTall mentioned in the comments above, the only other option to keep the chicken whole would be to use a barbecue/grill.

Tonight I cooked fried chicken on the stove. However, I have seen chicken with brown ligaments or bones, after cooking before. Not just from frying the chicken either. Is it due to the age of the chicken, or an incorrect temperature or overcooking? I hate seeing that when I eat chicken and if I knew what was causing it, I could avoid it, and enjoy my chicken more.

The darkening is harmless. It is more likely to occur in younger birds, since their bones are immature, soft, and porous. It is also exacerbated by deep chilling or freezing, since microscopic ice crystallization will allow various colored substances (e.g., marrow) to coalesce around the bones. When the meat is cooked, these substances will usually turn brown. Therefore, interior browning can be avoided by using older chickens and avoiding meat that has ever been frozen. Given that most commercial chickens in large countries like the USA are slaughtered very young (less than seven weeks old), it may be difficult, but not impossible, to find an older chicken.

In baking souffles, I find that they start deflating from the moment I remove them from the oven. One chef suggested adding xanthan gum which is hard to find and quite expensive. Do you think arrowroot might work, or can you suggest another alternative to stabilize them?. Many thanks.

Its normal for a souffle to deflate after leaving the oven. In the past with chocolate souffle i have had success with whipping the egg whites to a stiff peaks then carfully folding the mixture together. Keep in mind that you have only a minute or so to get the souffle to the guest carefully with out banging it on the table. The longer you can keep your souffle hot and steaming, the longer it will stay risin.

I wonder why my bread still have a yeasty smell? Did I put too much yeast? I use instant yeast, 11g for 500g wheat flour. Is that too much yeast for that amount of flour?

You are using to much dried yeast. 11 gr should be used with fresh yeast. To get an idea, divide the amount of fresh yeast with 2,5, so you should only use 5 gr (11:2.5) of dried yeast.

Obviously this will vary depending on the size/shape and ingredients used. But how hot does it get inside, say, a loaf of bread? A cake? How wide is the variation? What ingredients (or factors other than shape/size and cooking temp/time) might affect this, and in what direction? Edit: to clarify, I mean "maximum temperature during normal cooking."

Jolenealaska's answer provides the basics -- internal temperatures over boiling inside baked goods just don't tend to happen under normal conditions. The reason is because most doughs and batters contain a lot of water. The final baked goods generally still retain a lot of that water, too. When the dough is hot and in the oven, however, that water will be heated and will gradually evaporate from the dough. Assuming you get to close to 212F/100C, at normal atmospheric pressure, water will actually be "boiling" out of the dough. For the external surface of baked goods, that moisture can leave rapidly enough that the surface rises to higher temperatures (forming a crust). But internally, the moisture keeps boiling out, maintaining a temperature below or at boiling. Unless you have a weird situation where you are somehow cooking your baked goods under pressure, water will continue evaporating out of the batter/dough at 212F/100C until the dough/batter has pretty much turned into a dry cracker internally. That's the only way you'll ever achieve an internal temperature much over 212F/100C: to bake things until they are basically dried out inside (which is not a desirable feature in most baked goods). As for the maximum useful temperature, that depends on the baked good and the ingredients. I have to disagree with Jolene slightly here and say I have a number of bread recipes that recommend an internal temperature of 205F or so. Temperatures over 200F are only generally for lean crusty bread doughs (like baguettes or something), which often start with a fairly moist dough. The high internal temperature means that more moisture has been removed, which will keep the crust more firm and, well, "crustier." The more enriched your bread dough, generally the lower the desired final temperature. Basically, above 175F or so, the gluten coagulation is complete and the dough structure is formed. So, bread can be "done" anywhere from 175F to about 210F. If you have a very rich sandwich loaf or brioche or something, you might find that a temp of 180-190F is sufficient. Large loaves may also need different temperature handling than small buns, for example, since residual heat will continue the baking process outside the oven longer in larger loaves, but it also takes longer for moisture to migrate out of the center of a large loaf. As for other baked goods, similar advice applies. Cakes and quickbreads are generally done once you get to around 190-195F, though the ingredients will really affect this. A "drier" style cake without lots of "stuff" in the batter (e.g., pound cake) might go to 205F or even 210F before it's "done" according to normal criteria, while a quickbread made with loads of fruit might "get stuck" in the range around 190-195F for a long time because there's just so much moisture. (And it's basically done there anyway.) For cakes or other baked goods which are meant to be excessively moist (with a fudge interior or something), 175F might be sufficient, since again that's roughly the temperature when baked goods get a final "set" structure. (Of course, there are also things like "lava" cakes where the interior is not actually fully cooked; in that case, internal temp should be determined by food safety criteria sufficient to cook the eggs, which might be a little lower.) And again, shape and size are often important for these numbers, because residual heat will lead to further stabilizing of the structure in large things after they come out of the oven. So, a particular cake might be "done" at 195F, but making cupcakes with the same batter might require 200 or 205F to get the same texture. It's hard to specify a generic all-purpose desirable maximum temperature, because various changes continue to happen to baked goods after the structure gets set at 175F or so. Between 175F and 195F, the starches continue to gelatinize and some enzyme activity will continue. Above 195F, it's mostly about drying things out to the desired final texture.

I read a recipe that said don't preheat the oven when baking a pound cake. Why wouldn't you preheat the oven? Every recipe I've ever read said preheat the oven. This is really confusing to me.

One obvious reason is to avoid wasting energy. A lot of people tend to like recipes which avoid preheating for this reason alone. But, assuming that there's more than that here, my guess is that the recipe is trying to use the slower heating as a way to achieve a greater rise. Whether your pound cake recipe relies on leavening (such as baking powder/soda) or whether it's a traditional pound cake recipe that relies only on the air bubbles beaten into the batter while mixing, a gradual temperature rise can in some circumstances result in more expansion. Basically, baking is a race against time in crust formation vs. internal expansion. You want to allow enough time for the internal gas bubbles to expand and make the cake (or bread or whatever) lighter, because once the structure starts to harden (with egg coagulation, and then starch gelatinization), you can't expand any more. On the other hand, as a cake or loaf rises, it becomes increasingly unstable. If you wait too long to form a crust and then stabilize the internal structure, your whole cake could collapse. Frequently, the inside portion of a cake or loaf continues to expand even after the crust hardens, resulting in cracking on the top surface (common in pound cakes, perhaps even desirable according to some). In extreme cases with things like yeast breads, it can even result in a "blow-out" where the pressure from internal expansion literally blows a big hole in the crust. With pound cakes, this balance can be a particular problem. As already mentioned, hardening the crust too early can result in excessive cracking. But hardening the crust later can also be a problem if the internal structure is unevenly heated (and thus unevenly stable). If the crust hardens while the cake is rising very high (e.g., from rapid expansion under high oven heat), but the internal structure is unstable underneath and collapses a bit, it can result in the "crust separation" where there's an air gap between the top crust and the rest of the cake. It's possible that heating more slowly can make that less likely by heating the whole batter more evenly and ensuring the internal parts of the cake are closer to setting along with the top crust. Anyhow, to generalize a bit more, one of the reasons to slowly heat a baked good is to try to allow more time for a gradual expansion. On the other hand, internal air within batter/dough will eventually "leak out." It's actually a continuous process, since batter/dough is permeable to air. With cake batter, you can often actually see bubbles rising and popping on the surface of a cake early in the baking process. So you need some structure and crust to form to prevent all that air from escaping and collapsing your batter too. The trick, again, is to balance the time given for bubbles to form/expand vs. how fast the cake sets (i.e., structure hardens). That's actually one of the primary reasons for different baking temperatures in different leavened baked goods. While allowing expansion during preheating can sometimes be helpful, it's also hard to manage. Ovens don't preheat at the same rate. If your oven preheats too slowly, it could actually cause your batter to rise too much before it stabilizes, thus resulting in collapse. As pointed out in another answer, some ovens with radiant heat elements (especially electric models) can actually introduce a "broiling" effect on the outer surface during preheating, which could counteract the positive effects if the "broiled" crust hardens early and prevents further expansion. Since it's less predictable, most recipes tend to recommend preheating for things like cakes and pastry. And no matter what, you'll have to monitor doneness more frequently the first few times you do a recipe like this in a particular oven, since the time window for being "done" will likely vary much more significantly for recipes that don't preheat.

I've been following a recipe, and two things confuse me. One is the "what" for most steps, and the other is a "why". The recipe is here. But look at the steps, which I've abbreviated here to save reading. Whisk flours and yeast together. Dissolve honey in water. Using dough hook on low speed, slowly add water mixture to flour mixture and mix until cohesive dough starts to form and no dry flour remains, about 2 minutes, scraping down bowl and hook as needed. Cover tightly and let dough rest for 30 minutes. So what happens if there's no dry flour left, but a cohesive dough hasn't formed, or vice versa? Keep mixing? Stop, because I've gone 3 minutes and the recipe said only two? Give up and throw it away and start over? Add salt to dough; mix on low speed for 5 minutes. Increase to medium and knead until dough is smooth and slightly sticky, about 1 minute. Same deal: what if the dough was smooth and slightly sticky when I started? Do I still mix on medium for a minute? Or do I skip that step? Transfer to lightly greased bowl, cover, let rise until doubled in size, 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Same deal: suppose I've waited 2 hours, and it still hasn't doubled. Do I toss it? Using greased bowl-scraper (or your fingertips), fold dough over itself by gently lifting and folding edge of dough toward middle. Turn bowl 90 degrees and fold dough again; repeat turning bowl and folding dough 2 more times (total of 4 folds). Cover tightly with plastic and let rise for 30 minutes. A new question: What is the process above (repeated below) supposed to achieve? And in general, what does allowing multiple rises achieve? And why don't we just punch it down each time -- why the fancy folding for two of the rises? Repeat folding, then cover bowl tightly with plastic and let dough rise until doubled in size, about 30 minutes. [Form rolls and put them in a cake tin, cover, and...] Let rolls rise until nearly doubled in size and dough springs back minimally when poked gently with your knuckle, about 30 minutes. Again: what if they double in size, but the dough sticks to my knuckle, or it springs back a lot, or doesn't spring back at all? Mist with water, bake at 500 for 10m; remove from oven and separate, bake at 400 for another 10-15 min on a baking sheet. Cool. Thankfully, this last step makes total sense to me. :)

In bread baking, you do each step until you recognize that you achieved the correct end result for each step, then stop, wait until the appropriate changes have happened, then continue with the next step. An expert baker would work from a much more abbreviated recipe than the one you posted, and if something doesn't happen as expected, he or she will have an idea how to troubleshoot. The recipe you chose seems to be aimed at a beginner baker. It not only explains what the intermediate results should look like ("until cohesive dough starts to form and no dry flour remains"), but gives approximate time amounts, mostly for the eager newb who starts kneading and at some point asks "is this already silky?". These are basically signposts to make sure you are still on the right path. So, what you should do is to stop when the described stage has been reached, and not by the clock. Only if you are not entirely sure that it has been reached, and you are taking much longer than the clock, you should stop, take a step back, and think whether you might be interpreting the description wrongly, or maybe made a mistake somewhere along the way, so that there is not a chance of ever attaining the proper end stage. I agree this may be frustrating for a very new baker, if you have no idea why the recipe says 5 minutes, but it still looks entirely wrong after 15 minutes, but at least it gives you enough information when to abort your attempts. It is not feasible to do more within a single recipe - if you want to be an effective troubleshooter, you need both lots of practice and sufficient theroy (which can fill whole books). The opposite case you are suggesting - "what if the dough was smooth and slightly sticky when I started?" should basically never happen. You are making the step in order to achieve that state. If it were achievable without that step, the step wouldn't be in the recipe in the first place. So, all I can suggest is to try to follow the recipe as stated, and if a discrepancy occurs, play it by ear. I won't try getting into each of your questions separately, since some of them are not practically relevant, others need whole questions of their own here, and yet others are not really answerable in such a generic question. For example, if your bread really doubles in size in the last rise, but the dough is totally sticky, the diagnosis of the likeliest problem cause alone will require a detailed description of what happened until that occured, how you treated it, etc, and may still not be diagnosable from afar. And the appropriate reaction will depend on why it happened in the first place. Bottom line: these hypotheticals are unnecessary. Just bake, and see if you will run into any of the problems you described. If you do, come ask a specific question on the exact problem. But if the recipe is well balanced, you will likely not encounter any of them in the first place.

Last week I made a meringue icing for my cupcakes and had problems making my meringue form peaks. This makes me ask what are some of your tips/tricks? What do you do or add to your egg white mixture in order to help it form peaks when you are having troubles.

It's important to let your eggs get to room temperature. I use this simple recipe for all meringues: 4 egg whites 2 Tbsp powdered sugar Pinch of cream of tartar The cream of tartar is what really makes the egg whites to firm up nicely.

Still trying to restock my kitchen pans after my recent move and am on a budget, but what I do have is as set of clear pyrex, that looks about like this set: http://www.amazon.com/Pyrex-6021224-Storage-10-Piece-Clear/dp/B00005B8K5/ref=sr_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285775513&sr=8-1 My question is can I use it to cook a meatloaf? If I cannot use it to cook a meatloaf then have you ever cooked a meatloaf on a cookie sheet without it falling to pieces and/or burning on the bottom?

I see no reason you couldn't use that Pyrex set for a meatloaf - I've used glass casseroles for meatloaf before (so glass in general is no problem), and that set says the bowls are oven safe. As for the cookie sheet method, I would be afraid of it falling apart as you described, but if you were to go that route, I'd recommend wrapping it in aluminum foil to help it keep its shape.

I have lately come across good recipes, which happen to require tomatillos. Sadly, I don't have a source for tomatillos. Is there some way to substitute them in recipes? Physalis berries? Underripe tomatoes? If tomatoes, then which kind? Will it be a result similar to the original recipe, something definitely different, but usable, or so different that it only works by accident?

Under-ripe, green tomatoes that have a thick wall and medium pulp will work in many substitutions. It will remain tart however the crispness of actual tomatillos will not be present. There is an almost citrusy effect to the taste of tomatillos that green tomatoes don't quite match. If this is a recipe requiring lime juice and cilantro, I might also add a bit of lemon juice or zest to account for the bitter, citrusy profile. If you are not using a recipe with lime you can probably get away without adding the lemon since I'm guessing the citrusy flavor isn't focal.

My brisket doesn't have a lot of flavor on the inside. The outside is full of flavor but when getting to the inside it doesn't have much flavor to wow my guests. How do I get more flavor to the interior? I'm cooking it in the oven, by the way. BBQ is not my thing.

The closest thing you are likely to find is a product called Wondra flour. Like idealmjöl, it is a pre-gelated wheat flour, but unlike idealmjöl it also includes some malted barley flour. One post on this forum implies they may be interchangeable.

One of my recipe tell me to add 25cl of cream. I only have a weighing scale to measure it. How many grams should I add? If it was water it would be 250g and cream is quite heavier isn't it?

Rather than try to determine the weight of the cream do the following. Measure out 250g of water in your container. Mark the waterline on your container with a marker or tape Measure your cream based on your mark This way you don't need to know the weight of your cream, you simply need to find a container with the proper volume.

In the US, can I buy fish from any reputable fishmonger for ceviche, or should I be using sushi-grade fish?

This is an opinion answer, but and noted in the US "sushi grade" is a marketing label only, not a legal, inspected standard so unless you trust the vendor means very little. Other places it has actual meaning. In all cases you should likely go by what your local standards are, the reputation of the source and your own feeling. Something may be safe, but if it does not feel safe to you, then don't trust it. In general, my opinion on Ceviche but not backed by research is that it is an "acid cooked" item so is not raw but also has not had heat applied as we know. This says to me that some potential pathogens have been eliminated, but not necessarily all. As long as fresh, quality product is used, the main concern in sushi and ceviche of common proteins is usually parasites. The curing with kill some, but quite possibly not all, so ceviche has less of a worry than sushi, but is not free from fear. So, my opinion would be to avoid any fish even of high quality which might be prone to parasites, so I would use no fresh water fish. Fish like salmon spend part of their life in fresh, part in salt which makes them more susceptible, so I would tend to use them only if they meet sushi standards. In the US that means hard frozen to kill parasites while in some other places that means well inspected. I would always avoid any farm raised item myself as the crowding and often poor water exchange in the rearing increases risk. Of salt water creatures, I would tend to go for ones which are deeper water, not ones which habit shallow or possible brackish waters which would in my mind increase exposure. If it was an item that seemed more at risk, salmon as an example, then I would want sushi quality only. Mahi Mahi though, a fast growing salt water fish I would just look for good quality from a reputable source. My choices would vary by variety.

I made lasagna in a deep dark roasting pan and froze it. Now I am going to have to reheat it. How long in the oven?

Two suggestions, one practical, the other probably less so. 1) Hold the cup directly, instead of the plate the cup is on. I don't know if that's allowed by health code or restaurant policy, but if it is, you get much more stability from cupping the cup in your hand than balancing it on a small plate. If you're already doing that: practice will get you there. 2) A good cappuccino should be fairly stable. I know there's disagreement about the proper way of layering cappuccinos, but the best ones integrate very finely textured foam into the milk, instead of just layering coffee - milk - foam on top of each other. Milk foamed this way is more stable than regular milk; I've carried cups filled to the brim up the stairs without any spilling. But: this is a barista-side issue, and to be honest, I wouldn't touch it ... the barista is going to make the cappuccino how s/he feels it's best, and being told to do something differently won't go over well.

Just purchased a baking cookbook online which, while written in English, is clearly from a country outside of the U.S. Units are metric, which is fine, but there a couple of terms with which I am unfamiliar. Could anyone give me a clue about 'disintegrant', 'ammonium', or the units of measure 'glass' for dry ingredients or 'gl' for liquids? Thanks! Thank you very much for the responses, much appreciated! In response to your comments, here is a pic of the cookbook and a pic of a sample recipe using 'dintegrant'. Thanks in advance for your interest!

Given the recipe, a very likely guess for "disintegrant" would be some leavener, preferably baking powder. The reason I am suggesting this is that cookie recipes without leaveners are rare, and this one looks like it would have a good chance of turning out doughy if no leavener is added. The "1 bag" measurement supports this theory - in many European countries, baking powder is sold mostly in single-use sachets formulated for roughly 500 g of flour. I have no idea what linguistic misunderstanding is needed for getting the word "disintegrant" placed where "baking powder" should have been. But it is a logical ingredient from the recipe point of view.

I have never cooked rabbit before, and my charts don't include rabbit. Are there food safety considerations speaking for thorough heating, as with chicken, or is it acceptable to cook it medium rare? Also, what temperature corresponds with the different grades of doneness? I intend to roast half a small rabbit in the oven; the meat doesn't look suited for collagen-based cooking, the animal is probably too young.

In the food safety section of Modernist Cuisine (1-138) it says that all wild rabbit must be cooked through: Wild rabbit must be cooked well done to kill any tularemia bacteria; for rare or medium cooked rabbit dishes, chefs can substitute farm-raised rabbits that have been kept segregated from their wild relatives by trustworthy breeders. The section on meat (3-96) recommends bringing rabbit loin to an internal temperature of 59C (138F) and going by the section I've just quoted this is obviously only for farmed meat. The recommendation for the legs is to cook sous vide for 1 hour @ 66C (151F) which again obviously refers to farmed because that's definitely not long enough to tenderise wild rabbit meat. I would really recommend cooking the leg meat and loin separately as I find that the loin dries out long before the legs are cooked through. The legs are much nicer braised too.

I'm on a quest of learning how to prepare a more than edible sushi. I figured that with enough practice I can achieve the goal of being able to make sushi. The most important part of sushi as I see it is the rice, and that's where I'm not really sure what I am doing wrong. Although I'm making progress with the rice, it still comes out wrong, too sticky - ie not brittle enough - after it sticks it very hard to break, becomes a sort of Plasticine. My question is, what variables should I try to change in order to make it less Plasticine? Cook it less, put less oil, boil it less time, let it steam on low fire more etc... Or more generally put, which parameters influence the texture of the rice and how?

In general, the stickiness of rice can be reduced by removing some of the starch by pre-soaking and/or washing the rice. For sushi rice, chewiness can be increased by reducing the amount of cooking water. For what do you use oil? I don't believe that is a traditional ingredient in sushi rice.

How long can century eggs last for refrigerated and unrefrigerated? I have some slightly cracked eggs from a friend who has stored it for months in his refrigerator. A few comments from this blog have suggested people have eaten unrefrigerated century eggs stored in a pantry for half a year with no ill effects. Edit: It tasted great.

Century eggs are a preserved food. Unopened, they can last for a very long time, possibly years, without refrigeration. They are sold at my "local" Asian supermarket in the dry stock aisles. Once opened you can keep them in the refrigerator for a few days. Or make chok or congee and have the left overs for breakfast.

This probably has an obvious answer I'm missing. To make a long story short, my mother helped us out with an event several months back involving having to serve breakfast to a large number of people including breakfast sausage, a mix of links and patties. Afterwards, as is her habit, she packaged up the leftovers in a plastic bag and handed them over to us. We set them in the chest freezer and frankly forgot about them for some time. We now have about 3-4 lbs of precooked sausage in a single frozen lump. I've tried breaking them off and cooking then in my cast-iron skillet in the mornings, but the patties break apart more than break off of the main mass, and when the patties are just about to turn into hockey pucks, the links are still frozen on the inside. I'm a bit hesitant to thaw the mass because we'd just be refreezing it again, and my understanding is that it's a bad idea to repeatedly thaw and freeze meat. Is there a better way to handle this that doesn't involve us trying to eat a few pounds of processed meat at once or risk wasting it?

One option: reheat slowly in the microwave and until it is barely unfrozen enough to break apart. Then break it down into meal-sized portions, take the part you want for now and wrap the remaining bits in cellophane so they don't freeze together again. (My advice as a self-judged microwave expert is to heat it up at low power in 3 minute increments at first, then 2 minute increments. Fairly early, you will find that some parts thaw faster than others. Once this temperature difference becomes apparent, you can wait like 5 minutes in between bouts of heating it up to allow the heat to even out over the lump.) Given that the freezing and thawing will probably not do anything good for the texture, you might consider breaking the sausage up and adding it to something like sawmill gravy or strata (or just scrambled eggs) where you won't be eating it in large chunks.

A recipe I am planning to make calls for chili paste, which I have never used before. I found some in the grocery store (it is Sambal Oelek ground fresh chili paste), which seems to be more liquidy than, say, tomato paste. I only need 1/2 a teaspoon, however, so I will have plenty left over. Does chili paste require refrigeration after it is opened? It does not say anything about it that I can see on the jar. Also, how long will it last after being opened (regardless of whether or not it needs to be in the fridge)?

I don't know if it technically requires refrigeration, but I've always kept mine in the refrigerator and had it survive for at least 6 months with no noticeable degradation.

My nine (7) year old step-daughter is expecting to help me make Chicken and Dumpling today. I have the recipe for the stew, my question lies in the dumplings: I am aware that I can replace 1 1/2 cups of self-rising flour by adding 1 1/2 tsp baking power and 1/2 tsp of salt to 1 cup of regular white flour - but I want to avoid the white flour altogether. What (organic) grains can I substitute for bleached white flour?

You might try whole wheat pastry flour, too. It's usually used in things like pie crusts, and probably would be the closest in texture to white flour. Any grain other than wheat will not have the same amount of gluten and thus may have a vastly different texture.

I use the following dough recipe, it tastes okay, but is very difficult to shape and never holds its shape. Advice please 15 g Dried Yeast (Green Tin when make in Machine / Yellow Tin when make by Hand) 20 g Salt 900 g Light Spelt Flour 150 ml Honey 118 ml Oil 3 Eggs 350 ml Luke Warm Water Flour for shaping, egg for painting and sesame seeds topping

Spelt flour is not gluten-free. Light spelt flour has less protein (gluten is a protein) than regular spelt or strong bread flour, but it's still there (5-8% from what I've seen), so if you need gluten free you need to pick another ingredient. To answer your question, there are limitations to what you can do with low or gluten free doughs. Bread made with gluten is stretchy and keeps its shape because the gluten strands relax and become intertwined with each other, if you take the gluten out you lose that stretchiness and body. Dough improvers like xanthan gum can help give some stretchiness but not to the point of being able to make something like challah. Low or gluten free doughs are always going to be a bit crumbly - it's the nature of the beast - so my advice is to pick bread types where that's an asset.

I have seen countless recipes for cakes that involve a fudge frosting, a soft, gooey layer of fudge that goes between layers of sponge. I have yet to find any cake/sweet recipes where traditional fudge, the type you make or buy in blocks, is used as a layer in a cake. Why is this not done? Does anyone know any recipes?

Fudge icing is actually not made with fudge believe it or not, often it's a chocolate buttercream but there are other recipes. There are a few problems I can see with using traditional cooked fudge as a cake layer: It is not the right texture for a cake: Imagine you're eating nice fluffy cake and then you run into hard, gummy fudge which welds your mouth shut Fudge would be very hard to work with. You cannot spread it, you'd have to roll it out which would be messy Traditional fudge would not keep the layers together. Part of the role of the filling is to stick one cake layer to another so that they stay put, and pieces stay together when cut and put on a plate. A cake with a hard fudge filling would would be hard to decorate as any sideways pressure on the top cake layer would make it slide, and when cut it would fall apart.

In general, if you want to make something fluffy like whipped cream, what ingredients/techniques should you use? Basically, I want, when you put it in your mouth, to almost be like eating flavored air. Like eating the foam on a hot chocolate or beer. I would like to make dipping sauces with this fluffy like texture. Thanks!

There is no single, universal technique for making random food "fluffy". And you may have to live with significant changes in the recipe and in the final results if you try it. Classically, you have three types of foams. One is fat-based, the other is protein-based, the third depends on sudden gas production/dissolving. The fat-based foam is only possible in liquids which are an emulsion of fat in water, and only functions within a certain range of fat/water, a favorable temperature range, and a proper size of the fat globules. This is what whipped cream is. Besides cream, you can whip that way a few other things such as ganache or mayonnaise (although mayonnaise is a bit more complicated, since it also has protein). It is almost impossible to make at home an emulsion which will behave that way, you may succeed with lecithine and very good equipment (a lab-style homogenizer will be preferable over blenders and other kitchen staples), and you will be very limited in the ingredients you use. The protein-based foam happens when proteins link. This is also possible with only a few ingredients in the kitchen, most notably egg whites, aquafaba, and, under the right conditions, milk (that's what cappuchino wands do). It is even more finicky than fat-based foam. The third one is the (more-or-less sudden) release of gas. This is e.g. how beer foam happens. They are always very short-lived for liquids, although in principle a sponge cake and similar baked goods are a batter that has been set into this bubbled-up state by baking. None of the three types above are applicable to a random liquid or sauce. They all require that you start with a known ingredient that creates foams, and whip it under the proper conditions, with the least amount of additions. A fourth, more modern way, is to try forcing a gas into the liquid from outside. This is how soda stream works, or whipped cream siphons. This can in principle work with a wide variety of liquids, but you have to do quite some food engineering before the resulting texture is acceptable. Most liquids won't hold the foam as-is, if they whip at all, so you have to add a binding agent. So, if you want to really make a random sauce into a foam, the way to do it will be to purchase a siphon (don't forget to invest into enough charging cartridges, you will need a lot for your experimentation) and a variety of gums and other binding agents. Then you will have to experiment to determine the proper binding agent (and the proper amount of it) for your sauce. Since you probably don't want to run many hundreds of experiments per sauce, it is advisable that you also get the proper literature on the functioning of binders, and gain some hands-on experience by first following existing, optimized recipes for foams. After that, you can start designing your own recipes, and will probably get away with a dozen or two of experimental runs per sauce, depending on your level of experience and how exact your expectations of the outcome are.

Can you buy egg whites at the store, or must I take the yolk out my own? I assume if so they would be sold in some sort of carton. My plan is to just use them for scrambled egg whites in the morning. It just helps speed up the process this way for work days.

Many stores sell egg whites. Organic Valley Liquid Egg Whites as an example. They can be both pasteurized (useful if you want to use the whites in a non-cooked application) and non-pasteurized. In my US grocery stores, I find egg whites in the refrigerated section, near the eggs in cardboard cartons, similar to those that cream comes in. Depending on your application, beware of egg substitutes; these aren't quite the same thing.

I'm a huge fan of cooking up grilled onions, peppers, mushrooms, and many other toppings. When I worked at a local sub shop I was always the one volunteering to grill up some onions and saute the portobello mushrooms. When I made the mushrooms and the grilled onions it was the exact same process. I would add butter to my fry pan, slice up the ingredients, and then add them to the pan to cook. According to my past employer, I was sauteing the mushrooms while caramelizing the grilled onions. I never added any sugar or anything to my grilled onions. I did cook them a wee bit longer because when you slightly burn(darken) the butter before adding the ingredients you get an amazing flavor. (This was my own step that I added and did not inform my boss so the process to her was the same) My question is why was my employer saying I was doing two things when the process they told me to do was the same? Is there a major difference between the two, or is it just depending on the time spent cooking? I just want to be saying the correct term when I'm cooking so I feel more fancy. :} Any tips and advice?

Caramelising is a chemical process in which sugars decompose under the influence of heat (pyrolisis). It happens to any heated sugars, no matter if they are free (as in heating refined sugar for making candy) or bound in something else (such as the sugars naturally occurring in an onion). The outcome of the process are compounds which have a dark color and pleasant aroma. Sauteeing is a cooking technique. It consists of frying small pieces of solid food on very high temperature with very little fat while shaking the pan all the time, so they won't overheat and/or stick. Many people don't know the technical meaning of sauteeing and use the word for plain shallow frying at medium temperature and without shaking the pan. This seems to be the definition your employer was using. In fact, you were shallow frying both kinds of vegetables, which resulted in caramelisation plus other changes for the onions and in these other changes only for the vegetables which don't contain significant amounts of sugar. Cooking recipes frequently avoid saying just "fry the onions", because onions have to be brought to a different state for different recipes. So they usually use a word which implies a desired final state, such as "caramelize". For many other vegetables, which only have a single usable state of doneness, they specify the technique instead. This is why different words can be used for the same process - one describes the technique you are using, the other describes the changes which are happening, it is like saying 'I am going sunbathing' or 'I am going to catch some tan', which are indeed the same process. Incidentally, true sauteeing is a bad idea if you want to caramelise onions. Low and slow is the way to go if you want caramelised onions, while during the high temperatures used in sauteeing they go from translucent to burnt without passing a nice caramelized stage. But just leaving them in the pan for some time is a good technique. You also say grilling. This is a completely different technique, and it is done on a grill instead of in a pan. I can't imagine how you would caramelize cut onions on a grill, unless you put a griddle on the grill, which is equivalent to frying.

We bought a pizza stone from a thrift store (so at least it was cheap). Unfortunately we cleaned it with soap before reading up on how to clean them. I know, rookie mistake. Is there any way to fix it or should I just toss it out and consider it a lesson is researching new tools before messing with them? Obviously, I have no idea if the prior owner misused it so this might be a lesson in not buying used stoneware. I haven't tried baking on it since using soap on it and the soap was only lightly used. I guess I should perform an experiment and find out if it makes things taste soapy.

I would rinse well with clear water. Allow to dry thoroughly, and then use as normal. There is a small chance that your pizza stone will impart a soap flavor to your pizza, but I would say that it is worth a couple of pizza cooks to determine if there is a long term problem. It's really not that much of a risk.

What are the general rules regarding when can you refreeze food that was frozen and then thawed in the fridge? and what are the reasons behind them? (Hygiene? Food quality?). Let's assume for the sake of the argument that the items were in a non-frozen state only a few hours. To be more specific, I'm interested in the application of these rules for - Ginger garlic paste - Dough - Indian Curries - Green Chilly paste - Frozen green peas

There are two different issues, which have separate drivers. There are no specific rules, just consequences of the thaw and freezing cycles on each food--but it is always better to minimize the number of cycles to maintain quality. Safety From a safety point of view, the rule is any perishable food (one that is not fairly stable at room temperature such as cold cereal or pretzels) should have its time in the so-called danger zone (40-140 F, 4-60 C) limited to no more than two total hours over its lifetime. This prevents pathogens, which grow exponentially, from having sufficient time in hospitable conditions to grow and create enough toxins to be harmful. So if you have something at room temperature for one hour and then freeze it, it would have one hour left on the clock when you thaw it out. The rule is counted analogous for items which you defrost in the refrigerator - freezing "stops the clock", any time spent out of the freezer, be it during thawing or after it, counts towards it, and times between freezing "cycles" add up. (Note that as people will no doubt otherwise insist on pointing out: these recommendations are extremely conservative, and are meant to protect the general public health. You must determine your own willingness to accept risk.) Quality In terms of quality, there are two main issues that occur in freezing: ice crystal formation, and freezer burn. Additionally, condensation can be a minor issue upon thawing. Ice Damage As you freeze food, the water in it freezes (this is obvious). What may not be obvious is that this frozen water is in crystals, which are hard and sharp, and can penetrate cell walls of meat and vegetables. This will cause meats to loose moisture on being thawed, and vegetables to weep and become more limp and flaccid. The more slowly the food is frozen (due to a warmer freezer compartment), the worse the damage is. Some foods, like fresh vegetables are very sensitive to this type of damage (this is why most freezing directions for vegetables include blanching). Meats are also somewhat sensitive, but it is not as severe, especially if you take steps to freeze them quickly (freeze in a single layer, set your freezer to its coldest temperature). Many home freezers are also auto-defrost, which means they periodically warm up to get rid of accumulated frost, and then cool down again. This can cause ice crystal growth over time. Chest freezers without auto-defrost do not suffer this problem, but at the cost of requiring manual defrosting periodically. Food frozen commercially is often done in blast chillers which have forced air circulation and colder temperatures than are achievable with home freezers and so freeze food much more rapidly than is possible at home, resulting in a higher quality product as long as the frozen state is maintained well. Other foods such as purees or soups suffer little from ice crystal damage, and so are not as much of an issue. Freezer Burn Freezer burn happens when water sublimates (evaporates directly from the frozen state to vapor). This dries out the food, giving it a leathery, burned appearance. It is the same mechanism used intentionally in creating freeze dried foods (although that is usually done more rapidly and under a partial vacuum, to improve quality). You can mitigate or prevent freezer burn by wrapping food quite tightly, so there is not room for air circulation at its surface. This may involve multiple layers such as film wrap, followed by aluminum foil. Condensation Some foods, like cheesecakes, will react poorly to getting wet. If thawed unwrapped, water may condense directly on the food, beading on its surface and reducing the quality. If you do freeze a food like this, you want to wrap it very well (which also helps with freezer burn), and fully thaw it before unwrapping to keep the condensation off the surface of the food. Specific Examples Of the specific examples you have enumerated: Ginger garlic paste, green chili paste -- as a paste, it is already soft and somewhat liquid, so ice damage is not really an issue. Dough -- Most doughs freeze well, and don't have a cell structure to disrupt. If the dough is an active yeast dough, multiple cycles are going to slowly reduce the effectiveness of the yeast by killing off some each cycle. Curries -- Cooked food in sauces, especially braises which many curries are, usually freeze extremely well. They are not subject to much ice damage, as they are already softened during the cooking process. Frozen green peas -- If commercially frozen, they will have minimal damage, and are already blanched. If you have blanched them, the cell walls will already be weakened. Still, many people are very sensitive to the quality of their peas, so this is one of the foods that is more likely to give you poor outcomes. Better Practice A far better practice than thawing and refreezing is to freeze in smaller containers (such as four 1 quart zipper type bags of stock, instead of one large gallon container). This will allow you to take out only what you need, minimizing handling (for safety) and thaw/freeze cycles for food quality. It is also far more convenient than having to thaw the food, since you have less to thaw (which is faster). Some foods can even me used directly from the frozen state if you don't have to thaw them in order to get the amount you require.

The temperature in my refrigerator has suddenly increased and seems stuck at 55 degrees (12ºC) no matter how I set it. Clearly something is wrong but it's Sunday and I can't get anyone out to check it today. Do I need to toss the food inside? Freezer seems fine.

Dairy and meats should be tossed to be safe if they were at 55 degrees for more than a few hours in my opinion. When I have difficulty tossing questionable food, I mentally compare the potential cost of a trip to the ER, lost work, and pain/suffering compared to the cost of the food. The decision to toss or not to toss could be compared to the quandary of whether to purchase insurance or just hope there aren't any accidents or disasters. Remember that cheese does not go bad and is better soft, so do not toss that. Cottage cheese is not really cheese and should be tossed, as well as mayo, salad dressings. Depending on source of your eggs, you may consider discarding. In the US there is high salmonella risk, so eggs should be tossed, unless from your own chickens. Do not toss the butter. The source of cold for the refrigerator comes from the freezer; it just seems to still be cold since it will take longer to thaw. Rule #1 is do NOT open the doors unless absolutely necessary. You will lose tremendous amounts of cool air each time. If necessary, you may have to unload contents into coolers and pack in ice. If you do that right away with risky food items, may not need to toss a thing. Usually here when the power goes out, it's during a massive storm, so running to town to get bags of ice to pack perishables in is not really an option. But for a temporary mechanical problem, I would definitely run to the store and pack meat, dairy, perishables in ice in coolers, leave the less perishable, and keep the doors shut.

I want to make a barbecue sauce which has chicken stock in its recipe. This is the first time I needed chicken stock for cooking; somehow, I didn't come by it up until now. Anyway, neither me or any of my roommates ever buy chickens with bones; we always buy clean chickens or clean wings (nothing to create stock with). I understand I could buy a chicken with bones for the sake of making chicken stock, but I was wondering whether there is an easier, alternative solution that could substitute for chicken stock in my sauce. Think of "chicken stock for students."

Considering the sheer number of rather strong ingredients in that recipe - if it were me and I didn't have stock and didn't want to make or buy any...I'd substitute broth as a first option and salted water as a second option.

I've just tried to make this recipe from the BBC Good Food site: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/simple-soda-bread. The only variation was I used semi-skimmed milk (2% fat) instead of the whole milk specified. The result on mixing the wet and dry ingredients was a sloppy, gloopy mess, completely unsuited to be "shaped into a ball". Was it because there wasn't enough fat in the milk, or is there likely to be another cause?

The fat in the milk is a red herring here. At best, you would have to be a professional baker who knows the same recipe by feel to be able to notice the tiny difference made by 2% vs. 3.8% milk in that recipe. I would start in very different directions. First, was it really a disaster? This is a 80% hydration dough, and that with whole flour - I would fully expect it to be sloppy and gloopy. There is nothing wrong with that. If you haven't baked bread of different hydrations before, or no soda bread (which has lower gluten and so doesn't come together as much), you may be imagining something firm and plastic like pasta dough. This is not what the recipe is about. When they say "shape it into a ball", they don't mean a sphere, they mean a boule. It will be certainly wider than it's tall. Just continue working with it. If it is too extreme - e.g. it becomes a flat disc, or even flows freely - I can think of two possible problems. maybe you didn't measure correctly. The recipe is given by weight, but if you tried to measure by volume, you might have been off. Or you were not perfectly concentrated and by mistake put in 500 ml milk and 400 flour, or a similar mistake. maybe you used a different flour than what they have used. While white flour is pretty standardized, whole flours can differ a lot in their absorption ability. Update: As per J..'s comment, the amount of lemon juice can be significant for that amount of flour. It might be worth using a smaller lemon, or not that much juice. (Or maybe go with real buttermilk instead of creating a substitute on the fly). In any case, you can try saving the failed recipe by adding a little bit more flour this time (but don't make it as firm as mid-hydration yeast bread dough).

I just ordered some new loose leaf oolong, and I've noticed that the leaves don't unfurl all that much--even after two or three steeps. I've noticed with past oolongs that the leaves open up nice and big, but not really with this one. It still makes amazing tea, but I'm wondering if I'm missing out on some flavor. I typically use not-quite-boiling water and steep a couple teaspoons of tea for about 4 minutes. Are non-unfurling tea leaves an indication of...anything? Is there more flavor to be had with fully opened leaves?

Not sure if this is the situation in your case, but here's a possible stab. I hope it's informative (and correct!) anyway. :) Depending on the look of the leaves (can't tell from your link), you might have just the tips and buds, rather than fully formed and unfurled leaves. If this is the case, this can indicate higher quality (or at least more desirable, commercially speaking) tea, and perhaps the time of year of harvest. If very young, these buds won't unfurl much (or at all). When harvesting tea, one could pick the more mature (older) leaves further up the branch (toward the trunk of the tree), or further down toward the end of the branch (toward the newest buds), which will be smaller and more delicate. The latter (buds and smaller leaves) are "better" in various respects, and are generally more expensive in respects of harvesting, processing, etc., and correspondingly less common and more valuable. Take a look at tea leaf grading guides; the Wikipedia article on tea grading for more on the concept. There are many more guides if you search on that term. Though usually applied to black teas, I hope it illustrates the point I'm trying to make. Grades of "FOP" ("Flowery Orange Pekoe") and higher will have some quantity of the buds; more words means "better" in some regard (Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery... I have heard of SFTGFOP1, but I am certainly not refined enough to appreciate it). Good white teas (e.g., the picture on this page is an example of leaves that are "hairy" because the buds are just opening) sometimes have lots of buds, which won't unfurl when steeping. Again, you're talking oolong, but hopefully this illustrates the concept. Other teas are mechanically rolled (e.g., gunpowder green tea) so the look of the leaves before steeping could be similar between buds and processed teas. Gunpowder tea (the stuff that that I get, anyway) is relatively lower quality, made from more mature leaves, which unfurl completely into large leaves after steeping. As an aside: For good quality tea, I find using too-hot water yields less desirable tea. YMMV. I hope you've got a great tea!

I sometimes burn the bottom of the pan due to carelessness, or not stirring enough. The burnt smell tends to persist even after I separate out the unburnt bits. Is there any way to fix this?

Well, if the aroma is truly in the food then there's not much you can do. However, you can take steps to make sure that the aroma is subdued as much as possible. It's quite possible that a large portion of the burnt aroma is merely in the air. Turn exhaust fans on to get the aroma out of your kitchen asap Submerge the burnt surface in water as soon as possible to prevent the aroma from spreading Be very careful "separating" the unburnt from the burnt Inhale something very strongly scented. Why? It's quite likely that a significant portion of the burnt smell is merely stuck in your nose. If you can somehow nullify that source of the burning aroma, you can perhaps more accurately gauge if the food itself actually has it. Possibly you could overpower it by adding something very fragrant to your dish that fits. If your dish would work with lemon or lime this could help. If it's a desert maybe cinnamon or cloves might be useful. The best thing though is prevention. Use lower heat when possible if you find yourself being regularly careless. Using a better pot/pan may help also depending on what you are currently using. Also, don't turn down help if your guests offer. Make them stir! :D P.S. Don't inhale something dangerous like bleach or ammonia.

How do i stop small bits of cabbage from floating past my weight to the surface of the sauerkraut brine? it's the 3rd day of ferment and i'm using a Ball Spring weight with a fermentation lid. I tried putting parchment paper under the weight and that did not work at all, it just stirred up more bits to float

Tomato sauce and paste are not the same thing. Tomato paste is essentially a concentrated tomato with some water removed that is then preserved. It is generally only used as an ingredient. Tomato sauce is immensely variable and usually has a variety of other ingredients added resulting in something to actually eat.

I recently started using Tamari over whatever the standard US form of soy sauce is. The difference was something of a revelation. The depth and complexity of flavor is an order of magnitude more interesting than what I had been throwing around in the kitchen. Marinating some shrimp in it for 20 minutes was incredible. I'm wondering if there's more that I'm missing. Wikipedia has a load of info on Soy Sauce varieties, but it doesn't really answer the question of what they taste like or if there are certain uses they lend themselves to. I have 8+ types of vinegar in my kitchen. Is soy sauce a similar exploration? What are the common types of soy sauce? What is the difference in flavor profile? Is the usage different? Have I discovered a new kitchen addiction to drive my wife nuts?

This is a complex question, because there are several different ways to categorize soy sauces: COUNTRY OF ORIGIN (Chinese and Japanese are the ones most commonly contrasted --but as you saw in Wikipedia, there are many more), COLOR (light, dark, white), VISCOSITY (thin, thick, jam), and MANUFACTURING PROCESS (This has the most name variation, but there are just two options: fermented or chemical. Fermented is the "real thing" and also is called naturally brewed, or slow-aged. Chemical is the quick and, as usual, inferior-tasting alternative that abbreviates a months-long process into several short, chemically-laden days. Additional names for this unfortunate approach are non-brewed, non-fermented, and artificial. To avoid this type, study the label and avoid anything containing those non-savory corrective ingredients like corn syrup and caramel coloring.) To muddy the waters further, add into the mix the fact that flavor is most deeply influenced by the proportion of soybeans to grains -- yet this crucial factor is not typically used directly as a categorization tool. To focus my research, I tried to find a site that felt as though the writer was speaking directly to you: one that would encourage, and not overwhelm or confuse, as you decide whether to become a soy sauce affectionado. Specifically, I wanted a resource that clearly addressed FLAVOR PROFILE and USAGE. Surprisingly, a blogger named Barbara came to rest as my #1 recommendation: Tigers and Strawberries. I like the simplicity and clarity of her writing style, as well as her experiential platform (complete with honest explanation of her biases). The endless comments after her post provide additional insights that might be helpful, as well. Of course, Harold McGee always provides wonderful more scientifically-based, yet still somehow understandable, explanations. He takes 5 full pages (496-500) in his book On Food and Cooking to discuss soy sauce in all its layered glory.

I've heard and old wives tales that when you try to make fudge or candy when it's raining or snowing outside that the fudge or candy will not set. What is the truth behind this tale? If it is true, how do you make fudge or candy on days that it is raining or snowing?

It's not an old wives tale; it's actually true to a point. I can't say it better than Exploratorium, Science of Cooking Can weather affect candy making? Oddly enough, it can. Cooking candy syrup to the desired temperature means achieving a certain ratio of sugar to moisture in the candy. On a humid day, once the candy has cooled to the point where it is no longer evaporating moisture into the air, it can actually start reabsorbing moisture from the air. This can make the resulting candy softer than it is supposed to be. That’s why dry days are recommended for candy making, although the effects of humidity can be somewhat counterbalanced by cooking the candy to the upper end of the appropriate temperature stage. Cool weather is also recommended for candy making, because—generally—the faster candy cools, the less chance it has to form unwanted crystals. At The Fudge House on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, they like to make fudge on cool days for another reason: According to owner and candy maker Tom Lowe, people eat more fudge when it’s cooler. Huge commercial operations are in humidity controlled buildings, but you can get home dehumidifiers too. Perhaps one in the kitchen could help.

I am making a turkey in a bag this weekend and I was wondering if there is a sure fire way to know when your turkey is done cooking. I don't have a meat (or any other) thermometer.

Go get a $15 probe thermometer. There is really no point in cooking turkey or any other roast without one. The actual answer is- there is no good way without measuring the internal temperature. Any time-based approach will be a guess at best. The built in thermometer in some turkeys is a spring with some epoxy that melts a specific temperature. They are somewhat unreliable and either way they spring at 180F or so. This is well overdone for white meat but covers the turkey seller's liability. Really- it's worth it to just get the thermometer and take the guess work out.

Besides using it as a fertilizer, how else can I reuse my coffee grounds?

cooking wise, they're so bitter/burnt. The water already took the good flavor out of them and left the crap behind. From the previous answers, it seems that using coffee as an abrasive or any other way will require a clean up after using the grinds, which in my opinion makes them useless.

I have a hard time keeping basil. When I buy it from a local grocery store, it is perfectly fresh, but when I take it home it withers in a couple of days. I have tried keeping it in fresh water and trimming the stems, but that only extends its life about 48 hours. My current record is 3 days before it goes bad, and I only got that by trimming and replacing water every 16 hours. What is the secret here? How can I keep the basil alive?

All cutting (slicing, chopping) knives should be as sharp as you can get them, really. A dull knife is much more likely to cause an accident and cut you. Dull knives are more difficult to use properly and any knife used improperly is likely to lead to accidents. The duller the knife the more pressure you need to apply in order to cut your food, leading to a higher chance of slipping and hurting yourself

I am trying to make split pea soup. The first time I did it the peas softened just fine but the soup was scorched. I am trying again but at a lower heat, and the peas are refusing to soften. Ingredients are 1 bag each of split peas, frozen carrots, and frozen onions, plus a small amount of Spike seasoning. How can I soften the peas without scorching the soup? Is a slow cooker the best option?

The reason your split peas are hard is that you added salt or stock to the water before they finished cooking. From your initial post, you say you've added something called "Spike seasoning". I'm guessing that's the culprit. It's probably got salt in it. You have to cook split peas in just water for at least an hour, then stir to break them down and add any vegetables to flavor the soup. Only after another 30 minutes or so should you add salt to taste.

My wife bought some beef mince (ground beef) from a shop. It looked red. When she fried it, it give off an aroma of vinegar. Is it spoiled?

The smell indicates a safety problem. There is no reason to add vinegar to meat (unless you bought already marinated meat, but 1) marinating mince is so unusual, the chances of finding premarinated mince are against zero, and 2) this would have been declared on the label. The likely source for the smell is bacterial fermentation. Many bacteria produce acetic acid as a waste product (this is how vinegars gets to smell like vinegar). While the vinegar producing bacteria usually colonize other types of food, and meat tends to support bacteria producing other odors (the ones known as rotting meat), strange things can happen, and this smell is a big red flag. Especially with mince meat, which supports much more bacterial growth than a slab of whole meat (bacteria live on the surface only, more surface=more bacteria). it looked red This doesn't matter. The color of meat is not a reliable indicator for food safety. First, meat exposed to air quickly gets an unappetizing shade of green or grey. Second, because customers are known to turn up their noses at greenish meat, butchers can just package it under a special atmosphere, or just bathe it in chemicals which prevent discoloration, so it always stays red. Third, while meat does indeed change its look when it rots, this happens rather late in the process. Gas production (smelly or not) will come much earlier, and you should discard it at that point.

In this recipe, can I substitute or do without the white wine? Is there a non-alcoholic substitute?

Consider using white wine vinegar. The flavour profile obviously isn't the same, acetic acid changes things a lot, but you do get the other flavour compounds you get in wine. That said, subjectively speaking, I agree with the suggestion of lemon juice to go with fennel and sour cream. Or maybe a combination of the two.

I've been frying tilapia fillets in flour for a while and I like it, easy and tasty, just getting a bit tired of the same fish. Is there any other fish available in most supermarkets that is just as good for frying (I know some fish can't be fried easily)? I'm not looking for any exotic dishes, just some basic fried fish fillets to mix things up a bit.

Beer is about 95% water, so it's not that important to worry about the alcohol's boiling point— you can pretty much say that the beer will boil at 100ºC and ignore the alcohol. An oven is an enclosed space, and when you're cooking stuff with water in it (i.e. most foods) the relative humidity of the oven quickly reaches 100%, which means the air can hold no more water vapor. At that point, while the beer may be evaporating slightly, it condenses back into the bowl. Note that when you open the oven, the beer may start bubbling and boiling as the drier air from the room rushes in, allowing more liquid to evaporate.

I was wondering if there was a way to make a concentrated flavoring from a teabag. This probably isn't the best choice, but we have teabags readily available in our office breakroom, and I would like to occasionally add flavor to other hot or cold beverages. Specifically, I sometimes make hot chocolate using steamed milk, and would like to make mint hot chocolate. Alternatively, I'd like to make some concentrated chai from a chai tea bag and add it to steamed milk.

When I make iced tea at home, I put 5-6 tea bags in a small pot with about 2 cups of water and let it simmer for a while (usually about 30-45 minutes). Then I put the concentrate into a 2 quart container and add water. Sometimes (if I've simmered it too long) it's a little too strong and I'll have to add more water. Maybe you could try doing that? It seems like you could even simmer it longer, making it even more concentrated. Then just bring the concentrate to work and add it as needed.

Because of the shattering dangers of the apparently inferior lime glass that Pyrex uses for manufacturing in the U.S. as exposed by Consumer Reports, I'd like to replace my Pyrex with borosilicate bakeware. Apparently Pyrex used to manufacture their bakeware with borosilicate until about 10-15 years ago in the U.S.. I thought I found a manufacturer (Marinex) that used borosilicate, and though they advertise it as such, based on this report, it turns out that the materials used by Marinex still may not be as safe as "true" borosilicate bakeware. How can I purchase true (new) borosilicate bakeware from the United States? It doesn't have to be manufactured in the U.S., and I'm open to ordering it from foreign stores that export to the U.S.. Specifically, I'm looking for 13x9 and 11x7 rectangular, and 8x8 square baking dishes.

Induction just heats the pan using magnetism. Aside from very high efficiency, it isn't so different from any other method, and how hot the oil gets is an issue of power output and heat transfer/conductivity of the pan itself. There isn't an appreciable difference in how the physics work inside the pan. Clearly your oil is not hot enough for frying/sautéeing. Most induction cooktops say they draw at least 1000 W to produce temperatures in the 350-400° F range, which is a somewhat typical frying temperature, being just at or below the smoke points of most oils. However, that number is based on a lot of assumptions, and 1500 W is not necessarily a generous margin of error for a portable hot plate. A lot of things could prevent you from reaching even a modest 400° F: The pan is too dense. Are you using cast iron? It responds well to induction but the thermal resistance is also a lot higher. The pan is very large and/or you're stuffing a lot of food into it, a result of which could be that the heat is escaping faster than the hot plate can pump it out. The pan does not actually have the right amount of magnetic permeability for high-heat cooking. A magnet may stick to it, but how hard does it stick? If there isn't a very strong attraction - i.e. you have to put some effort into pulling off a permanent magnet - then you're not getting anywhere near the efficiency the unit was designed for, and even the full 1500 W may not be enough to reach the desired temperatures. The cooktop is not really pulling in the full 1500 W, either due to a poor power source or simply poor design. Some manufacturers might quote 1500 W as a peak in order to sell more units, knowing full well that they can't sustain more than about 60% of that. If you've got a power meter (e.g. Kill-A-Watt), plug it in and see how much it's really drawing. There are some portable induction cookers that go up to 1800 or even 2000 W, which is the bare minimum for the large element on an electric or induction stove (2500 W is typical for those). If you want to use a portable hot plate for high-heat cooking, check your pans very carefully, don't overcrowd them, and if all else fails, you might just need a better hot plate.

I've finally found a snickerdoodle recipe that results in cookies with that perfect "bite": a crispy outside -- not crunchy, but an almost-infinitesimal stiffness that resists your teeth just a little before "letting them in" -- leading to a chewy-soft inside that is neither too chewy nor too soft, but perfectly in between. The cookies also have a perfect balance of cinnamon vs. vanilla: they're snickerdoodles, not cinnamon cookies. (Well, unless you accidentally use the 1/2 tablespoon measure instead of the 1/2 teaspoon. Don't ask me how I know this.) The problem is, the cookies are just too sweet for my taste. They're not so overly sweet that I can't eat them, but every time I do eat one, I find myself wishing it weren't so sweet. How can I modify this recipe to make the cookies less sweet, without ruining their texture? Ingredients: 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature 1 cup sugar 1 egg 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon 2 tablespoons milk 1/4 cup sugar + 1 tablespoon cinnamon for dipping The method is the usual: cream butter and sugar, add egg and vanilla, then the dry ingredients, then the milk. Chill 30 minutes, then form into big balls - 1 1/2 inches, dip in the cinnamon sugar, put on parchment- or silpat-lined baking sheet and flatten slightly. Bake at 375°F for 10-12 minutes. (I followed the recipe almost exactly1, except for substituting 3/4 cups of the AP flour with WWW [white whole wheat] flour.) 1OK, so I followed the recipe almost exactly the second time I made it. The first time, well, let's not talk about that. Stupid capital T vs. lowercase t.

As I'm sure you know, sugar has many functions in baked goods, so replacing it can be tricky. Syrups will make your cookies too moist and just reducing the sugar can change the texture and browning. Sugar alcohols can add sweetness, but they usually don't brown and they can give people "digestive issues". I think your best route will be replace at least some of the sugar in your recipe with a different type of sugar, while keeping the total amount of sugar the same. I think your best resource may be a brewing supply store, as they often sell other types of sugar to help control fermentation in beer. Brewing sugar, also called corn sugar, will be easiest to find and it's almost entirely glucose. In your case, granulated glucose will have the advantage of only being about 70-80% as sweet as sucrose. If this reduces the sweetness too much, you can try blending the granulated glucose with regular sugar. There are other sugars that are even less sweet, like maltose or lactose, that could be used to replace some of the regular sugar in the recipe, but they can be harder to find. For reference, here is a chart of the relative sweetness of various sugars and sweeteners.

Sorry guys, but I suspect I have a bit of a newbie question here. When I buy raw chicken breast, I like to open up the package immediately and separate it out into 3 portions because that's roughly the amount I use each time I cook it. If I freeze immediately, it looks a bit like this after I defrost it: ... which is fine. But if I open the packet, then freeze, it looks like this when defrosted: Clearly the skin is drying out badly. :-) Is there a way I can stop this? I'm thinking of immediately covering the chicken again with clingfilm before refrosting but will that work? Or do I just have to keep it sealed in the packet? If covering it will work, why is that? Is the freezing process sucking moisture out of the skin?

I've actually found a combination of both aluminum foil and clingfilm to give the best protection. The foil is most effective at preventing freezer burn, but does nothing to isolate odors. Since the freezer is so cold, you don't ordinarily smell much when you stick your head in there, but that doesn't mean that the odors don't spread about, and you'll notice it only once you thaw your chicken (or other food item). That's why I like to wrap my food in clingfilm as well, but more pertinent to your question, the foil is what you want to prevent freezer burn.

I get the full cream milk, boil it, and then let it cool down. I collect the thick layer of cream that gathers on its top and put it in the freezer in a vessel. Next day if I get more milk I again follow the same process and put the new cream in the already stored cream vessel in the freezer. What should I do to extend the lives of these creams such that they last for about a week?

Assuming the milk is pasteurised, frozen cream made with it should last for months in a clean, sealed container in the freezer. I would put each batch in a separate container though rather than putting room temperature cream in with already frozen.

Recently I started a batch of sauerkraut, the first after several years. Unlike my previous batches this one is much smaller (half a head of cabbage, as opposed to several full heads), uses Morton's Kosher salt as opposed to sea salt, and fermentation was started in a large bowl as opposed to a crock. Today I received a new crock, and transferred the batch from the bowl into the crock. The sauerkraut is about 72 hours old, and seems to be progresssing and expected--however as I transferred the kraut I noticed that the brine appeared slimy as it dripped. Aside from it's appearance when dripping it seems normal (I tasted a small amount, it smells like it should, and when the brine is standing still it appears normal. I also ran some of the extra brine through my fingers and it didn't feel slimy). I'm curious if this is normal--perhaps either because the the kraut is relatively young (at only 3 days), or perhaps because of using "plain" kosher salt which may have additives such as anti-caking agents. Or perhaps it is perfectly normal and I've just never noticed it before, as I've never transferred a batch between vessels before.

In general, slimy brine is indicative of a fermentation problem. Your brine might be too weak (what concentration did you use?), it may be too warm, your brine might not cover the vegetables, there might be some air bubbles trapped in your ferment. This article suggests that in the early days of sauerkraut fermentation, the concentration of slime forming bacteria - Leuconostoc - is relatively high and towards the end of fermentation it's too small to measure. It doesn't say anything about slimy brine, but it's possible that the brine is temporarily slimy in the early days of fermentation and as the acidity increases it dissipates. I've never checked a ferment this early, so I can't comment on it. Personally, I would let it continue to ferment for a week or two and then see whether the perceived sliminess has dissipated or increased. It's possible that it's too early to tell. Slimy vegetables, without a doubt, should be discarded. References http://www.culturesforhealth.com/fermented-vegetables-troubleshooting-guide

Rex Stout has a recipe for "Broiled Georgia Ham" where the ham is soaked in milk for an hour. Elsewhere I have read that you can soak chicken livers in milk before sautéing them. Having read a little, it seems that this is done to tenderize the meat and I'm tempted to experiment by making meat loaf with milk soaked ground beef. Before I set about ruining tomorrow's dinner I'd like to ask if anyone knows already what the outcome of this experiment might be.

It is quite common to make meat loaf with milk-soaked cubes of bread, but I've never heard of tenderising meat with it. Having said that, some kind of fat is common for marinades (yoghurt for example), so it might work. I'd try it with full cream milk, not half-and-half. I think the reason for soaking liver in milk is to make the taste milder, as lamb, pork and cow liver can be quite strong tasting.

Do I always need to peel the avocado, or can I just chop it?

I certainly wouldn't want to be chewing through avocado skin. Unless you plan on throwing it in a blender and liquifying it, it'd be pretty nasty.

Sometimes I forget that bag of salsa chips open and with the summer weather they go soggy. How do I get them crunchy again before the guacamole is all gone?

A quick and dirty way of achieving this is to microwave them for a bit. Microwave oven powers vary, so try 10 seconds first and add time as necessary. You'll find the right time for the right amount to bring your chips to nearly what they were prior to sitting out.

I prepare Turkish coffee using pre-roasted coffee powder. What is a good time to add cocoa powder to it - before heating, after heating or during heating? Does it matter?

If you're using plain cocoa powder, which doesn't really dissolve, I would mix it with the coffee powder before adding to the water, and as long as the coffee powder will tolerate it, add it all to the water before heating. Mixing the two powders should help avoid clumps in the cocoa powder, and adding it early will give it time to release flavor into the water. You'll still have to stir a bit to keep it from settling out, though! If you're using instant cocoa mix, which is sweetened and processed to make it dissolve evenly, you can just add it at the end. There's no benefit from adding it earlier, and it'll be easiest to stir and dissolve it in already hot water.

I can find whipping cream, half and half, and even clotted cream where I'm staying in the US but not double or single cream, are these familiar terms or is there a US equivalent term?

In the UK, single cream is a milk product with at least 18% butterfat. Double cream has 48% butterfat. Neither are common in the US. If you can find clotted cream, which is 55% fat, then there is a chance of making double cream at home by diluting it. As some clotted creams have a cooked taste, there may be other solutions.

Readiing a previous question regarding determining the accuracy of oven temperature I wanted to comment/ask more on the topic. My GE Profile wall oven is 17 years old, its electronic board was replaced a few years back and all seemed fine until recently. I have two oven thermometers which give varied results as much as 50 degrees off. I have noticed that my oven does seem to get more accurate at higher temperatures. Set at 350 I know it is less than 300, set at 390 I seem to get close to 350, set at 475 for pizza baking on a stone (which is always in the oven) and the crust bakes just fine. Has anyone experienced a "sliding scale" for accuracy? Anything I can do?

While I am unsure about the 'sliding scale' you mention I do know that there is something you can do about it. A while back I discovered you can calibrate your thermostat. I couldn't find (quickly anyway) a good video example for the GE Profile, but did find two good GE examples. For an analog (dial) type thermostat see this video. For a digital thermostat check this one. Specifically I would suggest finding your particular owners manual (most of them are available online as a PDF for download anymore) As @moscafj points out if you are using two thermometers which are not in agreement you may want to acquire a new one and treat it as "right" for the purpose of calibrating the rest (or figure out which one is the odd one out and throw it away...) Some additional notes: Your pizza stone is likely acting as a heat sink (as it should) making it's behavior more consistent than if you were not using one, this would tend to 'explain away' the sliding scale theory. You need to be conscience of how often you are opening your oven door. This will have the effect of allowing far more heat escape than most people are aware of. If you are frequently opening the door to check the temperature you are possibly doing more harm than you know. This, too, could explain your observed sliding scale, at least in part.

I wanted to make a simple pizza, but as I read the recipe, I began to wonder about the chemistry behind it. When flour and water come together, gluten starts to form. We know that. But why doesn't gluten form when only flour and milk come together? 87 percent of the milk consists of water. When I whip the milk and flour, there is no elastic structure.

Milk does create gluten1 when combined with flour. The water in the milk does create a gluten structure. If it didn't, any bread made with milk would be dense and flat. But the dinner rolls I made yesterday (with no water, only milk) were light and airy. Milk clearly creates gluten. Note that gluten isn't only about elasticity. Beginning bread makers often associate gluten with stretchiness, but gluten is also necessary for the structure of bread. Without gluten development, bread won't rise high. Without gluten, gases will escape and bubble out, rather than stay in the dough. Without gluten, the final risen loaf of bread could collapse into a flat, dense pancake. Different doughs may be easier or harder to stretch into long strands, but that's not all that gluten development is about. The other ingredients in milk will tend to alter how gluten behaves. As Jeffrey Hamelman notes in his book Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes: Although the lactic acid in milk tightens the gluten structure, the fats present soften the structure, and the result is baked products that have less elasticity and an even grain. [...] When milk is used in yeast breads, it should be heated to about 190°F, a temperature higher than pasteurization, in order to denature the serum protein. Unheated, the serum is active and has a weakening effect on the structure of the gluten. Bakers often replace whole milk in formulas with dried milk, first for convenience, and second because the serum protein is deactivated in dry milk. A couple takeaways from that: Milk tightens the gluten structure (which means it won't stretch as easily) The fats in milk soften the structure, leading to more fine-grained bonding Some milk proteins can weaken the gluten structure (which will make the dough easier to tear and bread won't rise quite as high; as Hamelman mentions, a remedy for this is using heated milk or dried milk, but bakers often also just use a high-protein flour that generates more gluten to begin with) The question specifically mentions pizza, and the above issues are one reason that milk is less commonly found in pizza doughs than in things like soft rolls or soft white bread. Pizza dough needs to stretch easily, and it needs a very strong gluten structure to be stretched thinly. (Also, the sugars in milk will cause faster browning, which for pizza baked at high temperature may result in a crust that's quite dark.) 1 In response to a comment, I should clarify what I mean as the word gluten is used in modern English in several different ways. Gluten comes from a Latin word for "glue" and, when used in the context of preparing dough, generally refers to a network created when certain proteins combine with liquid to form a sticky and elastic mass. The properties of the combined liquid and protein mixture are different from the protein alone, so most cooks use the word gluten to make reference to this specific mixture and its properties. Nevertheless, as the proteins that occur in flour were isolated historically, the term gluten (or glutens, in plural; in wheat specifically called glutenins and gliadins) also came to refer to the specific proteins generally involved in creating this structure. Hence, one may also use the word "gluten" sometimes to refer to proteins in flour even when it is dry. And this dry substance can be isolated and sold separately as "wheat gluten." (Important note: occasionally, one sees people using the word "gluten" as a synonym for "protein content" of flour. However, other proteins that are non-glutinous may be found in flour as well, so the total protein content -- often found on labels -- is often different from the fractional amount of that which is gluten.) This ambiguity of usage -- a wet, elastic substance vs. the dry ingredient that enables its creation -- can be found in many sources. For a few examples, Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking writes: Gluten is a complex mixture of certain wheat proteins that can't dissolve in water, but do form associations with water molecules and with each other. When the proteins are dry, they're immobile and inert. When wetted with water, they can change their shape, move relative to each other, and form and break bonds with each other. Here McGee tends toward the second usage, but in subsequent paragraphs he switches nomenclature to refer to the dry components as "glutenins" and concludes by noting: "The result [of bonding and stretching of glutenins] is an extensive interconnected network of coiled proteins, the gluten." Thus, in McGee's usage, "the gluten" only comes into being in the presence of liquids, conforming to the first usage. Michel Suas in Advanced Bread and Pastry tends toward the first usage, stating: The two primary proteins in wheat -- glutenin [...] and gliadin [...] -- are responsible for the formation of the dough. Depending on their quality, these proteins can absorb 200 to 250 percent of their weight in water. As they inflate, they become attracted to each other and form chains of proteins called gluten. Some sources go further and even deny the existence of dry gluten (a view conflicting with the standard second English usage and product labeling). For example, Modernist Cuisine states: Gluten is formed when two of wheat’s native proteins, glutenin and gliadin, come into contact with water. That’s why it’s more accurate to talk about the gluten potential of a particular flour, rather than its gluten content. In any case, it's important to note the distinct meanings of the two uses of the word gluten in English, which can usually be understood from context. In dough formation, as here, it's quite common to talk about the "formation of gluten" through the addition of liquid, which is what I assume OP was referring to by the phrase "create gluten," a phrase I also incorporated into my answer.

I like to make a large amount of pan sheet cookies or brownie brittles as something to crumble over my breakfast yogurt. Something in the style of variations on the following recipe: https://www.instagram.com/p/CENLDHlJTp-/?epik=dj0yJnU9aWNEWTNma0ZEdVZsUjN2X2tVd2hSa1BvUVNtZXlBVUkmcD0wJm49V0ZxTlJMakQycmcwWUFWTzBtclZRdyZ0PUFBQUFBR0NYMGZB I let the brittle bake for fairly long, and let it cool and harden over the entire day so that it has no moisture left. Then I store it in a closed glass container in a shelf at room temperature. They keep fairly well but after 2-3 weeks, a tiny bit of mold starts to form, faster than I can eat them. Any ideas on how I could keep it longer? Ideally, they would store for up to 4 weeks. Any other techniques or additional preservatives I could add?

I would freeze it. Crumble will defrost pretty much instantly when you take it out of the freezer, so you can just pour it straight from the freezer container onto your yogurt. If you freeze it on a tray and then dump it into a container, it should stay crumbly rather than freeze into a block so it's easy to handle.

I have a lot of cottage cheese, and was thinking of using some to make a cheese sauce (possibley mixed with a blend of shredded cheeses as well). For some reason all the recipes I find for cottage cheese sauce call for putting the cheese in the blender. This is making me confused, if I skip the blender, shouldn't the cottage cheese just melt, like other cheeses would?

No. Cottage cheese is a type of acid coagulated cheese, much like ricotta, feta and farmers cheese. It will continue to have lumps when heated, which will never be smooth. The other type of cheese to avoid for melting is long aged hard cheeses like Parmesan or sharp cheddars. These tend to "break" and separate into an oily mess. Adding butter or cream usually helps, but can dilute the flavor. Using starch such as a bechamel sauce as a binder has a similar effect, but using a blend of short aged cheeses like gruyere or jack and stronger flavored cheeses like cheddar is a good option.

I bought a pre-made cornish pasty fromt the supermarket. The packaging says it can be eaten hot or cold, which presumably means it is already cooked. But the packaging also says it "is not suitable for microwave" and recommends 22 minutes in an oven at 200Cif it is to be heated. Why can't I heat it up in the microwave?

Because it is made from pastry dough. Pastry dough (and any other kind of dough) gets ruined by a microwave. See this question for details of what will probably happen. The only exceptions for dough in the microwave is pasta (which is supposed to be boiled in water anyway) and some kinds of very soft batter, which can be eaten immediately as a "microwave cupcake" (I think they get unappetizing if left to stay for a while). Any other kind of dough is destroyed by the water escaping the starch as steam.

I just moved from CO to VA- having mastered high altitude baking. But here I can't bake anything: cookies are burned on the bottom and uncooked on top, pizza dough is nearly raw in the middle. Cinnamon rolls do not rise. I am stumped. Could I need a new oven? I am a very serious and experienced cook and 8000' altitude did not phase me. What could I be doing wrong? Help! I have tried adjusting temps, I am not following my usual high attitude tricks at all. I also lived in the low lands for decades.

The whole "baking at altitude" thing is a beloved kitchen tale, but usually completely irrelevant. Certainly, the different pressure is a reason why the same physical changes in baking happen at a different temperature. And 8000 ft is nothing to laugh at, there water boils already at below 80 C instead of 100. So, you're dealing with a difference of ~20 degrees Celsius. This is indeed a number to behold, as opposed to people who start talking about high altitude baking at 900 ft. But what is much less known: Ovens are not a precise cooking method. I've regularly seen ovens which differ by over 40 C from the temperature shown on the thermostat. I've also regularly seen ovens where the difference in temperature between the back right corner and front left corner was at least 30 C. My grandma's oven doesn't even have degrees on its thermostat, just 6 settings. My other grandma and all her sister use a wood fired oven and regulate temperature by sometimes shifting the coals or throwing another log on. From ancient Sumer until the mid-twentieth century, humanity has baked without thermostats. And did so at all altitudes too. When you moved, there are many variables which changed which might have made a difference on your baking. The difference in average oven temperature is one, but it could also be anything from a different flour type (flours which are considered "bread" in some parts of the USA are labelled "AP" in others) through maybe having bought a new cake tin because the old one was too scratched to take along on the move, to you being stressed out, making small mistakes sometimes when baking and then falling prey to confirmation bias (you think your baking has gotten worse, and only notice the times it turns out worse than average). There is no way to say what happened. The key here is that there are two types of baker. One learns to follow process to the t. She uses the same utensils, the same ingredients, then sticks the cake in the oven at the usual temperature and sets the timer. With a few iterations, she has her process perfect, and starts producing successful cakes, then everybody is happy. But, if for some reason something changes, whether a known or unknown variable, a controllable one or uncontrollable, everything goes out of whack. Then there is a baker who pays more attention to what is happening, and why. This baker might be interested to read a bit about the physics and thermodynamics of cake batter. Or maybe not even that. But this baker will experiment a lot, pay attention to the difference. And this baker will never just set a temperature and a timer and go away, unless replicating something she did a dozen of times in the same setting. This baker will observe the batter before baking, and then in the oven. And no matter if it is the first or thirtieth time baking the same cake, she will not care what the clock says. She will use her nose to decide when to start checking the doneness with a wooden pick, and take out the cake as soon as she observes that it is done, not when she has waited the "magical" amount of time. This type of cook is unlikely to have to adjust anything when cooking in another place, be it with a different altitude, different oven type, or whatever. To your specific case: there is no need for a new oven. Any standard oven should be usable for baking cakes at any altitude found in Virginia. You just need to find out what it is that your cakes need - longer time, lower temperature setting, less baking powder, more baking powder, or something else - depending on exactly what goes wrong during making them. Without us being there and observing the signs, we can't tell which it is. From the scant description you give, "nearly raw in the middle", I'd suggest reducing the temperature as a first thing to try. And in any case, throw out your timer. It is convenient for your personal time management in the kitchen, but simply inadequate for deciding when to take a cake out of the oven.

Are white potatoes the right type for hash browns? I guess not as I couldn't get them to adhere, without using eggs or flour etc.

I'm assuming you're talking about shredded style hash browns. I'm not sure how much potato variety affects the outcome, as I tend to buy yellow potatoes (as they can typically be used either for roasting or mashing, so I don't have to think about how I'm going to use them in advance). I'm also more likely to make 'home fries' style hash browns, but I did a bit of research & testing for my pancake demonstration Most recipes for this style call for soaking the shreds in water to remove the starch, then wring them out in a dish towel or similar. You can get sometimes get better adhesion if you don't soak them, but still wring out as much water out as you can. If you're making latkes, you'll want a bit of depth to the oil, but generally 1 to 3 tablespoons of oil or butter is enough for hash browns, depending on how large of a surface you're working with. Make sure the crust is nice and brown before flipping. Also, make sure that you're flipping it over in chunks suitable for your spatula size (either divide it up into quadrants or similar if coating the entire pan; or make individual piles only slightly larger than your spatula). If the potatoes drank up all of the oil when cooking the first side, it's generally a sign that the heat is too low and you might need to add some more (before you flip, so it has a chance to heat up) The exact temperature to cook at depends on how much you're trying to cook at once, how fast your pans recover after putting the food in, and how thick of a layer you're cooking. (you want to make sure that the middle is cooked before you've burned the outside; if you're having problems with this, you can also par cook the potatoes in a microwave first). If your pan/burner combination has a particularly slow temperature recovery, you might want to get the oil up to shimmering before you put in the shreds, but you typically aim for a little lower than that.

Currently I'm storing most of my spices in a cabinet next to the stove. That's the best place for them. However, because of the way the shelves are spaced, I generally need to stack containers, leading to a pretty huge mess in our spice cabinet. I'd like to get some containers that are relatively uniform in size so they can be stacked on top of each other without falling all over the place. And I'd like them to be rectangular or some other non-circular shape so they can be placed in rows easily. And, for the tricky part, I'd like containers that have some sort of shaker part so I can shake the spices in if I want to. Any suggestions? I've seen some very expensive things out there and am wondering whether there are other options. I can store spices that don't fit in the containers on the second shelf of the cabinet, so I don't mind the size quite as much.

Emsa has spice organizers designed to solve this problem. I don't know if they are available worldwide, but at least in Europe, it shouldn't be too hard to get them.

I would like to try and recreate the sticky rice (aka glutinous rice or sweet rice) as I often find served in a kratip at my local USA Thai restaurant. I already have a rice cooker - the Hamilton Beach Digital Simplicity Rice Cooker and Food Steamer (on Amazon). I've cooked quite a few different long grain white rices and also brown rice, but have not yet tried sticky rice. For standard long grain basmati rice I would just pop it into my cooker pot with the appropriate amount of water and press the white rice button. I have some concerns about the sticky rice as I have read that it requires a presoak upwards of 6 hours and I've also read that some rice cookers (Zojirushi) have a specific mode just for sticky rice. I've also read reviews on simple steamers for sticky rice, so that leads me to believe that I would actually have to use the steamer basket vs the regular rice cooker pot, but I'm just guessing. Since my rice cooker does not have a specific mode for sticky rice, is it possible with my rice cooker, and if so how? Some related resources that didn't quite answer this question: Making sticky rice without rice cooker Do you need a rice cooker to cook sticky rice? How can I make perfect sticky rice?

This lady is pleased with the results just using her one-setting cooker: Sticky Rice. Note, she says in the comments that she uses 2 cups (or slightly less) water to 1 cup of rice (which makes sense) not 3 cups rice to 2 cups water like it sounds like she is saying in the video. She rinses the rice well, but does not soak it. EDIT: With things like this there are often "camps" of differing opinion. I doubt that Michelin Starred restaurants that include sticky rice on their menu ever use rice makers to make said rice. I am reminded of this: Turning regular noodles into no-boil noodles. Even though there are thousands of recipes online for making lasagna without boiling the noodles, I say pfftthhfft. Sure, you can do it, if you don't mind High School cafeteria food. (Remember the Church Lady? "Isn't that special?" Think like that.) I am less of a connoisseur of rice than of baked pasta. That being the case, I'm not sure that I would notice the deficiencies of sticky rice made in a rice cooker. With that in mind, and assuming that you are not on a different stratosphere of connoisseur than I am, I recommend that you give it a shot and let us know how it goes. Yet Another EDIT - I Tried It I used this brand of sweet (glutinous) rice: I used 2 cups of rice, thoroughly rinsed, 1 tsp salt, 3 2/3 cups water, and the only setting my simple, old rice cooker has. My lid is glass, and I could see that there was still quite a bit of water on the top of the rice after the cycle was complete (short, 30 minutes or less), so I waited 15 minutes before I lifted the lid. Since you can't see the rice without opening the cooker, I recommend that you do the same, wait 15 minutes before opening. After 15 minutes I checked it out: It's absolutely fine. Is it as good as the the great Thai place down the street? No. But it's close. The only thing I would (and will) do differently next time is to only use 3 1/2 cups water to 2 cups rinsed rice and 1/2 TBS salt. After it finished last night, I was suddenly too tired to mess with it anymore, so I just left the cooker on warm, and went to sleep. 5 hours later, if anything, it's improved. It was fine without it, but I'm intrigued by @GdD's answer here. Later, I'm going to try making the rice again with the above measurements plus 1.5 TBS sugar, just to see (more just seems like too much). Making sticky rice without rice cooker Final EDIT I Promise: Yep, that worked. It does brown a bit at the bottom of the rice cooker, but I like that. I enjoyed that as much as sticky rice from the Thai joint. It's not the same, but it's really good. So, there is my recommendation. Have fun! The lady who made the video has responded to me on YouTube. She seems grateful and flattered. She had no corrections.

So, I asked my friend to get me a chocolate cake mix, but she accidentlt got me a brownie mix instead (Betty Crocker Brownie mix). I wanted to make a chocolate cake for tomorrow's Super Bowl. However, if there's no hope then I'll just make the brownies. I can't turn them into cupcakes because I have no cupcake molds. I just have a rectangular pan. I also don't have baking powder. So the insturctions on the box say to add 1/4 cup of water, 1/4 vegetable oil, and 1 egg. I've seen some sites that says to add one more egg. Would that really help? Has anyone converted a brownie mix into a cake?

My answer would be to add more cake flour if you have it, but AP flour will do it too, then add an additional teaspoon of baking soda. The flour will lighten the mix so it's not so dense chocolate/cocoa, and the additional baking soda will help it rise more than a brownie. An additional egg won't hurt, and it will certainly help the stickier of the cake, but I don't know if it's necessary.

I recently added a KitchenAid to my kitchen on Valentine's day, so that's the source of my question. I know plenty of things can be done by hand or with a stand mixer. But recipes don't always mention when it's an option. So what general manual techniques should I try using the stand mixer for instead? And if I do, are there any adjustments I'll commonly have to make, or can I just throw things in and let it go? For instance, when making pie crust I used to just dice a stick of cold butter and slice that into 8 oz of flour adding water a drizzle at a time until I got the consistency I wanted, then I would roll that up into a ball. But it can also be done with the stand mixer. I was making pie crust for chicken pot pies, and halfway through I said... hey, that's why I got a KitchenAid. I just tossed the whole unfinished mess into the mixing bowl and let the flat beater do it's job at speed 1. It seemed to work just fine and I rolled out perfect crusts. But the recipe in the instruction book was different from my normal crust (more ingredients).

I use mine for anything that needs to be kept fairly cool, but doesn't necessarily need to be "cut" the way the blade of a food processor does. Anything that requires mixing meat, in particular. Burgers, meatloaf, etc. retain a better texture when the meat isn't warmed by your hands. Aside from those, we mix ground meat for jerky and meatballs in the mixer. Hope this helps. Enjoy your mixer!

Last time I roasted green chilies, which consisted of charring the skin, I had a tough time peeling them. Is there an easy way to peel roasted green chilies, or some secret I'm missing?

The standard advice is a paper bag, but I don't think it is optimal. I always put them in the smallest bowl that will hold them, and put a plate over the top of that. The idea is for the peppers to sit in their own steam for a few minutes while they cool down. The steam seems to loosen the skins. Whatever you do, don't take the skins off under running water, which is a tip that you will see sometimes. It makes it easier, but washes away a ton of the flavor! Consider wearing food-grade latex gloves while doing this procedure if the chiles are at all spicy. It will save you from burning hands later.

I have now twice experienced that when I'm tempering dark chocolate is becomes incredibly thick - almost solid- in the cooling phase When it happens I will accidentally heat it up to much as to get it into a texture where I can work with it. (I make filled chocolates) I use real chocolate, a water-free heating device, the right tempering method, and a good thermometer, so I have no idea why this happens The chocolates usually turn out okay, but it's frustrating that I can't figure out, what I'm doing wrong I hope someone out there can help me with some advice! Thank you on beforehand!

Based on what you’ve written, i can think of two possible reasons why you’re getting thick tempered chocolate. As the ratio of cocoa solids increase, the viscosity of your melted chocolate will increase. If your chocolate is high on solid content, you might need a bit more cocoa butter to decrease viscosity. Even though, you have a water-free heating device; due to the moisture of the environment and condensation caused by cold could introduce some water into your chocolate. Adding something to bind the water might help, the go-to emulsifier to bind some water is Lecithin. 0.5% to 1% Lecithin could help with binding the water, thus reducing the viscosity in a couple of minutes.

I am allergic to parmesean cheese - any aged cheese really (due to the mold created from the aging process). However, I can eat blue cheese. I'm making a ricotta gnocchi that calls for parmesan. What can I use as a substitute?

Some cheeses, especially here in the Netherlands, are covered in a plastic layer to prevent moulds from gaining access to the product. If the molds are indeed all you are allergic to, you might want to try an aged Gouda cheese as a substitute for Parmesan. It will provide you with a very similar taste, provided you go for the really aged kinds, like This brand that is sold internationally To get the effect that you would normally get from Parmesan you need to get a cheese that was aged at least 10 months, otherwise it will be too creamy and might ruin the texture of your dish.

If only two executives know the secret recipe of Coca Cola at any one time, and it is so well guarded, then how do they manufacture Coca Cola in plants without giving away this secret to the workers?

It's no secret, here it is! Complete with the cocaine that was removed from Coke's production in 1903: Picture and text from This American Life The radio broadcast recording on the above link makes a very compelling case that the picture at the top of the page is really the original formula for Coke. Of course it has changed over the years; it's not exactly the same thing now as it was way back when. In addition to removing the cocaine, they've also cut the caffeine, switched from sugar to high fructose corn syrup and use phosphoric acid now instead of citric acid. The proportions of the 7X ingredients had to have changed as well over time, as the ingredients themselves have changed. Extracting oils is a very different process now than it was over 100 years ago. The idea that the formula is ever-so-secret is a marketing gimmick. Sure, the actual formula is a trade secret, but the massive effort to keep the world's biggest secret thing is just a bunch of theater. Photo and caption from NY Daily News The "down to the gram" specifics of the production recipe today is a trade secret, but no more so than just about every trademarked, brand name food item sold today. No one person mixes and measures the whole batch (that's just practical, it's not even necessarily a security measure), so keeping the "super-secret-recipe" as it stands today from being published is no more difficult for Coke than it is for KFC. Nor are there highly-paid super-slueths trying to steal the formula against whom Coke needs to take extraordinary measures. EDIT 9/20/15 This American Life has added the following to their story: Much of the press about our story takes at face value Coca-Cola's statements that we have not found the recipe for Coke, present or past. But when asked if the company has actually checked to see if this formula matches the original formula - which archivist Phil Mooney assured me they still have - company spokespeople always politely sidestep the question. So it seems entirely possible that no one at Coke has checked. If they'd checked to see if the formulas match, why not say so? Phil Mooney even admitted something interesting about the recipe in our interview: "Could it be a precursor? Yeah, absolutely." He then went on to express, as his opinion, not as fact: "Is this the one that went to market? I don't think so." They're just goofin. Addendum When I wrote this answer, I had no idea that it was going to get so "big" or that Skeptics.SE and Chemistry.SE had taken on the same issue. Had I known, I would have spent a little bit more time researching. I have since done quite a bit more research and I am now even more strongly of the opinion that the secret-formula of Coke is just a normal trade secret, and the hype is just hype for the sake of marketing. Furthermore, the recipe for the 7X (that's even what Coke calls its "ever so super-secret" formula) in the old book pictured at the top of this answer is genuinely either the original formula or a precursor to it. At any rate, it's darn close. If you're interested in learning more about the handwritten recipe in the book, I strongly encourage you follow this link: This American Life and listen to the recording of the radio broadcast about the book, the formula and the hype. Early in the broadcast they make a point that I've been saying since I first got wind of this completely over-the-top marketing gimmick. One of the legends of "the secret" is that it is only known by two people, and they never fly on the same plane (you know, like the President of the United States and the Vice President). “The company has always said, and as far as I know it’s true, that at any given time only two people know how to mix the 7X flavoring ingredient,” Mark Pendergrast, historian and author of For God, Country and Coke told This American Life. “Those two people never travel on the same plane in case it crashes; it’s this carefully passed-on secret ritual and the formula is kept in a bank vault.” Time Magazine Think about that a second. If the vault contains "the secret" known to only the two men, and the two men died in the same plane crash, wouldn't someone at the company be able to open the vault? If the two men know something beyond that (or somethings, one version of the legend held that each man only knew half the secret) why wouldn't they put that information in the vault as well? Furthermore, if you have a really big secret that you'll go to any lengths to keep, would you shout from every mountaintop, "I know something YOU don't! Nee ner nee ner nee ner!"? So I say again, yes it's a trade secret, it's just a normal trade secret. It's not the Manhattan Project. The hype is just hype, the fact that we're talking about it now just emphasizes how effective the marketing is. Buying into the hype is just drinking the Kool-Aid.

I am making a vegetarian jelly using Carrageenan. I am hoping to make a batch to give out as samples to friends etc. (hoping to market it eventually). Does anyone know what concentration of citric acid to use as a preservative. Also, some commercial products include sodium citrate. Is that always needed?

You will have to use the amount specified in the recipe you are using. It varies with each fruit or vegetable. Further, making up your own recipe is not wise because of possible bacteria that could set in. You will want to check out recipes from sites like http://www.freshpreserving.com/tools/faqs.

I understand that to reheat pasta it must be done by boiling in water. Why must this be the case? Why can't you just microwave it, stir fry, or even quickly grill it?

If you're going to reheat pasta, microwaving is a good way. Adding a few drops of water and covering helps the texture if it doesn't have sauce already on it. You can actually do something close to a stir fry - heat some oil and use it to cook tasty ingredients (onions, garlic, herbs, spices) and then stir in the pasta (and things like olives or sweetcorn that might want heating but don't need cooking) over a gentle heat until hot enough to serve. Grilling is less good, but still not impossible for some dishes. For bare pasta it will dry out it, but immerse in sauce and top with cheese and you can get something nice. Strictly speaking the grill doesn't do the reheating, the (hot) sauce does - a grill would burn the top before the bottom is hot.

What is the difference between "rendered pork fat", lard, and bacon fat? I've seen lots of references to rendered pork fat in the Momofuku cookbook, references to lard in one of my Schezuan cookbooks, and well everyone knows bacon fat... so what is the difference ? Can you substitute them ?

Not a lot, bacon is basically brined and smoked pork (the process/recipe depends on where you live) Fat does not actually change in flavour as much as the flesh does when smoked "Rendered fat" is just the fat that has run off when heating meat. It should be pure fat, with all the impurity left behind, or skimmed off Depending on where you live, lard is either just pork fat, or a common word for animal fat In Asian cooking if it specifies pork fat I would use that. Most Schezuan recipes are not smokey flavour based, so it may be noticeable, and appear unusual

I currently have this on order and plan on using it for stocks, broths, and boiling grains/vegetables. My question is: what are the advantages of a dutch oven / sauce pot over this when it comes to most other types of cooking? Rather than the advantages of cast-iron vs. stainless steel I'm more interested in the general question of why a stock pot isn't ideal for braising, sauteing, or stew/chili, especially when the one I ordered has a clad bottom and is oven-safe. Does it just come down to the tall, narrow shape and clunky size? If it really does make sense to also have a dutch oven / sauce pot on hand, would I be wiser to start with stainless steel or enameled cast iron?

The answer is that both can be used just fine for the same purposes, however stock pots tend to have much thinner walls than the bottom and thinner than those found on Dutch ovens. The thinner walls mean that they retain less heat and so are less efficient at cooking on the stove top (e.g. soups), and more likely to burn or stick around the walls if placed in the oven - because of the faster heat transfer on these thin surfaces. Stainless steel is more prone to sticking for some items too (e.g. eggs, meats), and is relatively difficult to season (it's generally not done to stainless), whereas cast-iron can be seasoned very easily, it's more or less mandatory for this material and essentially makes it more or less non-stick. Enameled/ceramic-coated cast-iron pots such as the Le-Creuset ones are generally non-stick from the shop and have the same benefits as cast-iron. Having said that I use an oven-safe stock pot for making things like pasta-bake, where it is in the oven for relatively short periods of time (~40 min - 1h), and don't generally have any problems.

If I want to make dal (let's say) in an Instant Pot, I google someone else's recipe and find that the pot should be at pressure for 12 minutes if you're using red lentils and 15 mins. if you're using green lentils. Is there a way to calculate that on my own (i.e., some equation or formula that people use to develop pressure cooker recipes)? Or does everyone just figure it out by trial and error?

Instant Pot has a page with cooking times for various things on it: https://instantpot.com/instantpot-cooking-time/ However, there are also lots of good pages out there with more specifics. For example, chicken thighs (fresh, frozen, bone in vs. out, brown first vs. not): https://paleopot.com/recipe/instant-pot-chicken-thighs/

I was trying out some healthier recipes from the New American Plate cookbook, one was a Greek lamb casserole with lots of green beans and potatoes. The lamb was marinated in plain yogurt to which spices were added prior to being added to the pot and baked at 350 for 45 min. The flavor is good, but it is not attractive due to the yogurt separating into a grainy curds and whey. I now have a lot of leftovers, and am thinking if I can fix the texture of the sauce, the kids would be more enthusiastic about eating it. Is there anything to salvage this huge pot of tasty food? Thanks.

Did it and rescued it - important extended family meal and I took a curds and whey disaster to a great sauce! I cooked up chicken with its yoghurt base marinade, the yoghurt split. It tastes fine it's just the proteins have changed at high heat and clumped to form curds. To solve it I: took a small amount of water (2 tablespoons or so) in a jug and mixed in a couple of teaspoons of cornstarch. I then added this to the sauce. Don't add cornstarch directly or it will just lump. OPTIONAL: take other sauce ingredients that are meant to be whole (tomatoes in my case) and add 1/2 to sauce blend to a smooth sauce using stick mixer (careful of hot sauce splashes) Reduce sauce, if necessary, to thicken sauce on a medium heat stirring frequently Return chicken to sauce and add the rest of the ingredients. Serve and eat, and not to self "next time you cook with yoghurt do it slowly on a low heat - DO NOT BOIL"

I am in the process of making bread in the bread maker, but I want to try to bake it in the oven. I am just making white bread. What temp and how long would you recommend baking the bread?

General answer: for bread in a bread pan, 350°F until 195°–205°F in the center. That'll probably be around 40 minutes, I'd guess (and it seems you found) but a thermometer will let you be sure (and then you'll know how long it takes for next time).

Most recipes for sponge cake use a quantity of yogurt which sometimes is replaced with milk, or even soja or almond drinks. In those recipes (flour, sugar, eggs, butter/oil, yogurt/milk, some flavouring), what is the role of the dairy product? Is it about protein/fat/chs, about water, about flavour, about colour? Do the substitution for soja or almond drink make sense, or exist better ones?

To add to Stephie's answer, sometimes dairy is incorporated for a variety of reasons. In some cases, like a coffee cake, sour cream or yogurt can account for a good amount of the moisture and fat in the batter. Rich dairy products like cream and sour cream usually lead to very tender baked goods, due to helping to incorporate more fat (the fact that it's already emulsified helps too). Soured dairy, like yogurt, sour cream, and buttermilk are frequently used so that their acidity will react with baking soda in the recipe for leavening. Finally, yogurt and buttermilk often have stabilizers like guar gum, xanthan gum, and carrageenan. These will retain moisture after baking to help the finished product be more moist. Whether a substitution will work would depend on which functions the dairy ingredient is filling, and which characteristics the substitute matches.

So my parents got a knive set from St. Moritz, and wanted to give them to me. I'm an hobby cook, who just likes cooking simple stuff. I have barely any knowledge about knives or treating them, so here I am. I just had some questions about the knives, since I'm not sure if these are legit. Here's a picture of the knife set: Whenever I google the knives, I only get shady sites and stories about people being scammed. Is this brand legit? The booklet that's included says the entire set is worth around 730 euros, but I can't find anything online. And assuming the knives are legit, are there any tips on treating/using them? Can these be put in the dishwasher when cleaning, or should I refrain from that? I have a magnetic bar on my wall to store knives, but is it bad to put 'good' knives on them? They are kind of blunt at the moment, but I have barely any experience sharpening them, should I bring them to a special shop or something? Thank you for your help! Just figuring out how to use these, if they're legit to begin with.

"San Moritz" is the name of a line of culinary knives by the well recognized brand Messermeister. HOWEVER, the knives shown differ notably in design from that line and are likely a cheaply made product trying to capitalize on the name of that line. Knives that are actually sold aboveboard (and perfectly worth the money) at ~$100 and higher apiece will usually be of a well recognized brand (eg Herder, Zwilling, K Sabatier, Chroma, Global...), or small-batch/handmade pieces bearing the name of the artisan or responsible workshop leader (eg Heimo Roselli, Jürgen Schanz, Sirou Kamou...). Often (with a legit expensive knife), the steel type used will be clearly named (either by an industry standard name like VG10, 1.4116, 420B, AUS-8A .... or by a manufacturer-specific product name that describes a combination of steel and proprietary heat treatment method, eg Global "Cromova" ), and sometimes the hardness range will also be specified (eg 60-62HRC would be typical for VG10, 55-56HRC for 1.4116). A steel type and hardness do not signify the quality of the steel alone, since the way the steel is processed makes significant differences. A cheap knife is likely going to be of 420B at 55-56HRC, which CAN be a decent steel but often is not. Out of the box sharpness is a highly brand dependent matter in all price ranges, for different reasons - a very cheap brand might not bother to sharpen well since it is costly (good abrasives are not that cheap), a high end maker assumes that the user is knowledgeable and will either know sharpening it or know a trusted local professional, and have their own idea of HOW they want it sharpened (there are tradeoffs to be made in sharpness vs durability, and different edges are best for different applications). BTW, for culinary knives, cutting behaviour is a combination of actual edge sharpness and blade geometry.

I see a lot of restaurants and grocery stores advertising kosher food. What qualifies a kosher dish?

You can certainly cut meat on these, I have a large end-grain cutting board that is too large to wash conveniently in my sink. There are a number of methods to clean them: Soap and Water Soap and hot water are best for regular cleaning. Just get a rag or brush and scrub it. Dish soap is just fine for this use. Make sure to rinse and dry it thoroughly. Vinegar If you don't mind the smell you can use undiluted white vinegar to clean and sanitize your surface. If you keep some in a spray bottle you can just spray it down and wipe it with a paper towel. If you have a big oily mess, I'd suggest starting with the soap & water method, and finishing up with vinegar. Vinegar is apparently very effective at killing microbes, surprisingly more effective than harsher quaternary ammonium solutions. Bleach A little goes a long way with this. You only need a teaspoon or two for a quart of water. Just spray it down thoroughly, let stand 5 minutes. Finish with rinsing and drying. Like vinegar this is best as a followup to soap & water for a really messy board. Lemon If you have strong garlic, onion, fish, or other smells in your butcher block you can cut a lemon in half and rub the board down with the halves. Lemon juice is a weak antiseptic, so this should be used primarily for odor control and not as a sanitization substitute. Note that regular cleaning also requires regular seasoning of your block surface. You should oil your board/block once a week, or more with frequent use. See also: http://whatscookingamerica.net/CuttingBoards/AllAbout.htm

When you heat the sugar his color turns to yellow. I'm doing something that heats the sugar(~110ºC), but I don't want it to become yellow.

It is possible and not particularly difficult to make candy that is completely clear. However, it is not possible to have caramelization that is clear and colorless. When sugar is caramelized the sucrose begins to decompose from the heat. This gives us the distinctive delicious flavor but also changes the color of the sugar. It will go from yellow to brown to black... and then to the trash. 110C (230F) is not nearly hot enough to caramelize sugar-- that starts happening around 170C (340F). If you simply keep your syrup from overheating it will stay clear. As with all candy making, this is easier to do with an accurate thermometer and slow heat.

I'm interested in an techniques for preparing courgettes? I cook mine either in a stew or I lightly fry them until brown. Are there any techniques to prepare the vegetable before cooking in either in these styles.

When they're still young, I grill them -- trim ends cut into planks about 1/4" to 3/8" thick (~1cm) toss in olive oil sprinkle with salt grill over direct heat flip when you develop good char marks. pull from the grill once the other side is slightly charred. As they get older, the seed cavity starts developing -- you can cut the sides off, leaving the middle, but it's just not as sweet.

I looked at the history of Corn Flakes on Wikipedia but it doesn't really tell me how I could go from raw ingredients to the final product. Should I use corn flour ? What should I do to make the final product in shape of flakes ? Should I cook it in a oven or in a pan ?

Why did this happen? One possibility is that the outside of the custard became overcooked while you were waiting for the middle to set. As eggs cook longer they tighten up more and more, squeezing out liquids that were previously captured by the protein matrix. The cooking process continues for a while even after you remove the custard from the oven, so the overcooking might have happened later than you'd think. What could I do to avoid it happening in the future? If the overcooking hypothesis is correct, then any of the following could help: Reduce the cooking time. Most custard recipes that I can think of call for cooking times around an hour, depending on the size of the dish. Use smaller baking dishes. With a smaller dish, you won't have to wait as long for the center to set. Use a shallower baking dish. Same as above -- cooking the custard in a thinner layer should help the whole thing set more quickly. Remove from oven before it's completely done. With some recipes, like cheesecake, you need to remove the item from the oven before it seems to be done. This prevents overcooking at the edges and cracking in the middle. The same idea could work for your custard. Modify the matrix. Many custards contain ingredients like starch or gelatin, which can fortify the protein matrix that gives the custard body.

https://somedayilllearn.com/how-to-make-black-coffee/ Go big or go home. I typically use 2 tablespoons per cup. Weak coffee is more likely to be bitter. Is there some truth here? Why would weak coffee be more bitter?

It's not so much that weak coffee is bitter, as that over-extracted coffee is bitter. If you want it strong but don't use enough ground coffee, you can get more flavour by leaving the water on the grounds for longer. But then the bitter flavours come out. The opposite is espresso; a decent espresso is of course strong but not at all bitter and extraction is quick. Another factor may be that some of the bitter compounds come out early but are masked or made acceptable by the other flavours Water temperature also plays a role in which components of the flavour are extracted, but I assume that's fixed.

I always wondered and hope someone here can clear it up for me.

I believe what you have there are almonds...or "the fruit of the almond tree".

After a nasty bout of food poisoning lasting nearly 5 days (rare I know) my trust levels and appetite for certain foods have dropped considerably however my inquisitiveness kicked in... ...from a data perspective (ignoring allergies) which foodstuffs are almost guaranteed or are actually guaranteed to never induce food poisoning in a human being? My first thought ran to protein powders mixed with certified-safe tap water. I assume that all raw meat runs the possibility and all take-away or restaurant meals are discounted as well. I know fruit and vegetables fertilised with human manure in certain countries which potentially rules out fresh fruit and veg. Are there any foodstuffs guaranteed to be completely safe? Beef jerky perhaps due to the dehydrated nature?

There is almost no food which is guaranteed to be safe. If it has nutritional value for a human, it has nutritional value for many microorganisms too, some of which are human pathogens. So, out of the FATTOM rule, you can already throw out F: you cannot remove the food. A is also not a good candidate - no food is naturally acidic enough, and while there are foods preserved by acidity, an error in processing can lead to the food being dangerous. Also, there are some bacteria and molds which thrive in quite acidic environments (although few of them are pathogens). Oxygen is even worse, as botulinum is anaerobic and very dangerous. Also, once you open the canned food, it can get contaminated again. Time and temperature are quite good, but they are no guarantee for no food poisoning. First, processing errors are common. Second, you can't sterilize the food in a normal pot, and the remaining bacteria resume multiplying even before it's cooled off enough to eat. And, if it was contaminated before the cooking, the pathogens can have produced temperature stable toxins before you cooked the food. Moisture is probably the only factor which can produce completely safe food. Most dehydrated food is not 100% safe. Beef jerky, cured hams, dehydrated fruit, nuts and similar can easily grow toxic mold during improper storage. Depending on how much water was removed in the preservation process and where you live, the kitchen shelf can turn out to be "improper storage". Flours are quite safe too, but you have to cook them, and the cooked product is again not guaranteed to be safe. The only foods which will be completely safe will be the ones which never had any moisture to begin with, and will remain bactericidal if they acquire some moisture from the air. So sugar (either granulated, or hard candy),salt and pure oil can be declared safe from pathogens, but not from some kind of factory mishap where toxins can have contaminated the sugar and oil. A protein powder may fall in this category, I'm not completely sure how little moisture would be sufficient for a mold to grow on it. And don't forget that you can infect yourself with digestive tract pathogens by handling the food with contaminated utensils or fingers, even if they don't get the chance to build a colony in the food. You could in principle hold your dining room clean to operation room standards, but people get infections in operation rooms too. Nutrition is off topic for this site, so I won't discuss the wisdom of eating nothing but sugar, oil, salt and boiled water in order to eat guaranteed pathogen free food. For me personally, the trade off is absolutely not worth it.

I am making risotto for a Christmas dinner, serving 20 people. I plan to multiple the recipe by 3 or 4x. Since risotto is a challenging dish at the normal scale, how can I ensure getting good results when multiplying the recipe?

If you haven't done it before don't do this for Xmas day, it's not worth the risk. Always practise on less important occasions You need a wider, rather than taller pot. Nearly a paella style pan. And a strong arm Ingredients wise, I don't know of any magic scaling tricks for risotto The hardest part is stirring enough, but not too much, and doing an even job of it Probably easier to have two pots going at the same time, rather the one large pot. Then you can have two different flavours going!

Why aren't frozen tomatoes available like frozen broccoli, peas, peaches, or strawberries? Why are tomatoes only canned or fresh? Example: http://www.peapod.com/search_results.jhtml?searchText=frozen+tomatoes

Freeze one, thaw it and see. The liquid separates out and leaves a pulpy structure behind. Tomato sauce (no chunks) thaws much better and separated liquid can be stirred back in well enough. Canned works as we all know so no one is bothering trying to grow a freezer-friendly tomato, yet.

Making turkey chili for the week's dinners. Three tablespoons of chili powder: one, two, CRUD THAT"S CINNAMON! I now have a slow cooker holding 1.5 pounds of turkey meat, cooked onion and two green peppers, and two TABLESPOONS of cinnamon. I have read recipes with cinnamon in chili, but never so much. Can anyone make a recommendation to save this dish? Other items I have on hand and was expecting to use include chili powder, cocoa powder, other spices, diced tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, several times of canned beans (pinto - black or brown; chickpeas). And a few other things around the house. Thank you!

Would love to see what others think, but I think I found a solution that works for our palate! Used a tiny bit of cocoa powder, 1/3 the usual chili powder. Just a little black pepper for hot, but we don't like hot generally. I used the usual stewed and diced tomatoes, but eliminated the tomato paste to allow the cinnamon musty to dominate. This also allowed me to skip the honey too. And I used richer flavored beans than I usually do - pintos instead of white kidney beans.

I'm looking at recipes for Hot Buttered Rum, as I have plenty of rum and it's cold out. Several of the recipes call for vanilla ice cream. Is that traditional? What is it for? Wouldn't it just cool off some of the water and possibly interfere with the steeping of the spices? Would it be better to just toss in some vanilla and extra sugar, or does the milk content actually change anything? Example with ice cream: http://www.drinksmixer.com/drink5667.html Example without: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/hot-buttered-rum-cocktail-recipe/index.html

I don't think I've ever even had hot buttered rum, but I can take a stab at some of your questions: 1 part ice cream and 2-3 parts boiling water will still average out pretty hot. If the ice cream is at, say, -20 to -10C, that'll get you in the 60-70C range initially, which is I think fairly normal for hot drinks. And of course, if you keep it in the refrigerator instead, your drink will be hotter! I suspect mixing ice cream with butter will help it all mix together better in the end, by helping disperse the fat. Ground spices aren't going to need a ton of steeping. I imagine the boiling water would be enough, and if not, the pre-cooking could easily compensate. And since some recipes just have nutmeg sprinkled on top, it sounds like steeping isn't necessarily the goal. If you're really aiming for spiced hot buttered rum, you'll probably want more spices than those recipes, and perhaps to cook them briefly with the butter. If you intend to freeze the "batter", including ice cream will help keep it soft enough to scoop/slice. If it were just butter and sugar, it'd get quite hard in the freezer. Yes, the milk/cream content of the ice cream would make the drink a little creamier - but I don't know whether hot buttered rum should be a bit creamy. It sounds like it'd be fine either way - personal preference, perhaps?