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What kind of equipment do I Need to turn dried chilli flakes into powder?

You need a bladed spice grinder, also branded as bladed coffee grinders. To have a consistent result, sift the result.

I just thought about how seasoning a sauce is not a wise decision because if it needs to through reduction like marinara then the flavors would get too concentrated. But I always see people put salt and pepper into sauces before they are properly reduced so maybe there is a reason to season before a big reduction?

First of all, people indeed often add some seasoning in the beginning, but are usually careful with the amount, especially with salt. Flavor-wise, you could add it at the end, after the reduction and be fine. However, salt can also affect the process of cooking. For instance, it can draw moisture out of some vegetables when frying them first, meaning that they will be cooked a bit faster. That is why some salt can be added at the beginning. At the end, after the reduction, you should taste and add some more seasoning, if needed.

When making spätzle, it is common to chill each batch in ice water to stop the cooking. I need to make spätzle as part of a large feast for 10 people; I'm wondering if I can just leave the spätzle in the cold water bath for 4-5 hours to hold them aside, or if they will become gummy and waterlogged in that time. If the answer is, yes they will become waterlogged, can I drain them and hold them in a bowl for 4-5 hours without them sticking together? (if relevant, I'm planning to use a spätzle grater and not the board-and-knife method)

I would not keep them in water; they will absorb water and get soggy. I'd just drain them and toss them with a little bit of oil, just enough so that they will not stick together and put them in the fridge. A little bit like when you're making pasta salad.

Are prawns and shrimps the same thing or are they different? Basically, I think they're the same but one of my friends was arguing that they're similar but definitely not the same thing and they differ in size.

Biologically speaking, they are actually different species, but the names are so commonly used interchangeably as to completely muddle the distinctions. For example, spot prawns are actually shrimp while ridgeback shrimp are actually prawns. Prawns have claws on three of their five pairs of legs, shrimp have claws on two of their five pairs of legs. Their gills and body shape are different too. As far as cooking them goes, they are virtually identical and interchangeable. Source

Last weekend I prepared some sautéed yam for some guests. I usually prepare it in a non-stick steel pan with thick bottom, and I have to be very careful in flipping it at the right time to avoid charring it too much. This time, since that pan was being used, I had to use a non-stick aluminum pan with thin bottom, all the rest being the same. I was concerned that it would char even faster, instead the cooking was slower and more homogenous, resulting in a better result. I always thought that a thicker bottom would allow for a better distribution of the heat. Is this not the case?

Aluminum conducts heat better than steel. This means that, everything else being equal, an aluminum pan will have more even heat over the whole pan than a steel pan will. This is also the reason why expensive steel pans generally have an aluminum disk sandwiched into the base. I suspect that, knowing the pan was thinner, you used a lower heat on the aluminum pan, resulting in more even and slower browning.

My neighbor who also bakes has run out of yeast and can't find any in the store. We went shopping this afternoon and couldn't find any either. I have a fair-sized jar of the stuff in my fridge, but I'm also baking a lot. I'm worried about it running out, plus I'd like to share with my neighbor. Is there a recommended technique for propagating it myself so I don't run out, and have enough to share?

Absolutely there is a way to propagate yeast, it's as simple as making a starter with it. Most of the time these days people create starters for sourdough using natural yeasts, but you can use them to feed any kind of yeast. All you would do is put flour and water in a container with some yeast, let it get to work and once you start to get bubbles put it in the fridge to slow it down. You would then use half of it for every batch of bread you make, replacing the flour and water to keep it at the same quantity. If you don't use any of it for a few days you'd want to throw half away and refill in order to give the yeast a fresh supply of food. You can share this with as many people as you like, just split it into two, give each a fresh supply of flour and water, and repeat as many times as necessary. Using this technique a small amount of yeast could theoretically supply the entire planet. NOTE: During the Coronavirus outbreak it's worth noting that corona can survive on surfaces for quite some time, so you should take great care to ensure that your yeast propagation does not lead to virus propagation!

I recently went to a restaurant here that claims to offer local fair. It was in a super touristy area so I have my doubts, but it plays the part well. Anyway, what I ordered was the Shogun Farms Wild Boar loin, though I can't remember how it was cooked, but I think it was either on a grill or seared. However, I have always been told that you have to cook pork to well done or you will get parasites and die. And I learned from watching Monsters Inside Me on Animal Planet that you should cook wild game well done or you will get parasites and your life will suck. So basically, I ordered my wild pork game pork well done so I wouldn't get parasites and have my life suck until I die. Now. The food was excellent. Even the boar loin. However, to paraphrase the famous Canadian food critic Squirrely Dan, it was drier than a fart. So my question is: at what done-ness should/could I have ordered this at such that it would have been juicy and delicious and I wouldn't get eye worms, trichinosis, or that thing where your skin will be itchy forever? Addendum: I will accept answers that state that loin, due to its low fat, and boar, due to its lower fat, basically has to be cardboard to be safe. I will then at least be able to make an informed decision.

First, pick a scale and more detailed theme: I'd go for battlefield scale, so a person would be an inch or two high (3-5cm). This means you can cast moulds from toys. A few soldiers might need to be made, not easy but they don't have to be great. Otherwise go for life size. Make each brownie the right proportions and shape, helped by fondant, for a rifle magazine, accompany with cast bullets. Or a cake shaped like a military helmet. I've assumed something like WW1 below, but much of it would hold for older battles (cannon would be simpler than some of what I've suggested, but horses would be too hard) Then you can choose whether to present a full scene, or just individual servings with a suitable decoration. Military Hardware Chocolate tools (and other models made of chocolate) have become quite common recently. The link is to a video, but it's adequately summarised in text. Their method starts with taking a cast of real tools. If you can buy miniature weapons you can start from those, or full size (model or used) bullets. Note that the things you cast need to be fairly flat. Making moulds of toy tanks etc. should work, though the main gun would need to be added after casting (cylinders are fairly easy. Even failed attempts can be made into military debris. Flags, maps etc. You can get printed edible rice paper cake toppers. For common national flags you can probably buy it pre-printed, anything else might be a custom order. I had a couple of pages of my thesis printed like this for a cake to celebrate. Edible flagpoles can be made using sugarwork techniques. A little white food colouring powder will make them opaque. Scenery and other fiddly things Here are a few ideas: Marzipan or fondant (or modelling chocolate, but that tends to be brown or creamy white and doesn't take colour as well as the others) for: Sandbags, perhaps making trenches (at your cut lines). Troops (lying prone perhaps, or leaning against a trench wall) Coloured grey or brick-red, hard fortifications (pillboxes) Dig out shell craters from the brownie itself Sugarwork with powder food colouring again for fences/barbed wire. Food colouring dust and lustre powder can give surface colour or a metallic sheen You can paint with concentrated food colouring. I'd start with the paste type, mixing with a bit of icing sugar and water as they'll be too strong to start with. There's also edible food paint. Chocolate suggests mud, fitting with my European theme. Desert scenery could be made from marzipan or coloured fondant, while lush greenery would need lots of coloured fondant

my local restaurant served me recently some wild salmon (slice) from the grill. It tasted delicious, but was pretty dry. I'm aware that wild salmon has much less fat. So I'm wondering, is there any preparation or cooking technique for barbecuing wild salmon on the grill to avoid that the fish gets dry? note: Placing the grill a bit higher, is not an option for a restaurant, where they grill several kind of fish at the same time P.S.: there is a similar question here, but the answers focus on how to cook farmed salmon

There are several types of restaurant that might fit your description. I am working from a US perspective here. Fast food - Quick counter or drive through service. Mostly processed food in a restaurant that has a very casual ambiance. Food is mostly served packaged and/or wrapped. Fast casual - Often sit-down service (though can include counter service), more expensive than fast food. Can still be processed food. Nicer ambiance, but still casual. Family style restaurant - sit down service, where food is served to share on larger platters. Casual dining - ambiance is still fairly casual, but nicer, less "corporate" feeling than fast casual. Sit-down/table service and higher prices. I guess I could also include cafes in the list...coffee shops that serve food. None of the above place a great emphasis on the aesthetics of plating food, though each has its own aesthetic. You could certainly find "quality" in each category, though there is definitely a range.

Have always been one for all natural ingredients, but starting to sell my products to the public I want a hot sauce that will not separate. Xanthan gum seems to be one of the most common stabilizing ingredients in a lot of hot sauces, is this the most natural and effective way to keep a sauce from separating? Also what is the best way to incorporate it into the sauce. Is xanthan gum frowned upon for people who are looking for an all natural sauce and is it alway necessary to use a stabilizing agent? Thank you guy

Xanthan gum is made by the fermentation of glucose, sucrose, or lactose by Xanthomonas campestris bacteria. It's a fairly recent discovery (sometime in the 1960s) so it doesn't have a long history like yogurt, bread or beer does but it's still a fermentation food product using bacteria or fungi like many other foods. I have no idea whether everyone considers it natural but it's commonly used in baking gluten-free bread plus it's found in a wide range of food products. In gluten-free bread, it's used to provide the stability maintaining the bread structure (in absence of gluten's ability) for leavening by carbon dioxide from yeast. So a goodly sized group of people on the recent gluten-free fad who want to eat natural should be happy with you using it. One caution: Although I've never heard of someone being allergic to xanthan gum, the substrate the bacteria is grown on includes corn or wheat. For someone with extreme sensitivity to corn or wheat, it's possible (though extremely rare) that an allergic reaction could be triggered. You can get around this by buying xanthan gum grown on lactose instead. I'm not sure how easy it is to find it as I've only been able to buy xanthan gum with no info on what substrate was used.

A UK chain's chocolate fudge is very dark. When I do chocolate fudge it comes out more looking the colour of milk chocolate. Is this because they use whipping cream or for some other reason?

It's possible that you need to add more chocolate, or use a different type of chocolate. Dutch process cocoa has a much darker color than natural cocoa, for example. It's also possible that the color is being lightened by microscopic air bubbles. This can happen if you use a fluffy ingredient (such as marshmallow cream) or if you mix a lot of air into the fudge. Although, I imagine it would take a lot of air to make a big difference. If all else fails, try dipping pieces of fudge in dark chocolate. I know that's cheating, but who's going to argue with chocolate covered fudge? Sounds good to me!

I recently bought a new meat grinder and they recommend washing it with hot water, drying it completely, and spraying a food grade silicone to prevent the stainless steel parts from rusting. Can I just use a light coating of oil like I do my cast iron to prevent rust?

Dry stainless steel parts should not rust, and should not need any oil for storage For non-stainless steel parts, use any food grade oil as a rust preventative coasting. You can wash this off before use Most meat grinders need a drop or two of oil on the bearing surfaces before you start grinding. Use any food oil you have handy as you will be washing it off when finished

I had heard of plantains, but never eaten them (or seen them). Today, there were green plantains available at the local supermarket, and I seized the chance and got a bunch. While various Internet sources agree that they can be cooked any old way, nearly all recipes I found include fried plantains. I don't like fried vegetables much, so I thought that I could just modify a recipe. As I have never cooked a plantain, I cannot decide which would be the proper technique to use. I found a recipe which sounds nice. It uses fried plantain slices to create a kind of pie crust, and then the crust is filled with cheese and spices and baked (it is a savory dish). For crust: Heat oil in heavy large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Working in batches, add plantain slices and cook until golden brown, about 3 minutes per side. Using slotted spoon, transfer slices to sheet of foil. Pat plantains with paper towels and cool. Reserve 2 tablespoons oil from skillet for filling. Line 9-inch-diameter glass pie dish with single layer of cooled plantains; reserve remaining for garnish. Using fingers, firmly press slices together to seal any gaps. I thought of either roasting the slices in the oven without fat, or boiling them and mashing them, then smearing the mash on the pan (thickened with starch or flour if necessary) and maybe blind baking it. Do you think these techniques would work, or do you have better ideas how to achieve something sufficiently crustlike? Edit: The conclusion. First, I was ill some days, and the plantains ripened in this time. Seems to have had a positive effect in taste. Second, I made a pie crust with fried plantains and a jibarito (with a non-traditional filling) with roasted plantains. Both tasted quite good, and actually very similar. The roasted ones were, of course, not as greasy and much easier to make (the ones in the pan burned on the surface in seconds, despite the moderate temperature). This will be my prefered plantains cooking method from now on, provided I can find them. Just put them on a rack in the 200°C oven and roast until they get a bit golden. Very tasty.

This seems like a fun adventure. I'll say upfront that I've never tried what I'm about to suggest. When I read your question title the first thing that came to mind is a Puerto Rican sandwich that is very popular in Chicago, the jibarito. It's a sandwich in which the bread has been replaced by flattened and fried plantains. I think doing something similar could yield nice results for a pie crust. You just press the peeled plantains between two cutting boards to get your desired thickness. As far as not frying, you should also be aware that fried plantains are damn good. I've never eaten a plantain that wasn't fried. That said, if you are committed to not frying I have suggestions as well. First, the boiling and mashing is right out. I don't think the processing you'll be doing will result in a crust that holds up at all. Roasting, or better yet, pan frying in butter I think is the way to go. I suggest just greasing a large frying pan with butter and pan-frying the plantain over medium-low heat until done. If pan-frying is not your thing either, I'd suggest just brushing them with melted butter and tossing in a 400 F (200 C) oven for 10-15 minutes (complete SWAG - never oven roasted plantain). With either the roasting or pan-frying method you may wish to sprinkle each buttered side with a little sugar to add a little sweetness and a nice carmelization.

I need help: we had a problem with health dept. We put 5-10 lbs deep fried chicken in the walk-in cooler directly removed from oil. Around 350 to 400 degree then. After 1 and 1/2 hours in the cooler (cooler temperature was about 40 degree), it stated 77 degree. We got violation notice. To me it is the violation one way of the other. You left outside cooling is violation, inside cooling is violation. Is there any one please help me to give me the answer that how long it will take to cool down?

What size pieces of chicken? How are they arranged? In order to cool quickly, you need to spread the food out in as thin a layer as possible, preferable with space between pieces. You may also require a more active cooler for the chilling process with a larger cooling unit and a more powerful fan - chilling hot food is a far more difficult task than holding cold food. But the most fundamental step is spreading the food out on trays so it is only one piece deep - that will cool much faster than a basket or tub of the same meat at the same starting temperature. If the tray is metal and is stored in the freezer before use, it would add just a bit more cooling. Another approach would be to place the meat in a sealed bag (still in one layer), and plunge it into ice-water for rapid cooling.

Sometimes I see in supermarkets (in Italy) packages in which rocket salad is sold together with raw beef, like in this picture: This is clearly meant to be prepared in the form of tagliata con rucola, an Italian dish made with beefsteak cut in stripes and rocket: As you can see, the salad is normally served raw with tagliata. The supermarkets seem OK with that, but this practice triggers my food safety alert: is it safe to consume salad that has been in contact with raw meat? Should I worry about eating it? EDIT: further information: these packages are found in the refrigerator aisle. the bottom label says (among other things) "store at 0--4 degrees Celsius [32-39 Fahrenheit] -- cook before eating". It is not clear from the wording if this warning applies to the salad as well. the label in the top right says "20% discount -- the marked price already includes discount". It doesn't specify if it is discounted for quick sale or for other reasons. In any case, I have also seen regular packages without the discount tag, and with the current day marked as packaging date. It is not customary here to put salad or other edible items as decoration -- I have never seen this done with other fresh food on sale. upon request, full translation of the white sticker. The notes in brackets are mine. Il gigante [supermarket name] - the fresh food specialists. Corso Marche [address of the supermarket] Net Wt 0.354 kg price 4.43 EUR tare 0.032 EUR/Kg 12.50 prepackaged on: 04 August 2014 Tagliata con rucola [name of the dish, see picture above] Meat preparation NC16 [not 100% sure about the code, it's blurry. No idea what it means, I assume it's some bureaucratic category for the meat] Ingredients: bovine meat, rucola, sunflower oil, salt Store at 0-4 degrees [32-39F]. To be consumed after cooking. Cooking suggestions: in pan, 3 minutes each side. In oven 175 degrees [350F] for 30 minutes. Produced and prepackaged for immediate sale by "Il gigante", Turin. Note that I did not take this picture myself; this one comes from the internet. I can take a similar one the next time I visit my local supermarket, but it's probably going to be 7-10 days from now.

What you're looking at is called (in the US) "cross contamination". You have a food generally considered "unsafe" (beef) that is coming into contact with a food generally considered "safe" (salad greens). This contact makes the greens "unsafe" to consume raw. Cross-contamination is the transfer of harmful bacteria to food from other foods, cutting boards, utensils, etc., if they are not handled properly. This is especially true when handling raw meat, poultry, and seafood, so keep these foods and their juices away from already cooked or ready-to-eat foods and fresh produce. The rule in the US is to always keep these products away from each other so that the "safe" foods stay safe. The only way to make the greens safe to eat is to cook them, thereby killing off the bacteria that may have been transferred to them in the juices of the meat.

My wife and I brought back a box of Glico Medium Curry that we purchased on our trip to Canada this past year. I think we bought it at the Daiso store in Vancouver. After trying it for the first time just recently, we both fell in love with it and now can't imagine not having it occasionally. Unfortunately, I can't find anywhere to purchase it, either locally, or online. There are many other brands of Japanese Curry that are available online, but I'm afraid they might not taste the same as the one we had from Glico. Is there somewhere where I can buy this product online, or would any of the other brands that I could get locally be any bit similar? (Such as Vermont Curry, or S&B Golden Curry?) I live in Arkansas. Thank you!

Wow, this is hard to find. I know I've seen it in some asian grocery stores, but none of the online groceries that I could find seem to list it, even the venerable H-Mart. No Amazon sellers (usually a good source for odd groceries) right now, either. Fortunately I found one source for you, eBay seller "hirokojapan" has a persistent listing for Glico Curry Sauce, $5.99 each, $3.95 shipping to the US from Osaka, JP. You select the flavor you want, from Curry, Curry Sweet, Curry Hot, Stew or Rice. The individual listing link will expire eventually, but future readers can look up the seller directly and see if they are listing a similar item (or message them with a request).

We like to make ground meat kebabs. I usually use all ground lamb, but occasionally will use a mixture of lamb and beef or lamb and bison. I have tried wooden skewers (both small and large) and metal skewers (both round and small flat). (Sizes refer to diameter, not length.) The problem I have is that if I lightly rub oil on the skewers to prevent sticking, the meat often times gets loose around the skewer and causes the issues you would expect from this. If I don't use any oil, the meat will stick to the skewers. The meat mixtures we use leans toward Persian or Iranian styles and do include quite a bit of chopped onion. I've thought about adding a very small amount of oil to the meat mixture but I was thinking that it might keep the mixture from holding together as well. I also considered not using skewers but I like that with the skewers I can keep the kebabs just above the grill grate and don't have to worry about sticking or so much clean up. My goal is to be able to slide the kebabs off in one piece for a better presentation. Can anyone share ideas, tips, or tricks? Is there perhaps a different type of skewer that may work better?

Easy! You want fairly broad, flat skewers, which will prevent the meat from rotating around the axis, like these: Quite appropriately, I've seen these referred to as "Persian-style" skewers. Not having a decent Middle Eastern grocery nearby, I instead use flattened bamboo skewers that I can find at my local Asian market, which look similar but smaller, like so: As with any other wooden skewer, you'll want to soak these first so that they don't burn. The main thing is that the skewers be significantly flat. Stainless steel versions like this which are quite thin look nice, but they don't grip any better than a round model does. Alternatively, you can find double skewers which do pretty much the same thing, like these: If, like me, you bought a massive pack of cheap, round bamboo skewers before you figured this out, you can approximate by using two of them running parallel. This is basically the same concept as the double skewer without them actually being connected. The only disadvantage here is that you can find up with twisting if you're not careful, and they're a bit more finicky to use. It goes without saying that any of these options work very well with just about anything else that you care to skewer and toss on the grill.

If you have a hamburger at a fancy deli they'll often have a very fancy bun. However, I have never seen these buns for sale at bakeries or grocery stores. What kind of different buns exist for "high end" (15$) hamburgers? I'd like to get a list of as many of them as possible and then I'll narrow my search to the ones I can reasonably make or buy.

It won't be viable to leaven bread. Too soon and you'll just be using it in the leuconostoc stage which is bad bacteria and isn't good for anything. I wouldn't use the starter or discard till it becomes viable.

Background: I'm an ERP consultant and one of my customers is a metal works factory in which they have an oven. This is an expensive piece of hardware so they have only one oven. It is important to schedule the jobs that use the oven in order to use it as efficiently as possible. And now to the question: after cooking my lunch of baked fish, I wonder how restaurants manage their oven/s. Do they have only one oven, using it for all dishes, and filling and emptying at 15 minute intervals (or similar)? Do they have several ovens and somehow manage which dishes (for which diners) are in which ovens, and at what time the dishes entered the oven? A curious mind wonders.

tl;dr - they never turn off. I've never worked in a kitchen with only one oven. I'm sure they exist, but I've never been in one. That said, contrary to moscafj's answer, I've certainly used ovens heavily during service. These examples come from a kitchen that had two combi Rational ovens (i.e., an oven and steamer in one). Typically one was kept on steam, switching as needed, and the other on roast (for service). To give you a rough idea of what a daily rotation of oven usage was like: Breakfast (starting at 5:00 AM): one on steam, one held at 350 F. The roaster is primarily used to cook sheet pans of bacon/sausage/home fries which are then transferred to hot holding, either on the line or in a hotbox for the buffet (the steam is used for hot-holding for the line/buffet backup). During this time, other miscellaneous prep could also be cooked in the same oven (assuming 350 F is an appropriate temperature). Par-grilled chicken breast would frequently be roasted off and cooled during this time (either to be re-heated later, or further processed into chicken salad or the like). Lunch (starting at 11:00 AM): turned up to 450 F and held. Lunch service was typically too hectic to get any sort of significant prep done, so it would be used primarily for service (personal pizzas, heating crab cakes, the odd person ordering a steak or roast chicken off the dinner menu, parbaked rolls for the table, etc). The cold line might be able to sneak a tray or two of croutons in the oven at this time, but it wouldn't be a sure thing. The "spare" oven/steamer might be switched over to a slow-roasted prep item - say, roasted garlic or braised meat - depending on prep/service needs. Mid afternoon/bar service: (2:30 PM - 5:00 PM): still held at 450 F, although with the lull in orders, you could switch one up if you really needed to (most dinner items would be prepped at 450 anyway). This time was largely used as a mad dash for the dinner crew to set up and get as much prep done as possible. Usage at this time is highly dependent on hot line prep/service needs. Dinner (5:00 PM - 11:00 PM): held at 500 F and kept there. God help you if you changed an oven without explicit permission from the line. Primary usage is for service - pan roasted fish/chicken, heating/reheating various apps, finishing grilled steaks, etc. The oven is constantly being opened and closed as orders come in and out, but never cooled. Overnight (11:00 PM - 2:30 AM): a deep self-cleaning cycle is run on the service oven. The "spare"/steamer is switched over to roast for service orders and miscellaneous prep. Late night (2:30 AM - 5:00 AM) - hot food isn't served. A "quick" clean cycle is run on the steamer/overnight oven, and the main service oven is set up for breakfast. From the comments: How do the staff know which item in the oven belongs to which order? The answer is a combination of "just remember", "it doesn't matter", and whatever personal system the cook has to keep track of things. To explain: the system I used was essentially "ascending temperatures". I would use this system for the oven, the grill/range, and resting tray: from left to right/bottom to top, rare -> well done. As a random example: an order comes in for a mid-rare tenderloin and medium well sirloin, followed by a second order for a mid-well tenderloin and medium seared salmon. I'd put a tenderloin on the center left section of the grill (mid rare), a tenderloin and a sirloin on the center right (both mid well), and start heating a sizzle platter in the center burner of the range. At this point I can effectively forget about the ticket for the time being - all of the order information that I need to know at moment is embedded in the location of the food. Once the steaks were sufficiently marked to count as "grilled", I'd move the center-left tenderloin to the bottom rack in the oven (rares wouldn't make it into the oven, so the racks went mid-rare / medium / mid-well / well done), the two center right steaks to the second from the top rack. Ditto the salmon, once the sizzle platter was hot, I'd add the fish and move it to the second rack. Now it's a question of monitoring what's in the oven/waiting for my internal timer to go off. Once the [item] in the oven reaches the temperature the it's position tells me it should be, I move it to the resting tray (which is just a sheet pan with a rack on it), again in the appropriate [rare | mr | med | mw | well] position. At this point I can check the tickets to see if anything's ready to sell from my station, if so, I call to the expediter "ready to sell [table number]". The expediter will either tell me to hold off (either the table's not ready or the server isn't ready or we're still waiting on food from other stations) or sell it. If we're holding, I forget about it and move on. If a solo MR tenderloin walks in, I can immediately sell the one I have on the resting tray to clear that order and start working a new one for the holding table. If we're selling, I move the relevant proteins from the resting tray to the salamander (still following the left->right placement rule) to bring them back up to an appropriate plating temp and start laying out plates (any guesses as to how I'm going to arrange the plates?) The "just remember" part comes into play with special orders or just juggling random ticket information in my head so I don't have to go back and refer to the hanging ticket - but 95% of the information I need at give time is in front of my face and it usually doesn't matter which table this particular item is going to - a medium steak is a medium steak is a medium steak, all I need to know if how many I have working, how long they have left, and what's ready to sell.

Whenever I fry hamburgers I can't help but notice that they create a lot of smoke. I have brand new non-stick pans, and an electric stove. I cook them on setting 6, where the stoves max is 8. I don't add any oil because if I do it pops and goes everywhere. I have a thermometer that I use when cooking, and I keep cooking until they reach 170 all around. I think I'm doing it right, I put the burgers down, let them cook for about 4 minutes, poke the thermometer in to create some venting holes, flip them over. Repeat this process until they reach 170. Usually about half-way through they start to smoke pretty bad. Am I cooking them too high? It already takes what seems like forever to cook them through.

There are a couple of things that jump out at me: 170 F (77 C) - This is overkill for ground beef. The USDA guidelines recommend 160 F (71 C). Venting holes - This is unnecessary. There is no need to "vent" a hamburger. What you're doing is creating holes for the juices to flow out of and get vaporized on the pan. This is likely a significant source of the smoking you describe. Keep those juices in! I'm not familiar with electric stoves, so I'm not sure if 6/8 is too hot or not, but it might be. I cook my burgers on a gas stove at medium-high flame and generally do 5 mins per side for a medium burger (I grind my own beef). My burgers are about an 3/4" - 1" thick too. So you might have your stove too hot, try turning it down a smidge. Update I want to clarify regarding the "blood" you are worried about. It's a common misconception that the red liquid packaged with beef is blood. It's not. Beef is drained of virtually all blood when it is slaughtered. Beef is 75% water, so the liquid you see is mostly water and the pink hue comes from the iron & oxygen binding protein myoglobin which exists in muscle tissue. When cooking, the juices you are releasing are taking a lot of the flavor with them. This liquid is a combination of liquified fat, water, and proteins. You can verify this at the USDA site for beef. Another common misconception is that a completely grey-brown interior indicates well done. According to the USDA, 25% of burgers turn brown before being fully cooked; this can happen as low as 135 F (57 C). The inverse is true as well, some beef can be cooked to the USDA recommended safe temperature 160 F (71 C) and still retain some light pinkness in the center. If your concern is merely safety, cooking the beef to an interior temperature of 160 F is sufficient, regardless of it's hue. If you you're cooking it beyond that just because you don't like the sight of pink meat, well you're overcooking your burgers and doing yourself a bit of injustice. :)

We boiled the carcass of the turkey and let it set in the refrigerator for about 5 days. When I took it out to prepare the soup it was like gelatin. I know that's OK, however at the bottom there was white stuff. Could that be fat? I always thought fat was on the top!

The stuff at the top is fat, as oil floats on water (arguably one of the best things ever for a chef :)) The stuff at the bottom, is a collection of proteins, meat juices and all other sediments left in the stock after straining. Personally I'd scrape any fat from the top. Then depending on the solidity of my stock I'd either ladle out the clear stuff from above the sediment or if set well enough I'd turn the container over so I had a big lump of jelly on my counter and slice the bottom portion off with a warm knife and discard. It'll not taste great if at all and will make your soup, gravy or broth a little grainy. On a side note, 5 days in the fridge is rather long. Food hygiene wise you'd usually not keep cooked meat products much longer than 3 days though a boiled stock will likely last a little longer. I'm not 100% sure what the actual guidelines are but I live to a 3 day rule on everything cooked in my work kitchen to keep the 'environmental health organization' happy...

I tried by using two quarts of heavy cream, two cups of sugar and a spoon of honey and mixed it all together but I feel like it's missing something to the flavor. I'm trying to create something similar to what you get out of a can of whipped cream. Reddi-whip to be exact. These are the ingredients: Nonfat milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup, maltodextrin, inulin (chicory extract), cellulose, mono- and diglycerides polysorbate 80, artificial flavors, carrageenan. Can someone explain what these are: (maltodextrin, inulin (chicory extract), cellulose, mono- and diglycerides polysorbate 80, artificial flavors, carrageenan)

Sigh, I was trying to avoid answering this, but feel compelled to provide some information after all your revisions. I'm answering only this part of the question: Can someone explain what these are: (maltodextrin, inulin (chicory extract), cellulose, mono- and diglycerides polysorbate 80, artificial flavors, carrageenan) Let's break that down: maltodextrin is a sweetener inulin is also a sweetener cellulose is a fiber (wood, basically) used as a stabilizer mono- and diglycerides are emulsifiers, that make the cream smoother polysorbate 80 another emulsifier carrageenan algae, also a stabilizer Now, "artificial flavors" could literally mean anything, which is a big challenge for your recreation experiment. Not only does it not say which flavors they've added, the formula may be a trade secret.

I am an absolute newbie to baking bread. Just started baking veggies recently. Before I buy any baking pot, I would like to ask a few questions about bread baking. Is it always better to have a baking pot of cast iron (or the materials specific for baking)? In the bakeries and all I see people baking without pots. So, why do we need baking pots? Is anything made of stainless steel good for baking bread? If so, what should be it's thickness? Thanks in advance!

In my mind, bread baking containers are divided into two categories: 1- Pans for shape Many bread pans are used only to give bread shape. These can very from "normal" loaf pans for sandwich bread to baguette pans. These pans need to just stay out of the way of the heat as much as possible. Baguette pans are even perforated for this reason. They are usually made out of very thin steel and don't need to be expensive at all. 2- Pots for heat and steam Artisan style bread needs high initial temperatures to produce steam that opens up the bread and builds the crispy crust. It also needs to have a steamy oven during that initial crust-forming period. Consumer ovens don't usually retain heat very well and are not built with steam injectors either. Putting the bread in a pot helps with both issues. By preheating the pot, the bread will be exposed to a large, pre-charged, thermal mass right at the beginning of baking. Then as steam escapes the loaf it will be held close to the bread and give you a crispy crust. Pots to do this need to be able to hold a lot of heat so cast iron or ceramic vessels are used. A stainless steel pot with a lid probably wouldn't do very well because it wouldn't hold much heat and would shield the bread from the high heat. Since you mentioned no-knead bread, I would think that you are planning to make artisan style bread rather than soft, sandwich bread. If that is true then I don't think a stainless steel pot would be the best choice. Use either cast iron with a lid, or forgo the pot idea and bake the bread on a pizza stone and spray some water in your oven for steam.

I just baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies (https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/bas-best-chocolate-chip-cookies). I felt like they were just a tad bit on the sweet side, so wanted to know if there would be any negative consequences from reducing the sugar? (like 1/2-3/4 of the sugar in the recipe) Would the cookie not bake as desired or something like that?

Sugar contributes to the texture in cookies. In particular brown sugar is softer than white because of the hygroscopic molasses. If you like your cookies soft I'd reduce/remove the white sugar first (plus you don't lose the brown sugar flavour). If that's too soft you can adjust the ratio in the next batch (or, to some extent, bake a tiny bit longer, but the texture really only becomes apparent on cooking) Baking time might change a little, so keep an eye on them when they should be nearly done.

Is there a tool to cut cherry tomatoes in half? Since they are so regular it should be possible to build such a machine. Alternately, what can I do to improve my speed and accuracy when halving them with a knife?

Yes there is. It's called a knife. I use a Shun 10" chef's knife, but you could certainly make do with a much cheaper one.

I've recently realized how easy it is to make your own butter at home (thanks, SA!). Are there any significant benefits to this as opposed to buying butter in the grocery store? I do not have access to dairy cows, so I would have to purchase cream. That seems like it would mitigate any potential cost savings. How about culinary benefits? Does homemade butter taste better? Related: How to make home-made butter?

One reason to make your own butter is that you get distinctly different flavours depending on the type of cream you use. If you use fresh cream you get sweet butter which is popular in North America, Australia and Britain, but less easy to come by in continental Europe. If you use a cultured cream like Crème fraîche you get cultured butter, which is common throughout most of Europe. Cultured butter is slightly soured by lactic acid. It has a fuller, more complex flavour than sweet butter. If you decide to make it, be sure that you don't use a cultured cream that includes artificial thickeners. The ingredient list should read something like "pasteurised cream, lactic-acid culture" (apologies if that's not accurate; I'm translating from Swedish). I have a couple of other reasons why I personally want to make butter. First of all my four year old son has been asking how butter is made, and this would be a great way show him. The second reason is that I'm curious as to how real buttermilk tastes (the buttermilk in the supermarkets is fermented milk). And last of all, I noticed that my beurre noir sauce was working out much better when I lived in Australia, so I'd like to do some side-by-side comparisons with European butter.

Certain types of meat like chicken breast seem to have such a short window of being done. Cooking too little can be unhealthy and cooking too much can dry it out. So it seems most cooks are very careful with not overcooking these types of meats. Yet, I see all kinds of recipes about how to reuse leftover roast chicken, or chicken pot pie recipes where you're supposed to cook the chicken first (or use leftover cooked chicken) and then put it in the oven for another 15 - 45 minutes (depending on the recipe). I just can't understand how we're expected not to severely dry out and overcook the meat in these types of recipes. Is there some kind of a trick I'm missing? If there is enough liquid, are we able to drastically slow the cooking process? But even braised chicken breast can be overcooked without too much extra time. Can we optimize for this second cooking by using large pieces or trying to not completely cook the meat in the first cooking?

You're not expecting the same texture if you re-cook, that's why many re-cook recipes involve shredding the meat before the second part of the process - separating it as long fibres. Chicken Tinga, Pulled Pork, etc use this as the basis of the texture of the dish. Using fattier cuts can mitigate the drying out. Personally, if I have a long cook that's going to be using chicken breast, I often don't put the chicken in until near the end, so I can get it 'first time' rather than second. It will affect absorption of other flavours though. Something like a curry you can tweak this approach by marinating the chicken in a similar spice blend. Sometimes I just make the call based on experience with a particular dish, or try it both ways & see which I prefer. If you par-cook the meat, you will then have an extended period where the centre is in a completely unsafe temperature zone. Don't do this. From comments For a pie - so long as it's going straight in the oven, you can flash-fry chicken chunks to get some good colour then finish in the oven, in the pie-mix. So long as the mix doesn't start from cold, temperatures ought to remain in the safe zone throughout.

It's probably not a one to one ratio. Do you have any suggestions?

My egg salad has a ratio of 100% eggs, 0% potatoes. My potato salad has a half dozen eggs to 2 1/2 kilos/5 pounds of potatoes, I chop them fine. Sometimes I will make pretty eggs and put them on top though, usually sliced thin or quartered, then I use 8 eggs.

I'm a reluctant cook at the best of times but I'm interested to know what I just did. I got a massive bone for the dog from the butcher. There was quite a lot of meat on it so I thought the dog and I should both have some benefit. I placed the entire bone (I can't identify what it was anatomically maybe backbone) in my non-stick frying pan with a tiny bit of olive oil. I heated it up to max to brown it and then turned it down to the lowest setting and left it for the whole evening with a Pyrex lid on. It was thoroughly cooked through and tasted good. So what did I do? Did I fry it? Roast it? What would you call this? NOTE: I didn't add anything at all, not even salt or spices. There was a teaspoon of olive oil to lubricate the pan and then I stuck the lid on and left it.

I'd say "slow pan roasted stove top". It's not stewed, it's not braised, it's not pan fried, it's not oven roasted.

Can someone please explain why by adding a knob of butter into the pan of water during the steaming of cabbage makes the cabbage taste better. I understand this idea come from Denmark. I've tried it and for some unknown reason works and my friends have spotted the difference during a blind test I did.

Some of the butter ends up on your food. Most people will think the flavor is improved if there's a tiny bit of salt and a tiny bit of butter flavor. We like fat, we like salt, and we like the actual butter flavor, though it's more subtle. In case you were wondering why the butter ends up on the food... The oil melts into the water boiling on the bottom. It'll be trying to sit on top, but with the water bubbling and boiling things mix a bit. Either way, little droplets are definitely going to get thrown around. A bit of butter, or even most of it, is going to end up on your food. You can easily prove this to yourself - the residue on the sides of the pot will also be greasy, and if you boil away all the water after you remove your cabbage, there won't be nearly as much melted butter as you started with. You can also see this if you're cooking things in just oil (with a bit of water coming off the food). As things splatter, you get a lot of oil droplets flying everywhere, which I'm sure you've noticed when you're cleaning in the kitchen. Actually mixing oil and water just makes this even more pronounced. I'm not sure how you do your steaming, but if you're taking a shortcut, skipping the steamer basket, and just putting a bit of water in the bottom of a pot or pan, even more (probably most) of the butter will end up on the food.

I bought this George Forman Grill with detachable trays that are supposed to be dishwasher safe. I noticed that after the dishwasher there's this black soot on them. What causes this? Is there anyway of preventing it? The drip tray that came with the grill has written on it "wash in top rack only", should the same be done with actual grills? What difference does it make if something is washed in the top or bottom rack?

Most likely your problem is caused by your dishwasher detergent. Many of them will cause aluminum to oxidize creating the issue you are experiencing. I would suggest that you hand-wash and remove the oxidation as it looks quite extreme. (You don't want any of it to come off in the dishwasher and be deposited on other dishes.) While it technically may be 'dishwasher safe', to prevent the oxidation from reoccurring I would recommend going forward that you hand-wash. The other option may be to try different dishwasher detergents to see if you can find one that does not cause this reaction.

I’m hosting a party at our home in a couple weeks, cocktails and appetizers. I have a recipe I like for little meatballs in puff pastry. I was wondering if I can bake them all ahead of time and keep them in the warming drawer or oven or if I should bake each batch fresh.

Puff pastry itself holds fine a couple days (and the raw dough can be kept frozen months!); it's normally very dry so there's very little difference between baked fresh and "old". As long as you don't burn it and don't make it soggy when reheating, the pastry will be fine. OTOH if you keep it on heat, it will start getting too dry and unpleasant in some 3 hours or so. The meat stuffing is another thing you should worry about. 4h on very modest heat will dry it up badly. Just bake everything ahead of time, leave in the open in room temperature or even refrigerate and reheat every batch before serving.

There's a Mexican restaurant in my hometown that serves (their term) 'Arroz con pollo'. The dish itself seems incredibly simple -- it's pretty much just rice, chicken, and an incredible cheese sauce. I've spent countless hours on google looking for a recipe for something resembling this sauce, but there doesn't seem to be one definitive version of arroz con pollo, so I haven't had much luck. Can someone point me in the right direction?

That sounds like a standard queso cheese (typically found on your chimis etc.) If you are looking for a terrific queso recipe, there are myriad. However, two tips for any queso: seek out "Chihuahua Cheese" (its a mild white that melts very smoothly and has a subtle flavor) pepper and cumin and paprika roasted first are your friends, but if you add more than a little, they are your worst enemies. (also, fresh roast jalapenos for ideal flavor, don't use diced.)

I use my Marcato Atlas 150 for fettuccini and occasionally to make lasagna noodles. One side if the fettuccini head has a spaghetti roller. I've used it a only a couple of times because the pasta is so thin it appears to be angel hair or capellini rather than spaghetti. Am I wrong in my assessment?

No, you are not wrong. The roller you describe produces a noodle that is closer to capellini than spaghetti.

It must be banana season as the supermarkets are full of them at silly prices. I am beginning to think that I have come across and tried every banana recipe known to mankind. Is there a method of preserving banana? The weather here is quite dry so I have thought about drying banana slices. How about preserves, is there a way to preserve banana without using any sugar? Unfortunately freezing is not an option for me, since my freezer space is at a premium.

You don't mention what variety of banana you have access to. There is a host of banana varieties and they all have different characteristics in regard to flavor and texture. I will assume that you are referring to the Cavendish variety that is ubiquitous in the west. Cavendish bananas, when ripe, are very fragile. They go mushy easily and oxidize quickly. Before they are ripe they are more starchy but relatively flavorless with kind of grassy overtones. Drying them is easy and great if you like eating a lot of banana chips. Recipes are easy to find. You want to use bananas that are slightly under ripe. If they are fully ripe they get leathery instead of drying crisp. Some recipes will call for spraying or tossing them in acid or other mixtures to improve the color or flavor. Obviously, living in a dry climate will help a lot making the drying process much faster and so reduce the chance of mold. You don't often see banana preserves (chunks of fruit bottled in a syrup) because the ripe fruit falls apart when cooked and the under ripe fruit doesn't have a strong or pleasant enough flavor. Instead, an option that is used often in SE Asia where there is a huge variety of bananas is banana jam. This is more like what I would call a fruit butter. The bananas are pureed and cooked with sugar and sometimes pectin and then bottled. Sometimes chunks of fruit are left but they are much more tender than your typical preserves. It tastes good and will keep almost forever. If you haven't bottled before, the bottling process is more involved than drying. It is easy to find recipes. Many of them will include lime juice or other acids to reduce the browning. Often spices are added which will vary according to the local cuisine. The strangest preservable banana application I have seen was Filipino banana ketchup. Not bad but I can't imagine using enough of the stuff to preserve any quantity of fruit. While writing this post I discovered that banana ketchup is made everywhere bananas are more common than tomatoes. It looks like banana ketchup from other cuisines has a greater ratio of banana and is appropriately yellow.

I'm noticing that there is a huge difference of the amount of carbs in dark chocolate. For example, Lindt Excellence Cocoa 90% says: 100g chocolate: 592 kcal 55g fat 10g protein 19g carbs of which 14g is sugar in 100g chocolate. Amedei Toscano Black 90% says per 100g chocolate: 741 kcal 53g fat 11g protein 55g carbs of which 32g sugar per 100g chocolate. Both are 90%, similar protein and fat amounts but the carbs differs a lot. Why is that, what's going on here?

Nominally, high-quality dark chocolate is made of just two things, cocoa beans and sugar. In reality, nobody just chucks beans and sugar into a machine together. The cocoa beans get processed to different intermediate cocoa-derived products, and these get mixed with sugar to make a chocolate bar. The cocoa-derived products can be very different. There is a range from cocoa butter (100% fat) to low-fat cocoa powder (about 5% fat, the rest is basically all carbohydrates), with other products with a fat content between these two extremes. The difference in fat comes from simple mechanical separation - once the cocoa butter has been "churned" from the cocoa liquor, what is left can be milled into cocoa powder. The 90% number printed on the package means the total amount of cocoa-bean derived products. But their combination does not have to resemble the nutrient composition of a raw cocoa bean, it can be chosen by the producer any way they wish. So, apparently, Lindt Excellence uses a higher percentage of cocoa butter (or other fat-rich cocoa products) than Amedei Toscano Black. If you are wondering about the sugar content being different, note that the ingredient "sugar" (the 10% added to the 90% cocoa) is not the same thing that gets counted in the nutrition label, where any sugars (including those already present in the cocoa bean) are included in the calculation. See this recent question for a longer explanation.

I researched this question before asking, but I could not find a clear information. I'm sorry if I missed it. I want to make pizza from a leavened dough. I will use instant dry yeast. There are lots of pizza recipes. Is there a ratio for flour / yeast when making pizza dough? Of course, this will vary according to the type of flour. We can talk about bread flour.For example, X grams of instant yeast is used for each cup of flour. Some sources say that you can use instant yeast up to 0.5% of the amount of flour. Can we make such a generalization?

Pizza dough is basically a bread. So, like other bread formulas, can be developed and expressed using a bakers percentage. For a Napolitan pizza most pizzaiolos use .1 to .5 percent yeast. This is the percentage as compared to the total amount of flour (usually tipo "OO" for this style). So, your initial research is a good starting point. You will have to adjust for local conditions (and ingredients) from there. This might also help you. He makes use of fresh yeast, so that is likely why his percentage is on the lower end.

I bought some grilled chicken from a restuarant and it came with marinade on the skin. I asked the seller if they can provide grilled skinless with marinade on flesh. He said we don't do it like that because the marinade doesn't go well on the chicken flesh. I also notice other shops dont marinade without skin. However I have previously bought lamb chops from the same restuarant and it has been well marinated. My thinking is, if you can marinade and oven grill lamb chops then you can grill chicken too with marinade to a similar effect? What did he mean, is there a reason why restaurants may marinade meat but not skinless chicken meat?

There's an overlap, and a difference, between a marinade and a glaze. If a mixture contains a fair amount of sugar, then it's probably intended more as a glaze, and the cooking method will usually be grilling, or roasting, (rather than pan frying). There's no reason not to glaze poultry flesh directly (teriyaki, for example) but the bigger the piece, the longer the exposure to fierce heat will have to be to cook it to the middle. It's not easy to grill a whole skinless chicken breast without drying the outside before the middle is cooked. The combination of the fat from the skin and a glaze will protect and baste the flesh. The surface will be crisp, juicy, and caramelized, rather than parched and leathery.

I am trying to find a way to boil 1-2 quarts of water for 10 minutes and want to be absolutely sure that the pot doesn't leak any chemicals into the water. I have tried 3 stainless steel sauce pots but they all rusted (and one rusted after a single use). What kind of sauce pot can I get that is guaranteed not to rust or break due to temperature and not leak any chemicals into the water? Price is less important than finding the right item (I'm only going to buy 1).

Just use a glass pot, Corningware make some decent ones that can be used on a stove. But any glass pot designed to work on a stove with direct heat/flame exposure should work in this case. If you are worried about uneven heating or hot spots on a gas range due to less conductive glass, you can use a cast iron or aluminum heat diffuser plate under the glass to even out the heat.

I thought it was cross-contamination when you mix raw food with any food. So, can you use the same flour batter next and dip the chicken in along with French fries together and then fry them?

As long as you are cooking both, as you suggest in your question, there is no danger. Any potential hazard will not survive the heat of cooking.

I'm curious as to how a restaurant can serve a table with different dishes which take widely different times to cook - hot, fresh and simultaneously. I often want to do this at home, but often fail on the timings. I'm assuming here that a lot of this will be compensated by "Hot holding", either in pans or by quickly blitzing food under a grill or boiler. There is also the number of staff involved, and as each chef will deal with a specialty dish, this will be a lot easier to coordinate than than with just one person in the kitchen. So how can a home chef up their game and approach the same level of variety and quality, or is there a point where a commercial restaurant will always beat the home chef?

The fact that there are often different cooks working different stations makes the timing and completion of different dishes possible. You generally answered your own question... they are pros, and do what they do repeatedly, many times a night and many nights in a row. You probably can't recreate this at home. Everything is prepped in advance, when the order comes in the item is finished and plated, timing this among the cooks so that individual dishes are done together. At home, many things can be streamlined with good prep work, a solid understanding of timing and cooking procedures, warm or cold plates, and patient guests. You are probably not serving different meals to individual guests, so "up your game" by serving a coursed meal where you can have the majority of the dish completed ahead of time, with just the finishing and plating to do before the same course is served to all of your guests. Enjoy with them, then head off to the kitchen for the next course...even better if the kitchen is in close proximity or they are dining in the same room!

Because of the contest, I read up about tofu. It's something I'm not familiar with at all, I've only eaten it twice. I came across the term 'silken tofu'. I only know this by name. I've found that silken tofu is in short tofu that's not well pressed. It's consistency is custard-like. My question is if this is correct. Are there any other differences, apart from the moisture content? Another question is how to handle this. You can't fry custard AFAIK (although I'm willing to try ;-) ). So do you always use it raw? Or do you bake it in the oven? Do you use it as a 'sauce' with fried veggies? Or should/can you drain/press it yourself? If you would drain/press it yourself, would you have the same result as store-bought regular tofu?

Yes, silken tofu is undrained tofu. In Japan it is often eaten raw, in dishes like miso soup or even simply dipped in soy sauce. However, you can certainly cook it as well - it is especially useful as an egg substitute in vegan cookery (any number of recipes online). Firm tofu is probably better for frying with as it holds its shape. If you have the time, patience and equipment (some form of weight and some muslin) you could press silken tofu to make firm, but firm is just as readily available.

I would like to make wafer paper like it is used as basis for some Christmas cookies or as used in church (oblates). This seems to be too basic to be mentioned in usual recipes. Internet search results are so much spammed by recipes using wafer paper that it appears impossible to find clear instructions on how to make the paper itself. I found only generic instructions like "Use flour and water, maybe sugar salt. Bake." "Use flour and water" also applies to making pizza or bread and I would prefer to avoid too much experimentation. How do I choose the ratio between flour and water? What type of flour should I use? How long and at what temperature to bake? I know this requires experimentation, I am mainly looking for a starting point to reduce the parameters to try.

Very, very carefully. Although that's rather tongue in cheek, it's true: slowly and carefully is the key approach. The quicker you try to move, the rougher the shape you produce. You also significantly increase the chance of breakage. Make an initial rough hole at the center point of your eventual window area, and then cut out to finish the edges. A serrated knife used with a slow, steady sawing motion should work. Luckily, if you do end up with lopsided, misshapen, or unexpected results, icing and candy decoration can help hide the mistakes :)

I have always roasted my beets in a bit of vinegar in the bottom of the pan like 1/4" or so. It is how I was taught. But why do it? What does the vinegar do for the beets?

I think it is mostly for the taste. It certainly isn't necessary - I roast beets without any vinegar all the time, and they turn out great. I just roast them in their skins, without any oil or anything added. It takes a long time, over an hour depending on how big they are. When they are completely tender, let 'em cool, and the jacket slips right off. Roasting intensifies the flavor by caramelizing some of the sugars and removing moisture. You can always season with vinegar after roasting, depending on what you plan to do with them.

Please assist regarding water added to the moat during a 4 to 5 week ferment, because one cannot simply keep adding water to the moat because if the crock's vacuum is sucking in the water and you keep adding it will eventually reduce the salinity of the brine water and ruin your kraut! My 1st batch I followed what i presumed were correct instructions and added water to the moat to keep full. Within 1 week I added 4 cups of water and discovered after lifting the lid for inspection the water was actually being sucked into the crock from the moat as the water level inside was clear up to the top of the crock! Initially I had at least 5 inches from the weight stones up to the top. The pulling of water into the crock fix no one has been able to tell me. I thought well if it keeps pulling the water in from the moat that is not salted maybe it would be better to add salted water into the moat. Wrong! Because then it grew white mold or yeast floating all over the exposed moat salt water to the air & then since it was a real sucker and always thirsty that same white stuff got sucked into the crock and grew above the weights! So I skimmed off the white floaties best as possible, emptied the moat well and wiped clean & then refilled with clear distilled water & replaced the lid. I have 2 more weeks to go before it is done and hope all my hard work and efforts & expense is not wasted. None of these issues is presented clearly or what to do to correct and I have searched tons online. I even emailed the store that sold me my 10 liter crock and they had no answers other than to just say "fermenting is an art that you just have to learn"! Wow, they were zero help after the sale. Now the pros who know these answers and have faced such issues good luck trying to phone them or get the answers we all need because like an internet search you just do not get to THE person with THE knowledge needed after so much frustrations. The crock I bought the inner lip on the crock is the same height as the outer and this may be in part why water was getting sucked inside easier than those whose inner lip is higher? I did not know these things pre-purchase cuz nobody tells you. I mainly bought my 100 + dollar 10 liter crock due to the convenient handles and the glass weights which are easier to clean & do not get moldy. Here is the one I bought: https://www.stonecreektrading.com/collections/fermenting-crocks-2/products/copy-of-fermenting-crock-10-liter-Egyptian-style-with-stone-weights If anyone can help this issue of water being sucked into the crock and how to remedy please do so, then my next batch will be less of an issue hopefully.

Is the crock kept in a place where the temperature is steady (such as a cellar/basement) or is it exposed to daily temperature swings? As a a rule the ferment should produce gas to some extent (which would push water out, if anything) but repeated temperature swings would tend to "pump" out when warm, in when colder. When the initial gas production slacks off, that could lead to water pumping in, particularly with a defectively non-tradtional design as you describe (I have looked at fermentation crocks a lot, and so far refused to spend money on them - but I soon grasped that the entire contents of the "moat" should not be able to rise above the inner lip in a "suck" situation, for precisely the reason you have experienced.) One option would be to go back to a very basic airlock - a sheet of plastic wrap, or a (food grade) plastic bag, that covers the top of the crock, and a large rubber band holding it in place. Another would be to NOT fill the moat - put just a bit of water in so it seals, but not so much that suck-back would pull it over the inner lip.

I am told that during freezing ice crystals rupture vessels in poultry and denature them. This causes the poultry to have larger pores and so when cooking things like soup the poultry absorbs more water. If you have a thin layer of ice crystal formation on your poultry is this going to denature just as much as if you had larger ice crystals forming? I notice varying degree of ice crystal formation on different parts of my poultry in the freezer, do you know what factors might cause this to be the case e.g. perhaps bagging prevents ice crystal formation? Will the length of time left in the freezer make a difference to the degree of pores size opening i.e. if you leave it for one day will that have near as much affect as if you had left it for a week? Ideally like somebody who understands the chemistry of these things to answer with explanation but anybody who knows the correct answer will do. Thanks in advance. Please clarify two things in your answer. 1.You said if the container is not air tight frost will develop. Will this frost develop 'on' the food i.e. have no affect to denaturing as you say or is it likely to make its way 'in' the food and have a denaturing effect? 2.You have said if a food is frozen it is frozen and thereafter no denaturing can occur. Are you saying if frost develops in an already frozen food no denaturing will occur? Are you also saying the denaturing only occurs when meat is in the process of freezing and during this time only do any developing ice crystals have an affect?

There's not really much chemistry happening here. It's just basic physics - ice crystals form when you freeze it, tearing through things a bit, and then they melt back into water when you thaw it. Some proteins are indeed sensitive to denaturing during freezing, but that's basically going to be a constant no matter how you freeze it. (Denaturing is just a destruction of the tertiary structure of the protein - so it will mess with its structural properties, but since it doesn't destroy the amino acids, it won't alter nutritional value. I don't know if structure-giving proteins in meat are sensitive to freezing denaturation, but I don't think there's anything you can do to affect it anyway.) With respect to your first question: it's not the ice formation on the surface that matters. That's just sitting on the surface. It's the ice forming in the chicken that's tearing it apart. Amount of surface ice doesn't have an effect on the food underneath. It does mean that there'll be more water when you thaw it, though, and sometimes that's very undesirable (e.g. for bread) and sometimes it's just annoying (vegetables that you want to cook without much water). But all that matters for the food itself is the fact that it's frozen. This is the same kind of the thing that you see with fruit - if you freeze and thaw it, it'll be completely mushy, now that the ice crystals have destroyed its internal structure. This isn't so pronounced with meat, since it doesn't have as high a water content, but the texture is still somewhat altered. For your second question: it's just a matter of how much moisture-containing air was able to get to the food. This is a common problem. The ideal case is a completely vacuum-sealed, airtight container: only the food will freeze, and there's no room for moisture to get to it and form surface ice. If something is airtight but was sealed in with normal, somewhat humid air, that moisture will create frost on the food. If it's not airtight, air will leak in, and humidity is brought in when you open the freezer, so it'll slowly accumulate frost. For your third question: once something is frozen, it's frozen. It's not moving anymore. Pores aren't being opened. There's no effect from food being frozen longer. (Unless it's not airtight, in which case it can take on odors from the freezer - but that takes a while.) I can think of two things which could conceivably have an effect: freezing at different rates, and freezing and thawing multiple times. The former is hard to mess with at home, but freezing very rapidly reduces the amount of destruction. In a home freezer you're already freezing very slowly; freezing more slowly probably wouldn't be significantly different. Multiple freeze/thaws should tear things up a bit more (though probably two freezes won't tear things up twice as much, since some crystals will just form in the same place they did last time).

I usually bring my soon to be vegetable stock to a boil and then let it simmer for about an hour. One of my favourite ingredients is dried Shiitake, which I tend to buy whole and in bulk. Should I go with the common wisdom of increasing the surface area by cutting the dried mushrooms into smaller pieces to extract the most flavour, or does it not really matter under the conditions of making the vegetable stock? Perhaps dried Shiitake, at that temperature, already gives me complete extraction from the interior, and I get to indulge in keeping them whole and pretty.

Are whole dried Shiitake sufficient for complete flavour extraction in my stock Of course! Don't bother cutting them up, as that would make them prone to releasing too much of their flavor long before the stock is ready.

In Israel, there are some low-sodium salt substitute, which brag to have "60% less sodium than regular salt". I suspect that there's a catch. I strongly suspect that indeed they contain 60% less sodium than the regular salt, however, you need to add 60% (or 50%, but a larger amount) more of the salt-subtitute to get the same taste. Is that true? Did anyone else think about that?

I'd say that's not strictly true,mostly because no salt substitute I've ever seen can get the same taste anyway. "Real" salt is sodium chloride (and maybe iodine, or minor impurities if it's sea salt). Most salt substitutes are partly or mostly potassium chloride. This is technically a salt (chemically speaking) and does have a similar salty taste, but it doesn't taste quite like sodium chloride, and can be bitter or metallic-tasting. Some salt substitutes add herbs or other things to help make the potassium chloride more palatable. Sounds like your has some "regular" salt as well, if it's got a significant sodium content. So while you are right that there's likely a "catch," it's more likely to be that your salt substitute will never taste quite right, or will be bitter, and less likely that you'll be piling loads of extra on in an effort to get the right saltiness.

I've recently taken a liking to greek yogurt. So far, I've been buying the Chobani low-fat and non-fat yogurts, which all have flavoring added. I've recently bought a container of plain greek yogurt, and I was surprised at how bitter and flavorless it tasted in comparison. So, my question is, how can I "manually" flavor and/or sweeten plain greek yogurt? This is for someone who doesn't cook much, so instead of saying "add banana", how would I do that? Puree it? Mash with a fork? I assume simply sticking a banana in the yogurt and calling it a day isn't the right approach. Thanks! EDIT: To provide some more detail, in my head, there's a difference between "fruit-flavored yogurt" and "yogurt with a piece of fruit in it". This question is an attempt to figure out how to achieve the former and not the latter. Regarding flavoring, I'm specifically interested in the following fruit: banana, strawberry, pineapple. I'm not sure how different the process would be to incorporate the different fruits in, but that's what I'm looking for.

To sweeten it, add your favorite sweetener: sugar, honey, agave... whatever you prefer. This is important, because sweetness will help bring out the flavor of the fruit. General advice: If you have a fruit you want in your yogurt, pick the form (chunks, pureed, mashed, juice) that you want and mix it in. The Chobani yogurts appear have a variety of these forms, always along with some sugar. If you want banana flavor, sure, mash up a banana and mix it in. Or if you want chunks of fruit, chop it up. Assuming the fruit is soft enough, for this purpose, mashing with a fork is probably a good substitute for pureeing; you'll get some small chunks and some juice. In response to the updates: if you want actually fruit-flavored yogurt, then you need juice and/or puree. If you don't have any other tools, mash it as best as you can. If you have a small food processor or blender that will work with small enough quantities (or are making big batches), blend things up and stir them in. Juice and puree will disperse quite well through the yogurt. Bananas mash easily, especially ripe ones, so just do that with a fork. Strawberries aren't as soft, but you should get enough juice to flavor with if you mash them. Pineapple is tougher. If it's juicy enough, you can probably get some juice out by mashing it; otherwise you might be better off with a food processor or blender. (If it's from a can, you can use the liquid from the can, too - that might also have sugar in it.) Depending on how thorough you are, you may want to use the juice and discard the fibrous parts that are left over.

We sliced and grated some white cabbage three days ago and left it salted and completely covered in a plastic container. It has since then turned rose-colored. The top layer was pretty dry when I opened it tonight. We had it on our journey and the weather has been pretty cold these days. The big question: is it bad now? I mean, it didn't taste differently, there was no fermentation... Anybody have a clue if it's still safe to eat? We like to travel around and want to eat some of the cabbage mixed with salad cream in the next few days... So it's only salted and cut right now and completely airtight covered in a plastic container.

Are you trying to make Sauerkraut? Either way for the pink colour you have a non-desirable bacteria growing. While most Sauerkraut has some of this, it is not always safe to eat. Time to throw it away? If you salt cabbage, you need to ensure not too much salt is used (1% to 2% max), and make sure it is packed down very firmly, so only anaerobic bacteria will grow in any numbers It doesn't need to be in a closed container, but it should have a firm fitting lid, without an air gap on the top Also, once it goes past 20°C (70°F) you run the risk of getting other undesirable bacteria and yeasts, and general food rot

I have not used "instant flour" before as it is not available in my home country, and I have never seen it on my travels I have seen a few references to it in North American cooking though. Does this product have any real advantages over normal flour other than for quick and easy sauces and gravies? If so, is there a simple way to make a substitute? I currently have no problem cooking and emulsifying flour into sauces etc.

Instant flour has the advantage of speed and ease. You can pretty much always do without - but for home cooks in a hurry, it can be an easy solution. Its used for sauces, but sometimes recommended for pastry work because of the ultra low protein content. Normally, when adding flour to a sauce you'll need to make it into a slurry or roux and mix in correctly to avoid lumps. Then you'll need to cook it for a bit to get rid of the 'flour taste'. With instant flour, its just pour and stir - no clumps, no waiting. My understanding is that this is ultra low protein flour that as been flash hydrated, cooked (possibly with steam), dehydrated, and then finely ground. This means its pretty much 'ready' to use - it won't taste 'floury' since its already been cooked and the superfine particles are supposed to not clump. (It may also contain some malted barley flour as a dough conditioner). You could try (this is just an idea) making it at home by basically repeating the above process - steam cake flour, dehydrate, grind...but I don't know why you would. If you going to do all that, just make a slurry or roux or use cake flour. This site lays out a few interesting uses. Using it for crepes because it will hydrate quicker. Using it for pastry work when you can get pastry flour and you don't want the bleachness of cake flour.

I am looking for recipes that I can put in the slow cooker before I go to work and have them done (not over cooked) when I get home. This is about 9-10 hours of cooking. Most recipes that I am looking at have cook times of 4-6 hours. Most contain chicken or beef. Is there anything wrong with keeping recipes cooking longer than 4-6 hours? Is there anything I can do to prevent this?

It depends on the particulars of the recipe and the ingredients and the slow cooker itself. You say you are using chicken or beef, but are the pieces of meat small or large? Is the meat lean or fatty? I've had problems with overcooking large pieces of lean meat, such as chicken breast, but smaller pieces and/or fattier pieces seem to hold up better to extra-long cooking. Another issue is proportion of liquid. For example, soups tend to work better in your scenario than "drier" recipes. And, of course, the slow cooker itself can make a difference. I assume you are talking about 9-10 hours on low, not on high. But low itself is not likely to be entirely consistent between cookers. For example, a large slow cooker is likely to put out more total energy than a small slow cooker, so for extra-long cooking times, you are probably better off using a small cooker with a full pot that a large cooker with a half-full pot.

I recently ventured a bit outside my usual European cooking and started making recipes from a "westernized" Japanese cookbook I was gifted. Some recipes for salads call for "vegetable oil" in the dressing. I usually make salad dressings with olive oil and didn't have canola or sunflower seed oil at the time, but I wondered: would Japanese cuisine clash with olive oil? Most dressings in the book use soy sauce and sesame oil, which are very aromatic ingredients anyway, so would olive oil be "masked" by those anyway, or do Japanese sauces/dressings nnecessarily need a more neutral oil?

Olive oil is not native to Japan and is never used in traditional Japanese cooking. (Yes, olives are now grown in Japan and olive oil is readily available, but so are burgers and pizza.) Your recipe's "vegetable oil" is almost certainly a translation of the Japanese サラダ油 sarada abura, literally "salad oil", meaning any of a number of mildly flavored, neutral oils like canola oil (probably the most common) or sunflower oil. According to the relevant JAS standard, olive oil is explicitly not a type of "salad oil". That's the theory, but in practice, for things like salads you probably can use olive oil without significantly changing the flavor. Salads are also not traditional Japanese food, so there's more room for experimentation anyway. Stick to mild olive oils though, avoid funky extra virgin and the like, and definitely do use a "salad oil" if the recipe involves frying etc.

I've got a "sanguino moro" (blood/red) orange, but it appears to be only half-bloody, as in the photo below. However all figures I've found on the internet show oranges that are purely red inside, for instance the ones on Wikipedia. Is this normal? Should I be worried about it? I'm mostly concerned whether it's a sign of the orange being "sick" or health-threatening in any sense.

While many pictures show them deep red (perhaps for the dramatic effect?), even orange flesh wih only some red tinge is normal. Even the wikipedia link you gave in the question states: The Moro is a "deep blood orange" meaning that the flesh ranges from orange-veined with ruby coloration, to vermilion, to vivid crimson, to nearly black. The color of oranges is affected by temperature: Only if there is a certain temperature difference (cool nights vs warm days) the oranges develop the deeper hues. For blood oranges the crimson flesh and reddish tinges in the skin, "normal" oranges get their typical orange skin instead of greenish or yellow. Fun fact: Even greenish oranges may be ripe, but just didn't get the cool nights. For the sake of the consumers who percieve orange = ripe, green = unripe, the skin of oranges and other citrus fruit can be "de-greened" by the "ripening gas" Ethylene (if permitted). Below a range of color variations from mostly orange to deep red:

I ran across this historic reference to making chocolate out of Chinquapin (which I assume to be a type of Chesnut) nuts. I have turned the internet upside down looking for information on this. I found one tiny reference to Chinquapin as a substitute for coco. How are Chinqupin nuts made into chocolate? Is it identical to how regular chocolate is made from cocao?

Hello JoeHobbit, I have got two possible explanations for the connection between the word Chinquapin and chocolate. First of all, the way I read your question; making chocolate out of Chinquapin, you are asking about a possible substitute; called Chinquapin, for cocoa mass, chocolate liquor, cocoa solids, and/or cocoa butter, to make a confectionary similar to chocolate. The historic source you are referring to in your question describes the primitive and colonial history of South Carolina. And as most of us know, South Carolina is located in the Southeastern United States. This point is important, as the first explanation I’m going to propose, originates from the food traditions of Native Americans in the Southeastern United States. The second explanation I will propose, takes as its starting point your suggestion that the word Chinquapin refers to some species of Chestnut. The First Alternative The first alternative is the seeds of a plant native to Southeastern United States. The seeds are brown when ripe, and have a sweet taste. The use of this plant as a source of food is ancient, and stems from the time when hunter-gatherer or forage societies were prevalent. This plant also has an Asian sibling, which similarly has been used as a source of food since ancient times, and still is a very popular treat. The flowers, seeds, young leaves, and tubers (rhizome, root) of this plant are edible. The plant, especially its seeds, was a popular and extensively used source of food among Native Americans who eat almost every part of the plant (Carqué 1923:251; Cutler 2002:55; Moerman 2010:161; Newcomb 1961:324; Saunders 1976:35). According to Charles Francis Saunders, the ripened seeds, either roasted or boiled, are palatable and nutritious (Saunders 1976:35). In the context of the question asked, only the seeds of this plant are of interest, so we’ll focus on them for the reminding part. Similarity to Cocoa What’s especially interesting from the point of view of your question, apart from the fact that the seeds are brown, is that one of the methods used to turn the seeds of this plant into an edible substance, is somewhat similar to the method used to turn the seeds of the cacao tree into cocoa mass. The method I’m referring to was used by Native Americans in Arkansas. They soaked the seeds in water before dry-roasting them, then they deshelled them and grounded them into sweet meal (Fernald & Kinsey 1996:200; Moerman 2010:161). The similarity to the preparation of cacao seeds should be obvious, but I’ll include a short description for those not familiar with the process. Cacao seeds in their natural form have an intense bitter taste, which makes the inedible. The method used to turn them into an edible substance is as follows: fermentation, drying, deshelling, and then grounding into cocoa mass. Another point that makes the seeds I’m referring to interesting, from the point of view of making a chocolate substitute, is that these seeds have a natural sweet taste, whereas cocoa has a bitter taste. In other words, to turn these seeds into a confectionary would require less sugar then one would use when making chocolate from cocoa. How to make it into Chocolate I’m not an expert on confectionaries or chocolate production. Therefore, I would like to invite someone who is, to help us explain how we should go about making chocolate from the sweet meal of these dry-roasted seeds. The plant The plant I have been referring to in this first explanation, is Nelumboa lutea; commonly known as Water-Chinquapin, American lotus, water- nut, duck acorn, nelumbo, pond nuts, wonkapin, yanquapin, and yellow nulmbo (Allen 2007:302; Davidson 2006; Hanelt 2001:141). There is a link between Water-Chinquapin and Chestnuts. Otto Carqué claims that the Water-Chinquapin frequently is referred to as water chestnut, whereas other authors claim that the name; Water-Chinquapin, originates from the taste of the seeds, which some sources say have a chestnut like taste (Carqué 1923:251; Bailey 1948:209; BTBC 1895:120). The Second Alternative The second explanation I will propose, has as mentioned above, its root in the chestnut theory put forward by JoeHobbit. There is in fact a type of chestnut that was widely hailed as a sweet and edible nut, and used as a coffee and chocolate substitute by early settlers and Native Americans (Brown & Brown 1972; Duke 2001:88; Payne et al. 1994:62). Moreover, early explorers in Carolina claimed that chocolate made from this nut was not much inferior to that made from cacao (Fernald 1996:26). Fernald also points out that there are only three plants in North America that are known to be used as chocolate substitutes. The first of these is Basswood; or Linden, of which the young fruit has a chocolate like odour and flavour when mashed. The second one is the root of Purple Avens, from which can be made a chocolate like drink. The third one is the nut we are currently discussing here (Fernald 1996:25-26). The nut in question was well known to the first English settlers in North America. As early as 1612, Captain John Smith; one of the founders of Jamestown, described this nut as the great dainty (Sargent 1891-1902:18). Charles Sprague Sargent (1891-1902:18) noted several historical references to this nut: "They have a small fruict growing in little trees, husked like a chestnut, but the fruict most like a very small acron, this they call chechinquamins, and these, with chestnutts, they boile four or five houres, of which they make both broth and bread, for their chief men, or at their greatest feasts." (Strachey, Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, ed. Major, 118.) "The Chincopin Tree bears a Nut not unlike the Hade, the Shell is softer: Of the Kernel is made Chocolate, not much inferior to that made of the Cacoa." (Thomas Ashe, Carolina or a Description of the Present State of that Country, 7.) The plant The nuts in question, are the fruits of the plant Castanea pumila, commonly known as the Allegheny chinquapin, American chinquapin, dwarf or bush chestnuts, or just Chinquapin. The plant is a shrub, or a small tree, commonly found throughout the East, South, and Southeast United States. Conclusion Based on the literature I have gone through, it seems clear that the chocolate substitute you are looking for is the nuts of the American chinquapin. Although I also find the Water-Chinquapin as an interesting alternative. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any description of how you can turn the chinquapin nuts into chocolate. The only thing I have found out about consumption is that it was sometimes used to make a chocolate tasting drink. If it ever was made confectionary out of these nuts is unknown. The only thing I can say about the subject, is that the sources I have found do not mention confectionary in connection with chinquapin nuts. This is perhaps not the answer you were looking for. Nevertheless, it should give you some pointers to where you can begin your search. The references below might reveal more clues than what I have been able to discover. References Books Allen, Gary (2007): The herbalist in the kitchen, University of Illinois Press, Urbana. Google Books - Library of Congress Bailey, Robeson (1948): The Field and stream game bag, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y. Google Books - Library of Congress Brown, Russell G. & Brown, Melvin L. (1972): Woody plants of Maryland, University of Maryland Book Center, Port City Press, Baltimore. Library of Congress BTBC (1895): Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, Volume 22, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y. Hathi Trust - Library of Congress Carqué, Otto (1923): Rational diet; an advanced treatise on the food question, Times-Mirror Press, Los Angeles, Reprinted 1971, Health Research, Pomeroy, WA. Google Books - Library of Congress Cutler, Charles L. (2002): Tracks that speak: the legacy of Native American words in North American culture, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. Google Books - Library of Congress Davidson, Alan (2006): The Oxford companion to food, Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York. Library of Congress Duke, James A. (2001): Handbook of nuts CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida. Google Books - Library of Congress Fernald, Merritt Lyndon and Kinsey, Alfred Charles (1996): Edible wild plants of eastern North America, revised by Reed C. Collins, Dover Publications, New York. Google Books - Library of Congress Hanelt, Peter (2001): Mansfeld’s encyclopedia of agricultural and horticultural crops, Editor: Peter Hanelt, Springer Verlag, Berlin & New York. Google Books - Library of Congress Moerman, Daniel E. (2010): The herbalist in the kitchen, Timber Press, Portland. Google Books - Library of Congress Newcomb, William W. (1961): The Indians of Texas, from prehistoric to modern times. With drawings by Hal M. Story., Reprinted 2002, University of Texas Press, Austin. Google Books - Library of Congress Sargent, Charles Sprague (1891-1902): The Silva of North America; a description of the trees which grow naturally in North America exclusive of Mexico - Volume 9 Houghton, Mifflin and company, Boston, New York. Hathi Trust - Library of Congress Saunders, Charles Francis (1976): Edible and useful wild plants of the United States and Canada, First printed 1934, Dover Publications, New York. Google Books - Library of Congress Payne et. al (1994): Castanea pumila (L.) Mill.: An Underused Native Nut Tree Jerry A. Payne, Gregory Miller, George P. Johnson, and Samuel D. Senter, in HortScience February 1994 29:62-131. HortScience Online Websites Chinkapin: Potential New Crop for the South Flora of North America: Nelumbo lutea Texas Beyond History: Water Chinquapin Wikipedia: Castanea pumila Wikipedia: Lotus seed Wikipedia: Nelumbo lutea Wikipedia: Nelumbo nucifera

I 'know' that freshly ground coffee is the best there is (within the quality of the beans, that is). The question is whether this is true. Freshly ground coffee smells great, but does that affect the flavor after brewing? How long do these volatile flavors or smells last before the coffee goes 'stale'. Can anybody (experts) taste the difference between freshly ground and brewed or not so freshly ground coffee? If so, what differences can be observed? Edit as per talon8's link: Freshly ground: brighter acidity, richest flavor. 9 hours: very similar to the freshly-ground coffee, although a bit mellower; less “bright” notes. 24 hours: some of the fruity flavors have faded; a bit less flavor in general. 7 days: duller, significantly less flavor overall. To the people that notice the difference in taste, do you agree with these observations?

Posted as answer by request of @BaffledCook: Here's an slightly informal blog post outlining changes in taste between varying degrees of freshness in the grind of a coffee. http://investigationsblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/do-i-really-have-to-grind-coffee-right-before-brewing-it/ The short version is that the coffee starts losing freshness as soon as it is ROASTED. The longer it sits the faster it goes stale. The more surface area it has (ie: you've ground it up; also, the finer the grind), the faster it goes stale. The more you expose it to air, the faster it goes stale. So, seal your coffee in an air tight container at room temperature. And grind as close to the time you add water to it as possible. How much of a difference detected depends on the the actual coffee been, the roast, the taster's taste buds. If you buy a bean that's been sitting on the shelf for 3 months already, you will probably notice less of a difference than a bean that was roasted last week. I buy beans that are roasted and sold within a week, and I DO notice a difference if I leave the grounds for a day or two before drinking.

I have a recipe that asks for 2 sprigs of thyme. How much dry thyme do i use as a substitution for the fresh? Or what does 2 fresh sprigs of thyme measure, a tablespoon?

Two sprigs of thyme will yield perhaps a tablespoon of leaves when stripped from the stem, depending on the size of the sprigs. Using the typical ratio of 1/3 unit dried to substitute for 1 unit of fresh herbs, you would then want about a teaspoon for dried thyme. Thyme--or herbs and sprices in general--usually does not contribute to the chemistry of a recipe, just to its flavor profile, so you can adjust the amount as you desire to match your personal preference. You also want to consider how the thyme is used in the recipe. If it is in a bouquet garni, it would eventually be removed from the sauce or stock or other food product. If the appearance is critical, you might not want the flecks of thyme in the dish, so you might want to use a spice ball (I would just accept the flecks, as I personally don't even own a spice ball).

Searching online I found a lot of videos/ articles about making fruit powders, some of them dried the fruit itself then ground it. While other juiced the fruit, then ground it. I am wondering which method will give me a better result regarding: 1) The taste; 2) The color. The fruits that I am looking forward to try out: Mango, Orange, Lime, apple, grape, tomato, pepper and other fruits and veggies. I will be using a cheap dehydrator if that is going to make a difference.

I tried drying lemon in a cheap dehydrator, and the flesh doesn't really dry well even when the skin /pith is hard and dry. The membranes of the flesh some too keep the moisture in. For citrus at least, drying the juice/pulp would be worth a try, and is what I'll do next time I have some to try it on. I suggest drying the zest as well. The pulp or juice would have to be dried on something non-porous, like baking parchment.

I would like input from anyone that uses cumin in their food. I inherited a jar of the seasoning when my mom moved out of state. Better to give it away than throw it away. Unfortunately, I have no clue what to do with it. I've had this jar for a while. And I'd like to use it before it goes bad. I was wondering what it's used for?

Any number of different cuisines have cumin as a base spice. Anything from Tex/Mex to Arabian to Indian. It's also used in plenty of Italian and Chinese dishes, just not quite as much.

I have an American recipe that calls for Cane Sugar, is this the same as Demerara or is it Light or Dark brown sugar?

If it only says "cane sugar" without any other qualifier, just use the normal white crystal sugar you have. There is a common attitude that cane sugar is supposedly superior to beet sugar (which is the prevalent sugar in Europe), although this might well be the result of successful advertising campaigns. In any case, if you use beet sugar, I am pretty sure nobody will notice the difference. If it says something more than just "cane sugar", (e.g. "light brown cane sugar") it could be Demerara or something else. But then your question is not answerable without describing the full term. See also The difference between beet sugar and cane sugar.

I am going to barbecue 1/2 chicken on a gas grill. I want to use a water mixture with cider vinegar and salt, to baste while grilling. Can you give me any tips as I do this, like time and temperature?

Maybe you need to buy a new box of baking soda or baking powder? Baking soda & baking powder can & do lose 'oomph' over time. Otherwise try chilling the dough for at least 4 hours before baking. Chilling the dough usually helps butter/shortening based cookies hold their form a tad bit better.

Is it ok to store beans, rice, grains in fridge? I've been doing this method for years....lots of rotation as I use these regularly. Is there any nutritional loss?

If you have the space there's no reason not to, and some good reasons to. For one thing, it reduces odds of various bugs infesting (or hatching out if the eggs are already present.) For things like ground whole grains (whole wheat flour) it also slows rancidity - though that should not be a problem for the whole grain. Personally, I'd need a walk in fridge (which I'd love to have anyway) to manage to have space to store dry goods in it.

I have been tasked with creating war-zone brownies: should contain visual cues that the brownie is a conflict zone and have edible props. My progress has been very slow. After a few days, I'm still at the drawing board. I've only ordered some cheap toothpick props to stick in to cultivate the war-zone atmosphere: ak 47s, flags, ect. The trouble is these are not edible and betray the spirit of the project. In other words, I will still need some edible things too. My online queries found no shortage of fairy-dust, unicorns and a slew of other goody-two-shoes edible confectionery decorations, but virtually nothing in terms of the macho-man, war-zone edibles I'm after, leading me to conclude that a store-bought solution is unlikely. That leaves me with improvising edible props. To keep things simple, and to keep this question within a reasonable scope, I'll simply limit the universe of answers to help find edible solutions to my checklist, which is short: Guns / gun-looking things (best I could do was pocky) Bullets Debris Question Given my needs and approximate aesthetic as described above, what edible solutions can I improvise to decorate my war-zone chocolate brownies? (note: answers should ideally pair well with the flavor chocolate).

First, pick a scale and more detailed theme: I'd go for battlefield scale, so a person would be an inch or two high (3-5cm). This means you can cast moulds from toys. A few soldiers might need to be made, not easy but they don't have to be great. Otherwise go for life size. Make each brownie the right proportions and shape, helped by fondant, for a rifle magazine, accompany with cast bullets. Or a cake shaped like a military helmet. I've assumed something like WW1 below, but much of it would hold for older battles (cannon would be simpler than some of what I've suggested, but horses would be too hard) Then you can choose whether to present a full scene, or just individual servings with a suitable decoration. Military Hardware Chocolate tools (and other models made of chocolate) have become quite common recently. The link is to a video, but it's adequately summarised in text. Their method starts with taking a cast of real tools. If you can buy miniature weapons you can start from those, or full size (model or used) bullets. Note that the things you cast need to be fairly flat. Making moulds of toy tanks etc. should work, though the main gun would need to be added after casting (cylinders are fairly easy. Even failed attempts can be made into military debris. Flags, maps etc. You can get printed edible rice paper cake toppers. For common national flags you can probably buy it pre-printed, anything else might be a custom order. I had a couple of pages of my thesis printed like this for a cake to celebrate. Edible flagpoles can be made using sugarwork techniques. A little white food colouring powder will make them opaque. Scenery and other fiddly things Here are a few ideas: Marzipan or fondant (or modelling chocolate, but that tends to be brown or creamy white and doesn't take colour as well as the others) for: Sandbags, perhaps making trenches (at your cut lines). Troops (lying prone perhaps, or leaning against a trench wall) Coloured grey or brick-red, hard fortifications (pillboxes) Dig out shell craters from the brownie itself Sugarwork with powder food colouring again for fences/barbed wire. Food colouring dust and lustre powder can give surface colour or a metallic sheen You can paint with concentrated food colouring. I'd start with the paste type, mixing with a bit of icing sugar and water as they'll be too strong to start with. There's also edible food paint. Chocolate suggests mud, fitting with my European theme. Desert scenery could be made from marzipan or coloured fondant, while lush greenery would need lots of coloured fondant

Should I season my Michael Symon Home enameled cast iron frying pan?

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

I have a sugar free gum recipe that I'd like to add some grittiness to so that it scrubs teeth while it's being chewed. I need help finding an ingredient to add this grit, meeting the following specs: Won't dissolve in water/saliva Ingestible (generally regarded as safe) Contains no sugars so that the product stays sugar free. Tooth-safe sugar replacements would be OK I've been looking for an ingestible replacement to the microbeads that used to be used in exfoliating cleansers, but haven't found something that would meet the specs.

I found a patent application for Chewing gum possessing tooth cleaning effect and a teeth cleaning method. Paragraph 130 addresses polishing agents: Consequently, a polishing material can be any material that does not abrade dental enamel and dentine. Typical materials include silica gels and precipitates, aluminas, phosphates, and mixtures thereof. Specific examples include dicalcium orthophosphate dihydrate, calcium pyrophosphate, Bamboo, tricalcium phosphate, hydrated alumina, beta calcium pyrophosphate, calcium carbonate, sodium polymetaphosphate, sodium hexametaphosphate, Calgen, Giltex, Quadrafos, Hagan phosphate, micromet, calcium phosphate dibasic, calcium monohydrogen phosphate, dicalcium orthophosphate secondary calcium phosphate, carbonic acid calcium salt, cacti, calcichew, calcidia, citrical, aragonite, calcite, valerite, aluminum oxide, alumina, silicon dioxide, silica, silicic anhydride, and resinous abrasive materials such as particulate condensation products of urea and formaldehyde and others such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,070,510. Mixtures of polishing agents can also be used. I don't know all those ingredients. The ones that looked interesting are food grade silica gel and bamboo (powdered form). I was surpised to see calcichew and citracal in there, I'm not familiar with their abrasiveness. Also, whole (not ground) Chia seeds.

A few days ago, I tried cooking bacon on the stove for the first time, following the directions on the package to a T. I left it in the frying pan for 3 minutes, just like it said. Unfortunately, at the end of the 3 minutes, my bacon was stuck to the pan and smoking. The only thing I can think that I did wrong according to the directions was that I used an egg timer to time the 3 minutes. Is there a "bacon timer" or something like it I should be using instead? I know it sounds crazy but what else could possibly be wrong here? My wife told me frying bacon was easy and I don't have the nerve to just ask her what I did wrong!

My guess is that your pan was super-hot when you put in the bacon, and the fat didn't have time to render out fast enough to work as lube in the pan to keep things from getting sticky and then burnt. I've never been able to cook bacon in three minutes, it usually takes closer to 15. Next time, try using the oven and baking it. Still tastes like bacon, less fat gets on the plate, no spatter on the stove, and no more little grease burns on your arms (or am i the only one to get these). Also, are you sure it was bacon, you can't just fry up bacon bits, that doesn't really work well.

I have been trying to make bread using a bread mix and my mixer. I read that the amount of water you should add can vary on the humidity at the time. The mix instructions say that I should add 300ml of water to the mix but I find that by the time I have added 250ml it is already quite wet, so I never add the full 300ml. There are no instructions on how long to knead the bread if using a mixer but a recipe for bread in my mixer book suggests around 5 minutes. I have done this but I think that maybe it needs longer. My question is: Could my bread be too dense and moist due to: Too much water? Not enough kneading? Not leaving it to prove for long enough? What is a "warm place"? How warm is warm, without killing off the yeast? As you can see, I'm quite a beginner with baking!

I make bread a couple of times a week and usually have light fluffy results. On occasion though, I end up with dense and fairly wet loaf. This usually happens if I have been lax and not made it in a while and haven't bought new flour/yeast. It's important to keep (dried active/instant) yeast in particular in a sealed container and observe best before dates, else it will not work as well as it should. Make sure your bread mix is fresh and well before the best before on the packet. It's difficult to describe the consistency of a well kneaded dough - there's really no substitute for finding someone to walk you through it so you can literally get a feel for the texture of dough that is ready. If you have any friends or family that bake their own bread to results that you are aiming for, especially if they use the same mix as you, ask them if they can show you how they do it and get your hands stuck in. For a warm place in winter I usually set my bread for proving in a bowl by a radiator in my living room.

What are the transparent, irregularly winding strands at the bottom of the following picture? They can obviously be had cold together with salad. They are very crispy. They are much firmer and crisper than any "pudding jelly" I have met. They do not seem to be made in a mould but have a more "natural" shape. I had this in Thailand and when I ask what it is, people have told me wun (jelly) and buk (which I don't know what it is). I am not sure this is correct. (The staff preparing the salad buffet called it "buk", like English "book".) What is it and how is it made? In China I had somewhat similar food but warm and not completely transparent. I was told that was jellyfish. The only transparent things I come to think of are jellyfish (cut in strips) and konnyaku. Could this maybe be jellyfish? Two more pictures: https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/320xq90/r/908/B0O23n.jpg https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/320xq90/r/537/3Sc643.jpg

I think what you are looking for is kelp noodles. They are considered a type of glass noodle. They can be eaten raw or cooked in other dishes. In their raw state they are crunchy. Please see this link for a picture and some info. Hope this helps! :)

Shredded celery is a tasty replacement for high-carb staples such as potatoes, pasta, and rice, and it has fewer calories than other foods that that is also true of, such as spaghettified courgette and celeriac. But it doesn't shred well in a spiraliser, not being as hard as celeriac or as well-behaved as courgette. And a grater will turn it almost to pulp. The best way I have found so far is to use a julienne mill, but that tends to shred not hugely more than half of the celery I put in, leaving the rest in large soggy lumps. I would like to make "celeretti" with long strands similar to "courgetti". But I would like to do it with celery sticks, not with celeriac. Whereas celeriac has about two and half times more calories per 100g than courgette, celery has about the same amount. Suggestions?

A food processor works well. Just fill the bowl lightly so that you can watch what happens as you do quick pulses. Use the metal blade. Slow short pulses. It also helps if the meat is really cold but not frozen. Yum.

I'm looking to reduce carbs, yet still have things like pancakes, waffles, and maybe even tortillas. I've tried several coconut flour pancake recipes, but they all come out tasting like fried eggs to me. I was thinking I could probably add vital wheat gluten in place of the eggs, but I'm not certain this would work. What amount of it to use per egg in the recipe?

The primary reason coconut flour recipes (especially a high hydration recipe like pancakes) end up tasting like eggs is because they are primarily eggs with very little flour. Coconut flour is extremely absorbent, which means two things: For the same amount of liquid, you need less coconut flour compared to other flours like flaxseed meal, almond flour, etc. Because you must use less of it, there is less flour "flavor" that comes through to the final product, if that makes sense. For the same amount of coconut flour compared to other flours, you need more liquid. Because coconut flour has very little protein compared to other flours, that liquid tends to be eggs, which have the necessary protein to provide structure. Take a muffin recipe for example (I've omitted all other ingredients besides flour and eggs for sake of clarity). Flaxseed meal version: ¼ cup flaxseed meal (28 g) 1 jumbo egg (63 g) Coconut flour version: 2 Tbsp coconut flour (14 g) 1 ½ jumbo eggs (95 g) Now let's look at the baker's percentages of eggs to flour in both of these recipes. In the flaxseed meal version, we see that the weight of the egg is 225% compared to the flour (if the flour were considered 100%). In the coconut flour version, the weight of the eggs are 642% compared to the flour. Something that uses 642% eggs is likely going to taste a lot like eggs. But wait, we're not done yet. Most pancakes recipes are simply flat griddle-cooked muffins, though they tend to have even more liquid than regular muffins. That likely means even more eggs, and egg ratios upwards of 800-900%. At those levels, it's more like an omelette with the coconut flour just going along for the ride. Whether you can substitute vital wheat gluten (VWG) in place of eggs is really going to depend on the rest of the recipe. Without knowing what the other ingredients are, it's hard to make suggestions. If eggs are the only ingredient providing moisture, then substituting with VWG alone won't work without also adding a source of moisture. My gut feeling is that VWG would tend to exacerbate the requirement for moisture (it's also very thirsty), and tend to make leathery pancakes. Actually, I suppose it might theoretically be possible to replace the function of an egg by combining a small amount of vital wheat gluten (say, 6 g) with a non-egg source of liquid like buttermilk (say, 45 g). I'll have to try experimenting with that and report back. Until then, this is how I approached solving the "eggyness" problem: EDIT: since posting this, I've developed a coconut-flour version of my low-carb Buttermilk Pancakes #12 recipe, which I'll include here. While I know this isn't a recipe exchange site, I think this recipe can help show how I approached solving the OP's original problem of too much "eggyness": Buttermilk Pancakes #12 (Coconut Flour + Whey Protein Isolate) 3 ½ Tbsp coconut flour (*flour*) 42.98% 24.5 g 1 Tbsp psyllium husk powder (*flour*) 14.91% 8.5 g ¼ cup, packed, unflavored whey protein isolate (*flour*) 42.11% 24.0 g ¼ tsp baking powder 2.02% 1.2 g 1/16 tsp baking soda 0.51% 0.3 g 1 Tbsp Splenda (non-nutritive sweetener) 2.96% 1.7 g 3/8 tsp Kosher salt 1.84% 1.0 g 1 jumbo egg 110.53% 63.0 g 1 cup buttermilk 429.82% 245.0 g 1 Tbsp unsalted butter 24.86% 14.2 g A couple of things I'll note. First, this recipe has around 475% hydration, so it's still quite high, but it solves the eggyness problem by using only 1 egg. To make up for the structure and liquid that the egg would normally provide, I replaced it with several ingredients which work together to function like an egg. First is the unflavored whey protein powder. When mixed with the buttermilk and cooked, it will set up similar to how an egg might set up. However, being a pure protein powder, it is an extreme "drier" (similar to egg whites), and would produce an inedible dense pancake by itself. To balance that out, I added a moisture retainer in the form of ground psyllium husk. The psyllium husk also acts like a binder and holds everything together similar to how an egg might. The end result is probably the equivalent to around 3 eggs or so without tasting like an egg. P.S. I originally posted this recipe along with 3 other low-carb flour variations over on reddit. Regarding the carbs in buttermilk (and yogurt): While the nutrition info for 1 cup (245 g) of buttermilk and 1 cup (245 g) of whole plain (unsweetened) yogurt will say around 12 g of carbs from sugars, in reality, that number is actually much lower. The reason for this is that most of the milk sugar (lactose) in buttermilk and yogurt has been converted by the bacteria culture to lactic acid. As doctors Jack Goldberg and Karen O'Mara explain in their book "The GO-Diet", you can count a cup of either of these as 4 g of net carbs rather than 12 g. (See this website for more info: http://www.lowcarbluxury.com/yogurt.html).

I'd like to start purchasing more meat from organic farming for my stir-frys, but the price level for high-tier cuts like chicken breast is almost unpayable, so I'd like to look into alternatives. I don't care about which animal the meat is from, and it doesn't need to taste perfectly good or be 100% tender. What would be some cheap options that can reasonably be used in a stir-fry?

The problem with a lot of cheap cuts is that they are not really suitable for stir frying or other short cooking methods because they are less tender, more muscular, more sinewy. Instead, cheap cuts from e.g. beef often end up in pot roast dishes, where they can soften up and become really good. That being said, a few good options for stir fry meats are, in my opinion: chicken thighs, i.e., dark chicken meat, which also usually stays juicier than breast. I can get them at my local supermarket, de-boned, in free-range quality, for quite a low price. Need to do a little cleanup usually, but nothing too bad. cutlets (schnitzel in German) from beef, veal or pork: tenderize them a bit with a meat mallet, then cut in strips across the grain ground beef: while it's not whole meat, you can cook ground beef with a little bit of oil on medium-high meat to get the water out, then brown it in it's own fat and a little oil, then finally add your veggies and other ingredients for a "fine grained" stir fry, so to speak other cuts of beef: Kenji López-Alt covers cheap stir fry cuts from beef beautifully here

I'm just wondering, what's the point of letting dough rise twice? I've seen a bunch of recipes in the form: Mix dough together and knead Let it rise Knead again Let it rise again Why do they do this? Doesn't kneading just push the air bubbles out?

Allowing dough to rise twice results in a finer gluten structure than allowing it to rise once. It results in a smaller crumb and prevents huge gaping airholes in your bread. The reason that you have to let it re-rise is that you just pushed all the air out with the kneading you did developing that gluten structure.

Since I'm British, I'm used to biscuits that are crisp, dry and crunchy all the way through, with no soft chewy centre. Most chocolate chip cookie recipes are trying to do the exact opposite. How can I bake chocolate chip cookies with a more British texture? Essentially, I want the exact opposite to the answers to this question.

The best way to achieve what you are looking for is to lower the temp and lengthen the baking time. Lowering the temp will slow the edges from getting burned while the center is allowed to continue to cook. Allow the top of the cookie to brown before removing from the oven. For soft cookies, the moment it starts to turn brown is the moment you are just a little too late for the cookies to stay soft after they've cooled. If you let the cookie brown just a touch, the cookie will harden on the cooling rack.

According to On Food and Cooking, mushrooms are about 80-90% water. It makes sense, then, that when frying the mushrooms I should aim to remove as much of that water as possible. That way, I could actually start "frying" and could begin caramelisation and the Maillard Reaction. Bon Appetit give that exact advice here: If you keep the heat low, the mushrooms will just simmer in their liquid. Medium high or high heat will get rid of all that liquid, and will give the mushrooms a nice brown color. Advice from On Food and Cooking, however, is the exact opposite: Their flavor is generally most developed and intense when they are cooked slowly with dry heat to allow enzymes some time to work before being inactivated, and to cook out some of their abundant water and concentrate the amino acids, sugars, and aromas. Which approach will work best for extracting the most flavour from mushrooms: low heat, or high heat? And why?

I am with Bon Appetit on this one, or even more extreme - I always pan-fry mushrooms on the highest heat setting. For me, the keys for nice, browned mushrooms on a domestic stove are: Use very high heat, and preheat the pan before the first batch. Don't crowd the pan, make a single layer of mushrooms. Use a proper turning/stirring regime. That mostly includes to have the patience to wait for the mushrooms to brown well on one side before flipping them to another. McGee's advice sounds intriguing, but note that he specifies with dry heat At least for me, that is incompatible with the "cooked slowly" suggestion. Whenever I try to pan fry mushrooms on medium or low heat, the water they exude stays around, instead of instantly evaporating the way it does on a hot pan. They just stew around in their own sauce, which makes them soggy, bland, rubbery, and prevents caramelization. I don't know why it works for McGee; it might be that he has some technique trick I don't know, or maybe he simply leaves mushrooms in a low oven overnight with the intention to produce a kind of undiluted stew, or even to process them further to something marmitey. But for pan-frying, I have never had success with medium or low temperatures.

Other forms of poultry are regarded as undercooked at the slightest sign of pink juices and yet it is common practice to cook duck so that it's medium rare. Is the risk of food poisoning significantly lower with duck meat than other birds? On the other hand, if we could be sure that a piece of chicken could was salmonella-free, would its texture and flavor be improved by not overcooking it? I expect the sight of pink would put most people off but if one could overcome that, could it actually taste better?

Rare duck meat is safe to eat because it does NOT contain the same risk of Salmonella as does chicken meat. Primarily because ducks, as mentioned above, have not traditionally been raised in the same squalid conditions as "factory raised" chickens - salmonella is a disease that is primarily transmitted through dirt/dirty unclean conditions. Now, on the other hand, as more and more ducks are being raised in industrial conditions, they are also becoming more likely to contain strains of Salmonella.

Two days ago, I bought a goat cheese. It looked white and rectangular, it didn't had a particular name, and because it was in plastic I couldn't smell it. I got home, opened it, and wrapped it in paper. Some time after, I took a bite, and the cheese's texture was already not as expected; not creamy, kinda hard, and without a layer around. I took a bite and it felt like licking a ram. I tried to mitigate it with bread, and left it alone. Later, I gave it another round; this time on toasted bread, hoping cooking it would get the stench out of it. It didn't work. Now, i tried to crush it and mix it with olive oil and rosemary; it didn't work. I want to know what I can do to mellow out the taste of the cheese to a level I can enjoy.

This looks, and sounds, like a feta style cheese. I know that people are accustomed to seeing a certain type of cheese as "goat cheese", but goat milk can be used in mostly every type of cheese as cow or sheep milk. You can try leaving it for several days in water in a closed box in the fridge, and see if it reduces the smell to a level you like. If necessary, change the water a few times. This is normally done with feta to reduce the salt, but will also dilute the aroma somewhat. It is not certain whether you can ever take it to a taste level which you personally enjoy, for background see I overseasoned my food, what can I do to remove the strong smell?.

My Crème Brulee did not set. Recipe: 2 cups heavy cream 6 egg yolks 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/2 cup light brown sugar Directions Heat cream in heavy saucepan just until bubbles form around edge of pan. In double boiler top, with electric mixer, beat yolks with granulated sugar until thick and light yellow. Gradually stir in cream. Place over hot, not boiling water, cook, stirring constantly, until mixture coats metal spoon, about 15 minutes. Add vanilla. Strain custard into shallow 1 quart baking dish. Refrigerate 8 hours or overnight. Before serving, carefully sift brown sugar evenly over surface. Set dish in baking pan, surrounded with ice. Run under broiler just until sugar melts slightly & caramelizes. Instead of a 1 quart dish, I used smaller serving dishes. After three days they have not set. Can I save them?

Yes, you can fix Creme Brulee that did not set! You just have to be willing to put out the effort. Despite what the entire internet seems to say, it can be done & I have done it with resounding success! Scrape off the skin that has form on top of the un-set custard in the oven. Scrape custards out of ramekins into a fine metal strainer & work the custard through with a rubber spatula to ensure you have a smooth custard base, once again. Slowly heat your custard, stirring constantly, over a double boiler, until the custard base is hot (but not cooked). Redistribute into cleaned ramekins. Fill pans with a HOT water bath to reach the height of the custard. Rebake in a 300-degree oven until the custard is set. Voila!

I would like to know how long melted chocolate can last in a freezer? My wedding is in 4.5 months and would like to start now to melt chocolate for the party favours

Okay, to explain the 'tilt head' vs. 'bowl lift': On a 'tilt head' mixer, the bowl attaches with a screw motion into the base of the mixer. The motor portion of the mixer is hinged at the back, so the front of it can be lifted up. There's a lever to lock the head from moving on the right side (near the motor, opposite the speed control lever). And if you don't engage it, you can make a real mess On a 'bowl lift' mixer, the bowl has two little tabs on each side, which attach to two arms that protrude from roughly half way up the mixer. The motor portion of the mixer is fixed to the stand and cannot move, instead, there's a lever on the right side of the base (near the arms) that will move the arms up and down so the bowl moves instead of the motor portion. As for narrow vs. wide ... I have no clue what the corresponding measurements are. And I took the images from an answer from Doug that's been deleted. If someone has pictures from the other side (showing the relevant levers), feel free to replace them.

I don't know how to cook beef, I'm really not a meat eater; however, I prepared a recipe from memory and I was in a rush and I thought I remembered reading to slice the meat along the grain...I was wrong. I see articles all over the internet about how to slice it correctly, but I don't see any articles about what to do to salvage your meat when its sliced incorrectly. Right now my meat has been marinating for about 16 hours and I have 8 more hours to go. Is there anything I can do to this meat to guarantee that it'll still be tender, even though I sliced it wrong? I am making Hunan beef by the way. Thank you in advance for your responses.

Yes, but the trick is not to have the dough in the microwave when it's on: place the dough into a wide, shallow bowl, and wrap it tightly with plastic wrap. Fill a microwave-safe bowl with water, and float a toothpick or a grain of rice in it. Microwave the water 'til it's boiling. Place the bowl with the dough above the boiling water; the water level should not touch the upper bowl. Close the microwave and wait. (the plastic wrap isn't absolutely necessary ... but it prevents you from steaming the outside of the dough, changing its moisture content) The toothpick (or similar) is necessary, as it prevents the water from heating above its boiling point and spontaneously boiling when you nudge it..

After I cut or chop something up on a cutting board I have the problem of funneling the pieces into a bowl or other container and it typically makes a mess. Normally what I try to do is scrape the pieces with a knife into the bowl or whatever, but inevitably some of the pieces miss and go flying off onto the counter or floor. Is there a reliable method of funneling food off a cutting board into a bowl, cup or other smaller container?

I have a few ways of dealing with this: When using a small cutting board, use a bowl that's wider than the (smallest) dimension of the cutting board. If you can manage to swing (not fling!) the cutting board upright above the bowl, everything will fall into the bowl. Especially if the bowl is a bit wider than the board. Don't catapult your food off the board, but try to do it reasonably quickly so the board is upright before the food has slid/fallen off. When using a large cutting board, I put the board flush with the edge of the counter. I hold a bowl next to the counter, and because I'm not relying on gravity, I'm able to very precisely push things off the board bit by bit (as others mentioned, use your hands or the back of your knife). If you have a circular bowl, you may want to create some overhang with the cutting board, so the edge is above the widest part of the bowl. You can achieve a similar effect by putting the bowl in the sink and your cutting board next to and flush with the sink. If the food is going to be cooked together anyway, favor using a big bowl for everything rather than several small bowls to put everything in separately. Less washing up, less change of missing a big bowl when dropping food into it. When cutting large chunks, you can always just use your hands to pick things up. My mother would use a spatula and her hands and she should move quite a lot of food that way. If you have a cutting board with a handle, you can actually use the handle as a mini-funnel. With a bit of dexterity, you can make a V-shape by holding the back of the knife to the edge of the cutting board, and use that similar to the folding cutting board that moscafj linked. It only really works for smaller piles of food (depends on how wide your knife is, I guess). My grandmother's trick #1: Pile the cut food, put a cup/bowl over it. Flip the board+cup. Take away the board. My grandmother's trick #2: Pile the cut food, put a cup/bowl/your hand over it. Hold the board over a bigger bowl. While holding the cup/bowl/your hand in place, pull back the cutting board, so the food slides off the board and falls into the bigger bowl. Which method I use depends on the food, amount, cut size, and what bowls I have available. I have a fair amount of plastic bowls specifically to simplify the whole cutting-and-storing part of our rather large meal preps.

I am currently in S.korea, I was checking the ingredients of pizza in a small local restaurant, because I follow halal diet, and I was surprised to find that there is animal product in the sauce. So can anyone tell what kind of animal product that is used in making tomato sauce? Thanks is advance!!

All sorts of animal products may be used in a tomato sauce, and only the restaurant itself can tell you exactly which they used. For example, one could add anchovies for salt and umami, one could add chicken/beef/pork stock for a richer flavour, one could add a splash of cream for a rounder flavour, or one could use honey instead of sugar to balance the acidity of the sauce. This list is by no means exhaustive and only the restaurant can tell you what they did. (The "authenticity" of any of these options is up for debate.)

When making pizza, often the dough bubbles up hugely, displacing toppings and generally making a mess of the pie. Are there any secrets to preventing this? Does the key lie in the dough recipe, the distribution of toppings, or something else? Or is there no real secret, other than watching and popping the bubbles when they form?

From Encyclopizza There’s a difference between bubbles formed from under-proofing versus over-proofing. Bubbles from under-proofing tend to be flat but large in diameter. If unpopped, they can blow up an entire pizza. This is the process by which pita or pocket bread is made. Bubbles from over-proofing tend to be high but smaller in diameter. They rise up like little ping-pong balls and eventually form a hole at the top, at which time they stop expanding. They almost always burn. Most pizza bubbling problems are of the under-proofed type. To resolve a bubbling problem, dough fermentation must be adjusted accordingly. To stop bubbling caused by under-proofed dough, increase the amount of fermentation. To stop bubbling caused by over-proofed dough, reduce the amount of fermentation. In addition to proper proofing, it has been found that reducing the amount of water in a dough formula can help with reducing bubbling when dealing with the under-proofed type. The reduction in moisture aids in creating the pinpoint holes in the cells walls. In addition, you want to make sure you properly knead your dough. Some people poke tiny holes in the dough to prevent overly large bubbles. As a final resort you could observe your pizza in the oven and poke bubbles as they form.

I've never seen a mold that would shape them - any tips?

No mold required! Simply heat about an inch of oil in a frying pan (less oil if you're making less shells - this is enough for about a dozen), then cook small, flat corn tortillas one at a time. Cook for about 15 seconds on each side. Once you see bubbles on the tortilla, you're all done if you like soft shells. If you like more crispy shells, go ahead and fold the tortilla in half, and continue to cook. Keep flipping it over so you don't get it too browned on either side. You can blot the tortilla with paper towels if you'd like. Similar topic - you can make your own shell for taco salad by placing a large flour (burrito-size) tortilla in an oven-safe bowl (shaped however you'd like) and putting a big ball of tinfoil inside it. You can also do the opposite - place the bowl upside-down and drape the tortilla over it. Either way, Bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes until it's lightly browned, and you're done! When you remove the tinfoil and the bowl, the tortilla will hold its own shape.

What's the best way to wash lettuce while keeping it crisp? I've been soaking the lettuce head in water and then trying to shake the water off the leaves afterwards, but it doesn't work very well.

Invest in a salad spinner. Soak, spin, store. It increases the shelf life of lettuce and other leafy greens.

I like cheese. It's delicious. Sometimes it goes on a huge sale and it's a lot cheaper than normal. I want to be able to stock up in these times. I am wondering what the best way to store cheese is of different types (the 8oz blocks of softer cheeses or hard blocks of fancier cheeses). It seems like I could freeze them, but I've had bad luck with cheeses becoming crumbly. Harder cheeses feel like you could refrigerate them forever without them going bad, assuming you either don't touch them or they stay unopened. Is there a good way to store cheese without it going bad? And how long does it stay good if you store it?

Sealed hard cheeses will indeed keep forever at 15 Celsius and below, unsealed they can go mouldy or so dry you can't cut them. Soft cheeses can't be stored past their expiration date, they are a perishable product. (As always, the "freezer stops the clock" rule applies, but you already said you don't like the resulting texture). In short, unless you have a dedicated cheese cellar, you can't do better than your fridge.

I've bought two brands of salt that are completely different in terms of 'salt' concentration(not sure if this is the correct terminology). I realized this because I needed three or four times more teaspoons of one brand in order to match the saltiness of the other when making the same recipe. Chemically speaking, what is accounted for the difference? Which one is better for cooking? If I recall correctly from the chemistry classes, salts have crystal structures embedded with water molecules; could the concentration of water molecules be the determinant factor?

Summary for the Quick Reader Only the shape and size of the grains really makes a difference. Otherwise, salt is salt. What makes a difference between salts? There are only two real differentiators between different types of salt (assuming the product is essentially just salt, and not a seasoning blend): The mineral or other impurities resulting from the method the salt is collected, or additives (such as iodine) during processing. For example sea salts will have some small proportion of other minerals, and a tiny amount of biological detritus like dead plankton in them. The size, shape, and density of the crystals or flakes. Note that almost any salt you buy will be quite dry—there will be negligible water content. Reasonable blind tests show that despite chic chef use of fancy salts, almost no one can tell the difference between salts with different impurities based just on their flavor. When in other foods, any difference from this practically vanishes. The second aspect, the nature of the salt crystals or flakes, is very salient. Large crystals dissolve more slowly, and provide crunch between the teeth, and texture you can feel with your lips and tongue. Certain types of salt, such as fleur de sel and some brands of kosher salt have large, less dense crystals or flakes with a lot of air in them. These two factors together mean that per unit of volume, there is simply less weight of salt than there would be for the same unit of volume of a salt like US style table salt with very small, uniform crystals. That is, a teaspoon or mL of fleur de sel will simply weight less than a teaspoon or mL of table salt. This means that when added to a dish by volume, it is simply less salty, because you have added less actual salt—the rest of the volume in the measuring spoon was air. Common types of culinary salt The overall size of the crystals lends different salts to different uses. I will use US terms since they are the only ones I know. From smallest to largest grain size (more or less), some common salt products are: Popcorn salt Very finely ground, so it easily sticks to popcorn and other snacks. Not a lot of feel, but even coverage. Dissolves very rapidly in the mouth, so rapid kick of saltiness. Pickling salt Quite similar to popcorn salt. Useful because it dissolves rapidly in the pickle juice. Table salt The familiar standard we are all used to. A good compromise for most purposes. Dissolves quiet well. Kosher salt Relatively large, slow dissolving crystals or flakes, engineered to stick to the outside of meat. Often used in cooking, where it performs quite similarly to rock salt. Note that different brands have significantly different densities, but it is usually on the order of about half as dense as table salt. Sea salt, rock salt, fleur de sel. Various natural salts which usually have larger, less dense crystals or flakes. Allows more perceptible texture, and a longer slower saltiness as they dissolve in the mouth. Take longer to dissolve in foods, due to the larger crystal size. Pretzel salt Really big (comparatively), sometimes opaque chunks (they are opaque due to air inclusions). Lots of texture to chew. Crunchy bursts of saltiness. Not generally used to season foods other than as a surface topping, since it doesn't dissolve quickly at all. Rock salt For salt grinders. Just for table aesthetics. Salt is salt, and it is the size of the grains after grinding that matters. What salt performs best? I cannot say that any particular salt is better to cook with. Many cooks use a small variety of salts depending on what they are doing. If you were to pick only one salt to have in the kitchen, I would recommend table salt which is not perfect for every use, but pretty good at most. For a reasonably stocked but not extravagant pantry, I would choose: Table salt for baking. Kosher salt for topping breads and stuff where a little texture is desired, and because it is easier to pick up with one's fingers--also so many recipes specify it these days that having it on hand so as to not have to figure a conversion is nice. Either of the above will serve well for general savory cooking, although you would use less table salt (by volume) than kosher salt, as indicated above. Note that by putting kosher or table salt in a spice grinder, you can grind it down to popcorn or pickling salt size, so buying this is rarely necessary unless you want a lot, as for a day of pickling. The exotic salts There are some exotic salts out there, which might have extraordinarily high mineral levels or other properties (such as pink salts from Hawaii), but the above covers most usual types of salts that are available. Just NaCl Chemically, all normal culinary salt is the same thing, discounting trace impurities: sodium chloride. There are curing salts and salt substitutes which consist of or contain other chemicals, like sodium nitrate or potassium chloride. I don't discuss these in this answer. Note that so-called "pink salt" (in at least some of its meanings) is a curing salt blended from sodium chloride and sodium nitrate. Some minimally processed salts (such as sea salt) will have a tiny percentage of other chemical salts in them. See Also Update March 2013: Serious Eat's has published an interesting article talking about the differences between regular and kosher salt: Ask the Food Lab: Do I need to use Kosher Salt

I'm following the "slit & peel" advice, but I'm not getting consistant results. Sometimes, my ripe plantain (90% black) has a peel that is impossibly hard to remove - it's dry and sticks to a very soft flesh. I end up throwing most of it away - even though the bits I mange to save are sweet and tasty. Have I stored it incorrectly? It would appear that I have no trouble peeling 50% black plantains, but as they get closer to full black (max sweetness), they tend to dry up and the peel sticks.

I will often freeze black bananas that are too soft to peel, then thaw or run warm water over them till I can remove the peel from the still frozen fruit.

When making a cherry pie is it best to use frozen cherries or canned cherry pie filling when you don't have access to fresh cherries.

The frozen ones are just like fresh, only softer and they drip their juice out - but that's OK when you are going to bake them anyway. Canned cherry pie filling is sweetened and spiced, so it is going to taste the way the canner made it, not like homemade. If I go to the trouble of baking a pie, I always go all the way and make my own filling, not using the premade stuff - then I could just go out and buy the whole pie.

I've been cooking a Dutch pie lately, and the results are not very regular. Using the exact same ingredients (I'm trying to get the best minced meat, but that's hard), sometimes the minced meat becomes nice and juicy and sometimes it gets dry and chewy. I've tried putting everything raw into the oven, but the result is a bit too compact for my taste. I try to sauté the meat for a short period of time and add some brandy to flambé. The meat should get a little crust, but not be done entirely as it'll go into the oven. With this description, do you think there's anything wrong with the technique? Should I use higher heat but leave the meat less time? Should I skip the flambé? Should I leave the meat on longer (like a bolognese)?

This is an overly broad question which may get closed by some here for that reason. For the future you may want to limit your questions to specifics goals or issues. It is often helpful to include what you have already tried. As for general resources YouTube and other sites offer a variety of videos where experts will teach and demonstrate a variety of techniques. If you search Google or YouTube for "Alton Brown" and any of a variety of topics you are likely to find a video that will be helpful. Here is an episode from Alton Brown on Shish-Ka-Bob as an example. Your profile indicates that you are in Pakistan, some of the best resources I can suggest come not directly from the internet but from television, much of which is also available via YouTube, Hulu and other internet sites. Also The Food Network website is a great resource.

What is the distinction between seeds/grains for sprouting and other edible uses and seeds/grains for sowing/planting?

Generally there is no distinction, other than that the variety for eating the sprouts may be a special one developed for taste. Having said that there is another consideration: Seeds for sowing often (not always, depends on the supplier and type of seed) are coated with anti-fungals and things to make them less attractive to pests. These seeds should not be eaten, nor should the sprouts from them!

Pi day is coming up quickly! What are the technical differences between pie, tart and quiche? Tarts are sweet. Here are my observation so far: Pies can be either sweet or savoury. Quiches must be savoury. A pie can be with and without a lid. Tarts and quiches don't have lids. (See “Pie” vs “Tart”?) Tarts can be small. Quiches and pies are cut up and shared. Both pies and tarts can contain fruits. All have a pastry bottom. All may be served hot or cold, depending on the filling. All are rounded. Please feel free to correct me. Sorry to be too technical. I'd like to avoid the embarrassment of bringing a tart or a quiche instead of a pie for Pi day parties.

Pie and tart are regional (North American versus Western European) terms for essentially the same thing. Some will argue that the pans make the difference (see below), but I don't buy that story. There are some stylistic differences that appear quite often, but nothing that makes them truly different things: Pies tend to be deeper, and have more filling Pies tend to be made in a shallow, sloped sided baking pan called a "pie pan; whereas tarts tend to be made with only a ring, or a tart mold which consists of an outer ring with a removable bottom plate. Tart pans or rings tend to have vertical sides, not sloped ones. Tarts usually only have a bottom crust If the recipe is from France or cooks of a French cooking tradition, it tends to be called a tart; if it is from North America, it tends to be called a pie Pies often feature a flakey short crust, or a crumb type crust, whereas tarts often feature a pate sucre type crust, but again this is far from universal Pies are usually served from their pan, where tarts are almost never served from their ring—this may be as close to a defining difference as there is! Both tarts and pies can be made in a variety of sizes, including appetizer or finger food sized, personally sized, or family sized. In North America, sometimes a turnover (like an empanada or pastie, but hand-sized) which is baked or fried is also sometimes called a pie, hand pie, or even fried pie. The word pie is also used in England and North America for a class of casseroles made with a top crust, such as shepherd's pie (mashed potato crust), steak and kidney pie, or chicken pot pie. There is also the gallette which is a pastry made free form without a pan or mold, by making a crust, adding filling, and folding the sides partially over towards the center. This is essentially a free form tart or pie. Quiches are a savory pie or tart whose filling is based on an egg based custard, often with cheese as well. Oh... and if it is from New York, made with a yeast raised crust, and covered with cheese and hopefully pepperoni, it is definitely a pie :-)

Just cooked some chicken breasts today. All day in the crockpot and when done the meat was horribly dry. I put chopped onions, carrots, spices, and coconut milk and 1/2 cup water and 4 chicken breasts. There was plenty of fluid there when it was done, but the cooked chicken meat was really dry. This seems to happen with beef roast as well. Is there some trick to getting meat to be tender when cooking in the crockpot?

Cooking anything really lean for a long time can result in super dry meat. Chicken breasts have little fat and little connective issue. The same goes for a lean beef roast. You can do chicken breasts in a crock pot - just not all day, more like a few hours on low. Try something with more fat like a thigh (or any dark meat) or a beef chuck (shoulder) roast and you should have more luck.

For pork, does it matter if you marinade first, then sear + braise vs sear + braise first then marinade? More details: I'm trying to cook pork chashu using pork butt. The marinade is mostly soy sauce, sake, mirin, sugar. So far, I sear it then I either: Braise for 3 hours, then marinade for 12. Or... Sous Vide in marinade for 12 hours at 170ºF (not vacuum sealed) It turns out dry :( So I am gonna try with lower temp next. But I am also curious if the marinade could be the cause (because of the curing effect), and if doing it before or after matters.

If your issue is with the meat being too tough and dry, then your best bet is to marinate beforehand. Marination is the process of soaking food in seasoning before hand to flavor meat and also to cause the marinade to break down some of the tissues in the meat. This will cause more moisture to be absorbed into the end result. This will likely solve your too dry issues rather than cure your meat and dry it out. If you "marinate" it afterwards, it will likely only flavor the meat but not have the secondary effect of making the meat more moist. The proteins in the meat have already denatured so the marinade will not be able to break down the tissues that it would in a raw product. If you want to sous vide the meat, I would suggest a lower temperature. 170 degree F is beyond the well done temperature. If you are cooking your pork sous vide at 170 degree F, then the pork will reach a internal temperature of 170 which will result in dry tough meat. Try between 150-160 degree F. Also traditionally it is marinated before hand rather than afterward.

I am not sure if I am on the right site for this, but here it goes. I have a friend, named Jason, who makes a hot sauce for a company he runs. It is very pasty (made of pepper flakes in an oil). The problem is, when Jason makes a batch, he's got to continually stir up the batch while trying to pour an equal (and evenly distributed) amount of the paste into the bottles. He wants a system that makes it easy and predictable to do this faster. Ideally, he would make the paste, put it in something that keeps it stirred so the flakes don't settle, and from there fill each bottle with the same amount of paste. What kind of contraption would do this?

This thought came to me, and is so different from my first answer I don't think it makes a good edit to that... If the product is really made of pepper flakes in an oil rather than mix a batch at all, measure out a bottle's worth of each, funnel in the flakes, pour in the oil (and seal/heat-process if that's normally done.) Might need some vibration/shaking, but two easily dispensed components mixed in the bottle might be a lot easier than getting the mixture nicely dispensed.

I've been searching about making a lunch box. From what I searched, food is usually safe for up to 2 hours after it was taken from the fridge (pasta, hardboiled egg, etc). However, if commuting takes 2 hours and the place I'm going doesn't have a fridge, which foods could I bring and make sure they're still fine to eat? Maybe I'm wrong, but I think most people leave their lunch boxes for more than 2 hours before they can get to eat them. Is it still fine to eat? I also read that eggs especially shouldn't be eaten after 2 hours, However, I've seen a lot of students, incl. me eat egg sandwiches 2 hours later. Is this a written rule that nobody follows? I was planning on making some cold pasta with cucumber, cherry tomatoes, hardboiled egg (?), carrot, pickles and some fruit on the side, but now I'm not sure whether it is safe to bring and eat after ~4-5 hours.

There are a lot of salads that will store well in an insulated bag and an ice-pack. If you store the dressing separately, you'll keep everything dry and more likely to be fresh when you eat in 3-5 hours, too. As someone else mentioned, you can easily pick up an insulated bag from Walmart, or other retailers. You can store protein for your salad, like chicken or turkey, or tofu, in a separate container, or together without dressing, as long as it's with an icepack. The ice pack can allow you to store the foods for a full day, or until the ice completely melts.

I boiled a chicken legs for over 2 hours in low temperature. The soup is yellow and with very soft chicken. It tastes very good after adding some salt. Which part of chicken is the most appropriate for doing a soup? I am looking for the lowest cost option.

The lowest-cost option is definitely bones, assuming you don't actually need or want pieces of meat in the soup. When I say bones I'm referring to the parts that are normally thrown out as waste products, especially the necks, feet, and carcasses. If you can't find them at a supermarket, talk to a butcher. They are sold for next to nothing - usually less than $1/kg, sometimes as low as $0.50/kg. That is even less than the per-unit cost of a whole chicken. Some butchers (no promises!) will even give them away for free, or at least haggle a little bit, especially if their business is small. You can roast these and simmer (not boil) them over a period of several hours to produce a very rich stock. Usually you would do this with a mirepoix and/or bouquet garni for flavour. When it's done, you strain it, and then add fresh or frozen vegetables, noodles, etc., to stretch it into a full meal or at least a hearty soup. If I really wanted meat in the soup, I'd opt for thighs, as they are inexpensive and (once butchered) you can throw the bones in with the rest. Other than pure bones, the "budget" option for chicken is almost always the whole chicken, if you can use it all. That means doing your own boning and butchering, then using the bones and trimmings for stock/soup and finding ways to use the offal (combs, hearts, livers, etc.) The offal really isn't any good in soup, so if you just want chicken soup, then stick to just bones and one inexpensive cut (over here it's thighs, but this may vary by location).

I'm making dal for the first time and have all of the ingredients below, but I can't decide whether to use white, yellow (vidalia), or red onions. I have all three in stock. Here are the other ingredients: 1/4 cup ghee 1 1/2 cups diced onions 2 tablespoons minced garlic 2 jalapeno peppers, cored, seeded and minced 1 tablespoon cumin seeds 2 cups orange lentils 2 tablespoons ginger powder 2 tablespoons Garam Masala powder 1 tablespoon salt 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 1 tablespoon sugar 1 bay leaf 3/4 cup diced tomatoes 1/2 tablespoon rice vinegar 8 cups chicken stock

My mum and I've always used red onions all our lives and everyone or a huge population in North India uses red onions. I have friends here in Australia from South India who I've seen using red onions as well when making dal. Having said that, I've also tried brown onions a few times and it doesn't make too much of a difference. And good luck with your first time making it :)

I'm thinking about buying a wheat grass juicer, but the fact that it only juices one thing gives me pause. Are they adequate at juicing vegetables such as spinach, kale and carrots?

Some juicers are better than other kinds for different things. A dedicated wheat grass juicers probably isn't going to juice spinach, carrots, and kale well. A centrifugal juice usually doesn't handle wheatgrass well and in general isn't supposed to be as efficient as some other kinds for leafy greens. A single-gear or double-gear masticating juicer works great for leafy greens, but isn't supposed to be as efficient for softer fruit. If you're looking for something that will do wheatgrass, leafy greens, and a variety of other things - consider something like the Omega 8004. Long warranty, easy to clean, and gives good quality juice. If you need to make juice for a lot of people though, it is kind of slow for large quantities.

I want to heat up rice or pasta at work so I can have a hot meal with rice and chicken or pasta and chicken. There is a microwave there - can I use that?

To reheat left over rice, microwave is the best! Put a clean damp (wet but not runny) cloth or paper towel on top of your rice in a microwave safe dish and heat it for 2 minutes. Don't put a lid on top of the dish. Left over pasta is always gross, no matter how you reheat it. So stick with microwave. If you pasta is not super saucy, same method (with a damp paper towel) would apply to pasta, otherwise, just heat with a lid on.

I already know Penzey's spices, which is good, but they don't sell sauces. Ebay won't work for me because it is too expensive to ship to Russia (judging from one bottle from one user). Amazon is also not an option as they will only ship books. In particular, I'm looking for worcestershire sauce, fish sauce, pure extracts, sesame oil.

While their selection of salts isn't the broadest ('only' eight or nine varieties) I'm a huge, huge fan of World Spice ( http://www.worldspice.com ) here in Seattle; I've never mail-ordered from them but every time I've dropped in to pick something up the staff has been immensely helpful and knowledgeable.

I am making mug cake in a pot using steaming method and I will use normal tea cup. I want to know what precautions I must take so that the cup doesn't break after baking

I think your process is pretty close. Add more water to your pan. If necessary, add more salt. At the boil, drop in your spaghetti. I like to use tongs, but a spoon or fork will work. Gently stir and press down the softening bottom part of the spaghetti. It should only take a minute or so for you to submerge all of it. Give it a stir. Turn the heat down so it doesn't boil over. Keep an eye on it. It still may want to boil over. After a few minutes give it another stir, paying attention to any sticking. Stirring occasionally during cooking will help. You don't say what condiments you are using, but it is almost always better to cook for a minute or two less than the directions on the package, and finish the cooking in a pan with the condiments. I remove the cooked spaghetti from the water with tongs, and place it in the condiment pan. Then I have the starchy pasta water to use in my condiment so I ultimately get the right consistency of the completed dish.