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I have a chocolate syrup recipe that calls for around 1 cup of sugar and 3 cups of water. I have found that the recipe turns out better if I caramelize the sugar. However, when I add the water to the caramelized sugar, the sugar immediately hardens (due to the temperature difference, I assume). I have tried boiling the water, which helps, but the problem still exists(the melting point of sugar, according to wikipedia, is 320F, so there is still a significant temperature difference). Stirring until the hardened sugar dissolves is tedious and often leaves me with small, undissolved chunks. Is there a better way to dissolve caramelized sugar without it hardening?

Walk away. No, really - it works. Once you add the water to the sugar, it will likely harden and clump up (I don't know how to stop that happening). But once it does, you can just walk away, and leave it to sit till it cools down. A lot of the sugar will just dissolve on its own, given time and enough water to dissolve into. Some mixing (occasional stirs as or after it cools) will dissolve some more. And at the last, when most of it has dissolved, you can gently start heating the pan up again, stir it around, maybe bring it to a boil for a bit, maybe add a bit more water and heat some more to get at those last undissolved chunks... It's sugar, in water. It will dissolve until the water's saturated. It takes time to dissolve on its own, and that's annoying if you want to use it right away - hence measures like heating, or stirring, or crushing the dried caramel to stir into water that way. But it really works just as well, and is less tedious, just to give it some of that time and let it dissolve away. I did this when making a caramelized burnt-sugar syrup, and it worked. Adding the water was pretty spluttery at first (the caramelization had to be stopped pretty fast), but I did notice the caramel hardening to the bottom of the pot once it had settled a bit. I gave it a few stirs, and walked away to take care of something else - and by the time I got back to it, most of the lumps were well on their way to dissolving.

I'm a newbie when it comes to any type of chili. I'm alright at eating food with chili, but don't really have any experience with using it. I bought the one I used at a local supermarket. I first tried eating a small slice to measure its hotness, but couldn't really feel much heat at all. Pleasant flavor though. Then I tried to eat a small slice with one (1) seed on it, and this time, it was pretty damn strong, I'll admit. But the "flesh" itself was not strong. The food I made (ground beef, crushed tomatoes, onion) was about ~1.5kg total and filled my pan, but when I added half the chopped habanero with ~6 seeds there was not noticeable hotness at all. I didn't notice this until I served since my tastebuds were giving me false readings from the first tasting I did. So, this lack of hotness, is it because That's how habaneros work (surprised me that I didn't get any hotness though) The type I bought was not very strong. I prepared it all wrong. Extract flavor using oil first? My supermarket sells non-fresh / low quality habaneros? Or something else?

I've experimented with growing different varieties of peppers over last decade and found by surrounding one with other types of peppers (sweet, medium or hot) and increasing or reducing water near harvest time you can completely change the heat and flavor of the peppers from that plant. If planted in a pot you can move it around your garden to get different tasting peppers from the same plant throughout the season.

From where did people get the yeast for their bread??

The first yeast was "just there" - in the environment, everywhere. People discovered very early on that leaving the dough (or just a flour-water slurry) out would lead to it getting "sour" and "bubbly", thus leavening the bread: What we today call sourdough is in fact a mixture of yeasts and bacteria (lactobacillae). The origins of bread-making are so ancient that everything said about them must be pure speculation. (M.G. Gaenzle: Encyclopedia of Food Microbiology) Early sources are the Bible (-> the explicit demand for of "unleavened" or "unsoured" bread during Passover suggesting that otherwise was the norm) and sources from Ancient Egypt. The "modern" yeast that was explicitly added was mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis historia as a foam skimmed from beer: In Gaul and Spain, where they make a drink by steeping corn in the way that has been already described - they employ the foam which thickens upon the surface as a leaven: hence it is that the bread in those countries is lighter than that made elsewhere. Source: The Natural History, Chapter 12: Wheat. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855. Sources from the 18th century describe how the yeast from the brewing process (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) was used for baking, leading to the "specialized strains" of bakers' yeast cultivated separately when the brewers switched to bottom-fermenting yeast (S. pastorianus) in the 19th century, which preferred cooler temperatures and was not as easy to harvest as the top-fermenting types. The use of separately cultivated yeast allowed to bake "milder" breads than the sourdough types with their typical acidic undertones but is restricted to certain flour types.

I want to use Matcha powder in some baking recipes (cake, macaroons, cheesecake, etc), and while I think it tastes fine many others have told me that it is too bitter. So I was wondering if anyone knew a good way to kind of keeping the unique matcha flavor but reducing the bitterness to make it more sweet or palatable for others. For example: I made a matcha cheesecake the other day. Ingredients: 24 ounces of cream cheese 8 ounces of sour cream 1 cup of granulated sugar 2 tablespoons of matcha powder 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract 3 eggs I combined the cream cheese, sour cream, and sugar until smooth and creamy. Then I added the matcha powder and vanilla extract for flavor; this also thickened the batter. Finally, I mixed in the eggs individually until just combined to make the batter smooth again. The cheesecake turned out excellently and I thought it tasted good, but all my friends and family thought it was too bitter. So I want to keep the matcha flavor while reducing the bitterness for others who are less familiar to the matcha flavor can enjoy. My thoughts to counter the bitter flavor were to either combine: mix 1/3 cup heavy cream with 2 tablespoons of matcha powder mix 4 ounces of melted white chocolate with 2 tablespoons of matcha powder add 1 tablespoon of honey with 2 tablespoons of matcha powder Or some combination of the three If anyone knows if these combinations work or has other suggestions I would be happy to hear them.

So, first things first... matcha is not supposed to be overly bitter. It has a certain bitterness to it, but good, well-prepared matcha is not overpoweringly bitter. (I'm talking about the actual tea itself, not anything made with it) I'm going to add a few precautions you should take when making anything matcha-flavored: Make sure what you're buying is good and authentic matcha, even if it is culinary grade. Good matcha is very bright green and very finely powdered. Look for shade-grown, stone-ground matcha made of tencha from Japan. It is going to be expensive, but it will keep you from disappointment. That being said, matcha doesn't like to be heated past 80-90 degrees C and needs to be quite thoroughly aerated for the flavor to spread and blossom. This is why the best-tasting products made of matcha are usually things that are not boiled or baked, like mousse, icecream, or cookies with matcha frosting. Potential solutions: Switch to a no-bake cheesecake recipe (so you don't cook your matcha) Prepare the matcha in milk (or other very fluid, easy to aerate liquid) and incorporate that as an essence / extract in your recipe - the usual proportion for drinking is 1-2g in 80mL of water so you can go from there for adjusting your liquid quantity

In older or Australian recipes, is “small cup” a specific (if not quite standardized) measurement? If so, what, approximately, is that measurement? I’m going to be making a recipe from an Australian cookbook this weekend, “Jet Age Cookbook… compiled by The Royal Australian Air Force Women’s Association”, circa 1969-1976. The recipe calls for “1 small cup boiling water”. This is a sauce that is basically a syrup, so I suspect that the water content does not need to be exact. I plan to use ½ cup. I’m also aware that in older recipes, measurements such as spoons, teaspoons, and cups (and in some countries such as Australia, dessert spoons) weren’t necessarily standardized but could refer to the various tableware the cook happened to have on hand. In those cases, however, they are referring to specific measurements even if it isn’t a standardized measurement—a spoon used for tea, a spoon used for dessert, a half of a specific cup (it makes little sense to call for half of a random cup out of the cupboard). I’m wondering if “small cup” is also a specific measurement, whether a standardized one or not. It’s difficult to do a search on merely “small cup”, but I did find a few references in older recipes (that they’re older is not necessarily indicative of anything: I added “vintage recipes” to the search in an attempt to weed out mere references to smaller drinking vessels). In some older recipes, a small cup does (to me at least) clearly refer merely to a smaller drinking vessel. These Martha’s Vineyard Hermits, for example, tell the cook “In a small cup, stir the sour cream and baking soda to mix well”. Others seem to refer to a specific measurement. In Mrs. Edison’s Old Fashioned Recipe for Chocolate Caramels I found the only reference that might be a clue as to the size of a small cup. It calls for “1 small cup of butter (size of an egg)”. If that’s the approximate size of a “small cup”, even my ½ cup estimate may be too much. But one reference is difficult to base a philosophy on. I did a search for “small cup” limited to the Internet Archive, and found the reference in several very old cookbooks. The 1809 Complete Confectioner has a recipe for Naple’s biscuits that calls for “one small cup full of orange flower water”. The 1895 Universalist Social Circle Cook Book has a recipe for coffee bread that takes “1 small cup butter”, a recipe each for crumb pie and corn oysters that take “1 small cup flour”, a recipe for graham pudding that calls for “1 teaspoonful soda dissolved in small cup milk”, and, very interestingly, a recipe for steamed roly-poly pudding that calls for “nearly a small cup milk”. If “small cup” was another way of saying a scant cup (another of my guesses), this is a very odd phrasing. The 1908 Council Cook Book has a recipe for fruit icing wafers that calls for “One small cup of sugar”, and a recipe for leb-kuchen that calls for “one small cup each of chopped nuts and citron”. The 1909 Recipes of the Woman’s Club of San Mateo has a recipe for onion cream soup that says “Put small cup of cream in a heated soup-tureen…”. The 1910 Magnolia Cook Book has a sponge cake recipe that calls for “another small cup sugar” and a fig cake that calls for “1 small cup butter”. It also has one recipe that calls for “a small ½ cup of sugar”. This might indicate that small refers to the opposite of heaping, similar to a scant cup, but that doesn’t seem to fit all of these recipes. And in my particular recipe, a scant cup of water would seem to me to be a lot (see below). While some of these references seem as if they could be just saying “a little bit of”, others do seem to use the phrase “small cup” to reference something reasonably specific. It seems unlikely, for example, that a recipe would call for “nearly a small cup milk” if they’re just calling for a random small cup from the cupboard. Am I reading that right? What is the likely range of measurements if so? I’m asking for an answer for either older recipes in general or for Australian recipes in particular because other research I did involving teaspoons, tablespoons, and cups indicated that measurements tended to be similar, though not exact, throughout the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia before standardization. While I would prefer to know what a small cup is in this particular Australian recipe, I will accept knowing what a small cup used to be within the core Anglosphere. Note: Jet Age Cookbook does not mention a year; I’m estimating the age via addresses in the advertisements in the book: two businesses used addresses of shopping malls that opened 1968 and 1969, and another business’s address diverged from the address they used in this book in 1976. The book itself seems like it ought to be older, to my American eyes. From the two-color cover, the cover font, and the interior typing, to the near-universal use of “moderate oven”, “hot oven”, or “slow oven”, it seems more like what I’d expect from the fifties. Note: I’m also aware, from looking up the definition of dessert spoons, that the modern Australian tablespoon is four teaspoons, not three. Full recipe for reference: Jam Roly Poly (Noela Pomery) 1 cup Lion S.R. Flour, 1 tablespoon butter, 1 teaspoon baking powder, salt. Mix into paste with little milk. Roll out and spread with jam or syrup. Roll up not too tight and put into pie dish and pour over sauce. Sauce: 1 small cup boiling water, ¼ cup sugar, 1 tblspn butter pour hot over roll and bake ½ hour in mod. oven. Bake 1 hour for apple roll.

TL;DR: Based on early British and cooks' resources, "a small cup" was probably equivalent to "a teacup", which is 1/4 pint, or around 142ml. However, there are a lot of caveats to that. First, I cannot tell you for certain whether "a small cup" in any particular recipe was a specific measurement. Until the very late 19th century, "a cup" was not a standard measure of anything. The standard measure that was smaller than a pint was a gill (1/4 pint). So in pre-Victorian and many Victorian cookbooks, "a cup" meant "whatever cup you happen to have around" and could thus be equivalent to anything from 75ml to 400ml. This kind of loose usage persisted well into the early 20th century, so one can never assume that "a cup" means precisely anything. Second, British and American measurements diverged in 1824, so one cannot assume that anything in one system is necessarily true of the other. Since Australia was still British possession until 1942, I'm assuming that any measurement trends in mid-20th-century Australia would follow the British standard. The caveat is that I don't know that to be true; the simple truth is that sources for early Australian weight and measure practices are scarce-to-nonexistent in my library (I live in the US). Thirdly, understand that volume measurements were not standardized between materials until the Victorian period in Britian; there, a pint of flour, a pint of milk, and a pint of beer would have all been different sizes in the mid-19th century. And in the US, they weren't standardized until the mid-20th century. We're going to assume that Australia standardized shortly after England, but that could be wrong. Fourthly, I'm assuming (like you are) that your book is relying on older measurement systems, since "a small cup" is not a standard measure for any post-metrification Australia. With that preface, I consulted British cooking references: the classic Mrs. Beeton's and Around The Clock Cooking. The first is one of the most published and updated cookbooks in the British world. For the second, a South African cookbook historian claims it was very popular across the Commonwealth in the mid-20th Century. I also consulted The Victorian Way cookbook. While none of these references mentions "a small cup", both of them distinguish between "a breakfastcup" and "a teacup". The former is 1/2 pint, and the latter is 1/4 pint. The Epicurean, and excellent early American reference for measures, also uses breakfastcups and teacups, but puts them at 1/2 pint and 1/3 pint respectively, although the American pint was smaller (the Epicurean also has "a coffeecup" which is 1/5th American pint, so if the teacup still seems too large, try that). This strongly suggests that "a small cup" is the same as "a teacup" which is 1/4 pint. However, how big was a pint? In most of Australia today, a pint is 570ml, and only a little smaller before metrification (567ml). But in South Australia, it's 425ml, similar to the American pint. Since cups are defined in relation to pints, your "small cup" could be 142ml, or it could be 106ml, depending on where the author and their teacups were from. The reference to the Edison recipe where "a small cup" is "the size of an egg", which would be about half that size, doesn't contradict this because Edison was American, and not British or Australian, and the notation "the size of an egg" suggests that the author knew they were not using a standard measure.

For personal reasons I won't purchase alcohol or have it in my home, but I'm a bit of a foodie and love Chicken and Steak Marsala. I've found decent nonalcoholic substitutes for dry and sweet white wines and burgundy (Meiers Sparkling Juice), which covers most of the recipes I've wanted to make, but I've never found a good substitute for Marsala. Are there any non-alcoholic versions that would pass in a recipe, or a decent mix of other juices or ingredients that would pass, even if I have to process it somehow?

It's very difficult to replace Marsala - it has plenty of flavors. There is a fair chance that you like a specific flavor within the Marsala, which is the important distinction you desire. The flavors of Marsala are often describes as walnut, curry plant (Helichrysum italicum - not to be confused with curry leaves), chocolate, leather, honey and dates, together with a distinct acidity and saltiness. So, if you want to recreate the flavor, you have to experiment with these flavors, instead of "doing something with grapes". The most difficult part of course is leather. I would try long-brewed green tea, which will end up with a lot of tannin - this is the bitterness and astringency you need. Together with dark chocolate, honey, salt and wine vinegar for the acidity, you could, in theory, create something similar. If you want to cheat, you can just get Marsala flavoring, f.e.: http://www.bickfordflavors.com/products/marsala-flavor

I'm having a birthday party this weekend, and therefore I need to make some food for my guests. For dessert I want to make a chocolate sphere with some kind of stuff inside, and then pour it with caramel sauce. In order to make the chocolate spheres I bought some half sphere chocolate moulds in polycarbonate. But the one I have only have room for 6 at a time, and I need to do 24. So my question is, since I want the day of the birthday to be as stress less as possible, can I make these moulds in advance, while they still remain shiny (Of course only if my tempering is done correctly) and not the white spots, and if so, how should I store them, and can I do it 3 days in advance, or is 1 day advised ? :) Basically: I need to make some tempered chocolate moulds, but I'm pretty sure I won't have the time to do all 24 the same day, since I will be having lots of other stuff to do as well. So can I do it in advance ? :) Best regards

Chocolate will stay fresh for weeks or even months if stored correctly. And yes, the spheres will stay as shiny and beautiful as you made them if you store them correctly: in a cool, dark place away from sunlight but not necessarily in the fridge - taking them out will lead to condensation on the surface at rather constant temperature and dry. So in short: A large enough foodsafe plastic container in a cool cellar or cupboard, away from (sun-)light and, if applicable, curious kids, pets or others that might feast on your stash in advance. Unless you have a high humidity environment, it's not absolutely necessary that the box be airtight. But if you want to be really sure, include some silica gel packs against excess humidity. Do not stack them like nested bowls, or you could scratch or otherwise damage the glossy surface. If you have to, place one layer in your box, cover with parchment, foil or similar, add a sheet of cardboard for stability and another layer of parchment or foil, then the next layer of spheres. Good luck and have a good party!

I looked up some recipes for pasta al'arrabiata, and one part I find a bit confusing is that most of them finish cooking the pasta in the sauce. So you cook the pasta separately until it's almost done, and then mix it with the sauce and finish cooking. I'm used to simply cooking the pasta and the sauce each for themselves, and only then mix them. I'm an inexperienced cook, and this part adds some complications where I'm wondering if they're worth it or if I should simply cook the pasta and the sauce separately as usual. I'm comfortable with cooking the pasta alone to something resembling al dente, but mixing them both just before they're finished and then cooking both together makes this more difficult. I also usually use a rather small pot for the sauce, so I'd have to adapt that as well. So, I'm wondering what the purpose of this step is, and whether I should just cook sauce and pasta entirely separately.

While Italian cuisine is defined regionally, the majority of Italian pasta dishes have one cook the pasta until almost done, then finish in the condiment. While there are exceptions that include thick, long cooked sauces like Bolognese or sugos, finishing in the condiment serves several purposes: (a) the pasta and the condiment can be combined, (b) the pasta finishes cooking, (c) it absorbs the flavor of the condiment, and (d) the condiment (sauce) thickens and emulsifies from the addition of the starchy pasta cooking water (this can be controlled by adding cooking water and/or allowing it to cook off). Yes, it is more difficult than cooking separately, and it can be a little nuanced, but it is not very technical. With a bit of practice, I think you will find this step worth it.

You probably know these kind of gadgets that help you cut vegetables quickly: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C7069MI/ref=s9_topr_hd_bw_bjuyUN_g79_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-4&pf_rd_r=CQ3ZZHAVEXQ376TYPCZK&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=2223171242&pf_rd_i=678514011 https://www.amazon.com/Onion-Chopper-Vegetable-Fruit-Salsa/dp/B01CSZQFW6/ref=sr_1_13?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1473544287&sr=1-13 I've had a couple of them over the years so I could make simple salads quickly, but I always ended up throwing them away after a few uses, for a simple reason: They're difficult to clean. You may be saving 3 minutes by using a fancy chopper rather than a knife and a cutting board, but then you're losing these 3 minutes right back because you can't put the chopper in the dishwasher, so you have to carefully clean all of its twists and turns. Some of them have parts that you can put in the dishwasher, but so far I haven't seen one where the main part, the one that has the fancy mechanism, can be put in the dishwasher. Do you happen to know a salad chopper that could be put in the dishwasher entirely for easy cleaning?

While it is difficult to prove a negative, I would not expect to find such a gadget at all. The problem is that a dishwasher dulls blades badly, and the blades in a chopper cannot generally be sharpened (you cannot fit a sharpening stone in there). So, there is no good technical solution for your use case. If you find somebody who wrote "dishwasher safe" on their chopper, go ahead and try it. Maybe their engineers found some innovative way around the problem. But it is also possible that they simply wrote that there, disregarding the problem that will occur after several washing cycles. Also, most of them will likely simply expect you to clean the chopper by hand, that would explain why you have trouble finding one rated for the dishwasher.

I have recently experimented with adding a strawberry swirl to my cheesecake. I am using homemade strawberry jam to swirl in the flavor. Everything has gone great with it other than I get a bunch of big red craters! What am I doing wrong? How do I make a strawberry swirl without having the cheesecake full of the cracks and craters? Here is a second picture after it cools a bit. Some of the crack come back together and others are still wide open. Edit: I was using this recipe and then added my own swirl: https://sugarspunrun.com/best-cheesecake-recipe/

If your goal is longer term preservation, freezing is one of the easiest methods and what I tend to do on occasions when I've bought a lot of ginger at once (for whatever reason). While you'll lose a little flavor with freezing, when used in cooking, I find it still works well and is often difficult to distinguish from fresh. And it's quite convenient: you can actually pull out a frozen piece of ginger, grate off what you need, and just put the rest back in the freezer. As a side benefit, peeling and grating frozen ginger can actually be a bit easier than doing the same to fresh ginger. If you need chunks of ginger, though, you'll need to let it defrost a bit first (or, alternatively, cut before freezing if you have a standard recipe you want to use it for).

I have some cracked wheat, some bran flakes, wheat germ, bread flour, and whole wheat flour (among other various things). How could I, using those ingredients and whatever basic principles (what I'm looking for here) apply, invent a new recipe that at least worked reasonably well? What are the principles I could use? How do I decide how much of the non-flour type grains to add so that the bread both tastes decent (I know first attempts are not going to be perfect) and doesn't collapse or explode? How do I know approximately how much water I'll need to add short of slowly adding until it feels right, or is that the only way? If there is no water estimator, how do I soak the cracked wheat without going past the moisture point of the whole bread? In other words, what are the things I need to know in order to be able to throw together things I have available that seem like they might make a good bread?

I think that first you need to decide on the type of bread you want to achieve, which basically means deciding which leavening agent and which baking method to use. Leavening. Common leavening agents are yeast, sourdough, baking powder/baking soda, unleavened bread, and eggs. For creating a new recipe, you should pick a method you are very familiar with. Eggs and unleavened are more likely to fail if the proportions are not optimal, so I'd say you shouldn't create a recipe with them from scratch, it is much safer to alter an existing known-good recipe. Also, experiments with nonsweetened dough using baking soda have taught me that while it is no problem to achieve a good leavening, the taste is often bland and dry. So I'd say to go classic with yeast or sourdough. As I don't have much experience with sourdough, I will describe the yeast case here. If you are a sourdough expert, you'll probably be able to duplicate my reasoning for sourdough. Baking. As for baking methods, the oven is the traditional one, and a bread-baking machine should be equivalent. There are types of bread made on a stovetop (with or without fat) and also some which require open fire, but oven is the classic one and probably the easiest to work with. Non-flour grains. Now we have decided on yeast and oven/machine, we want to determine the proportions. The most important variable should be, as you mentioned, the moisture content. I think that the easiest way to ensure that the non-flour solids (cracked wheat, bran) don't soak up too much moisture is to precook them. Then you can also time the baking after the doneness of the crumb and the crust, without worrying if the bran etc. are already done. So just boil them separately (or together if you are sure that their cooking time is similar), until they are al dente (completely done is probably too much, as they will be spending time in the oven). While still hot, put them through a sieve and then spread them on something (e. g. baking sheet) so they can lose the excess moisture while cooling down. This is only for dry grain products; if you decide to use something else too (e.g. sunflower seeds), it doesn't need the precooking. Water. Now your additional ingredients are rendered more or less moisture inert, you can determine the ratio of water to flour. All bread yeast recipes (and lots of other yeast dough recipes) I've come across require you to add between 35% and 65% of the flour's weight in water (35% for some hard rustic breads, but very uncommon, and 65% for soft airy breads like baguette). (Edit as derobert pointed out, this range is somewhat low, you can have bread which uses much more water than that, though probably not kneaded, and the 35% dough will require additional sources of moisture. So trying to create a recipe from scratch on the lower end of the range would be quite risky). As the additional ingredients still present some risk regarding moisture (and I cannot tell you if they tend to lose the already soaked moisture or start getting more from the dough), you should steer well away from both extremes and stay in the middle, at somewhere like 50-55%. As the whole wheat flour will need slightly less water than the white flour, I'd say go with 50% (and also because of the fat - see below). So if you use 500g flour, add 250ml water. And yes, you have to work with flour by weight. Flour by volume is way too risky for a new recipe, especially if you are mixing two different types. Fat. A good way to reduce the risk of getting bread which is too dry is to add fat to the dough. For bread, it is more typical to use a fat which is liquid at room temperature, but for some richer breads, butter is also used. For your whole-grain kind of bread, I'd tend to use either a neutral or a nut-tasting oil (canola, refined safflower, walnut, pumpkin seed, maybe even hazelnut if you want to go exotic). But too much fat would be a problem, not only because it hampers yeast leavening, but also because the whole grain stuff cannot soak it up as well as white flour. So a tablespoonful of fat per 500g flour should be enough. I wouldn't use any liquids other than water and oil the first time, it makes things more complicated. If you make it and notice that you have some leeway in moisture, you can experiment with other stuff. Yeast. Now about the yeast. Normal bread calls for between 10 and 25g fresh yeast per 500g flour. More yeast results in more leavening, with big air pockets in the crumb, but the bread dries more quickly afterwards. As your dough contains lots of inert mass beside four and liquid, my intuition go for about 20g yeast per 500g flour. (I am assuming here that your so-called "bread flour" is just a white flour and not some premade baking mix already containing a leavening agent. If it is premixed, it is best to leave it out completely and use normal white wheat flour instead. If you don't want to, you have to read the ingredients list very carefully, calculate the proportion of leavening agent, salt, and other stuff it contains, and change the ratios of the things you will be adding). Just remember to put it in a big enough pan for baking, because under perfect conditions, dough with this amount of yeast can increase its volume up to 2.5-3 times while baking. If it turns out well moistened but with too big air pockets in the crumb, either use less yeast, or add an emulgator (lecithine, egg yolk). Don't forget to use some salt, it is very important for a yeast dough. Typical dosage is one teaspoonful per 500g flour. Amount of "other" ingredients. As for the ratio of the atypical ingredients, I'd say that mixing too much of them up is too risky. There is bread made completely without flour, but not yeast bread. I think that it is best to add no more than 50% of the flour's weight in inert (=non-flour & non-liquid) ingredients, maybe even as low as 15-30% the first time and then increasing if the initial batches turn out well. Preparing the dough. For the mixing, the traditional method is time-consuming, but the least risky. Make a predough from some water warmed to 35°C, a flush tablespoonful of sugar, a tablespoonful or two of flour, and the yeast. Mix your flours, the salt and any dried herbs you are using in a bowl, make a hollow in the middle. When the predough becomes foamy, pour some of it in the hollow and mix it with enough flour to make a thick fluid, like pancake batter. Then add some more predough, mix in some more flour, etc, until the predough is used up. Then pour the oil in, stir well, and continue stirring while grabbing some more flour, until it is too thick for stirring. Then start kneading. Continue until you have a dough of the consistency you wish. Then take it out of the flour bowl and knead the wheat, flakes, etc. into it, as well as any non-dry herbs. This kneading method is much more work than dumping everything into a bowl and using a handheld mixer or the bread machine for quickly kneading it, but it ensures that if you miscalculated your amount of flour, you still end up with a good consistency. Once you have determined the actual amount needed for your recipe, you can start using the easier methods. Let the kneaded dough rise in a warm place, then re-knead it and shape it into a loaf. Don't make the loaf too thick, 5 cm should be the maximum. Crust. The only thing left to decide is how you want your crust. For a thick rustic crust, just bake it in the preheated oven. You can even spread flour on it first, then brush it off, leaving a very thin layer clinging to the dough. For a baguette type crust, you must have lots of steam in the oven while baking. Heat water in a wide pan to a rolling boil and put it on a lower rack in the oven while preheating. Leave there while the bread is baking. For a fancy crust, brush melted butter on the bread and shortly before it is done, take it out and brush egg yolk or whole egg on it. For a seed crust, put on the seeds before baking. Or if you like lye-baked goods, bring a strong baking soda solution to boil, and put your small loafs in it for about 30 seconds, then drain before baking. For a soft crust, wrap it in aluminum foil, trying to not leave any air pockets. But for your whole-grain bread, I'd go for the rustic crust or, if you use seeds inside, for the seed-covered (or cover with dry bran flakes if you don't use seeds). That's about it when baking fairly standard bread. If you want to go fancy (you could add quinoa, ricotta and agave syrup and still get a good bread), you should better start from an existing recipe and try a single new ingredient per batch.

I am told it's better to steam meat (over boiling) so that all the dangerous bacteria and parasites are killed but too many nutrients aren't lost in the process. So how does one figure out how long to steam meat? (So that it doesn't get overcooked, but is safe and nutritious to eat.) EDITED out the part that said it's for the dog, as the context is unnecessary here (as suggested by @rfusca).

There are charts for when bacteria and parasites die. You will just have to check the internal temperature of the meat with a thermometer. Once it has reached the minimal temperature which makes you feel safe, you can remove it from the heat. It doesn't matter if you are steaming or using any other method. This is a safety-oriented chart from Jeff Potter's book Cooking for Geeks. And this is a detailed protein chart from McGee's On food and cooking

Well my rule of thumb is to boil the following vegetables for that time before putting them in the ice bath: 1 minute for broccoli 3 minutes for carrots 2 minutes for beans 1 minute for flat beans 4 minutes for cauliflower Is there a master list out there for the amount of boiling before bathing that will perhaps have better timing and more vegetables on it?

The good thing about Cumberland sausages is that the meat is supposed to be coarsely chopped and in of itself has a very high meat content. However, all good sausages have this quality also! So in essence look for a sausage with a high meat content (80%+) and you can't go too far wrong.

I am interested in making the dense pungent black bread that is traditional in Russia. Recipes for black bread are varied and seem to disagree with one another. Too many of them make spongy, pumpernickel-like loaves which, while good, are not what I'm trying to make. Is Russian black bread always made with a sourdough starter? Some recipes have called for cocoa powder or coffee to darken the loaves as just rye flour will often turn out gray instead of dark dark brown. Are such additives common in traditional black bread recipes? If not how is the dark color obtained?

The primary coloring agents in a traditional black Russian loaf are molasses and dark rye flour.

I often make up a box of pasta (dried) with some sauce that I make from leftover ingredients for work the next day. The sauce is always either tomato or cream cheese based. By lunch the next day, the pasta has soaked up a good amount of the excess sauce that was previously filling the base of the box. Aside from storing the pasta and sauce in two separate boxes, is there anything I can do when cooking to avoid this happening? It does not appear to be a problem in supermarket ready meals.

If I plan on storing my pasta in the fridge with the sauce, I take the pasta out of the boiling water and immediately rinse it in cold water. I rinse until the pasta has cooled completely. Make sure to drain it well. Afterwards, I either mix a little sauce in the pasta to help keep it from sticking or just put the sauce on top. Basically I'm trying to stop the pasta from continuing to "Cook" in the sauce.

Are there any food products that can be used for cooking/baking that have high calcium as an alternative for milk - not necessarily liquid alternatives...

Little fishies with soft, edible bones (think sardines) are a good source of calcium as well as omega 3 fats.

I've heard the slogan 'Happy chooks make for happy cooks', implying that free-range eggs make for more successful cooking. Do eggs from free roaming chickens actually have a discernible difference in baking or cooking? I am not asking for a moral opinion, purely a cooking/baking question.

True free range eggs are noticeably different in terms of yolk colour (a much deeper yellow) and taste. Free range chickens are allowed to supplement their diets with naturally found grubs, inscets etc. You might find this of interest: Nutrition – Free-Range vs. Battery-Cage Eggs: Hens with Outdoor Access Produce More Nutritious Eggs

In another question, a user proposed burning briquettes on a propane grill in order to get charcoal flavor on the meat. I don't grill myself, so I don't know enough to judge whether this is a great or a terrible idea. But my mom always told me that playing with fire is dangerous :) So, are there safety problems with this approach, anything one should look out for?

Per Kenji Alt's Food Lab article on fajitas: [T]here are really two distinct cuts from the diaphragm of the steer. The outside skirt steak is from the plate section, below the rib and between the brisket and flank, and usually comes with the membrane still attached, which needs to be trimmed before cooking. Inside skirt comes from the flank—it's narrower and thinner than the outside skirt, and comes with the membrane removed. According to the Houston Press, outside skirt stake is extremely rare in the US, as much of it gets exported to Japan due to a quick in the tariffs. The outside cut is tougher, but extremely flavorful. Both are used in similar applications, if you can get them. Given that any skirt you buy is probably inside skirt, the difference is likely to be moot. In making fajitas, Kenji Alt recommends grilling it over extremely high heat, to get browning flavors on the outside, and not overcook the center. He recommends not cooking it over medium rare. A couple of pictures:

I have a cutlery set that came with 7 teaspoons. Six of them are the same, but one is different. In the following image I have three of the six on the left side of the picture and the different one on the right. Unfortunately I don't have the box the set came in, but on the back of all the cutlery it says "justinus edelstahl 18-10". I was unable to find information online about what teaspoon that is. What is the one on the right used for? Why does it have a flat tip? And why was there only one in the set? The set was for 6 people, so I have 6 spoons, 6 knifes, 6 forks, 6 little forks, 6 (normal) teaspoons, a few other things, and this strange teaspoon. It had its own special place in the set, so it is not a defect. And it doesn't look cut or chopped or smoothed. It was created like that. It definitely had its purpose.

Like dlb suggested it is a spoon for sugar. At least in Germany this type of spoon is not uncommon with sets of cuttlery. Update: For an impression of various forms of spoons check a picture search. I searched for "Zuckerlöffel" (German for sugar spoon) and found a wide range of different forms. As for the specific form I don't think there is a special reason other for having a different looking spoon that fits the design of the cutlery set. Historically sugar spoons where of a complete different design than your everyday cutlery as sugar was quite expensive and not used everyday. There are even examples of sugar pots that have small locks on them so that the servants weren't able to nick some sugar if laying the table.

I am following a recipe from the well established Italian Baker Bonci, to make my liquid sourdough starter (with some success too). In his recipe he says to refresh the starter with a 1:1:1 proportion every day for a month before it can be considered matured and ready to use. I would like to know what happens during these 31 days and why this time frame is needed (the starter seems very active after a week or two and is capable of leavening bread already). My understanding /theory is that the successive rounds of feeding, souring and re feeding help grow yeasts while acidity weeds out some of them, in fact selecting the right "genes" we want to keep in our starter. I would like to know : If my theory is correct and if it is Exactly what traits/type of yeasts are we selecting for? What are the typical proportion of a yeast types found in starter? Is there any source describing the detail of this process (I'm interested in the selection part more than in the recipe part, but I don't won't a bio textbook)

Here is a small piece of the answer. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33496265/ It is not just yeast strains but especially lactobacillus bacteria that develops and helps to change the ph of the starter. This change in ph is what helps the sourdough bread retain moisture and results in the creation of acetic and lactic acids which create the tanginess.

I'm thinking about buying a French press for making coffee. I'm just not sure what is the lifetime of the filter? Can I use it for years or do I have to get a new filter from time to time?

Not all French Presses are created equal; some have the obnoxious habit of getting creases at the edge of the filter, which lead to grounds coming up the sides. Other filters deteriorate more quickly. My experience is that a fine metal mesh filter tends to last longer than nylon filters, and that I am always going to be unlucky when it comes to the French Press. Inevitably, things fall apart. Replacing the filter will be needed at some point, though good care can help prevent it from going bad. There are really two ways to look at the investment of the French Press: You're buying a cheap one with the expectation that it'll last only 6 months to a year. You spend a little more, and perhaps have to replace a part once in a while. My suggestion is to buy a mid-priced Bodum press; replacement parts are available and relatively affordable, and their products are decent enough to be used in restaurants around the world. Either way, you're spending less than on a decent drip brewer, and getting a better cup of coffee for your efforts.

I have already noted this question about making root beer, but I wanted to explore further, so I hope you'll indulge me. I want to make a home made root beer that is similar in taste to the A&W brand. Obviously, I want to make something different, or I could just buy A&W... but that's my starting point. If I can approximate that, then I can experiment from there. There are some points that I am stuck on: Most online recipes suggest either using "root beer extract", or "sasparilla", or "sassafrass extract". I understand sasparilla and sassafras are different roots, but is "root beer extract" another way description for either of the roots, or is it a catch all term for pre-mixed root beer flavouring? Is there a noticeable flavour difference between sassafras and sasparilla? Should I really try and hunt down sassafras without the carcinogenic ingredient, or is it not worth the effort? Where can I find a reliable supplier of the key ingredients that ships internationally? A lot of suppliers have either unclear web sites or their stock seems to come and go. Recommendations would be really welcome! What I like about A&W over, say, Barq's, is that it seems thicker. The foam holds longer and the mouth feel is creamier. What would be the ingredient or method that would steer a root beer brew towards being thicker? Thanks for any tips!

I have long kept a copy of an old usenet posting on my web server that addressed the flavorings issue. There are alternatives to sassafras, and sarsaparilla plus dried burdock may get you most of the way there, and I always like the drink called sarsaparilla a little more than most mass market root beers. Birch beer has its charms, too. I think you can experiment with a few different barks and roots. Wintergreen and some of the other ingredients are used for other reasons; I'm pretty sure they were present in earlier forms of root beer as well. See http://www.jagaimo.com/bistro/rootbeerfaq.html for the old discussion I kept a copy of (circa 1995). The same posting covered some suppliers but they may or may not be relevant 16 years after I collected that posting.

I often buy green tea with different flavors like lemon, strawberry, and jasmine from the market. I want to add these flavors at home. Can you recommend how I might do this?

The easiest way, is to cool (fridge) it down and remove the hardened fat that should have floated to the top. You could try doing while the soup is hot by using a shallow spoon and spoon the liquid fat from the top, or use absorbant paper to absorb the fat. In both cases, it will never remove all of the fat, especially if the soup contains meat or is not a clear soup (like a consommé)

I just made caramel sauce using 1 1/2 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cup butter, and 1/2 cup milk. I was supposed to use 1/4 cup milk but i poured in extra by accident so I doubled the other ingredients. But my caramel sauce came out grainy and buttery, it also crystallizes as soon as it cools. What can I do to fix it?

My recipe called for a cup of sugar 6 tbsp. of butter and a half cup of heavy cream. My sugar turned into a mess while heating on medium heat. It never melted but seized into little chunks. Then I began adding my butter and it got worse. I took it all out of the pot and added a splash of water to the pot first and let it heat up and put the chunky little bits back in the pot and let it boil for a few minutes. I added half of the heavy cream and it began to smooth out. It was still somewhat grainy so I poured it through a sieve. Voila. It worked fine. I have smooth caramel sauce. Just plain water did the trick.

I made kimchi more than a year and a half ago. Because I live in Europe, I know and I often eat sauerkraut (fermented sour cabbage). When I made the kimchi, I committed a big mistake. I added too much salt. The final result was inevitably salty. So I went the same way as when sauerkraut was prepared. I dropped the kimchi into a fermenting barrel, I stamped it with stone and hermetically sealed. I let it 20-25 C° warm place until the fermentation started (it started very slow because too much salt). Then I took it to a cooler place and I let it for 5-6 months. After then I tried to taste it. The kimchi doesn’t rotten, just turned like sauerkraut, but it was too salt yet. Due to the extremely high salt content fermentation was very difficult. Then I put it the refrigerator and I let it more 4 moths. After I made another portion of kimchi but I was very cautious with the salt. For the previous one, it was a mistake to put cabbage with very large amounts of salt, pushing it with weight and leaving for a night. The cabbage made a lot of juice and swallowed the salt almost completely. I could not wash the salt out of it. And I added extra salt to it. (Don't know why.) Next time I used less of salt and I left it for less time in the salt. The old salty Kimchi was still in the fridge, so I found out to mix the old with the new one. After that, I put it back in the barrel and waited for a few days until fermentation started. Salinity just started to ease but didn’t disappear completely. Afterwards, I was put back into the refrigerator again for 5 months. After 5 months, the salinity almost disappeared. But the whole thing was very sour. the taste has changed, it tastes like very spicy sauerkraut. (But it didn’t rotten.) Has anyone been here like this? Added too much salt and fermented the kimchi too matured? What should I do with it? Can I use it for some of dishes which requies matured kimchi? (I struggled a lot with it, so I do not want to throw it away.)

I have quite a bit of experience making homemade kimchee. There are two distinct stages, for me, where salt is used. The first is the initial salting/wilting phase. The cabbage leaves are heavily salted and left to sit, some recipes call for pressing under weight, others do not. Then there is the "stuffing" that flavors the kimchee - chives, scallion, garlic, salted shrimps (if you use them), hot pepper powder, etc, along with..... some salt. Before the cabbage is stuffed with or mixed with the "stuffing," there is another step. The cabbage gets pressed to get excess water out, then thoroughly rinsed to get all that salt off, and drained of excess water. THEN the stuffing goes in and the kimchee is allowed to ferment/pickle. I suspect that you aren't rinsing away the original salt you use to draw the moisture out from the cabbage and jump-start the pickling process. So.... now you have well-aged kimchee that is a lot more sour than the normal "eating" kimchee. What to do? One fantastic dish that requires over-soured kimchee is the kimchee stew, aka Kimchee Chigae. Traditional recipes call are made with kimchee, scallion, sesame oil, tofu, and pork belly. Since Koreans have a particular passion for Spam, my mom always made it for us with spam instead of pork belly. If you're worried about the salt level, you can give it a little bit of a rinse, since the hot and the sour is what's needed for the stew. If the kimchee is particularly salty, then you would not want to substitute Spam for unsmoked, uncured pork belly. You might also want to hold off adding soy sauce until the end (recipes usually call for a little bit) and reduce the amount or use a low-sodium variety (never, ever thought I'd recommend that), after tasting it. I always eat the stew mixed with a lot of rice, so a little bit strong or salty is not a major issue. Just Google "kimchee chigae recipe." Also, I'd strongly advise cooking outdoors or at least in a well-ventilated kitchen. Simmering a kimchee stew is obviously going to come with a certain amount of odor.

Do you have to adjust oven temperature and cooking time when cooking in glass loaf pans? My Ricotta Pound cake never seemed to get done in the middle (took another 10 minutes beyond recommended cooking time) and got overly brown on the outside. Then it broke in half when trying to get it out of the pan. Thanks.

Yes, but not the time so much. The dish itself is not a good conductor of heat, like cast iron or other metal for example. And it allows radiant heat directly on what is being cooked. One thing I do is that I have a pizza stone in my oven that helps keep the oven temperature stable. Another thing that is very common is that oven temperatures are notoriously inaccurate. So, it pays to use an oven thermometer in order to get accurate oven temps (instead of going by the oven temperature dial). Here's another tip. Place a cookie sheet on the rack below the glass/pyrex baking dish. This keeps the radiant heat from the lower element from directly heating the dish. I must say though, that the #1 thing that has improved my baking is the oven thermometer. The oven dial in my kitchen is off from 15 to 25 degrees. This is a tip I got from "On Food and Cooking" by Harold McGee. The second thing is the pizza stone that helps regulate the temperature. A standard oven cycles on and off to maintain the temperature. All that being said, I'd use metal cookware for cake. But I do get good results when I wind up using glassware by controlling the oven temps. Update I made brownies last night and noticed in Marion Cunningham's (The Fannie Farmer Cookbook) recipe this advice, "If you're using a Pyrex dish, place it on a baking sheet during baking". What that does is to act as a buffer between the heating elements and the dish.

I am interested in the caffeine content in various coffees. Will day-old coffee have much less caffeine? I am refering to espresso drinks such as the Starbucks Americano or the drip coffees also available there. Does refrigeration make much difference to the half-life? What about re-heating? How about instant? I have seen charts comparing caffeine content in various fresh coffees but not instant. What is the typical caffeine content of instant coffee? What is the half-life of caffeine in instant coffee on the shelf as a room temperature solid?

According to Sigma-Aldrich, pure caffeine has a shelf-life of four years at room temperature, or many years at 2-8°C. A caffeine solution can be stable for months even at moderately high temperatures. So, essentially, your day old coffee has still all its caffeine in it, although probably it does not taste that well, but that's caffeine unrelated. As a side note, after drinking coffee/tea/Coke/etc. it will take ~1-2 hours for blood caffeine levels to peak. Caffeine half-life in the body is ~3-6 hours.

My household really likes things like turkey and ham sandwiches for lunch. One thing I've searched around for is a 'manual' meat slicer. I'm thinking of something like a miter box like one might find for woodworking. Basically it would be a device that holds a serrated knife in a frame, and allows the meat to slide along in increments in order to achieve consistent slices. Does anyone know if there is something similar for slicing meat? (I know that electric meat slicers are available; but do I need yet another electric appliance?) Personally, I don't have any problems with just using a knife. But others in the household lack slicing proficiency. Addendum For those who have suggested that I get knives...I have great knives and have no problems in using them; and like I said above, it's for others in the household who are not proficient. Anyway, it looks like there is nothing like what I visualized even on google searches. I added a picture of a woodworking miterbox in case people don't know what that is. Of course a knife would replace the saw and you probably wouldn't have the angle cuts; and it would be tailored so that you could slide the food item along incrementally for even slices.

I'm going with an electric slicer. The item I envisioned does not exist. Update: The housemates are happy now. They're computer geeks and love gadgets. They can now slice up their own ham and turkey to their hearts' content. The slicer takes up space, but will pay for itself in a few months. We were getting deli slices for $8 - $10 per pound. Now I can get frozen turkey breast for ~ $3 - $4 per pound, roast, slice, and freeze the excess for future weeks. ;~)

I've been experimenting with "uncommon" vegetables (in the US) and have recently fallen in love with long beans, which I buy at my local Korean market. Because of their length, I'm able to grill them, and the taste is delicious. I put them perpendicular to the grates (I have a typical three-burner propane grill), and the problem comes when I try to flip/rotate them so they char evenly on all sides. Turning them (by kind of pushing them with the tongs or spatula so they roll) isn't very effective unless I try to do them one or two at a time, and I cook in large batches. Flipping them by picking up with the tongs is also somewhat ineffective; because of their inconsistent length I often have some ends fall under the grate and burn as I try to lay them back onto the grate. I can correct this individually, but I'm looking for efficiency. I realize I could probably pick up both ends at the same time with two sets of tongs, but I don't know that I have the dexterity needed to flip from that point. Also, this is only very effective if the beans are similar lengths, otherwise they'd fall from one end and I'd have the same problem as before. One recipe I found suggested tying them in small bunches with cooking twine or scallions. This makes a lot of sense to me, but I have neither on hand right now. So, my questions: If I were to use cooking twine, what would keep it from burning? Should I soak it? With direct flame like this I would expect the twine to catch on fire easily, is that an incorrect assumption? What makes cooking twine special? Is it just because it frays less than normal twine, or is there something that makes it food-safe? Could I use, for example, braided nylon rope, or another type of string or rope that I might have in my garage? Why or why not?

NO--I cannot emphasize this enough--you CANNOT use nylon rope (or any other random rope you have laying around, unless you can be guaranteed that it is 100% cotton or hemp)! It will melt all over your food. Cooking twine is generally, if memory serves, pure cotton and thus safe (though perhaps not tasty) to eat. Tying your beans in bundles would be counterproductive; only the outer beans would cook. Unless you did some sort of weaving thing like a bamboo mat, at which point I would have to question whether the extra work actually saved you any time. The mistake that most people make when grilling long skinny things is, as you say, to roll them. Or to flip them as though they were bigger objects. The trick is to turn them from their ends, so it's just a matter of grabbing the end--straight on, parallel to the bean--with your tongs, twist your wrist, move on to the next one.

Everytime I try to make chicken fried rice like I get at the take out place it never tastes like it does when they make it. We all know the basic ingredients Rice (1 day old), Chicken, Green Onions, Sprouts, Eggs, Soy Sauce, MSG (optional) I have a wok and I cook it just like them, I've heard all sorts of things as to what the "missing" or "secret" ingredient is. Some say it's a different type of soy sauce (not the standard La Choy) that they use. I've been searching for definitive answers for this for a long time. It seems no one knows or anyone who's worked in a chinese place doesn't wish to share the knowledge. I went as far as adding MSG thinking that was what made the take-out place's Fried Rice taste different. MSG helps (sold as Accent Flavor Enhancer in your spice aisle) but that's not it.

For me it isn't fried rice without toasted sesame oil, and the fried rice I have had in restaurants always tastes to me as if it contains toasted sesame oil. Peas are pretty required too. BTW, La Choy is synthetic soy sauce, it was at the very bottom of the America's Test Kitchen taste testing of soy sauce (sorry, paywalled), the only soy sauce to get a "not recommended" rating. Use anything but that. From that taste test: "In summary, could this be any worse?" I actually fry the rice in toasted sesame oil, but I have reason to believe that some toasted sesame oils will burn at that temperature. To experiment with that is on my list of things to do. So I can only say that this sesame oil has a high enough smoke point to fry rice. For whatever reason, the label does not say that this sesame oil is toasted. It is, and it's a very high quality oil. Amazon Link EDIT: In other answers, Pepi mentions ginger, and Teresa mentions oyster sauce. I second both of those. I always use ginger and garlic and either oyster sauce or hoisin sauce. Also, Cindy mentions salt, the eggs do need salt. I actually use all of these in my rice (which looks like this when it is done, this is mine): I'm assuming already cooked meat, peas sitting in a colander defrosting, water run over them enough to rinse off any clinging ice, and day-old rice. I start by making slightly underdone scrambled eggs, seasoned just like I season eggs that I'm eating for breakfast. I set the eggs aside on a plate and wipe out the skillet (or flat bottomed wok) with a paper towel, and let it get pretty hot. I don't attempt to use extreme heat, the same level of heat I'd use to sear chicken works fine for me. I add a good pour of the sesame oil, perhaps 1.5 tablespoons for two big servings (like the amount of fried rice in the picture above), let it heat for 30 seconds or so, then add ginger and garlic and stir. Then I add whatever veggies I'm using in the order of how long I want them to cook (all veggies except peas). When the veggies are just about fully cooked to to the level I want them in the rice, I add the rice, breaking it up and stirring in the veggies. I lightly press everything into the bottom of the pan, then I don"t touch it for a few minutes. I want the rice to get a bit of a brown crust along the bottom and to get mostly heated through before stirring again. This adds color and flavor, and helps keep the rice from sticking. This step seems to bridge the flavor gap between the the rice made with the super-high-heat that Asian restaurants can achieve, and the more moderate heat of a typical home stove. In the meantime I mix my sauce. The proportions are up to taste, I usually go about half and half soy sauce and hoisin or oyster sauce. Less soy if is is dark, more if it is light or reduced sodium. I'll usually make just shy of a cup of sauce, knowing I won't use it all. When the rice has formed a crust, I stir in the meat. Then the sauce, a bit at a time, tasting as I go. Finally I stir in the peas and eggs. I garnish with some chopped cilantro on the plate. Voila. You mention Five Spice. That would be interesting, and possibly very good, but it is not a flavor that I associate with fried rice.

I wonder why Chinese mitten crabs are a delicacy in Chinese food, while most people in Europe and US don't eat them even though there are many of them now in these two places? For example, in Germany, mitten crabs are only caught for exporting to China. In US, why are blue crabs popular and valued while Chinese mitten crabs are not? On the food safety side, are the two species both safe to eat? Thanks!

As a Chinese, who have had many mitten crabs in my life, I think I can provide 2 insights: In Chinese culinary culture, it's not only meat that's the most appreciated, but rather the taste, texture and the freshness especially with seafood. Mitten crabs during the autumn season contains a lot of eggs under the shell. The flavour of the eggs are what's appreciated as well. Mitten crabs (not sure in the US) are safe to be consumed from food safety perspective as long as it's being cooked properly like any other seafood.

I am a person that likes spaghetti that is stuck together, al dente, so it's nice and chewy. I haven't been able to find any advice on how to cook spaghetti so that it sticks together, but rather the contrary, as it seems most people would prefer spaghetti that is separated. So, logically, I did exactly the opposite of what these sources recommended so that it would stick together (not stirring, not letting it boil so much that it separates itself), which seems to work well, but not as much as I would like it to. Some of it sticks together, but not all of it. Is there a way I could make spaghetti such that all of it would stick together ALL the time? Like just one big clump?

Easy....cook per the package instruction, with no oil in water. Drain well through a strainer. Allow to sit in the strainer or in a bowl long enough to allow the moisture to flash off. Your pasta will be sticky and clumpy. To further enhance the effect, refrigerate. Saucing or oil will separate the strands, If you like to eat it that way, there are recipes for using leftover spaghetti, and cooking it with egg, that results in a sort of pasta fritatta. You might enjoy that as well.

I'm looking at the side of my "breakfast - O - meal" box at a recipe for 12 muffins. The kind you would use with a standard muffin tin. What kind of variation should can I use to make the recipe work in a larger 6 large muffin tin? I tried this once before with corn bread muffins and they never seemed to be able to bake all the way though. Ideally I would like to try this with some other cupcake / muffin recipes I have too. So what's the secret? Less liquid? More Egg? My underused large muffin tin needs to know.

This table comes from the front of the muffin section in Bread, by Beth Hensperger: Muffin size Baking time Yield Mini/gem (1 5/8") 10-15 minutes 18-20 Regular (2 3/4") 20-25 minutes 9-10 Oversized (3 1/4") 25-30 minutes 6-7 Muffin cake (8-9") 55-65 minutes 1 The baking times are for 375-400°F; most recipes will fall around that range. Note that the yields don't necessarily match up to typical pan sizes; for example, if you take a recipe meant for 12 regular muffins, you'll probably have more batter than you need for a pan of 6 oversized muffins. Perhaps this is your problem - you could be overfilling. If even after scaling the volumes appropriately, you still have problems, you could try reducing the temperature by 25°F and increasing the baking time. ("Muffin cake" refers to baking in an 8-9" pan of some sort - the author says that you can get away with it for any muffin recipe, but I've never tried it!)

I'm in the middle of trying to tackle making baguettes without all the fancy equipment of a typical bakery. I'm getting closer and closer to a perfect texture on the inside and out, but I have yet to tackle why they always seem to come out bland. Is it the water I'm using or do these things just need a little butter? Sample recipe: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/baguettes-recipe Expert recipe: http://www.chewswise.com/chews/baguette-traditional-fromartz-recipe.html

You do not need the fancy equipment of a typical bakery. It helps, but it is not necessary. What will likely take your bread over the top is some sort of pre-ferment, which I see you've already found in your recipes, but I have a slightly different suggestion than those recipes provide. The simplest way to do this is to make a small amount (perhaps 1/3) of your dough one night in advance. Let it rise once, then retard further proofing in your refrigerator overnight. Before making your full dough, remove it from the fridge and let it warm to room temperature for about an hour. Cut into several pieces. Add to your dough when you add the liquid. The pre-ferment gives your dough something similar to what a bakery with a 9 hour full cycle for making a baguette would have. Your dough should go through an additional proofing plus rising time after shaped. When shaping your dough, be careful to degas it as little as possible. For a good texture, bake your baguettes on a pizza stone with plenty of corn meal underneath. Pre-heat a thick, ovensafe metal pan with your stone. When you put the bread in, put a cup of boiling water in that pan to add steam. This will help create a great crusty bread crust and oven spring in your dough. I have found that the same baguettes with oven spring taste 100% better than those without - something about that key activity during the first minutes of baking really brings the tastes over the top. More information on amazing bread can be found in The Bread Baker's Apprentice or, for whole grains, Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads.

I have always allowed my red wines to breathe for at least 45 minutes prior to pouring. Often I don't drink the whole bottle, but instead cork what is left. When I go to serve on a different day, does breathing the wine provide the same benefit? Is it recommended each time I uncork the same bottle?

I don't think so. (I also assume that you are talking about dry red wines.) You let the wine breathe to allow 1) things that need to evaporate to leave, 2) some air to be dissolved in wine. Which is why wine tastes so different before and after you allow it to breathe. However, when you put the cork back and open the bottle again in a day or two, or even a week, the processes that ages wine for months and years does not have enough time to «unbreathe» the liquid (consume all oxygen and replenish the substances that evaporate during breathing). Which is why I pour immediately from a previously opened bottle and let the wine stay in wineglass for a few minutes.

I was cooking rice, beans and sausage for my friend and I but since we are living very low budget my only utensils were plastic forks, knives, and spoons (really cheap ones that come in packs of like 48). I was picking up the sausage in pieces and putting them in a bowl when I noticed the fork had begun to melt. Luckily these are not for until tomorrow but I was wondering if it is safe to eat them since the fork did not seem to leave any plastic behind and was only in the sausage for about 30 seconds. I just don't want to feed my friend contaminated sausage. Thanks.

My experience is that adzuki have a very different taste and texture than red beans and I wouldn't substitute one for the other. If you've really gotten into mochi, it will be worth the effort to find adzuki - I've bought them in natural food stores, Whole Foods and on line And I buy in bulk so I never run out. Beans seem to last forever.

I'm baking something that I might end up sending on a very long trip. For this I would want to make ganache, but it may be in transit for as long as 10 days so I don't want to use cream. If I do make these, the ganache would between sandwich cookies. What could I use for that, stable at varying temperatures, for as long as 10 days, possibly even longer?

You could make a ganache type filling if you used water, cocoa powder,chocolate chips, butter, and icing sugar. Adding all but the chocolate chips in a saucepan will create a chocolate like sauce. Thick and with body. Once everything has melted,and blended smoothly together, you add the chocolate chips with the heat off. let the residual heat melt them the rest of the way. Once cooled it can be sandwiched between cookies, cake topping, cupcake "frosting", eclair icing. It is a shelf stable "ganache" like filling I like to use. In terms of quantity, I use 1 Lb. butter, 4 cups icing sugar, 1 cup water, 1 cup cocoa powder, 2 cups chocolate chips. This is a very rough recipe as I do most of my pastry making/baking by feel. *Note...The more chips you add, the thicker the end results.

I am new to baking bread, and I have a recipe that calls for 2 1/4 cups total liquid to 2 3/4 cup whole wheat flour and 2 3/4 cup unbleached flour. I have made this several times, and can never mix in all of the flour, which will cause the bread to fall when baking. I do not have a mixer or bread machine, and this recipe is not for a bread machine. Help! Thank you!

Having 2 stones/steels in the oven is totally workable, the top one would cook a bit faster than the bottom one but that's not a dealbreaker. 2 steels will take longer to get up to temperature than one, whether an hour is enough in your oven is not something I could say. I would suggest you get an infrared thermometer so you can take measurements and know for sure, they are cheap and take the guesswork out of it.

Is there a way to determine how much salt per quantity of food is required? For example if I use 1kg of ingredients then I need at most one tbsp of salt. Any such metrics? The quantity of salt to be added to food is a major problem for many people just learning to cook.

There's a reason so many recipes say "salt to taste": there's no single answer. Most of the time, we use close to 0.5% salt by weight (so 1kg food has 5g or 1 teaspoon of salt), but "close to" leaves plenty of wiggle room about what exactly is best. Different people have different tastes. What's perfectly salted for one person may be oversalted or undersalted for another. Different dishes need different ratios too. Some things are supposed to taste a bit salty, while some just need a hint to amplify other flavors. Some ingredients need more salt to balance them than others. Sure, you can get approximate starting points, e.g. bread might be around 1% salt by weight, cookie dough might be about 0.5%, soups and stews might be something like 0.5% (with tons of variation - that's a couple random recipes). So very roughly, 1kg of food often comes with 5 grams of salt (1 teaspoon) with exceptions ranging up to 10 grams (2 teaspoons). But your best bet is always going to be to find a good recipe for the specific dish you're making, and possibly adjust it if you know your preferences lean one way or another. Failing that, when cooking something improvised or new, or using one of the many recipes that just says "salt to taste", letting you do what suits you, trust the instincts that you've developed for your own tastes. If you're cooking for others, with possibly varying tastes, it gets trickier. For things where salt can be added after the fact, you can use less salt and let everyone individually salt to taste. For things you can't mix after cooking, you pretty much have to compromise somewhere in the middle and hope it works for everyone. Beyond that, if you can't decide what the right amount of salt is, don't worry about it. There's surely a range that works for you, so if two different amounts both taste good, there you are. And if you find yourself disagreeing with someone about what amount of salt results in the best flavor, stop. You probably just have different tastes from the person you're arguing with.

Is there a food that resembles the texture and consistency of ice cream but is not cold/does not have to be kept cold?

Much of the distinctive experience of ice cream comes from its temperature, so be prepared for disappointment. However, a set custard like in a crème brûlée or panna cotta is creamy and holds its shape, and can be flavoured as ice cream can be. Alternatively, a mousse has air bubbles incorporated into the mixture so is much lighter, although less creamy. Because it cannot rely on ice crystals for solidity, it will necessarily be richer than ice cream so you'd want a smaller quantity (I'm imagining an ice cream cone filled with custard and it is way more than I would want to consume).

In the case that there isn't an oven; is it possible to make cake on electric cooktop by using basic kitchenware?

Yes, but it's a pain (and depends how much kitchenware you have). When I was in the Peace Corps, I learned how to construct an "oven". You'll need two pots of the same diameter that are big enough to enclose your cake pan, hopefully with about at least an inch of room on all sides. (Just one pot is needed if it's tall enough.) Put one pot on the burner, then put something in it to elevate the cake pan at least 1/2 inch above the bottom of the pot. Three small rocks work well, as will three stacks of coins. Put the cake pan on top of this stand, then put the last pot upside-down on top as a lid. (If your first pot is tall enough, you would only need a regular lid, not a second pot.) It's best to set this up on the burner as moving it can be risky. Use a low setting for the burner and expect a longer baking time. This method can work on a stove or on a charcoal grill (with very low heat in the case of grill). It will work better if you can add heat from the top as well (e.g. put a few coals on top). It's finicky though and takes some practice. Bread is a pretty safe thing to try, though I would guess that a box-cake would do okay. Microwave cake is an easier option, just google "microwave cake" and you'll find lots of recipes.

Soy meat, flax seeds and peas are probably the best known such sources. Are there other cheap sources of protein?

Chick peas/Garbanzo beans, lentils, and other legumes (black beans, Great Northern beans), and nuts (nuts are a bit pricier). Cheap and vegan/vegetarian friendly!

I make very thin crepes using batter made of 500 grams of flour, 3 eggs and 250 ml of milk. They turn out thin, soft and pliable. My wife on the other hand remembers fondly her mothers crepes, which used to be a bit thicker and had a bit of crunch. How should I modify my recipe or technique to make them more like that? I'm guessing using more fat (I try to use as little as possible) could help, but then I run into problems spreading the batter over the pan surface.

A crisp crepe is less about the recipe and more about the cooking technique. You simply need to leave it a little longer before flipping it, allowing the edges to crisp. A little more oil than usual will help, but it should still only be a thin coating wiped on with a paper towel. To make a thicker crepe, simply use less liquid. You can also look at using alternative flours like buckwheat which alter the texture.

My wife and I love making things from scratch, but we're just starting out without a lot of equipment. We don't have a cast iron pan, especially because my wife has a neuromuscular disorder, so she can't lift really heavy pans. Can you make good homemade flour tortillas in a regular stainless steel saucepan? What should we watch out for?

Sure, I made hundreds of tortillas on a couple of old revere-ware saucepans before springing the big bucks ($7.50-$12.00) on a couple genuine mexican sheet-steel (not stainless) tortilla griddles. The griddles work better, because you can do 2 at a time per griddle, and flipping is easier because there are no sidewalls to get in the way of your metal spatula. Incidentally, I prefer the wooden tortilla presses to the metal ones; less persnickety. A couple square sheets of clear flexible window plastic make a good, and nearly permanent replacement for thatendless stream of saran-wrap or waxed paper.

Purely a theoretical question I'm afraid - I haven't experimented (yet). If you take popped popcorn and grind it to a flour, would the result be similar to cornmeal? One difference, I imagine, is that it is in principle ready to eat, as opposed to regular cornmeal which still needs to be cooked to denature the proteins. Are there things you could achieve with this "popcorn meal" that don't work with regular cornmeal? For example, what would you get if you used this for making polenta? Could you make a "raw polenta" that doesn't require much cooking?

Interesting question. so I pulled out a hot air popper (you wouldn't want to use a oil popper to try this.) and put some popped dry corn into a food process and let-her-rip. I wouldn't call the results "masa" but it might be usable for an ingredient in a breading. I call your attention to the book "POPCORN". It has a nice collection of recipes which include popcorn, and in no case does the author suggest reducing popcorn to corn meal, so I suspect the answer is, "Yes, ground popcorn meal would differ from ground corn."

We now live in the mountains at 8,500’ (2600 m) and I cannot make matza balls for chicken soup up here. They explode into dust in boiling water. Water boils at 190 F (88 °C) here, that's probably a factor. I’ve even tried freezing the balls before boiling , but only about half came out right. What else can I do?

Some recipes for mazta have chemical leavening. Chemical leaveners operate very differently at varied elevations. See here for conversion and tips. This is a very common problem. Judging by the problem, it seems like you were previously closer to sea level and this recipe worked fine. Am I right? Basically [no pun intended], baking powder is a mixture of desiccant, baking soda, and cream of tartar. When water mixes to make a solution, the chemical reaction ensues releasing CO2 gas as a byproduct of soda bicarbonate and cream of tartar (an acid). Higher elevation causes this reaction to carry out much faster, and this is how your balls are blowing apart. The solution [no pun intended] is to make a stronger dough with more flour, more kneading, and more powder so that the rise is slower, more controlled, and better tolerated by the ball. Heat also causes the reaction to take place faster. It may be annoying, but try pulling the soup off to cool for a bit, then bring it slowly back up to temperature.

Taste aside, is it safe for drinking? Whiskey that was left inside a stainless steel flask?

Whiskey is quite high in alcohol, on the order of 40% by volume, and is not hospitable to pathogens growing. The flask is intended to hold liqueur, and so is made from or lined with a food safe material, such as food grade stainless steel (assuming you have one from a reputable manufacturer). So yes, it should be fine. Remember: when it was distilled, the whiskey was probably held at different stages for long periods in a stainless steel vat.

I was boiling soapy water (to help clean it) in my Martha Stewart stock pot, and I forgot about it. It seems pretty burnt. Can it be cleaned and salvaged, or is it headed for trash? Thanks for your input.

I would never leave it unseasoned. Carbon steel rusts. If you just cook with sufficient oil, and let it cool down with the oil still inside, and then clean gently (preferably without any soap), the inner bottom will indeed session itself with time, as tfd mentioned. But the rest of the pan will be exposed to the air and will create a layer of rust. If you don't use it frequently enough, or if you prepare acidic food in it before it has gathered some seasoning (and most vegetables are acidic), you will get rust on the bottom too, before seasoning has had time to build up on its own. Ingesting rust is not an immediate health risk, but it is better to avoid it. Our bodies weren't designed for it, and you might end up with too much iron in your diet. It is also porous, so the pan would be hard to clean well. And it looks really shabby to have a rusty pan in the kitchen. And if this is your first "normal" pan after years of non stick, you might be amazed at the amount of oil needed to prevent food from sticking. It looks terrifying to our modern "fat is bad" eyes. And you still have to be careful, despite the oil. With time, you will learn to cook the right way, but having it seasoned first certainly helps. There is no law requiring you to season, but to me, the above reasons are enough to always season.

I have purchased microwave safe cake baking pan but as soon as I use the pan in the microwave the spark is coming. What may be the problem ? In which mode should I keep that?

If it is sparking then it is not microwave safe and you should get your money back. No change of mode is going to help, it is the material and construction of the pan which is the problem.

I love massaman, green curry, red curry, yellow curry, etc. Can any of these be made quickly at home with only 4-5 ingredients?

I think @roux is generally right, curries are like mexican moles, they have lots of spices and are fairly complex. But I do think there are some short-cuts. The most important components in a curry are sweetness, creaminess, heat, citrus, salt, and depth. I don't know if by simple you also mean you want to use common ingredients, or just 'few' ingredients. This is what I would use if I only had common ingredients: Coconut milk, cayenne pepper, onion/garlic/ginger, lemon/lime juice, salt/pepper, sugar/honey. I'd also add basil/cilantro/jalapeno for green, tumeric/cumin for yellow, ketchup/tomato paste/chili powder for red. If you have them, the traditional ingredients you're trying to replicate are lemongrass, lime-leaf, red or green chiles, and fish sauce (or soy sauce).

What are food additives that help popsicles/shaved ice melt slower? Simple popsicle ingredients: water, sugar, flavoring I used agar agar and gelatin before, but don’t want to: The texture is not the same, it feels like icy flakes, not like fluffy snow.

This is a very vexing case, I douobt that anybody can tell from looking at your cake. So you will have to troubleshoot it yourself by first trying to bake a successful cake by following a traditional recipe and using best practices, and then, if that cake works well, start changing it back towards your preferred recipe one-by-one and seeing what makes the difference. For the test cake, you should bake a very standard recipe that has the best chances of rising well - I'd say that's a pound cake. So, use following factors: 200 g eggs (4 whole eggs), 200 g white all purpose flour, 200 g sugar, 200 g cow-milk butter, 10 g baking powder (not baking soda!). Do not make any replacements here, and don't add other ingredients (flavors, etc.) make sure the ingredients are all room temperature, and have gotten there slowly. Just leave them overnight, no "Oh I forgot the butter in the fridge, I'll give it 15 seconds in the microwave". use the creaming method. Cream the butter and the sugar together until you see an obvious change in color and volume (can take 10+ minutes), then add the eggs and beat well, only then add the flour and baking powder. Use freshly bought baking powder sift the flour bake in a 175 C oven for as long as it takes to pass the skewer test. If that works, as I said above, you will have to slowly change the ingredients back to your preferred recipe and see when the change happens. If it isn't work even for that, there is some hidden factor that is very difficult to guess at. You will probably have to ask a good baker to bake together with you and either show you how they bake, or have them watch how you bake, and see if that person can spot the problem. You can also have them bake in your kitchen and with your oven, to see if they get the same trouble - but if you measured your oven's temperature, there isn't much that can be going wrong there.

I recently made coloured swirled bread, in which different colours of dough (in my case a coloured and an uncoloured piece) were rolled together and baked in the same loaf to give an interesting novelty appearance. When I put it into the oven the poke test on the uncoloured dough rose up slowly, but the uncoloured sprang back a bit more quickly. The finished bread rose acceptably, but not spectacularly, and the coloured dough was somewhat denser than the uncoloured. The whole thing was a sourdough loaf if that makes any difference. When should the colouring for the coloured piece have been added? after kneading? This is what I did. With liquid colouring, which seemed to colour individual strands of gluten, this required considerable kneading to distribute evenly. This amounted to nearly twice the amount of kneading as the uncoloured piece. Since the undivided full batch of dough had completed kneading (it was at windowpane) when I divided them, I might possibly have overkneaded the coloured piece. The uncoloured piece would also have undergone more fermentation than the coloured piece due to how long the extra kneading took (even in the fridge). before kneading?* This would have allowed the colouring to be more easily mixed in, but would also have required each colour of dough to be separately kneaded to windowpane strength as well as separately proofed. Not only would I need to be sure each piece was equivalently kneaded but also equivalently proofed. As with the other option this would leave one piece fermenting longer than the other. EDIT: *before kneading referring to the point when the flour and water and other ingredients have been barely incorporated together and the result is still just a "shaggy mess" as some describe it. I assume that "kneading" is a specific stage of breadmaking for the purpose of gluten development, not merely an act of kneading at any point in the process.

I baked 3 or 4 loaves of challah last January over a month period to try and perfect a rainbow loaf of bread for a dinner party (Wizard of Oz and over the rainbow themed). Loaf 1 I mixed ingrediants and worked the dough and then prior to kneading I used cake decorating gelled (Wilton brand) coloring. This required substantial kneading to fully integrate the coloring and probably caused the loaf to not rise properly from over work or inconsistent gluten formation. Subsequent loaves required making the water and yeast mixture and dripping in 5-35 drops of liquid food coloring into measured amounts of liquid by weight. Each liquid amount depending on rainbow location varied and the apparent strength of the drops did too. The liquid mixture then had a consistent bright color and adding in the sugar, salt and flour proved to make for a consistent color shading throughout. The minimal quantity of the alcohol/glycol based coloring didn't appear to affect the texture and the need to over work the dough was lessened since the color was consistent from the beginning. Using up to 7 different colors in 1 large loaf (both rainbow shaped in a large baked bowl and in a braided roll) did require a bit more effort than making 1 batch of dough and separating briefly after kneading to add color. However the effort was well worth it!

Is there a common ingredient, or cooking technique, that gives sauces such as Teriyaki, General Tsos, Orange Chicken; their thick/syrupy texture? We sometimes make dishes in a crock pot; we have a recipe for a teriyaki chicken, and another for a honey sesame chicken, but the liquid we end up with is always very watery/liquidy. What can we do to thicken the sauce; so that it gets the texture that I am used to on Asian chicken? Note that this does not necessarily only apply to Asian cuisine; sauces such as A-1 steak sauce or even BBQ sauce seem similar; though it's quite possible that their thickness is due to completely different reasons.

Thickening agents To thicken, you would mix in an agent designed to do so. There are many options, but here are some that are directly applicable to Asian cooking: Corn starch - Works well in small quantities, though I find it has a tendency to turn sauces into jello in the fridge. If you have too much liquid in your sauce and use a relatively large amount of cornstarch, you can have unusual effects when trying to reheat the leftovers. Specifically, cornstarch solutions can suffer from shear thickening making it hard to return a gelatinized corn starch sauce to liquid form. However, this is 'authentic' in the sense that it is probably what is in your neighborhood General Tso's purveyor's recipe. Xanthan gum - Works well in very small quantities; it doesn't take much to thicken a sauce. I don't think there is anything very Asian about this ingredient, it's more of an 'industrial' food additive. Still, it is flavorless so won't impact the taste of your sauce. Xanthan gum has the opposite effect of cornstarch, namely shear thinning. I don't find the shear thinning to be an undesirable trait. Potato or Tapioca starch - These are my personal preference. These starches act more like flour, in my opinion, and since I have more of a cooking background with gravies and roux, I like these options. To a certain extend, you will have the same shear thickining effect that you will get from corn starch, but I've never gelatinized a sauce with either of these ingredients, so that drives my personal preference. The above listed don't need more than a few minutes at heat to achieve their thickening effect. Be sure to stir in completely and be patient; if you add thickening agents in haste you can easily end up with too much (again, I find this to be a big problem with cornstarch). Also, for all of them, be sure you don't have too much liquid in the first place; a sea of sticky sauce can often be overpowering. There are plenty of other thickening agents in common use (flour/roux, egg whites, pectin, gelatin). You could give any of these a try, but I wouldn't consider them "Asian" in any way, so I don't feel like these answer the question.

I ran out of organic brown rice today, and I happened to have some lentils, but when I went to rinse them with the spray nozzle on my sink (set to warm) they started to create a bubbly foam. The lentils were in a bowl not a strainer. I'm not used to this, so I'm wondering if it's natural. But I'm also recalling how when I made homemade potato chips and when I rinsed thin slices of potatoes I got a similar foaminess. What's causing this foam? Is it natural with lentils?

Yes, it's perfectly natural. Dust being rinsed off the outer surface of the lentils makes the water more viscous and helps to trap air in the form of small bubbles. In a strainer, the dust would be rinsed away, so you don't see the same effect; a spray nozzle especially adds a lot of turbulence, which causes more air to get trapped. You can get similar results when rinsing many processed, dried grains or pulses. The effect from potatoes is similar, but it's caused by proteins in the potato being rinsed out into the soaking water. Neither has anything to do with the presence of arsenic, so don't worry.

After watching "The Wing and I" in Good Eats and being the one that always ordered Buffalo wings (I no longer live in the US), I decide to give it a try. The recipe for the sauce is: butter garlic hot sauce I wonder what exactly is hot sauce. Alton Brown said there are dozens of hot sauces. I tried to use plain tabasco but that doesn't work. Can I make my own?

The original Buffalo Wings are made with Frank's RedHot Sauce. The original recipe is simply equal parts melted butter and hot sauce. However, you truly can use just about whatever hot sauce you want in even greater ratios if you want more kick. There are also some distributors that specialize in spicy wing sauces. I recommend Defcon 2 if you are adventurous and enjoy a very nice kick of heat.

Sometimes I want to avoid oil and oil-related food. How do I remove oil from soup?

The easiest way, is to cool (fridge) it down and remove the hardened fat that should have floated to the top. You could try doing while the soup is hot by using a shallow spoon and spoon the liquid fat from the top, or use absorbant paper to absorb the fat. In both cases, it will never remove all of the fat, especially if the soup contains meat or is not a clear soup (like a consommé)

Whenever I go to a BBQ and sausages are cooking, the chef will always prick the sausages while they are cooking. I have no idea what this does, I assume it's to get the fat out, however I recently read that you should never prick sausages as it results in them being dry inside? So my question is, should I prick sausages with a fork or knife during cooking?

I'd say no never prick the sausages if you can help it. the fat inside helps to keep them succulent and moist, and if you have a problem with the splitting and are pricking them to release the pressure as was stated by @foodrules, then I'd say you are cooking them over too high a heat. Lower the heat, or if you are BBQing move them further from the source, then you will get to have unsplit, moist sausages. When pan frying I prefer a very low heat for a long time. This allows a delicious sticky crust to develop on the outside of the sausages. mmm... If they were meant to be pricked why would they not come pre pricked?

I've been making dosa lately and was wondering if you could make the batter using only soaked urad dal (black lentils)? Or, do you have to include soaked rice, as well? I am diabetic, so I am trying to make dosa batter more "diabetic-friendly," because I love them so much! If not, what's the smallest amount of rice you can use? Currently, I use 3 cups rice and 1 cup urad dal. I am using brown basmati rice, because it's a little better, carb-wise. Thanks in advance for answers!

Yes, you can make dosa without rice! I am very health-conscious and one day tried making dosa without rice and it worked very well. Moreover, this doesn't even require fermentation. Just soak urad dal for couple of hours and grind it into a smooth paste. Make the batter as thin as regular dosa batter and enjoy :)

Most fruit pies call for two crusts, whereas most custardy pies do not. However, my apple pies with one crust or two or substantially the same. Is the number of crusts simply traditional?

Yes, it is mainly tradition, appearance, and how you like the ratio of crust to fruit in your pie. You can make any pie open faced, with a full top, or any type of lattice top. The other thing to consider is that a top crust provides some heat insulation to the fruit, so if you don't want the fruit to caramelize as much, it will help with that.

I'm purely curious and google has failed me.

Based on the photo from Jolenealaska, I did some analysis: Note: I'm no mathematician, so let me know if my math is terrible, and how to fix it! I took the image and opened it in ImageJ, then as the image is lighter on the left than the right I adjusted the window level to even out the background. I then converted to binary (true black and white, not greyscale) and "watershed" the image to separate out the clusters of granules. Following this, I used the "analyze particles" command with the parameters "size = 20 - infinity" to exclude any small crumbs that might skew our data. This resulted in a total of 429 particles counted, and gave me some more data about the area of each in pixels (as there's no scale on the image). Fortunately this tied in nicely with my hand counting of the particles. So: If there are 20 *10^9 cells/gram, then there are 1 *10^9 per 0.05g 1*10^9/429 = 2331002 cells/granule on average. For those interested, is this at all correct?: The statistics as calculated in R using the summary() command on the values generated in ImageJ are (in pixels): Area Min. : 20.00 1st Qu.: 26.00 Median : 31.00 Mean : 36.27 3rd Qu.: 43.00 Max. :130.00 The sum of areas is 15558 pixels and the distribution looks like this: : This tells us that there are a couple of outliers in the data, that are probably skewing the mean area a bit (and also that the watershedding didn't work fully). The data doesn't look quite like I would expect - I was expecting more of a bell-shaped curve, less heavily skewed to the left, but I did cut off data less than 20 pixels, so the left-side of the curve is a bit selection-biased anyway. According to this answer a 7 g packet of yeast is 2.25 teaspoons, and a US teaspoon is 4.92892 ml (AKA cubic cm/cc, also thanks google for knowing the volume) - so 4.92892 ml * 2.25 ml = 11.09007 ml (or cubic cm). so for 1 g we have 11.09007/7 = 1.5843 cc/g 1.5843 cc * 0.05 g = 0.0792 cc 0.0792/429 granules = 0.000185 cc/granule According to this paper (paywall?) the average volume of a baker's yeast growing at 30 C is 309 um^3 and there are 10^12 um^3 in a cc. I can't find the volume of a freeze-dried yeast cell, but I expect it'll be a bit smaller. 0.000185 cc = 184615400 um^3 So 184615400 / 309 = 597461 cells/granule. The good news about this is that we are in the right ball-park for numbers with the top estimate being in the low millions and this being in the mid 100,000s. There will be some error in this estimate too, as not all the volume measured here is taken up by cells - some of it is air, so this number is possibly a bit high.

I remember seeing somewhere that one could use daikon in place of pasta, but I can't seem to find how one would prepare it. Have you done this? If so, what should I be aware of when I try it out?

The advantage of using stainless steel is the fond (tasty brown bits) that form in the pan. It both flavors whatever you are sauteing and is often used as the base for a pan sauce.

When placing food items in my sous vide bath, often the pouches will rest on the bottom of the bath or against the sides of the container. I've also seen dedicated sous vide magnets used for attaching items to the side of the bath that prevent the bags from floating. This will press the bag even closer to the sides of the bath. I would assume that even worse case, conduction through the food itself would bring the item up to temperature. On that basis I generally leave food in at least 30-60 minutes over time to compensate for this when a bag is very close to the side or resting on the bottom. Is it essential then that any food cooked sous vide is totally surrounded by water? If so, by how much? 1mm? 1cm? 10cm?

I wouldn't say that it is "because of the Maillard reaction", or at least not in the strict either-or sense you seem to assume in the question. There are thousands of reactions which happen while cooking, and only some dozens of them belong to the Maillard family. And certainly a larger variety of reactions happens when you have more ingredients in the pot - simply because you have a larger variety of inputs to react with each other. Thousands of years of observation have found out that this results in tastier meals with less effort. First, it increases the complexity of the taste you create. Second, you want to brown the other ingredients too, not just the meat. Given the choices of 1) brown the meat and not the others, 2) brown each ingredient separately, and 3) brown all ingredients in the same pan at the same time, you will find out that the third option is the easiest one logistically, and gives you a somewhat better taste than the second, and a hugely better one than the first. This is why cooks do it that way. The kernel of truth in your assumption is that indeed, Maillard reactions happen there. They happen both when you cook the meat alone, and when you cook it with other ingredients. It is even plausible that different reactions happen when you cook it alone than with other stuff (e.g. meat protein reacts with meat sugars, vs. meat protein reacts with onion sugars). But that's only a tiny fraction of what happens when you cook the food. So I would not declare it "the reason". The reason is the total combination of all these not-yet-researched reactions that happen when you brown meat and vegetables and seasonings together, which chefs like to think of as the art and magic of cooking.

I bought a bag of brown rice from a store. After having opened and used for a while, I found there were moths flying in the house. At the same time, I found worms in the rice. I suspect that the moths are from the worms(rice-size, white body, dark head). I guess but am not sure if they are called rice moths. There were also many little sand-like things in the rice bag, are they the eggs of the rice moths? Will eating this infested rice pose a health risk?

I haven't had that happen since the 1980's. Sound like the Flour Moth. Freezing Rice or Flour for 3-4 days will kill the eggs. I usually freeze local flour/rice for a few days so that I don't have to deal with any potential problem. If you have pantry moths, or other moths that have hatched, you may need to take extra measures to get rid of them. Once they start flying, they can get into any opened grain-food.

I know how to fix a split mayonnaise made with olive or vegetable oil - that's not a problem. I have made Kenji Lopez-Alt's recipe for animal fat mayonnaise (bacon fat, for putting on a burger). It emulsified beautifully, chilled wonderfully.. and then as soon as you put it on a burger it gets too warm and splits faster than a gymnast at the Olympics. The recipe I used: 2 egg yolks 1.5tbsp Dijon 1tbsp white wine vinegar salt and pepper 600mL bacon fat 800mL vegetable oil Two egg yolks should be more than enough to emulsify this, and indeed were -- I had to add tons of vegetable oil just to get the right consistency. But as soon as the bacon mayonnaise gets above fridge temp, it splits immediately. It re-emulsified with agitation, but that's a bit tough to do when one is trying to serve a burger in a restaurant. Help?

I think the problem is actually not the heating, but the refrigeration! Consider: bacon fat solidifies easily and thickly, and does so even at room temperature. When you throw it in the fridge, the micro-droplets of bacon fat will turn to solids and clump together. These solid droplets are frozen in place when solid, but when you thaw it, they melt and reveal how wrecked your emulsion is. Now, you could add additional emulsifying agents (lecithin, extra yolks) but that's not really going to solve the problem of refrigeration. The solution is to break up the bacon fat as it melts, and re-establish the emulsion before it can break. To do this, you have to whisk constantly as you gently heat the mayonnaise, generally in a warm water bath. How to execute this in a restaurant setting: Prep a big batch of bacon-mayo and throw it in the fridge. Just before service, warm some water in a pot and throw a cup of the mayo in a small bain marie or metal 6th hotel pan. Immerse the bain/pan in the pot, and whisk it as it melts. Hold the mayonnaise for service in water warm enough to melt bacon fat, and DISCARD THE WARM MAYONNAISE EVERY TWO HOURS AND THAW A FRESH BATCH. Make sure no cooks get lazy about that -- it's a food safety problem. Ideally, you should be using pasteurized eggs to reduce the risk of salmonella. Basically, you're treating your mayonnaise like a Hollandaise or Bearnaise. I've found that the thawing trick works fairly well for home hollandaise (which most people say shouldn't refrigerate), and which does the same thing if heated fast. It should apply to easily-broken mayonnaise too.

I got distracted while assembling the dry ingredients for a cookie recipe and added the sugars, which were supposed to be creamed with the butter first. Fortunately, the sugar was added last and I was able to salvage enough to cream it. What does creaming the butter and sugar actually do? Had it been on the bottom of the bowl under the flour etc, could I have just beat everything together? The recipe is simple and just calls for creaming and then adding egg, and after that, dry ingredients. It's nothing fancy.

Creaming puts the air bubbles into the mixture. The baking powder only helps enlarge the bubbles, not make them. In cookies the creaming plays another essential role, which is to help dissolve the sugar. To cream the butter keep it cool and do it for a few minutes (at 65°F, harder in the summer). It has recently been discovered that cookie dough is different from cake batters. Sugar is part of the structure of the cookie and not just a sweetener, tenderizer, and browning agent. It forms the base upon which the fats and the starch granules of the flour are embedded. The sugar needs to dissolve for the matrix to form. If you beat the whole thing, it will be harder to get bubbles in and you may end up overworking the dough. The cookies will end up flat and tough.

At my home and relative's homes I've never seen anyone using a pressure cooker to boil water (to make it safe for drinking). They just take an ordinary steel vessel, fill it with tap water, add some salt and jeera seeds, cover the vessel top partially with a lid and let the water reach boiling point. I just realized that it might be far more efficient to boil water in a pressure cooker until the first whistle sounds, since it's a closed environment that would lose less energy to the environment. It may boil the water faster (less cooking gas consumption), boil it to a higher temperature (greater variety of bacteria dead) and perhaps lose less water to evaporation. Is this practical or are there downsides to this technique because of which people dont use it?

Overall it will make little if any difference. The pressure cooker won't reach 100°C; noticeably quicker than a normal pan with a close fitting lid, and the pressure cooker is made of thicker metal which will take more energy to heat. Simply closing the lid would help quite a bit. If you want to hold it at a boil the sealed lid of a pressure cooker would help, except you can't really monitor the temperature. Waiting until it whistles will mean it has been boiling for long enough to produce enough pressure for a whistle, but that's still a measure of pressure, not time. There are a few species killed by the temperatures achieved in a pressure cooker, and not at 100°C; but my understanding is that these aren't the pathogens that tend to contaminate drinking water. As you're flavouring the water as well, you may have to adapt the quantities of seeds if you use a pressure cooker, because the flavour will extract faster.

I would like to buy a few meals from a restaurant that would then later be reheated. What would be the best way to safely transport pasta for 10+ hours while maintaining freshness and quality? I was going to ask the restaurant to make it and freeze it. Then we were hoping a cold bag (as purchased at Sam's Club) would keep it sufficiently cold. Are there better (practical) options or is this endeavor ill-advised or unsafe?

Pasta does not freeze very well, so I would advise against asking the restaurant to freeze it. I would ask that they provide the sauce in one container, and the (uncooked) pasta in another. Those two will keep just fine in a cold box with ice for ~10 hours. If you're very concerned about food safety, you can keep a thermometer in the cold box and make sure it doesn't exceed fridge temperature. If the temperature starts to increase (unlikely in 10 hours with a decently insulated cold box) the car can stop for more ice. On arrival, you boil the pasta according to instructions (it's most likely fresh pasta, so it should only be boiled for 2-3 minutes) and gently heat up the sauce in a pan before combining and adding any toppings like cheese.

For example, is there any difference (taste, use, health, etc) between using an olive oil infused with lemon and a regular olive oil and adding lemon juice? If there are differences, do they only apply when not cooking with the oil (e.g. in a dressing or garnish) or also when heating the oil?

There certainly are differences. Specifically regarding lemon there are differences not only in taste, because the lemon olive oil is flavored using the zest of a lemon, but also in acidity. Lemon juice is very acidic, olive oil is not. There are plenty of times where it is completely inappropriate to add an acid. A better comparison would instead be lemon infused olive oil compared to olive oil and lemon zest. There would still be a difference, but it would be less noticeable. The infused olive oil has had more opportunity to capture the fat soluble flavor compounds in the lemon zest, however the flavor compounds that aren't fat soluble will be forever lost. That is generally the trade-off when it comes to any infused oil. You will get lots of the fat soluble flavor compounds, but you will lose the non-fat soluble flavor compounds. As for difference of use in the olive oil and lemon juice case, yes, definitely. You can't always add acids to foods. In the lemon zest case, apart from the slight flavor difference, there's also a texture difference. Of course, if you want something very smooth, pieces of zest wouldn't be a good thing. Apart from those though, not really. All of these differences still apply both in uncooked as well as cooked preparations.

I do not have a pressure cook in my house. But the soybean I bought remains really hard after soaking for 24 hours and boiled for 1 hour. I saw someone saying that some old beans will never soften no matter how long I cook. Is this really true? One of the poster mentioned 10 min cooking in a pressure cook should soften the beans. This appeals to common sense. But I am still concerned about those people saying "will never soften no matter what". So, I am asking if any one has tried boiling which did not work but succeeded to soften the beans with pressure cook? I have no need for a pressure cook. And I don't want to buy a pressure cook if it too can not soften stubborn hard soybeans.

Tried it. Failed utterly. If the beans won't soften with overnight soaking and an hour of cooking, you should forget about them.

What can I use as a substitute for 1/2 cup of barley in a 2 quart soup?

Barley's there to bulk out the soup, and add a bit of flavor and texture. It doesn't thicken or have any other special function, so you don't need to add anything to replace it. If you want to add something with a roughly similar size with some texture then short grain rice like risotto or paella rice will do, however I prefer Orzo, which is a type of very small pasta. You can also smash up some short pasta like penne, farfalle, or shells and put them in. Just remember that rice and pasta cooks much faster than barley, so add it at the end of cooking and get it off the heat as soon as it is al dente so it doesn't overcook and get mushy. Add a handful of frozen peas to it to get the temperature down quick.

When making a cake from a box mix, I see that soda can be used instead of eggs and oil. What is the science behind this, and what are the properties of oil and eggs that the soda is replacing? Here's an example of this substitution being mentioned (from ehow) Reduce the fat in a cake by using soda to replace the oil and eggs, as well as the water. The cake will still have a tender and moist crumb, but will be somewhat chewier than usual. A diet soda may be used rather than regular soda, which will further reduce the total calories in the cake. Edit: Here are some links to similar recipes http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/diet-soda-cake-recipe/index.html http://www.food.com/recipe/diet-coke-cake-224794

There are lots of people who have a rather simplistic approach to nutrition and think that removing fat and calories makes you healthy. Then they go through recipes for things they want to eat, replace the sources of fat with something which doesn't have fat and doesn't make the result outright inedible, and declare their recipe a success. I think this is what happened here. In a cake, eggs provide leavening, moisture, smoothness, own flavor, and enhancement of other flavors. Oil provides smoothness and enhancement of other flavors (and possibly its own flavor, if not netural). And while it is not water based, it keeps the moisture in the cake from evaporating, so it makes the cake less dry. If you are a "simplistic nutritionist" without all this information, you can approximate some of the effects with soda. It will provide moisture, and it will also provide some leavening because it is fizzy. It will provide some flavor of its own too, but frankly, I find the rather chemical flavor of soda to be unpleasant. And it won't have any fat. In the eyes of the simplistic nutritionist, it has successfully replaced the oil and eggs while reducing fat and calories. From the point of view of a baker, the cake will be a disaster, and won't even deserve the label cake. It will dry out quickly because it has no fat. It will have a bland flavor. Its texture will be terrible. They say "more chewy?" It will miss both the protein structure and the emulsifying agents provided by the eggs. It will be essentially an overwhelmingly sweet quickbread with no redeeming qualities. From a culinary point of view, it will be terrible. Bottom line: under some assumptions, it is a good substitution. For me, these assumptions are so far from reality as to be useless. It is a terrible substitution.

Having misplaced the custom measuring cup for an "egg steamer" device, not quite sure how to steam eggs. Desired result: so that: The perfect soft-boiled egg should have firm, custard-like whites and a warm, runny yolk Firstly, I've never poked holes in the egg; seems fine without doing that. I suppose the odd egg cracks, but that's not the end of the world. So this is assuming no holes are being poked. Is there a formula? I'm looking for a method to cook up to four eggs at one time: soft-boiled. Not quite sure what temperature the yolk should be, but it's not hard-boiled. By random experimentation, six minutes with half a cup of water seems to work reasonably for two eggs, resulting in a soft-boiled egg. I'm reiterating soft-boiled because hard-boiled eggs are just inherently easier. This is using a generic type "egg cooker", but I can't see that it's any different from steaming in a pot on the stove? Not using a pressure cooker or anything technologically sophisticated.

I happen to have some experience with steam egg cooker. For starters: how does an egg cooker work? The egg cooker doesn't use a timer. Instead, the cooking time is determined by the amount of water you put into it: the more water, the more time it takes to boil off and trigger the overheat alarm. This is why your egg cooker has a water measure cup that has markings for different number of eggs to cook. Secondly, to soft boil an egg you don't actually control the absolute temperature, but control the temperature gradient: you want the outer layers of the egg to be very hot (rolling boil water or steam) but the inner core of the egg doesn't really have time to heat up, which is why 6min in rolling boil water gives you reliably good results, although you may need to adjust a fraction of a minute depending on the temperature of your fridge. Strong temperature gradient (difference between outer and inner parts of the egg) is what gives you the "water balloon effect" e.g. the yolk is near liquid and white is like a thick and strong membrane. OK then how do you steam your egg? For your situation you basically need to reverse engineer your measure cup that comes with the steamer. I propose following procedure: Put about 1-2 tbsp of water in your steamer, turn it on, wait till boiling. Put egg in, steam for 6-7 mins. Turn steamer off and check one egg, three things can happen: a) This egg is under cooked, you can salvage them by cooking them for another minute. b) This egg is over cooked, then your data is useless, you need to wait for another chance to repeat this experiment and deal with 4 medium done eggs for now. c) The egg is perfectly cooked. If you hit case a) or c) you are in luck, wait for the steamer to cool and measure the remaining water. Subtracted from your initial water you get your desired water amount for 4 eggs. Based on my experience, 1 tbsp and 7 min should yield a close enough result and I'm sure you can get this right within 3 iterations. How do I know all this? I once owned a egg steamer (6 eggs) and lost the water measure cup as well. I ended up putting about 2tbsp of water and cook for 7 min. It takes roughly 20sec for water to boil and generate steam and 40s for the surface of the egg to equalize with steam, so the net cooking time is about 6min and result is mostly perfect. At the end there's always some excessive water, but I never bothered to reverse engineer the measure cup and stuck to the 7min rule. In fact, because I never carefully measured water consistently, the net cooking time varied and fluctuates the doneness of the end product. If you control the water and time constantly you will get much more consistent results than I did.

I recently made chili oil at home for the first time, it is delicious and works great. I simply infused canola oil with some spices and then poured it on chili flakes mixed with a bit of black vinegar. However, when I look at pictures of homemade chili oils, I noticed mine is a bit different. Most chili flakes sunk at the bottom, but there's also a layer that stayed nearly floating at the top. Nothing but oil in-between those two layers. Whenever I use it, I have to mix it with a spoon first, which gets it looking exactly like what you'd expect, but slowly goes back into layers. Is this normal behavior for homemade chili oil? If not, what can be done to prevent it? My few theories as to why that is are: I haven't used enough chili flakes for the amount of oil (though I did research these amounts first) Some of the chili flakes burnt when I poured the oil while others didn't Cheap chili flakes are cheap Finally an update:

I've had the same thing happen. My suspicion is that the flakes on top had residual moisture which puffed them up during cooking, or alternatively that other gases were produced by pyrolysis and similarly trapped. Either way, a quick Google image search suggests that this happens fairly often. Chili oil has to be mixed before use in any case, so I wouldn't worry about it. But if you were particularly unhappy with the look, you could try cooking the chili oil at a lower temperature, or pre-drying the chili flakes in the oven (a few hours at around 120°C should do it).

Here is the recipe I used, I did not mix it for long, as that make the muffins very hard. The muffins were very hard, and had a bad after taste and smell. I missed adding some oil, but what else could be the reason ? Red Millet Flour, 50 g Whole Wheat flour, 50 g Toasted Oat Bran, 40g Whole Green Mung Beans - Sprouted, 100 g Domino - Light Brown Sugar 50g Baking Soda, 2 tsp Salt, 1 Tablespoon Liquid Egg White, 4 eggs 100% Whey (Vanilla), 75g Chobani - Greek Yogurt - 0% Vanilla, 5.3 oz (small packet) Carrots - Raw, 1 cup, grated Bananas - Raw, 1 cup, mashed White, all-purpose, enriched, bleached, 40 g Also I wanted to try yeast instead of baking soda, but due to eggs and other veggies I cannot let is rise overnight (any ideas ?). I was trying to make good protein muffins which are an ideal breakfast, grab one with a glass of milk and done! They run approximately 160 calories per muffin 25g carbs, 1g fat, 12g protein.

What makes muffins soft is starch and fat. You have no fat at all in these "muffins", and very little flour when compared to the vegetables and proteins. Normal muffin proportions are 2:2:1:1 flour:liquid:egg:fat (per Ruhlmann). I guess you can add up to 2 parts filler (so as much vegetable as flour) before you get the result too terrible. In your mixture, there is a total of 140 g flour and ~700 g fillers (bran, beans, whey, carrots, bananas). This is never going to be muffin-like, you will have to forgo most of your additions. And the whole wheat flour is also making it harder. You either have to change to normal flour, or live with some hardness (it should be manageable if you change all the other factors). The liquid provided by the yogurt is good if you switch to white flour, no need to change anything there. You may consider adding a bit if you stay with whole wheat, it "soaks" more liquid. The egg whites are a problem too. First, egg whites make baked goods dry out. You shouldn't be using pure egg whites, they will make bad muffins. You need whole eggs. And second, the equivalent of 4 eggs (200 gram) is probably too much. 1-2 whole eggs would be normal for this amount of flour, 3 makes it pound-cake-like but still usable. Still, you may find out that, if you make all the other changes, upping the (whole) eggs to 4 doesn't make it too bad. You also used too little sugar. Sugar is an important structural element in muffins. It retains moisture and prevents gluten buildup. It can be reduced if you don't want the taste or the calories, but each gram you take away also reduces the quality of the muffin, so you have to try out and see how much quality reduction you can tolerate. You had absolutely no fat in the recipe. The standard ratio suggests 75 g. This is also a major factor in softness and moisture. In short, you cannot take any muffin recipe, remove all the stuff which doesn't have the nutrients you don't want, fill it up with foodstuff you want, pour it into a muffin form and expect it to taste like a muffin. Baking is chemically very complicated, and most of the ingredients are not there for flavor, but for texture. Replacing them with random other ingredients will do nothing good. You can either return your recipe towards a more traditional muffin, which will of course change its nutrition values back to "sweet baked good", or you can find a different form of combining the foodstuff you have chosen to eat. Mixing it and baking it is not going to work.

I have been experimenting with making bread and pastries and have tried kneading with both oil and flour. I have found that I tend to use flour with bread and yeast based loaves and oil with pastry dough. I don't know what is best, though. I am slightly concerned that adding flour to a bread dough will mess up the flour water ratio, so is it better to use oil, and vice versa with the pastries (say a shortcrust pastry that already contains a form of fat)? Is there some other factor that determines flour vs oil?

Both messes up the ratio, as you said, so you shouldn't use anything during kneading. You only need to use a little bit of something during shaping. With some pastries, the shaping is extensive and you get lots of the smoother worked into the dough; this is expected and desired (e.g. in strudel sheets). Properly kneaded bread dough does not stick to anything, even if it started out very wet. So, if it sticks at the beginning, just continue kneading until it stops (I knead it between my hands then, not on a surface). When it is ready, it will not only stop sticking to your hands, but also pull the smear of the hand surfaces into itself, coming clean off them so you can work with it. (You will still have to clean your hands afterwards from gunk between the fingers and on the back of your hands). When your dough is kneaded through, you want to form a good surface for the rising period. You can use flour, oil or water; you'll use so little that it doesn't really matter much. Just spread a thin film on your surface, shape the boule and put it into the rising bowl. For the final rise, you want it to keep its shape when it's put into the oven. So, when you are giving it its final shape, you can use either flour or a starch to prevent it from sticking to whatever it is rising on. I knew somebody who swore by rice flour as producing the least stickiness, but use plain wheat flour myself. You can even lay it on a bed of flour; it is not getting pressed into it, so it won't absorb it and get hard. But you will have a layer of either raw or burned flour on the prepared bread. An exception would be very oil-rich breads (at least half as much butter as flour). They do better when the final shaping is done in oil too. For pastries and cookies, it depends on the type of dough. If it is supposed to be a hard dough, use flour. The strudel mentioned above is made in flour. If it is supposed to be a soft or tender dough, you can try shaping without any smoothening (for example many cookies will flow into a smooth shape during baking even if put onto the sheet as an unsightly pinched ball). Ugly sticky pastry doughs like pie crust can be rolled into submission if you roll them between two smooth silicone mats, but you can't get them very thin that way. If you need them at less than 4 mm, use flour, best in combination with the silicone. Plastic wraps also works, but you might have to use two pieces per surface when the crust gets wide. If you have a dough which really feels half-liquid in your hands, shape with flour. Corriher's very light southern biscuits from Cookwise are a good example for such a dough.

I have baked Betty Crocker's Giant Honey and Oat Cookies three or four times now, and every time, my cookies do not spread out, I just get thick cookies. Is there something I am doing wrong? As far as I can tell, I am following the recipe exactly. Does it have something to do with my oven? With my technique?

There are a few things I can think of. The first is, are you sure your oven is at the right temperature? Although your oven may beep that it's preheated, without checking it with an oven or infrared thermometer you can't be sure that it's actually at the temperature you need - and even if it is at that temperature where the sensor is, it might not be the same temperature elsewhere in the oven. Try moving the rack you're using one or two levels closer to or further from the element and see if it makes a difference (further will probably be better if you're trying to increase spread). My oven has a 50-75°F range from the top rack to the bottom - a major difference when it comes to baking! Understanding my oven's temperature range changed my baking outcomes significantly. Second, are you letting the dough come to room temperature before baking? I've found that the colder my dough, the less spread I get. On Betty Crocker's site, there is an FAQ and under "Why don't my cookies spread", they recommend using an aluminum sheet - the darker the cookie sheet, apparently, the less spread you will get. I haven't tested this personally, but I trust the source :) I get good spread on my silpat baking sheets, for what it's worth. The only other thing I can think of is your butter, is it truly softened, or is it a hard block, or is it melted? I'm not an experienced enough baker to explain the science behind the differences as they relate to baking, but I do know that those three options will produce significantly different results. I believe that if your butter is too cold, they won't spread as much as they could - but hopefully someone can chime in and confirm or deny that. Oh, and I asked a friend of mine who's a baker - she said that it's possible that your baking soda is old, and that could cause it, but I don't know from first hand experience if that's possible or not. I trust her judgment though, as she's my go-to with baking questions and she's never led me astray.

Catering a small event tomorrow for twenty people. Serving beef brisket, pulled pork, and veggie lasagna. Question is how much brisket & pork should allow for each person? also serving three sides, rolls, etc.

It depends in part who you are serving--hungry college students (or those with that mindset) eat considerably more free food than do wealthy health-conscious professionals. You also need to keep in mind that while you don't want to overshoot massively, it also looks bad to run out of food. You may also need to keep in mind that a significant number of people do not eat pork for personal/religious reasons, so you want to not run too short of other options. That said, the best way to estimate is to see what people who do this all the time provide. For instance, CityBBQ provides 8 lbs of meat for 20-24 people. Famous Dave's seems to offer about 8 lbs also, if you can count their 60 chicken wings as equivalent to your lasagna. (This is likely cooked weight, though neither site says.)

Does the water need to boil or just be hot? Do I need to put salt and vinegar in the water or just salt? And if it needs vinegar, what kind? How long do I leave it in the water to get the white solid but not the yolk? I do not like raw egg white, so this is very important for me. But the tricky part is to have the yolk nice and runny though...

By far the most important factor in a nice poached egg is the freshness of the egg. Fresh eggs shouldn't need vinegar to help them set, but It can help with an older egg, whose white has started to go a bit runnier. Vinegar does leave a flavor, but if you're poaching your eggs ahead of time and putting them in iced water to stop them cooking, that does seem to wash it out. Salting the water will toughen an egg, better to season it after it comes out. A large egg, starting at room temperature, in barely simmering water (trembling) will take 3 1/2 minutes to just solidify the white, and leave the yolk very fluid. If you want your yolk more viscous, another half minute.

I've bought some red bean paste to use to fill mochi. I don't think I'll use it all in one go and I'm not able to translate what the package says for how to store it. What is the best way to store it once the package is opened and how long will it last for? (This is the paste I am using: http://www.japancentre.com/items/maeda-hokkaido-red-bean-paste-koshian) Many thanks :)

Cucumber << water, water, water +++ Tomatoes << water, water Onion << water Do you see how much water each of those main ingredients contain? Let's take one at a time. Onions:- Fresh onions are not only have a high volume of water, also natrual chemicals that make strong pungent flavour. These chemicals (e.g. Sulphur) work quite well with oxygen in the air, resulting the bitterness. In order to tone down the flavour and bitterness, soack the onions in ice water. Another method is to add fresh lime juice immediately after slicing/dicing the onions. Cucumber:- Cut and remove the entire section of seeds. Now dice the cucumber. Remember the little science projects about drawing out excess water from vegetables? Soak Cucumber in ice water with little salt. (Perhaps you could refrain from adding salt to the final salad bowl, if the quantity used at this point suffice) Same theory goes for making potato chips. Slice potatoes are soaked in water to draw out that extra moisture. No ricket science here though ;) Tomatoes:- Remove entire section of seeds. Dice them and add into your salad. Garam masala has Fennel and Cineman, that has the sweetness. It's also possible restaurant adds in a bit of sugar. However, certain onion species are sweeter naturally. To be frank, we don't use garam masala, mint or corriander. Insated you could have the following simple ingridients to make a heaven of a salad, if you may. fresh :{cucumber, tomatoes, onion, spicy green chilli, black pepper, salt, lime} Bon appetit!

This question is inspired by this answer suggesting that honey lasts a long time. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to last so long in my cupboard. I make sure it's sealed tight, but usually after only a week or two it's looking pretty nasty. Is there a way to prevent this from happening? Or is there a standard (not to mention safe) way to "rescue" hardened honey without losing flavour or texture?

Keep it stored in an airtight container, so that it doesn't absorb moisture from the air. If it congeals, put the container in hot water until honey is liquid (~10-15 minutes).

If I'm doing salmon fillets then I'll normally do 50c for 25 minutes, but a whole salmon is a different kettle of fish. I've done sous vide whole salmon on several occasions and I do 55c for 3 hours which works fine but dries out the fish a little more than I'd like. I'm not really comfortable cooking anything at a temperature lower than 55c for long periods of time but I'd like a less dry whole salmon. Does anyone else have any views / science on this one? Could I get away with doing a whole salmon at a lower temperature?

Your temperature is inevitably going to dry the salmon out - it's too high. As to whether it's possible to sous-vide whole salmon, I'm about to find out. But experience with smaller fish suggests the time goes up but the results can be very good. There are some web resources which help calculate cooking times as size increases. I suggest you try lower temperatures on smaller pieces to find what you like. If it's 50C - which tastes dry to me - cook at 50C I cook at 43C but that's about as low as I'd go.

I'd like to try this bete noir recipe, but it's for Passover. I'd like to make it parve (dairy free). I'm thinking about substituting butter with margarine (which seems pretty straightforward), and for the ganoche, whipping cream with almond milk (which feels iffier). Any immediate thoughts on a better approach, or advice for using the almond milk, in particular?? UPDATE: I took the good advice to serve something else, and wait to do this recipe justice. I was ready -- even found some coconut milk with guar right in it, marketed as a cream substitute, but chickened out. Made it with whipping cream this week, and it was worth it-- though the ganache is just a thin layer on top of the cake, and I suspect the coconut w/ guar would have worked just fine.

The key to a smooth ganache is fat - add too much water and you will end up with a “grainy” product. There are even recipes that use butter instead of cream (full or partial substitution), and while that’s probably a heart attack on a spoon, the texture is excellent. Almond milk is at least as “watery” as regular cows milk, so yes, that’s a questionable substitute without further changes. You can benefit from the recent vegan trend and either use full-fat coconut milk (if the flavor is to your liking) or buy a vegan cream substitute, just check what your local store has available. If you want to use almond milk, consider adding a butter substitute (solid vegetable fat?). Margarine instead of butter in the crust won’t be an issue, alternatively, you may want to check vegetable shortening. We may have a few Q/As on that substitution on the site. And don’t forget to get dairy-free chocolate.

Hello Turkish coffee lovers, Could anyone tell me how I can have a lot of good coffee foam? When I boil it 3 times, all the foam is gone. I want to make a coffee similar to this:

There are various techniques, however here's how I do, and I usually get enough foam by making like this. Sometimes really much, sometimes just decent but never too little. First of all, put the water before the coffee to the cezve (or pot, however you call it). Then add the coffee without mixing it with the water. Do not mix it, just let it get into the water by itself as the water gets hotter. To let that happen, you have to keep its flame in medium, and even a little bit less than medium. Like... 3/7 of full flame. This will take time. There are people who cook the coffee on the hot sand in Turkey, it takes perhaps half an hour, maybe even more. You don't need that but don't make it too quick. As the water gets hot and the coffee begins to mix with the water completely, the foam will begin to appear. Now you can use a teaspoon to collect this foam and share it to the cups equally. Since the cooking takes time, it will continue producing more foam and you should keep collecting those. Just like the previous answer, do not let it boil. It messes all the thing. The secret of the Turkish coffee is that since it doesn't melt in the water, it needs to remain calm so that the coffee collapses at the bottom. If it boils, the coffee will spread and you'll drink that as well, which feels quite unpleasant. I've never tried salt, I don't use sugar either. However, I suggest you to put one sugar cube into your coffee jar, it keeps the coffee dry. Other than that, I can suggest using cool, fresh water. Also, it's ideal to cook for like 2-3 cups, not just one or not 4-5.

I came across a recipe for Italian-style meatballs today that includes two ingredients I've never seen used in any meatball recipe before: baking soda and cream of tartar. It also does not include any sort of bread or breadcrumbs, as is generally customary. What could be the purpose of adding these ingredients? Does it somehow go hand-in-hand with omitting a bread filler? Recipe ingredients: 1/4 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar 1 tablespoon water 1 pound ground beef 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar 2 cloves garlic, minced (about 2 teaspoons) 1/2 cup fresh parsley leaves, minced (about 2 tablespoons) 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes 1/2 teaspoon Italian herb blend (or oregano)

According to Cook's Illustrated's article Tenderizing Meat with Baking Soda (possible paywall): Briefly soaking meat in a solution of baking soda and water raises the pH on the meat’s surface, making it more difficult for the proteins to bond excessively, which keeps the meat tender and moist when it’s cooked. This is almost certainly the effect of the baking powder: to help create a more tender product. This is probably especially necessary given the lack of bread products (which provides starch that physically interferes with protein linking, and helps retain moisture in the, thus producing a more tender meatball). The tartaric acid is probably there because recipe authors are used to pairing it with baking soda which is necessary when it is used to create leavening in baked goods. In the meatballs, it will simply tend to help make them more acidic, although it will also neutralize some of the baking soda. I have surveyed several recipes on the web which include baking soda in meatball recipes; they variously claim that it helps make the meatballs lighter or more tender.

I'm on a mission to recreate boxed mac and cheese or velveeta shells and cheese. I've used sodium citrate to make a creamy cheese emulsion from normal cheese. However, I feel that my sauce still lacks a certain tart/piquant/tangy/sour taste. I've tried adding lactic acid, and while this helps, it only adds more sour, but no "salty tang". I've read the ingredients list, but off hand can't identify the one thing that makes these "artificial" cheese sauces taste as good as they do! FWIW, obviously it is easier/cheaper to just buy these sauces off the shelf, but I'm drawn to the challenge and learning that come with replicating at home! I also understand that these sauces are industrially engineered products with many ingredients and that exact replication would take all ingredients in the original, but I have a hunch that there is a single ingredient that could take my sauce quite a bit closer in flavor.

Cook some of each. The one that's done in 20 mins or so is bulgur. [I tend towards 1:1.6 bulgur:water, 15 mins simmer, 15 mins rest.] The one that eventually needs more water adding & takes at least another half hour is cracked wheat. …then label them ;)) Alternatively, the heat-free method. Soak both overnight in excess water. The edible one is bulgur.

I am an electrical engineer, who have studied ins and outs of microwaves - so I would find ludicrous, scientifically and physically wrong conjectures like microwaving destroys the "structure" of food or makes it radioactive. Why do restaurants and ascribed "good-chefs" avoid the reputation of using the microwave oven? At least, I get that vibe from Hell's kitchen. To me, when used expertly, the microwave oven in combination with convection or grilling produces excellent and tasty food. And it saves electricity. For example, I microwave my chicken first for a few minutes in an enclosure, before roasting or grilling it. Why would a restaurant or renowned chef not boast of "expertise in microwave" but in fact, hides it, as much as he/she would boast of their expertise on the wok or on the flame? Is microwaving bad for your food? Or reputation? Why?

Microwaves steam food from within, because they excite water molecules to the point of heat production. This has varied side effects such as: Glutens tighten (that's why breads come out rubbery, and pasta sometimes falls apart) Meats cook unevenly (though, as you mentioned, this can be a way to give marrow bone-in meats a head start so they cook completely in less time on dry heat) Vegetables steam very quickly and are easily overcooked (though spuds in a microwave can be a handy shortcut) While those 'crisper' liners can help, you can't really sear anything that's steaming. It's meant to reheat things mostly, and it's good at cooking some things entirely. I would no sooner put waffles in a pressure cooker than I would tenderloin or fresh squash in a microwave - it's just the wrong tool for the job. But I will use one to melt butter, thaw demi glace, soften potatoes, quickly heat water to replenish a pasta pot that has been going a while, and lots of other things. My objection to the use of them in commercial kitchens is mostly centered around cooks preparing and freezing stuff and then just microwaving it on demand. I can buy frozen food much cheaper in the grocery store. If you can easily reheat something that needs bulk prep and cold storage without degrading the taste or texture, who cares how you do it? I don't mind if you microwave my mash as long as it was made recently and tastes like you made it today :) My objection to home use is assembling an entirely cold dinner plate and whacking it in there for a few minutes - my short ribs get all dry and my string beans start staring at me like Whoopi Goldberg would if I accidentally walked in on her in the restroom. Microwaves don't replace conventional ovens, but they're often marketed as if they do. But I don't hate microwaves, in fact I'm considering an upgrade to one of the smarter ones in hopes of getting more use out of something that occupies some prime counter real estate. Much like hammers, I think they just get used as inappropriately as they do appropriately, and you're hearing lots of people complaining about throbbing thumbs :) I think some also resent the implied suggestion that microwave manufacturers make, which is "go on, cook more of stuff that shouldn't be reheated, in fact you don't even need to worry about that anymore - we've got this!" At least I did when I saw my mother-in-law grab 750 grams of cooked tiger prawns and throw them in the microwave on high for three minutes and I knew it would be rude not to eat them.

Buckwheat flour. Can it be used for pizza dough, and what other uses/properties does it have? I remember making crepes from buckwheat flour and I'd like to use it more often. I'm fond of pizzas, the child that I am, and was wondering about why do you hear so little about alternative flour being used for pizza dough.

You can use buckwheat for pizza dough, but it will not be anything like an actual wheat flour. Buckwheat isn't actually a grain and doesn't contain gluten. The gluten is what gives pizza dough it's chewy texture (and makes it stretchable when you're tossing the pie). You need to substitute something like xanthum gum to make up for it. If you want to go down this path, google 'gluten free baking' for advice and directions. On the other hand, buckwheat makes an excellent partial flour substitute in pancakes.

We found a nice recipe lately for barbecue sauce and made 3 variations to test out. The problem is: now we have ~3 pints of homemade barbecue sauce that we need to use before it goes bad. (It won't last nearly as long as store-bought stuff with all of their preservatives). What are some tasty ways to use up our new sauce?

BBQ sauce pizza w/ chicken, red onion, cheddar/american, etc... As sauce for enchiladas, tacos, quesadilas, etc.... BBQ wings. A spicy, cheesy casserole w/ corn, green beans, pasta, etc... Add some to spaghetti sauce for a kick. Obviously, sauce for just about any meat.

The blades in 2 out of 4 jars of our Mixer Grinder stuck within two months of its purchase and we put the jars aside as the blades stopped rotating. I think WD-40 will do a good job (I tried it on one of them and it worked immediately), but my mother worries that it might be harmful. Could anybody tell me if I was right and suggest the best thing to loosen them? By the way, loosening bolts with the plastic tool the company provided never worked. Update: I should have used coconut oil or vegetable oil, but I think it attracts dust and worsens the problem if we don't use the jar for sometime.

WD-40 contains naphtha, hydrodesulfurized heavy; 1,2,4-trimethyl benzene; 1,3,5-trimethyl benzene; mixed xylene isomers; and surfactant, which are not for food use. WD-40 can harm/dissolve certain plastics and rubbers (perhaps used in your blender). I think the toxicity of WD-40 is relatively minor, but essentially, WD-40 isn't food grade. Now, I know that this is not a food facility, but I would definitely opt for food grade mineral oil to prevent rancidity and rusting issues. FDA Code of Federal Regulations 178.3570 allows food grade mineral to be used for lubricating food processing equipment, and USP grade mineral oil happens to be the primary lubricant in the industry (I'd guess at least 90% of the lubrication is done with mineral oil). CFR 178.3570 also allows use of naturally-sourced fatty acids (like capric acid, caprylic acid and caproic acid, which are more for antibacterial applications, and can/will cause corrosion issues), polybutene (maybe for electronic parts), isopropyl oleate (pricey), and castor oil (which is gummy, can become rancid, and induces cramping). The petrolatum that is mentioned is USP grade (CAS Number: 8009-03-8) which is basically vaseline; and it is only for use in "as a protective coating of the surfaces of metal or wood tanks used in fermentation process". The rest of the lubricants that are mentioned in CFR 178.3570 are not actually lubricants (more like, antibiotic soaps and chealating agents) or are simply exotic materials (even for industrial manufacturers). So, what I'm saying (to be 100% clear) is that USP mineral oil is the only realistic lubricant allowed by FDA. Isopropyl oleate would be my second choice, but the price is going to be about 10 fold higher than mineral oil, and castor oil would be my third choice for reasons mentioned above. The rest of the "lubricants" are basically industrial-use lubricant additives (used in very minor amounts for more specific applications).

What are the proper ways to thaw foods? Are there any advantages or disadvantages to them?

There are four methods for thawing frozen foods which are recognized as safe: In a refrigerator In the microwave Under cool running water As part of the cooking process These four methods all meet the criteria that they minimize the amount of time the food spends in the danger zone (40-140 F, 4-60 C) where bacteria can grow. The pros and cons of the following often-recommended methods are also reviewed: Leaving food on the counter overnight Thawing in a bowl (or sink) of water On a metal pan or with a "miracle thaw" device In the refrigerator Thawing food in the refrigerator is slow; it can take a day to thaw several pounds (a kilogram or two), and even more time for larger foods like a whole frozen turkey. The advantage is that the refrigerator is at a safe temperature, and bacterial growth is already inhibited, so there is little risk. This is probably the preferred method for many foods, if you have the time. In the microwave Thawing in the microwave is fast, but it has several disadvantages: It requires a lot of attention, turning or rotating the food to get even coverage from the microwaves; for items like ground beef, you might even need to scrape off the thawed portions and continue defrosting the frozen portion. It is easy to accidently go to far and start cooking the food, especially if it has an odd shape or small pointier parts sticking out (like wings on a chicken). For this reason, microwave thawing is best done only for foods like soup or stew, where you can stir them and if one part boils a small amount while another part is frozen, no harm is done. Under cool running water This one is most surprising, but it is true: the fastest way to thaw food safely is under cool running water (at or below 70 F / 21 C), like the cold water from your tap. The reason is that that water has an extremely high capacity for carrying heat, and the forced convection from running water ensures that it transfers heat from the food item as rapidly as possible. In the Good Eats episode What's Up Duck, Alton Brown thawed several frozen ice duck sculptures by various methods. The one under cool running water was almost completely melted, even when the one in the oven at 200 F was still fairly recognizably bird shaped. It is important that the water be running, to ensure strong convection. You can do this by setting the food in the sink under a very small stream of water. If the food should not get wet, you can put it in a zip-type bag or similar to keep it dry. Try to remove as much air as possible, to get the best contact between the water and the food (through the bag). This is the best method for forced, rapid thawing (at least when microwaving is not appropriate or inconvenient), but it is probably less convenient that the refrigerator method. You also have to monitor the food, and remove it when it is thawed, or it will come to the ambient temperature of the water, which is probably in the danger zone. As part of the cooking process Some foods can be cooked starting from the frozen state, thawing and then cooking in one operation. Among the ones most suitable for this are are smaller or thinner items, such as: Cookie dough lumps Hamburgers Chicken parts Pizza Stew meat Frozen, chopped vegetables Frozen stock (at least in smaller quantities) Bad idea: on the Counter overnight This is a bad idea, especially for meats and other highly perishable items. You have no control over the temperature the surface of the food will reach, and it may begin to spoil at the surface before the center is thawed. Bad idea: In a bowl (or sink) of cold water Again, a bad idea. Without the convection, the thawing speed is reduced. There is also no source of newer, cooler water, so the temperature of the water itself will rise. Some parts of the food may reach dangerous temperatures before it is fully thawed. Also, if you don't check the food frequently, the temperature can get into dangerous territories, facilitating spoilage. Risky: On a cast iron, stainless steel or other metal pan, or a "miracle thaw" device This method is most often used with thin foods like steaks or frozen hamburgers. Physics are with you, as the specific heat capacity and conductivity of the metal are very high (higher even than water). The large surface area of the metal acts like a radiator or heat sink in reverse, conducting heat away from the food more rapidly than air alone would. This method is not approved by health codes for commercial use, and carries some risks. You need to monitor the food closely, and cook it or move it into the refrigerator as soon as it is thawed. Failure to do so will allow the food to spoil, and the conductivity of your metal will become your enemy, more quickly bringing the food to ambient temperature. While this method is not officially sanctioned, you may choose to assess its risks for yourself. See also: USDA Food Safety Fact Sheet How do I know if food left at room temperature is still safe to eat?

I have tried this recipe but i want roti more soft. Roti recipe 500 g Wheat flour 15 g Salt 50 g Oil 300 g Water or as required

Assuming you didn't over-use the vinegar, and mainteined the spreadable consistency of the cream-cheese, I think what you've invented is also known as a sandwich spread.

I have no problem cooking fried eggs to my desired doneness or keeping them intact while cooking and serving. But eggs cooked by professional chefs and diner line cooks look like this: The white is round and mostly white; the yolk is basically centered. My fried eggs look like this: The yolk won't stay in the center (even though I let the white firm a little before adding the yolk to the pan), and the white looks like the British coastline. (Ignoring, of course, the detritus of the leftover onions and peas - those are attributed simply to laziness of the cook.) How do the pros get their eggs to stay so symmetrical and pretty?

One factor you may not be considering is the quality of the egg itself. The highest-grade eggs have firm whites and more regular shapes when cracked onto a flat surface. The fresher the egg, generally, the higher the grade. If you've ever cracked a grocery store egg next to a fresh-laid egg, the difference is clear. The hen's diet makes a big difference, too. But judging by the pictures, I'd say your biggest problem is cooking with too much heat. Notice how much your whites have bubbled and that the edges are already browning while the inner albumen (the thick part of the white that surrounds the yolk) is still raw. In comparison, the albumen of the "prettier" egg has a visibly consistent cook on the whites. Getting the right temperature To get that consistent cook on a sunny side up egg you need to use less heat than you'd use for other fried eggs. The inner albumen cooks slower because it's sitting up higher than the outer albumen, farther from the heat. And you're not going to flip this egg, so it's a very uneven heat that you have to work with. Imagine trying to cook a hamburger, entirely on one side! That's the challenge you have here, except with an egg, which is thinner than a hamburger but also less evenly-shaped and much more delicate. Some people like to loosely cover the pan for part of the cooking time, which reflects some heat and traps some steam to help cook the inner albumen from above. The risk there is that you're also cooking the yolk faster; if you cover the pan tightly, you can end up steaming the egg instead of frying it. You can use a plate, a lid of the wrong size, or another pan if you like. Assuming you can get the temperature right, though, you don't need to cover the pan. To practice, start with the heat around medium-low and try to find the right balance of heat and time through trial and error. Crispy, brown edges means either too much time or too much heat. If you're practicing, try not to adjust the heat too much in the middle of cooking an egg. Cook one egg through, then assess the result and adjust your heat if necessary on the next one. Getting the egg into the pan Once you get the temperature right, assuming your eggs are decent quality, your only other challenge is getting it into and out of the pan gently. If you're rough with the egg, not only will it spread out unevenly, but you can break the membrane that separates the inner and outer albumen. This makes the white cook faster but it definitely doesn't lead to an attractive sunny side up egg. Cracking the egg into a ramekin or small prep bowl rather than directly into the pan or pot makes it much easier to get a regular, attractive shape on your fried or poached egg. As far as centering the yolk, I suspect that's all about the grade of the egg; high-quality fresh eggs are just firmer and tend not to wander so much. I wouldn't recommend separating the yolk and adding it after the white -- I think that would do more harm than good. You want to keep that nested membrane structure, but separating the yolk requires breaking the inner albumen's membrane. What you get is a yolk that's just going to slide around on the raw surface of the white, instead of being held by the membrane in one place. Other tips Use oil rather than butter. Butter will brown the bottom and edges of your egg more quickly, and give it that browned butter flavor. A classic sunny side up egg is supposed to be evenly white and taste like egg. (Of course, if you like that flavor, go for it!) Whether you're using oil or butter, only use enough to keep the egg from sticking. Too much butter can foam up around the edges and not look very nice. Too much oil can result in little splashes of oil on top of the egg and an unpleasant residue on the plate (and palate). It takes some practice but cooking an egg every which way is a very basic technical skill that will stay with you forever once learned. As you get better you may start to notice how much of a difference the freshness of the egg makes, or how the color of the yolk indicates the quality of the hen's diet (and the flavor and nutrition in the egg as a result). You don't have to go buy the fanciest eggs on the shelf -- plenty of restaurants get good results with whatever they order from their supplier -- but there's definitely a difference between brands. Hard to tell the gimmick from the real deal without cracking one open; I remember a story on the radio a couple years ago about a woman who resold grocery store eggs at a farmer's market when her hens weren't laying well, passing them off as fresh-laid. Best thing is to keep your own hens, but that's obviously not possible (or desirable) for everyone. Next best source is likely a CSA or farm stand. Oh and by the way -- I never ate egg breakfast growing up. Couldn't stand them, especially the runny yolks! Tastes change; now I keep my own hens and I love a good runny poached egg. I don't claim to be any sort of professional in the kitchen; it's all about quality ingredients and practice, practice, practice. A note on color and texture I wrote above that "crispy, brown edges means either too much time or too much heat." To be clear, that's assuming your goal is a classic American diner-style sunny side up egg, evenly cooked and pale in color, like the photo shown in the question. But crispy fried eggs are also delicious, and require more heat rather than less. I cooked two crispy fried eggs, sunny side up in my wok this morning on a high-output propane burner. The image shows that the edges are crisp and lacy without being burned or ragged, the inner albumen is fully set and the yolk is liquid. I didn't cover the pan, baste with fat, or use any sort of ring mold or specialty egg device as other answers have suggested; I just have enough practice with this pan and heat source to be able to get this result. Which is to say, I've ruined dozens of eggs over the years trying and failing to get this result. It's fine to cover the pan, to baste the egg, to use egg molds. All of these methods involve trade-offs and you may find that one of them is your preferred method. But if there is a simple thesis to my answer, it's that cooking an egg is fundamentally a problem of finding the right time and temp. And there's no substitute for experience because everyone's kitchen and ingredients are a little different.

Tofu is considered as a processed food. After watching a couple videos on YouTube. I am only concerned about two points specifically: Is heating the soaked and crushed beans so that they become a paste harmful? As sometimes high heat can harm a food product. I don't know about the coagulant they add, which is magnesium chloride. I see that they sometimes add calcium chloride/sulfate too. Are these safe coagulants? Nothing else I watched in the process made me think they could be harmful.

Making tofu for mass production and consumption and making tofu at home generally follow the same procedures. Soybeans are soaked, ground, and cooked. The resulting "milk" is separated from the soilds. Then a coagulant is added (either salts, acids, or enzymes depending on producer and type of tofu). Finally, the tofu is pressed. The one difference between tofu you purchase in a package and tofu made at home is that the mass-produced variety likely goes through a pasteurization step. In general, this is a process that has been used for centuries (other than the pasteurization, of course, which is more recent technology). Given the history of tofu production, and the number of people who consume it, any health concerns would have been identified by now.

Let's consider a situation where someone dislikes a taste of, let's say, broccoli (or some other food), and MSG is added to that product during the cooking process to improve the taste. Will the taste actually become more pleasant for the person who dislikes broccoli, or will it make the taste even more unbearable (by making it more pronounced)?

MSG has a flavor itself; it tastes of "umami", the savory, meaty flavor. This is because it's made of glutemic acid (or glutamate), with a little sodium (less than salt). Glutamates are the compounds responsible for the basic umami taste, and they are found in high concentrations in kelp, cheeses, soy sauce, and oyster sauce. To the best of my knowledge, it's not like salt, which is said to enhance existing flavors; this would be more like cooking broccoli in bacon grease to impart a bacony flavor to the broccoli. Therefore, it depends heavily on the existing flavor profile of the food in question and the taste preferences of the person involved. If the person likes broccoli dunked in soy sauce, it might be worth a try.

I have made roti a couple of times now, and each time have found that I can't get the dough super thin before it tears in order to fold it correctly. I'm using this recipe: http://chefinyou.com/2009/11/roti-canai-recipe/ And using salted butter instead of ghee. When it gets to the dough stretching phase, I can get it thin but not super thin. After I've folded it it's at least a cm thick and I have to roll it such that it's flat enough for cooking. How do I get my dough super thin and stretchy? it also ends up very crispy and doesn't tear like it should after cooking. What do you think I'm doing wrong?

I would guess your main problem is the protein in the flour. To get that stretchy dough that will not tear you need bread flour. Your water, the proportion between kneading and resting of the dough, and the salt also matter. The recipe you are using has way too much fat in the dough. The leaner version suggested by bonCodigo is closer to the needed proportions. YouTube has a video channel on roti canai. Flour. You can buy roti flour from an ethnic grocery store, but many of the chain supermarkets in the US now carry bread flour. It has higher protein content without being whole grain. Different flours have different proportions of gluten. Those with lower content (called weak flours) being better for cakes and those higher content (strong flours), better for breads. Gluten is not one protein, but a mixture of two protein families: gliadins, which give the dough its plasticity, and glutenins, which give the dough its strength. Different strains of wheat have different ratios of gliadins to glutenins, hence the need to find an appropriate flour. In the US and Canada, high protein flours tend to be optimized for loaf breads and not flat breads, so some hunting around for a good brand may be needed. Ghee The recipes on the net vary dramatically in the amount of fat added to the dough. The basic process of dough making is to get the water to break up the gluten in the flour and then stretch those giant molecules to create a network of stringy, tangled molecules. Too much fat interferes with this process. About 5g of fat for every 100g of flour is a good ratio. As ghee adds flavor, the trick to make a dough with higher ghee content is to think of it as a croissant and fold the fat in after the dough has incorporated some water. This is done by brushing the ghee in later stages of stretch and fold. Kneading and resting Making the network of gluten proteins requires energetic changes. Lots of water and rest could do it (as in no-knead breads) and so could a little water, a little rest, and a lot of kneading. With flat breads one does not need to wait for the yeasts to create the bubbles in the dough. The resting is for the water to do its work of untangling the gluten. The trick is to know if the water activity, resting, and kneading have brought the dough to the right point. There are many dough tests that are better explained through a video. The dough in the leaner recipe is a wetter dough that is a bit trickier to knead by hand. The basic idea is to place it on an oiled countertop, pinch a corner, and fold it over. Repeat a few times and it will become easier to handle without having to add extra flour as it often suggested. Water. Don't use tap water. It may be too alkaline, to hard, or too chlorinated. Andrew Whitley in his Bread Matters book has a chapter on how guilty he felt using Evian to make his bread, but it improved his bread. For flat breads one is less worried that the chlorine in the water will kill the yeast, but depending on your tap water composition, the other chemicals could be an issue.

I have an Atlantic salmon fillet in my frig at the moment, but I really have no idea what the normal cooking temperature and time are for a salmon fillet. What's the best temp and time to cook a 1lb salmon fillet in the oven?

When you're determining the doneness by time, you're doing it wrong :) There are too many differences between individual fish to go just by weight, thickness, oven temperature, and time. The best way is to measure the internal temperature (stick a thermometer into the thickest part of the fillet); I like about 120 F (50 C) for salmon (carryover cooking raises the temperature a little higher after taking it out of the pan), but then it has to be good quality fish. You need to check early and often, because it can go from undercooked to overcooked fairly quickly. Now, like zanlok says, my experience is mostly with pan frying, and I'd expect using the oven would be a bit slower than using a pan because of slower heat transfer; so you should be a bit safer. If you don't have a meat thermometer, an easy way to test fish for doneness is to look for translucency. Salmon can still be just a little translucent in the middle. Also, properly done fish flakes along the natural "seams". Another nice trick (which doesn't work for boneless fillets - sorry) is to find a bone in the thickest part of the fish: if it comes out fairly easily, then the connective tissues have mostly dissolved and it's done. That leaves the temperature for your oven. I would go with very high - that way the fish gets the least possible time to dry out (which is going to be a big risk with this cooking method, I would think - unless you wrap your salmon in bacon or something like that). At a guess, I'd try 450 F (230 C).

I just found an old jar of Beef Bouillon cubes and although there is no expiration date, I'm a bit skeptical about using them - do they go bad?

Taste them. Bouillon cubes contain enough salt to preserve them from spoilage, but the flavor (which, after all, is why you're using them) may weaken, dull, and change over the years. If you still like their flavor, then go ahead and use them.

I have a large gouda cheese wheel that I need to cut first in half, then quarters etc. I have seen cheese wheels broken down using a scoring tool and what appears to be a handled wedge tool. That wedge tool is used instead of cutting. Does anyone know where I can get these tools or an easier method of breaking down my wheel?

Soft cheeses are best sliced using wire, which is easy to work with and avoids squishing the cheese. Hard cheeses, like Parmesan, are difficult to cut with a wire. These cheeses are often (as you say) scored and then split with a prying action. If the cheese is sufficiently dry, it will easily break apart in sections. You can do this with an ordinary knife, or use a specialized cheese knife such as these. Gouda is kind of in a middle ground, being a semi-hard cheese. Some specimens may be too soft to pry apart, and others may be too hard to easily cut with a wire. That said, I would probably try the wire first (the prying apart method usually only works with very hard cheeses). The age of your cheese will give you a rough indication of how hard it is-- Gouda is usually aged anywhere from 1 month to 3 years.

Is it safe use half-eaten bones from a family dinner meal to make stock? Or is this unsanitary, and it's better to just obtain bones through filleting and deboning while raw or after slow or pressure cooking?

It's not sanitary, in the sense of following the health rules. Especially since it's unlikely that you're following the two-hour guidelines: the gnawed bones have been in the danger zone enough to potentially pick up an enterobacter that produced heat-stable toxins. Boiling will not fix that. And having been in somebody's mouth increases the chance that such bacteria is one that infects humans. Consider it this way: even if you're not squicked out by the basic concept, how would you feel if the bones had been left out on the plate for a day? A week? As for whether it's safe, the short answer is "no". The odds it being actually dangerous are pretty low. The food safety rules are designed to keep the most at-risk people safe: small children, people with compromised immune systems, etc. Given how many other opportunities there are for food-borne infections to be picked up, I'd consider something that I picked up and simmered for many hours to be about as free from pathogens as anything I got out of the dirt, i.e. vegetables, which we often eat raw. So I'll admit to having done it, but I wouldn't feed it to anybody except myself.

Last year, I made a simple pepper relish out of some hot peppers that are grown on a local farm. The method I used was to saute the whole peppers for a short time in olive oil, then blend them in a food processor with vinegar, salt, and a little sugar. This turned out to be a really tasty treat, great on pizza, sandwiches, sausage, just about anything. This year, I repeated the process. The relish is the single hottest thing I have ever put in my mouth, bar none. It's excruciating. It's so hot that after eating something like an eighth of a teaspoon half and hour ago, my nose membranes are still burning. So this concoction is sitting in my fridge, and I have two questions: first, how long can I expect it to last? My thinking is that with the vinegar and salt (no sugar this time), I should expect it to last approximately forever. Second, what can I do to turn this volatile relish into something I'd happily add to a cheese sandwich?

I would dilute it with another sauce made the same way but with non-hot peppers if you want to make more of the same sauce you had last year. If you just want to use this up, two of my favourite sauces involve adding sriracha (which is pretty hot) to other sauces: added to mayo you can call it "sriracha aoli" as though you were on Top Chef, and it's yummy as a dipping sauce for meatballs, little pastry hors d'oeuvres and the like; added to plum sauce it is great in the places most people use plum sauce. I also put both sriracha and ketchup (but don't mix them) on hamburgers. So try mixing it into mayo, plum sauce, or ketchup, and see if you like what you've created.