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Is it safe to cook in a Teflon pot that has blistered and peeled and produced fumes from previously being heated too high? This is what the bottom of the pot looks like

The simple answer is not really. Avocados have a high fat content relative to other fruit, but they're only about 20% fat, which is much less than any other cooking fats. If you add enough avocado to provide the fat content for a cake, you'll also be adding too much water and all the other flavours of avocado, which I assume you don't want.

In one of my previous questions, it was indicated that animal oils (saturated) would have a longer lifetime than unsaturated oils. However, given good hygiene and properly fresh oil use, what would the difference in caloric intake be, when choosing between these two oils?

The calorie intake is the same; a gram of fat has 9 calories.

My wife is making a cake for some kid, and she asked me to come up with something brilliant to project an image of the Paw Patrol dog (like this guy) she needs to draw on the cake, but we don't have a projector - apparently that's what they use to draw on cakes, to project the outline of the drawing and "follow the lines" with icing. Short of an actual projector, what technique can she use to do this?

That is totally doable. Just print out an appropriately sized copy of the desired picture and put a piece of waxed paper over it. Using a piping bag, trace the picture with frosting, filling it in. Then freeze the frosting and waxed paper. Once it is frozen, peel away the waxed paper, and put the pieces on the cake. Here is a great pictorial of the process.

Fudge is arguably the most delicious substance known to man. With its rich, creamy taste and seemingly endless variety of flavours, I can't be the only person who really likes this stuff. Oddly enough though, it's very difficult to find anybody who sells it, and it's usually pretty damned expensive. I had no idea what fudge is actually made of. But when I looked it up, the recipe says, basically, throw three ingredients in a pan, boil it for a while, let it cool, done. As recipies go, that's pretty damned simple! So I gave it a try. And it... didn't really work. The result was like fudge... but no, not really. So then I went and did some more research, and found this other site that claims that you have to do all these complicated rituals and that you mustn't try to make fudge on a cold day and the moon has to be in the right phase and... seriously?? It's this hard? The long and short of it is this: How hard is it to make good fudge? Is this something that an average person, with no expert training, working in a normal domestic kitching, should be able to pull off relatively easily? Or is this for the hardcore experts only? Is it realistic for me to be attempting this? I honestly can't tell whether I just need a little more practise to get this right, or whether I'm attempting something so hopelessly difficult that I'm doomed to eternal disappointment. (FWIW, my first batch was nearly inedable. I changed a few things, and my second batch was better, but still not quite right. If there's some hope that this could work, I can ask more specific questions. Right now I just want to know whether what I'm trying to do is feasible in the first place.)

Like so many things, if you know what you are trying to do, fudge is not difficult to get right. Fudge is a high fat candy. In the US chocolate is implied but the addition of chocolate doesn't change the process. You want a solid, creamy candy with a smooth texture. As Elendil wrote, it is important to ensure that you cook the candy to the correct temperature- but that is only half of the problem. As the candy cools it will form crystals. In order to have a smooth texture you have to make those crystals as small as possible. The bigger they are the grainier the candy will be. The slower the crystals form the larger they will be able to grow. For a smooth texture we want to form crystals as quickly as possible. Crystals require a trigger to set them off- such as a seed crystal or agitation. If the candy is allowed to cool undisturbed and with no seed sugar crystals in the pot no crystals will form. It will be like a bomb ready to go off at the slightest provocation- this is what we want. After it is cooled we stir it like mad to form all our crystals all at once- fast and small. Fudge is very forgiving in that it is easy to start over. Unlike an egg custard that when it breaks is unrecoverable- the sugar crystals that ruin fudge are easy to fix. You just add a little water, melt the candy back down, and start over. Tricks to prevent premature crystallization Prevent errant crystals! A lid is placed on the pot for the last few minutes of cooking. This causes condensation to wash any errant sugar crystals off of the sides of the pot. A single errant crystal can ruin your fudge. Don't agitate the candy When the candy is cooling it can't be stirred or bumped. Add distractions I consider this cheating and it is unnecessary but some recipes reduce the risk of premature crystallization by adding things like corn syrup or marshmallow creme.

I need a little liquidy version of Nutella for a recipe, how can I achieve this? I tried blending Nutella with milk but its a messy procedure, is there a clean way to make Nutella more liquidy?

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_burrito Two key technologies that made the San Francisco burrito possible are the large flour tortilla and tortilla steamers, which together increase the flexibility, stretch, and size of the resulting tortilla. The tortilla steamer saturates the gluten-heavy tortilla with moisture and heat, which increase the capacity of the tortilla to stretch without breaking. This in turn allows for the size of the San Francisco burrito. Corn tortillas, the original indigenous pre-Columbian form of the tortilla, cannot achieve either the size or the flexibility of the flour tortilla, and thus cannot be used to make a San Francisco burrito. A few San Francisco taquerias grill the tortillas instead of steaming them, using heat and oil instead of steam; and a few grill the finished product before the final step of wrapping it in aluminum foil. The aluminum foil wrapping, which is present whether the customer is eating in the restaurant or taking out, acts as a structural support to ensure that the tortilla does not rupture. One of the main difficulties of the San Francisco burrito is the issue of structural integrity, but skilled burrito makers consistently produce huge burritos that do not burst when handled or eaten. A successful large burrito depends on an understanding of the outer limit of potential burrito volume, correct steam hydration, proper wrapping/folding technique, and assuring that excess liquid has been removed from the burrito ingredients prior to inclusion.

I am using the vanishing oatmeal cookie recipe on the container of Quaker oatmeal. I do not like the way the cookies turn out. I am looking for a more chewy or softer cookie. It calls for two eggs - would reducing the eggs to one make them more chewy? I'm not experienced in making adjustments to recipes so I'm not sure if the eggs are the problem. I thought they might be the problem because I really loved the results I got from a sugar cookie recipe that only had one egg. The full ingredients list is: 1/2 Cup(s) (1 stick) plus 6 tablespoons butter, softened 3/4 Cup(s) firmly packed brown sugar 1/2 Cup(s) granulated sugar 2 Eggs 1 Teaspoon(s) vanilla 1-1/2 Cup(s) all-purpose flour 1 Teaspoon(s) Baking Soda 1 Teaspoon(s) ground cinnamon 1/2 Teaspoon(s) salt (optional) 3 Cup(s) Quaker® Oats (quick or old fashioned, uncooked) 1 Cup(s) raisins

More crunchy without eggs to moisten. Another factor is how long the mixture sits to absorb the liquid egg before baking. Longer = chewier I use molasses and white sugar in place of the brown sugar and that also makes them more tender less crunchy. Also adding 1/2c more oats to recipe will be chewier if they aren't over Baked/dry.

I have run into this a few times. I soak dry posole overnight, and then add it to my sweated/sauteed vegetables, add water, and stir it regularly, and it still takes over 4 hours for the kernels to pop. Is there a part of the process I am missing or doing wrong, or could I just be dealing with old posole? Posole is essentially Nixtamalized Corn, or hominy.

Use a pressure cooker. Try for example this recipe: http://ljcny.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/chicken-pozole/ where dried hominy is cooked in a pressure cooker.

The dish is simple. I usually just boil beans, add sautéed onions and garlic, season with cumin, then eat with steamed rice. I love the flavor as it is. I have a problem with the texture. If I leave the water in the beans, the dish becomes, well, watery (I don't want soup). If I drain the water, I'm left with a rather dry rice and bean dish. Rather than draining the water, I'd like to add something that would change its texture. I've tried thickening the dish with flour and cornstarch, but I end up with a pastey texture. I'd like a more syrupy/creamy texture (think baked beans from a can). Suggestions?

What I would suggest is rather than adding a syrup, to take some of your cooked beans, cook them a bit more, then liquify them in a blender. This should give you a thick sauce that tastes like the beans, therefore compliments them perfectly. You can then thicken them very slightly if the consistency is still too runny, be sparing with the flour though. In fact, you could probably make something satisfactory by simply using less thickener. If you have a pasty, sticky sauce it's a classic symptom of too much thickener. Try making a roux with some butter and flour, cook it awhile for a dark roux which gives deeper color and more flavor. You can then add the roux in small amounts to your cooking liquid until you get the right consistency. If you are pressed for time and have some available a couple big spoons of refried beans may just do the trick too.

I'm preparing to make pumpkin seed brittle, and I notice the recipe is very similar to the peanut brittle recipe I used before. Unfortunately, it turned out awful! The sugar never quite turned "light amber" even after almost an hour, and eventually I noticed it start to crystallize. I tried pouring it anyway and ended up with basically a clear sheet of sugar that dissolved into crystals when broken (I left off the nuts because I was pretty sure it was ruined - the nuts tossed in spices made a lovely alternate snack instead). I notice several comments having similar issues, but also many more saying "It worked perfectly the first time!" What did I do wrong? Should I use a different recipe? Is there some way to make this more foolproof? One of my friends started babbling about "invert syrup" being the cure for my ills... Recipe is at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/peanut-brittle-recipe/index.html . My attempt was done in spring in Manchester, UK, so while it may have been a bit damp, there wasn't likely to be a ton of humidity and no altitude problems.

You didn't heat it enough. "Turning light amber" means that you want caramel. What you did instead was to evaporate water from a sugar syrup, without reaching caramelization temperature. The crystals are not unusual (at some point you get a supersaturated syrup, after enough water has evaporated), but it is better if they don't happen, so don't give them occasion (use a clean pot, don't stir, etc. I suspect the oiling of the pan is meant to reduce nucleation sites). The recipe is a bit strange anyway, using way too much water. Maybe you can try another one, if this has negative comments. The regular recipes will use some more conventional nut instead of pumpkin seeds, but this doesn't affect the physics of making the caramel. And do yourself a favor and use a candy thermometer. There are experienced cooks who can make sugar candy without one, but if you are not one of them, you'll save yourself lots of errors (and probably enough money in expensive ingredients for the thermometer to pay for itself). Here is another recipe for brittle. While I haven't tried to make it, I strongly suspect that they know better what they are doing - not at least because they give you the exact temperatures you are aiming for. This is a site with lots of useful tips for candy making, and if you really want to try this without a thermometer, use their chart to learn about the different stages of sugar syrup and caramel. And choose your recipes carefully. Candymaking (both sugar and chocolate) is even more exact than baking. Directions like "put back on medium for some time" are practically useless. In order to successfully cook a candy recipe, you have to know if not the exact temperature, then at least the desired sugar syrup stage. Maybe somebody who has made lots of brittles could work with a recipe like the foodnetwork one, noticing the problems on the fly and making the appropriate corrections towards the ideal brittle mass. If you don't know what the ideal brittle mass looks like before you start, it is better not to try it that way and go for an exact recipe.

https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/sky-high-chocolate-mousse-pie/#tasty-recipes-69503 Using this recipe, calls for cream of tartar. I don't have that, I've only got tartaric acid. Would that work? Or anything else in substitute? Thanks

Your acid will work in place of potassium bitartrate, AKA cream of tartar. Lemon juice, vinegar, or even baking powder will also work. Six good substitutes: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/cream-of-tartar-substitutes Most common baking powders are a mix of sodium bicarbonate and cream of tartar. As per link, add 1.5 tsp baking powder in place of 1 tsp cream of tartar.

I whipped up a cream cheese filling for sweet bread. By accident, I added salt instead of sugar... an entire cup. Now I have disgustingly salty mixture of 16 oz cream cheese (2 packages), two eggs, six tablespoons of AP flour, and a cup of salt. I'd prefer not to waste it. Any ideas? Maybe lots of spinach and more eggs and bake it quiche style? Or do you think it's beyond salvaging? Worried it might take an absurd amount of salt-free added ingredients to adjust for the entire cup of salt.

This is too salty to be worth salvaging. You could use small quantities of the mixture in place of salt in recipes where the cheese would be complementary. But since it is so salty you cannot use very much; it would take weeks to get through it all. Salt is pretty cheap, so instead, I would just discard the mixture. To go with your quiche idea, take a look at a few recipes. They use between 1 and 2 teaspons of salt for a single large quiche. Since you have a cup of salt to deal with, this is 48 teaspoons, or at least 24 quiches! I assume you do not want to bake this many.

I'm following a recipe that calls for 200g of dried chickpeas, soaked overnight. I have two 28 fl. oz. (796 ml) cans of chick peas, packed in water. This is made complicated by two things: You can't easily convert a weight measurement to a volume measurement. (What is the density of a chickpea?) The recipe wants me to measure dry chickpeas, and I have canned chickpeas. (How much of the weight is water?) How much of my canned chickpeas should I use?

There is no exact conversion because there are so many different varieties of chickpeas or any bean types for that matter Their water absorption rate and amount is effected by many things including how they have been stored, have they been heat treated on import, and what time of year they where grown! My rough rule of thumb for beans in general is 2.5 ±.5 times the volume and 2 ±.5 the weight after an overnight soak With our local chickpeas it's 2.2 times the weight after 10 hours at 20°C (on the bench) 200g should be around 440g of soaked chickpeas. 1 cup of chickpeas is around 240g, so just shy of two cups of soaked chickpeas should do it

When I first started baking pizza years ago, I read somewhere that one should toss some cornmeal on a hot pizza stone after preheating, just before putting the pizza on. Since I tend to bake pizza at the highest setting on the oven, the cornmeal (or semolina, which I later switched to) would immediately smoke and burn. I set off a smoke alarm in my house a couple times. And I always had this wasted layer of burnt cornmeal/semolina which I'd wipe off the stone after each use. After a few years of doing this, I realized that my pizza dough never stuck to the stone in the oven (though I occasionally had trouble getting it off the peel as it was going into the oven). So I just stopped doing it. Even with the minimal amount of semolina I tend to use on my peel these days, I never have had a case of the dough sticking to either a preheated pizza stone or a pizza steel. (I have had cases where the pizza got stuck due to sauce or cheese leaking through a hole or over the side, but a little dusting of cornmeal/semolina wouldn't have prevented that sticking.) Recently, I watched Alton Brown's pizza bake on his fun Mega-Bake Oven contraption. I noticed he too tosses what appears to be semolina on the hot pizza steel (which smokes immediately) before loading the pizza on. I've seen this recommended occasionally in other reputable sources. I can certainly understand putting some sort of cornmeal/semolina/flour on a cold pizza stone or steel, for those who tend to bake raw dough without preheating first. But is there really a good reason to throw some semolina or cornmeal onto a screaming hot pizza stone before baking, assuming a "normal" pizza dough (of some sort)? I would assume that perhaps some recipes might stick, though I tend to use a very high hydration dough that sticks easily to my hands and the peel, but it always releases easily in the oven. I also have baked many loaves of various kinds of breads and again have never had a problem with sticking. Am I just lucky? Or are there some particular recipes/stones that stick more? Or is there some other reason for doing this?

I agree with you and don't do it either. Rather, like you, I put some cornmeal or semolina on the peel, upon which I construct my pizza. This, of course, allows the pizza to slid off and onto the steel. Clearly, some of the cornmeal or semolina winds up on the steel itself, but I don't toss it on intentionally. Never had sticking issues. I use a very high hydration dough. I also don't use anything on the stone when I bake bread...no sticking.

When I buy 'cook at home' poppadoms or order from a restaurant/takeaway they are usually very crispy and expand and bubble up as soon as you fry them. I tried a recipe for homemade poppadoms which consisted of gram flour and water (plus some seasoning and cumin), which I made into a dough and needed for a few minutes until it was smooth, rolled it into paper thin rounds, dried out gently then shallow-fried in about a cm of hot oil. They did not expand at all and turned out more like something between crackers and a flat bread. I'm guessing they need some kind of raising agent to make them like the restaurant style ones? Are these style of poppadoms easy to make at home? Does anyone know the best way to make them?

I know this thread is a bit old, but just in case you are still struggling... You might be using the wrong flour. Papads are made from Urad Atta which is made from Urad Lentils, not from gram flour (besan) which is made from Chickpeas. It can be confusing because Urad Atta is sometimes called Black Gram Flour. If you can't find it, buy skinless urad lentils, dried ones, and grind it up in a spice grinder. I haven't tried, but I gather it works fine. Then to that you add a tsp of Papad Kharo, otherwise known as Bicarbonate of Soda, and flavour how you like. But Urad flour is essential. Good luck!

When I prepare a poppy seeds filling (e.g. for a pie), I currently use an old-style coffee grinder. It takes small amounts (like 2 tbsp at a time) of poppy seeds and grinds them into powder in 2-3 minutes. The resulting quality is OK for me, but the process is not very easy as I often need to stop for the grinder to cool down, to move around the seeds that got stuck to the inner walls, and it takes quite some time when you need to process 200-300 g of poppy seeds that way. So, my question is: Is there any kitchen appliance or just some other way to grind poppy seeds easier without losing on the quality?

You need to acquire a poppy seed grinder (picture #1). It's still not easy to grind a lot of poppy seed — you will need to break out your supply of elbow grease — but it's much more efficient than a coffee grinder. It also does a better job, because it actually crushes the seeds to release all their oils and other goodness, rather than haphazardly cutting apart some of the seeds and not others. (They do make electric grinders [picture #2], but they're aimed at bakeries and the like, not for home use.) 1. 2. If you're stuck using what you have, namely the coffee grinder, try adding sugar. It helps keep the poppy seed from sticking everywhere you don't want it to. Naturally, you then need to take the sugar quantity into account when you're actually using the poppy seed.

A japanese cheesecake is basically like a cheesecake fused with a spongecake. When i beat the egg whites they peak perfectly then i am required to get 1/3 of the egg white mixture and fold it into the cake mixture then fold in the rest of the egg whites. Then i pour it into a pan and place it into a baine-marie and bake it for about 1 hour and 10mins at 180 degrees celcius. In the oven it raises perfectly and looks beautiful, then when i take it out of the oven to rest it slowly starts to shrink and is no longer tall but rather about 1-2cm shorter (20cm cake pan). Can anyone please help me? Anyone have any suggestions or any techniques on how to prevent this from happening?

Try letting it cool in the oven. The tip is from the blog "The Little Teochew", which writes: Leave to cool in oven with door ajar, about 30mins to 1 hour. Sudden changes in temperature may cause the cake to cool too quickly and collapse. Further tips can by found in the blog post: Japanese Cheesecake

I like to drink my coffee with milk, but my new place of work has no refrigerator I can use. Is there any milk or milk-substitute I can use that will not taste funny around 15 o'clock, when I remove it from my home fridge at 8? What if I buy 1L of long-lasting milk and bring in ca 100ml in a airtight container a day for coffee, will that be OK? Maybe a substitute like almond, soy, rice or oatmilk will keep better? Will it taste good? Another option I can see is powder milk, but that does seems like a hassle. Bonus points for minimal amount of waste.

I would invest in a small thermos bottle, about the size of what you need for one day. They are not only designed to keep hot food hot, they can also keep cold food cold. Choose a size that will be as full as possible when you start, it will keep better. This is what the small B&B we‘re currently staying at supplies to their guests. If it’s good for an early morning tea, it’ll be good for afternoon coffee as well: If you want to go all the way, you can pre-chill the container, then fill it with well-chilled milk from your home fridge. You could even freeze some milk as ice cubes, if you find that it doesn’t stay cold enough until the end of your work day or your last coffee break. Store the thermos away from heat sources and not in warm sunlight, of course. Note that you also have the “two-hours in the danger zone” buffer and that “unsafe” doesn’t automatically mean “spoiled”. Especially when the milk is still quite cold and only shortly after the two-hour window the risk for a healthy adult should be small. No recommendation, just a thought. Switching to milk alternatives won’t change anything where food safety is concerned.

Maybe it's called something else, but to me a grilled cheese sandwich with extra stuff in it is an "ultimate". The extra stuff I'm referring to is generally tomato, onion (thin sliced raw or grilled) and bacon (already cooked). The problem I'd like to correct is that often the cheese has difficulty fusing the sandwich together because it doesn't stick well to the other ingredients. I've tried a few different placements of the ingredients but they all usually end with on slice of bread not really "attached" the way a proper grilled cheese should be. For example: Bread, Cheese, Other, More Cheese, Bread : this tend to give me two separate slices of bread with cheese and some ingredients in the cheese. Is there any special technique to keeping this thing together as one piece?

Ignore the purists. If it's got cheese in it, and you're grilling it, it's grilled cheese. The problem is this: your cold ingredients are keeping the cheese from properly melting through. The cheese is what binds the whole thing together. If there is not enough cheese, or if the cheese hasn't transitioned completely to gooey deliciousness, the sandwich is going to fall apart. The solution is to heat your cold ingredients (at least to near room temp), and to cook the grilled cheese longer, at a lower temperature, so the heat has time to penetrate before the bread gets overcooked.

I am single. When I buy strawberries or blueberries they don't always last until I get to eat them. Would they last longer kept in water? (in Tupperware) I know strawberries can be frozen in syrup. I don't want to do that. I sometimes make muffins with half the blueberries just so I can eat them all.

As Elendil says, for long storage, you can just freeze as-is, in a plastic bag or other container. As for refrigeration, there are all sorts of guidelines for various fruits, and other questions here have covered storage recommendations for specific types of fruit. You specifically ask about strawberries and blueberries. Never put fresh berries in water, and don't even wash them until you are ready to eat them or use them (assuming you want them to last longer). For reputable information on strawberries, see here: The optimum storage temperature for strawberries in the home is 32° to 36°F (0° to 2°C). The optimum humidity for storage of berries to prevent water loss and shriveling is 90 to 95 percent. Store the fruit in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator. Keep strawberries packaged in closed plastic clamshell containers or place fruit in a partially opened plastic bag to maintain high humidity. Do not wash berries until just before eating or preserving. Washing will add moisture and will cause the berries to spoil more rapidly. Strawberries can only be stored for up to 7 days under optimum conditions, and that shelf life also depends on how ripe the fruit was when purchased or picked. The same general recommendations apply to blueberries: keep your fridge cold (just above freezing), keep humidity high by storing in crisper drawer and in containers, don't wash until ready to use. Blueberries which are picked and cooled properly should last at least a week in the fridge, perhaps even a couple weeks if you buy them relatively freshly picked. In general, keep the berries cold as much as possible, keep them dry, and store in high humidity. Check on a regular basis and remove any berries showing signs of rot or mold. There are various myths about keeping berries at room temperature until they are cleaned or washed, or washing fruits in vinegar to preserve them, or whatever -- don't believe them: no scientific tests have shown them to work. Just keep the fruit cold and the humidity high by keeping them in their containers (though not in a completely sealed container: that will also cause faster rot, which is why the little holes exist in the plastic supermarket containers).

Specifically, if I work from a started paste that require adding coconut milk, what would be a good substitute?

Half and half or heavy cream is a pretty good substitute. It has similar fat/water suspension, reduces and thickens similarly, and emulsifies similarly. You lose the coconut flavor, but it cooks similarly and you keep the texture. You cannot substitute coconut cream, because it is too rich, which changes the texture of the sauce greatly, and doesn't do as good a job of getting flavors out of spices. Incidentally, I highly suggest you pick up a box of instant coconut milk powder. It's not as good as the canned stuff (needs whisking), but because it's nonperishable you don't have to use the whole container at a time. This helps avoid the "oh crap, used the last can!" moments you get with canned coconut milk.

I enjoy stuffed bell peppers, but while green peppers are substantially cheaper than red or yellow, they're also more bitter. Reading on the web, it looks like peeling the pepper will reduce the bitterness. Can I use this technique for this application, or will that also destroy the integrity of the pepper, making it unsuitable for stuffing?

Absolutely. Look to chiles en nogada, or chiles relleno, for a common example of something similar. Poblanos are admittedly a much firmer and more flavorful pepper, but you can definitely stuff bell peppers with the same process. By charring the peppers first - either directly on a flame (e.g. on a gas stove or grill) or under a broiler, you can quickly blacken the skin, making it easy to remove. Doing this quickly enough can help avoid making the flesh of the pepper too soft and fragile. You can then (carefully) stuff the pepper with the filling of your choice, and finish in the oven. If you're really good, you can get it all in through the top where you remove the stem, but it's much easier to split it down the side in just one place, and carefully tuck it back together after stuffing. I've often seen stuffed bell peppers sitting upright, with the top removed; if you've roasted them first you'll probably have better luck with them whole, lying on their sides.

I've made Kimchi using this recipe (german link, but I think it should be a pretty standard recipe). I let it ferment for a week at room temperature and everything looked fine (it was covered in water/brine throughout). I put it in the fridge today (to keep fermenting for another 2-3 weeks), and after a couple of hours in the fridge it now looks like all the water has been removed (I assume it was soaked up by the vegetables). I am worried that it will go bad now, as it's not covered in water anymore. But I am unsure what to do. Is this normal? If not, what went wrong, and how can I prevent it in the future? What should I do now? Refill the glasses with water? And if so, should I use salt water?

It looks like non-stick to me, judging by the way the damage looks around the edges of the scraped parts… You can't season non-stick & this 'smooth' type of non-stick tends to be the 'old fashioned teflon' type, which will not be good at high temperatures. There are modern non-stick coatings which do work at wok temperatures [& the woks are not actually particularly expensive, $£€ 25-35ish depending on size. I have one at home.] You could test it empirically, but you'd need to do it outdoors over a grill/barbecue or indoors with good ventilation. ['Teflon' is not good to breathe.] Subject it to one or more heat cycles as though you were going to high temperature cook or season it. This is far too hot for 'teflon' to survive, hence the ventilation - this is a 'kill or cure' method. Rub it round with a thin layer of oil for seasoning each cycle & see how it looks after several layers. Then once cold, leave it to soak for a couple of hours in water & see what happens if you give it a scrub round with a plastic pan-scrub. If it survives that treatment, use it. If the surface starts to peel off, either sand it all off & treat as 'raw' pressed steel, or bin it & get a proper high-temperature one.

When I made a dough, I dissolved natural organic yeast in water, but it didn’t make bubbles. Is this a sign that something is wrong?

I read two or three different questions here: Should I dissolve yeast in water? a. Should I proof yeast? Should I mix wet ingredients into dry, or dry into wet? 1) You don't need to dissolve active dry yeast in lukewarm water anymore (if you're using some other kind of yeast, this may not apply). You may have heard over the past year or so that active dry yeast (ADY) has been reformulated into a smaller particle size, and can now be used without dissolving it first – as had always been the requirement.... You don't need to dissolve active dry yeast in lukewarm water before using it. (Even though it still says you should dissolve it on the back of the yeast packet, if you buy your yeast in packets.) "Active Dry Yeast: Do you really need to dissolve it first?" King Arthur Flour 1a) Proofing yeast doesn't improve anything in the dough, it's just a means for you to discover whether your yeast is still active. If you bought it relatively recently, from a relatively busy story, you probably don't need to worry. Yeast packages often have expiration dates. I've found them to be not all that accurate. 2) Typically we add wet to dry: Order of combining wet and dry ingredients when baking The gist is, dry powdery substances tend to float on top of water and form a skin. Adding the water to the flour (better) prevents this and tends to allow the wet ingredients to be incorporated more easily. So, putting that together, you should mix the flour, salt and yeast (unless you think you need to proof it), then mix in the water (and oil, if you're using it).

I'm looking for a food processor that I can make nut butters (peanut & almond) in. No reviews on Amazon show any promising information about being able to blend nuts to a buttery texture and the ones I've bought so far have just ground them up into dust. Are some food processors better than others for making nut butters? If so, what makes them better? How can I choose the best one for this task?

Resurrecting this thread in case people end up searching for it. The only requirement for which food processor is that the motor is powerful. Underpowered will tax the motor too much. If the FP says that you can knead bread dough in it, it almost certainly will be fine. Run long enough with a cutting blade, and you will get a smooth butter. Blenders mainly have powerful enough motors, but they are not shaped properly to get thick/pasty substances in contact with the blades. My Vitamix would work for a cup of nuts, but more would be too annoying. Top end Breville FP that I have will make smooth nut butters, with the caveat that some nuts (hazelnut. Walnut) always feel somewhat “pasty” in comparison to peanuts or cashews. I don’t add additional oil, so perhaps if I did so the mouth feel would be better.

For both long-grain (Jasmine) and short-grain rice I typically rinse the rice with cold water to remove some of the starch and to clean the rice a bit. What temperature (hot/warm/cold) should I use to wash the rice, and why does it matter? Thanks!

It is usually recommended that basmati and jasmine not be rinsed because they are not overly starchy and the taste is better unrinsed. American style short grain rice and japanese rice is usually rinsed to provide a cleaner flavor, but this can also wash away some of the vitamin fortification. Do not rinse risotto rice, since the starchiness is important to the dish. When you do rinse rice, the purpose is to clean it and reduce the starch, but not to cook it, so cold water is probably best, but it likely does not matter much. In the end, rinsing or not is not terribly noticeable, and mostly comes down to taste. You will definitely see both sides argued well. To me, this usually means either way is fine.

What's the best place and way to store potatoes so they keep fresh longest?

Best thing to do is to keep them out of the light in an cool dark dry place. I usually put them in a hessian bag to try and keep the moisture away. Don't store them in the fridge or anywhere that gets direct sunlight.

I roast red bell peppers all the time. I use a number of methods, but most typically I slice them in half longitudinally, roast at 450F cut side down on a foil lined sheet tray treated with non-stick spray until they are thoroughly blackened and blistered. Straight out of the oven I put them in a sealed Tupperware type container (to steam) until they are cool enough to handle, then the blackened skins come right off. Easy, and I love the results. I'd love to do the same kind of thing with smaller, sometimes hotter peppers (jalapeno, serrano, poblano and even habanero), but my attempts have always failed. The outermost skin doesn't blister away from the "meat" of the pepper the way it does for bell peppers, and by the time the skins are blackened, the meat of the pepper is mush. The biggest problem seems to be that the bell pepper has a thick, meaty, juicy (ready to generate steam) wall, while the other peppers do not. I can get that roasted caramelization effect easily with any pepper, but I'd like to eliminate most of the peel while maintaining some of the structure of the pepper. Does anyone know of a way to pull this off? (so to speak)

For ramen, udon, and soba, it is not uncommon for Japanese restaurants to use multiple broths for layered flavors. My friend is from Yamagata in Japan and several of her favorite Udon places will make a sturdy broth with dashi as well as pork and chicken stocks. When I make noodles at home, I almost always start with dashi and fortify with chicken or pork stock. While the aroma of a good dashi is strong, often times it isn't solid enough to feel full-bodied. Try adding other stocks/broths and see where that gets you. Use neckbones and feet if you make your own pork stock.

I ask if there are websites which explain how to store/preserve (in the fridge, freezer, out) all kind of foodstuff. Examples: eggs, milk, meat, specific fruits, specific vegetables, etc. This book provides such descriptions.

The resource we generally use here on Seasoned Advice is stilltasty.com. Feel free to edit this answer to include other resources.

In other words, what is the maximum temperature of water I can use in yeast bread dough? I don't proof the yeast, I use rapid dry yeast and I just add it to the other ingredients and knead it in.

There are multiple temperature points per yeast family might be of Interest: The growth limit temperature, see this paper. It indicates as high as 45°C for some and 20°C for others. 'Injury' temperature (for bread and brew generally thought be around 120°F) Death temperature. Keep in mind for bread: Bread Yeast at higher temperatures produces off-flavours that may be undesirable to your goal. If you are trying to speed up your dough, you may want to add the yeast to water with some food and let develop for a while before mixing in the flour.

I have a trusty pumpkin bread that I make countless loaves of every year. My wife and I love Chai Tea and I was curious how one could go about adapting the linked recipe above to include Chai spices or some type of Chai tea as part of the ingredients. To me this seems like the best convergence of many tasty flavors for the fall.

I just noticed that your recipe uses water. That's an ideal way to get tea flavor into things - you can replace it with concentrated tea. Assuming you use teabags, you should be able to steep two in that 2/3 cup of water. Tea is a fairly subtle flavor, so you may not taste it too much in the bread, but this is easy and doable with what you have! There's also instant tea, if you want to try to boost it - but it of course won't be as good as real, fresh tea. (You could buy chai concentrate, but I think it's usually about double strength, so not really better than you'll do on your own.) I'd then replace the spices normally in your recipe with chai spices. If you've ever made chai from scratch, you could use that recipe as a guide, but it sounds like you might not have. There's an awful lot of variety here, from region to region, and in Western variations; you could search around online for chai recipes that appeal to you. I'm not an expert (I'm from Texas!) but from what I know, here are some common spices, with the most standard ones toward the top: cardamom cinnamon fresh ginger black pepper fennel cloves Cardamom is pretty much required, and that'll help give you a flavor very different from your usual spice blend. I'd mix/grind up the spices separately from the rest, smell them to see if they're what you're looking for, and adjust as needed before mixing into the rest. Aiming for a similar total volume of spices to that of the original recipe should work fairly well. It might be a bit spicier, since you'll also have the tea, but that's probably fine. (Fresh ginger obviously won't go with the dry spices, if you use it - maybe a teaspoon or two minced?)

Normally we use charcoal in the BBQ I want to use wood for BBQ and this may generate a lot of smoke. One way to handle it, is to first make charcoal from wood, and then use this charcoal to BBQ. But is there any design for a BBQ that removes the smoke, so we can BBQ while burning wood?

The best BBQ's are wood fired, you get real wood smoke flavour. Anything else is just a just outside hotplate/grill, and might as well be electric Using charcoal is easy and safe. A simple hack is to use some small pieces of strong smoke flavour generating wood on top of your charcoal when you are actually cooking Smoke is all part of the BBQ experience, and after a little practice at fire lighting techniques, shouldn't become a big issue. Join the local Scout group as leader, and they will teach you how to make good cooking fires :-)

Next year for university I'm moving into a new house with a large chest freezer (a big upgrade from my current freezer drawer). I've always been a fan of making fruit smoothies with banana, milk, yoghurts, berries and what not however the biggest problem with this is that since I've moved out I can't afford to keep buying fruit for it to go off. So I have essentially 2 questions Firstly is it realistic to buy fruit from the market where its cheapest, I'm thinking all fruits from apples to bananas and from berries to mangoes and then just throw them straight in the freezer, will this preserve them ?? Then the next day get them out and throw them straight into a smoothie. Secondly and more preferably would I be able to buy a lot of fruit make it all into smoothies then put these into containers and freeze them, then get them out the night before so they will defrost and I can drink them for breakfast in the morning. Thanks in advance

In professional smoothie/frozen youghurt/fruit shake shops, you'll usually see the fruit frozen in small pieces for easy portioning. So raspberrys and blueberrys are fine, but you'd wnat to quarter strawberrys and cube mangoes or apples or kiwis or whatever before freezing them. The freezing process itself is important to the strucutral integrity of the fruit, and will affect its texture. However, if you only want them for smoothies/blended drinks, that isn't very important. As a usage note, remember that a home freezer compartment is usually at -4 degrees Celsius, whereas a chest freezer (deep freeze) would more commonly be at -18 degrees. A good blender won't mind either way, but your lips might find it a bit cold. Also, you might find you can buy the fruit pre-frozen from the same vendors the shops get them, in which case it will be prepared for you, and all you need is to defrost and blend. Aside from saving you the work of peeling and chopping, their freezing process may be better, and it'll probably end up being cheaper too.

I used Splenda in one of my favorite quchinni (squash) recipes and it did not rise at all. It is about 3 inches thick and is heavy as the batter was thick. Why did this happen, and is there any way to tweak the recipe?

If it is a quick bread then it should be chemically leavened with baking powder or soda. The presence, or absence, of sugar should not play a role at all in the working of baking powder. Where sugar may play a role, however, is in creaming the fat. If this recipe calls for solid fat such as butter or shortening then it will often also call for the sugar to be creamed with the fat. This step is very important as it will create the millions of little bubbles that will define the texture of the finished product. You can try adding more soda which will affect the flavor. You can try beating the butter more on it's own. I have read that some people folded beaten egg whites into the batter. I can't recommend one approach over the other. My personal opinion is that if the recipe calls for creaming butter and sugar then it is not a good candidate to use splenda.

As anyone who's put marshmallows in the microwave knows, they expand a ton! Sometimes they puff up to literally more than twice their original size (YouTube video for those who haven't seen it). So, why? At first I assumed it was because they had a lot of air in them, but that doesn't make sense. There's no way that amount of air can puff up that much from the heat! What makes marshmallows poof up so much when they are microwaved?

Marshmallows expand so much because the water in them becomes steam, and gas takes up a LOT more volume than liquid. Specifically, 1 mL of water becomes ~1.36 LITERS of vapor, before it gets heated further. That's 1000-fold expansion, before you add additional expansion as the gas is heated. Marshmallows don't have all that much water content, but when it's trapped in a stretchy gelatin matrix that holds gas readily, it only takes a bit to blow the whole thing up like a balloon. You are correct that the gas expansion on its own is insufficient; unless I've badly muddled my calculations, gas expansion from 20C to ~150C (caramelization temperature) will increase the gas volume by under 50%.

I am looking for a bread mold (or is it a pan?) that can be removed prior to baking. The reason is that it will lose the shape if I rest it before baking too long, but longer resting time in my experience makes bread more airy. I do not want to bake the bread in the mold itself - there are too many chemicals that can be released during baking cycle, and I like free-form loaves anyway. I know the loaf will keep it's shape better if it's drier but I dont like how the bread turns out in this case. This is about yeast bread, and I am referring to resting (not rising) time, immediately prior to baking. Regular round/oval shapes will work. My bread is adapted version from 'Artisan Bread in 5 minutes'. Any suggestions how to do this?

You don't need a pan or mold at all to create round or oval loaves or rolls. Properly formed loaves/rolls can be baked directly on a sheet pan or stone. They will not loose their shape if the gluten network on the outside is stretched tight. This is part of the craft of bread making. Almost all books on bread making describe this, and there are many videos easily found by googling. The height you can achieve (along with many other factors) is partially determined by the hydration of your dough. Typically, for a formless loaf, you would have a moderately low hydration--you don't want a dough that will flow under its own weight. One trick that may help, although not terribly traditional is this: form your loaf on a sheet of cooking parchment. This will make it easier to slide into your oven without disturbing or deflating the loaf. Once the loaf sets, you can remove the parchment if you wish, to allow the remainder of the baking to occur directly on your stone (assuming you have one).

I'm trying to make a curry, and failing. I'm a decent amateur home-cook, but now that I'm exploring outside of my usual cuisines, I'm at a loss how to improve my preparation of this recipe. Either that, or the recipe might just be of questionable quality... which would also be good to know. Following this recipe (automatic translation here), I end up with something that looks and smells very much like a curry, but it tastes very flat/bland, while still hot/spicy. I'm not used to talking about flavour so forgive me for this poor attempt at describing the taste (any hints on how to learn that skill?). It's spicy, but only as an after-taste, mostly in the back of the throat. Most curries I've eaten in Indian restaurants had a real strong flavour right at the first impact, which mine is lacking. Adding questionable amounts of salt after serving helped a little bit, but felt like a cheap trick to mask the issue.

The recipe basically shows how to assemble a curry powder for that "curry" flavor. What the recipe lacks, and may account for the general "blandness" that you can't put your finger on, is salt. Add a little salt, if there isn't any elsewhere in the recipe, and see if that perks up the flavor. As noted in the question, with all the spices and no salt, one would expect it to have some heat, but to be a bit bland.

I made dill pickles using an old Ukrainian recipe fermenting the cucumbers in salt water. I wanted to can them when they were finished instead of keeping 10lbs of fermented pickles in my refrigerator. I didn't want to use the salt brine the pickles fermented in,so I made a brine using 1qt white vinegar, 3tbls salt, 1tsp mustard seed,and 1/2 cup sugar. The result is really, really sour pickles! Can I open the jars and dump the brine and use salted water as canning liquid? Or what can I use?

If you are going to do anything, do it when you are ready to put the pickles in the fridge again, not when canning - acid keeps the canned pickles safe. So - leave them really sour as canned. When ready to eat a jar, open, dump the brine, add water (whether or not you salt it is up to you and the salt level in the pickles - I'd try plain water) - put it in the fridge. You might want to let that soak for a day or two, and you might want to dump it again and replace it again, depending on how things taste at that point.

Every Thanksgiving a family favorite is roasted root vegetables. Specifically: Rutabagas Parsnips (Heirloom) Carrots Beets I cut the vegetables into 0.5x0.5in (1.25x1.25 cm) strips of approximately equal size. Then, I coat them with olive oil, ground black pepper, and rosemary and roast them in the oven at 450ºF (230ºC). The problem is that they take 60-90 minutes and take up substantial space in the oven. My proposed solution this year is to parcook the vegetables the day before so they are done much faster but still develop the delicious caramelization that makes them so popular. My question is what is best method (boiling, roasting, etc) and level of doneness to take them?

If I were to do this, I'd be inclined to take cues from double cooked fries -- Cook them (parboil, in the oven, or even frying) at a lower temperature until they're cooked through (so a knife or skewer inserted comes out easily), but not browned. Let them cool, bag them up, and refrigerate them. On the day that you're going to be serving them -- preheat your pans in the oven as hot as it will go. While this is happening, toss the veggies in a little bit of oil. Spread the veggies on the pre-heated trays, and then put them into the oven. If it has convection, turn the fan on. After a few minutes (maybe 10 minutes?) pull out one tray and do your best to flip the veggies over. Then swap it with the other tray (so if it was on top, it's now on the bottom), and flip over the veggies on the second tray, and put it back in the oven (on the empty shelf) Repeat the last bullet until they're sufficiently browned to your liking. As for your specific question -- I'm not sure of the "best" way. Boiling (or simmering) is a pretty traditional way of doing this. It can end up washing away a bit of the starches, but it also tends to make the surface just a little sticky from geletanized starch, which can be a good thing -- as you can then toss them around to rough them up, giving just a little more surface area for crisping in that final roasting. But it's also easier to overcook them to where they're falling apart if you cook them in water. You can reduce this problem slightly by boiling slabs, and then cutting them into sticks after they've cooled down, but you'll also reduce that extra crispiness that you get from the starchy coating. You can also par-bake in slabs, so it's easier to turn things over as they're cooking, and then cut them up. Par-baking has the advantage that it's easier to judge how it fits on the trays you're going to use, so you know how much you need to prepare. I'd also consider par-cooking each type of vegetable individually, as it's possible that one might be cooked through before the other ones. And if you do the beets last, it'll be less mess to deal with. (I might even bag them separately, so they don't color everything else) As for the doneness to take them -- cooked through (so no one gets an undercooked bite), but before it starts changing color significantly

What's the difference between freezing meat (mainly, but vegs not excluded) in a Tupperware instead in freezer bags? Does the space and air between the meat and the recipient imply any change in texture, taste? I'm conscious about the environment, but I also think it can be more convenient storing boxes in the freezer than bags.

"Water and foods freeze differently", according to the Penn State Extension. First, you want to freeze items as quickly as possible. The faster the freezing, the smaller the ice crystals in your food. The smaller the ice crystals, the less damage to the cell structure of the food. Remember, your freezer will go through freeze-thaw cycles. This is where the potential damage occurs. Evaporation occurs during these cycles. This is known as freezer burn. One way to protect against freezer burn is to package your food with as much of the air removed as possible. So, a freezer bag will be better than Tupperware, and a vacuum sealed bag will be even better. At the very least, with a zip-style freezer bag you can use a straw to suck out much of the air...or, even better use Archiemedes principle. In terms of convenience, bags are much more effective, not only do they take up less space, but items can be spread out in the bag, as flat as possible, making thawing faster.

After boiling pasta and setting the water in which the pasta was boiled aside I noticed that after the water cooled it thickened. It sort of has the consistency of gravy. Would I be able to make gravy with this instead of using starch?

I think you should read McGee on this one. Basically he says the 'water' from boiling pasta is very rich in flavor. Italian recipes often suggest adding pasta water to adjust the consistency of a sauce, but this thick water is almost a sauce in itself. When I anointed a batch of spaghetti with olive oil and then tossed it with a couple of ladles-full, the oil dispersed into tiny droplets in the liquid, and the oily coating became an especially creamy one. Restaurant cooks prize thick pasta water. In “Heat,” his best-selling account of working in Mario Batali’s restaurant Babbo, Bill Buford describes how in the course of an evening, water in the pasta cooker goes from clear to cloudy to muddy, a stage that is “yucky-sounding but wonderful,” because the water “behaves like a sauce thickener, binding the elements and flavoring the pasta with the flavor of itself.”

I have a large gathering on St Patrick's day and serve corned beef. In years past I did all the cooking on that day and missed my own party due to all the work. Last year I cooked the beef the night before, let it cool overnight, and sliced it cold. I added water from the pot and reheated it in the oven in aluminum trays, and kept it warm in sterno racks. The taste was great but the color changed from pink to gray. Any suggestions on how to serve a large group a hot meal and still keep the color of the beef pink would be appreciated. FYI, my typical method is to cook the beef first the night before, then in the same pot with the same water cook the potatoes, carrots, and cabbage on the day of the party.

As Jay mentioned, potassium nitrate or sodium nitrite is what gives commercially made corned beef its long-lasting pink color. Home cooks can use the same chemicals. Just make sure that whichever you buy is specifically labeled for use in food. Also, since you mentioned that the corned beef you buy comes with a spice mixture, check the ingredient list to make sure it doesn't already contain either chemical. I've only ever used potassium nitrate (A.K.A. saltpeter) for corned beef. 1-2 teaspoons per gallon of water is plenty.

I am a little.paranoid because just today my son had some fried rice he was going to bring to school in a thermos like container. The food wasn't really that hot and I explained to him by the time he ate it it would be at room temp for almost 6 hours and he could get sick of he ate it. So not thinking I left the container at my house on the counter to throw away. I got distracted and didn't end up throwing it away until late the evening. So in total the food was in an air tight thermos at room temp for about 16 hours. I am worried that the amount of time in which botulism could have grown? Of course I did not eat it but it it could have grown botulism and then in turn could be at risk of botulism spores forming that quickly? Because I did smell the food when I threw it away for some reason and now I am scared to have been exposed to spores. Also after rinsing out the container now I would have trace food on other dishes in the sink and normal washing would not kill the botulism? Just trying to see if me and my family are at any risk? Thank you!!

It doesn't sound like you have anything to worry about. It's very possible that botulism or some other organism grew in that time in those conditions, so you were right to throw the food away. You can't get botulism or other foodborne illnesses from smelling food, you'd have to actually eat the food to get sick, which you wisely didn't do. Thoroughly cleaning the container will get rid of any contamination on it and make it safe to use again. I wouldn't worry about the sink personally, just give it a rinse afterwards.

I watch cooking shows often. I see chefs finish a dish with olive oil. Why do chef's finish their dish with olive oil? What is the reasoning for this? Is it purely a presentation or is it just taste? I know olive oil isn't the most pleasant thing to eat by itself.

For an astringent/bitter twist to the flavour, for a scent, and the visual gloss effect ** Mediterranean people have been doing this for centuries For best effect they are probably using a first cold press oil (Extra-virgin) from young olive trees (less than 50 years old). It is often quite green in colour and has a pungent and astringent odour These are often only available from boutique olive farmers, in expensive small quantities e.g. Rangihoua Estate or Azzuro Groves. Expect prices around NZ$50 to NZ$100 per litre It is sort of similar in concept to squeezing a fresh lemon over a dish It's a bit over fashionable at the moment, but in some dishes it really works ** the three s's - sap(or), scent, shine

When I was pregnant, my mother-in-law helped me make several casseroles to freeze. We're still eating them, but the ones with ham have had some problems. At first, it was just ham, vegetables, and noodles with no sauce to hold it all together. So I started adding cream of mushroom soup. But the ham is still really salty. Is there something else I can add in addition to or in place of the cream of mushroom soup to help, or should we just toss the rest of the ham casseroles? Thanks!

If you're looking for something with the glue power of a cream soup, without the same salt level, consider making a white sauce (aka. béchamel). It's a cooked mix of butter, flour and milk (possibly with some seasonings, like nutmeg or black pepper).

I was always told to wash fruit and vegetables right before eating or cooking them, and not earlier. This is supposedly intended to "keep them fresh" or "keep them safe from bacteria" (depends on the source). I tried to find some sourced information on Internet but while there is no shortage of information about how to wash them (especially today with the COVID-19 pandemic), I did not find anything about when they are best washed (right after buying them, or right before consumption). I would be interested in a generic information - that is not targeted on today's critical handling of fruit or vegetables (or anything else - again, COVID-19), but one for "normal times".

Wash them right before you use them. You could wash them when you get home, it's not going to hurt most things if you're gentle, but that won't mean they're still clean once you're ready to use them. I'm guessing you aren't storing them somewhere sterile, so they will get dirty again during storage, and you'll just have to wash them again. The other issue with washing a considerable amount of time before using is that washing doesn't remove 100% of bacteria on a surface. It should get rid of enough so it doesn't make you sick, but if you let it sit long enough after washing, the bacteria could reproduce into a dangerous quantity again. Obviously that's not true of everything you wash off produce (it's not going to magically gain more pesticides and some pathogens can't reproduce on the surface of produce), but it could be of some things. In short, washing produce when you get it home isn't sufficient to make it safe to consume later, and you probably don't want to wash it twice if you don't have to, so just wash it before you use it. An exception might be in the current pandemic situation, where you want to get rid of any viruses on your produce before putting it away. In that case, feel free to wash produce when you get it home along with other washable items, but you should still wash it again before using it. With that said, nothing makes eating raw produce perfectly safe, so it's really a matter of your risk appetite. If it's much more convenient for you to prep your produce in advance and you keep them in something that's thoroughly washed between uses, then it's not terribly likely to hurt you. It's a bit safer to wash them closer to when you use them, and some things may keep longer if they aren't washed, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to wash them sooner in some cases.

I'd never heard of sous vide before coming to this site, but all the posts about it here have made me want to try it. I've seen the beer cooler method, which I also want to try, but, for a smaller scale test, is it possible to do it in a crock pot? What would the differences in cooking times and techniques be?

For cooking in the home kitchen, I find the 7 quart oval CrockPot to be an excellent vessel for sous vide when attached to an external temperature controller. You must use the "simple" knob-controlled type (mine has low-high-warm settings available. The models with digital controls and temperature probes are not yet programmed for sous vide cooking, although I have hopes that some day they will be. I have used both a thermistor-based thermostat (Johnson Controls A419) and a platinum (PT-100) temperature sensor and PID controller (JLD 612 with solid-state relay) successfully. Most do-it-yourself sous-vide home cooks like myself would assume the PID controller to be the preferred equipment, but I have found I prefer the thermostat. The water temperature oscillates up and down about two degrees using the thermostat, and many would fear that loss of control, but my results trump those concerns. The core of the meat remains at a stable temperature that is the average water temperature, and even very near the surface the temperature does not track the oscillations. I use an aquarium air pump and air stones to provide circulation. I do take control of the temperature measurement accuracy by calibrating against accurate and trusted digital thermometers. The digital fever thermometers sold in pharmacies are accurate, and allow calibration of the thermistor or PT-100 sensor at a temperature range of about 100 F. The CrockPot holds larger roasts quite comfortably, and with heated walls requires no separation of the meat from the walls by racks as is practiced with commercial cookers with cold walls. I insist on using an aquarium airstone and pump to cause water to circulate, and believe this is why my results are good. The advantages of the CrockPot as I use it over, for example, the Sous Vide Supreme, are: 1) Easier cleaning -- hard water spots dissolve away with a few drops of lemon juice, and the glass pottery can also be removed and washed in a dishwasher. This means a lot when, as I did, the cook actually practices sous vide daily for home meals! 2) Comfortable size -- no wasted corners and cold walls means more space for larger roasts but the cooker can still be lifted without strain while filled with water. 3) Dual utility -- I can use it as a CrockPot instead of a sous vide cooker when I want to. 4) Probably the biggest advantage that the CrockPot with A419 thermostat has over PID-controller based cookers is that the thermostat recovers unattended from short interruptions in the electrical power. The JLD612 as with most PID controllers, would allow meats cooking while I am at work to rot on the pot. I suspect that a power outage of perhaps three seconds may result in the same problem with many commercial cookers. The drawbacks: 1) This is an "off-label" use of the CrockPot. I expect fairly that my CrockPot will lose a heating element to all the temperature cycling some day, though after about 500 meals it is still going strong. Rival cannot be expected to take responsibility for such failures when their products are subjected to the unanticipated abuse. I humbly submit that the low cost of replacement of the CrockPot outweighs this risk. I often cook roasts that cost more than the CrockPot, and don't object to regarding it as an expendable like the ZipLock freezer bags I use with it, and the aquarium tubing that I replace every few months. 2) Low prestige -- I can't show this cooker to those who've spent $450-$3000 for higher-end products and fairly expect them to understand that I'd truly prefer this to their set-up at any price. I can't explain to the owner of a silent Sous Vide Supreme that the sound of bubbling in the CrockPot bothers no one, but means my 7-qt cooker can cook more than their 12-qt cooker, with my 85 watts bringing big roasts up to temperature faster than their 400 Watts. I can't explain to them that the 2-degree temperature oscillations from the A419 are no factor in flavor or safety, that they are at greater risk from the cold walls of their cooker than I. I have to let them feel smug. My final analysis: the ability to pre-cook the meat in advance of crunch time allows me, or any home cook that uses sous vide, to put dinner on the table with much less effort after I get home from work. If I were forced to buy a high end sous vide cooker to get this benefit, it would be a small price to pay. The tenderizing and the consistency of preparing sous vide meats has made mealtimes a great pleasure for me. But my choice of equipment has numerous advantages that have made cooking with my setup a true pleasure. Most of my mealtimes involve fairly familiar comfort foods that cook all day while I am at work. 24 hour tri-tip roasts, 12 hour chicken breasts -- boneless and skinless -- that I'd prefer cooking for four hours, and 24 hour pork loin come to mind. This results in the kind of mealtime convenience required for me to be able to even attempt cooking myself. If I did not have reliable regulated temperature my sous vide cooking would be limited to weekends, when I'd prefer to be eating out. I estimate I've cooked nearly 550 sous vide entrees now. I could no longer be satisfied cooking without the technique. But the beer cooler method requires constant attention that limits it's use to weekends and short cooking times. I recommend it for 35 minute fish filets, 3-4 hour chicken, or 3-4 hour beef tenderloin. Any longer cooking times will discourage its use. Now, a beer cooler with a PID controller and an electric water heater element could be good method...

I mixed up a salad in a glass container I added dressing and goat cheese crumbles and shook it up. The next day when I went to eat it all the cheese ended up in a big congealed lump in the bottom of the container. Did I do something wrong?

I can't comment to ask a question yet, so I'll try to phrase it as an answer. IF you used a vinaigrette, it could be possible that the vinegar broke down the cheese and/or the oil congealed in the fridge, like someone else mentioned.

I recently thought about trying to make the Chicken Ramen recipe from Wagamama, however I will need to know how to get the correct ingredients from the best sources. I don't know any good sources to get the right noodles for making the Ramen. Where should I look to acquire good-quality Ramen noodles for a recipe such as this? Here's the recipe in the book I took a snapshot of. EDIT: I found a website where you can purchase them from http://www.theasiancookshop.co.uk/fresh-ramen-noodles-400g-3570-p.asp

"Ramen noodles" are a predominantly North American term for what the Japanese call "Chinese Noodles" (Chukamen, which I've also seen spelled Yuukamen). In practice, you can use any wheat noodle that's made with eggs or kansui, including lamian or mee pok, or even buckwheat noodles (notably soba). Noodles made without either of those are not recommended. It does not matter which of the above you use, although the Chukamen varieties are the more traditional. Much like pasta, it's largely a matter of personal preferences and how you want it to come out in terms of texture and appearance. You'll find a wide variety of all of these noodles in dried or fresh form at any Asian supermarket or grocery store. Across Canada there's a chain called T&T. You should have no trouble finding some Asian grocery stores in your region with a phone book or maybe Google or Yelp.

I bought a bottle of wine larger than required for my recipe. How and how long can I keep the remainder, so I can use it in cooking again? (In other words, it needn't be drinkable.)

Tightly closed and in the fridge it will keep for a few days, maybe a week if you can tolerate it being a bit rough (which you can for some dishes like my tomato, smoked garlic and red wine sauce with chilli - in fact that doesn't want anything too delicate to start with). If there's less than about 2/3 of the bottle left, transfer to a smaller container. But that's not what I would do. Instead I'd freeze it in useful quantities. There are two things to bear in mind of you freeze wine: it expands (so use a bigger container than you think); and it doesn't go completely solid (so keep it the right way up). In the freezer it keeps indefinitely. You don't want it to go far beyond drinkable, unless your recipe calls for vinegar as well, which you should use less of.

I have a sushi rice bag from Sun Rice. They write on it that we should only wash it for 5 minutes then boil it. But I know that sushi rice should be washed for more than that and soaked in water for at least 2 hours. I did it and left it for 2 hours. Then I boil it (1 cup of rice to 1 and 1/4 cup of water). But when I started making the sushi, the rice started to expand and not sticking to each other. The problem is because of the 2 hours or I didn't left the rice cook until all the moisture gone ?

It's hard to say exactly which thing was the issue. Rice sticks to itself because of starch on the surface. As Joe pointed out, if it's actually still wet, it's not going to stick. It doesn't get sticky until it's dry enough for the starch to be sticky instead of just starchy water. But even if you did let it cook/dry properly, the extra washing and soaking could well have been an issue too. One of the main things washing does is remove starch. If you manage to remove too much, you could well stop the rice from being sticky. So... I'd suggest following the instructions that came with the rice, and seeing how it goes. It might be suggesting less washing and soaking than you expect because it's a less starchy variety of rice.

I've scoured the internet to find the recipe for one of my favorite childhood sweets, and since I'm away from home, I can't buy it by weight and I definitely can't afford to buy a tiny piece for $3 or $4 all the time. I came across a recipe and I did everything exactly as the recipe said, but I ended up with this. Now THIS is what I actually want to eat, I bought it at a Venezuelan place a while back, but they only sell singles. Any ideas on how to end up with the fluffy sweet white one?

As you have not posted a recipe I can't tell you how to fix it for next time. I can't tell you what is wrong with them though. Brown, because the oven was too hot. I do mine by blasting in oven at 135c for 15min then turning it off and going home. Then when I get back to work in the morning they are perfect. Flat, because... Many possibilities Over/undrr whisked eggs Too much/little sugar Too much moisture Time between whisking eggs and getting them in the oven was too long (5min maximum) Fat has got into the mix. Possibly from a dirty bowl/whisk/bit of egg yolk or even your hands. To help control the whisking of eggs I mix about 1 part corn flour with my sugar. And an equal amount of white wine vinegar. So whisk your eggs up to stiff peaks, tip in your sugar/cornflour mix whisk a little till it starts to dissolve then add the vinegar. Keep whisking until all the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is really shiney (rub a little between your fingers if it feels grainy keep whisking). As soon as it's whisked (use the old trick of holding the bowl upside down if it stays you should be fine) get it straight on a baking tray however you want and into the oven. This part is critical the longer it sits UN cooked the more likely you'll have a disaster.

I was in a Mexican restaurant with some co-workers recently and noticed that many of them ordered a "burrito." What's the difference between this and a tortilla? I thought that's what they were called.

Depending on where you are, the word tortilla can mean a few different things. In Mexico it refers to a flatbread made of either wheat or corn and a few other ingredients. These flatbreads tend to come in standard sizes in the United States at least, one of which might be labeled the "burrito" size. A burrito is one use for a tortilla. A burrito consists of a wheat flour tortilla wrapped around a filling. Often the filling might include beans, cooked meat, rice, and perhaps vegetables.

I often make homemade pizza making the bases by hand from scratch. I'm going away with a group of friends and plan on making a very large batch of pizzas one night. I'll use a full 5kg (11 pound) bag of bakers flour. With a pile of dough this large, would it need to be broken up into smaller balls while rising or is it fine to leave in a single large ball (I have a very large saucepan that would fit it)? I'm concerned maybe air wouldn't make it into the base of such a large mass of dough or that the weight would prevent the dough at the bottom rising. Commercially, how are large quantities of dough proved?

That foam is perfectly natural. The foam is the result of meats natural protein composition. If you've ever poached eggs, or boiled lobster, or cooked a stock, you'll know that the water can become a little scummy. If you leave the pot on, that scum makes a white-ish or grey-ish foam that forms lovely looking rafts. That foam is made of water soluble protein. In your case, you have wet sausage meat in a case. A small amount of that meat's proteins, mostly sarcoplasm and myoglobin, are going to escape from their cells and into the meat juice. When the sausage case breaks, that juice, a mix of water and protein, is escaping into a hot oven, and the proteins are going to spontaneously denature, forming a foam much like scrambled eggs. If anything, you should be happy- water soluble albumin foam is a sign that the sausage is full of proteins, and is definitely made of meat, and not, say, recycled chipboard. Enjoy the sausages!

While listening to a radio cooking program, one of the guests claimed that vegetables can often be made to taste better by removing water from them. His reasoning being the ratio of tasty elements is increased relative to water content. He gave cooking celeriac in salt as an example. The conversation then moved on to other topics. Having recently started eating more vegetarian meals, I'm looking for ways to add flavor back into my meals. What methods exist to remove water from vegetables?

I am going to assume that your chrusciki is cast iron. I have been collecting and using vintage cast iron for 30 plus years and use the following method for reconditioning pieces which have lost their seasoned finish. Your irons must be able to separate from their handles, unless the entire piece is cast iron. Separate all non-cast iron pieces from the cast iron pieces. If there are crusty bits stuck to the cast iron remove these. I use a variety of methods including fire, scraping, and soaking in a hot water bath for 15 minutes or so. Soapy water is only okay before skillet is seasoned, never after. Keep the cast iron off porous surfaces during the soak as rust may form and be difficult to remove from them Dry cast iron pieces and apply heavy coat of fresh cooking oil to entire piece. Bake on a foil covered cookie sheet in a hot oven (350-375) for up to 1 hour. Let cool, pieces may be sticky and this is normal. Store on wax paper until first use. Use as recipe suggests. Clean up irons using hot water only and a cloth of some type. To keep seasoned, dry after cleaning, wipe with a paper towel dipped into fresh cooking oil, store away from moisture. Pieces don't need to be dripping with oil, just lightly covered completely. Can repeat steps 3-6 once yearly.

In the TV show New Girl, there is an episode (season 1, episode 6) in which they are cooking for Thanksgiving but forgot to thaw the Turkey, so they put it in the dryer, but it has some unexpected results. Is it actually possible to thaw a turkey in a dryer? If one were to try to accomplish this in real life, how would one go about doing it a safe and reliable manner? Please note that I am not asking, should one thaw a turkey in a dryer. Rather - is it possible?

Ignoring food safety for a moment referring to an example like How Clothes Dryers Work in most dryers air enters near the top, is heated by an element at the rear of the dryer but the air is actually being drawn in / out by a fan at the bottom of the unit. The internal temperature of the air ends up being about 175C so most of what is "floating around" in the dryer will be steam in normal use. While the electrical conductivity of pure water is very low the actual conductivity depends on contaminants. Those contaminants will be present inside a dryer but intuitively I'd say at they would be well distributed given the fast air flow. I'm not sure of the conductivity of turkey fat itself but it obviously remains a liquid at 175C and contains many contaminants. So the real problem I'd see is turkey fat would splatter on the heating element and get within the evacuation fan. Both those events could change their electrical resistance, increase power draw in areas and cause hotspots that could cause a fire. It could also clog up the various vents leading to further overheating. I guess the answer to that would be completely prevent the possibility of fat / juices escaping during the process. A regular oven bag probably wouldn't be durable enough but maybe a modified pressure cooker vessel of some form would be suitable if you didn't mind a bit of wear and tear on the drum of the dryer. But getting back to general cooking method I wouldn't see it any different to using an oven to do the same. Results would either go from either dangerous from a food safety point of view to just nasty and overcooked on the outside, especially with something as large as a turkey.

If my stew beef is tough (it's been on a small flame in liquids for about an hour), does it mean that it is overcooked, or undercooked?

Generally speaking when speaking of "stew beef", the meat will break down more the longer you cook it. I often make shredded beef for tacos out of that cut by simmmering it for a few hours or more. At 1 hour, I'd say it was undercooked. For example: http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/Main/Beef/recipe.html?dishid=1772 In there he recommends using stewing beef, browning it first and then "... stew until the meat is tender and can be cut with a spoon. This will take at least an hour and a half."

I'm making a yeasted sourdough starter per the directions in my bread-machine book, but with rye flour instead of whole wheat. It's supposed to sit for 2-5 days, but it doubled almost immediately and is doubling again in my largest bowl! I can stir it down to keep it from overflowing, as it did the first time, but is it OK if I let it stand for another 6 days, when I plan to make the bread?

As another commenter asked, are you using store bought yeast or a sourdough starter? If you're using a starter, you can store it in the fridge, covered and then take it out a day or two in advance and give it feeds every 12 hours or less depending on its doubling speed. If its store bought yeast I wouldn't take the chance and would throw it out.

I have made jelly using both Jello and agar-agar seaweed. Jelly made with agar-agar is firm. Using concrete-pouring terminology, the agar-agar jellies that I made would have a slump of more than a foot. Whereas, my jellies made from jello would have a slump height of only about 4 inches. That is, I estimate that I could make a 1 cubic foot block of jelly from agar-agar and it would still hold, whereas the the max size of a jello block is only 4 cubic inch before it starts crumbling. Just an estimate, have never tried making a cubic foot block of agar-agar. Is there a way to firm up the jellies made from jello? Would adding tapioca flour help? But adding tapioca flour would destroy the pretty translucence of jello. Also, agar-agar has a nice firm chewiness whereas eating jello is like eating yogurt.

There is a modified form of tapioca that gives a clear solution, but it is not easily available and I do not think it would help in this case. The obvious way to firm up Jello is to use less water than recommended - use somewhere between a half and three quarters of the amount specified on the packet. But you are comparing agar with gelatin here, it is like comparing chalk and cheese. Gelatin is extracted from bones, agar-agar is extracted from seaweed. They are chemically very different, the big common factor being that they form an edible jelly. I'm not going to discourse on those differences, beyond saying that mixing chalk and cheese is not a good idea. I am just going to point out that, since much of the gelatin comes from pig bones, Muslims object to gelatin. OTOH Muslims like jelly, so in every Halal shop you will find a range of commercially produced fruit jellies which are mostly based on seaweed. Since vegetarians also object to gelatin, you get those jellies in health food shops and other vegetarian outlets as well. Get some Halal jelly and start from that, you should be able to adjust the texture as desired with agar-agar ...

I have made my recipe with many changes and the most successful effort was the addition of a Instant Pudding mix. All others were much too hard to carve and serious effort was needed to just get the spoon or scoop into the frozen delight help please. All recipes made were made dairy free using soy and tofu bases. The responses to this question have been very helpful and have given me new directions to explore. I believe now the product I want to create is achievable. Thank you everyone.

Well, that's basically where ice machines come into the game. Often ice recipes tell you to stir the ice during the freezing process every 5 to 10 minutes or so, so the ice will stay softer. That's what ice machines are taking care of: While freezing the ice they constantly stir the mass, so in the end you will get the perfect soft ice. Anyway if you then place this ice in the freezer, it will become hard nevertheless, since finally it's all a question of temperature. So you might either go invest in an ice machine or get the ice out of the freezer (and into the fridge) some 15 to 30 minutes before serving it. There's definitely no other way around it.

I have noticed that when I use either of the three (cinnamon-mint-saffron) spices/herbs in savory dishes they tend to turn them bitter. With the saffron I know that you only need a pinch but even that pinch seems to be turning the food bitter (stovetop cooking). Has the issue got to do with the heat or the quantities or both?

cinnamon, mint and saffron are bitter. You probably know that "flavor" is roughly 90% smell. Our tongue identifies only the basic tastes, such as sweet, sour etc. When you "taste" mint, your tongue identifies a sour-bitter mixture, and it's your nose that absorbs the citrusy-herbishi-whatevery aromas that we call "mint". When you cook spices, and especially when you overcook them, the gentle volatile aroma compounds veporize away or are destroyed by the heat. And you're left with the plant material, sometimes wilting, mostly without the smell. Now, of course the "tongue" taste of these herb and two spices is not straight-out medicinal bitter. But I guess it's not what you meant either. It's just.. a bit yakkish, on the bitter side, right? Here's what I do to avoid it: I add gentler spices towards the end of the cooking. Say, in a slow cooking dish, I'd put a whole cinnamon in the beginning, but the fresh chopped mint will be added only when I serve it. So to your question - yes, it's heat and quantity. Put more, heat it less.

To try to narrow the scope and help deduce an answer to this question, I'm wondering: Why does tea become bitter if brewed too hot or too long?

Tea contains a lot of flavinoid compounds notably tannins. Tannins are astringent and have a very strong bitter flavor. The tannins are released much more slowly compared to the other flavor compounds. So when brewed for too long or too hot, much more tannins are released into the brew along and hence the resulting tea is much more bitter.

I recently acquired a pizza stone to use for baking bread. Other than pizza and bread, are there other uses for it in the kitchen?

I use mine as a heat shield in my grill to create indirect heat for slow smoked BBQ. I also use it to cook pizza on my grill, but that's not really a different use.

My wife purchased 2 M&M Family Frozen Meat Lasagnes and left them in a thermal freezer bag in the rear of the Escape. I found them two days later as I was taking her vehicle in for service, and they were thawed. Are these lasagnes still safe to eat if cooked, and if so, can they be refrozen? According to the ingredients the noodles are cooked and I assume the beef has been.

Per Foodsafety.gov, you can refreeze a casserole if it "still contains ice crystals and feels as cold as if refrigerated", but if "thawed and held above 40 °F for over 2 hours", it must be discarded.

Many manufacturers will sell and advertise emergency preparedness food packs to still taste "great" 25-30 years into the future (or at least maintain a consistent taste over this period). For instance, they will cook eggs, lasagna or vegetables (anything really), then place it into a freeze-drier unit, which eliminates the water via sublimation. They then place the food product into a mylar or aluminum pouch (sometimes polyurethane), insert an oxygen dissector pouch in it, then instruct the customer to store it in a cool (less than 16 degrees Celsius or 60 Fahrenheit) and dry environment for long term storage. What process happens after 25-30 years which limits its shelf life? It is the accumulation of oxygen diffusing within the bag over time? It is the oxygen pouch that reaches it absorption limit? Is moisture sneaking in? Is the organic structure of the food break down due to normal thermodynamic forces over time (increase in entropy)? What if one wanted to increase the shelf-life to say 50 years, maybe even 100 years? What food break down processes will be encountered as the limiting factor, that would need to be countered?

There are no strict formulas or conversions, the mathematics of bread baking are too complex for such predictions. Rising at room temperature overnight is not recommended, it is generally way too warm in our homes. The thing you can do is to take any recipe you have, and stick it in the fridge as-is, either for the first or for the second proofing. It should generally turn out OK overnight, but if it tends to overproof or underproof, you will have to adjust the amount of yeast in the future. You have to find this out by trial and error. In the morning, you will have to give the dough time to warm up back to room temperature before continuing to work with it. There aren't that many things to be said about ingredients. Doughs with very high amounts of butter will tend to change their handling with refrigeration and are more demanding about the temperature at which you shape them.

When a product says "refrigerate" or "freeze", the temperature they're asking you to keep it at is not a mystery -- most refrigerators and freezers maintain an expected temperature range. But other products indicate "room temperature" or that they should be stored in a "cool, dry place". Are there actual temperature ranges associated with these set phrases? I grew up in North America, in a household where we couldn't afford to overly heat the house in the winter, or cool it in the summer. "Room temperature" was, therefore, 50-55°F (10-12.7°C) in the winter, and 85-90°F (29-32°C) in the summer. My perception of "room" temperature is similarly skewed -- this isn't at all "normal" from a N. American perspective, where most of my peers like to keep their houses at around 77°F/25°C in the winter, and 67°F/19°C in the summer. But I remain confused, at least, from a culinary perspective of what exactly I'm being asked when a product indicates these set phrases. As a concrete example: I recently bought a tub of ghee. It indicates to me on the labelling that it does not require refrigeration, can be kept at "room temperature", and should be stored in a "cool, dry place". My apartment is 80°F/26.6°C right now -- is this "room temperature"? (It'll cool to ~61°F/16°C overnight.) In the meantime, it's significantly warmer than the store shelf I bought it from, and the ghee has gone from a soft solid to pure liquid. This change of state (solid -> liquid) is what prompted my concern that I'm misinterpreting "room temperature" in terms of food temperature and safety.

"Room temperature" as used for testing, analysis, and validation purposes generally falls within the range of 65F-75F (18C-24C). Published research will typically specify temperature ranges used. Both the FDA Food Code (2017) and Canadian Food Retail and Food Services Code (2016), providing guidelines for inspection activities, take an outcome-based approach and do not reference specific storage temperatures or humidity levels as products stored unopened in these conditions are designed to be safe or are self-evident if spoiled/unsafe - mouldy potatoes, rusted or swollen cans, etc. In most jurisdictions in North America, refrigerator and freezer temperature conditions are often codified in laws and may be required to be explicitly labelled for consumer protection since pathogen activity is not as readily evident as spoilage - some Listeria, for example, can reproduce in food below 40F/4C, making both maximum storage temperature and duration needed. A better source for optimum room temperature conditions would be your local building code, though most will specify the same range noted above and humidity <60%. If it's comfortable for humans, it's most likely suitable for products designed for those conditions. For your ghee example - it originates in India for preserving butterfat at 30C+ temperatures and seasonal relative humidity close to 100%. When properly stored in an airtight container there is no water available for microorganism activity, and the concern is more for long-term quality decline due to oxidative rancidity.

Mashed potato hash 1 cup mashed potatoes 1 cup ground meat (it doesn't matter what kind) 2-3 slices cheese (it doesn't matter what kind) 3-4 tablespoons herbs/spices of your choice Cook the meat for 15 minutes, drain the fat into a paper towel. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook for 5-10 minutes. Serve warm Now my question is what would be the leanest meat that would be best for using with this recipe?

I don't really know what "work" means. Usually people like ground meat to not be completely lean because the fat adds flavor and moisture. But if you personally don't mind lean meat, then, well, whatever you want. The most common lean ground meat I've seen is turkey, often 99% lean. Sometimes you can find chicken too. Lean ground beef is usually more like 95% or 90%, but you can see what you can find. I'd also note that the recipe doesn't sound great as written. Cooking ground meat for 15 minutes sounds over the top, and overcooked lean meat is probably even worse. Lean meat can already be quite dry and tough, and overcooking makes that worse. You should really only cook it only until it's done. Similarly, already cooked and mashed potatoes don't really need extra cooking. It can break down starch and make them more gluey and less fluffy.

I am having epic rice-cooker failure here. I measure out the amount of rice suggested by the little cup thingy. I rinse it with a bowl and a strainer until the water is clear while rinsing. Then I put the rice in and fill it to the appropriate line in my Rice Cooker with fresh water. After cooking for a little while, it immediately begins to boil over and nasty bubbles start popping out of the little hole in the top, dumping yucky, sticky water all over the place. The Rice, when all is said and done, is alright but it's a hell of a mess! What am I doing wrong?

You mention you're using the recommended amount of water according to the rice cooker... have you checked, or tried, the amount of recommended water according to the rice? Varieties or preparations of rice use different amounts of water, sometimes varying by quite a bit - I've seen them from just under one-cup-per-cup-rice, to three-cups-per-cup-rice. Your rice cooker can't change the lines to suit the rice, and may be making assumptions that don't fit the rice you're using. Personally, we made rice a lot growing up, and I never noticed the amount of rice we made, or the amount of rice and water we started with, actually fit the rice cooker's lines. Beyond that, you should probably try reducing water, even if your rice recommended amount of water is fairly close to the rice cooker's. You clearly have too much of it for your rice - the amount of water making your rice come out right plus the amount that gets dumped out the vent. And rice is a biological rather than processed product, like flour or tea or vegetables, where different weather, different years, and other minutely different factors in growth, production, and usage means that one batch of even the same variety of rice may end up being different from another batch - so you may need to tweak recommendations to fit what's actually going on.

In my family I am well known for baking a great focaccia bread, but soon I won't be able to bake for some time, so my idea was to bake a big batch and put it into the freezer. Will that work or will the texture and taste of the focaccia change big time? I know some people freeze their bread, but the one time I tasted such bread (wholemeal) it wasn't that nice, but I am not sure if it was because of the freezing or because the bread was just rubbish. Also, a focaccia is not a wholemeal bread, so I guess any conclusions based on that experience would be wrong.

You can freeze (as < 0 °C / 32 °F) bread and it will last longer. As @FuzzyChef answered, there's even a whole "just baked bread" industry using that method. The main problem with taking a piece of bread at room temperature and freeze it, is that it must go through the 0~5 °C / 32~41 °F zone. That is the temperature at which bread stales faster (as starches degelation). So, one should try the bread to be at that temperature the least possible time (maybe having small pieces of bread, or having a freezer at the lowest temperature as possible). The same applies when you defrost the bread. Luckly, that degelation is, up to a point, reversible: If heated above 60 °C / 140 °F it will gelate again. So, better than letting warm up at room temperature, you can put it in an oven or a toaster. Side note 1: remember to cut the focaccia before freezing it. Side note 2: frozen bread industry helps itself with this.

It's hard for me to decide what apple I want to buy from all the different choices in a store. I can look at the colour, the size and maybe carefully feel if it's hard or soft, but that's it. This page (archive) gives quite some information about apple types, but it's difficult to search (for example a Google search for "sour site:orangepippin.com/apples" results in nothing useful) and it's more about apple identification than about apple choice. How can I find out how sweet/sour an apple is, how hard/soft, how durable it is, maybe even how much of which vitamin is in it, just by conducting non-destructive tests on apples in a store? A website that's easier to search would also be acceptable, although that wouldn't work if I'm offline.

Tl;dr: If you know what kind of apple you're looking at, you don't need to test the apple. I don't think you can tell any of those things about an unidentified apple without destroying it somehow. You can tell how hard/soft it is by pressing firmly, but this will leave a dent in the apple, so that may or may not count as destroyed for you. However, if you know what variety of apple you're looking at, you can know these types of things without even touching the apple, as each variety has its own characteristics regarding sweetness, crispness, juiciness, and other qualities. For instance, Honeycrisp apples are typically very sweet and crisp (as the name implies) and are excellent for eating out of hand. You can find more information about different varieties of apples here. Grocery stores (at least in the USA) typically label their apples by variety. If you shop at a farmers market and the varieties aren't labeled, the farmer/seller can usually tell you (if he can't, I probably wouldn't buy from him anyways, but that's just me). As far as durability goes, that is largely dependent on how you store your apples. Refrigerated apples last longest, as they do not continue to ripen in the cooler temperatures of the fridge. They will if left on the counter, though, leading to mushy, rotting apples in just a week or two. (I have successfully kept apples in my refrigerator for several months, though those were fresh-from-the-orchard apples, so your results may vary.) Nutritional content varies by variety as well, though I was only able to find a single source focusing on vitamin C. However, as vitamin C and potassium the main nutrients in apples, that may be sufficient as far as varietal differences go. You can find some more general nutritional information for apples here.

I saw this question entitled "How can I bake bread using a mother culture?", but I have no idea what a "mother culture" is. Can someone explain what the term "mother culture" means?

A mother culture is sometimes known as a starter dough and is a fermenting dough that is used to 'start' the fermentation process in the bread you are going to make by adding a bit of the starter dough to the dough you are making. Mainly sourdough I think, but I believe you can use different mothers for different breads. The starter dough is 'fed' flour and water to keep it alive and going, and then used everyday to make the days bread. The mother can then be kept going for many years and gives the bread made using it a distinctive flavour. At least that's my understanding, I'm hoping to get a more detailed picture from this and the answer to my question... Some information here and also on wikipedia

I've been trying to make chewy sourdough bread and it's not going as planned. I read somewhere that if you mix and knead the bread a lot and avoid adding a lot of sugar and use a lot of water that should aid gluten development to make the dough chewy. Also I read that the dough should be stretchy and if you pull two pieces apart it's supposed to be transparent. Well, I don't have anything anywhere near that. My starter was super fluffy. I took 2 cups of starter, added about 1 cup of water with 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 tea spoon of brown sugar already dissolved. Then I kept adding flour and mixing in one direction until it didn't mix with a spoon anymore. Then I kneaded it for about 1/2 hour to 45 minutes. I tried to avoid adding too much flour to keep the water percentage up, but that's hard to do when you are kneading on a wooden board and the dough keeps sticking. I finally got it to where there was an even layer of dough stuck to the pen so the piece I was kneading didn't stick to it too much anymore, but the dough still refuses to be stretchy. I pull on a piece and it tears with a ragged edge. That's after 1/2-3/4 hour of non-stop kneading. Finally I gave up because it wasn't getting better. I let it rise for 1 1/2 hours between a heating pad and covered with electric blanket on top. Then I kneaded it again. At first it was slightly more stretchy, but the more I kneaded it the less stretchy it got. I didn't add a lot of flour at this stage either so it kept sticking to the board. Now it's back to the original non-stretchy, tearing consistency. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Edit: I should mention that I'm using King Arthur bread flour, so the protein content is most likely not a problem.

Your recipe is to blame. Your dough is stiff and tears because it isn't wet enough. While different types of flour do absorb different quantities of water, I think most of the issues you're experiencing are due to the ambiguousness of the recipe and instructions you're using. Most sourdough recipes yield dough around 80% hydration (the weight of water/the weight of flour). The recipe you've cited relies on the starter providing all the hydration for the dough. Doing the math, following the feeding instructions, you would have a starter that is 55% hydration. Adding all the flour called for in the dough recipe, you would end up with a dough that is about 45% hydration... stiffer than bagels (50-55%). While it is possible to make dough that doesn't have any added water, it is not common, especially with such a stiff starter. Also, the volume of flour would be much smaller than the volume of starter. Try using a tried and true recipe that doesn't rely on the starter to provide all of the hydration. Don't worry so much about gluten production and how sugar or fat will affect it. Small amounts of these enrichments, like those in the recipe you linked to, will soften the interior of the bread and help the crust brown nicely. Just look at brioche if you want an example of how far you can push enrichment and still get a well structured bread.

I am looking to start cooking more things gluten free for my girlfriend, and have heard that powdered sugar may or may not be considered gluten free. What do I need to look for in the ingredients to keep powdered sugar gluten-free?

The simple answer to your question is the kind of starch they use. Most use cornstarch or tapioca starch, neither of which contain gluten, so most powdered sugar shouldn't contain gluten. If the type of starch isn't listed, don't buy that product. For absolutely no gluten, it gets a bit more complicated. A Google search for "Gluten Free Powdered Sugar" only yielded a few brands that make a "gluten-free" claim. Since most brands of powdered sugar don't contain any ingredients that would normally contain gluten, look for the line "This product is processed in a facility that also processes wheat". Choose a powdered sugar that lists the starch used as cornstarch, tapioca starch or other non-gluten starch and that doesn't have that line on the label. Of course I can only speak to US labeling, other countries may be different. One brand, Domino Sugar, stood out to really stand by their claim of gluten free. Domino's Gluten Free Claim (C&H is Domino, BTW). I happen to have some C&H powdered sugar, so I looked at the label. There is no "Gluten-Free" claim on the label, but the ingredients listed are only sugar and corntarch, and there is no "this product is processed in a facility..." warning. Walmart brand also pops up on the "Gluten Free Powdered Sugar" search, they say "Naturally gluten-free food". The FDA requires that claim not be misleading, so if they do use equipment to process the sugar that also processes gluten-containing ingredients, the sugar cannot contain more that 20 ppm gluten. There is one way to know for sure about any ingredient you use, or to even to check your final dish. Elisa Technologies, a very well respected name in medical laboratory testing, has put out home test strips sensitive to 10 ppm, that's half the concentration of gluten the FDA allows for a product to be certified "gluten-free". If a product tested contains less than 20 ppm gluten the US, Canada and the European Union allow that product to use "Gluten Free" on the label. FDA Announcement At over $10 a strip, you'd want to use them judiciously, but if I or someone I loved had serious health issues that did not allow gluten, I'd get these strips. Test Strips

We're using our electric smoker to do 2 pork loins close to equal size. We did only one loin before and it was great! Do we need to adjust the time and or temp to do it right again? We want to do them together. We are using the "Masterbuilt" brand smoker.

Because you're working with a greater volume of meat, when you put it in, it will take longer for the smoker to get back up to working temperature, and it may be quite a while before the overall temperature in your smoker is where it needs to be. If your smoker doesn't auto-adjust its cooking temperature (turn itself up temporarily), then you can assume it will take longer to cook both loins properly. Increasing the temperature of the cooking overall can help with this, but you do run the risk of making the outsides of the loins more cooked than you want. One of the advantages of low and slow cooking is that the meat, even a large cut, can be more uniform in temperature throughout, rather than especially done on the outside and rare in the middle. If you turn up your temperature to make up for the extra meat, you will be casting some of the low and slow advantage aside. My choice would be to use the same temperature you did before, but cook it longer. You'll eventually make up for the extra thermal mass of the meat, and you'll still have the advantages of slower cooking. As Cos Callis said, you'll do well to use the internal temperature of the meat as your guide to how much longer you should cook. Rule number 1 of smoking/barbecue: Don't try to make the meat come out at a specific time. It needs as long as it needs, and there's very little you can or should do about it. If you're on a deadline, start early enough that you're certain to be early with the meat, then hold it at temperature. Much better results than rushing it.

I am confused about how multi-cooker actually works. Frying meat on a skillet is one thing. Baking it in the oven is another. Advertisement says a multi-cooker can both bake and fry. How is that possible? If it bakes does it mean it can replace oven at all? Can I actually bake meat in the multi-cooker as I would in the oven? Or can fry it like I would on a skillet? How can this single device do two things differently?

It doesn't necessarily do any of those things well, but yes, it does (more or less) all of the things it suggests. Basically all cooking is the application of heat, in different ways, to food. So a multicooker like you mention is something that's capable of producing heat at different levels and different timings. Baking differs from frying/sauteing/etc. in that some of the heat is not applied through conduction. Some of it is - the pan typically gets hot and directly heats the food where it is in contact - but some of it is either radiation or convection cooking. This probably won't do much for convection, but because it's an enclosed container, it will heat the non-contact parts through radiation if it's constructed properly (i.e., it is properly insulated, and has metal walls that will radiate heat back towards the food rather than plastic that will absorb the heat). You'll notice it doesn't claim to roast foods (as opposed to some other multicookers); some do, and those have a heating element in the top. A pressure-cooker style multicooker can't have this (easily, anyway) and so doesn't claim any application that requires direct heat - only conduction or radiation. Frying is cooking in oil (the oil version of boiling). Anything that can produce heat in a pan can fry (and to be good at frying, it just has to be good at maintaining a specific temperature). Most of the features it claims are related to an ability to precisely control temperature. Yogurt making and sous-vide cooking require specific temperature control, but beyond that most of the features are just things you could do in any pressure cooker or slow cooker managed in the proper way. The one feature it claims that I'm most dubious about is 'microwave'; it seems unlikely to me that it uses microwaves (it's too small really, for one), so probably it's claiming it can replace your microwave because it can reheat your food (the main reason many people use microwaves). There are microwave/oven combos (If you're in the US, your local Subway restaurant uses one, for example, probably made by Amana), but they're much bigger. Either way, I don't think this is something that can 'replace' an oven or similar, because an oven is going to be much better at even heating over a period of time, and an oven is much larger (you're not roasting a turkey in here). It probably doesn't get very hot, either, compared to a good oven. The main point of multicookers is that they can do several things in the same device - so for example you can sautee your veggies and then cook a soup directly in them without involving anything else; and they do several things that you might need different devices for (saving kitchen space). They don't do them as well, but if you're in a tiny 40 sq meter apartment, perhaps that's fine.

I'm looking into the technique of 'hanging' meat, and whether there are 'home' applications that would be safe and have a beneficial effect. Now, there are a lot of (possible) synonyms that muddle the waters (for me). There's hanging, dry-aging, faisandage (for game birds), and more. What I'm looking for is the 1-3 day (near) room-temperature storage of meat and the spoiling / enzyme process that will cause a flavor change. Feel free to help me along by clarifying the answer. Basically: Is there any (good) use for this technique / process for supermarket / butcher cuts of meat? What should be taken in consideration for safe execution?

I investigated the possibility of dry aging beef at home a while back and decided that in my small apartment, at least, I did not want to risk the possibility of spoilage or contamination. These are the resources I found at the time: Is It Possible to Dry Age Beef at Home has a list of steps and tips Dry-Aging Beef Pays Off With Big Flavor calls for a shorter amount of time that I might be more comfortable with Standing Rib Roast - Dry Aged discusses Alton Brown's technique for dry aging at home How To dry age steak at Steamy Kitchen goes over the use of an interesting item called a Drybag for dry aging. Because I'm not highly confident on controlling my refrigerator temperature in my rental and don't have a lot of space, I didn't end up trying these techniques at home. Some day, perhaps!

Can I thaw fish during steam cooking or is it better to leave the fish the night before in the fridge?

Browning ingredients (both meat and vegetables including the aromatics) before doing a braise or stew (which is what slow cookers do) helps develop depth of flavor, through the Maillard reaction where proteins and carbohydrates react together to create a myriad of flavorful compounds. Vegetables that are high in sugar, such as onions or leeks, and even carrots may also have some caramelization, where sugars react with each other, again creating flavorful compounds. Especially with beef, these deep browned flavors are often what people associate with the product, and what they expect to taste. On the other hand, browning almost by definition overcooks the outside of meat well past well done, so it is somewhat drier and tougher, although this can be mitigated by a long braise Some experts recommend browning only on one side of cubed meat, to compromise between getting flavor development, and getting good texture. The one thing browning or searing doesn't do is "seal in the juices"; that is a myth that is well de-bunked. The choice to brown or not brown is one of taste and balance. It is traditional in many recipes, especially of Western European heritage. There are many traditions where browning is not as frequent, including true Mexican cuisine and many Asian cuisines. Choose what seems most appropriate and tasty to you in a given dish. Personally, I like the flavor development, and almost always opt for browning.

do you have any idea about the solubility of chocolate? I experimented a bit and I can't make sense of what I've found. It isn't 1+1=2. It's rather like 1+1=8,3543 or so. Here is what I found: Chocolate mixes with water, milk, and coconut cream, and gives a homogenous liquid Cacao butter does mix with chocolate the same way But coconut oil doesn't mix with chocolate, and instead segregates and repeals, giving liquid chocolate with oil swimming on top. Yet, cacao butter and coconut oil mix together well, giving a homogenous liquid When chocolate is already quite diluted in water / milk, cacao butter doesn't mix in anymore Whether water mixes when chocolate is enriched with a lot of cacao butter, I didn't try Now, I used a chocolate that consists of cacao mass, cacao butter, cacao powder, and a non-caloric sweetener. Why doesn't coconut oil mix with it when cacao butter does? Making chocolate at home from cacao powder and coconut oil and assumingly cacao butter works well.

So I think there are two big players in your experiments. Chocolate is complicated, and I won't pretend to know it all though. Chocolate has two big, arguably essential components: cocoa butter and cocoa solids. (White chocolate lacks cocoa solids, and is therefore a point of contention.) Melted fats are a liquid, water is a very different liquid. As far as the liquid fat stuff goes, I'm paraphrasing Chocolate Alchemist to the extreme: Cocoa butter is actually a collection of fatty acids. Three are dominant and of particular interest: Oleic, Palmitic, and Stearic acids. These three collectively provide the crystalline structure of chocolate by connecting to each other, forming the cocoa butter crystal, and giving chocolate shine and snappy qualities. When chocolate melts, that structure is lost, the three go wild, and the reason tempering as a process is such a big deal is because those three acids will try to settle down at different temperatures. As a result, they won't return to the desired crystalline state without some kind of tempering process. (Which involves heating and cooling chocolate in a particular sequence, or agitating chocolate while it cools to prevent crystals from forming at all until all three acids are ready to cooperate, or using cocoa butter "seed" crystals that will encourage the other acids floating around to fall in line, into the proper crystalline structure... It's a terrifying process for a lot of baby chocolate geeks.) So a lot is happening when you melt or cool cocoa butter chocolate, and similarly, adding any other fat will throw off the fairly delicate balance of fatty acids and drastically change the effectiveness of tempering and the texture of the final product. You should consider the melting temperature of any fat you decide to add at the very least - Coconut oil melts around 78F - so even without all the chemistry, it makes sense that if you add coconut oil to a fat solution that melts at 93F, you'll get something that melts at a temperature between 78F and 93F. When you dig into the chemistry of it, you find that you're adding a bunch of lauric acid and other shorter chain fatty acids that want to hook up with the cocoa butter and won't let the crystals form properly at all. Practically speaking, it won't set up and form a solid. I once attempted to make a white chocolate ganache with coconut milk and...yeah, it never set up. It was velvety smooth, impossible to whip, never stopped dripping, and therefore completely useless to me. (It was a tasty sauce though). That was what led me to the Chocolate Alchemist once upon a time, and since real white chocolate was very expensive to me back then, I was sad. Hence my warning in the comment above. You can make something tasty with chocolate and coconut stuff, but it will be softer. It might not be what you'd call chocolate at all. If you want to extend solid chocolate, you should look into paramount crystals - easy to use and give you a hard chocolate. Paramount crystals, or partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, lecithin, and citric acid, are easy to use, raise the melting point of your chocolate, and contain an emulsifier to prevent separation issues. They're the main component of compound chocolate made with cocoa butter. Unfortunately, while they can be very helpful, they also don't contribute much to the aroma or taste of the chocolate, so I'd recommend using them sparingly. Some people absolutely despise the stuff lol. You could also look into edible waxes, but... again, use them sparingly. Wax has a very... waxy texture. Hard to describe any other way and extremely recognizable, and not generally desirable. As for why you witnessed complete separation, my guess would simply be proportions, a resulting loss of emulsion, and the cocoa powder settling, even in your liquid fat. Which brings us to the other feature you should consider in your experiments - the cocoa solids. These become more significant when you start adding water. The cocoa solids, not to mention the milk and sugar as applicable, are not liquefied in the chocolate, they are just extremely finely ground particles suspended in that cocoa butter crystal matrix. So when you melt and solidify chocolate carelessly, you may notice sugar or fat bloom on the chocolate. You may notice areas of dense, grainy chocolate next to smooth creamy bits. That's the result of cocoa solids and the other components settling out unevenly. My though is that by adding enough fat you saw this happen in an exaggerated sort of way, real time. It wasn't just the coconut oil refusing to mix, but the entire chocolatey emulsion breaking down. As soon as you introduce water to the mix, as in some of your experiments, either in your mouth or in a cup of liquid, you dissolve any sugar and start to hydrate the cocoa solids and any milk. That hydrated chocolate mixture might remain thick and emulsified at first, especially if the solids aren't fully hydrated yet. At this point, you can add more fat and easily mix the two substances because those cocoa solids are holding onto the liquid for you. But the more liquid you add, the less dense the solution becomes, the less your cocoa powder can keep it locked up, and the harder it is to keep emulsified without additives like lecithin, and ultimately the cocoa powder will in fact sink to the bottom. Even if you thicken the liquid with corn starch for a drinking chocolate, the cocoa powder will settle out with a little time. And since you're dealing with a mixture that's mostly water at this point rather than fat/particulate, any added fat will act like... well oil to water. Even with added emulsifiers, it's not truly dissolved into a new solution. The liquid and fat never really become one, they're just held in suspension with each other, forming an often uneasy peace. To summarize a bit, if you want to extend and dilute some solid chocolate, paramount crystals are your best, easiest option. You can use other fats with a higher melting point than chocolate, but even then, by doing so you'll interfere with the cocoa butter crystal structure and get something that while firm, likely lacks any snappiness. Cocoa butter is a fat that a lot of people think will work great in this application, but due to its chemical composition is arguably the worst lol. And many of us learn this the hard way. When you add water in any form to chocolate, you've created a whole new liquid emulsion to which different rules apply. While you can make a partially hydrated kind of ganache that sets up firm, the particulate can only absorb so much liquid, and you can only add so much fat to any emulsion before it breaks down.

Can you make a pumpkin flavored bread similar to how you can make banana bread? Adding pumpkin to a bread dough mixture similar to how you make banana bread. Is this what pumpernickel is?

Is pumpernickel a form of pumpkin bread? No, definitely not. Pumpernickel is defined by the grain used (specifically rye) and not by any added ingredients. Can you make bread with pumpkins? Sure! Pumpkin bread is generally a moist quickbread, and like banana bread is often intended as a breakfast food. Unlike with bananas, the pumpkin usually has to be roasted to soften it before use, so it can take a bit more effort (though there is an excellent instructional guide on the old SA companion blog) unless you use a pre-cooked canned pumpkin. The moisture, protein, and fat content of pumpkin (or any squash, really) will also differ from banana, so you are best off not substituting into a banana bread recipe. Fortunately, a quick Google search for "pumpkin bread" shows dozens of recipes from different sources. Pick one that looks good to you and have a go.

I'm considering exposing raw fish slices to a UV lamp to kill bacteria before making it into sushi. Would this help? Is there a practice of doing this? And what could be the drawbacks, if any? UPDATE Thank you very much for your answers. A couple of points to clarify. I am talking about: Using UV-C light wand Using it on freshly defrosted fish, that is in addition to freezing, not instead of it The goal is to further reduce risk of bacterial infection, not to completely sterilize the fish, as that wouldn't be possible Furthermore, while digging on the Internet I found this: For some types of food this [surface treatment] may well be sufficient, for example, muscle flesh from a healthy animal immediately after slaughter is, for all intents, sterile. Where contamination does occur, it will be as a result of contact with contaminated surfaces or fluids and this will initially manifest itself at the surface. The efficacy of UV surface treatment will be strongly influenced by surface topography. Crevices, and similar features, of dimensions comparable to the size of microorganisms (i.e., a few microns) may shield microorganisms from potentially lethal UV rays and enable them to survive. This was cited in recent work as the reason why the UV treatment of fish fillets from a smooth-fleshed species was more effective than that of a rough-fleshed one. This seems to imply that what I proposed had been tried and even proven somewhat effective. I have not however found any mentions that UV exposure can cause changes in raw fish that would make it harmful to eat. In other words to make fish less safe than before. If anyone saw such effects being mentioned, please let me know (preferably without a pay wall). Thank you again.

That is an interesting idea, but I would not recommend it. It is true that UV light is able to kill microorganisms, and it has been used to treat water for quite some time now. It has also been used to treat some types of juices, and is even used in the food industry (factories). It is an alternative to pasteurization, since it provides an alternative way to killing harmful bacteria without altering the food taste. However, the uses of UV light in solid foods (and even liquids) do require extensive study about the food properties. This means that, in order to effectively use UV light to kill bacteria in fish, one would have to seriously study how it interacts with the specific type of fish you plan on using. I am not sure if such study for fishes exists. So, it is best to avoid using this technique, since it could potentially make people sick. A good read about this topic is this academic paper, entitled "Review: Advantages and Limitations on Processing Foods by UV Light".

The past couple times I've bought wine stopped with a synthetic cork, I've had a very difficult time reinserting the cork after opening the bottle. It seems the cork expands after leaving the bottle, and it's made of such a rigid material that sometimes I can't squeeze it back in. (And no, inserting the back end doesn't work, as it sometimes does with real cork.) Is there a trick to getting an expanded synthetic cork back in a wine bottle?

There is no trick, it just won't work. Synthetic corks are popular as replacements to cork not only because they are cheaper, but more effective at preserving wine as they don't dry out, and they expand more in the neck keeping a tighter seal. This makes it more difficult, if not impossible, to get them back in. The simple and easy solution is to buy re-usable bottle stoppers. There are many different types, I prefer the ones which have a lever or button you push down to expand the stopper as they are best at preventing spills and leaks. There are vacuum sealers as well, however IMHO they're gimmicks and don't improve the storage of wine.

Help! I have tried making Panang Curry several times at home with the canned pre-made paste (forgot the brand name) and it just doesn't taste like the restaurant versions I've had. I fried the curry paste in the coconut cream off the top of the can, Chakoh brand, for a few minutes until the oil started to separate, added my beef, carrots, and additional coconut milk and simmered it until the beef cooked. Seasoned with kaffir lime leaves, salt and palm sugar. I tasted the curry as it was cooking and the flavor was decent, but after serving it over the rice, the curry flavor was flat or muted. Also, what was a nice creamy sauce with the beads of orange oil floating on top became dry and stuck to the rice, it seems like the sauce of the curry just dried up (and the rice wasn't undercooked). What am I doing wrong? I'm aware that making my own curry paste is an option, but until I can master the process of cooking a decent curry with premade paste, I don't want to invest time and effort in homemade pastes. Thanks!

I think what people often don't realize about many Thai curry pastes is what is not in them and this applies particularly to the main brands of imported Thai sauces like Mae Ploy for example. Let's take the Panang paste, this should have quite a pronounced peanut taste but if you check the label you will will search in vain for peanuts; fish sauce so essential to a Thai curry also missing. Why? The answer lies in the way these pastes are prepared on the production line. The ingredients are mixed and ground but then instead of being cooked in the conventional sense of the word they are instead pasteurized. This is a fast convenient process. The problem lies in the fact that there are certain ingredients that you can't use this process on, peanuts and fish sauce being among them. They use salt (a lot of it) to try to replace the saltiness of fish sauce but this lacks the aromatic factor that fish sauce provides. This can make it difficult for the cook to add fish sauce to the dish as it is already quite salty. Also although you may see shrimp paste on the label they are being a little disingenuous here; it is not Thai shrimp paste as we think of it but rather shrimp powder, I suppose if you mix it with some of the ingredients you can get away with calling it a shrimp paste. A poor imitation of the real thing though. So onto the fact that your Panang curry doesn't taste like a Panang curry you eat in your local Thai restaurant. Well you might be surprised to learn they probably use the same paste as you do! What, you think they make their own pastes? Almost never. Yes there are exceptions, Pok Pok restaurants in the US being a good example with chef Andy Rikker describing the commercial pastes as "horrible" but for the most part many Thai restaurants will use them. When you see a Thai person pushing their trolley around an Asian cash n' carry that is loaded up with industrial sized tubs of curry paste you can be reasonably sure they are not just stocking up their home pantry in case of a coming Armageddon. They then customize the sauce for use in the restaurant, in this case maybe ground peanuts or often peanut butter, a lot of sugar so they can then add Thai fish sauce without it tasting overwhelmingly salty. Maybe chop some coriander stems in to disguise the fact that only coriander seed is used in the commercial paste instead of coriander root.Depends on the restaurant, they all have their own methods. There are also some supermarket brand pastes that may well use peanuts as they use a method more akin to pressure canning, these are generally rather insipid concoctions though and best avoided. So if you want to try making your curry taste more like one you had in a restaurant that is how you do it if you can't get the fresh ingredients to do it yourself. Also if you google "mythaicurry" you can buy pastes online that are cooked by more traditional methods and are far more authentic and will most likely surpass anything you have ever had in a Thai restaurant. They also have a good section on how to cook with coconut milk. I'm a chef and worked in the development kitchens of some major food producers hence my knowledge of the techniques and limitations of commercial food production.

User manuals of some freezers indicate that for the first few hours after switching on the new freezer, one should not put any food into it. For instance, I am looking at a specimen that requires me to wait for 6 hours before starting to fill it. Note that this is unrelated to letting the freezer stand upright for a while before switching it on. This rule is alluded to on various non-product-specific websites, as well. Two examples: "When you've set it to what you want, give it a few hours before you start filling it up with food – some fridges have a light that'll let you know when it's ready." "It is only in the case of new freezers that you must wait a number of hours before storing frozen foods (You should consult your manufacturer’s handbook for more information)." What is this restriction based upon? If I put some frozen food (bought in a frozen state) into a new freezer right after switching it on for the first time, what could happen? Is it bad for the food? Is it bad for the freezer? Is it bad for either of these no matter what, or only in specific circumstances? Or is it one of those restrictions that are reiterated by many who do not actually remember what the rule was for and under what circumstances it was applicable? UPDATE: Here are some clarifications, as the scope of this question appears to be unclear. First, I am not asking for what the restriction says what might be a valid guideline if I ignore the restriction how I might preserve frozen food during the initial period I am truly looking for the technical rationale behind the restriction as stated.

Most of the "cold" in a freezer isn't stored in the air. It's stored in the contents of the freezer, and in the walls (air has a very low volumetric specific heat). However, the thermostat controlling the compressor works off the air temperature. If you start filling a freezer before it's had a chance to properly cool the walls down, the food is exposed to an effective temperature that is far higher than the freezer's setpoint: heat gets transferred from the walls to the food, warming it up to unsafe levels. Only once the walls reach thermal equilibrium with the air is it safe to start filling the freezer.

I have chicken bones after being boiled down to mush. Can they be crushed? Then what can I use them for?

Worm bin. Worms need calcium and sometimes they struggle to get enough. People recommend eggshells in the worm bin for that reason. You are not supposed to put meat in the worm bin (because of rats) but I think these bones are ok. They will fall apart pretty quick. If you don't have a worm bin you could bury them in your garden. I am told tomatoes like extra calcium in their soil. Do an experiment and put them all by one tomato plant and see if that one is bigger. If you have kids the right age, show them what you are doing and maybe they will make it into a science fair project for next year.

In either wet or dry rub prep, if you use both hands, you will have likely contaminated the rub by the end. How can I prevent this from occurring?

You can save yourself the waste of making double, while preventing cross-contamination, by using one hand (clean) to scoop and sprinkle, and one hand (dirty) to direct the spice falling, pat/tamp, and rub the spices. Typically I begin by applying a "glue" (previously I have used honey and mustard, once I was vegan I went with just mustard; both worked well on smoker) to the cut of meat or vegetable before smoking or bbq. I follow applying the glue by washing my hands, then proceed with whatever rub I am using after the glue has had a chance to adhere (typically thirty minutes medium, but I have followed instructions to let set and congeal for up to eight hours). Then, you can apply the rub following the method above: keep one hand clean to pick up handfuls of rub and sprinkle the rub down, use the other hand to press that rub you are sprinkling down against the cut. This sequence minimizes the number of steps, the times where you need to wash your hands, and makes for great bark. Hopefully you can rotate the cut with one hand, if not it adds one hand-wash. I started doing it this way because I hated having the spice turn into clumps from the moisture. Now I not only have no clumps in the spice after, and sanitary spices for further usage, but also a clean left hand for turning on the sink to wash my right hand.

What is the best way to remove or alleviate the sour, briny taste of canned bamboo shoots? I've tried soaking in cold water for several hours (changed water every hour). I've added salt one time, but found it to be too salty and still sour after cooking. This can't be the natural taste of bamboo because I've tried fresh ones before.

I don't think it's really achievable with most of the canned product I've seen. The best I've accomplished is to slightly mask the flavor using tricks like adding sugar to the dish, which only works for certain categories of foods (clay pot braises, etc.) I've found better-quality water-packed plastic sealed pouches that are only slightly acidic, but these can be quite expensive ($3-5 for what is probably only 1/3-1/2 lb), and my nearby Japanese market has ones which are only slightly briny in their produce section. My acquaintance who supplies mushrooms and some other produce and herbs to restaurants advised to buy frozen bamboo shoots for best results, although they are somewhat hard to find in consumer-sized packages; he caters mostly to the restaurant trade.

I have an old fruit cake recipe and it calls for spry, what can I substitute for spry?

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

I'm new to sourdough starter, so I'm a little confused regarding a statement I read recently which said that the yeast is formed AFTER you see bubbles forming in the starter. Yet, it makes sense to me that the yeast is the cause of the bubbles in the first place. Would someone please explain? Thanks.

The answer is actually both! Yes, the bubbles are caused by the yeast, they are converting sugar to carbon dioxide, among other things. Its also an indicator that the yeast colony is multiplying. So, technically, there is (more) yeast forming.

I have a Brie Cheese that has not been opened. It shows an expiration date that is 6 weeks ago. Is it still safe to eat?

Cheese is a durable food, and the date printed on it is more of a best-by date than an expiration date. While brie is rather soft (which is normally a problem because soft cheeses are more welcoming to bacteria), its colonisation by noble mold fills the ecological niche which would be otherwise claimed by pathogens. So, especially if you kept it in the fridge, eating it a few days or weeks after the date printed should not be a problem food safety wise. As with most mold cheeses, you may find that it has overripened. Overripened mold cheese will have a gooey to liquid core and a somewhat funky smell. It is still safe to eat, but you must decide if the taste is still good enough for you.

Do I need to adjust the oven temperature in a roast duck recipe if I want to put more than one duck in the oven at a time. I suspect I should keep the same temperature but keep them in longer. Should I cover each duck in foil individually or together? Does it matter if they are on the same pan?

Let's do some physics again: All culinary aspects aside, a roast is a (more or less) solid "blob" with a certain mass and volume. To get the roast to the desired doneness, you want to reach a certain temperature at the center of the meat. The crucial properties are the thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of your meat or, very simply put, how fast your meat transports the oven heat towards the center of your roast, which again is calculated on oven heat and starting temperature of your meat. This depends on geometry, or, the maximum thickness of your meat. Hence the rule to stick your meat thermometer in the thickest part of your meat. Two ducks next to each other are two separate masses, which heat up independently, not one roast of greater thickness: Two ducks in your oven need basically the same time as one duck of the same size. (A good oven should be capable of heating enough that the second duck won't lower the temperature significantly.) Now to the practical points: For the reasons discussed above, it is easiest if you choose two ducks of about the same size and weight. If not, one will need less time than the other and you might have to take one bird out of the oven sooner. If both shall be done at the same time, the smaller one needs to go in a short while after the bigger one - how much time difference is very hard to say, even with those handy "roasting time by weight" charts in cookbooks or on the Internet: Use a thermometer, not a timer, to determine doneness. (And don't forget that the core temperature will rise a few degrees even after you have taken the bird out.) You ask about positioning in a conventional oven: By all means roast your birds side by side, not one above the other. Stacked, they will be very close to the top or bottom heating element, which will at least dry them out but more likely burn the top or bottom, while shielding the other bird from the heat on one side. Even if you switch positions occasionally (do you really want to juggle hot pans?), you get the same effect of a "burned-but-undercooked" bird. And no, foil will not prevent this. And just because we repeat it again and again: Do not determine the doneness of your roast by a watch, use a meat thermometer.

I like the look and taste of salsify, and have had it in restaurants. However, I cannot find anywhere to buy it. I don't even mind how it comes - tinned, frozen, fresh.

I am fairly sure I have seen it in Waitrose, when I had one close by - not sure if they still stock it, or if it is location dependant. They don't appear to have it via Ocado either. Need to be quick though - it's the back end of the season already.

The last time I used fenugreek seeds, they and mustard seeds were the first into the pan, followed by onions, then other vegetables. I expected them to soften a bit and release their flavor, but they retained a bit of an unpleasant crunch, in the end. Do I need to grind or crush them first, or can they be used whole if you treat them right?

When cooking with fenugreek personally, I have found that processing them in a grinder is the best way to use them in a dish. If they are not ground fine enough they can remain a bit more textured. Longer cooking time in liquid can help with the breaking down of the texture as well. However, it is best to just start out with grinding them as fine as you can. In response to the mustard seeds, I leave them whole, or grind them. Depending on how I plan to use them. They can be prepared in dishes both ways. They too break down in liquid much easier than the fenugreek seeds. So the crunchy texture you mentioned, may have been from the fenugreek, not the mustard seeds. Cooking duration can play a role too, just to keep that in mind.

I recently made a simple pasta dish with minced pork and I noticed that the taste was very "porky" or I think some people call it "gamey," and I found it quite unpleasant. I rarely cook with pork mince, so this surprised me. I'm used to pork flavours from dishes with cuts like tenderloin, or the classic loin porkchops (cuts which don't tend to have a lot of thick fat, or are not super close to skin). These usually have that funky smell when cooking (frying in a pan) that I'm used to, but the minced meat retained a lot of that unpleasant flavour. It's a little difficult to find words to describe it. I read up about lamb potentially tasting "gamey" from ChefSteps (due to oxidising), and they solved this by introducing a lot of antioxidants - mustard powder, black pepper, salt. Could this be related? Is there a word for this? Is it porky, gamey, etc? How would I go on about preventing this porky flavour? Is it possible with things like minced pork meat?

I know this is a couple years too late but I found this post while looking up ‘ground pork tastes weird’ and thought you might still appreciate an answer. This is what I found: “Boar taint is the offensive odor or taste that can be evident during the cooking or eating of pork or pork products derived from non-castrated male pigs once they reach puberty. Boar taint is found in around 20% of entire male finishing pigs.” Apparently some people are more sensitive to it than others: “Studies show that about 75% of consumers are sensitive to boar taint”

I prepare fried chicken (imitating broasted chicken) at home. Normally to make it tender and juicy I will add baking soda (gives unpleasant flavor) or glutamate, but it doesn't make it that tender. How do I make it as tender and juicy as broasted chicken in restaurants?

The correct answer to any question following the template of "how do I get (some meat) to come out tender when I (some cooking method) it?" is: don't overcook it. It's seriously not rocket science. Cooking meat dries it out as moisture evaporates. The second, and perhaps dominant factor is that in overcooked meat—anything above about 165 F / 74 C, all of the proteins in the meat are fully coagulated. They have squeezed into tight little balls, squeezing out liquid, and taking on a rubbery texture. This effect cannot be reversed. Overcooked meat is too dry, which gives it a tough and sinewy texture. For other tips on making fried chicken more like what you've had in restaurants (very few of which are "broasting" it), see: How to imitate commercial fried chicken?

I have a delicious red curry recipe which I think could be improved if I could add a touch of acidity. I've tried using rice wine but this seems to either overpower the dish or add nothing at all. I'm wondering if I should be using a different type of acid. My recipe goes: Heat 1/4 can of coconut milk in a skillet. Add 1 Tbsn curry paste. Simmer until the oils separate and very little liquid is left. Add remaining 3/4 can coconut milk. Return to a simmer. Add 1 tsp fish sauce. Add 1 tsp palm sugar. Add proteins and veggies. Cook until veggies are soft. Add 1 tsp rice wine. I really want to add complexity with a bit of acid but I just haven't been able to achieve this.

Rice wine vinegar If you are using plain rice wine, then you aren't going to get much acidity. Rice wine vinegar will give you a higher acidity to flavor ratio. I generally add rice wine as part of the stir fry process; I almost always make curry in the following order: aromatics (i.e. ginger, ground spices) -> stir fry vegetables/meat -> add liquid. Rice wine vinegar (and fish sauce, too) I like to add while stir frying as I find that tends to get the flavor into the vegetables without letting them get too soggy soaking in liquid. Lemon or lime juice I would be careful with lime, as it tends to add a sweetness, and I find that it can easily overpower a curry. But lemon, on the other hand, will give you more acidity without so much sweetness. Depending on what is in your red curry paste (specifically, lemongrass and how much), lemon juice could go well or clash. Lime juice is something I generally use in green curries.

I wanted to render the fat from some bacon to produce bacon grease. The usual advice that you see on the internet is to simply fry whole strips of bacon at a low heat, for a longer period, and the fat will melt away from the meat proper. That normally works for me. The other day I wanted to try someting different. I have previously rendered other fats in different ways. I've tried a 'wet render', by simmering at a very low temperature in water. That worked well for lamb fat. And I tried a 'dry render' by putting the fat in the oven at a lowish temperature (gas mark 3 = 160C), which worked well for chicken skin. I tried these methods with some bacon fat, that I had cut off from the meat of back bacon strips. So it was just 16 white strips of cold fat. But they didn't work. With the wet render, no matter how long I simmered for, the water didn't get more than a tiny bit oily. The dry render behaved similarly, except that it did give a tiny bit of fat, but nearly all of the fat was still whole, the bits hadn't reduced in size at all after I baked for about 5 hours. Why didn't it work? At first I thought the temperature might be too high, but it's not like the bits were getting blackened or anything. And surely a higher temperature would also show signs of rendering the fat, it wouldn't just arrest the entire process.

Chop bacon finely...or even use a food processor. Place in a pot. Add just enough water to cover the bottom of pan and prevent initial sticking. Place on very low heat. You might even need a heat diffuser. You don't want frying, just low, gentle heat. Too much heat produces off flavors. It might take a few hours. You will have rendered fat, but also the cracklings (the stuff that doesn't render). Strain. Use both the fat and the cracklings. Really, it's the same process for rendering beef, pork, duck...any type of fat rendering.

According to wikipedia, the byproducts of yeast fermenting (like done in baking it says) are carbon dioxide and alcohol (not necessarily ethanol -- the kind you can get drunk on). If that's the case, then technically speaking does every form of raised bread have alcohol in it?

The majority of the alcohol evaporates during baking. McGee's On Food and Cooking says (pg 532): In making beer and wine, the carbon dioxide escapes from the fermenting liquid, and alcohol accumulates. In making bread both carbon dioxide and alcohol are trapped by the dough, and both are expelled from the dough by the heat of baking. I also found this report, which states that some alcohol (0.04 to 1.9%) may remain. However, the report is from 1926, so 1. it may not be really representing modern day situation 2. the data, methodology etc. is not reported: it looks more like an informal news than a real research article, so I cannot critique on whether the results are realistic.

I sometimes buy rice noodles from an Asian grocery, especially since certain sizes (like sheets) are hard to find in dried form, and the finished texture is different. However, I generally find that unless the rice noodles are very fresh (as in made within 24 hours) the tend to stick together as if glued, and tear instead of separating. I've tried soaking them both in warm water and in cold water to help separate them, but inevitably end up with a bunch of torn noodle bits instead of the nice spongy rice noodles I wanted. Given that selling week-old fresh rice noodles is common across Asian groceries, there must be some way to separate them. What is it? Update: I'm talking about noodles like this:

I think those are chow fun noodles, cut them to the desired size if not already cut, soak it in cool water for about 7-15 mins then hand unroll them. That how I was taught anyways. The packaging looks tight too so possibly cut the sides off too, should help it stop from clumping and allow the water to penetrate and separate them.

I currently work in home office but in the late afternoon I pick up my kids from school, we spend some time on the playground and usually only come home half an hour before dinner time. For soups I used the strategy to set them up during my lunch break and then let them cook for half an hour. Then turn the stove off and put it back on when we come home. The soup is ready just at dinner time. I was wondering whether I can do the same with a roast chicken in the oven. That is I put in the oven around noon, roast for half an hour and then turn the oven off, leaving the chicken in. Turn the oven back on when we get home. Have ready roast chicken at dinner time. I was mostly wondering whether there is something that could go wrong here? Will this turn out any different from just roasting a chicken for 1 hour without breaks in between?

Can it be done? yes. Is there a higher risk of food poisoning? yes. The way to get around that is almost more of a pain -- you cook it in a low oven until it's just barely cooked through (which is a different temperature for the legs vs. the breast meat), then chill it, and then return it to a hot oven to warm it and crisp the skin up. You're often better off fully cooking it, chilling it, and then warming it back up, and serving with a hot gravy that you can pour over it. Another alternative would be spatchcocking the chicken (cutting the backbone out and flattening it, so it cooks quicker; see https://www.seriouseats.com/butterflied-roasted-chicken-with-quick-jus-recipe ). You could prep it in advance, so you just had to throw it in the oven when you got home ... but you have to cook it under the broiler for a chance at the 30 minute window: https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/broiled-butterflied-chicken-recipe-1951266 ) There's also a technique where you quarter the chicken, start it on the stovetop (starting the leg quarters first), then move it to the oven that's been pre-heating ... and if you had the chicken prepped might take 30 minutes ... but I'm having difficulty finding the recipe. (I thought it had been on Good Eats, but I'm not having luck searching the Food Network website).

I want to re-use some peanut oil I used to make wings the following morning. I don't have any cheesecloths for filtering. The used oil will be sitting out on the stove for less than twelve hours from the night before. Is this safe? Any advice on filtering without cheesecloths if it's a must?

As far as food safety goes, it should be safe to refry food with it (after all, you are heating this up to ~400 F again, bacteria stands no chance) The filtering helps on the flavor department. As food particles/breadings fall off, they burn and impart a burnt flavor. If you reuse oil with much burnt parts, the burnt flavors will come through lot quicker. Alternate to cheesecloths: If you notice hardly any food particles in the bottom, you are good to go. if you have food particles, I can suggest either Pour the oil slowly to another vessel, leaving the last half inches or so, and the food particles will remain in that last bit of oil. Discard that oil and use the remaining oil. Use paper towel to filter. Edit: If you want to go deeper in ther knowledge-base, heres an excellent source: http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/09/ask-the-food-lab-how-many-times-can-i-reuse-fry-oil.html

Recently, a sack of whole grain organic rice that we bought became infected with small black bugs. We bought the rice in the bulk bins at the same organic supermarket we always visit, but this time we didn't cook it until a few weeks after buying it. Since, the rice was stored in a sealed plastic bag, it seems like the bugs (or their eggs?) must have been in the rice when we bought it. Is this normal? Should I worry about buying rice there again? Is there a better way I should be storing the rice? It was in a plastic sack with a twist-tie.

Those bugs are probably weevils. I would take it back to the store and ask for a refund. If the rice is the only grain with bugs, chances are the larvae were already in the rice. The weevils are about 1/4 inch long and they have a little tube sticking out of their head. The larvae take about 35 days to emerge from inside the kernels. A farmer can only control a weevil infestation with chemicals, which would preclude the organic label, and there is just so much frogs and birds can eat.