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I notice that in both countries where I lived the fridges are kept at 6 or 7 °C (43-45 °F). When it would be colder, people find their drinks to cold, when served straight out of fridge (especially in winter). Also a lower temperature would cost more energy. What would be the best temperature for food storage. Would that be even lower? For storing meals, how much time longer would food stay good when the fridge would be colder?

The USDA says refrigeration temperature should be 40°F (4.4°C) or below. If food is in there at a higher temperature (such as the 43-45°F the question mentions), for longer than 2 hours, and they're saying the food isn't safe. Keep in mind that when too cold, after a while parts of things freeze, which can damage items, or severely diminish their pleasant taste. This especially goes for produce such as lettuce or even tomatoes. If you want to store leftovers longer, consider freezing them. Edit: corrected to 40°F or below

This happened to me often when I go to some restaurants or be on a visit to somebody place. It just happen that I want to add some lemon to my soup or use it as an addition to my meals but they do not have access to a lemon crusher. Is that the name of the tool?. I've seen people used forks, spoons and just their thumb for squeezing the juice of the lemon. But is there a method which has proven to work the best to take out all of the juice without trying to make much force with the hands or something?. Is there a tool that can be carried on maybe portable for this purposes?.

Yes. This happens to me. Some scientists are investigating the possibility of using the peppercorns as a means of reducing people's salt intake. Potential of Szechuan pepper as a saltiness enhancer, Tram Hong Le Bao, Siree Chaiseri and Yaowapa Lorjaroenphon, International Journal of Food Properties 21(1), pp533-545.

I am embarking on a project to cook every recipe in the "The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread" cookbook. I would like to maintain a cooking journal, something similar to a lab book, to document my observations as I attempt each recipe. The objective is to prefect my bread making method. I prefer electronic methods of maintaining the journal for efficient referencing.

I've found Evernote (www.evernote.com) to be the best, simply because it is everywhere. It supports basic features like tagging, and can adapt to most every use case you can throw at it. And it's free!

I have a lasagne recipe that has pumpkin, sausage and collard greens in it. Is there another vegetable that will replace the pumpkin as I do not like pumpkin?

You want emulsification. Emulsification is the breaking up a fat and dispersing it into a liquid (or vice versa, dispersing a liquid in a fat). A classic example of an emulsification, also known as an emulsion, is mayonnaise. There are at least two good ways you can emulsify your brown butter, soy sauce, and lemon juice. One way is called shearing, which is just what it sounds like. You're basically cutting off slices of droplets, making them smaller and smaller. The smaller the microdroplets, the more stable the emulsion. You can accomplish a short-lived but great textured emulsion with just energetic whisking of your liquid and fat ingredients. You can make the micro-droplets even smaller and your emulsion more stable by using a blender or immersion blender. A second thing you can do to bind your liquid and fat ingredients into a much firmer and more stable emulsion is to add an emulsifier, an egg yolk being a very solid candidate for the job. Energetically whisk in about half of an egg yolk while slowly bringing the cool sauce to just above perfect serving temperature. If you like where the sauce is going, and would like it to be even more like that, temper, then add the other half of the yolk. Mustard is pretty effective too, for a different flavor.

I once heard that one type of canned tuna is prone to have less mercury (poison) based upon the size it is at harvest or the location where it is commonly found. I buy Genova brand which has both kinds packed in olive oil. They are both the same cost so getting the "safer" one is a no-brainer. Can you shed some light on this subject?

The Environmental Defense Fund has made a few recommendations based on EPA guidance: Canned white, or albacore (0.32 parts per million of mercury). Children under six can eat up to one 3-ounce portion a month; children from 6–12, two 4.5-ounce portions a month. Adults, including pregnant women, can safely eat it up to three times a month (women, 6-ounce portions; men, 8-ounce portions). Canned light — the safer choice (0.12 parts per million of mercury). Children under six can eat up to three 3-ounce portions per month. Older children and adults can safely eat it once a week. But look out for "gourmet" or "tonno" labels. They are made with bigger yellowfin tuna and can contain mercury levels comparable to canned white. A better alternative is canned salmon (mostly sockeye or pink from Alaska), which is low in contaminants and high in heart-healthy omega-3s. It's also sustainably caught in Alaska and similarly priced, making it a great choice all around. They may say "safer choice" but what it comes down to is that regardless of which type of tuna you eat, you're going to be getting a pretty high amount of mercury if you eat it frequently. Mercury accumulates in animals higher up in the food chain. I hate that I'm screenshotting an svg in order to post it but below is a helpful little diagram: - via Wikipedia I included the part regarding salmon from the EDF source because salmon is just a better choice to make environmentally and for your health. I know your question was albacore versus yellow fin, but the difference there is negligible. The light vs white is a matter of which cut of the fish you get and that does matter, but you're still getting a fair amount of mercury. Eat smaller fish, like salmon, herring, sardines, kippers, etc. if you are truly worried about mercury.

There are times when I have accidentally mixed up baking powder and baking soda in a recipe resulting in a bitter, almost metallic tasting dough. However, my signature pancake recipe uses a mix of baking soda and baking powder and there is no issue with taste. When does adding baking soda make something taste bitter? When you do mix up baking powder and baking soda in a recipe, is there anything that can be added to fix it if caught in time?

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

According to USDA, medium grain raw brown rice has carbs and fiber at a ratio of 76g / 3.4g = 22.4. When cooked, the ratio changes to 24g / 1.8g = 13.3. Are these numbers wrong, and if not, why does this ratio change in favor of fiber? Mere dilution shouldn't change this ratio. EDIT: The missing 0 hypothesis seems to be the most plausible explanation so far, but I'd like to find sources completely independent from USDA to be sure. All of the sources I found just copy USDA directly or indirectly.

When you cook things using water you add mass that have 0 calories. Some food, like rice, absorb that water. Hence boiling 100 grams of rice increase final mass to around 300 grams. Then again you measure the 100 grams carbs and it's 3 times less than your starting points because you never added additional carbs in the process. The fiber amount is IMHO wrongly calculated because 3,4 gram divided by 3,16 (ratio of carbs in 100 grams before and after cooking) is 1,075. Probably someone rounded up the 75 wrong and had 1,8 instead of 1,08.

More like meta-cooking question, but I believe it fits here better than on travel stack. All around the world, one of the symbols of Thailand is Pad Thai. And multiple versions of curry. But when I wander around Bangkok or other Thai cities, I see pad thai served mostly in tourist areas like Khao San Road and its surroundings, around the Royal Palace, etc. When I look and most food street carts there are plenty of sticks (meat/fish/sausages/balls/seafood put on short wooden sticks and grilled over fire), soups (tom yum based, clear soup with noodles, wonton's), many kinds of meat, seafood, noodles (though not strictly pad thai I think) and so on. Not that many curries either, but in more in-house restaurants you can find them. So my question is - is the pad thai really Thai? Maybe I'm just overlooking it, or search in wrong places. Or is it a dish once found by a western traveller, made famous in the West and then its renown came back with the travellers.

It's Thai, but it's a relatively new dish as it doesn't date back when the country was called Siam, and it uses Chinese style noodles and preparation (with Thai flavors). There was a coup against the monarchy in 1932; in 1938 Plaek Phibunsongkhram (aka Phibun) came to power as prime minister. Phibun ordered the creation of a new national dish, "Gway Teow Pad Thai" (Thai fried rice noodles). The thing was, noodles weren't popular in Thailand before that, but there are stories that as this coincided with World War II, it was a way to get people to eat less rice. (although, it's rice noodles, so I don't understand that part) The government pushed for the dish, including subsidizing food carts (and banning non-Thai food cart vendors, so there wasn't competition from the Chinese noodle vendors) ... But they're not the only country where foods we associate with them are relatively new -- potatoes and tomatoes are "new world" crops, not European, and untrusted (as they're part of the nightshade family along with capsicums (peppers), eggplant, and tomatillos). So Irish and Italian cuisines before 1500CE (aka 1500AD) were extremely different from what we think of as their cuisines today.

I have become interested in learning how to cook better, and how cooking works. I prepared a dish, a kind-of pie made from tortillas as the base and top, with potato, feta cheese, sauteed soft rings of onion, mushrooms, garlic and spinach in olive oil with pepper as the filling ingredients, and baked until crispy. A pretty simple recipe. A lot of my meals so far seem to be based on this base of onion, mushroom, and garlic. When eating the dish, I found that certain ingredients on their own were too much, mainly the spinach (bitter) and feta cheese (overwhelming), and that certain combinations of the ingredients were good, potato and feta, or onion and garlic, but when I ate full slices (ie. containing nearly all ingredients) they all faded into each other and lost sharpness and therefore seemed bland I know without going into the specifics of my preparation of these ingredients, it may be hard to come up with suggestions, and this is a very general question but I am trying to understand the bigger picture of combinations of tastes, and cooking techniques to make food that tastes really good, so I am wanting suggestions of further ingredients, or techniques to refine this base, and add more flavour and quality to my dishes. I appreciate any input or suggestions. Thanks

One of the most important things to consider when designing a dish is the balance of tastes in the dish: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. Remember that certain tastes can combine with each other to cancel each other out, enhance one another, and sometimes even create new tastes. Here are three rules of thumb that should help: Sweetness can complement and even suppress bitterness. As an example, think of beer. Saltiness, in general, enhances the other tastes, and can often be masked by them. Sweetness, for example, can suppress saltiness and, at the same time, saltiness can enhance sweetness. That's why many baked confections contain salt. Also, that's one reason why a classic pairing for salty feta cheese is sweet watermelon. Sourness/acidity can make fatty foods seem less fatty. That's one reason why fatty meats are often served with vinegar-based sauces. It is important to think about what each ingredient contributes to the dish in terms of taste, flavor, texture, and color. If two ingredients are serving the same purpose, then chances are you don't need one of them. In your specific case, here is what some of your ingredients contribute in terms of taste: Feta: Salty. Onion: Sweet. Mushrooms: Umami. Spinach: Bitter and slightly sweet. The other ingredients are mostly just adding flavor and texture, which may not be necessary in your case. Also, keep in mind that the oil, feta, and tortillas (assuming you are using flour tortillas) all contain fat, so you may want to bump-up the sourness a bit. Also, if you found that the spinach was too bitter, you could offset it by reducing the amount and perhaps caramelizing your onions a bit more to add sweetness. You could also add some balsamic vinegar to your onions as they caramelize which will both make them sweeter and also add some acidity. As a final suggestion, make sure to write everything down! That way, then next time you try this recipe you will know (1) how much of each ingredient you used before, and (2) what ingredients you'd like to alter.

Both bain marie and steaming are indirect methods of cooking but are they interchangable or are there cases where one should or shouldn't be used? It seems that some recipes call for one or the other but no reason is specified for the choice of method other than: The benefits of indirect cooking e.g. better temperature control or gentler cooking. That's just the way it is done. I wondered this after reading about how to make silken tofu. Some methods steam it, others heat the milk and slowly let it cool but I found none use a bain marie, though I can't see why not? I have not found any direct comparison in my searches so any insight would be much appreciated.

They're not really much the same and what they're used for is generally pretty different. I don't consider them interchangeable at all. Use a bain marie for things that are liquid or will become liquid on heating: Chocolate can be melted in a bain-marie to avoid splitting and caking onto the pot. Special dessert bains-marie have a thermally insulated container and are used as a chocolate fondue. Cheesecake is often baked in a bain-marie to prevent the top from cracking in the centre. Custard may be cooked in a bain-marie to keep a crust from forming on the outside of the custard before the interior is fully cooked. In the case of the crème brûlée, placing the ramekins in a roasting pan and filling the pan with hot water until it is 1/2 to 2/3 of the way up the sides of the ramekins transfers the heat to the custard gently, which prevents the custard from curdling. The humidity from the steam that rises as the water heats helps keep the top of the custard from becoming too dry. Classic warm sauces, such as Hollandaise and beurre blanc, requiring heat to emulsify the mixture but not enough to curdle or "split" the sauce, are often cooked using a bain-marie. Some charcuterie such as terrines and pâtés are cooked in an "oven-type" bain-marie. Thickening of condensed milk, such as in confection-making, is done easily in a bain-marie. Controlled-temperature bains-marie can be used to heat frozen breast milk before feedings. Bains-marie can be used in place of chafing dishes for keeping foods warm for long periods of time, where stovetops or hot plates are inconvenient or too powerful. A bain-marie can be used to re-liquefy hardened honey by placing a glass jar on top of any improvised platform sitting at the bottom of a pot of gently boiling water. Generally, the food needs to be pretty homogeneous with no big open spaces. If you put broccoli in a bain marie, most of it wouldn't be in contact with the inner bowl so little of the heat would be transferred. Steam, however, will creep in and around all of the branches and cook it evenly. Steaming is best when you're trying to heat up oddly-shaped things that will retain their shape like vegetables, meats/fish/poultry, rice, cakes, buns, etc. You also specifically would not want to use the steaming method for something like chocolate as you usually want to avoid introducing water into the chocolate.

I'm in a place where buying baking soda is proving to be quite difficult*, so I was looking for substitutions, and it seems there really aren't any. So this got me thinking: Baking soda is made (or otherwise harvested from nature) in some way. How can I do this? I realize the answer is likely to be so involved or expensive that I won't want to undertake the project, but for the determined baker, how would it be done? *I eventually found some. NOTE: The question is about making, not sourcing or substituting, baking soda.

Sodium bicarbonate, the chemical name of baking soda, has always been manufactured using industrial processes at an industrial scale. I can't see how it could be practical to make at home. You'd need specialized equipment and you might well find that the materials you need aren't any easier to acquire. Baking soda is known by different names, in addition to sodium bicarbonate according to Wikipedia it's also known as bread soda, cooking soda, and bicarbonate of soda. So it's possible it's available in your area on under one of these other names. If you live in area where a language other than English is used then you might find other alternative names in that language's version of the Wikipedia page. If you still can't find any you'll either have to pay to have it shipped to you or find a substitute recipe that uses some other leavening agent.

I see Pillsbury pre-made dough rolled in tubes. This makes it easier to open it at one end and chop off slices as needed. In my case, I force freshly made cookie dough into containers and just slice them up later -- very difficult and tough. I tried preparing them into rolled parchment paper, which I ended up using a lot of, so it was thus wasteful. Is there tool I can use so I can form the freshly made cookie dough into tubes, for ease of rolling later on?

A sausage stuffer, perhaps? Your standard food mill attachment type more typically seen in a home kitchen: Unless you're seeing some product I've never met, I would not call that stuff "rolled in tubes" - I'd call it a tube (or log) of dough, and I expect the filling process is VERY like a (large, automated) sausage stuffer, and involves no rolling at all. In making refrigerator cookies, one simply makes a log out of the dough, wraps it, and places it in the fridge to harden before slicing. The dough is not liquid to start with, so it does not pour, and can be shaped without a form. If your "dough" "pours" I'm dubious about your recipe or method.

I made a cheesecake this past weekend. The firing schedule was two stages, cook at 350 F for 25 mins; then apply a sour cream top and insert back into oven for 5 mins at 450 F. When I went to put it back in to brown the sour cream, I noticed there was a fair bit of smoke (although not enough to be alarmed yet). As I inserted the cheesecake, I noticed what seemed to be a bit of liquid on the oven liner. As the sour cream toasted, I thought about what could have caused the liquid. I wondered if maybe something I cooked earlier (like a roast chicken) gave off some spatter. I became concerned that at 450 F, the smoke would become worse. Looking in on it, the smoke was indeed worse, and I shut the oven off and gave up on the cheesecake. I am wondering specifically what caused the liquid. I have some guesses, but I am hoping someone more experienced than me would be able to say for sure. First, I will talk about the ingredients of the base cake, and see if that could have caused seepage. The crust was an Oreo crumb, frozen (not baked), and there were several places where liquid could have gotten through. The cheesecake itself consisted of: 1.5 lbs cream cheese 2 tsp vanilla 4 egg whites 1 C sugar I am thinking one point of failure could be the egg whites. The directions were to beat to soft peaks, then slowly incorporate the sugar and beat to stiff peaks. When I separated one of the eggs, a very minute dabble of yolk may have gotten through. I thought I read that if there were any yolks, then it would be nearly impossible to beat to stiff peaks. After I beat the whites and sugar for what seemed like too long of a time, I settled for what I told myself were stiff peaks. The recipe called to fold the whites into the beaten cream cheese. This may have been another failure point: I am unsure I folded long enough. When I took the cake out to top with sour cream, it showed definite segments of the cheese and egg. And lastly I am wondering if the oven liner may have caused the liquid. That is, I think the temperature of 450 F was too high and am wondering if that temp caused the liner to degrade. Hopefully someone knows what the cause was. I am looking to make this to an edible product.

Spring forms are not entirely liquid-proof, so anything liquid can leak out of the form while baking. I personally set off the fire alarm a month ago trying to make potatoes au gratin in a spring form. In my experience, what tends to leak from a cheesecake is fat from the crust. Many recipes recommend baking a cheesecake in a water bath, which both helps the cake bake evenly and neatly prevents anything from leaking onto the bottom of the oven. I will say that using beaten egg whites for an oven baked cheesecake is somewhat unusual. Most recipes include whole eggs, and you would try to avoid beating any air into the batter to prevent cracks from forming.

This question may sound as stupid as it is, but I just want to feed my curiosity (I am not going to eat mouldy food). I am trying to find a common point for these two assumptions (provided that both are true): Many years ago I was told that microwave heating purifies food out of any valuable nutrition values, because microwave radiation plus high temperature kills all biological forms of life (i.e. "good" bacteria) or organic chemistry (i.e. vitamins) that exists in heated food. About 2-3 years ago I also run through a question asked here (can't find it now) to which answer explained that there are only 2-3 examples of food that can be still eaten after removing mold. All other thousands of food examples must be recycled, if mouldy. If both assumptions are correct then how it is that treating a food with a little bit mold over it for about 5-7 minutes in microwave at let's say 800 W doesn't do the same (point 1) to mold, which is after all a biological component (fungi?)? Isn't 5-7 minutes of heat and microwave emission enough to kill all colonies of mold and enough to make food again eatable? (of course I am talking about "bad grey mold", not "good cheesy blue mold")

No. In many cases, it's not the mould (or bacteria etc.) itself that poisons you, it's toxins released by the pathogen. Killing the mould doesn't say anything about what happens to the toxins, any more than killing a creature cleans up its excrement. You should assume this to always be the case as even if you could identify the most visible mould as not too much of a threat, you're quite likely to have other forms as well. It will also taste bad, as you'll know if you've ever bitten into bread that hadn't kept as well as you'd expect, without noticing mould spots.

Do I need to double the quantity of baking powder,when all other ingredients are doubled for preparing simple sponge cake?

For doubling a recipe, yes, you double the amount of baking powder. Issues with increasing a recipe rarely cause trouble until you get to 4x or more. For baking though, you do want to make sure the depth of the cake is the same as for the original recipe though so that it bakes properly in about the same amount of time. This recipe from Bon Appetit is a sponge cake for a 13"x 9" pan or a 9" round cake pan. It mentions that you can double it for a two-layer cake with no other adjustment for the baking powder. A common mistake may be to also double mixing time -- which you do not want to do since that can cause gluten development.

I have this T-Fal non stick pot, and really I don't have any use for the non stick coating. I'm wondering if there's any harm in washing it in the dishwasher aside from the non-stick coating wearing off. In particular I am wondering about food safety.

Details on beef color changes can be found here. Briefly: When beef is first cut (or ground or whatever), it has a purplish hue, caused by deoxymyoglobin, a pigment that can only exist in the absence of oxygen. When exposed to oxygen, a chemical reaction occurs, producing oxymyoglobin, which leads to the bright cherry red color most people associate with "fresh meat." Eventually, the molecule oxydizes, producing metmyoglobin, which can no longer bind oxygen -- and this turns the meat brown. (There are natural enzymes present which can convert back to oxymyoglobin when in the presence of sufficient oxygen, though these will eventually be depleted. Packaging can preserve the strong oxygen-rich environment for longer, which is why grocery store meat stays bright red on the surface.) When meat is cooked, the globin denatures and forms a tan/gray hemichrome pigment which can no longer convert back to the other myoglobin pigments. Anyhow, this is all a preface to explain that certain chemical additives will change the chemistry here, pushing the reactions to move to or away from certain pigment states. The primary one that you mentioned is salt. As discussed in the linked article: If salt has been incorporated into patties or is present in the case of enhanced steaks, salt decreases metmyoglobin reducing activity allowing more MMb to accumulate [i.e., turning brown]. . . . In addition, salt promotes heat denaturation, or breakdown, of myoglobin [i.e., turning tan or gray]. Basically, salt causes the pigmentation molecules to convert faster to states resembling old or cooked meat, causing the color change you see.

I made an Oaxacan-style mole and went too heavy with the cinnamon stick. That flavor is now too prevalent. How can I fix this? I was thinking about adding some chicken stock and tomato sauce. Your input would be greatly appreciated.

Clove or allspice can take it nicely over the top; sage and oregano can tame it. This approach means to simply adjust the flavors of the sauce. Basically, if the problem you are having is that cinnamon is to cinnamon-y and distinct relative to taste, you can apply a flavor blur with neighboring spices (the clove, allspice, coriander, cardamom, cumin etc). If the problem is that you are finding that neighborhood of flavor to intense, you can round the palate by adding the herbs. The other route would be re-scaling the sauce. Adding stock, oil/fat, peppers/onions, chocolate disks/cocoa, or other ratio constituents means you would need to re-up on the other constituents as it may throw off the sauce's viscosity. This may be preferable if you simply can't stand the cinnamon or its neighbors; or if balancing the spice/herbs would make the sauce too noisy.

There is a "flavor of bubble gum", not only for bubble gum, but also for kids toothpaste and milkshakes. Is it possible to reproduce this taste in the kitchen? What ingredients are required? Are they available to consumers or are they 'commercial chemicals'?

Amazon offers several "Bubble Gum Flavoring" or "Bubble Gum Extracts" in both "Natural" and "Artificial" varieties. While the manufactures don't list specific ingredients this is one recipe: Here is my basic bubble gum recipe based on "10 parts..." the key is really in the wintergreen, cinnamon and clove. Fruits can vary a bit-but you will find this to be the "ticket." 3 parts banana flavor 3 parts pineapple flavor 2 parts wintergreen, 1 part cinnamon and 1 part clove. As I said Bubble Gum flavor is complex and not just one or two notes. The oldest formula included a fruit like "king fruit" or "passion fruit" but I find most any tropical flavor will pull through. Whether you (or various manufacturers) choose to use "natural" or "artificial" versions of these flavoring is an individual choice, but it is clearly not limited to "Just artificial chemicals". Beware that wintergreen oil is quite poisonous: as little as a teaspoon can be fatal. The Drugs.com page on it contains the following: "The highest amount of methyl salicylate typically used in candy flavouring is 0.04%." "Because of this toxicity, official labelling requirements have been changed so that no drug product may contain more than 5% methyl salicylate."

I have just moved to Germany. I haven't yet been able to find brown sugar of the type we have in Australia ie: soft, small grained, slightly sticky in that it holds its shape well when you dig a spoonful out. The only brown sugars I have seen are granular. You can also buy molasses. Crushing the granular sugar is both labour-intensive and not that successful. Any ideas on the ratios of different sugar products required to produce a 'soft brown sugar'? As context, I tend to use soft brown sugars in things like fruit crumble toppings, as a base for a very dark caramel sauce, and also as a substitute for palm sugar when (as in Germany) it's difficult to get hold of. The granular sugars don't behave in quite the same way when melting/added to hot sauces.

Put the regular (refined white) sugar and molasses (about 2 tablespoons per cup of sugar) in a food processor and give it a spin. Use more or less molasses as needed to get the color and consistency that you want.

This has been playing on my mind for a while and I thought it was time to ask! In any supermakert, there is usually at least 5+ regular brands, then 3-4 supermarket brands. In addition to some supermarkets stocking expensive/specialised brands. Forgetting margarine or low fat/special butter where chemicals are added, traditional butter is just milk with salt sometimes added. Now, it doesn't matter where I buy milk from, it always tastes the same. Considering this and that traditional butter is just churned milk... Why do different brands of butter taste different!?

Cook's Illustrated (AKA America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Country) has done taste tests of various brands of butter, salted and unsalted, cultured and not cultured. They found that the single most important thing in unsalted butter was how it was wrapped. Butter wrapped in foil doesn't pick up off flavors from its environment. Land O Lakes (incidentally my go-to brand) treats the parchment it wraps its butter in, and that parchment does keep out off flavors. Butter wrapped in regular parchment not only picks up off flavors, but over time loses moisture. The wrapping is an issue in salted butter as well, but not as big of one. Secondly, obviously some butters are cultured and others are not. In the United States, most cultured butter is imported and is significantly more expensive. In the tastings, most people preferred cultured butter to uncultured when used as a spread. When used in baking, they found no difference. The third issue they found was whether or not the cows were grass fed. Some tasters picked up what they called "barnyard notes" in the grass fed. Some tasters liked that, others did not. In salted butter, the amount of salt varies widely. For use as a spread, most tasters preferred brands with more salt. For baking and cooking they almost always recommend unsalted butter. Just FYI, Cook's Illustrated recommends keeping butter in the freezer until just before the stick's first use. Even foil wrapped butter will pick up some off flavors from long storage in the refrigerator.

I'd love to eat sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes or topinambour) more frequently, but the side effects (gas, abdominal discomfort) are a bummer. In a home kitchen, how can I prepare the sunchokes to prevent this side effect?

In On Food and Cooking (2004 edition), page 307, Harold McGee indicates that the... erm... flatulent effects of sun chokes (also called Jerusalem artichokes) are due to complex fructose-based carbohydrates that are not digestible by humans. Long, slow cooking allows enzymes present in the fresh of the tuber will convert these fructose over time. McGee recommends 12-24 hours at 200 F / 93 C. He indicates that the result will be soft and sweet, akin to a vegetable aspic. Note that the ogliosacharrides in beans are a different class than the inulin in sunchoke (galactose based versus fructose based, respectively), and evidently Beano is not effective sunchoke. Short of this extreme measure, your best defense against wind may be smaller portions of the vegetable.

OK, so we shouldn't refreeze meat once it's been defrosted. But if I've partially defrosted meat, then popped it back in the freezer, is that safe? Specifically I'm thinking of sausages or steaks or chops, which may be frozen in groups. You might want to pull them out of the freezer for 30 mins to 1 hr, so they thaw just enough to loosen up to separate them, then put half back. Is this safe? My question is ... is there a clean cut off point with defrosting after which it becomes unsafe to refreeze, or does it just get progressively more dangerous?

If you're unthawing them in your refrigerator (below 40 F), then you should be just fine. Most beasties don't reproduce at any significant rate below 40 F. There isn't a clean cut off point because it depends entirely on the existing level of contamination present in your meat. You should be aware that repeated cycles of thaw/freeze will really damage the texture of your meat. The cells simply do not hold up to that.

I Tried Milton 3ltr with press button on it but after few hours the taste gets change. I want a right product to keep it fresh as prepared for more then 6 hours. What's the right way to do that so that I will increase the supply area to reach maximum.

There's a reason it's termed "Fresh Brewed". Tea and coffee only stay fresh for so long. It can be kept hot, not fresh.

I learned to make caramel sauce pretty recently and for a while was on a serious sauce-making kick. Anyway, the day after Christmas I went to make a batch and noticed I didn't have any cream. I did a quick Google search and a few sites said I could substitute whole milk for the heavy cream in my recipe. When I got to that stage and added the milk it very quickly became apparent that those sites were wrong. Instead of thickening and becoming creamy the melted sugar simply dissolved away and I was left with a really nasty smelling pot of sweet warm milk. So obviously I can't use whole milk instead of cream, but I'd really like to know, for curiosity's sake, why it doesn't work.

Quite simply, it's the fat content. Whole milk or "full-fat" milk is 3.25% fat by weight. Heavy cream is 36-40% fat by weight. These two products are at opposite ends of the fat spectrum, and there's very little difference between 1% and 3% when it comes to an item such as caramel sauce, for which the optimal ratio is about 50% fat. (A little butter can boost the fat content from 40% to 50%). You might be able to substitute standard/single cream (18-20%) or maybe even coffee cream/half-and-half (10%), but any lower than that and you're just making sugary milk. Other alternatives to (possibly) get it thicker: Use (much) less milk; I'd advise not attempting a direct substitution, just find a recipe based on milk. Even the best milk-based caramel sauce will still be substantially runnier and/or grittier than a cream-based sauce. Considering that butter is 80% fat and homo milk is 3.25%, you could use a mixture of (approximately) half milk and half butter that would emulate the fat content of heavy cream. I've never tried this personally, and I suspect that the flavour might be a little off, but at least it would be closer to the expected texture. Try a reduction (simmer off the water in the milk). You'll be simmering a long time, and you'll have to watch it very carefully to make sure it doesn't burn, and you'll probably have a nasty stuck-on mess to clean up in the pan afterward, but it will thicken.

I like to make corn tortilla chips by cutting up store-bought tortillas and baking them at 350 for ~20-25 minutes without oil or salt. However, I've found that the last few minutes are highly variable - they go from perfect golden to burnt brown very quick. I've had to toss quite a few sheets because giving an extra minute or two resulted in burnt chips. I also try to flip and rearrange the chips about halfway through because another large source of variability is the chip's placement within the oven - usually chips near the front crisp up much quicker. These issues are further compounded if I'm baking two sheets of chips at the same time, which is often the case. I've thought of a couple things, but haven't tried yet: Bake at a lower temp for longer. Dehydrate the tortillas somehow before baking. I'd rather avoid the first option, and I haven't thought of a means of doing the second. Does anyone have suggestions for baking tortilla chips in a more consistent manner?

I broiled on low and just watched them. Didn't take more than a few minutes per side and they browned relatively evenly. Actually they looked store bought and they tasted delicious completely unseasoned

I like the idea of eating pigs cheeks, I've heard they are delicious, but difficult to cook so they are not chewy. How should I cook them so they are succulent and delicious?

Restaurants quite often cook pigs cheeks 'sous vide', but unless you have, or fancy investing in a water bath, you can do things the old fashioned way. How you prepare the cheeks for cooking will, to some extent, depend on which part you're cooking. If you're going to cook the whole cheek, you really should think about soaking in a brine of sugar, salt, vinegar and spices for 24 to 48 hours. If you're just cooking the 'pad' that part can be skipped. The thing to remember with cheeks, is they are quite a fatty meat and the muscle fibres are very dense, so whichever method you choose, it's going to take time. One classic method is braising the cheeks with a variety of vegetables and something slightly sweet and sharp as a counter for the fat and cook in the oven for 2 to 3 hours at around 180c (350f) Basically dust the cheeks in a little flour and season, then brown in some olive oil. remove form the pan and lightly sauté your vegetables, use leeks, baby onions, carrots, apples, garlic etc. add the cheeks pack to the pan, add some stock or stock/cider mix and cook. You could also do this on the hob (cooker top) in a heavy bottomed pan, but cook for 4 hours on a low heat.

Just curious, no other answer seems to be specific. I'm not looking for a discussion here, just an answer and an explanation.

I would say no, cereal in milk is more simply comparable to a food in sauce - there's very little interaction between the cereal and the milk to make it a single dish, it is not a cohesive whole - and in fact it is considered the same dish (cereal) if eaten dry. It might work as a simple sweet pudding if allowed to soak and meld a bit, perhaps, instead of being eaten crunchy (which is where I was getting the food-in-sauce likeness). Hot cereals might count a (sweet) soup, especially if there are other ingredients (like a gruel with grain and milk, and spices, dried fruits, and egg yolks to thicken) - though I think it would depend on consistency. Something thicker, like a gummy oatmeal, would probably be more closely related to a pudding, but a thin one might well be soup. Even cold cereal might work as a (sweet) soup if there was more going on with the milk, some other ingredients and flavorings - then it would be a cold, sweet milk soup with the cereal bits acting like dumplings. The dictionary definition of soup is basically a savory definition, citing a combination of liquids, or meat and vegetables in broth or water (with other ingredients for flavor and texture), though there is a secondary definition that covers mixtures or substances resembling soup - which is how sweet soups, cold soups, and other more unusual sorts of soups earn the name. I think (cold) cereal is just too far removed to earn that label, being cold instead of hot and sweet instead of savory and separable into its parts instead of married into a single dish and only having two ingredients, that is, not being a complex mixture or a greater-than-its-parts whole, and having other words which are better definition matches (cereals, puddings, foods with sauce, etc). A soup can still be a soup with a couple of these alterations, I think having all of them is too many for it to fit that category.

I'm using standard LorAnn's flavoring oils, which are supposed to be for 'high temperature' cooking with candy. So far 275 degrees F works as far as the flavor goes, but it's bad for efficiency, as much of the candy is lost to waste due to cooling and cleaning. What temperature have you found you can put in oil based flavors into sugar candy without the oil hitting its smoking point?

There is a huge difference in using oil in a pan to cook something and mixing it into a sugar solution for candy-making. I have been using that brand of oils (and others) for decades when making candy and, depending on the end-product (i.e., soft caramel at 246F and a hard-crack candy like toffee at 300F) have never encountered a "smoke-point" problem. Hope this helps!

Our coffee maker instructions often refer to a "cup" of coffee. These cups are whats marked on the side of the coffee maker showing how much water is in the reservoir. The instructions never define what a "cup" actually equates to. It appears to about 6 oz. An old coffee maker seems to also have had this definition of "cup". The coffee beans we got from the local coffee shop also have instructions indicating one scoop of beans per 6 oz cup. To be clear -- Is a "cup" to a coffee maker always 6oz? and therefore it has nothing to do with the Imperial unit "cup" which is 8oz? Its more a notion of a typical serving size of coffee?

Assuming you're talking about USA usage, you're correct, a "cup" is usually 6oz. In the USA, the standard size for a "cup" of coffee is 6oz, even though nobody drinks cups of coffee that small (12oz to 20oz is more common). For that matter, the size of a "cup" of tea can be 5oz or 6oz when the number of "cups" a teapot holds is listed; a "6 cup" teapot is only 32oz. However, be careful how the word is used in American recipes. If a recipe calls for a "cup" of coffee, they are more likely to be calling for an 8oz cup, rather than a 6oz cup. I can't find a clear reference as to where the unrealistic 6oz measurement for a cup of coffee started. Possibly the result of Mr. Coffee, but we're stuck with it as customary now. However, even though a 6oz cup of coffee may be customary, specific coffee maker manufacturers may use different measurements on different models, including cups as small as 4.2oz. So don't assume unless you've checked. Oh, and also note that the 8oz cup is American, rather than Imperial measurement. An Imperial cup is around 10oz, although you're unlikely to encounter this measurement in any recipe published after World War I. Confused yet?

After I add oil to pan on cook top and stir fry them, my scallops get brown sear marks. See photos: But when ever I order Jade Scallops (西蘭花炒帶子 in Chinese) in HK restaurants, their scallops stay white! I phoned them all yesterday and they confirmed they wok fry them – I don't think they're lying. Top to bottom – House of Canton in Kowloon Tong (first photo beneath),Ming Kee Restaurant in Wan Chai, 金龍冰室 in Tai Po 大埔, Joy Point Dim Sum in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Your scallops are (beautifully) seared on the outside because they are cooked all the way through in a very hot pan. The scallops in the Chinese stir fries stay pale because most of their cooking is done at low heat. They are likely cooked twice: first they are velveted (meaning marinated and oil-blanched) and then very quickly stir fried to reheat. In more detail, we have three steps: marinate in a mixture of cornstarch, wine, and egg whites blanch in oil at a very low temperature (at most 300F/150°C) make the rest of the stir fry over high heat, and add the meat at the very end of cooking Unfortunately, velveting is an involved project. It involves an oil-blanch which leaves you with a lot of waste oil. For home cooking, some recipes suggest to replace the oil-blanch with a water blanch.

This is a screenshot of the food. What is it? It appears in the original movie in at 49:28.

Those are canapes: little bites of something tasty. Being served on a silver tray implies they are expensive and were made with care and time, letting us know that this setting (I know nothing about the movie and haven't followed your link) is rich and luxurious. The black blobby stuff is probably supposed to be caviar, the white piped stuff probably some sort of creamy filling. The red could be fruit, or a red caviar / salmon roe kind of thing. (It would be odd to have sweet and not-sweet on a tray together.) Other visible garnishes include sprigs of parsley and "cheeks" of olives. The beige cylinders are probably puff pastry or bread and the green ones probably carved cucumber. A comment on the other answer points out you could use a fluted cookie cutter to cut both bread and cucumbers, and that seems really likely in a catering context. [In movie-set reality these things might be play dough or mashed potatoes or anything else a prop person feels like using.] Would you need more detail than that? Why?

How long will carrots that I've shredded in the food processor stay good in the fridge? Also what's the best way to store them?

According to the website StillTasty, fresh, raw whole or cut up carrots will last 2 to 3 weeks in the fridge. I would think that it would be a shorter time (1 week) for shredded carrots. I'd store them in a container with a tight sealing lid, or in a plastic bag with the air squeezed out.

In this recipe in minute 7:00 the cook separates the chicken skin from the breast to put butter between the skin and the breast for basting. When I tried that (very slowly) it always felt like I was about to rip the skin. When I finished a sizable part of the breast was left exposed because some of the skin ripped.

I'd say experience ? You need to try it a few times to get the feel of the skin and the meat and how much pressure is needed to separate the skin from the meat. Try putting more pressure on the meat itself and not on the skin (hard to describe). The quality of the chicken is also important, most supermarket chicken have crappy skin and will break easily. If you try on a good free-range chicken, the skin will be sturdier (personal experience, here).

When winter holidays come, I always find with my parents and the whole family. Sometimes we use Spumante, some other times Champagne, both to accompain with some sweet at the end of the meal, or during the meal. In any case, I always wondered which is the difference between Champagne and SPumante (apart the fact that they come from different countries). Are they the same? Is one more precious than the other? When do you use one or the other?

Champagne is sparkling wine that is produced in the Champagne region of France. The grapes used in champagne are usually Pinot noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier. I think that there are a few sparkling wines that are grown outside of Champagne, France, that are allowed to be labeled as champagne but for a purist, they aren't actually champagne. The politics are complicated, and you can get an overview of the idea at the champagne wikipedia page. Spumante, on the other hand, is a sparkling white wine from the Piedmont region of Italy. (It is also called asti or asti spumante.) It's made from the Moscato Bianco grape. More information can be found on the spumante wikipedia page. I find spumante wines to be very sweet, whereas you can purchase champagnes that are brut (dry), demi-sec (half-dry) and doux (sweet). Most champagnes are pretty dry. Champagnes are also typically sold at a premium, whereas you can find bottles of spumante for about $5. I think it's a matter of taste for when you want to drink champagne vs. spumante. If the cost is an issue, then champagne should be saved for special occasions. Spumante is good for a meal or occasion that calls for a sweeter sparkling wine. If I want a dry sparkling wine and don't want to shell out for champagne, there is always Prosecco, Cava, or other generic sparkling wines.

What is the easiest way to strain fry oil? I strain fry oil so it can be reused. I've been using cheesecloth put inside a funnel. It works but it's a bit messy and a hassle. Is there a better way? Can you use a coffee filter or something like that?

You can buy really large filters for this purpose. It's how some restaurants filter their fry oil on the cheap. We had two conical strainers and put the huge coffee-like filter between the two so it wouldn't slip down as much, also so we could skim out the large bits easier. If you have a laddle you can sorta force it through faster by agitating in a plunger like motion but be careful the oil isn't too hot because it will splash at you. Places that do alot of frying have a machine that will filter the oil while still really hot and pump it back into the fryer. For home use I use coffee filters, the biggest I can find, and have a plastic 4 litre storage tub for holding the oil. It takes awhile for it to pass but it keeps it cleaner than a cheese cloth I find. The more particals you filter out the longer the oil will last before you have to toss it in your diesel truck ;-).

I'm interested in applying principles of dough magic to Passover cooking and I have sort of a general understanding of how developing the gluten structure works when kneading a traditional wheat flour dough. My question is whether there is any further development of the gluten structure possible when the "flour" is matzoh meal, which is basically flour that has been combined with water, baked quickly, and then ground back into flour. I assume there's a reason that there's no family recipe for "matzoh bread" but I don't know if that's religious (bc we're supposed to eat matzoh instead of bread and all the restrictions on yeast and all) or culinary (bc making bread-like food from matzoh meal just doesn't work). Will a gluten structure develop at all within the matzoh meal dough? What's the chemistry of how matzoh meal doughs and batters stick together?

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

An example would be green beans - some recipes call for parboiling green beans before stir-frying while others do not? Is there a reason behind this?

Really, this is just to even out cooking times for vegetables that don't have a surface area to volume ratio consistent with the other things you're stir-frying. If you were to shred those green beans, as is sometimes done, you could put them in at the same time as raw, julienned carrots, and they would finish at the same time. If you put them in whole, you'll end up with beans that are burned on the outside and raw on the inside, as there's not enough time for the heat to penetrate to the center of the bean before the outside burns. Or, if you fry at a lower heat, you could get the beans cooked, but would have to add the carrots later (which means a lower temperature, too, since the beans are dragging heat out of your pan) in order to have them not turn to mush.

This answer about creating infusions suggests using a compressed gas siphon to quickly infuse liquids with flavours from 'fragile' herbs. The manufacturer of the popular iSi compressed gas siphons seems to sell whipped cream and soda siphons, but neither is advertised for the aforementioned infusion purpose. I'm not at all averse to using one of these devices for this different purpose from that which it was designed, but I'd like to find the most usable device for creating infusions using compressed gas. This leaves me with the following questions: Is there a compressed gas device designed specifically for creating infusions using this method? In general, would a soda siphon or a whipped cream siphon be more suited to creating infusions? Are there particular attributes to look for in a compressed gas siphon that lend themselves to creating infusions?

1) I do not think so, the technique was described in e.g. modernist cuisine, they suggest using a ISI siphone and if I can remember correctly does not describe any other tool. Any pressure chamber would work, if you have access to one :-) 2) I have something like this which can be charged with both soda and cream charges, that is what I woudl suggest. (mine is not ISI). Think both you show will work since both charges are the same. Charge with N2O (cream charge). 3) For the infusion part, you want pressure, look for size of the device that suits your needs. The bigger, the more you can do at the same time, but will require more charges for same pressure.

I tried it Vietnam 3 years ago. I prefer the Vietnamese version, there they made it with coffee flavored liquid on top Thanks!

Your question suggests you want to make the caramel syrup part coffee-flavoured. I'd simply replace the water used in making that with espresso (if you can get real espresso). You don't need much so if you can't make it at home, perhaps get a takeaway from a coffee bar. If you can't get real espresso, something close like aeropress espresso or moka (stove-top espresso), in both cases using a lot of coffee to the amount of water. Instant espresso powder is a last resort, or for reinforcing the flavour if it turns out too weak. If you want to make the custard part coffee flavoured, I've had success in the past infused hot milk with ground coffee before filtering. I was going for very strongly flavoured to make a latte buttercream, but you wouldn't need to. Instead as the milk starts to warm, stir in ground coffee, continue heating, then filter (through a coffee filter paper, which you can put in a sieve for a one-off if you don't have a filter cone) before you add it to the egg. Again, avoid instant coffee. Strength will be hard to get right. My best guess would be something like a tablespoon of ground coffee to 250ml of milk, but I'd suggest aiming for subtle rather than overpowering on the first attempt, and use a little less. I referred to this recipe; you may need to modify my steps slightly if yours works differently.

I live in an area that has some of the best catfishing in the world. Here, they are considered a garbage fish, and no one eats them. I think I would like to try them. What are the best ways to prepare a catfish?

Dredging in lightly salted cornmeal and then frying (shallow frying is fine, but deep frying is magical) is an absolute classic in the Southern US, where catfish eating is big. I usually just put the plain filets in the cornmeal without first dipping in egg or milk. I don't think it's necessary--though I'd go with milk if I were forced to use something. After dredging, I let them sit on a wire rack for a minute or so before frying to set the cornmeal (which I would do if using egg or milk also). Generally, though, most treatments that work for a mild, tender white fish will work. Recipes for flounder or sole (Sole a la Meuniere for example), or ones that look for rockfish or striped bass will work really well. Bear in mind that catfish does have a distinctive flavor, though it's not really strong. Some people don't care for it, and they tend to describe it as "muddy" tasting. Personally, I don't see it. If you like the catfish OK, but find the flavor intrusive in some applications, adding spicyness or acid (lemon juice, vinegar) will mute it.

I know that for fresh fish, or fish that was previously frozen without special storage, you should use it the same day. If I thawed too much, does the fact that it was vacuum-packed add to the time I can safely keep it? Does it depend on the type of fish?

There's always the delight of botulism, which thrives in the anaerobic environment provided by vacuum packing. Listeria and vibrio bacteria can grow in an anaerobic environment, and are potential food safety risks present in fish. With this in mind, I would not expect vacuum packing to extend the life of a fish much. It will reduce freezer burn though!

I have exactly the same procedure and ingredients for cooking vegetable and chicken stock - of course, the latter contains chicken meat, which is the only difference. The ingredients I put into my stock are: onion, a few garlic cloves, two carrots, celeriac, parsley root, leek, spices: bay leaf, allspice and peppercorns. Simmer time - about 2 hours. It quite often happens that my vegetable stock is bitter, but it never happened with a chicken stock. I read here and there that vegetable stock shouldn't be cooked for long - even 45 minutes should be enough, and if simmered for too long it may become bitter. However, chicken or any other meat stock recipes call for a much longer time, and bitterness should not be a problem. Thus, why is there a risk of vegetable stock becoming bitter, while it is not that much of a problem for a meat stock?

I notice that your recipe doesn't include any salt. That's important, because salt decreases the sensation of bitterness. Chicken contains a certain amount of salt, and I suspect that's making the difference. (The "umami" -- brothy -- taste of chicken may also decrease the sensation of bitterness, though as I understand it there's still some disagreement about that.) Try mixing 1/8 tsp of salt into one cup of your vegetable stock as a test. I suspect that'll decrease the bitterness to a comparable level. Oh, and if you want to make your stock less bitter without making it more salty, use parsley stems and leaves instead of parsley root, and celery (including leaves) instead of celeriac. Those two roots will be the primary sources of bitterness. Incidentally, I very much approve of you not salting your original stock, and instead salting whatever you use it in. Unsalted stock is more flexible, and is more forgiving if you decide you need to concentrate it.

Subjectively, I have often heard people's opinion that there's a marked difference between a broth made with chicken breast meat vs. one made with chicken leg meat (assuming all other things in the process are the same). Usually, the latter is claimed to be tastier. Is there actually an established difference in two broths and what exactly is it? What leads to such difference, if it exists? Is it difference in the muscle tissue? Presence of bones and/or cartilage in the legs?

It's also a matter of palate and preference. Some simply don't care for dark meat at all, much less boiled on the bone. For some it has a bitter, or even metallic aftertaste. Breasts are lean cuts with a rather mild flavor. They don't contain nearly as much fat, and are far more susceptible to overcooking. Thus, a broth made with breast meat is going to be much milder in flavor (especially if you intend to eat the poached breast). The more a muscle is actually used during the life of the animal, the more flavor it's generally going to have. This is because of enzymes and acids that maintained the muscle while the chicken was living and then started to break down the meat once the chicken was slaughtered. You also have bones, which have marrow, which holds quite a bit of flavor. Thighs are one of the fattiest parts of a chicken. So yes, the flavor is a bit more intense. I don't use either in my stock, I buy our chickens whole and break them down to individual cuts (the price of the sum of the parts of a chicken sold individually is usually higher than the price of a whole chicken). This gives me the carcas, which is mostly skin, scraps, feet, neck, back, bones and cartilage. It creates something with a jello-like consistency due to the gelatin in the bones. I boil then simmer them for several hours, skim any impurities off the top, chill the stock and then remove the layer of fat that rose to the surface and solidified. This becomes the base of my broth since it doesn't have the aftertaste some want to avoid. I then poach cubed breast meat if I want chicken soup, or use it as a braising liquid if I want to stew some legs and thighs. So if you know everyone eating loves dark meat, use dark meat, it's delicious! If you want to have a sort of neutral base that you can go either way with, just use the carcass, including as a base for something made with just white meat.

I'm cooking a big dinner. I am wondering if I can use my electric smoker without woods chips like a second oven so I can free up space in oven inside. Will it cook my ham well? I don't want to smoke my ham.

I wouldn't recommend it, but that said your ham by definition has already been cured and all you are really doing is heating it. Smokers are optimized for smoking meats at a lower temperature than a traditional oven or fire. They use a combination of smoke and water moisture to make great moist smoked meat. You could easily make your own ham by taking a pig's leg bone and "smoking" it with or without wood chips. You should always use a smoker outside, and not indoors. Why can I have an indoor pizza/wood oven, but not a BBQ or smoker? (or can I...?) Happy Easter!

Anytime I've purchased prosciutto from a store it's sold in slices separated by pieces of wax paper, but when I try and peel it off it doesn't peel evenly. The lines of fat in the ham offers less strength when peeling, and the prosciutto often tears along these lines. When trying to make sandwiches it isn't too much of an aesthetic issue, but if I'm trying to make a charcuterie board having thin strips isn't as appealing. Is there some best way to scrape the meat from the wax paper, peel from both ends simultaneously? Or is this an inconvenience I'll just have to deal with?

I usually use a palette knife (frosting spatula) to separate the slice from the paper by sliding it betwixt the two. It is quick, but does require some care.

Sour cream is not sold in stores where I live. I found a sour cream recipe. This asked me to put some cream in a bowl, add white vinegar, then let it sit in the refrigerator for one hour. I used some cream called “UHT thickened cream” and added some drops of white rice vinegar. The taste is okay, but it is liquid like milk and not thick like the sour cream sold in stores in the United States. How can I thicken this sour cream?

You need more vinegar for it to thicken. I make salad dressing with cream as the oil and when I stir in the vinegar, it becomes quite thick. Unfortunately, it will probably have a strong vinegar taste in your recipe (which turns out to be okay in a salad dressing).

Every recipe says I should soak beans in water overnight before cooking. Why? I did some experiments. I have tried soaked and unsoaked beans from the same batch. There was no difference in cooking time, taste, structure or color. Even farts were the same! Also, one time I read an interview with a cook that makes famous bean soup and he confirmed my findings. He said that he also experimented and he doesn't find a difference. So what is the reason for soaking beans before cooking? What does it change?

One reason is to remove some of the indigestible complex sugars that cause gas. Another reason is that beans are dirty, so you're just cleaning them with the soaking. If the recipe wants the beans to be cooked in the water used for soaking, the washing needs to be done before the soaking. On top of that the soaking can reduce cooking time considerably, which might be the biggest advantage.

I have a bottle of white vinegar on which it says that the presence of deposits is normal. My problem/concern is that there are LOTS of deposits. What are they? Is there any danger associated with eating these deposits?

There are unfiltered vinegars on the market that come with a lot of solids, and it's perfectly normal for those to have all kinds of chunky weirdness if they've sat for a little while. Wine vinegar has a wide range of normal behaviour: it can get cloudy* or develop sediment, and that's normal. Even filtered vinegar can develop cloudiness and still be perfectly safe. If your distilled vinegar gets cloudy, I'd worry. That shouldn't happen. Still, foreign bacteria do NOT grow well in vinegar. If your distilled vinegar is growing something, you probably know why. Commercially produced vinegar very seldom goes bad, unless you're storing it outside on your deck, or something. If you brew your own, your mileage may vary. *This is often a result of leaving live bacteria ("The Mother") in the vinegar. Some people think this makes it better, like live yoghurt cultures. There isn't much data either way, but it's certainly not harmful.

I have been looking at some of the low calorie brownie options online and have not found one I can sink my teeth into, without worrying about my hips. So I decided to think up a whole new recipe of my own: Ingredients for your average Brownie Soft Butter, for greasing the pan Flour, for dusting the buttered pan 4 large eggs 1 cup sugar , sifted 1 cup brown sugar, sifted 8 ounces melted butter 1.25 cups cocoa sifted 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1/2 cup flour, sifted 1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt Ingredients for my low calorie high fiber Brownie Peanut vegetable oil for greasing the pan Flour for dusting the buttered pan 4 large eggs 1/4 cup No Calorie sugar 1/4 cup wild honey 2 ounces melted I Can't believe it is not butter 1 ounce Peanut vegetable oil 1.25 cups cocoa, sifted 1/4 cup flour, sifted 1/4 cup Oatmeal, finely blended, and sifted/ 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt I also thought of adding blended Cabbage(high fibre) to make more brownies and increase the fiber. Please tell me what you think. Is this possible to make brownies with all the substitutions I made or will any of these substitutions adversely affect the results of what one would refer to as a normal brownie?

It depends a lot on what you expect. I wouldn't call it a mess. The result will be edible, and will have a similar flavor to a brownie. The texture will be very different from a brownie. It will be dry and dense. Personally, I wouldn't eat it. First, the fat plays important roles in baked goods besides taste. I am surprised to see a recipe which uses melted fat (so no creaming) and no baking powder. This thing (the original one) is going to be denser than chewy cookies - maybe OK for you. If you reduce the fat from the original recipe, you will get a very dry result. An airy cake which is dry is not too good, but can be eaten when combined with e.g. yogurt or other wet things. Something which is both dense and dry will taste like chicken food mix run through a dehydrator. If you have a recipe for baking, don't reduce the fat. Also, never use spreads or margarines or anything else which is not real fat. It does not act like real fat, so it doesn't work the way it should. It is likely to contain lots of water and gums, and melt into them when baked. For baking, always use butter, lard or shortening. (It is OK to use vegetable oils for dense recipes which direct you to melt the butter). You will need your full share of fat. Some people replace part of the butter with applesauce, but you can't replace all of it. Also, I don't know how it will act in a non-leavened recipe. Second, you need the sugar the same way you need the fat. It retains moisture and makes the brownies soft. Honey is already a risky proposition, but partial replacement will work. But do not reduce the sugar by half, it will make dry, unpleasant brownies. Also, I don't know what "no calorie sugar" is, but it sounds like some artificial sweetener dispersed in a filler. I don't know what the filler is made from, but it may not be good for baking. You can't always replace wheat flour with other flours, but finelly milled oats should work for brownies and cakes. Using a vegetable or fruit puree in place of the liquid is normally a good substitution, but your recipe doesn't have liquid. Just adding cabbage will destroy the liquid balance. You could theoretically replace part of the eggs with an equal amount of cabbage puree by weight, but because eggs also have important roles in baking (they lubricate and set the dough), you shouldn't nomrally replace them. So, the replacement will bake into something you can bite and chew and swallow, but I wouldn't call it brownie. It also wouldn't be a tasty non-brownie, at least not in my eyes. Also, if you go ahead and make the stuff, you don't even win much in calories. Your original recipe is about 2950 kcal, and you get 820 g of brownies, resulting in 359 kcal/100 g. Your replacement recipe is 1610 kcal but only 530 g of brownies, which makes it 302 kcal/100 g (still a very caloriedense food) - and that if you use these substitution products, which are bad for baking. So, you only lose 15% of the calories overall, but you get something which tastes nowhere near the original. It will have cocoa flavor, but it won't be moist and creamy. I would rather eat 100 g of real brownies than 115 g of brownies made with your recipe.

I had a few handfuls of fresh Okra delivered with the last CSA delivery. I'm looking for an interesting way to cook a dish featuring it. I also have: One eggplant Some pumpkin One leek Lots of tomatoes Cilantro Dill Potatoes

Okra is great in curry. I'll do an okra and tomato curry, but you can find plenty of recipes online.

I'm using Santa Cruz ORGANIC Mint Chocolate flavored syrup and I put it in an icecube tray with 1 raspberry with each one and I put it in the freezer and a bit later I took it out and it was a paste. Do you know how I could change that?

Frozen berries as noted elsewhere have a mushier texture than fresh, so perhaps aren't great for eating in the hand; but they are excellent to pair with plain yogurt. My wife eats plain yogurt with cherries or blueberries directly out of the freezer, not fully thawed, all the time. She usually microwaves them briefly to take the chill off and partially thaw them, but I don't believe she fully thaws them. Smoothies are the other main use I have for frozen berries, they go directly in and make the smoothie nice and cold. Fully frozen cherries would be too hard to eat really, you could suck on them I guess but that seems like a stretch.

It has always been assumed at our house that if you make a meal with previously frozen meat that the meal cannot then be frozen itself and reheated at a later date. Is this true? So, just to be clear, I've got some frozen mince, I defrost it, cook it in a lasagne then want to freeze the left-overs. Advice would be most welcome.

Broadly this is OK. By broadly, I mean a couple of things. First, I'm assuming you are cooking the meat very thoroughly. That both means for long enough time to be completely thorough and hitting high enough temperatures to kill the main nasties off. Second, it naturally assumes you observe good practice with regard to not letting it sit for long periods, not co-mingling uncooked and cooked meet, yada-yada-yada. I do what you're describing lots of the time myself incidentally, and have done for years without incident. Of course, as I'm sure you know, one thing that is certainly a really bad idea is to freeze defrosted meat without cooking it.

I have some (not so) fresh broccoli I need use. I'm thinking of making a quiche with it. Most quiche recipes seem to call for frozen broccoli. Can I just use the fresh instead? Does it need any special prep?

Yes, you absolutely can. I do it all the time, in both quiche and omelets. It does need to be cooked which is most easily done in the microwave. Prep by removing much of the large stem, diving into little 'tree' segments, and placing in a microwave-safe dish or bowl. Add just a bit of water, not much, just about a tablespoon, to create steam. Cover with plastic wrap/cling film or a very wet paper towel, and microwave on high for about three minutes. Drain any liquid that remains. It can also be cooked on the stove top, simmered in water, but I prefer to microwave, as it keeps it tender crisp with little loss of nutrients.

I have baked my chicken drumsticks for roughly 40 mins at approximately 420 F. I do not have a meat thermometer, so am looking for another way to determine its doneness. I did some research on this, and found that the juice should run clear; however, when I cut open my chicken, the juice that comes out is red. Does it sound like my chicken is correctly cooked to a safe internal temperature?

There is a common misperception about redness in chicken and what it means when gauging the doneness of the chicken. Fully cooked chicken can leak juices that are tinged with red, and fully cooked chicken can have pink meat and/or redness in the joints or bones! From the USDA: The pink color in safely cooked chicken may be due to the hemoglobin in tissues which can form a heat-stable color. Smoking or grilling may also cause this reaction, which occurs more in young birds. The acidity in the tissues can case a similar effect in the myoglobin. From an unnamed research assistant at a major chicken processor speaking to Meathead Goldwyn at AmazingRibs.com: "When the muscle is high in pH [low in acid] it takes a much higher temperature to denature the myoglobin. The meat may need to be 170 to 180°F before the myoglobin in breasts is denatured sufficiently to see clear juices. The drumstick and thigh have higher levels of myoglobin and they require an even higher internal temperature to denature it. Red or purple bones and adjacent meat are caused by modern chicken manufacturing that can produce chickens big enough to slaughter at an age much younger than used to be the norm: Darkening around bones occurs primarily in young broiler-fryers. Since their bones have not calcified completely, pigment from the bone marrow can seep through the porous bones. Freezing can also contribute to this seepage. When the chicken is cooked, the pigment turns dark. It's perfectly safe to eat chicken meat that turns dark during cooking. -USDA Furthermore, chicken that has not reached a safe temperature can have meat that looks done and juices that run clear! If the muscle pH is low then the myoglobin is denatured at a lower cooked temperature. This means that one might potentially see clear juices at 150 to 160°F and this is not safe. -AmazingRibs.com According to the same source, the PH of the muscle tissue can be affected by the chicken's genetics or pre-slaughter stress. That and the fact the source doesn't want to be named causes unpleasant images to appear in my mind. But I digress... In my experience, dark meat is best cooked to the point that it has begun to shrink away from the bone; which is way past the point of it having reached a safe temperature. Therefore laxity is better test of doneness than color for dark meat. Another way to describe that is that the joints between the thigh and the body and the thigh and the drumstick move freely. To be considered safe, chicken must be cooked to or above 165 °F (73.9 °C). Chicken breasts are (IMHO) best right at that temperature. Getting good at hitting that temperature takes some practice. White meat is much more sensitive than dark meat to overcooking, so testing frequently with an accurate thermometer is really the only way to go until you have the considerable experience necessary to accurately gauge the meat's doneness without the thermometer. Drumsticks are very unlikely to be undercooked after having been baked at 425°F (218°C) for 40 minutes. Watch for meat that has begun to shrink from the bone. You should be at or beyond that point already, which as I have shown, is a far better indicator of doneness than color. Of course, an accurate thermometer is always your safest bet.

I'm serving filets mignon with goat cheese and balsamic reduction to guests who don't drink alcohol. I'd like to serve a beverage with our meal that complements the steaks as nicely as red wine would (even if not in the same way). I'd also like it to be a sort of festive beverage. I was thinking along the lines of sparkling cider, but that will be way too light and sweet for the heavy meal. There's a long tradition in the culinary world of pairing wines with meals or specific types of food, and the same goes for beer. What do I need to keep in mind when looking for a beverage that can hold its own against my filets? Are there any general rules for non-alcholic pairing, like there are for wine pairing, that would apply in this case?

I have had success pairing steaks with freshly pressed apple juice, as the tartness helps offset the richness and fats of the meat and cheese. An apple/raspberry mix works beautifully, too, as does apple and blackcurrant. While ginger beer and ginger ale may work, you run the risk of the drink taking over the show, which you don't want. Two more pairings that work well: Apple and cherry juice is beautiful. Blueberry juice (100% blueberries, with no additives) have much the same mouthfeel as a good red wine, while giving flavor notes all of its own.

I have two beautiful ginger roots (rhizomes) which I had planned to turn into gari (pickled ginger). But I also have two children and the ever-changing schedule that goes with this. So the ginger sat in a bowl for a while, waiting. While Wikipedia states that the rhizome ...it is immediately scalded, or washed and scraped, to kill it and prevent sprouting. mine obviously weren't and appear to have gotten spring fever and started to sprout: Now, I could put them in a planter, let them grow and harvest in fall when they start to wither, but before I sneakingly sell them to hubby as the latest addition of our ever-growing collection of plants I'm wondering: Can I use sprouting ginger? Just like regular/dormant ginger? Or is there something to keep in mind? My main focus is on the culinary aspect: While sprouted ginger isn't toxic, I'm wondering whether it requires special or different preparation, how to handle the sprouts, and do sprouting ("growing") and mature ("dormant") ginger taste differently in dishes. (Should I decide to plant my ginger, I will ask the guys over at Gardening SE for advice, if required...)

From a culinary perspective, I find that when sprouted, the ginger just loses a bit of flavour, that's all. If you let it grow for a very long time and it becomes all shriveled, then you are talking about a flavourless piece of ginger. I've even used such shriveled and even moldy (cut the mold off, though) pieces... no flavour at all!

my tomato sauce that I keep in the fridge has been getting pressurized and will pop when I open it. It is so forceful that it splurts a little. The air inside is white but dissipates quickly after I open the jar. It just happened a second time. Is it still safe to eat? What is going on? More info: I'm not sure what the fridge temperature is but I have bought the exact same brand and had it be fine the entire lifespan of the product. It is entirely possible I accidentally used a spoon to pull out some sauce that was used for something else.

This should not happen, and sounds like you have some fermentation happening in the jar. I would suggest discarding. In the future, use only clean utensils to reach into the freshly opened jar. Refrigerate immediately after use, and use within about a week.

I live in Finland and I can't find urad dal in the city where I live. Can I make thin crispy dosa with different beans?

You could always make Rava Dosa - it's made with semolina and rice flour.

This site has what looks to be a good recipe for homemade "Chai" spiced tea; however, it requires a lot of prep and won't work with my current routine, which is the modern English style tea preparation for loose-leaf tea: boil water in an electric kettle, pour into pre-warmed teapot with leaves, steep, dump into travel mug, add milk and sugar, run out the door late as usual. Total time: about 5-6 minutes. Is the boiling of milk with spices necessary, or can I dump pre-ground spices into my brewed tea along with milk and sugar? Can I boil a large batch of milk with spices and store that in the fridge and add to brewed tea instead of my usual vanilla soymilk? EDIT: I appear to have misread part of the instructions; it calls for boiling water with spices then adding milk, rather than boiling milk with spices directly. The comments, however, insist that the milk needs to come to a proper boil as well. So, the real question appears to be: is that true, or can I toss the spices in with the leaves in my pot while the tea steeps and add milk as usual later?

That recipe actually says there are two ways you can prepare this: There are two ways to do this: throw just about everything in a pot of water and simmer, then add the milk, tea and sweetener and brew for a few minutes; or, let the spices soak overnight in the water then simmer in the morning with your tea leaves and milk. (emphasis mine) Have you tried the latter? That way you still only have to heat things up once. I'd be hesitant to boil milk with spices and then store it cold, reheating again. If you're using dairy milk, that is. If you're using anything other than non-fat (skim) milk, you'll get a "skin" on the top of the milk when you're boiling it - that's one of the classic signs of masala chai for me. But anyway, it becomes substantially less appetizing if it has time to cool into globules and is then reheated again. I'm not sure what problems, if any, you'd encounter using non-dairy milk like almond or soy. You could dump the pre-ground spices into your brewed tea with milk and sugar, but the flavor profile will be a little different. Boiling the spices with the milk and tea gives everything time to meld nicely and provide a really smooth flavor blend. But I don't see any especially compelling reason that you couldn't do it. I would like to point out, though, that boiling enough water for a travel mug's worth of tea doesn't take any more time to do on the stove than it does in my electric kettle. Adding milk shouldn't make too much difference; I'm willing to bet that after you get familiar with the routine, you can follow this recipe and still have it take 5-6 minutes. :) Purists will insist that the spices must be boiled with the water, but those are the same people who would scoff at you adding cold milk to your tea in the first place. There's no reason why you can't, other than it might cool down the rest of your tea.

Is there a way or technique to make mashed sweet potatoes less stringy? Does it just come down to potato selection or can it be improved by a technique?

I peel and cook sweet potatoes with butter or oleo in a crock pot, about a half pound for 6-8 pounds of sweet potatoes, then use an electric mixer to pull out most of the strings - mix for a few minutes, lift up the mixer to spin off the sweet potatoes, turn it off and wash the strings off. Do that until only a small amount of strings are collected. Then to make it essentially string free, push the hot sweet potatoes through a good quality kitchen sieve with the back of a large spoon.

Take for example a custard. I recall reading somewhere, probably on the internet, that heating it to 70C will kill all the bacteria in it for sure. I also recall reading that holding it for 5 minutes at 60C will do the same thing. I’m having trouble finding a proper reference for this. Is what I said actually true? It must have been studied in food science, so is there a proper source for this?

According to J.D. Schuman, info that I found in Douglas Baldwin's guide for sous-vide: Place egg in a 135°F (57°C) water bath for at least 1 hour and 15 minutes (Schuman et al., 1997). J. D. Schuman, B. W. Sheldon, J. M. Vandepopuliere, and H. R. Ball, Jr. Immersion heat treatments for inactivation of Salmonella enteritidis with intact eggs. Journal of Applied Microbiology, 83:438–444, 1997. This is for whole eggs in the shell, so for your custard the time should vary according to the volume (as it will take longer for the temperature to reach the center). Here is a time table for Salmonella reduction from The Modernist Cuisine (by Nathan Myrvold):

Recently a local grocery store had a sale where Fresh Salmon Fillets, apparently normally $6.99/lb, were dropped down to $1.99/lb. My parents were all too eager to load the car with 20lb of salmon fillet, but I was much more hesitant. I was slightly suspicious, because what reason would they have to discount salmon fillet so heavily? So that's my question. Should I be suspicious of meat/seafood that is on sale? Especially if it's heavily discounted? Is there something wrong with the meat? Like is it low quality or something? Why else would stores heavily discount these things then?

In the case of quickly perishable items like meat, when it's not an advertised sale, shops will sharply discount prices if they anticipate that they will be otherwise left with product beyond the sell-by date. So the answer to your question is both yes and no. There is nothing wrong with buying something just before the sell-by date, but you do need to use or freeze it sooner rather than later. For everything but seafood, I jump all over those sales. I can barely tell the difference between super-fresh and right-at-the-sell-by-date for most items. Seafood is an exception for me, but that is just me. I will pay extra to get super-fresh seafood, even though I'll buy milk and meat right at the sell-by date if it saves me a few pennies. So in this case, like many others, the key to making an informed choice lies in reading the label. No reputable grocery will alter the sell-by date. At least in the US, getting caught doing that will close a shop down and land people in jail. So read the label (or the tag on the meat-case window), and be informed about what you are buying.

I am looking to replace my >10 year old Calphalon nonstick cookware. I can see the nonstick surface coming off the pans, and am starting to worry about how much of that is getting into our food. I love the ease of cleaning nonstick cookware, but am wary of buying it again. Should I opt for nonstick or not?

I'm with @Ward -- I like being able to scour my pans for those times when even deglazing doesn't work. (although, I've found that if you ever forget about the stock that you're trying to reduce ... burning chicken bones is a nasty smell and will stain even stainless steel). I do have some non-stick, and even a non-stick flat-bottomed wok (from circulon, but then, I'm also using electric, so it's possible I don't get enough heat to ruin it; I also never pre-heat it without oil in it, as you should never heat a dry nonstick vessel). I'd say to look at replacing your set bit by bit -- which items do you cook that really need non-stick, and what pan do you cook it in? Maybe replace your more beat-up items with something not non-stick, try cooking with it, and see how well you like cooking with them -- it's possible that you won't like it, and it'd be better to be out the cost of only a piece or two than a whole set. You could even try out a few different materials -- cast iron, stainless, anodized aluminum, etc. It also might take a little time to get used to cooking with out the non-stick. One mistake I've seen people make is not giving their pans enough time to pre-heat. (I think it was the Frugal Gourmet who'd say "Hot pan, cold food, food won't stick" ... which isn't entirely true, but you'll have much less problems with a hot pan).

I've been making cupcakes for a while now and I use butter icing. They come out pretty and taste nice, but they melt so quickly. Sometimes it's impossible to pipe, because the icing goes so sloppy. When I go to parties and see other cupcakes, they stay on the table all day and the icing doesn't melt. Are they using something different? If so, does anyone know what?

I usually add vegetable shortening to my frosting recipe so that it doesn't melt easily. I live in India and it's hot in here for crying out loud. Another helpful tip is to add 2 tsp Meringue powder to your each icing batch, that tends to avoid the weepy icing. Hope this helps. (Source: Years of commercial bakery experience and my fair lot of sad weepy but delicious cupcakes)

The thing with a cast iron pan and stainless steel pan is you've got to season them. Once they're seasoned, they have a non-stick (more or less) layer that's transformed olive oil, vegetable oil, or butter. I've been told that the jury's still out on which could be more harmful: that, or non-stick plastic. One advantage of a regular seasoned pan is you don't have to be afraid of overheating it past 350 or so degrees. Another one is you can use a metal spatula on it. With non-stick pans you have to use wood, or plastic (the latter option scares the hell out of me). As for the heat spreading evenly: it won't. Each individual pan and skillet has its own little faults and foibles. I'm a great fan of Italian cuisine. I would love to cook French, but it's just too labor-intensive for me: I favor efficiency over meticulousness. I use my pans to cook chicken, veal, lamb, turkey, fish, vegetables, and pasta, plus, occasionally, eggs and pancakes. All other things being equal, what's the best option for those who put taste first: cast iron, stainless steel, or anodized non-stick? Or should I try ceramic?

I've never heard that boiling potatoes skin on makes a difference in consistency, but it's possible. The skin will act a as a barrier to moisture, letting the potatoes cook while absorbing less water. That will only work if you keep the potatoes whole though, cutting them up will negate that somewhat. While skin in may make a difference the choice of potato makes a bigger difference. Waxy potatoes are not a good choice, neither are dry ones like russets. A medium starch potato is best, like a yukon gold or a maris piper. Also very important is preparation after cooking. I find using a mixer tends to overwork the potatoes and make things gluey, while most chefs would recommend using a ricer. A ricer does give a great result but it is messy and lots of work. I use a potato masher and do it by hand, which to me is a good balance between speed and cleanup while giving a good result.

Some fruits are more common to make jam from them (like peach in Hungary), but sometimes even widely available fruits are not common to make jams (like grape). What's the reason and what is it depends on?

The historical purpose of jam is to preserve fruit from a time of bounty to a time when it is less plentiful. Therefore, to be a candidate for jam making, the fruit must be reasonably plentiful in the region where it would be preserved. Technically, in order to form a jam or a jelly, there must be sufficient pectin and sufficient acid in the fruit to thicken it. In some regions, there are traditional combinations of high and low pectin fruits, in order to get a viable jam from the low pectin fruit. Some fruits need acid, in the form of vinegar or lemon juice usually, added in order to help them gel; others need additional pectin. Canning Homemade has lists of high, medium, and low pectin fruits. Other than this, it is down to the cultural preferences in a given region.

I would like to use my rice cooker to cook one of those pre-packaged jambalaya mixes, and I've had good success with using prepackaged rice packets in my rice cooker. Sometimes there is a bit of sticking on the bottom but it comes right up and is never that bad. My question is if it's safe to throw uncooked meat inside of the rice cooker. I'm talking about average sized chunks, but can cut them smaller to make sure they cook through. Since water boils at 212°F, and the contents of the cooker are kept warm afterwards, I'm guessing that any meat you put in there (granted its cut thin enough) will cook straight through. To be more specific, in this instance I am thinking about throwing cubes of deer venison which require much less cooking than say pork or poultry.

Anything will cook in a rice cooker, eventually. You will need to experiment with the size of the meat chunks. When the meal is done cooking, take them out and see if they are cooked and at the correct temperature. If not, finish cooking them and cut them up smaller next time. What I would do however is cube the meat, sear it, and then throw it in to the cooker. You will end up with a better texture this way.

I want to know the exact method of preparation and consumption of green tea. How much sugar can be used if recommended? Can I opt for honey instead? If so how much? How many cups can be consumed per day?

It depends very much on what kind of tea you're brewing and what you want out of it. Green tea is a huge category of different preparations of the basic tea leaf. Therefore, it's not possible to give a specific method. You might not like how I like my tea, and the chances are extremely good that you don't have the same tea leaves anyway. Generally though: If you're brewing from a teabag be fairly brief. Teabags contain very small pieces of the tea leaf, and will start to produce some very bitter flavours quite quickly. You might like these, but since you're asking about amounts of sweetening I'm suspecting you probably won't, at least not at first. And they do tend to get rather dominant, preventing you enjoying the full set of flavours of the tea. If you're brewing from whole leaves you're in for a much bigger treat as the flavour will generally be far superior. The temperature of water used to brew your tea will change the flavour, as will the steeping time (typically in the 1-5 minute range). Many tea suppliers recommend temperatures from 60-90C for various teas - this depends entirely on the character of the tea, and you might disagree with what the supplier thinks is best. Do experiment. Personally I do use water at the hotter end, but I let the kettle sit for a bit after boiling so it's dropped away from that super hot water which is so beloved of the traditional British cuppa. Also, for whole leaf tea, keep the leaves - you can brew them a second time, maybe a third time, maybe a fourth time, and it'll be a bit different each time. If you find it too bitter or dry you can add a bit of sweetening. It's entirely okay to do this if you want to. I'd be sparing though, you can always put more in, but if you put too much in you've wasted the whole cup. Your choice of sweetening affects the flavour of course - honey tastes of honey, but it's going to need a more assertive tea to stand up to it (in my opinion at least). Simple white sugar adds sweetness with very little flavour. I'm not sure I'd recommend brown sugar for any tea, but something punchy (probably not a green tea) might be able to handle it. You should also bear in mind that if a tea is too bitter, brewing it next time with cooler water or for less time (or both) should reduce that. I'd also advocate minimal sweetening so that you can gradually cut it back and get used to drinking green tea as-is. It's better for you (no calories!) and once you've got used to the bitter elements there is a vast wealth of flavours to be discovered. You might like some of the blended teas, too - jasmine tea is well-known, and a good jasmine tea is fantastic (it's basically a good green tea infused with jasmine flowers - a good whole leaf jasmine tea has jasmine petals in it). Green tea with mint (often called Moroccan Mint in the UK) is great, far more satisfying than plain mint as the green tea provides something for the bright mint to sit on. I've also had great brews of green tea with chrysanthemum flowers, white tea with rose (and black tea with rose, actually), and green tea with toasted rice (yes, really). This all makes it sound a bit intimidating I guess, so the thing to do to start with is simple: buy some good quality green tea leaves brew them for two to three minutes with water you've boiled and allowed to cool for a couple of minutes taste, think, sweeten a little if desired, taste again enjoy!

So i've ordered 2 different brands of gynostemma (or jiaogulan in chinese) and they each taste very differently. The first one I've ordered tastes extremely bitter, the second one I've ordered tastes light and sweet, even though I can detect somewhat of a similar bitter after taste. According to the boxes they are both 100% gynostemma leaf, and the tea bags appear to be exactly the same in size. Why does one taste very bitter why the other one doesn't? Is it possible the leaves from the first box were older when i ordered them?

"However, it is known that the chemical constituents of GP planted in different areas are very different in composition.17,18 Furthermore, there are two taste variants, sweet and bitter, for GP herbs, which have different clinical application in folk medicine in China.18-21" Chemical Differentiation of Two Taste Variants of Gynostemma pentaphyllum by Using UPLC–Q-TOF-MS and HPLC–ELSD Jing-Guang Lu†‡, Lin Zhu‡, Kate Y. W. Lo‡, Alexander K. M. Leung‡, Alan H. M. Ho‡, Hong-Yang Zhang§, Zhong-Zhen Zhao‡, David W. F. Fong‡, and Zhi-Hong Jiang*†‡ J. Agric. Food Chem. 2013, 61, 1, 90–97 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jf304154d

What temperature should a pork loin be when cooked in a slow cooker or how long should it cook?

Loin or tenderloin is a very lean cut of meat and should not be cooked in a slow cooker. Slow cookers are better suited to cuts of meat with high amounts of connective tissue, like pork shoulder or chuck roast, that turns into gelatin as it cooks for a long time. IMHO, tenderloin should be grilled or broiled just until the center is 145° or so. Then rested and sliced. Good luck!

When I broil or grill my burgers, I end up with burgers that are round in the middle. I grind my own beef blend and form my patties the same every time. When I cook my burgers in a pan I don't get the rounded burgers. What makes the burgers rounded and smaller when broiling/grilling, but not with pan cooking?

I'm not sure what causes the bowing to be more pronounced from one cooking method versus another, but the solution is to put a thumbprint indentation in the middle, creating a slight "donutted" shape. This will help to ensure you get the "patty" shape you want.

In China, where I live, most pistachio nuts sold on the market have very white shell, and yellowish skin and flesh, like this: Today I read some articles claiming that these pistachio nuts were so white because they had been bleached using hydrogen peroxide, and good pistachio nuts should have yellowish shell, purplish skin and greenish flesh, like this: So, my question is: have white pistachios been bleached? What colour do pistachio nuts in your country have?

The natural colors for pistacio meats are green, yellow-green, purple and/or red. Shells are beige. The Kerman variety, which account for 90% of the pistachios grown in California, are yellow-green to deep green. Pistacios from Iran tend to be more in the red-purple spectrum, and are alleged by their partisans to be superior to California pistacios. Personally, I like both the Kerman and the Iranian ones I've been able to sample. Looking at the picture, I'd say that those nuts were clearly bleached, due to the excessive whiteness of the shells. This seems to be a common practice in China, enough to cause the government to debate a ban on bleaching. Per that article and others, there is no health risk associated with peroxide bleaching, but there is thought to be a significant loss of vitamins due to bleaching.

I'd like to know whether is it possible to always substitute milk with water (or the other way around) in bread recipes and what difference does it make? For example, in the following recipe that I found here: Honey-Oat Pain de Mie 255g lukewarm water 361g AP Flour 85g old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick oats) 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 64g honey 57g melted butter 2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast

There are three factors that will make dough rise more quickly: 1- More water 2- More yeast 3- More heat from any source More yeast will make the bread rise more quickly but won't create the sticky texture and better flavor that you describe. More heat will be the same, not just from your heated water but also the temperature of the room- it would accelerate rising but not change the final texture. I have noticed that when my water is too warm that the dough is stickier- but not after rising. More water will make your yeast able to act more quickly. It will also create steam that will make the crust a little chewier. It would also, obviously, make your dough stickier. Even though your process makes the water content the least suspect variable- In my opinion, it is the only one that matches your symptoms. Perhaps the day was slightly more humid than you thought? Perhaps you mismeasured a little? It's easy enough to experiment with your next batch and add a little bit more liquid. Artisan bread just gets better with more liquid. Sandwich bread doesn't so don't bump the water content up too far. My standard sandwich bread recipe is 65% hydration by weight.

I have made Deidre's Ultimate Keto Bread 2.0 for years with generally consistent results (though a bit uneven on the top). I made a couple minor tweaks recently, and the last 2 batches have risen properly, but got ENORMOUS in the oven (see photo)! Then they collapsed while cooling, making a weird and dense inside. There was no giant air bubble - just huge. I know if it works, don't fix it, so why I am tweaking it, but I was hoping to get the top to rise a bit more evenly. Here were the tweaks: I make it in the Kitchen Aid and need the paddle to get it to come together, so maybe 5 minutes with the paddle, then reduced the time with dough hook to 5 min (I used to do 10+). (In making some non-keto bread for hubby, they warn against over-kneading, so figured I'd try it). I used to flatten the dough, put it in the bottom of the loaf pan, let it rise ~2 hours in a microwave warmed with boiled water. It always rose fine, sometimes rose a bit more while baking, but mostly came out looking like it did after the rise, and never collapsed. Based on another non-keto bread technique, this time I made a 9" rectangle, rolled it up from the short side, and placed it in the loaf pan. The first time I did my usual 2 hour rise and it was a nice even, normal-looking rise, but when it got so huge in the oven, I figured it was over proofed. So I then tried only a 45 min rise (which was enough to look like a normal rise), and it got even bigger in the oven! Any thoughts on which of these tweaks may have caused it to expand so much during baking, and collapse? Could the rolling up of the dough make such a difference? Did I need to knead longer? (NSGod - Once I figure this out, I plan to try your updated version with the increased dry ingredients. Thanks for your experimentation toward perfection.) Recipe: 84 g golden flaxseed meal 28.19% 84.0 g (flour) 60 g oat fiber 20.13% 60.0 g (flour) 154 g vital wheat gluten 51.68% 154.0 g (flour) 100.00% 298.0 g (total) ------------------------------------------------------------ ¼ tsp xanthan gum 0.25% 0.8 g 1 tsp salt 2.01% 6.0 g 2 ¼ tsp instant dry yeast 2.60% 7.8 g 1 tsp honey 2.35% 7.0 g 1 cup water 79.53% 237.0 g 2 large eggs 33.56% 100.0 g 2 Tbsp oil (canola) 9.14% 27.3 g Instructions 1. Proof yeast in honey and warm water; mix all with paddle attachment 3-5 min, then dough hook for 5-10 min.

Well, I have good news and bad news. I attempted a ½ size test loaf using my 1st recommended recipe below. The bad news is I had the exact same problem as the OP did. The good news is that now that I can reproduce the problem, I can better reason what might be happening. I will leave the answer and update it as I continue to make tests. I've had this happen before myself, from time to time. After doing some testing, I’ve come up with some recommended changes to the recipe. TL/DR: The primary cause for the great expansion during baking and collapse afterwards is a combination of excess amounts of water, honey, and yeast. The biggest contributor was the amount of water, with the other 2 less so. I arrived at this answer by first inadvertently reproducing the problem the OP had, and then tested several variations until I came up with the desired result. Before I get to that answer, however, a bit about how this recipe works: vital wheat gluten mixed with water makes a virtually solid rubbery mass. It is highly elastic. If you managed to trap air in that water + vital wheat gluten mix, and applied heat to it, the air and moisture would expand and it would blow up like a balloon. Once you remove the heat, however, it will deflate just like a balloon will. Pure VWG won’t expand and then hold its shape. That sounds a bit like what might be happening in your case. So, what happens in a “normal” wheat flour bread recipe during baking: can it expand and collapse like this? To be honest, I’m not sure, and hopefully some more experienced traditional bakers can help fill in the gaps. That said, here’s how I imagine that it works. In a regular wheat flour bread recipe there's not nearly as much gluten, and it's also not nearly as fully developed and elastic as VWG is. In addition, there are starches that "set" and help the bread hold its expanded shape. In order to accomplish the same effect, Deidre’s recipe works by adding 2 important ingredients to function as flour along with the VWG: oat fiber and flaxseed meal. Oat fiber is a pure insoluble fiber that interferes with the gluten networks by getting between the VWG particles, thereby preventing cross-linking. This allows for air holes to develop during fermentation and baking. Unlike vital wheat gluten, oat fiber has no structure building characteristics at all: it’s simply a filler. In contrast to vital wheat gluten, which tends to want to hold onto moisture during baking, oat fiber has a neutral effect on the water-retaining characteristics of the dough: it neither retains moisture, nor acts as a drying agent. Flaxseed meal contains soluble fiber in the form of a mucilage network that can be woven in between the gluten network to help open up the crumb somewhat. Flaxseed meal does have gelling structure-building characteristics, but it also has a tendency to want to hold onto moisture. So, while the oat fiber and flaxseed meal help tame the elasticity of the vital wheat gluten somewhat, they don’t add any “setting” ability. The recipe does include 2 eggs which, while providing moisture, also act as structure builders and drying agents (particularly the egg white proteins). They do aid a bit in helping the bread to “set” during baking. Given those thoughts, I do have some suggested modifications to the recipe to try. First, I'd lose the xanthan gum, as it inhibits gluten development and results in a tighter crumb. While the oat fiber and flaxseed also do this, by eliminating the xanthan as a variable, it can make reasoning about what’s happening a bit easier. I also noticed that your vital wheat gluten % is a tad high. That, and not enough oat fiber could potentially cause the loaf to be too elastic, especially when mixed in a stand mixer. I try to keep the weight of the oat fiber about equal to the weight of the flaxseed meal. If you’re having issues with it blowing up and collapsing, I’d probably lower the vital wheat gluten proportion down to around 46% rather than 51%. (Increasing the amount of oat fiber can cause taste to suffer, so you may want to add a Tbsp or so of a keto sweetener to offset that). My original recommended recipe following the advice in the previous paragraph (which actually ended up producing results similar to OP): 85 g golden flaxseed meal 26.98% 85.0 g (flour) 85 g oat fiber 26.98% 85.0 g (flour) 145 g vital wheat gluten 46.03% 145.0 g (flour) 100.00% 315.0 g (total) ------------------------------------------------------------ 1+ tsp (6.3 g) salt 2.00% 6.3 g 2 ¼ tsp instant dry yeast 2.46% 7.8 g 1 tsp honey 2.22% 7.0 g 1 cup water 75.24% 237.0 g 2 large eggs 31.75% 100.0 g 2 Tbsp oil 8.65% 27.2 g ------------- hydration(water:237, eggs:76.2g) 99.43% 313.2 g This dough was extremely wet, and as such, expanded greatly during baking. While this recipe has a hydration rate (ratio of the weight of moisture to the weight of the flour) of around 99%, I’ve found that the bare minimum amount needed for the dough to come together is in the low 80% range. This overly wet dough was providing extra lift in the form of moisture turning to steam to push things outward. Forgive the bad focus, but you can see from the image below what happened after baking: After baking and while cooling, the sides of the loaf were almost sucked back in towards the center. During baking all that extra moisture turned to steam and expanded the bread outward, but as soon as that source of heat was removed, the excess water cooled and created a vacuum and started to collapse the loaf. Because the crumb was so overly open as well, it doesn’t have much structure to resist the forces. While I immediately dismissed the amount of honey (sole source of food) and yeast as a contributing factor, I definitely think this is also part of the problem. So, did Deidre’s recipe just call for a ridiculously high amount of yeast? Not necessarily. The performance of this bread depends greatly on how well the dough is mixed and kneaded. I think with an undermixed loaf and higher amount of yeast, you could probably create the equivalent of a fully mixed loaf and a lower amount of yeast. In the former’s case, much of the extra gas produced would simply escape out of the loaf during proofing and baking. Based on how well I mixed the dough and how well you mixed the dough (and the roll-up method you used), the amount of yeast likely needs an adjustment. So, here is final revised recipe: 85 g golden flaxseed meal 26.98% 85.0 g (flour) 85 g oat fiber 26.98% 85.0 g (flour) 145 g vital wheat gluten 46.03% 145.0 g (flour) 100.00% 315.0 g (total) ------------------------------------------------------------ 1+ tsp (6.3 g) salt 2.00% 6.3 g 7/8 tsp instant dry yeast 0.95% 3.0 g ½+ tsp (4 g) honey 1.27% 4.0 g 200 g (~6.75 fl.oz.) water 63.49% 200.0 g 2 large eggs 31.75% 100.0 g 2 Tbsp oil 8.65% 27.2 g ------------- hydration(water:200g, eggs:76.2g) 87.68% 276.2 g You’ll notice that I ended up reducing the water from around 99% to 88%, the amount of yeast from 2.46% to 0.95%, and the amount of honey from 2.22% to 1.27%. I mixed this just like the others, first with the paddle attachment, then with the dough hook, then by hand for a couple minutes until I could tell it was ready. I placed it in the loaf pan and allowed it to rise (I take a large bowl, lay a heating pad in it, then set the loaf pan on top of that, then cover it all with saran wrap and a towel). I place it on low heat or medium if I'm in a hurry. I let it rise for about an hour or so, until it was at the top of the pan. With this final loaf, I decided to slash the top of the loaf before baking. While normally this is a way to help allow for maximum expansion during baking, it's possible it had the opposite effect for our loaf. In any case it only rose about another inch or so during baking. This resulted in a loaf that didn’t cave in after removing from the oven:

After just 2 days of using my new carbon steel wok pan, I noticed something suspicious inside it: Looking back on it, it was probably just burnt oil and nothing to worry about. However, I mistook it for rust, and began my arduous journey to get rid of it. (Let me know what you think it was and what to think of it in the future, please) First I scoured the spots with water and plastic scouring wool, then added some dishwashing liquid and continued the process, but it had practically no effect on the spots even after tens of minutes of work. Eventually I just chose to nuke the pan and start the seasoning process all over again. I decided to try soaking the pan in acid and filled it up with water, adding some grams of citric acid into the mix. After some 20 minutes of waiting and haphazard scrubbing, the inside of the pan looked shiny enough for me even though there were still some bits of crud left. I removed the acidic solution and, just to be safe, filled the pan with water and some grams of baking soda in order to neutralize the acid. (Looking back, I do not think this was enough) After that, following the guidance of numerous internet guides (e.g. 1, 2), I wanted to temper the wok again. I assumed that the protective oxide layer formed while bluing the pan for the first time had been erased along with the rest of the seasoning. However, after I had blued the pan and waited a couple of minutes for it to cool down, a horrible sight awaited me: I am almost certain that this was rust—the infamous flash rust. I was petrified. Too demotivated to start the process all over again, I tried to season the pan, hoping that the "rust" was just a harmless byproduct of the bluing process. (Though I had not seen it when tempering the pan earlier) This ended just about as well as anyone could expect: I had clearly botched the seasoning. In hindsight, I think I may have tried to polymerize the thin coat of rapeseed oil over heat too high. Thus, my main problem is as follows: how do I prevent flash rust from appearing after tempering the pan? I quite clearly cannot just rub oil on it to protect it while it's at 350 degrees celsius (≈660°F)... Do I just have to cool it down really quickly with water? Also, what caused it? Acid residue? In general, how should I proceed? Can I, or should I, even repeat the bluing process again while reseasoning the pan? How acidic should the initial nuking solution be; is more acid better, or less?

Your first picture might be the beginnings of a seasoning layer, though a bit lumpy & uneven from poor technique. "it was probably just burnt oil and nothing to worry about" - yeah… but that's what you actually want. That's the seasoning, or the very beginnings of it. In the later photos, I see no evidence of any seasoning remaining… nor, in fact much blueing. Personally, I think the blueing* is a waste of time so long as you make sure to get rid of any industrial oil from the surface before you season it. I'm sure the thrashing you've given it will have done that. What's left is an unseasoned pan that will rust if you so much as look at it askance. It's the seasoning that prevents rust. You can scour it all you like, but until you get a proper polymer coat on there it will just keep rusting again. Seasoning is not oil - it's what oil turns into after heating to a high temperature for a long time, almost a plastic; a polymerised coating. The first layer or two will look yellowish to brownish [but not red like rust]. The more layers you get on it, the further towards black it will go. Many very, very thin layers are far better than one thick layer, which will just peel or chip off. Neither of those links gives me much confidence, tbh. Try What's the best way to season a cast iron skillet? instead, & just do it upside down in the oven, 5 or 6 times… once you've got the rust off again. *heating mild steel until it goes blue isn't really 'blueing', which is a chemical process, it's case-hardening - similar to what a swordsmith would do. It has two purposes, to harden & to resist rusting. Unless done properly it actually achieves neither. By far the best way to protect an iron pan or wok is to season it. Do it properly, use it often & you'll never need to do it again.

I make all of my own bread. For just everyday use my go-to recipe is as follows: Honey-Oat Pain de Mie 255g lukewarm water 361g AP Flour 85g old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick oats) 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 64g honey 57g melted butter 2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast I use a Pain de Mie pan like this: Typically a loaf loaf looks like this, I made this loaf a few weeks ago: Over half the times I have made this recipe (including yesterday), I've used my bread maker to knead the dough. I always use my (spookily accurate) digital scale to measure the ingredients; I put the bread maker insert or bowl on the scale and tare between ingredients. I always bake in the same Pain de Mie pan. Up until yesterday it has always taken 1 hour for the first rise and a half an hour for the second. I preheat the oven during the second rise, I bake for 25 minutes (per digital timer), covered, then 5 more minutes uncovered. It's as routine as brushing my teeth. Yesterday I noticed the dough was a bit sticky when I put it into the pan after the first rise, and the first rise was done a bit quicker than usual, maybe 45-50 minutes instead of an hour. The second rise took 25 minutes instead of the usual 30. But this is where it got really weird. The dough just went nuts in the oven. It oozed into the lips of the pan lid and onto the oven floor. You can see the shape of the loaf is odd because the dough was squeezing into the crannies. I would just blow it off, chalk it up to human error, and assume that my next loaf will be normal. But, this bread was the best loaf of this type that I've ever made, so I want to figure out what I did wrong so I can do it again :) I have not shopped since my last loaf, just a few days ago, and I haven't opened any new packages. So it can't be different oats, salt, butter, yeast or honey. It is possible that I grabbed the 00 flour instead of AP (but not terribly likely, the canisters are different). The measurements listed in the recipe by grams could have been measured incorrectly, but in this case weight errors seem less likely than spoon errors. The least likely measurement error would be the water because I measure the water in a Pyrex measuring cup, heat it in the microwave, stick a thermometer in it until it comes down to 110F, and then pour and weigh it. So the measurement of water is redundant, and that's a pretty solid habit. I specifically remember that my water temp was normal as well. The mistakes that I can most easily imagine are for the salt or yeast. I could have accidentally grabbed either a tsp measure or a TBS measure for the salt. I usually use a 1/2 TBS measure. For the yeast I usually use 2 tsp measures and a 1/4 tsp measure. So 3.25 tsp would probably be the most likely error of that type. So. With that info, what would you say is the most likely reason for this great loaf? EDIT: It's such a good and (usually) foolproof recipe, I thought I'd share the rest of the recipe details. Use a 9" Pullman Pan, this one is great. Mix dough ingredients and then give it a 20-30 minute rest to hydrate the oats. If using a breadmaker, just run it through mixing, unplug it for 20 minutes after mixing, before kneading. After 20 minutes plug it back in, starting over, and let it run through the dough cycle. If hand kneading just knead as normal after the rest, let it rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. Preheat oven to 350F (175C). Give the pan and lid a bit of Pam or butter (not much, the pan is very non-stick, I do it mostly just for crust texture), shape, and place the dough in the pan. I poke across the top until it looks pretty even. Cover with plastic wrap, proof in a warm place until the dough averages just shy of an inch or 2.5cm from the top of the pan. Put the lid on and bake covered in a preheated oven for 25 minutes. Uncover and bake for another 5 minutes or until it registers about 195F (90C). Remove loaf from pan and cool on a rack.

There are three factors that will make dough rise more quickly: 1- More water 2- More yeast 3- More heat from any source More yeast will make the bread rise more quickly but won't create the sticky texture and better flavor that you describe. More heat will be the same, not just from your heated water but also the temperature of the room- it would accelerate rising but not change the final texture. I have noticed that when my water is too warm that the dough is stickier- but not after rising. More water will make your yeast able to act more quickly. It will also create steam that will make the crust a little chewier. It would also, obviously, make your dough stickier. Even though your process makes the water content the least suspect variable- In my opinion, it is the only one that matches your symptoms. Perhaps the day was slightly more humid than you thought? Perhaps you mismeasured a little? It's easy enough to experiment with your next batch and add a little bit more liquid. Artisan bread just gets better with more liquid. Sandwich bread doesn't so don't bump the water content up too far. My standard sandwich bread recipe is 65% hydration by weight.

Our recipe called for frozen pearl onions & I only found fresh. What do I need to do to the fresh ones?

Fresh ones will require peeling, and probably slightly longer cooking, as the freezing process tends to break down some of the cell membranes. The frozen ones are typically pre-peeled. The easiest way I've found to peel pearl onions is to score them accross the top in an X pattern with a paring knife, dip them in a pot of boiling water for 15 seconds or so, shock in an ice bath. Then, one by one, grab them by the stem-end, and squeeze gently -- the onions will typically pop right out of the peels! Again, depending on the dish, you may have to cook them a little bit longer. If it's a fast saute or stir fry, you may want to leave them in the boiling water for another 30-60 seconds when you're peeling them to soften them up more. If it's a long braised or stewed dish, I wouldn't bother.

According to Amazon, Kewpie mayonnaise contains vegetable oil, egg yolk, vinegar, salt, MSG and spices (no sugar). Hellmann's (which I specify only because it seems like it's the 'canonical' American mayonnaise) contains soybean oil, water, whole eggs & egg yolks, vinegar, salt, sugar, lemon juice, natural flavors and calcium disodium edta. To me, the Kewpie mayonnaise seems sweeter, even though it doesn't contain sugar, and the Hellmann's does contain sugar. But that's not even the big difference to me. Somehow, the Kewpie is just "right" in sushi rolls and for just about every other application from that part of the word that benefits from mayonnaise. Yet, I find Kewpie just awful on a bologna sandwich. How are they so different? If I make mayonnaise, the list of ingredients will look more like the Kewpie, but taste more like Hellmann's. What gives?

OK, I did it. The rice vinegar was definitely the biggest difference. A pinch of MSG (Accent) sealed the deal. I found a recipe on Serious Eats. I tasted after every addition, saving the MSG for last. It wouldn't be as close having skipped anything that I used. I didn't have real hon-dashi or Japanese mustard, but I had some instant miso soup powder and some Colman's mustard. It was close enough. I also used just rice vinegar, I didn't have any malt vinegar. I don't have any real Kewpie to do a side by side comparison, but I can tell this is pretty close. It's definitely much closer to Kewpie than Hellmann's. Everything that has been said here was right.

I know, right? Sounds awesome. Here's what's up: For Christmas I got one of those do-it-yourself molds for making ice shot glasses. My idea is pretty simple: Melt chocolate and pour it into the molds and make chocolate shot glasses. I'm thinking maybe try doing some sort of fruit-flavored liquor (as the shot) with it as well. Any suggestions on how to get started? My instincts tell me that straight melted chocolate that is then frozen / chilled wouldn't set well and the fats would their separate ways and not be good. Should I cut it with cream or milk? I'm most certain a double-boiler for melting is the best way to go and I was considering using semi-sweet baker's chocolate.

There are chocolate shot glass molds that work much better than the ice molds. I have the same mold you link to and it makes the shot glasses way to thick. It is like taking a shot and then eating a bar of chocolate. I would recommend trying to find another mold. What also works is to take actual shot glasses and chill them. Take them out of the freezer and use a small paint brush to brush the inside edges with melted chocolate and put back in the freezer. This doesn't work as well as a plastic mold because it is hard to unstick chocolate from glass as opposed to plastic.

I know that meat thermometers generally won't handle as high a temperature range as candy, but I'm only planning to make caramels and fudge (so soft ball and firm ball) and that's within the range of the meat thermometer that I already own. Also, meat thermometers are often labelled "medium well" etc., rather than "soft ball". Since I have access to the temps required, that's not an issue. I'm definitely a noob to candy, so is there some magical reason I can't use a meat thermometer for my candy? Is it a huge no-no? Does it contain leprechauns that will destroy my caramels?

I think Doug and yossarian both touched on the main points, but to summarize, there are four reasons why you might not want to use a meat thermometer for candy: Range A meat thermometer might go from 140 F to 220 F or something like that, which is plenty for meat. Candy often requires a range from about 75 degrees (chocolate) up to 400+ degrees (hard candy). The range on most thermometers is simply not sufficient for most candies. Accuracy When you temper chocolate, 88 F degrees is an ideal working temperature (for dark chocolate). Some people would consider 91 so high you might want to think about starting over. When you make caramels, the difference between 235 F and 240 F can be the difference between wonderfully chewy caramels and a sugar-flavored rock. If you can't read one degree increments at a glance, you need a real candy thermometer. Speed Meat thermometers often take 30 seconds to a minute to get an accurate result. When you are making candies, you have to be able to tell what the temperature is right now. Contamination I don't want the thermometer that goes in semi-raw meat anywhere near my chocolate.

Some years ago I tried Norwegian brown cheese Brunost. I am aware that technically it is not cheese and it is brown and very sweet due to caramelized milk sugar. I was wondering - is there any other use of this cheese other than a sandwich with some butter and possibly jam/marmalade?

Brunost is often used in Norwegian cooking, especially in brown sauces. E.g. like this. I have personly used brunost for such a recipe, and it does add a very nice flavor to the sauce. Here is a link to several recepies using brunost, from Tine the biggest maker of brunost in Norway) Hope this helps, Best wishes from Norway!

While recently experimenting with a seitan based fake turkey, I was curious if I was even pursuing the right media for making a fake vegan turkey. With respect to the following characteristics, what vegan meat substitute media (as in, can approximate turkey not necessarily in nutrition but rather taste) fits best? What preparation of the media is most suited to creating this profile? Why? Has the defined texture of turkey meat Has the defined texture of turkey skin, whether deep-fried or baked Has the moisture level of either light or dark meat Has the flavor compatibility to suit either a mushroom or vegan sausage stuffing Has the flavor compatibility to suit either a rosemary or vegan sausage gravy When made from scratch, does not exceed the cost of a relatively sized bird Please note, I am not asking about pre-packaged or brands of media, but rather media and preparations themselves (i.e. not Field Roast or Tofurkey, but rather Seitan/Vital Wheat Gluten)

I always make a tofu turkey by blending tofu with herbs and flavorings and then draining over night in a colander dressed with a kitchen towel. The next day I shape the tofu info a turkey shape with stuffing inside, wrap it in a soaked yuba sheat and bake it in the oven, brushing with butter and marinade occasionally. This "turkey" will not have the texture of turkey meat but it will be carvable. The skin will have a texture similar to turkey skin. The flavor of this "turkey" (I use a lot of sage, light miso and poultry seasoning) is very traditional and goes well together with above mentioned gravies and stuffings. When brushed with enough marinade and butter it will be moist if a little crumbly. I spent about 10 € on the tofu (6 blocks of 450 g each), 2.50 € on the skin and 5 € on the herbs. If you have buy seasoning, miso, etc, it will cost more.

So I found some Sherry Cooking Wine ($6 CAD) at my supermarket and I don't want to go and shell out too much money on a real bottle of wine just for a stew, is it possible to use cooking wine like Sherry Cooking Wine as the base of the stew? If it matters, the meat will probably be lamb or beef. The cooking wine in question:

"Cooking wine" is unfortunately ubiquitous on US mega-mart shelves. It is notoriously bad. I mean really, really notoriously bad. It starts bad, and then they add obscene amounts of salt so that it can be sold on grocery store shelves for $6. As pointed out by @Malvolio, "salted wine is supposed to be disgusting! Many US states have special licensing requirements for any store that wants to sell alcohol, even wine and beer, but wine that is so heavily salted it cannot reasonably be consumed directly is exempt." The salt literally makes it undrinkable, so underage and other sales that would otherwise be illegal aren't an issue. The added salt also ups the shelf life, but not nearly enough to justify the sensory assault of these stunningly awful "wines". Canadian "cooking wine" is the same thing, just with different levels of salt just like the 50 states. (these are just examples, all "cooking wine" brands on US grocery store shelves are the same level of truly insulting): Skip the cooking wine. Go to a liquor store and look at the inexpensive bottles of wine. You might be surprised - bargains abound. Incidentally, if you don't generally love to drink wine but occasionally like to cook with it, you might try what I do. I keep a bottle of inexpensive but good dry sherry and another bottle of inexpensive but good dry vermouth tightly capped in the fridge. Those wines, along with marsala, port, and others are fortified with liquor, giving them a much longer refrigerated-after-open shelf life than normal wine. Fortified wine can often replace the wine in recipes, at an equal or slightly reduced volume of the non-fortified wine called for. Sherry is often actually called for in Chinese and other Asian recipes, and dry vermouth can generally sub for "dry white wine" in recipes. Cook's Illustrated says: Our recipes often call for dry white wine. Its crisp acidity and lightly fruity flavor add depth to everything from pan sauces and pasta to risotto and steamed mussels. The problem? Standard wine bottles are 750 milliliters, and our recipes rarely call for more than 1 cup (roughly 235 milliliters) of wine. That leaves us with most of a bottle to finish in a matter of days. Dry vermouth, which can be substituted for white wine in equal amounts in recipes, is a convenient alternative. Like Marsala and sherry, vermouth is wine that’s been fortified with a high-proof alcohol (often brandy), which raises its alcohol content and allows to it be stored in the refrigerator for weeks or even months after opening. I buy the dry vermouth recommended as the best buy by those same folks at Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen, which sells for $6-$8 in the liquor store that connects to the grocery store (barely more expensive than the hideous salt bomb on the grocery store shelf). One of the Sherries recommended by the Cook's Illustrated taste test clocked in at under $6:

I have read that industrial microwave ovens operate at 900 MHz rather than the more common 2.4 GHz ovens found in most homes. Why is this? Some examples of this claim: Continuous Microwave Processing for Heating Materials Comparing Microwave to Conventional Heating & Drying The latter link claims "[The 900 MHz] range allows more efficient penetration of the microwave through the material." Though I don't know why that would be.

For freezing ice cream or other confections in a refrigerator’s freezer area, a refrigerator tray was a rectangular, shallow, open container. The ice cube tray (often provided with the refrigerator) began, around the mid-to-late thirties, to be fitted with a removable divider so that it doubled as the refrigerator tray. Ice cube trays with removable dividers are referred to as “refrigerator trays” and were designed specifically for freezing desserts. The terms “refrigerator tray”, “freezer tray”, and “ice cube tray” were used somewhat interchangeably for making desserts with these trays, at least during the period after ice cube trays with removable dividers were included with refrigerators and until the included ice cube trays became one-piece plastic trays. The Carnation Fun to Cook Book, for example, has a recipe for “tropical freeze” on page 40; for the final freeze, the recipe is poured into “two small (or 1 large) refrigerator trays”. The drawings accompanying the recipe show shallow, rectangular trays. Experiences with Foods by L. Belle Pollard includes notes on “making ice cream in the home refrigerator” on page 258. The ingredients have been combined according to the recipe and poured into the refrigerator trays or molds. The accompanying photo shows two of these refrigerator trays. They are metal, rectangular, and shallow. You can also see refrigerator trays used for desserts in this 1951 commercial for a Westinghouse refrigerator. By at least the late 1960s, authors had begun to use the term “ice cube tray” in recipes for ice creams made in the refrigerator. In Vincent and Mary Price’s 1965 A Treasury of Great Recipes, there is a recipe for Tre Scalini’s Hazelnut Ice Cream on page 93 that says to “Pour into 2 ice-cube trays and freeze. This makes a soft ice cream.” Borden’s The Dessert Lovers’ Hand Book from 1969 also contains recipes for making ice creams in the home refrigerator. The accompanying illustration shows the same shallow, rectangular container, but in this case calls it an “ice cube tray”—despite there being no cube shapes in that container as drawn. The ice cube grid has been removed. Borden’s 1952 Borden’s Eagle Brand 70 Magic Recipes uses the term “freezer tray” for the same Vanilla Ice Cream recipe that their 1969 Dessert Lovers’ Hand Book contains. The recipe is the same; only the terminology has changed. One patent for a refrigerator tray with removable grids for ice cubes is Richard E. Kaufmann’s patent 2,112,027 filed October 3, 1936, found in the Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office Volume 488. The patent is labeled “Refrigerator Tray” and shows a “removable grid for ice cube trays”. A slightly earlier patent, Louis Brownstein’s patent 2,037,364 from March 17, 1934, is labeled “Ice Cube Tray”, but specifically mentions its use for desserts: My invention further contemplates the provision of a freezing tray from which the grid partitions and other parts may be readily removed for purposes of cleaning or when the tray is to be used without its partitions, as when it is desired to freeze desserts, etc. in the tray. Brownstein writes specifically that the grid-less tray may “be used for freezing liquid desserts in one mass”. You can see ice cube trays with removable dividers in this 1954 commercial for a Crosley Super Shelvador. Here’s an example of a later iteration of an ice cube tray with a removable divider, a double-sized Quickube from a Frigidaire refrigerator: Notes While traveling recently I acquired Borden’s Dessert Lovers’ Hand Book and Price’s A Treasury of Great Recipes. The reference to ice cube trays in these two books provided the necessary clue to answering my own question—that a refrigerator tray and an ice cube tray were at least in some instances the same thing. This led to finding Kaufmann’s patent on a refrigerator tray that was clearly an ice cube tray. Borden’s 1969 Dessert Lovers’ Hand Book also includes instructions for making ice cream in specialized ice cream churns; the 1952 70 Magic Recipes only has recipes for making ice cream in the refrigerator. The archived version of Borden’s 70 Magic Recipes that I linked to is supposedly dated 1956; I’m not sure how archive.org arrived at that date; the only obvious differences between the archived version and my copy appears to be that (a) mine has a copyright year of 1952 on the inside front cover where the archived version does not include the year in the inside-front-cover copyright statement; and (b) the inside back page on mine has what I think is a print date of 8-52 and a version of E-56 where the archived version has what I think is a print date of 5-63 and a version of E-56 Rev. The Quickube ice cube tray has levers for more easily removing the grids from the tray, a feature mentioned in later patents such as F.W. Sampson’s 1946 patent 2,573,066 and E.H. Roberts’s 1956 patent 2,763,997 both of which are fascinating historically but don’t address this question.

I'm trying to make soups (e.g. tomato soups, with some veggies, chillies, etc) and would like to make its cost lowest possible. One problem that I have to solve is choosing the right thickening agent in order to make the soup cheapest possible. Flour seems a common choice, but there is also xanthan gum. Xanthan gum is more expensive per gram, but looking at the cost per gram is misleading as different amounts in grams are required to thicken a given volume. For example, only a few grams of xanthan gum are required to thicken a serving. To be more specific, suppose that I have 500ml of hot water that I'd like to thicken, what's the cheapest way to thicken it with a soup-like consistency? There are many more thickening agents than the two that I have mentioned so far, and this complicates the problem for me as I'm not experienced with thickening agents nor soups. Therefore, experts' opinions here would be really helpful, specially that this question seems not answered here, and my search attempts failed to find any website that answers it.

An absolutely definitive answer would be based on a formula that takes into account the thickening power per weight of different thickeners as well as the cost per weight of the thickening agent. That's completely unnecessary however because I can tell you without a doubt that the cheapest thickener is wheat flour. I don't have to do any of that work because food companies have done that for me: they keep their prices competitive by getting the most effect out of the least price, and they use wheat flour and cornstarch for soup thickening almost exclusively. Xanthan gum may be used in some gluten free recipes, but it's rare. If it was cost effective they'd be using it everywhere. Of the two most frequently used, cornstarch is double the thickening power of flour, but is far more expensive. The quick checks I did showed anywhere between 10-20 time the price of flour, so at least 5 times the cost for equivalent thickening power. Cornstarch has distinct advantages over flour as a thickener: it doesn't need to be cooked before it's added and it adds a nice gloss, however purely on a cost basis you won't get cheaper than flour.

My knowledge of cheese making is extremely lacking, but what determines how hard or soft the final cheese product is when making your own cheese?

Harold McGee, in On Food and Cooking, is very detailed in his explanation of how cheese "works". He describes three stages. In the first stage, lactic acid bacteria convert milk sugar into lactic acid. In the second stage, which overlaps with the first one, rennet (an extract of calf stomach - or, to be more precise, chymosin, a protein found in this extract and now also obtainable from yeasts and the like) curdles the casein proteins and watery whey is drained from the concentrated curds. And finally, in the third stage, the cheese ripens, and a whole host of different enzymes do all sorts of things to flavour and texture. According to McGee, Acid and Rennet form very different kinds of curd structures -- acid a fine, fragile gel, rennet a coarse but robust, rubbery one -- so their relative contributions, and how quickly they act, help determine the ultimate texture of the cheese. He goes on to describe how mostly acid coagulation leads to softer cheeses and mostly rennet-based coagulation leads to firmer curds and harder cheeses. Draining of the whey also strongly affects the final texture, as Sobachatina points out in her excellent answer. Pressing firmly expels much whey and thus leads to a harder cheese; softer cheeses are just allowed to drain some whey by gravity. But there's another important factor here: heat. Some cheeses are "cooked" in their whey at this stage, to a temperature as high as 55C (130F) for a rock-hard Parmesan or about 38C (100F) for a somewhat softer Tommes, and this expels even more whey from the curd particles (and, of course, also affects flavour). At this stage, salt is also added. Salt draws some moisture out of the curds as well and is a catalyst for the denaturing of casein, thus reinforcing the protein structure. McGee also discusses aging of cheese at some length, but he doesn't really touch on the effect of aging on the structure of cheese. That effect is certainly there; a very young Gouda cheese is almost as soft as a Camembert, whereas a very old one gets close to Parmesan hardness (if it doesn't crumble to dust). I imagine that this is due to some moisture escaping the cheese, but also due to the fact that the protein networks keep growing more and more interconnected as the cheese ripens.

Having recently invested in an airfryer, I was wondering if it would be suitable for roasting coffee beans? The model I have is this one and goes up to 200C. Has anyone attempted this with any success?

Generally lowfat sauces use tricks to get texture and some semblance of flavour. Starches and thickeners give the illusion of richness, while vast quantities of salt somewhat mask the lack of cheese and butter. Anyone with half a palette can tell at first taste though. Make it seldom, but make it properly.

I love the soup, but hate how it makes my house smell.

Bake bread to go with the soup as you make it. The smell of bread baking (sourdough in particular!) is usually enough to cut the smell of lentil / split pea / chic pea / fish soups and stews while adding the right elements of savory aroma to make the combined smell almost, if not actually desirable and palatable. Any good yeasty bread recipe should do the trick. Another thing you can do is bloom some saffron, which mixes delightfully with the smell of split pea soup. In short, taste your soup as you smell other things. When you hit on winning combinations, they're aromatically complimentary and create a sensory affinity. Many bistros (and bakeries themselves) rely on this technique to lure passers-by.

My orange jams and strawberry jams with honey are not getting set.. for some reason I don't use pectin (mental block maybe - though I know it's a natural ingredient).. reading a lot of blogs I found this could be the case when lower amount of sweetner is used.. Is this correct? My friends love the saucy consistency so that's not a problem.. but I want to know if this is normal or should I let it boil more? Strawberry jam: 1kg strawberry + 100 grams water to boil initally to remove seeds (this was for a kid who doesn't like the seeds) 600 grams honey 3 tbsp lemon juice To start with low flame for 10 minutes and then at a medium flame for 80 minutes.. temperature was 104°C when I switched it off.. Orange : 500 grams orange juice 220 grams honey 1 tbsp lemon juice Low flame 10 minutes + boil in medium flame for 30 mins - end temp 104.5°C

Jam is set with pectin or it is syrup. Period. If you are not adding pectin then you are relying on whatever pectin is available in the fruit you use. Strawberries don't have a lot. Oranges have a good amount but it's in the peel- thus the existence of marmalade. Pectin requires sugar and acid to set. The sugar is not going to prevent a normal jam from setting. If you boil it longer you will just be removing water which will thicken your syrup and maybe it will be thick enough for your tastes but it still is unlikely to gel like jam. If you are deathly opposed to purchasing pectin, you can make it yourself by boiling tart apples. It's a lot of work and you will end up with a product that is no better than commercial pectin but you will have control of the process.

I'm currently experimenting with making various wine jellies to be served with meat and/or cheese. Cabernet + black pepper, mulled wine jelly, and so on. I then can the result in a water bath to increase shelf life. I submerge the (sterilised and filled) jars in boiling water for ~5 minutes and then let the water cool slightly before removing the jars. After a few hours (or overnight) I check that they have sealed. I would like to make a jelly from white wine with garlic and possibly some rosemary. I also add sugar and pectin to make the jelly. Searching the internet reveals many recipes for such a jelly, but no note on how safe it is. Just because someone on the internet has done it doesn't mean it's a good idea. Is a wine jelly acidic enough that I don't need to worry about botulinum?

If you have evaporated milk (also known as unsweetened condensed milk) in your pantry, you can use it to replace everything except the cheese in a cheese sauce for stovetop macaroni and cheese. Stovetop Mac and Cheese with Evaporated Milk Cheese Sauce This recipe is an example of mac and cheese made with an evaporated milk cheese sauce. Ingredients 6 ounces (170g) elbow macaroni 6 ounces (180ml) evaporated milk 6 ounces (170g) grated mild or medium cheddar cheese, or any good melting cheese, such as Fontina, Gruyère, or Jack Directions: Place macaroni in a medium saucepan or skillet and add just enough cold water to cover. Add a pinch of salt and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently. Continue to cook, stirring, until water has been almost completely absorbed and macaroni is just shy of al dente, about 6 minutes. Immediately add evaporated milk and bring to a boil. Add cheese. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring continuously, until cheese is melted and liquid has reduced to a creamy sauce, about 2 minutes longer. Season to taste with more salt and serve immediately. The recipe does not drain the macaroni, but instead uses the remaining cooking liquid as part of the sauce. This is important, as the starch released by the pasta during cooking is needed to keep the sauce smooth. (Consider this cheese sauce recipe, which uses a similar ratio of cheese to evaporated milk but also includes cornstarch. The "Read more" link in the recipe notes that a sauce made with just cheese and evaporated milk was significantly less smooth than a sauce made with both evaporated milk and cornstarch.) A note for baked macaroni and cheese: A footnote in a recipe for baked mac and cheese from the same website noted that a different cheese sauce recipe using evaporated milk did not work well in baked mac and cheese. I found that [the cheese sauce] didn't translate as well to the baked version of the dish; it tends to break when subsequently baked, diminishing its gooey texture and cheesy flavor.

I read that in the north of Italy they would use eggs in their recipes (the recipe to make the pasta itself). Is it an actual tradition or is it just a recent trend? I always thought that the pasta was something simple, made with the heart, durum semolina and water.

Although nowadays both are ubiquitous in Italy (and abroad), dried pasta and fresh egg pasta are traditionally associated with different regions of Italy. Dried durum-wheat pasta originated in the old Kingdom of the two Sicilies, which encompassed the entire Southern Italy, including the island of Sicily, and had its capital city in Naples. Oldest historical records associate the production and consumption of dried pasta with Sicily, but one of the best renowned home of pastifici (artisanal pasta production places) from time immemorial is the town of Gragnano, in the province of Naples. Still today, the humble spaghetti with tomatoes and basil is one of the iconic food of Naples. Fresh egg pasta ("fresh" here is referred to pasta, not to eggs, as in "not essiccated") is linked to the historical region of Emilia, part of the River Po Valley. It is worth mentioning that from a historical point of view this is the reason why spaghetti alla bolognese, one of the best known Italian dishes abroad, is actually a fake one: "bolognese" means "from the city of Bologna", which is the largest city of Emilia. For this reason it was always supposed, from its very own "design", to go well with tagliatelle, which is a classic fresh pasta format.

We made some fondue the other night, and instead of being a nice smooth dippable fondue texture, it came out grainy and lumpy. What went wrong? Here's the recipe that we used: 1 clove garlic 3/4 cup Dark Ale or Other Beer 1 cup Emmenthal Cheese, Shredded 1 1/2 cups Gruyere Cheese, Shredded 1/2 cup Appenzeller Cheese, Shredded 1 tbsp Corn Starch Slice garlic in half, rub in fondue pot. Warm beer without boiling. Mix cornstarch and cheeses. Stir cheese into beer, one handful at a time, allowing to melt in-between additions.

I suspect that your cheese curdled. This happens to me if I overheat the mixture- especially in the presence of acid. (I don't have any experience with using beer.) The cornstarch is there as a safety net to prevent this but obviously it is not infallible. Turn down the heat and try adding a little more corn starch- it may not get back to perfect fondue but you may be able to pull it back to edible.

There are lots of American cheese cake recipes which call for cream cheese. And I don't know about cream cheese in the USA, but in Europe, cream cheese is salted. It may be not as salty as, say, feta, but the salt is definitely noticeable. As a result, my cheesecake's taste is a combination of sweet and salty. Do you have any ideas how to solve the problem? Of course, it would be perfect if you can tell me a brand of cream cheese without salt which I can get in Germany. But if not, I would like to hear ideas about how to make the salt less noticeable. Adding more sugar or using a different kind of cheese (e.g. mascarpone) are not an option. Or if it is normal for a cheesecake to taste that way (I have never eaten a genuine American cheesecake), please tell me so I can stop worrying about my cakes. Also, I have observed that a cheesecake tastes less salty after a day or two. Is this real, or just my imagination (or me getting accustomed to the taste)? If true, what causes this to happen?

I would 'cut' a standard cream cheese like Philadelphia with mascarpone, which is essentially triple cream with a cream cheese-like texture.

I've been baking bread for years and no longer really measure the ingredients. But I'm no expert on the science of what I'm doing. I add fat (lard) because I've always added fat. What job does the fat do? And if I have long been using too little or too much fat how would this affect my loaf? And then, writing this up, I'm also wondering about yeast. I guess if I use too little yeast I am going to get a loaf which rises insufficiently. But what would be the consequences of using too much yeast?

Amongst other things, fats help moderate/impede gluten development, by not allowing water to activate the proteins. Too much yeast and your dough will be flabby and over-risen.

Possible Duplicate: How does one find recipes given an ingredient rather than the recipe name? I'd like to get a recipe by given food (fridge content ;) )

After years of cooking, I don't really need this service anymore, but I sure did wish there was something good like this 5 years ago. I couldn't find anything then, though. However, I've seen a couple of sites pop up since then. I can't really testify to how well they work, because I haven't used any of them. But here are some things to explore: Recipe Key - Lets you create your own pantry and then get matching recipes. This looks like it could be a really cool tool if you use it regularly as well as a good spot solution for inspiration. Recipe Matcher - Lets you type in the ingredients you have for matches. And now I need to run, so here are a couple more sites to check out: Super Cook All Recipes Recipe Puppy Yummly Hope one of those helps. I think the first two (recipe key and recipe matcher) look like your best options. Let us know how you fare.

If I need to melt margarine on the stove and have no pots or pans available, can I melt it in a thin disposable aluminum pan directly on the burner (on a low flame), or will the pan burn/melt?

Butter melts at such a low temp that this would work. You would want as low a flame as you can. I would not recommend it, however. If you forget it the metal is thin enough to burn through and at least make a mess- worst case it will ignite the butter, atomize the aluminum which will unverifiably hasten the onset of Alzheimer's, and burn your house to the ground. Butter melts at 90-95F. You can just leave the butter in the sun for a few minutes.

Many people prefer certain dishes and drinks to be hot (or cold). I can understand the impact it has on mouthfeel for some foods (cold pizza has a very different texture than hot pizza, for example), but for liquids like soup and coffee that doesn't seem to be a factor. But both of these are often seen as disgusting when they're at room temperature. Why do we prefer food at a certain temperature? Is it just conditioning? Does it impact taste? Is there some physiological reason? (Obviously, some foods, like ice cream, can only exist at certain temperatures. This isn't what I'm asking about)

I'm assuming you're asking why food is often served hot, not why food is often cooked. Cooking can obviously have a major transformation on food. While people often debate whether cold pizza is better than hot pizza, I haven't heard anyone arguing uncooked pizza is the best. The main reason why foods are often served hot is because higher temperatures increase our perception of taste. However since this increase not uniform across different compounds it can also alter the balance of tastes increasing some more than others, possibly creating a better or worse overall flavour. Temperature can affect how the texture of foods is perceived and even the amount of pain felt when eating spicy hot foods. Probably the easiest way to test this yourself is would be to compare either soup or coffee served hot as normal and cooled down in a refrigerator. You should notice when served cold the soup has less flavour, and the coffee is noticeably less bitter. Another thing to try would be beer. It's hard not to notice the difference between an ice cold beer and a room temperature one. While most people prefer their beer as cold as possible, the recommended temperature for craft and specialty beers is often somewhere in the cool range. That's so you actually taste the beer you spent more money on.

Another question regarding mashed potatoes. I have prepared my (vegan-friendly) mashed potatoes, and now I want to keep them warm. I decided to place them in a slow cooker on the 'LOW' setting, thinking that would keep the mash warm and not over-cook them. However, after 1-2 hours, I saw burnt red-brown marks on the pot and around the mash. I have never seen potatoes by themselves burn and turn red, so I assume this must be due to either the salt, or the Earth Balance margarine that I was using in the mash. However, I am clueless as to why margarine would burn at such a relatively low temperature, considering that the smoke point of the vegetable oils used in margarine are very high. These are pictures of the burn in my pot: This is the model of my pot. A Booney 3SC65R slow cooker model.

That just looks like mildly burned mashed potatoes to me, possibly with a little oil/margarine included. I think the issue here is just that potatoes are thick, and there was no stirring. Slow cookers are best suited for liquids, so that convection can transfer heat throughout the contents. With potatoes, nothing can move around, so whatever's around the edges can get a lot hotter. I've definitely managed to burn things a bit in my slow cooker too, for example apple butter that was too thick for good convection. I'm not sure there's really much you can do about this given your slow cooker. If it had an even lower "warm" setting, you could try it. If you were willing to make really wet mashed potatoes, there might be enough water to avoid burning. But otherwise, you might have to look to another solution for keeping warm, like the oven, or or maybe an insulated carrier/box if it doesn't need to hold too long.

When cooking the chicken for quesadillas would it be ok to use taco seasoning to give some flavor to the chicken? Would that taste weird? I have a new quesadilla maker I will be using tonight?

The short answer? The bone. And here's why. As this page shows, (the Wikipedia entry for Strip Steak), there are several name variants for the very same cut of beef. You've simply hit upon two of them, let's say. A New York Strip is a sirloin, but is generally cut from the uppermost section where, that is, the meat is most tender (aka does less work). This is called the strip loin part of the sirloin. It's my personal favorite, bone in. But that variation is known as a Kansas City Strip. This is the distinction you have made with the idea of a "Bone-In New York Cut Sirloin" That said, the New York Strip may be cut, prepared, and served with or without bone. The presence of bone adds just one more dimension of flavor that some diner's prefer and, of some note, serves to prove that the cut came from the strip loin. More definitively, here we find The strip steak is also known as striploin, shell steak, Delmonico, New York or Kansas City strip steak. Cut from the strip loin part of the sirloin, the strip steak consists of a muscle that does little work, and it is particularly tender. When still attached to the bone, and with a piece of the beef tenderloin also included, the strip steak becomes a T-bone steak or a Porterhouse steak. The Kansas City strip steak usually has a portion of the bone connected, whereas the New York strip steak is boneless. Here too, we find yet other variants on the name as well as a graphic which shows where the cut is taken from This cut has many aliases, New York steak, Kansas City steak, boneless Club steak or Ambassador steak to name a few. Given all these nuances and variants, it's no wonder not even the surest restauranteur had for you a ready answer to this question. [EDIT] Having since learned that this is a Smith & Wollensky menu item, as worded, there's really no excuse for their not having been able to make for you this distinction.

I make Swedish pancakes for my family every Thursday, as per Swedish tradition. Fresh from the frying pan they are crisp at the edges and very slightly crisp on the surface where the batter has caramelised. If I fry and serve while everyone else eats, we get to enjoy pancakes at their best. The disadvantage is that I don't get to sit and eat with my family. If I make a stack of pancakes in advance, as I often do, most of the pancakes have become rather limp and lost all of their crispiness by the time they are served. Those at the bottom of the pile are also noticeably cooler. Is there some way to serve pancakes en masse where each pancake is hot and crisp through to the last?

You have this same problem with most fried foods that you want to serve fresh. Anyone who makes latkes for Hanukkah knows this problem well. So it's similar to this question What technique should I use to make latkes for a party so that I don't have to stay in the kitchen? You can try what I do for latkes - I put them on a drying rack, sheet pan, skillet, etc. in the oven set at around 250°F. You may want a lower temp for Swedish pancakes, like 200, since they are less dense. They will not be the same as fresh from the frying pan, but they will stay warm and crisp. For reheating, put them in a dry cast iron or non-stick skillet or in the toaster oven on 375-400 for 4-5 min, more or less time depending on thickness and initial temperature. If you do this a lot you could also invest in a heat lamp/warmer set up like they use at fast food chains to keep the fries warm. Cheap one on Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Home-HL100SV-Culinary-Heat-Lamp/dp/B0043M5N08 Many a Top Chef participant has been felled by this problem though - fried foods, blinis, etc. are never the same as when taken out of the fryer fresh, but they are still quite good out of the warm oven.