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I’m looking at a couple of recipes from the early twentieth century. One calls for a quick oven. The temperature for that (375 - 400°F) was easy enough to work out, several places online have it, including a 2010 Q&A from this site. The other one, quiet oven, is proving a little more challenging. (If this is a mistake, it was a typo/typesetting mistake in the original article: it is a newspaper article and is pretty clearly 'quiet'.) I am leaning toward ‘slow oven’, 300-325°F, because it is difficult to imagine anything being cooked at lower temperatures. (It is a sweet potato biscuit if that makes a difference to anyone’s logic process.) So, any ideas what a ‘quiet oven’ might be?

Google Books has a number of results calling for a "quiet oven" in older recipes, but it seems to have been such a ubiquitous concept that they didn't feel the need to explain what it meant. The only source I could find that gave any indication at all was this book by Robert Carlton Brown, published in 1955, which indicates that it was an English term for a "moderate" oven. He doesn't say what that specifically means, or when it fell out of favor as a term (I would assume with the advent of electric ovens), but I would posit that it's somewhere around 350-75 degrees, based on modern usage.

I recently came across some fresh black beans at my local farmer's market. It was the first time I had seen black beans that weren't either canned or dried. I'm sure the fresh beans will cook faster and not need to soak, but are there any other differences I should know about? How will the resulting beans cook compared to dried beans? Will they also taste different? Are some dishes suited more to fresh beans than dried? What about other types of beans since fresh Cranberry and Lima beans were also at the market?

Taste Fresh beans are sweeter on the palate. They also have a "fresher" quality to them. The best example of this is the difference between a fresh pea dish and a split pea soup. Both can be delicious but the fresh pea dish might be sweeter and have a more floral, aromatic quality to them. Dried beans can slightly more grainy, but this can be mitigated via cooking methods. Cooking Because the fresh beans are more tender, they cook much quicker than dried beans. Roughly 20 to 30 minutes versus the 1-3 hours for dried beans. The skin of fresh beans are both tender and sturdier than dried beans. They hold up better when cooking so typical bean-issues like burst and broken skins are much less of an issue. The fresh beans hold up to early salting, turbulent boiling water, and vigorous stirring because of the strength of the skin. Nutrition I couldn't find much research on the topic other than how many nutrients dried beans retain rather than lose. The general consensus seems to be that dried beans retain much of their nutritional value. Much of the water-soluble nutrients of beans can leak out during the soaking and cooking process but provided that one also consumes those liquids it's easy to enjoy the benefits.

I'm not able to purchase agar-agar (yet), so is there a rule for replacing the quantity? I've seen a recipe with 0,5 spoon of agar-agar for 1 spoon of gelatin. Is that the usual proportion? Additional: is there a difference in treatment to activate the agar-agar or gelatin?

I think this is not possible. Avocado is a great source of high quality fat, but does not contain any protein. Egg contains copious amount of protein which enables it as 'binding' agent. When protein coagulates it 'binds' the ingredients together, giving them a different texture. So, avocado - having a completely different taste, texture and macro nutrient composition could not act as egg substitute anywhere. On a side note - egg is not a vital ingredient in bread. Bread gets it's elastic consistency from wheat protein, while the CO2 bubbles from yeast make it spongy and airy. If anything, adding the avocado would be like adding potato and oil to your bread. It would have a harder time rising and the texture would be moister. Don't know about the taste, though...

I am trying to make my own shortcrust pastry, but don't have a blender or food mixer. I also don't have a gas or electric oven and am using the convection bake function of a microwave. I mix 1 1/4 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of butter (grated with a cheese grater then back in the fridge before finally mixing into the flour), 1/4 tsp sugar & 1/4 tsp salt, and about 5 tbs of ice water. Then I convection-bake it in the microwave. Somehow I just can't get it right. I tried blind baking and my pastry ended up looking like a very pimply kid with blisters all over. It was also sweating butter or something a fair bit when it was baking. It tastes okay, but a bit crunchy like a cookie, and impossible to cut without breaking apart. What am I doing wrong? Is it the temperature (190 degree Celsius/375 F)? Is it because I grated my butter? Too much water? The way I roll my pastry? Any advice is really appreciated as I'm a total newbie to baking and don't understand a whole lot about it yet.

This is because you are using a microwave. In theory, if you could turn off the microwaves in the microwave oven, you could use the convection function to bake things. In practice, we have had several questions which indicate that this is not how convection microwaves work. They keep nuking your dough, making it inedible. In your case, they are cooking all the moisture locally, resulting in mini-steam-explosions which create blisters, and a dried out, hard and crispy dough. I am sorry, but there is no way you can bake with a microwave, not short pastry, and not other things. One exception might be quickly eaten "microwave cupcakes" which don't have much flour to start with and are baked for a very short time. I have seen people claim that they work, but never actually tried them. For baking, you need a non-microwaving oven. The cheapest solution is a toaster oven with a 30x30 cm inner size, they are somewhat trickier to use than a big oven, but good enough for a small budget.

I've just reduced a 4l of stock in my "kitchen" to 0.5l by boiling it over an hour. I wrote "kitchen" with quotation marks, because that room might have been designated as a kitchen when the apartment was being built, but I'm pretty sure I see a lot of sagging paint on the ceiling that wasn't there before, the windows in all the rooms in the apartment look like it's just been raining inside and all the sachets I keep in the spice cabinet are wet. Is there something I could buy that would collect the steam from boiling and prevent this from happening again? The obvious answer would be to install a hood and connect it to a vent (which is conveniently located at the exact opposite point to where the stove was installed), but that would easily set me back a few $1000 and what I can afford right now is more in the range of $60. Summary Is there something I could buy within $60 range that could handle collecting steam from 3.5l of evaporated water boiled within one hour? Maybe a dehumidifier made specifically for kitchen or a special lid that allows evaporation but collects the water? If it helps, I'm located in Poland and the price range is actually around 280 PLN.

Well, what you’re looking for is called a “still”. It boils liquid and condenses and recovers the vapor. Most commonly (in cooking) a still is used to boil off and collect pure alcohol, but stills I’ve seen are also capable of boiling off water — in fact, in places where stills are legal to own but alcohol distillation is illegal, distilling water is the excuse under which stills are commonly sold. But it really will work for you; you’ll end up with reduced stock and some distilled water.

I often make fried chicken fingers the traditional way with an egg and milk covered cutlet dredged in seasoned flour, however my girlfriend is now on not only a gluten-free diet, but also a hypo-allergenic one which excludes eggs and dairy as well. My questions is, what are some ideas for an egg-less batter for fried chicken? For the dry mix, I'm mostly using rice flour as a GF alternative to standard all purpose flour, which is okay. My concern is with the wet mix, some things I have already tried for the wet potion of the mix: 3 parts cornstarch to 1 part water to replace the same quantity of eggs: This resulted in a good flavor, but lacked the flaky texture I was going for, the batter was very crunchy but smooth on the outside. A mixture of prepared mustard and water thickened up a bit with some of the dry mix: This resulted in the perfect flaky texture that I wanted, but I dislike the taste of the mustard in the batter. A mixture of apple sauce and water, thickened up with some of the dry mix: This resulted in a flavor that was better then the mustard, and a texture that was better then just the cornstarch, but I feel as though the apple flavor makes this option better suited to something like a pork schnitzel than a chicken cutlet. I do have gluten free bread crumbs as a last resort to help get the texture I want, but I usually prefer to have a bread crumb free batter in my chicken fingers. What might be a good egg alternative or a good wet mix substitute that will allow for a flaky texture with either a neutral flavor, or one that lends itself well to chicken.

It is not necessary to have any egg to make a breading. You should instead take a step back: rather than trying to create a substitution for egg in a breading which relies on their unique properties, instead use one of the many breading methods which does not. Among them are: Simply dredging in an acceptable starchy flour (such as corn meal) Using a (gluten free) tempura type batter Using a (gluten free) beer batter without egg All of them can be enhanced with spices or seasonings that you prefer such as chili powder, garlic powder, and so on. The latter two can even accommodate wet prepared condiments (in reasonable quantities) like prepared mustard or soy sauce. While the result will not be identical to the classic triple-layered French breading, it can be very good in its own right.

I've been pressure canning zucchini soup the past 2 years and it's a beautiful thing. This year I used a different pressure cooker, and I've just found out that 15psi on this pressure cooker is actually more like 13psi, and the internal temperature gets to 235 maximum when it says 15psi. Well, that means that I didn't meet the rules of 240-250 degrees for 15 minutes and I have 20 cans of soup to show for it. I also learned while researching that it may not be a good idea to puree the soup before canning due to high viscosity and heat distribution, and it is indeed pureed, so I have two issues to combat. All of the can seals are still in tact, but it's only been a few weeks. I've come up with a few options: Re-can the soup. Just put new lids on, bring the water up to boiling for a minute or two before putting the lid on and building pressure. This will help with heat distribution from room temp up to boiling point since this is not freshly cooked and hot soup. I will also keep the water level in the pressure cooker to just below the fill level in the bottles to further combat the viscosity/heat distribution issue with the puree. Sterilize then freeze the soup. Pour the cans from matching batches right into the pressure cooker, bring it up to pressure to kill anything that may have formed, then bring down to about room temperature inside of sealed pressure cooker, pour into containers and freeze it. This method addresses my fear of the pureed/viscosity issue. Refrigerate, use ASAP. Put the cans in the freezer. Leave it alone. Is 235 degrees good enough? Are those extra 10 degrees important? Is everyone else in the world as precise as me, or was there a safety factor when they came up with those numbers? I'm not sure which is the safest option. All I know is I dodged a major bullet by finding this out early. In the future I will can the soup before pureeing as well.

In our culture we eat olive pits (especially Kalamata) for generations and no one has ever had a problem with eating them in small quantities (3-4 max). They seem to be digestible (never noticed any of them coming out! :)

I don't have baker's semi-sweet chocolate and recipe calls for a box with 8 squares. Can I replace with chocolate chips and if so what would be the ratio?

Yes, you can use the choco. chips. One square of chocolate is normally one ounce. Half a cup of chocolate chips is usually around three ounces. If you are looking to use 8 squares (8 ounces), you will need about 1 and a quarter cups of the chips (maybe just a tad more). Some folks may come on and say that the chips are sweeter, less intense in flavour, etc., but when you are in a pinch, you can sub them out just fine. Doubtful you will notice any difference.

I've recently started making macarons using the Italian meringue method. I got this recipe from a macaron class I attended at the Waitrose Cooking School (in the UK). When I made them at my class, they were perfect, but I can't say the same for making them at home. I don't think there is anything wrong with my mixture but rather with my oven that is making my macarons either lop-sided, or spew their "guts" out. The meringue is glossy/shiny and gooey when I remove it from the mixer. The paste is firm. After mixing the meringue into the paste it's the right consistency i.e not runny and not firm that its doesn't fall off the spatula. It looks a bit like ice-cream if you keep mixing for lack of a better description. Piping them, they keep their shape and size and have the "nipple" on top. Banging them on the counter sets/smooths them and they look ready to go. The recipe said to have the oven on 145 degrees Celsius (with fan) (293°F) for 14 minutes. I have one tray in the middle of the oven and my first batch cracked. I left the next batch to set for a few minutes before putting them in and this solved my cracking issue. Now however, they just spew out the sides and are lop-sided. What could be causing this? I started trying different temperatures, fan off and on, double tray, putting the tray higher up but nothing really fixed it. Is the oven not ventilated enough? Is it too hot? Too much moisture? (it's quite humid today and rainy) I have an electrical single oven (top and bottom elements). The best result seemed to be 125 degrees Celsius (257°F) with fan, in the middle with a double tray. No cracks and spillages but just lop-sided (only one side had "feet"). I tried piping as straight as I could but this didn't seem to help either. Does anyone have any ideas? I really want these to work :(

As you probably know, making Macarons is tough, especially making them at home. But it is possible as I have been able to create perfect macarons in my home kitchen, using Italian and french meringue. The Italian meringue always got me better results. There are many reasons why your macarons don't come out like expected. First off, the meringue. It should be glossy and shiny like you say and also firm, but not too thick. When you take your whisk out of the meringue it should look like this: The French say that when you take the whisk out of the meringue, it has to look a bit like a bird's beak, hence the way the meringue forms a soft peak slightly pointing downwards. The consistency of the meringue mixed with the almond paste is very important. People often say it has to fall like a ribbon or like magma, but I always thought that is hard to imagine. You can take a knife and cut through the batter. If it flows back immediately, it's ready. But let me tell you: One or two strokes too much with the spatula and the batter becomes unusable. I always tried to make sure not to under-mix it. Then, every time making Macarons, I mixed it a tad more until I ended with an over-mixed batter one day. Since then I know how far I can go without destroying the better. Some people even count there strokes, maybe this helps you. And one tip I can give you: The process of transferring the batter into the piping bag also 'mixes' the batter, so maybe don't go too far if you are unsure. From my experience, making macarons with fan turned on always fails in my oven. For yours it could be different as every oven is different, but I only use top & bottom heat, 13 minutes at 150 °C in the middle of the oven. When piping them it is really important to pipe them directly from the top (90 degree angle). Directly after piping them, I also tap against the bottom of the tray to remove any air bubbles. You really have to experiment with the temperature and baking time. This process was really hard for me because even when the Macarons looked good from the outside, they could be hollow. Although some sources say it's not necessary, I always wait a few minutes before baking my Macarons. When you touch them, they can be sticky but shouldn't stick to your finger. I never have tried baking them without resting. Your first batch cracked, because the temperature was so high that the batter expanded too fast I believe. What exactly do you mean with lopsided, do your Macarons look like this? Or like this? (left one) Maybe you should bake them longer at a lower temperature, you really have to experiment here, every oven is different. It took me a few weeks until I figured it out. Also, make sure you let them rest enough. Moisture could be a problem, but I don't think so. As long as they don't stick to your finger after resting and before baking, it always worked for me - even on rainy days. So the thing I would try first is baking them without fan. If that fails, I would experiment with baking time and temperature.

I would like to make a garnish of bacon spirals. Spirals like cinnamon rolls, not like curly fries, nor like Gemelli pasta. My plan is to bake loosely rolled bacon held in place with a toothpick. I fear that the rolls will crumble while removing the toothpick. Is there anything I can do to ensure they retain the spiral shape after removing the toothpick? Is there a better method?

Roll the bacon into its spiral and set it on end in a muffin tin to bake. You can use the toothpicks as "spacers" to keep the edges apart, and then easily pull them out the side once everything is baked. (Depending on how tight and broad you want the spiral to be, you may need to use a mini-muffin pan instead.) You may also want to add a light coating of brown sugar before shaping the spiral to help the bacon hold its shape. It should caramelize while cooking and help achieve a crispy and stiff shape. Plus, it's yummy!

I'm after batch cooking mini meatballs in sauce for my kids, so I'm wondering how best to prepare the meatballs so they can be frozen and reheated? I'm assuming it wouldn't be good to soak the breadcrumbs in milk? But I'm very much a beginner so not sure how best to go about it. Thanks :)

Meatballs can be pre-formed, frozen, then cooked....or cooked then frozen, then reheated with minimal if any loss of flavor. Soaking breadcrumbs (or not) is irrelevant. If it were me, I would form, cook in sauce, portion, freeze, reheat when ready.

I baked a cake which is sweet and moist. I would like to make cake balls with it, but I wonder what should I use as frosting to not make it sweeter! Is it possible to ignore any kind of frosting and does coating the cake balls - which are made out of the cake only- work? I mean will it keep its shape that way? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Mineral oil is your friend As you said, Ana, the biggest enemy of a clean — and warp-free — wood cutting board is moisture penetration. The first trick to fight this is to wipe down your cutting board fairly often with mineral oil or other food-safe wood treatment. This helps with cleaning as it prevents liquids and bacteria from penetrating into the wood. It also has the nice effect of helping to keep flavors from embedding and transferring to other foods. Scrape it. Scrape it good. The second trick is to use a sturdy steel scraper to clean the surface as you go, scraping out excess moisture after each round of cutting before it can penetrate too deeply into the wood. This is something you'll especially want to do with an end-grain cutting block, which is much more absorbent than other grains. Soap & water is (mostly) all you need When I'm done, I usually wash with light soap & hot water on the board, followed by a good hard scrape with the steel scraper, so I have a nice dry, fresh surface for the next use. And store that board on its edge, not flat! This promotes even drying and prevents warping. It's science The smart people at America's Test Kitchen used science n' stuff and found that soap & hot water was pretty effective at killing bacteria, though the USDA recommends an application of bleach dilute to really sanitize that bad boy. Maintained board = clean board Notable board maker, Boos, has a good list of board care suggestions, including these related to cleaning: Periodically (once every 3-4 weeks, depending upon the use and household conditions), apply an even coat of Boos ® Mystery Oil and Boos Block ® Board Cream to all surfaces of your wood cutting board. The Boos ® Mystery Oil acts as a shampoo that contains oils and minerals that penetrates through the wood surface to increase its longevity. Next, you will want to use the Boos Block ® Board Cream, that acts as the conditioner, to seal the top coating of the wood surface. DO NOT allow moisture of any type to stand on the cutting board for long periods of time. Don't let fresh, wet meats lay on the board longer than necessary. Brine, water and blood contain much moisture, which soaks into the wood, causing the cutting board to expand, the wood to soften, and affects the strength, of the glued joints. Use a good steel scraper or spatula several times a day, as necessary, to keep the cutting surface clean and sanitary. Scraping the surfaces will remove 75% of the moisture. Do not use a steel brush on the cutting surface of your board. DO NOT cut fish or fowl on the work surface of your cutting board, unless you have thoroughly followed the instructions in step #1. The moisture barrier must be intact prior to cutting any type of fish, seafood, or fowl on the work surface of your cutting board. ALWAYS CLEAN THE CUTTING BOARD SURFACE THOROUGHLY AFTER CUTTING FISH OR FOWL ON THE WORK SURFACE. Sanitize cutting board by wiping all surfaces down with mild dish soap and water. Dry throughly. DO NOT wash your wood cutting board with harsh detergents of any type. DO NOT wash your butcher's tools on your cutting board surface. DO NOT put Boos Block ® wood cutting boards into dishwasher. Happy chopping!

Now that the sun has started to shine in the frozen north I can start thinking on using my espresso machine for some cold drinks. I was thinking of a banana iced coffee. But I would like a more natural flavour than most of the syrups I can buy in my local coffee shop. Do I was wondering if it would be possible to extract the flavour from a banana, without getting the texture/consistency from the fruit?

Consider making a banana consomme via gelatin filtration. As described in Harold McGee's 2007 NYT article, this technique produces liquids with the taste of all sorts of foodstuffs that are otherwise full of texture and color. A tomato consomme, for example, is clear and watery, rather than red and pulpy, while retaining the flavor of a tomato juice. The same technique can be (and has been) done with breads, meats, vegetables, fish, etc. The process is to make a loose banana gel by mixing a banana with water, adding gelatin, and heating until the gelatin is dissolved. The mixture is then frozen until solid, then suspended in a strainer over a bowl in the refrigerator for a couple of days until the liquid essence distills out and the solids are left in the strainer trapped in a gelatin net. The particular advantage I believe gelatin filtration will give you in this case is that it will give your coffee a full banana flavor without making it thick, pulpy, or cloudy.

I've started adding various greens (spinach and arugula) to my eggs and omelets. I've only tried a few ways: Add greens first to a hot pan with olive oil and butter. Add the eggs afterwards. Cook the eggs, etc. first then add the greens near the end of cooking. Ideally, I'd like to preserve the freshness of the greens without it being a salad on top of my eggs. Also, keeping the leaves whole doesn't seem to work out the best. Perhaps I should chop the greens before adding?

Well the traditional french way would be that you add spices to eggs before cooking and stuff the omelette right before serving. I've watched a few youtube videos on the matter and I like how Jacques Pepin explains the process. Check it here. Jamie Olivers version is quite similar, he stuff omelette with cheese before he folds it. Check it here. I've tried all version and I like them all. The main trick about an omelette is that you do not overcook the eggs. Everything else is personal preference I'd say, like whether to chop or no the greens.

Is a coffee mug oven safe? I'd like to make French Onion soup au gratin in a mug. My concern is the mug shattering while the food is being served. I currently bake the french onion soup at 450°F, but I'm curious about broiling as well.

Hello Justin, First of all, a question like this should be answered by an expert in materials science, and I’m not. Bear that in mind when you read the following. Generally, you should not take it for granted that coffee mugs are oven safe. Quite simply, some are and some are not. However, high quality coffee mugs produced for the catering industry; especially the white ones with no decor, are normally oven safe. Nevertheless, I will not give you any guarantee. Basically, coffee mugs cannot be regarded as oven safe, unless the manufacturer have stated so with a stamp underneath or otherwise have published some kind of guarantee, and the manufacturer is a respected and well-known entity within the industry. Why coffee mugs aren’t always oven safe A coffee mug isn’t always what it seems. Coffee mugs come in many varieties, are made from different materials, differ in decoration, and so on. Moreover, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and other hot drinks commonly served in mugs, are seldom; read never, served at temperatures above 100 ºC / 212 ºF. However, due to competition, special on sale items, and so on, coffee mugs of low quality might not be able to withstand temperatures much higher than this. The reason is simply that manufacturers, or the manufacturers’ customers, want to save a few pennies to gain a market advantage. There might also be a consumer demand for cheap low quality coffee mugs. Materials Most coffee mugs are made from some kind of ceramic. Others are made from wood, plastic, clay, pewter, steel, and a long list of other materials. Obviously, some of these materials will never be reckoned as oven safe. To keep it simple, I’ll stick to ceramic for the reminding part of this answer, although other materials might be oven safe. Ceramics commonly found in a kitchen environment include Earthenware, Stoneware, Porcelain, and Bone china. Of these Earthenware and Bone china are seldom, read never, reckoned as oven safe, although this isn’t completely true as far as Bone china is concerned. Nevertheless, only a complete idiot would use a Bone china mug to make French Onion soup au gratin, cup cakes or any other kind of food. That leaves us with Stoneware and Porcelain. Both Stoneware and porcelain are normally oven safe, unless decor elements have been added after the finale glaze is applied and the coffee mug is baked in a furnace. One final remark needs to be added about coffee mugs made out of thin porcelain. Although these mugs might very well withstand the heat, it’s advisable to ensure that they are not exposed to any other kind of force while hot, e.g. handled without care. Further information about Coffee Mugs, and links to other resources, can be found at Wikipedia: Coffee Mug.

I made a hot-and-sour soup based on an online recipe, omitting the pork, sugar and dried lilly buds. The major flavoring components were: 1tsp White pepper (I used a supermarket-grade pre-ground variety) 2tblsp premium brand red wine vinegar 1tblsp good soy sauce 1tsp Sesame oil 1tsp Salt Small package (3oz) assorted dried and reconstituted wild mushrooms 4c Chicken stock as the base I also added a tablespoon of Asian chili-garlic paste for extra heat. The color was pale clear, not the rich brown or reddish-orange I'm used to at Asian restaurants. It smelled terrible - a definite barnyard odor once the white pepper was added. The taste was off as well - instead of a pleasing tangy heat, it was vinegary in an unpleasant way without being tangy, and not particularly hot despite some extra white pepper and chili-garlic paste. While I can fix the heat (more chili paste!), I'm not certain how to fix the sour, the color or the aroma. (Note: I cannot add sugar or solid meat to this dish for medical reasons. Sugar substitute should be OK, if that will really fix it.)

For heat, I recommend chili oil as opposed to a paste. That and white pepper should give you a pretty solid heat component. Even though the thought initially made me go EEEEEEW, ATK does recommend a a 50/50 combination of Balsamic and red wine vinegars as a replacement for the ideal Black Chinese Vinegar, which is probably what great Chinese restaurants use. Do you eat eggs? If so, I'd certainly use one. Here's the technique, again from ATK " Without stirring soup, use soupspoon to slowly drizzle very thin streams of egg mixture (1/2 tsp corntarch, 1 tsp water beaten with 1 egg) into pot in circular motion. Let soup sit 1 minute, then return saucepan to medium-high heat. Bring soup to gentle boil, then immediately remove from heat. Gently stir soup once to evenly distribute egg." You probably should considerably up your soy sauce. Consider too your mushrooms. "Assorted" can mean just about anything. Some mushrooms are very strongly flavored in a way that just plain clashes with Chinese Hot and Sour. That could very well account for the barnyard odor you describe. I'd recommend sticking to shiitake/oyster/woodear if you can.

As far as I'm aware any herb or spice CAN be eaten raw and hence added at the end of cooking. We cooked a stew with garam masala as we wanted to try something bland. It wasnt very tasteful so I suggested adding the chill powder in hours after the garam masala stew had been cooked. My friend told me it was too late and the curry would start to smell bad if we added it now. This question is not about whether adding at the beginning or the end would add more flavour as I know certain herbs need to be cooked to extract flavour. Rather why did she say the curry would smell and isn't this statement contrary to the idea that you can add any spice at the end of cooking?

That's absurd, imho. You add spices generally to the earlier stages of a stew so they can meld in together, between themselves and with the main ingredients. That takes time usually, more time than just cooking even. It's why most stews are better the next day, when flavors have really had the opportunity to form a cohesive whole. So if you add spices at the end, you run the risk of them not being totally well mixed. But there's no way your curry would start to smell bad! Especially from chili, which if anything would prevent any bad smell from its conservation powers. That's just superstition. And I hope you added some and demonstrated that :-). Or at least try it on your leftovers.

Related: What does kansui do to dough in noodle making? I'm looking to make my own 拉面-style noodles. I've read up a lot about kansui and making your own kansui with a powder mix of sodium and potassium carbonates. I've also seen some recipes that substitute kansui powder with baking soda. Can I use baking soda to substitute for kansui? If so, in what proportions? If not, what other common ingredients can I use to substitute?

Harold McGee tackled alkaline noodles a while back. He found that baking baking soda actually changes it from sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate. This is a reasonable substitute for the kansui called for in alkaline noodles and can be substituted 1:1 in recipes. The noodles may not get AS yellow as they would with both alkalines present in kansui but it's a small price to pay for not having to hunt down that ingredient. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/dining/15curious.html?_r=0 The key part: Just spread a layer of soda on a foil-covered baking sheet and bake it at 250 to 300 degrees for an hour. You’ll lose about a third of the soda’s weight in water and carbon dioxide, but you gain a stronger alkali. Keep baked soda in a tightly sealed jar to prevent it from absorbing moisture from the air. And avoid touching or spilling it. It’s not lye, but it’s strong enough to irritate.

I have just made a pastie in a pie dish using S.Burt's recipe Can I substitute olive oil for butter/shortening in pie crust?. It was really delicious but has no strength. I used rice oil and lite milk and did not rest the pastry. I used plain all purpose 9.7% protein flour. Can anyone advise how to get a stronger pastry so that the pastie is contained by the pastry and doesn't need a pie dish?

Traditional Cornish Pasty pastry is made with 1 part strong bread flour, 1/4 part each of butter and lard, about 1/3 part water, and about 1% of the flour's weight in salt. The pastry is worked quite hard, almost like a bread dough, and left to rest for a good hour. The resulting pastry is leathery enough to withstand a miner's pocket, faintly crisp on the outside, (with an egg-wash), and slightly gooey where it meets the filling ingredients, which are introduced raw, and cooked in the pastry. Doing the sums, that's about 450g of fat to a kilo of flour,and 380g of water. Bread flour is 12-15% protein, higher than yours. The stronger your flour mixture, the more pliable the result.. the more oil, the more prone to crumbling (pure oil> shortbread.. pure water>something like a salt crust which it might take a hammer to break) If I was experimenting with oils, I would combine the oil with the flour first, (probably in a food processor - it doesn't matter if it's overworked) and introduce the water slowly, until a coherent ball is formed, bearing in mind the paste will become more pliable after resting. For a Cornish Pasty, the paste is rolled quite thick, about 5mm, cut with a dinner-plate as a guide, back half flopped over the pin to be filled, then folded over, and crimped. Forgive me if I've misunderstood what you mean by 'Pasty' .. but then, I come from that part of the world.. :) But it might, anyway, be an informative parallel to the kind of pasty you're aiming for.

A couple of times I ruin good non-sticking (teflon) pans in the same way - I fry or roast a bell pepper with too little fat, the pepper juices stick to the non-stick surface and I have to use really hard steel wool to scrub them off. One problem is that no-matter how hard I scrub, small spots remain on the pan's surface and after that almost everything I fry tends to stick there (even with enough oil). The other problem is that at least in a few cases, I've managed to dent the non-stick coating so deeply that metal showed through. This time, it is my favorite Bialetti pot (water boiled out while I forgot to turn off steamed peppers) and I want to make everything possible to save it. Any suggestions are welcome...

I don't want to disappoint you, but I have never been able to remove burnt-on pepepr juices - and in my case, they are on stainless steel, which can be cleaned with much harsher methods than non-stick. Most of the stuff went away, but small spots remained on my pot too. I would advise to leave out all scrubbing. It is not very efficient even on steel, and it can easily damage a non-stick surface. Non-stick happens to be a chemically inert molecule, but it is very susceptible to physical damage. The nice side of "chemically inert molecule" is that it can withstand a lot of chemical solvents - and these are better for burnt-on stuff anyway. I would go in there with concentrated acid first (citric acid solution at around 2 pH - try it in the same way as decalcifying a kettle, but use a higher concentration than written on the sachet), then, after a really good washing, switch to a base (for example a very concentrated baking soda solution, I would be afraid to use lye on a non-stick pan because it could seep through scratches to the interface between alu and non-stick surface and start corrosion spots). If that doesn't help, probably nothing will. And I would strongly recommend to not roast peppers in a non-stick pot. Roasted peppers need very high temperatures. Non-stick coatings start changing their properties at around 250°C, this is a low-to-middle hot setting on most stoves (my resistive stove goes from 1 to 9 and 4 is already too hot for non-stick). The best method is a broiler in the oven, but if you don't have that, you can consider using a steel or iron pan which you don't mind accumulating some discoloration and spots (they are not too problematic on steel), or putting alu foil directly on the (resistive) hob and discarding it after the roasting.

I like the taste of sunflower seeds, however I really dislike the process of shelling them. The bags say "Eat. Spit. Be happy." But I have found that shelling it in one's mouth is not only messy, it also tends to splinter the shell and hurt gums. I have tried shelling them out by hand, but that is exceedingly time-consuming. I know they can be purchased shell-less but I was wondering if there is some trick, as I like some of the seasoned kinds, just not a fan of the process. Any trick to unshell multiple sunflower seeds efficiently?

Here's a quick and easy way where you only your teeth and your nails. The tip of the sunflower seed shell has a little bit an edge, so I bite that off and then I crack open the cut that I made with my teeth with my nails.

I see a question here about stock out overnight, but in my case it's a bit different in that I used a pressure cooker. My question is, is there anything that could possibly have survived an hour of high pressure cooking? I've essentially gone far beyond what's done in pressure canning, and never opened the cooker. Is it really possible that anything survived that inferno? Pressure cookers by definition have an air tight seal, so I can't see how anything would crawl in after the deed. Safe to eat?

No, it is not safe. As soon as a pressure cooker loses pressure it is not hermetically sealed. Stock, in particular, is often used as a culture medium in petri dishes to GROW bacteria. They love the stuff. Pressure cooking or pressure cookers do not confer magical powers to food - once the pressure is gone all the regular food handling rules apply: Always refrigerate perishable food within 2 hours (1 hour when the temperature is above 90 °F). When in doubt, throw it out. Here's a little story about Bending the Rules on Bacteria and Food Safety, wherein a cookbook author feeds lethal week-old stock to his family - and the expert opinion on why this is NOT ok.

Are there any bread machines that would allow making a sourdough rye bread? If not, could a bread maker simplify the process of making a sourdough loaf?

There are three courses of action for producing sourdough with a bread machine: Use the bread machine just for mixing dough, then rise and bake it separately. This will produce the best result, defined as the best texture and strongest sourdough flavor. In this case, you get to monitor the progress of the sourdough as it is rising, which gives you better control over the results. With this course, make sure to start preheating your oven early, because it has to be fully ready when the dough is. It's heartbreaking to watch helplessly as beautiful sourdough loaves collapse while your oven preheats. Also, you can throw a handful of icecubes into the oven a minute or two before the bread, to get steam, which gives maximum oven spring and a softer crust. This helps prevent the common problem of dense sourdough. Do a "cheater" sourdough that incorporates both yeast and sourdough starter. This is the most hands-off approach, but it won't yield as strong a sourdough flavor results as option one. Basically, you take a standard bread recipe that uses a poolish preferment, and you replace the poolish with equivalent-hydration sourdough starter, but retain the yeast. So, you're getting leavening primarily from the yeast, but flavor from the sourdough. Up to half the flour can come from the starter. You can gradually reduce the yeast amounts and increase rise time until it's approaching a true sourdough. See recipe below! Do true sourdough with a bread machine that allows you to program VERY long rise/proofing times. This is the worst option, because sourdough rise times vary greatly, even with the same starter. The leavening power of starters also varies from almost as fast as instant yeast, to over 12 hours for a full rise. I think you'll have a hard time finding a bread maker that can be programmed for the longest times, and because you're relying on a fixed timer, the dough will inevitably be either under-risen or collapsing. Sourdough can go from under-risen to over-risen and collapsing in as little as 30 minutes. Cheater Sourdough Recipe derived from Pain Sur Poolish: Ingredients: 425g/15 oz sourdough starter, fed the night before with equal volumes all purpose flour and water (or about 6.7 oz flour per 8 oz water) 227g/8 oz bread ("Strong") flour 227g/8 oz all purpose flour 200 g/7 oz warm water 1 tsp instant yeast (SAF Red Label) 2 tsp salt Optional: 1 tsp diastatic malt powder Optional: 1/4 cup dry milk powder Procedure: Mix together dry ingredients, then mix in wet ingredients until incorporated. Knead about 8-10 minutes on stand mixer speed 2, or until the dough is soft and stretchy. It should be a little wet, but not too much. Rise dough for ~45 min-1.5 hours, or until doubled. If using a bread machine, rise an extra 30 minutes or so, and skip to step 9. If using oven: start preheating to 500F/260C with a pizza stone in the lower rack Divide dough in half, and shape into two loaves, making sure not to handle too much as this will remove gas. If using oven: coat an inverted aluminum 1/2 sheet pan with pan spray and corn meal, then transfer loaves to pan. Cover with plastic wrap with the bottom coated in pan spray. Proof bread 45 minutes to 1 hour, until it stops rising and a finger leaves a dent in the loaf. If using oven: throw a handful of ice cubes into the oven to generate steam, then slash the loaves and load into oven. In oven: Bake @ 500F/260C for 5 minutes, then reduce heat to 435F/225C and bake for a further 15 minutes. In bread machine: bake at about 375F/190C for about 30 minutes. If not using diastatic malt, crust may still be somewhat pale. This recipe (with slight modifications) is now my standard bread, which I bake frequently. I'm still tweaking the exact time to bake at the reduced temperature; if the top is browning excessively but the interior is underdone, it may help to flip the loves over for the last few minutes of cooking.

I regularly reuse my tea bags, sometimes over as much as a five hour span. I am sure that there are limits to the safe re-use of tea, but I can't find any USDA or other authoritative guidance. What are reasonable precautions I can take to ensure that I am not putting myself at risk for foodborne illness? Please provide evidence-based answers, not anecdotal reports. I don't mind if the answers are somewhat speculative based on evidence from analogous food preparations.

The issue here is how long do you steep the tea, at what temperature, and under what conditions do you store the used tea bags? The reason "sun tea" has been discouraged has been because of the likelihood that the tea leaves that are in the bags are contaminated with bacteria such that a long soak in luke-warm water such as that of the "sun tea" causes them to multiply to the extent that they become a serious health risk. Tea leaves are not typically pasteurized during their processing, and may carry viable bacteria and/ or bacterial spores. If you were to soak the tea bag in warm water not hot enough to get a good bacterial kill initially, there may be enough viable bacteria in the tea leaves to grow during that 5 hour interval such that the next cup may be seriously dangerous (some may divide every 15 minutes, for example). However, if you were to adequately kill the bacteria and spores off by a nice hot soak (for this example, you would need to use a pressure cooker since some bacterial spores are not even killed by boiling water at atmospheric pressure), refrigerate the tea bag afterwards, and then reuse it 5 hours later it would likely be perfectly fine. I think the final answer to your question comes down to your own personal risk tolerance and the conditions above. If you brew in luke-warm water or for a very brief time and then leave the bags out at room temperature you are just asking for trouble and eventually you may hit the loaded chamber in your own personal Russian roulette game. For empiric answers, take your particular brewing temperature and time and compare it to the USDA tables for pasteurization. Then, look up the growth curves for the major pathogens at your storage temperature and figure out how many would likely be present after 5 hours (20 generations at 15 minutes per generation or 2^20 times more bacteria than viable after the brewing event at the end of the storage interval).

How in the following picture the sushi rice is transparent, and when I made home sushi rice, it would white as snow ? I soak rice in water for 2 hours. And by the way, why sometimes even with a good knife, when I cut a sushi roll, the inside ingredients start to fall off and got a bad shape sushi pieces ? And why sometimes ingredients on top of rice do not stick to it (like mangos or avocado ) ? Is it the rice ? Or some ingredients are making the nori wet.

Not that I can imagine. Many of the recipes I use call for making doughs in a food processor and the first step is often "sifting" the flour by pulsing it a couple of times either alone or with the leavening agents. This shouldn't hurt your flour, particularly if your recipe calls for sifting your flour. I do recommend that you consider measuring your flour by weight (if you are able), if the chunks are too big to give you a good volumetric measurement before processing, especially if you're making a recipe that's generally "picky" about flour amounts or specifically calls for "pre-sifted" volume measurements. Processing the flour will likely aerate it somewhat and may throw your volumetric measurements off slightly. Weight measurements shouldn't be effected by this. If the chunks are small (1/2 inch/1 cm), you may be able to get a good volume measurement before you process the flour. Consider coming back and letting us know how it goes!

My rice cooker will vent steam at the red arrow, when the rice is almost cooked. I've been holding my sponges and toothbrush heads over, but not blocking, the steam exhaust to try to sanitize them. Does this work? I thought about microwaving my sponges, but "Stop Microwaving Your Sponges, Immediately"!

You typically want to bloom the spices by cooking it over high heat for some period of time. But if you cook it for too long, you risk burning the spices. If you're trying to brown meat, the moisture in the spices both make it more difficult (because of the spices burning first), and throw off the color to let you easily tell when it's cooked properly. When you're making a dish that cooks quickly (like fish) or that you want to stew more than brown, I'll cook the spice paste first, then add everything to it. In general, my procedure for using spice pastes is: Cook down onions or other veg that needs to soften and/or brown meat (optional) Add spice paste Cook for a minute or so (optional) Add whatever remaining ingredients Cook for another minute or so Add liquid Simmer until cooked through I'm actually more surprised that your paste didn't mention cooking the paste for a minute or so, or letting it cook with the vegetables before you add the coconut milk ... but it's possible that it contained an ingredient that doesn't like high heat. It's also possible that the goal for the red curry dish is for the individual ingredients to maintain their own distinct flavor with there being a sauce at the end, rather than it being more like a stew where the flavor meld together.

I've an "Aga toaster", which is like a couple of disks of 2cm wire mesh joined together with a handle: But no matter what I try, most of the time the toast sticks. Any ideas?

You can try to tossing some Flour on your Aga toaster first, but it will give you extra grill marks on your toast.

Having made mistakes earlier which resulted in undercooked or over-fried chicken, I've been looking for details of how to correctly steam or pressure-cook chicken before shallow frying it. Recipes like this, this, this and this do not mention necessary details. This recipe mentions first pressure cooking until the first whistle, but is the water released from the tomato and meat sufficient to generate enough steam? I guess a small pressure cooker would have to be used because of less steam, correct? Am also worried if pieces would stick to the cooker and get burnt. If cooked until the first whistle, the meat is fully cooked. Won't shallow frying overcook it? Should the water from the cooker also be added to the shallow frying pan and the meat fried until the water evaporates? On the other hand, this recipe recommends steaming 1.5kg chicken for 20 min and uses lettuce to prevent sticking. If the steaming is done with a steamer basket or idli stand, won't the pieces sandwiched between other pieces be undercooked? Does the pre-cooking have anything to do with the amount of oil used for shallow frying and the duration it is fried? If you could re-write the recipe for pre-cooking the chicken, how would you write it so that even an inexperienced person would be able to cook it? Update: recipes like this, this and this explain the procedure, but is the short cooking time really sufficient to cook the meat? When I prepare chicken curry in a pressure cooker, I have to ensure that it is cooked till the first whistle, and after switching off the flame, it's only if I leave the cooker unopened for 2 hours that the meat gets cooked fully. So these recipes with short cooking times leave me wondering if something is wrong. Or is frying naturally faster than boiling? Update2: I tried the third youtube recipe with four pieces of chicken and proportionally less onion etc. At the blending stage, all the ingredients flew to the sides of the mixie and didn't form the masala paste as desired. The lady uses just 3tbsp oil for 2kg chicken. I used 4tbsp oil and it got absorbed by the chicken and masalas promptly. On closing the lid and allowing the chicken to cook, the masala-onion mixture got burnt within 3 minutes. There goes another unsuccessful attempt at frying chicken. Thankfully this time my losses were only the masalas and onion. This is exactly why I asked my question here. The online recipes do not explain a LOT of steps. I'm pretty sure I was supposed to add more oil and the masalas and onion can be blended only if there is a sufficient quantity to weigh it down onto the mixie blades. That being said, from the smell I could discern that if it did get cooked properly, the result would've been delicious.

I often precook chicken (generally sous vide or slow roasting in a low oven) before frying (American style) fried chicken. The cooking method for the precook essentially doesn't matter. However you precook, you just want to have it reach a suitable temperature to be thoroughly cooked to a food safe temperature. I usually precook a bit in advance (or the day before) and after precooking, I cool it back down and refrigerate it. This helps to keep the collagen and other "juicy" parts inside by resolidifying in the fridge. Then I take the cooked, cooled chicken and proceed with the recipe as normal. Cooking is primarily about reheating the chicken, and cooking the breading. I no longer have to worry about hitting the exact food-safe temperature (because I already did that on the first cook!). For American-style fried chicken, other than starting with fully cooked chicken, the recipe and method can pick up from the "bread/batter then fry" step as normal. This should translate well to other recipes as well, as you're essentially just searing & reheating the chicken at the end in your pan, rather than cooking it.

I screenshot 0:16. Won't the heat damage, shatter or explode the glass bowl? I'm not affiliated with that YouTube channel "missevabakes".

Use more mature cheese. Cheddar runs the gamut from very young, mild, melts like mozzarella in strings, right up to so mature it has salt crystals in it & is crunchy, which barely melts at all. Most supermarkets [at least in the UK] carry mild, medium, mature, extra mature & vintage. Specialist cheddars then run even further, to 'crunchy', or 'crackly'. Try at least one if not two categories older. Vintage is probably too mature for a chilli & would be a tad grainy if you try to melt it. In the UK - I don't know about anywhere else - there is a rough guide to cheese maturity marked on the pack. This is a simple & quite broad numbering system, from 1 being the mildest to 5 being the strongest. It is not necessarily directly related to the age of the cheese, but there is a reasonable correlation between the two. From comments: In the US aged cheddar is called 'sharp', the more aged it gets the more superlatives they add to the name, like super sharp, super extra sharp, etc and… as we're getting some rather preposterous claims in comments about cheese ages, let me point out that cheese is not wine or whisky. You don't generally mature it for years unless you want something very specialist [& not coincidentally very expensive.] UK Cheddar ages, approximately. Mild is typically about 3 months of age, medium matured is 5 to 6 months old, mature is around 9 months, Extra Mature around 15 months and Vintage is usually 18 months or more. Anything older than that is getting into specialist territory.

I experimented with adding wine and dark chocolate to a sauce. The result was generally OK, but the wine was not strong enough in comparison to the chocolate, I would have liked more of its taste to come through. I knew that I will need a strong, assertive flavor for this combination, so I got a bottle of dry Cabernet Sauvignon, the label called it "spicy" and recommended it for dark sauces and beef dishes. But when I tried the wine, it turned out to be OK in taste, but too light for this application. I would have liked more bitterness and earthy notes, less fresh/sour taste. What could have helped me find such a wine? Which grape variety (or region, for wines sold by region) would have been a better choice? Are there other signs which would have indicated such a taste? For example, I know that a Gran Reserva wine is supposed to have a better, smoother taste due to better production, but would it also have predicted a wine with a heavier taste? Would barrel-aged wine have had that taste? If possible, I would like to hear about European wines, because I pay less for an European wine than for the same quality imported wine. But if you have continent-independent advice or can only name wines from other continents, that's still OK, there are lots of imports here.

A very good choice would be the Amarone. It's an Italian wine from Veneto (north-east of Italy). Its flavour is quite bitter (actually, the italian word "amaro" means "bitter". We could translate "amarone" to something like "big bitter"). Its typical alcohol content is between 14% (it's the legal minimum, actually) up to 16% in some cases. A good match is to taste it with chocolate (extra dark would be preferred), so I think it should be suitable for your sauce.

I'd like to cook chicken in my Crockpot but just about every time it comes out so well done that it shreds when you try to cut it. How can I make it so it's not as well done; more like it comes out when cooked in an oven?

Funny you should ask about this as I have just been experimenting with tough old chickens. Your chicken is falling apart because the connective tissues in the meat are being turned into gelatin. Cooking meat in a wet environment at low temperatures causes the connective tissues (collagen) in the meat to dissolve into delicious gelatin and makes the meat more tender. Cooking at the lower temperatures means that the meat can cook for longer without over heating and maximize the gelatin conversion. This is often a very desirable thing. Cheap, tough meat can be made delicious. Crockpots are designed to make this very easy. Roasting in the oven is hot and dry. The meat cooks faster, not very much gelatin is converted and the meat holds together better (or is tough depending on the meat). The solution is simple: Don't cook your chicken as long. To taste done, your chicken needs to reach 140F. To be safe from bacteria, your chicken has to get up to 165F. (Actually, it can be safe at as low as 135F but you have to hold it at those temperatures longer to kill the bad bugs. This document has the whole time chart.) You should use a thermometer to determine when the interior of your chicken is done and then stop cooking it. How long it will take to get your chicken to those temps will depend on your recipe, how much meat there is, what shape it is, and the properties of your crock pot. Keep in mind that a crockpot is still wet cooking (braising) where an oven is usually dry. The outside of the chicken will never be as browned or crispy from a crockpot as from an oven.

I’ve tasted Iranian dizi and loved the herbs that where served with it. Leaves look like basil and have a minty taste. Does anyone know what it is? Thanks :)

When it comes to "is it safe" questions it is difficult to give you a simple, direct, reliable answer...most often (as is the case here) you can't provide all of the information needed to 'give you a straight answer' (which is, of course, what you really want). If the meat was 'safe' to begin with, if it was just left in the sink with cool water and ice overnight (~8 hrs) and if it is still cold to the touch...it is "probably" perfectly safe. Then comes the question of "What is 'safe'?" Will eating this meat 'kill you'... highly unlikely. Will you want to remain near a toilet for a day or so? 'possibly' (but still very unlikely). Will eating this contribute to a stroke in 20 years? Your mileage may vary. It is highly unlikely that this method of thawing has introduced any significant risk to your meat.

As I understand it Ferment grains and you get beer. Distill that beer and you get whiskey. Ferment grapes and you get wine. Distill that wine and you get brandy. Ferment sugar you get ???. Distill that and you get rum. Ferment honey and you get mead. Distill that and you get ???. What are the names of the ??? pieces above? If they don't exist, why not?

The interim step in rum making is called 'Wash', which unlike beer or wine isn't sold separately. I don't know exactly why, but I suspect it's because it doesn't taste good. The same is true of just about every spirit, including brandy and whiskey, you don't want to drink the first stage product. To be a little bit technical, the first stage of whiskey making is an ale, or very similar to an ale. However, the fermented product that is made in whiskey making isn't a product you'd bottle and drink, again because it doesn't taste very good. Whiskey makers use different yeasts and encourage bacterial growth to add character to the end product after it's distilled, I'm told it's sour, unpleasant and very strong. Brandy is made from wine (not always grapes, you have apple brandy, apricot brandy and others), however what makes a good table wine doesn't make good brandy. Special wine is produced for brandy that isn't bottled for consumption because it's acidic and not sweet.

I've read about the beneficial use of soybean in the food industry, so I wonder what it tastes like? How can it be explained? Does soybean taste like regular beans? Also, what's the difference in its processed forms, such as soymilk?

I can get soy beans in two varieties here: As dried beans and as edamame. Edamame is a particular type of soybean that is harvested when it is still young. The pods are cooked (usually boiled or steamed) and then served with salt. The beans are popped from the pod and eaten. The pod is discarded. Edamame is sweet and a little grassy because it is young. Dried soy beans can be cooked like any other bean. Their hulls tend to come free and have an unpleasant texture so it is nice to skim most of them off. The flavor is good but not unique. It tastes like a normal white bean. The raw beans have a very strong "beany" flavor but cooked beans should not. Soymilk is made from dried soybeans. The beans or the milk are cooked to remove the very strong beany flavor. The finished milk does have a hint of sweetness and bean but not strong at all. Tofu, made from soymilk, tastes the same as the milk. Besides being sweet and a little beany, it can be a little nutty tasting. It can get chalky if it isn't fresh. All of these soybean preparations are very bland. They tastes fresh and clean but there shouldn't be any overly strong flavors. Strong flavors in these products are often a sign that the product is past its prime. Some soybean preparations ferment the beans. These have a wide range of flavors and textures.

Cakes made of whipped-cream by professionals last for a long time in a consistent, white state. However, from what I know, whipped cream tends to become yellow and return to a more liquid state in a few hours. I prepare whipped cream with just the cream and an electric mixer, so I assume there's some magic ingredient or process to keep the thing stable. Where's the trick ?

There are two levels to this question. If you are using modern whipping cream as a starting point, then the trick for a longer lasting whipped cream is stabilization. If this is some farm bought milk you are skimming the cream from, then you have the additional problem that your cream is not fatty enough. Modern creams are concentrated with a centrifuge. To get good whipped cream, whip it cold until it doubles in volume and you get firm peaks. Stabilize the whipped cream by hanging it in a cheese cloth in the refrigerator or by adding gelatin.To use the gelatin, dissolve 2 teaspoons of unflavored gelatin into 2 tablespoons of cold water. Work out the lumps. After the gelatin expands, mix in a quarter cup of cream and heat the mixture to dissolve the gelatin.  Cool over ice and mix a bit. Complete 2 cups of cream and proceed as you would to finish your whipped cream.

There are a lot of roses in my garden at the moment and I've been wanting to make rose-flavored turkish delight. Looking online, most recipes for rosewater appear targeted towards using it as a cosmetic fragrance (rather than a food ingredients). I know that flowers can sometimes be toxic or gross if not processed in the correct manner / generally chowing down on flowers from the garden is ill-advised. Other than washing the roses, are there any particular considerations in ensuring that homemade rose water is food safe? Which roses should I use if I have access to several varieties (e.g. white/red/pink)?

The biggest issue with what's essentially a foraged food is identification. Luckily for roses that's quite easy. You do need a lot of petals, and well-scented ones; many pretty varieties are bland, but wild species can be very good. Scent is crucial, colour is optional, but (pale) pink rosewater is traditional and is what you'll get if use use a mix of colours including a little red or plenty of pink. The link above says that all rose petals are edible, a statement I've seen elsewhere too. Cultivated roses, or those in hedges right next to farm fields, may have been exposed to pesticides. In particular those pesticides used on ornamentals may be long-lasting and not wash off, unlike those used on crops. That would rule out roses bought as cut flowers, which are almost guaranteed to have been sprayed. If you've grown them yourself and know they've not been treated with anything that isn't suitable for use on food crops, then a good rinse and inspection for bugs is all that's needed. Some recipes start with boiling water and soak, some simmer, others do something close to distillation (that recipe doesn't use many roses, and probably makes very little). I once made a very small quantity using white dog roses and the traditional simmering recipe in (I think - it's at home) Jocasta Innes' Country Kitchen - you really do need a lot of good fresh but ripe petals, ideally just before they start to turn brown. Storage - unless using quickly I'd freeze it (in ice-cube trays perhaps); lifetimes in the fridge aren't well-established for home made versions and we can't extrapolate from commercial preparations.

I have this box grater, and one of the sides is "non-directional" (not sure what this is called) -- that is, the pointy "blade" things are on every side of the holes: Close-up: The fibers you see are from ginger. My question is: How do I clean this side of the grater? Sponges and rags get torn apart and the fibers are left on the grater. Brillo pads same deal, of course. I tried rubbing it out with my fingers but, you know: Ouch. Even scrubbing from the inside doesn't do much like it does for the directional sides of the grater. The food isn't stuck in the holes, it's stuck on the little points. Rinsing it under the highest pressure water my sink has doesn't blow away the food matter either, it's just all snagged there pretty tightly. I found this page about graters and the author there seems to just avoid that side of the grater specifically because of how hard it is to clean, so perhaps there is no hope here. I do not have a dishwasher. Even though the above picture has ginger fibers on it, I'm not looking for techniques just for this specific case (that just happened to be what was stuck on the grater when I took the picture). I have the same problem with this side of the grater no matter what I grate, e.g. cheese, even hard cheese, leaves bits of cheese there, which are slightly easier to remove with hot water than tangled fibers are, but still not easy. What can I use to quickly and conveniently clean this after each use? The cleaning difficulty makes this my least favorite kitchen tool. I'm never excited when it looks like I have to use it.

A dishwasher gets cheese off even that side - but that's no good if you don't have one, nor is it very effective against ginger and other fibrous foods. The best I've found is simply a washing up brush (i.e. plastic bristles and a long handle) from both sides. I would then put it in the dishwasher for a final clean unless I'm doing a proper load of washing up, which is rare

We have a chocolate cake (brownie) recipe from France and calls for a packet of levure. We have been putting in yeast but not sure if it is wrong or right. Yeast, baking powder, other?

We metropolitan French distinguish "levure chimique" and "levure organique" (also called "levure de boulanger"). The first one is baking powder (the carbonated molecule), the latter is yeast (the fungi). If there is only "levure" written, it generally means "levure chimique" (baking powder), as it is more readily available, rises faster, and doesn't need to be carefully kept alive.

I love soy sauce, but I'm trying to minimize my consumption of phytochemicals. Is there any difference between "brewed" and "regular" soy sauce as far as their phytochemical content?

Safely? Yes. Cold water thaws are fine. It's hot or warm water thawing that's bad. Cold running water will thaw faster than cold still water, but cold still water is okay as you basically have a giant ice cube in the water (the thing you're thawing), so the water stays at a safe temperature until you're towards the end of the thaw ... it just takes a really long time compared to thaw running water. The only issue here would be the meat getting wet. If it's clean water, and you don't drip it on other things it shouldn't be a problem from a safety standpoint. It can change the quality of the food being thawed (wash away flavors, cause the food to absorb too much water), so if you're going to do it intentionally, it can be worth adding salt to brine the item being thawed. So, from a safety standpoint, what you're doing is fine ... so long as your fridge temp is set well.

truly fresh fish should not smell of anything except sea water. I've been buying fresh sardines however when I take it out of the bag there seems to be a smell, it seems to be originating from liquid, blood, and the fish. even after cooking i can sometimes taste this smell. Note this smell could be from blood, paper wrapping or something else but i think its the fish and blood. with fresh fish which shouldnt smell of anything except sea water, is it normal for its blood to smell? does one remove the smell by thorough washing or does it need to be heated to a particular temp to remove, if so what is the temp? also I notice larger fish like mackerel on the fish counter look clean to begin with, why don't they have blood over them or emit this same smell? thanks

truly fresh fish should not smell of anything except sea water While that might be true of most fresh fish fillets, fish guts most certainly smell, and unless all of those little guys have been opened and cleaned, you're almost certainly tasting/smelling the guts. The big fish in the case are nice and clean because they're gutted and washed. Often, smaller fish like Sardines are sold whole without gutting and washing. This can be kind of a dicey proposition if your store doesn't do a ton of volume, or you're not super close to the port at which they were caught. Are you removing the guts and washing them before you cook them? That would be the first step to reduce the flavors you don't like. Is the thin flesh of the belly deteriorated, perhaps even with the guts falling out? This is called belly burn, which occurs when the guts were left in too long and start to digest the fish from the inside out. These fish should be discarded (or used as bait if you decide to go DIY)

We found a "wet" rub marinade and love how it flavors steak. But, watching a recent cooking show Chef Michael said you should not "rub" your steak but rather sprinkle your seasonings on and let them rest. Can you please explain to me why rub is suppose to be sprinkled?

I would consider adding some soft brown sugar. The molasses content should increase the stickiness and thickness of the sauce overall. You may want to reduce the amount of white sugar to compensate.

I am wanting to make a spicy Korean soup broth and the recipe calls for ground pork. I was wondering how long the cayenne peppers would extend shelf life of cooked ground pork? Or is the broth still "bad in 3 days" as most sites suggest when referigerating ground pork?

Opinion and learned knowledge without doing searches for citations to back it up to follow: Spices, including peppers have a history of being used to extend the life of foods including meats. This is a false reputation and representation of that history, IMO. The spices in reality were used in large quantities to cover up poor quality proteins and produce and hide the deficiencies and early stages of spoilage. It hid these qualities only, it did little to nothing to reverse or slow them. Under poor storage conditions 100 years ago a bite of pork might have turned your stomach to taste it at two days, but spice it up enough with peppers or a stout curry sauce and at four days you still might not have noticed. This does not mean it will still not end up with you locked in the loo for a few hours or worse. With improved meat and produce quality and storage capabilities today in most of the world (yes, really, even as much as many of us complain), this is no longer necessary. We make things spicy because we are used to the taste and like it. But stories and traditions of it being a preservative continue. Salt for instance is a preservative, but only in the quantities used in curing and pickling and such, not in the quantities we use to spice food. That is for flavor, not to kill bacteria or extend the useful life of the food.

I mean it's gas - an open fire - and heats up in less than a minute. Does preheating making any difference when baking with gas?

Yes, preheating warns up the entire interior of the oven which is important for keeping the air hot such as when you open the door. It helps the oven bounce back to full heat much sooner. If you don't preheat, it will take several minutes before the oven reaches proper cooking temps, and interfere with even heating. If you want to see the difference most dramatically, bake some chocolate chips. First without any preheating and then when those are supposed the be done, do another batch and bake them for the same amount of time. If you are baking something for an hour or more, it may not make much difference, but shorter baking times can be dramatically affected.

My wife has been baking sourdough bread in an enameled cast iron Dutch oven and has been getting a very nice crust. She preheats the pan and oven to 500 °F (260 °C), then puts the dough in the pan, cooks a while at 480 °F (250 °C) covered, then at 450 °F (230 °C) uncovered. Dutch ovens are round and our main use case is sandwiches, so it would be nice to cook in a rectangular pan. When I search for them, it appears they are all ceramic. Does the lower heat conductivity of ceramic make it not form as nice a crust?

Doesn't matter; you cannot use a ceramic pan with that baking technique. If you heat the ceramic pan to 500F and then add the wet dough, it is likely to crack, and possibly even explode. Same goes for glass. Ceramic pan maker Emile Henry says: Never preheat your ceramic baking dish dry, always add cooking oil or some type of liquid to the dish. You should, instead, find a covered cast-iron loaf pan, such as the one by Staub, or a different baking technique, such as the traditional cold-oven cloche technique.

I make a big pot of vegan chilli roughly as follows: Saute onion and garlic. Brown soya mince. Add 1 tin corn, 1 tin tomatoes, 1 tin chickpeas, 2 tins beans, various spices, cocoa powder, and tomato paste. Simmer for a while. I'm sorry if all the tins made you cringe. I'm not a cook and I like how convenient the recipe is. Nevertheless, I have dry beans now so I can do better! I want to use the quick soak method from here to cook the beans: Place 1 lb. dried pinto beans in a large, heavy pot. Cover with water about 2” above top of beans. Cover pot, bring to a boil, then remove from heat. Let rest 1 hour. Stir in 1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt and bring to a boil over medium heat. Uncover, reduce heat, and simmer until beans are tender and creamy, checking after 1 hour and adding more water as necessary to keep beans submerged, 1–1 1/2 hours total. However I have no idea how this fits into the grander scheme of the chilli recipe. I see three options: Once I've gone through the above soaking, consider the beans equivalent to tinned beans and just continue as usual. Reduce the amount of time soaking and heating to compensate for the time spent simmering with other ingredients. Cook the non-bean ingredients on their own and only mix the two parts after both are done without further cooking. Should I add the spices to the beans as they soak? What should I do with the soak water? I bought the dry beans from my local supermarket and they're not the typical varieties I see in recipes (I have no idea where to find dry black or pinto beans where I live). I have: White kidney beans Half white sugar beans Red speckled beans Small white beans Which of these beans can I use in the recipe, and what modifications to the recipe should I make? Thanks for reading all the way through! I'm sorry if there are too many questions at once, they all seem tightly related to me.

I would soak the beans for several hours, or overnight; discard the soaking water. Tinned beans have been cooked, so place the soaked beans in your usual cooking vessel and add fresh water to about an inch over the beans. You could add in your tomato paste, spices, and cocoa powder. While it simmers for about 20 minutes or so, I would separately saute your onion, garlic, and mince before adding that mixture to the pot, along with all your other veg. Simmer for an additional 10-15 minutes. You can always test a few beans, to make sure that they're becoming tender. You might try the white kidney beans first; they're very commonly-found in many chili recipes, but any of your bean varieties would work. Some may need shorter soaking and cooking times; the package directions should guide you in this.

In the following accepted answer you can find the ingredients of the Indian curry powder. I usually cook with Indian curry powder, however, I recently received some Sri Lankan curry powder. The aroma is different when I use Sri Lankan curry powder, (in my opinion, better,) and it tastes different too. Does anyone know the spices used in making Sri Lankan curry powder?

Most of the recipes I've made for Sri Lankan curries typically have pandan, dry curry leaves, fennel, green cardamom, mustard seeds, cloves, cumin, coriander & black peppercorns.

This recipe for poppy seed rolls calls for 1 large yeast. How much yeast am I supposed to use? I usually see recipes measure it in teaspoons, but I can’t guess how much “large” is. I am also assuming this is active dry yeast, maybe it’s not and that’s the reason why the size is weird.

This is short for “1 large cake of yeast.” According to this investigation, cakes of yeast traditionally came in two sizes: Small, around 3/5 of an ounce Large, around 2 ounces This similar recipe gives the substitution “1 large yeast or 3 envelopes dry yeast.”’

I forgot to add butter to my dough when making king cake, I have kneaded it and left it to rise, will it ruin the dough to mix the butter in and then knead and let it rise again?

Unfortunately, if you attempt to combine the butter into the already risen dough, the dough's structure would most likely get ruined. I wouldn't stress too much over the forgotten butter in the dough though, as the filling will consist of butter as well. Also, you may be able to salvage some flakyness by gently folding in thin sheets of butter into the dough.

While cooking a kielbasa in a toaster oven today, I noticed that periodically there would be flashes near the heating element. At one point there was a very large, bright flash of light and pop as though a flammable gas was being detonated. Some of the ignitions I was able to see in detail. Next to the heating element a small round flame would illuminate and waver then go out. It was obvious that some lighter than air gas was rising up and upon reaching a high enough concentration, igniting. What gas would the kielbasa be emitting? My first guess would be methane, but why would a cooked kielbasa be giving off methane?

Cured meat should not be emitting methane- or any other flammable gas. That would be an indicator of advanced spoilage and you would notice the smell. A more likely culprit, in my opinion, would be fat. Fat burns well, of course, and sausage is full of it. Tiny splatters of fat can become aerosolized and travel a good distance where they would ignite on the burner.

After chopping away at a chilli earlier today (well, 10 minutes ago) I then went through my normal ritual of scrubbing my hands to remove what traces the chiles leave on my fingers. And it made me wonder - is whatever is difficult to get off my finger having any long-term effect on my wooden chopping board? I clean/scrub the board regularly, and there is no visible staining, but we all know hidden problems exist..

Pretty much everything I've read (for example, this page) says not to use wood, because the oils from the peppers will penetrate the board and transfer, and hold there indefinitely, even after thorough washings. This thread is full of people with personal experience transferring the heat to later meals. That said, as with Jefromi, I've cut hot peppers on wood before and not noticed any transfer. Specifically, home grown habaneros and jalapenos on maple boards. Maybe I'm just acclimated to the heat and don't notice, but those recommendations are not in line with my personal experience. I do thoroughly scrub my boards after use, but that probably isn't washing away any residual oils. If you really want to be safe, for example if someone in your house is heat sensitive or you have small children helping in the kitchen, you can dedicate a board to cutting peppers, or just cut peppers on a small plastic board and wash thoroughly after each use.

I was able to get my hands on mangosteen, a dark purple fruit that is grown in Southeast Asia that is hard to find in the United States. It's got a hard shell on the outside that feels like a very unripe avocado with a very flat and sturdy stem. It's been sitting in my fruit bowl for about a week and the firmness has not changed and I don't smell any fragrance. How do I know if it's ripe enough to eat?

Generally, mangosteens are harvested when they are ripe as they don't tend to ripen once picked.

I've been using a George Foreman like grill for grilled cheese sandwiches. The problem is the bread seems to burn before the cheese is thoroughly melted. How can I fix this? Do I just need to add more butter because I've been trying that. EDIT: I keep my cheese in the refrigerator so maybe leaving it on the counter to come to room temperature would help.

The vast majority of wasabi in the US is mostly horseradish. Some brands like this one, contain no wasabi at all. That one is the #1 seller on Amazon. Other brands, including this one, contain a small amount of wasabi, presumably just so they can put wasabi on the list of ingredients. Incidentally, that brand is made in Japan. Real wasabi can be found without too much trouble. This brand is in the powdered form, you can also get it in a tube. I understand that real wasabi loses its heat very quickly after being grated, which may explain why I actually prefer the fake stuff. I've tried real wasabi in a tube, and I found it disappointingly mild. If I ever see a fresh wasabi stem I will buy it just to satisfy my curiosity. (Originally I called it "wasabi root", the wiki article linked to in the OP tells me it's actually a stem. Hmmm, learn something new every day.) I have read that most of the wasabi in Japanese sushi bars is the same stuff we get here. Even in Japan, real wasabi is the exception, not the rule. You bring up an interesting point about the legality of labeling a product "wasabi" when it doesn't contain any real wasabi. Our labeling laws usually wouldn't allow that. My guess is that it's a loophole just for wasabi, maybe written especially for Japanese exporters. HA! There is even an on-line petition to ban the practice of labeling horseradish "wasabi".

When replacing sugar fully or partially with stevia powder it seems that baked goods like biscuits do not spread as much and are often dryer. Is there anything that can be done to make the dough with stevia behave more like dough with sugar when baking?

Not really, unless you go for a different carbohydrate with physical properties similar to refined sucrose. And if you are removing the sugar for dietary reasons, you're probably not winning anything by doing the substitution. Artificial sweeteners and stevia are just that - a sweetener, not a sugar. They can only be successfully used as a substitute where table sugar is used as a sweeteners. For example, they work well in a coffee or a homemade lemonade. In baking, sugar is not used primarily to make the batter sweet, in fact it often makes it too sweet for my own taste. Its purpose is to provide structure. It has unique physical properties it shares with other short carbohydrates, but not with non-sugar sweeteners. You cannot substitute sugar for something which is completely unlike sugar and expect to get the same result. If you are very adventurous, you can try using soluble fibre in place of sugar. But it's hard for a home cook to 1) get a supply of it, and 2) tweak a recipe such that it works well enough texturewise. If my assumption is wrong and you are not counting calories, it becomes easier. Adding pure glucose or fructose will produce a recipe which still needs a tweaking, but can potentially be made similar to a sugar-containing one. Then you should also leave out the stevia, because it will make the bisquits overly sweet.

Are ice tea bottles like Lipton considered to be carbonated drinks like coke and 7up? I have issues in my GI (Gastro Intestinal) tract and I cannot tolerate coke and other carbonated drinks, I am just wondering if ice tea is a carbonated drink that might cause me discomfort.

The word "Soft drink" stems from drinks with No alcohol in them. ice tea is a "Soft drink" But is not carbonated.

recently I've been trying to recreate the mocha they make at Mcdonalds. After many failed attempts. Here is how I currently prepare it: Put chocolate powder and sugar into a cup, pour a little boiling water, beat Heat milk in another pot, mix in coffee powder while boiling After the milk is sufficiently boiled, pour it into the cup The problem I'm having is that my mocha doesn't have the 'creaminess' that the fast-food chain has... it's a bit too 'smooth'. Yet when I drink the one from Mcdonalds, the drink feels dilute yet more creamy... which is weird because how can you have less milk in the drink yet have it creamy?

The creaminess in many coffee drinks comes from steamed milk. The milk is heated by forcing steam through it. This leads to a very creamy result. It is hard to replicate at home without an espresso machine with a steam wand. You can foam the hot milk with a cappuccino wand (or something similar) for a slightly more authentic result but the result will not be as creamy as properly steamed milk.

I've been making sourdough and kombucha for a while now, and the results are great. I've never taken any particular care with the utensils. I wash my hands before handling the SCOBY, and I use fresh tap water for it and for the sourdough, but that's about it. No boiled water, no sterilised jars and bowls. So far so good. Now I'm thinking of making nattō. All of the recipes I've seen say several times to sterilise all the utensils. I'm skeptical of this, since nattō has been made for almost 1000 years and I doubt people would have been able to achieve the level of cleanliness asked for by these recipes. Indeed it used to be made in bundles of straw, which should have had plenty of bacteria in it other than nattō-kin. So, what is the real risk of food poisoning when making nattō? Can anyone share their experience of making it without sterilising everything?

Your question has two facets. I’ll answer the first one. While brewing beer or wine as well, you’re advised to sterilize all the equipment and use a specific culture of bacteria. The reason for that is, if the “stuff” you’re trying to ferment gets some wild yeast/mold/bacteria, your end results won’t be what you desire. So you’re trying to minimize that risk by sterilizing it. I believe people with relevant food-safety experince will better answer your second question on safety of fermentation. As I will leave it unanswered. Even though I also think in similar terms with you.

I am looking to bake a red velvet cake, but I’ve seen different recipes, some use all purpose flour and some use cake flour. There are some diy cake flour recipes too since I don’t have cake flour. I’m wondering what’s the difference if I use all purpose flour instead of cake flour? Will it make a difference? I’m undecided on which recipe to use too so if you also have a suggestion that would be great, thanks

Cake flour is milled more finely than all purpose flour. It also has a lower protein content, so less gluten is produced in the final product. It is ideal for achieving the soft crumb of a cake. That said, plenty of cakes are made with all purpose flour. You would be able to perceive a difference in a side-by-side comparison. In your own kitchen, with one cake, it is not going to matter too much. I would suggest you sift your dry ingredients and move ahead with AP flour. It will not be a problem.

My neighbor shared her delicious french bread recipe with me. Her loaves always turn out tall and fluffy. My loaves fall when I score them and the result is flat, saggy crisp crust bread. Things I have tried - keeping my bowl warm, letting it rise a third time after scoring (it's never the same). She even came over with her uncooked loaves when mine flattened right before a dinner party. Guess what? Hers sagged and flattened and never rose in my oven. Could it be my oven???

Marinating meat is typically for fast-cooking methods like grilling. Typically when stewing, the chicken will stew for more than an hour, so any flavour from the marinade will be MOSTLY lost. If you use a very strong marinade, like balsamic vinegar, you might retain a small bit of flavour in the chicken. But keep in mind, the flavour will undoubtedly seep into the rest of the stew. Overall there is usually not much point in marinating stewing meat, simply because you can impart all the flavour you want in the surrounding sauce, and tenderizing is done by the long cooking process.

About 4-5 years ago I attempted to preserve some lemons in salt as per lots of recipes for Morrocan preserved lemons for tagine etc. I didn't ever get around to using any of them and also used an inappropriate clip top jar which allowed gas to escape and the salt badly corroded the metal parts. The lemons turned an unappealing brown colour and also went gross & mushy so I finally tipped them out into the compost today. The weird thing was the salty juice which seeped out of the lemons had turned into a really well set gel. Everywhere I have looked claims that pectin only sets with sugar and jam also needs cooking to 105 degrees c otherwise no gel will form. How did these raw salted lemons make a gel? It would be very cool if I could do the same thing with sugar and make a raw citrus marmalade!

The German „Mittelscharfer Senf“ ist pretty wimpy compared to the average English mustard that looks deceptively similar. You need something that packs more punch, if you can’t get proper English mustard (the Coleman’s in the other answer is occasionally available in German stores), a Dijon mustard (Maille is a commonly seen brand) will do, or a „Scharfer Senf“ (strong/sharp mustard) of a German brand.

I've got a recipe here for fish done with a glaze made of peach preserves that looks pretty tasty. However, some members of my household dislike peach. Citrus is a classic pairing for fish; can I swap out the preserves for a marmalade? I'm not 100% sure on the differences between the two. Or is there another substitution that would work better? Recipe: Ginger-peach glazed tilapia

In addition to the sweetness, marmalade has a pronounced bitter flavor that could overpower the fish. It seems that others feel the same way — there are few online recipes for fish with marmalade, and of those few, most are for salmon which has a more robust taste of its own to balance out the marmalade. Perhaps something like an apricot preserve would be more in the spirit of the original recipe?

I have a weak spot for aromatic oils. Not essential oils, but the cooking oils like hazelnut oil and avocado oil. I love making dishes where they are the primary flavour component (e.g. a veloute sauce poured over something bland). Just now, I was shopping in a Turkish grocery store, and they had nigella oil (I am not sure which plant it is exactly. The label says Nigella big, then Black cumin in the English translation and Schwarzkümmel in the German translation. Schwarzkümmel is usually translated to English as Black caraway). I almost bought it, but at the steep price (14 Eur for a 250 ml bottle) it would have been too bad if it turned out to be a neutral tasting oil. Has somebody tasted it? How strong does it taste? The stronger, the better (for my purposes). Does it taste at least as strong as avocado oil, or is it a weak aroma, like grapeseed oil, or even neutral, like sunflower? Also, if it has a taste, is it a taste most people are likely to accept (like macadamia, or almond oil) or one which is at best an acquired taste (like the overly bitter flaxseed oil)? For reference, I like black caraway seeds as a spice.

I bought a bottle some time ago and wanted to share my experience. The nigella oil has turned out to be one of my favorite oils. I don't have any other like it. It has a very strong aroma, more similar to fresh carrot than to black caraway seeds. It is slightly bitter, and also slightly hot. The hotness is weak when compared to most hot spices, but it is there. The bitterness is very pleasant. It doesn't have the fatty, clingy quality of flaxseed oil bitterness (and has no fish taste at all). All in all, it is a very green, fresh taste, more like a herb than like an oil. "Robust" style olive oils taste this way, but the nigella oil is much stronger. It is too strong for combinations, but it is easily made the main star of many dishes. Frying an omelette in it completely changes the taste, no need for other spices at all (it does get more bitter at low frying temperatures, but does not lose the strongest part of the flavor, just the overtones). It is also very good for dipping a rustic bread. It is also economical in the sense that a little bit of it goes a long way (using too much of it makes it really overwhelming). Conclusion: a great thing to have in the kitchen.

I am planning on making eggnog for the first time. I am from Australia where eggnog is not really a thing, and living in the UK where that still seems to be the case. This means I haven't grown up seeing how eggnog gets prepared and stored. I am aware that some recipes of eggnog are made to be stored and aged for a week or more, sometimes a month or even several months. I plan to make some tomorrow to have on boxing day (so 14 days). If I were to make eggnog to be consumed in a day or two I imagine I'd just store it in a plastic jug, but what should I be using if I were to store it for longer? The eggnog recipe on Alton Brown's website mentions storing it in glass jars. Should I be using mason jars, or jam jars with screw-on lids, or is either fine? Are there better/worse answers?

Cooked or Uncooked eggnog is a safety decision.In US you get pasteurised eggs generally, unless you are in a raw food store or something. With pasteurised eggs you can use then raw in recipes without worry. In some other countries (like in India where I am now) eggs are not pasteurised. So to kill the salmonella etc, it is required to bring the eggs to above 160F in recipes. This you can see in Tiramisu recipes also where it similarly starts with a custard.

I'm about to do a Spaghetti sauce batch this afternoon, and I can't seem to remember a life hack that I read that made it so you didn't have to go through you sauce and pick the bay leaves one by one. I can't remember if you have to put them in a teabag or something like that. So is there a known 'lifehack' to facilitate the picking back up of the bay leaves after cooking with them?

In Germany there is a „Spickzwiebel“ especially for red cabbage. You put your bayleave on the onion and attach it with cloves. For other dishes I use onions the same way but substitute the cloves with a sprig of rosemary or some other hard herb. Works best if herb bags are too small for lager sprigs that don‘t fit the bag.

Background: My wife (for some unknown reason) bought a huge bag of dried soy beans. In my efforts to dispose of it I have been experimenting with making soy milk and tofu. Tofu has a bad reputation for being overly bland. It struck me how tofu making is identical to cheese making except with soy milk. As such I wondered if I could flavor tofu the same way cheese is flavored: salt, fermentation, additives, etc. I tried adding salt after the curd was drained but before it was pressed. This helped a little but I found I had to add a lot more salt than I do for cheese to taste the difference. I added quite a bit of smoked peppers at the same time and could only barely taste it at all. 1- Is this a valid approach and I should just add a lot more of my flavoring agents? 2- Are there other flavoring agents that will present themselves more forcefully (and pleasantly) in tofu? 3- What easily accessible bacteria would be able to ferment soy curd in a pleasant way? ** Edit to clarify per comments below ** It is true that marinating tofu is the traditional way to infuse flavor. Marinating seems to only penetrate very shallowly. I want to see if I can introduce flavors that are spread homogeneously through the curd so I can use the tofu in non-traditional applications.

1- Is this a valid approach and I should just add a lot more of my flavoring agents? Yes, you can make additions to your curd prior to pressing/knitting just like with cheese. Adding bits of dried peppers ala pepper jack cheese sounds like a great idea. The main concern in this regard is to avoid adding so much adjuncts that the tofu curd fails to knit together during the pressing/draining phase and falls apart as you're handling it during subsequent cooking. A secondary concern is that tofu generally weeps significantly more water than cheese curds. And since you've added your adjuncts already, part of the flavor of those adjuncts will run off as the tofu curd weeps. The only real suggestion I have for that is to use assertively flavored adjuncts. 2- Are there other flavoring agents that will present themselves more forcefully (and pleasantly) in tofu? Soy beans have fat in them. The fat in the beans becomes emulsified in the milk when processing the beans into soy milk. The majority of that fat ends up in the soy curd when curdling the soy milk. The majority of the fat in the soy curd will remain in the curd during pressing/knitting into tofu blocks. You can use this to your advantage. When grinding the soy beans into milk, you can fat based flavoring, some of which will end up in the soy milk, some of which will end up in the resulting curd, and thus into the tofu blocks. If your fat based flavoring is particularly intense, then it should be noticeable in your tofu blocks. A common type of intensely flavored (aromatic) fat based flavoring is essential oil. You can add essential oil of lemon or orange and that flavor will certainly carry through into the final tofu blocks. 3- What easily accessible bacteria would be able to ferment soy curd in a pleasant way? Fermented tofu/bean curd has been made for centuries. There are number of fungii strains commonly used to ferment bean curd. There are likely many other bacteria that could be used. Lactic acid bacteria could feasibly grow in tofu/bean curd, though I'm not sure a sour tofu is something I'd personally enjoy. Aside from blocks of tofu/bean curd, there is also a long history of fermented products with amazing flavor that use soy beans but not in a curd/block form. There is tempeh, soy sauce, koji, miso, etc.

I made beignets and I want to hurry and bake them before going to sleep tonight. Do I have to let them sit overnight or will they be fine if i just put them in there for a few hours then fry? This is the recipe: 1 cup warm water 1/4 cup sugar 1 Tbs active dry yeast 1 egg replacement 2 Tbs vegan butter 1/2 cup soy creamer 4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 tsp salt Oil for frying Enough powdered sugar to choke out an army In a stand mixer or mixing bowl, combine the water, sugar and yeast. Allow to sit until the yeast gets bubbly and happy, about 5 minutes. Add in the butter and the egg replacement and beat until combined. Add in the soy creamer and half the flour and beat for 1 minute. Add in the salt and the rest of the flour and finish with the dough hook. If you don't have a dough hook, knead the dough by hand. Spray cooking spray or a light bit of oil into a bowl or dish with a lid. add in the dough and turn to coat. Cover and allow to sit in the fridge for 8 hours, or overnight. Heat your cooking oil to 360 degrees. On a lightly floured surface, roll out your dough to approximately 1/4 to 1/3 inch thickness. 1/2 inch thick is too thick. Cut the dough into 3" x 3" squares or diamonds. Place into the hot oil carefully, making sure not to crowd the oil. The beignet should float to the surface almost immediately. Cook on each side for about 20-30 seconds, or until a rich golden brown. Once golden brown on both sides, remove from oil and allow to rest for about 1 minute. With a sieve, sprinkle the powdered sugar generously onto the top of the beignets. Enjoy, traditionally with a cafe au (almond) lait.

Warning: this answer isn't about traditional beignets, but about New Orleans beignets, which are actually made from yeast dough, like donuts. It refers to this recipe which the OP is most likely using. For yeast dough, the difference between long and short rising times is that longer times give you more flavor development. Beignets are so chock-full of sugar and fat that they don't need the subtle flavoring of long fermentation. They can be made with very short rising times. I don't know why the recipe tells you to refrigerate overnight and then forgets to tell you that the dough should come back to temperature. There are some rich doughs which are baked from cold in order to hold their shape (brioche and other butter-rich relatives), but due to the physics of deep frying, you don't want fridge-cold dough in your pan. But there is surely no need to get it thoroughly cooled; the recipe is probably advising the long stay for fermentation or convenience reasons, not because you need chilled dough. One possibility which comes to mind is that the soft dough might be a bit hard to roll when warm, but a combination of non-stick mat, clingfilm and flouring usually takes care of that. If you keep your dough out of the fridge, it will be ready much earlier, and you can fry it as soon as it is properly risen. But because this recipe has such an insanely high yeast ratio (equivalent to 7.5% fresh yeast in baker percentages), you have to watch it closely, it might rise very soon.

What emulsifier can be used for an egg-free mayonnaise?

Aquafaba! (also known as chickpea water) Here's a good recipe from Serious Eats: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2016/03/easy-vegan-mayo-aquafaba-recipe-vegan-experience.html

I started making pita flat breads at home using only whole wheat, water and salt. I usually make it really fast by putting all the ingredients together and start giving it a roudish shape straight away. Then I just put it in the frying pan both sides for a couple minutes. Now, I noticed that sometimes it starts to puff, which is good as I can simply cut trough it and fill it easlly, lile a kebab. However it only happens sometimes, and I wanted to know if there is a way to make it always inflate... It seems pretty random to me so far. Any help?

Puffing is caused by steam evaporating inside the dough. The gluten matrix holds the steam in, especially after you've cooked it on one side. If you cut into the puffed dough, you'll notice that a lot of hot steam escapes. Be careful when you do that. You can burn yourself. I speak from experience. Besides, the texture is better if you give it a few minutes to set up completely: cut it too early and the cutting force can glue the edges together. You get similar effects in naan, tortillas, and chapatis. These are also generally un-yeasted. The yeast doesn't have time to produce that much air, and it's quickly killed. (I use yeast in mine anyway because I like the texture and flavor.) As for getting it to puff every time... it seems to be a knack. Preferably learned from one's grandmother, I gather, but I didn't. The way I do it is to mimic a tandoor. While I shape the dough, I preheat a cast iron pan and the broiler. When ready, I put the dough on the pan and pop it into the oven. Cooking on both sides simultaneously means it cooks on the outside, making a steam-proof seal. It can be done just with the frying pan. It's a matter of timing, flipping it when it's sufficiently cooked on one side to set, but not cooked through. I haven't mastered that, I'm afraid, but many others have.

I have a Circulon frying pan I've been using for a few years. I got it second hand in good condition. The non stick factor was great when I got it, but when I fry with it now, I find I need to use quite a bit of oil or it sticks. I've tried hard to clean off what seems to be a kind of oily residue, but I'm wondering if it's the last of the non-stick coating I'm trying to remove! Other than the stickiness, it's a great pan. Are this pan's non stick days over? Or otherwise, what can I do to restore it?

Let's just mention that there are health controversies about using a broken nonstick coating and/or bare aluminium surfaces, and see them as controversies that are off topic here. Non-stick wise, this pan is wrecked. There is no practical way to fix a modern nonstick coating to original state yourself at home. It seems that some spray-on products used to exist, but these were not actually teflon based even if they were sold as teflon repair sprays, and did not give an equivalent result to industrially applied coatings. There are professional refinishing services, but the price of the refinishing plus shipping costs is about the price of a brand new medium quality pan, and even this could only work with a piece where all non-heatproof fittings can be dismantled from the pan itself; the refinishing process will involve baking it at a high temperature. The only thing that would be possible to do yourself, IF the base material of the pan is either stainless steel or carbon steel/cast iron/wrought iron, would be to completely get the damaged coating off and use the cookware as a stainless steel, or seasoned iron, piece. But with most non-stick cookware, the base is aluminium, which is not useful as an uncoated or seasoned cooking surface. EDIT: It seems there are seasoning techniques for some types of bare aluminium, they might or might not apply. As I mentioned, there are health controversies about it, so make informed decisions.

I just cooked a huge batch of burrito filling. Everything seemed okay, but then it turned out to have a really disgusting charcoal aftertaste. I think maybe some burned bits got stirred in while I was cooking it. Can you tell me how to remove the taste? I find it inedible, but it's about $50 dollars of ingredients. Any advice would be hugely appreciated.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don't think there is anything you can do to remove that flavor. It sounds like what is often described as "scorched" flavor. In restaurants, that is well known as the one flavor you can't mask, you just have to dump the whole batch and move on. You can feel free to take a shot at masking it with acid (lemon, vinegar, ...), salt, sugar, and spices, but I don't think it is going to work.

We bought a large package of dry rice vermicelli recently at our local Thai market. We've cooked it a couple of times, and both times once it starts to boil it gives off a chemical odor, sort of like lye or chlorine (not really either, but that kind of thing). It doesn't rinse off, though rinsing helps a bit. Once rinsed, the chemical smell is not strong enough that it's a problem if you have any kind of sauce on the noodles, but eaten plain they definitely have a chemical funk. I haven't cooked with this style of rice noodle a lot (we usually do cellophane noodles, which seem different), so maybe this is normal. Can anybody tell me if this is something we should expect with this kind of noodle? The package was new, clean, and in perfect condition, so if there was some kind of contamination it happened in the factory.

I've made rice vermicelli many times, and I've never smelled anything like what you describe. I suggest throwing out the ones you have, and buying a different brand (or maybe shopping at a different store).

Reading through a book of cocktail recipes from the late 1800s, I notice some recipes call specifically for Santa Cruz rum and some call for Jamaican rum. Is this a mere place of origin reference, or is there some qualitative difference? For example, would one of them be what we now call spiced rum? Or light rum vs dark rum?

Cocktail historian David Wondrich discusses this very topic in his book "Imbibe!", pages 74-75. (It's structured around Jerry Thomas' first cocktail books—perhaps it's in one of those you're seeing the spirit referenced?) The references are indeed to places of origin, but there are qualitative differences as well. Modern designations like "light" and "dark" are essentially meaningless (2, 3). Spiced rum is typically poor-quality, neutral spirit with sugar and artificial flavoring added. It's a style that only took off in the 1980s with the advent of Captain Morgan, and can safely be omitted from any classic (or modern craft) recipe. Rums of the 60s and 70s were characterized by light body and clean taste, in order to compete with vodka, the popular new kid on the block. Their blandness—which opened the doors for Captain Morgan's popularity—was (and in too many cases still is) a far cry from the rums of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Jamaican rum was (and still is, in many places) regarded as the "best," or at least the most flavorful. Heavy-bodied, funky, and delicious. Smith & Cross is probably the best easily-sourced rum that might get close to the strength and flavor of rums that one may have seen 150 years ago. Hamilton Pot Still Jamaica and Doctor Bird are also excellent choices. Hampden Estate (which has been in continuous operation since 1753) rum is very good, but current offerings are more expensive than you might want. Rum-Bar and Plantation Xaymaca are fairly solid, 100% pot-still picks, but fairly mild in terms of strength and "hogo." Appleton is solid, though similarly mild. Coruba, Navy Bay, and Myers's are pretty far from the recipe-creator's intent, but worlds better than, say, Bacardi. Santa Cruz rum—the "un-Jamaican,"—was lighter than the Jamaican rums of the era, but not nearly so light as today's multicolumn rums from St. Croix, Cuba, or Puerto Rico. Given how little we know about the Cruzan rums of yesteryear, you've got a fair bit of leeway. Try to find a rum that's got at least some age (which shouldn't be guessed by the color), some backbone and bite but not too funky. A tough of vanilla from the oak and grass from the cane. Wondrich offers the following blend to approximate the profile of Sta. Cruz rum: 1 part Smith & Cross (or other full-proof, 100% pot-still Jamaican rum), 2 parts lightly aged rhum agricole (paille or ESB), 3-4 parts young Cuban-style rum (like Don Q or Havana Club). To keep things simple, you can probably get "close enough" with a milder blended rum like Appleton Signature, Denizen Merchant's Reserve or Dark Vatted, Chairman's Reserve, Mount Gay Black Barrel (Eclipse is OK but pretty rough with a too-big hit of ethanol), the Probitas/Veritas collaboration from Foursquare and Hampden, a mild-ish pot-still rum like Rum-Bar Gold, or even something US-domestic like Richland or a local rum distillery you want to support. If you have a favorite rum (not a spiced/flavored one), try it in a recipe and see what you think! Heck, even Cruzan—as different today to its forebears as it is—should still be OK. Also, given this was originally posted nearly 8 years ago, let us know if you have any updates :) Cheers!

Often when I buy a dressed fowl, it comes with the neck, a bony object, which in the case of a duck, is suggestive of the male anatomy. This item is so hard and bony, it would take a heavy cleaver to cut it. What am supposed to do with this part of the duck?

I spray mine with a little water and then put it in my toaster-oven at 400 (F) for a few minutes. Won't be as good as fresh baked, but it does improve the smell and texture.

I am considering getting a slow-cooker. I leave for work by 8am, return about 4pm and feed my family dinner about 5pm. Can food sit in the slow cooker that long? Thanks.

Yes. A typical slow cooker's low setting ranges between 8-10 hours, which is within the range of your listed times. All (or nearly all) slow cookers come with a removable ceramic bowl/insert that the food cooks in. Most families do most of the preparation in the evening, putting everything into that bowl, and putting the bowl into the refrigerator. Then when they wake up in the morning, they put the bowl back into the slow cooker and start it up. Your bigger concern should be what size of slow cooker to get. If you don't fill up that ceramic bowl to at least 1/2-2/3's full, you can end up burning the entire dinner.

Simply, as the title says I’d like to know if it is safe to store raw meat alongside pre-cooked produce (ie. ready-made pies) in the fridge. Given the ready-made pies still need to be cooked to a high temperature – would this be considered safe?

Ideally, you'd store all meat tightly wrapped and/or in air-tight containers. Further, you'd store the meat on the bottom shelf of the fridge, and the ready-to-eat food above it—just in case the meat leaks juices out, it won't be able to drip onto the ready-to-eat foods. That's perfectly safe, and indeed is what's required in a commercial fridge. The idea is to avoid any chance of cross-contamination. You don't want juice from the meat dripping or splashing (when you move it, for example) onto anything else. You also want your pies tightly wrapped, to avoid them drying out or picking up off flavors. Now, if cross-contamination were to occur, you'd want to use that pie quickly, and when reheating it, you need to make sure to bring its internal temperature—measured with a food thermometer in a few spots—up to 165°F/74°C (just like if you were cooking chicken). I suspect your normal pie reheating doesn't do that.

I was at Trader Joe's again, and I bought this cheese alternative. Being hungry out of my mind, the thought to check the ingredients never crossed it. Now I, a vegan, am stuck with having to eat a "cheese alternative" that contains the following (lest a portion of my finite grocery budget be spent in vain): Almond base Filtered water Crushed organic almonds Casein Milk protein Expeller pressed canola oil Modified potato starch Natural Parmesan cheese flavor (adds a trivial amount of lactose) Parmesan cheese Pasteurized milk Cheese cultures Salt Enzyme Water Salt Xanthan gum Vegetable glycerin Sodium phosphate Sea salt Citric acid Psyllium husk (a plant fiber) Calcium phosphate My question is this: What is the purpose of a cheese substitute that contains dairy? It's not suitable for people allergic to or otherwise averse to dairy Apparently it is, to an extent. So what's the thought process behind the development and release of this product?

Lactose intolerance (which is different from a milk allergy, which is a smaller group) comes in varying degrees, so this may be useful for people who can have a bit of lactose (who can process casein fine). For example, many lactose intolerant people (who often avoid dairy) can handle non-dairy creamer fine (and varying amounts of cheese), even though it has casein. Many cheese substitutes still do use casein. The parmesan adds glutemates to the mix, while casein gives a lot of structural properties to cheese (like melting ability for real cheese).

I've started to learn how to make cheese and all the recipes call for cheese salt. What is it about this particular salt that makes it different than others? Some of the reading I've done have a few comments that suggest there is no difference between cheese salt and fine table salt. Is there another substitute for cheese salt if for some reason in the future I can't get my hands on any? I'm mostly interested in making hard cheeses that will need to age for 3 to 6 months.

Cheese salt is just non-iodized salt, generally in flake form; the iodine would interfere with the cultures, and flakes are good for salting surfaces. So kosher salt and flaky sea salt are both essentially the same thing and viable substitutes.

I usually freeze all of my meat unless I plan to use it within one day, but I was just wondering whether I could keep some raw chicken in the fridge until Thursday (three days from now). I wanted to make sure it wouldn't go bad, so I did some searching and it seems that most sites recommend discarding raw poultry after just two days. But the sell-by date on the package is August 6th, which is six days from today. The implication is that if I had boughten this chicken six days later, then it would somehow last in my fridge all the way until August 8th (6+2 days). Why does the usual food safety advice seem to be suggesting that raw poultry/meat will degrade much more slowly while on grocery store shelves? Are they kept colder there than in conventional refrigerators? Or will my chicken actually be safe to eat for another week?

The advice you see on sites is for poultry which doesn't come with an expiry date. It comes from the time when meat wasn't sold in individual containers with a date stamped on them. You buy poultry at the butcher, he wrapps it in wax paper, and you can keep that in the fridge for two days. If you buy your meat in the supermarket, it does have a date, and that's what you should go by. If it is a "use by" date, then it is clear - this is the last day on which it is safe to eat it. If it is a "sell by" date, you can again turn to the advice you found. It is calculated conservatively, as is usual in food safety, and gives you a margin which is safe even for meat sold after lying around for a few days at the butcher's. If you buy the meat before the "sell by" date, you "get" extra time to use it. raw poultry/meat will degrade much more slowly while on grocery store shelves While the system above would work without the need for such a mechanism, there is indeed a difference which goes in that direction. The supermarket meat is packaged under special atmosphere, which is low in pathogens and also differs from normal air in a way which inhibits bacterial growth. It is not sterile, and it definitely goes bad. But still, when compared to the butcher's meat, its total lifetime from slaughter to expiry date is longer. This tidbit is not relevant to your practical question though, since this has already been accounted for in the choice of the "use by" or "sell by" date stamped on the package. I am simply sharing it for more background.

I'm trying the America's Test Kitchen tweak of No-Knead Bread. The video segment on the website conflicts with the attached written recipe (sorry, paywalled). The video clearly says to preheat the oven and the Dutch oven before slipping the dough into the hot Dutch oven and baking it. The written recipe says to allow the second rise to happen in the Dutch oven and to place both in a cold oven, then turn the oven on to 425F (218C). Other places on the website say that the written information is kept up-to-date and supersedes any video segment, but oddly, it doesn't address the conflict in this recipe. I'll call ATK in the morning for clarification, but does anyone here have any experience that could shed some light on the subject? As a rule, should the Dutch oven for No-Knead Bread be preheated? Does it make sense to start baking the bread in a cold oven?

I did not get an answer from America's Test Kitchen beyond that the written recipe supersedes the video, so I proceeded with the experiment. I made two identical doughs following ATK's recipe for Almost No-Knead Bread with Olives, Rosemary, and Parmesan. Knowing that I would bake them two hours apart, I even started the doughs two hours apart, so the two doughs were truly identical in every way possible. They were both allowed 18 hours for the first rise and 2 hours for the second. For the first loaf I followed the written instructions for baking. I did not preheat the oven or the Dutch oven. When I put the loaf in, I turned the oven to 425F (219C). One half hour later I removed the lid and continued to bake until the dough registered 210F (99C), which took about another 35 minutes. For the second loaf, I followed the instructions in the video. I preheated the oven and the Dutch oven to 500F (260C), put the ball of dough in the Dutch oven, returned it to the oven and immediately reduced the oven temperature to 425F (218C). It baked covered for one half hour, then baked uncovered until it registered 210F (99C), which took about another 25 minutes. RESULTS The loaf on the right was made per the instructions in the video, it used a pre-heated oven and Dutch oven. That loaf is superior in every way. As you can see in the second picture, it rose higher and the crumb is lighter. The first loaf is dense. The crust on the second loaf is perfectly crunchy. The crust on the first loaf is just hard. And, on the first loaf, the bottom burned before the bread was done. I didn't think starting the bread in a cold Dutch oven made any sense, this experiment clinches it for me. If you're going to bake bread in a Dutch oven, I recommend that you pre-heat it.

From what I understand, the cooking process melts the collagen, turning it into gelatin and making the meat more tender. However, the process also tends to cook the meat itself, making it tougher. So too long or too high and the stewing beef is too tough. How long is too long? Say in a slow cooker on high, where is the inflection point where the meat stops getting more tender and start to get tougher? I googled the crap out of this but haven't found an answer?

I'm going to assume that you are covering your meat with liquid, because if you aren't that's the problem. Collagen needs heat plus water to break down, if you don't have liquid it will turn tough as old leather. There is no point where meat gets tougher when being slow cooked, what happens first is that the collagen breaks down, then the proteins start to denature. Generally once the collagen is all broken down is the ideal time to take it out, any longer and the meat itself starts to break down. Things to remember: How long it takes for meat to get tender in a braise or slow cook method depends on the size of the cut, thickness of the cut, and the amount of collagen in it. Working cuts like chuck, rump, neck, shin, etc have lots of collagen and need a longer slow cook to break it all down. They also have more flavor. Non-working cuts like filet, sirloin, etc would need much less time, but to be honest you're wasting good money slow cooking cuts like that, roast them instead of grill them as steak! Bigger cuts and thicker cuts will need a longer slow cook as well as it takes longer for the heat and the moisture to get to the center Some meat will never get tender no matter how you cook them. Low-quality, poorly processed meat that has been frozen and then quick-thawed is likely to be tough as old leather no matter how lovingly you treat it in the pan. It's the GIGO principle, Garbage in-Garbage out, you can't make bad meat good with technique. So it may not be that your meat toughened up after slow cooking, it may be that it never had the potential to be tender in the first place! Moisture is critical with working cuts as it breaks down collagen, in a slow cooker the meat must be completely submerged in liquid. In the oven it's important to have a lid on your braising dish, or at least tin foil.

When preparing a soup, the spoon which I use to stir the soup with, often falls in. Is there any way to prevent the spoon from falling into the soup?

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

My grandparents are deliberating if they need a food processor, and if using knives is easier. They They can pay any amount ≤ $999 CAD. Consider only Consumer Reports's top 3 food processors. I'm hoping someone here with one can testify from personal experience. How long do the blades last, if they food-process raw hard unpiercable vegetables like 1 winter squash daily? Can the blades be sharpened? r/cooking contends yes. Even if they can, is it cheaper to sharpen or replace the blades?

First things first, as it was very well pointed in the comments - food processor is not a 100% substitution for knives. It helps to do bulk processing of the more laborous knifework (slicing, brunoise, etc.) and also to do things that you cannot do with other tools (pureeing raw stuff) How long do the blades last, if they food-process raw hard unpiercable vegetables like 1 winter squash daily? See first point above. The skin and seeds should be removed before processing. Winter squash is very pierceable with a sharp knife - I did dice a kabocha squash with only a knife yesterday. If you take good care of your processor and do not try to use it on things it is not supposed to be used, the blades last for a very very long while - it is more probable that your processor breaks instead of the blades going dull, especially if they're serrated blades. Can the blades be sharpened? r/cooking contends yes. Depends on the blade. If it is a smooth blade like the older models, yes, you can resharpen them. My mom has an old-school processor that is older than me and she had the blades sharpened quite a few times. If it is a serrated blade (designed for longer durability and less dulling), you need to go to a cutler / knifemaker if you really want to keep it because the serrration is very fine and difficult to sharpen using the sandpaper method. Even if they can, is it cheaper to sharpen or replace the blades? Depends on #2 and your location (i.e. how much would you pay for sharpening a normal knife and how much would you pay for sharpening a serrated knife), and whether or not you can exectue proper sharpening by yourself.

What is "Buttered Sugar"? Is it something specific? I got the term from this image floating around the net. I'm trying to understand what specifically the different sugars are.

A search of the internet for "buttered sugar" comes up exclusively with variations of the this list on various websites that list alternative names for sugar. Of these only one "Returning to nature" lists it as a synonymy for buttercream. It is possible that site is correct and "buttered sugar" is a possibly rarely used alternate name for buttercream. I would suspect that it is more likely that there has been an error at some point in the past that has been copied between these sites.

I stopped by a farm stand last weekend, and found the strawberries were rather pale looking. I commented on this, and the farmer assured me that this was no worry, and that furthermore I should be wary of bright red strawberries. His claim was that bright red strawberries at the supermarket are in fact dyed that color. Is it common practice to dye berries? Is it even legal? Is this something one would normally expect to find at a grocery store, or is a technique used elsewhere (say, commercially, or in restaurants?) Or is this guy just trying to convince me to buy his product?

Strawberries turn a natural red color in their ripening process. This is usually a very strong, ruby-red color. Rest assured, strawberries in the US are not dyed. FDA clearly lists all adulteration done to fruits (oranges can be dyed), but strawberries only has a regulation of when the product is considered moldy, etc. Note that even though dyed strawberries may not be sold in US, they may be exported in countries that permit it ( fruit intended for export is exempt). Rest of the world is a different story. It wouldn't be uncommon for you to find strawberries that are picked too early in the process, or are just grown in poor conditions that are dyed red to give it the luscious red appearance. There have been anecdotal reports of this in China - this color comes right off when washed, showing a white strawberry. Strawberries do leech a red fluid when washed, but that shouldn't result in a white strawberry.

I accidentally bought roasted, salted chickpeas (I've never heard of this - why would anyone want that?) instead of normal, dried chickpeas. To be clear, these chickpeas are dry and powdery, rather than boiled chickpeas roasted with salt to make a soft/crispy snack. Can I still use them to make houmous? Or should I give this one up?

Roasted, salted dry chickpeas are a snack food. I would not expect for you to be able to make humus out of them; for one thing, they would have way too much salt, and the texture would be wrong. It might be possible with a lot of experimentation, but you'd need to go through several failed batches before you got one which worked. Personally, I'd just go back to the store.

I see this recipe for ramen noodles ("alkaline noodles") that says to use bicarb / baking soda that is baked in a very slow oven for an hour (250F / 120C) before incorporating into the noodle dough. Is it necessary to bake the bicarb? What does baking do? The New York Times has an article about baked baking soda, which says that baking transforms the sodium bicarbonate into sodium carbonate (NaHCO3 into Na2CO3?) but this seems strange; does this really work or is it safe? Am I creating hydrogen gas or presumably harmless water vapor and carbon dioxide? If it is worth doing for some reason, then there are the ancillary questions. How do I know when it's "done" baking? Both seem to be nondescript white powders. Will a different compound result, after dissolving both in water? Are there any safety concerns with sodium carbonate?

Baking turns bicarbonate of soda into a weak form of lye - sodium carbonate, as you said. It basically makes it a stronger alkali. The actual baking process is safe, but the resulting lye is an irritant and you should avoid getting in on your skin, and definitely avoid it getting it in your eyes. The difference in texture and colour is noticeable after baking. The texture will be finer, and it will be whiter.

I enjoy cooking but have a seriously small kitchen. There is only about 3 ft of work surface and that has kettle and toaster on it. I have a fair amount of shelf space but still need to larder goods and plates in another room. I find it almost impossible to keep the kitchen clean and tidy while cooking. With more complex dishes becoming almost impossible. Are there any good techniques for cooking in a small space?

Do what professional chefs do: clean constantly. Put all of your ingredients out in an organized place. Use them. Put them away. Clean the station. If you can, prepare. Put stuff that is prepped back in the fridge until you need it. Try to use the same few tools for the whole meal--cutlery, mixing bowls, cutting board. Quickly rinse and re-use rather than multiplying utensils. Aim for dishes that can be cooked in stages in the same pot rather than needing multiple pots or saucepans. Try out dishes with fewer ingredients. Great chefs can do wonders with 3, 4, or 5. Maybe you don't need more complicated? Put non-essentials away. Move the kettle and toaster to a shelf until you're done. Use the sink as a repository for anything you're not using but might still need. Use another room, too. A nearby table could become your staging area, a place to put ingredients that are prepped, finished, or waiting to be used (so your work area isn't cluttered with them). Just some ideas.

One of the international groceries near me stopped selling smaller (~2lb / 1kg) bags of teff flour**. All that that they have now is 25lb bags. All of the other ones that I frequent are latin or asian, and just don't carry teff. Bob's Red Mill sells teff in small (24oz) packages, which I can get in some of the 'organic' type grocery stores, but it's whole. I know that grain mills exist, but I'd prefer not to buy a new appliance just for a 'let me play around in the kitchen with a new recipe' type situation. (in this case, injera) As the grains are so tiny, would coffee grinders (blade or burr) even work for it? Is there some other common kitchen appliance that would work? Or would I have to spend some time with a mortar and pestle? ** as the bags were self-labeled like how they sell other bagged bulk foods, it's possible that they just had a damaged bag, and found a way to cut their losses, and it just took them a while to sell it all, as it was only a month or two from when I noticed it 'til it was gone.

I've done it several times with good results. It shapes a round loaf so that it rises up instead of spreading out, and you can see when it has risen enough to bake, but it would be easier to remove the finished bread if it were a real cloche with a knob on top instead of a bowl. I put a lot of oil on the bottom and sides of the bowl so that the bread does slide right out, but still it can be a little tricky getting it out. The 1.75 qt bowl has the right depth to width for me, but I wish they had a bigger bowl with the same proportions.

I just bought a cast iron waffle pan. I've seen conflicting advice about whether it should be seasoned. I have several old cast iron pans and my instinct would be to season it but I've also read that in a waffle pan the seasoning will get gummy and the waffles will stick to the pan. Some sites recommend just brushing the pan right before pouring the batter in. What are your thoughts?

I see no reason that a cast iron waffle pan should be treated differently in regards to seasoning than other cast iron. Since it won't be cooking anything with significant fat in it naturally, if anything it may be more important! Seasoning is both for non-stick reason and non-oxidizing reasons. Season it well on your own, then use it with some fat (of some kind) very lightly brushed on to keep it well. Only brushing right before use will keep one good likely, but would take a long, long time to naturally season since a large portion of the fat will immediately get used by the food. Cast iron gets gummy if you either 1) season with a spray like Pam consistently or 2) don't cook your seasoning long enough and/or high enough. Use a fat, bacon fat, would be great here and season away - properly. In regards to seasoning, I recommend checking out this question, as its unneeded to replicate detailed information elsewhere in the site.

After soaking and sieving the tamarind through a fine mesh strainer, the remaining pulp has some grit. It kinda ruined my dish. Wonder if there’s any method that would get rid of the grit, maybe a second sieving?

This is short for “1 large cake of yeast.” According to this investigation, cakes of yeast traditionally came in two sizes: Small, around 3/5 of an ounce Large, around 2 ounces This similar recipe gives the substitution “1 large yeast or 3 envelopes dry yeast.”’

I am a chocolate lover and recently figured out I have to completely remove milk from my diet (due to problems with casein). I figured I can make my own milkless milk chocolate from dark chocolate by adding soy milk and... thickening it all the way back to solid form. Now the problem is normally the way I'd approach it would be adding parts of liquid milk and parts of powdered milk to end up with good enough consistency for a chocolate block. But I can't use powdered milk for the same reason I can't use liquid milk. I realize there are vegan alternatives to powdered milk like soy powder or coconut powder but those are really hard and expensive to get in Poland. What can I use or do to create my own milk chocolate from dark chocolate with easily purchasable ingredients?

Milk chocolate is made with powdered milk; adding a liquid will make it break or it'll be unable to set. If you add something with enough fat to keep it from breaking, like coconut milk, you'll end up with a delicious chocolate ganache, but it won't set like a chocolate bar. I would instead look for a vegan milk chocolate; some companies are making them with coconut milk solids. You may have to order them online.

Failed miserably at the first bread bake. I have this oven: Bajaj 28 Litres 2800TMC Oven Toaster Grill I tried this recipe: Baking the Perfect Loaf of French Bread Instead of using 4 cups bread flour, I used 3 cups whole wheat flour. Replaced 2 teaspoon active quick rising dry yeast and 2 teaspoon salt with 1.5 teaspoon active dry yeast and 1.5 teaspoon salt. Used 1 1/4 cups warm water Do not have a machine so kneaded the dough by hand all the time, followed the resting times as mentioned in the recipe. Place this dough in a large lightly oiled bowl (I use Pam spray). Turn dough over so that all sides have a thin coating of oil. Cover with plastic wrap and set in warm place for 1 1/2 hours to let rest and rise. Dough should almost double in size. While the dough is rising, about 1 hour into the rising stage, preheat your oven to 450F My oven has only 250 Celsius maximum setting, so I preheated for 15 minutes on that temperature without a stone. My dough did NOT rise during the resting period of 1.5 hours. At least I didn't notice any visible changes in the dough size. Room temperature was 32 Celsius. If you are using a long cast-iron pot or covered baker: -> Before closing the lid on your pot/baker, put 1/4 cup of water directly in the pot. Cover immediately. I did that and didn't notice any visible steam. Then I put the dough inside on the baking sheet. Check temperature of the bread – internal should be 190-210F. Remove and let cool before cutting into it. Repeat with other loaf. I had set the temperature to be 200 Celsius since it hadn't mentioned the temperature of the oven while baking. It is here talking about the temperature of the bread. Should I have read it as temperature of the oven? :redface: Moreover, it didin't rise a bit in the oven even. Was it supposed to? (For convection ovens- bake 8 min covered, 10-12 min uncovered. Check temperature of bread) To re-crisp the crust, put in 375F oven for 5 minutes. What should I have covered here with what? I baked for 20 minutes at first. The dough surface was hard and the internal of the bread was NOT cooked. I baked for another 10 minutes and the bread crust got hardest. Internals weren't baked yet. I suspect that my fault was either improper measurement of yeast (don't have a teaspoon), or wrong temperature, or both. Please guide in detail.

There are some previous questions with good answers like this one, or this that go into much more detail than I'm about to. You said your bread didn't rise with the first rise, if you don't have a first rise you can't go onto the next step. If your yeast was old, or the temperature was cold in your kitchen or you used cold water in the dough, or the yeast came in contact with salt then its action could have been slowed down drastically and it would take much longer to get a rise. I've had a first rise take up to 4 hours in the past because of these factors. The times given in recipes are just guidelines, you have to be result-driven. Active dry yeast also takes longer than quick yeast to activate. When using active dry instead of quick yeast you would get better results by mixing it with the water before mixing in. I'd recommend using quick yeast as it's milled into smaller grains and you can mix it directly into the flour. Of course your yeast may have simply been dead, or killed by salt or heat. Get some good fresh yeast and store it in the fridge to keep it fresh long-term. Also, using all whole wheat flour isn't going to produce anything like a baguette. Whole wheat flour is very heavy compared to white flour and will take longer to rise. A half and half mix would work better. I'd recommend sticking to the recipe first, then gradually modifying it over time until you get your desired result.

They are new. Never opened. Sealed. Do I have to bother sterilizing both lid and bottle by immersing them separately in canner and pan? Or are they safe and sterile considering they are straight from factory?

You should sterilize your jars and lids before every use. The dust that gets on them between uses and even in the box is enough to warrant sterilizing. It doesn't take long. Running them through a cycle in the dishwasher with a steam or sterilization step is enough. I boil the lids in a small sauce pan. Edit Debbie M's comment below made me think that some clarification is warranted. Lids used to need to be heated to soften the seal so it would seal properly. That is no longer the case. Additionally, bottles and lids don't need to be sterilized if they are going to be processed for longer than 10 minutes or pressure canned. http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/general/recomm_jars_lids.html Foods that are processed less should have sterilized jars and lids. I am in the habit of washing them in the dishwasher which also sterilizes them.

I'm having trouble with some enamel-coated cast iron grill grates. I've only had this grill for a few years, I don't live on the beach (salt), we don't get much rain, and I store it outside but keep it covered when not in use. However, at this point I strongly suspect that the discoloration is rust, not old grease. It never goes away no matter how much I scrub (before and after every use), and over the last couple weeks I've tried: bathing them in Simple Green BBQ cleaner, hosing them off while scrubbing, running them through the dishwasher, and putting them in the oven on self-cleaning mode. Nothing seems to help, and it looks like they're actually crumbling. I've read all sorts of conflicting information about what's considered normal, how to handle cast iron, and so on, and I'm just not sure whether these are in the "a few specks of oxidized iron won't affect you in the slightest" territory, or "you need to throw those away today and stick with stainless steel from now on" territory. Stainless steel grates are not available for this model of grill (Coleman Roadtrip LXE), and the cast-iron replacements are about half the cost of the entire thing, so if these are no good I'll probably get a new, stainless steel grill. What do I do about these things? Update: After getting the answers below, I've been doing regular, minor grilling. After each session, I lightly scrub the grates, put a bit of oil on them, and lightly wipe down the oil with a paper towel. Over time, the rust spots darkened and started to look more like proper cast iron, which I suppose just means properly-seasoned cast iron. I grilled for a get-together a couple days ago, and it all seemed to work out fine. No flakes or other debris from the grates, no problems with sticking or anything, no apparent issues at all. From now on, I'll try to use it more regularly and wipe it down with a thin coating of oil after use.

"Are they OK to cook on?" can mean: Will I die within 24 hours after using them? No! Will I die within a few years? No! Will I get ill within a few years if I use them daily and lick all the juice off them after each use? Meh, very probably not! Does it look gross and might the food taste of rust? Yes! So, thoroughly clean them before each use with a copper wire brush and after each use, clean them again and then oil them with some nice olive oil¹ and a paintbrush as soon as possible after using them and continue using them regularly. ;-) Note¹: Don't soak them in olive oil: just some nice clean sweeps with the paintbrush lightly dipped in olive oil to make a thin film everywhere to prevent atmospheric oxygen from rusting it any further...

I boil rice often and then store them. Next day when I take them out of the fridge, they are lumped together in one structure. I can heat them and then press them to separate them. The same even happens within the pan in which I have cooked the rice, if I leave it alone for some 10s of minutes once the rice is ready. What do I do to keep the rice separate?

To get very separate rice I use a long grain rice, pre-rinsed and cooked at a 2 to 1 ratio of water to rice by volume. There are three factors that affect the tendency for rice to stick together: Length of the grain. Long grain is the least likely to stick together. Medium and short grain are starchier and are more likely to stick together. Amount of hydration. If your water to rice ratio is too high, it will cause even long grain rice to cake together. Cold rinsing. Rinsing your uncooked rice in cold water helps to wash away the excess starch. My basmati rice recipe calls for a rinse followed by soaking the rice in cold water for 30 min to an hour to ensure very fluffy separate rice.

I've found some good recipes for garlic knots, but can't get them to have that restaurant style brown tops to them. The best I can do is get them slightly brown at the top if I cook them longer than expected, on the verge of burning the bottoms. I have the same problem with pizza crusts too and some other rolls I've tried in the past. Is there a tip to get these to brown better in a regular home oven?

The usual tips for browning the tips of baked goods: move them higher in the oven, so there’s more top heat a milk wash, butter, or something with protein or sugar to brown Add sugar or protein to the dough Add baking soda to the dough (because acids inhibit browning, bases promote it) … but I would avoid that first one for garlic knots. Burned garlic is not good. And I assume they’re covered in butter already, so you will likely need to adjust the dough.

I went vegetarian for a while and now back on meat. but there is a lot of time the smell is repulsive like rotting flesh and death. My family member say its all in my head, but i am sure a real chef can help. I am looking for a way to take away that smell, what can I do/add to the meat?

Avoid cuts like liver that naturally have a strong flavor. Start slowly with lean cuts like chicken breats and tenderloin and use a lot of spices. Chicken and pork are good cuts for marinating a few hours before cooking. An acid marinate will naturally remove any odor or unpleasant taste.

Recently moved to the bay area, and it seems that everyone is advertising "Kobe beef burgers" on their menus. As someone who has been in Japan and tasted the real thing, it's quite clear to me that this isn't in any way related to Wagyū cattle especially considering the low pricing (<15$ per burger). So, does anyone here know why Americans are calling this meat "Kobe"?

It's for the same reason that all sparkling wine is in America is called 'champagne'. We don't participate in PDO / PGI / DOP / etc. agreements with most foreign countries. We do have requirements for specifically American-made items to have similar tules, such as Bourbon (so Jack Daniels is Tennessee Whiskey, not Bourbon). But just as America doesn't recognize the European protection for parmesean, champagne, etc, European countries don't recognize the American protections. I've talked to a local Wagyu farmer, and he said that true Kobe has to be processed in Japan (and he said it in an ambigous enough way suggesting that it might be possible for American-raised cattle to be shipped back to Japan for processing), and they're given a specific diet and treatment that doesn't happen in the US. (I also tried to talk him into selling me 1/2 a cow, and at the time (3-4 years ago?) he said it was in such high demand that all of his cows were sold before he even started raising them. At that time, Wagyu was still pretty rare in the US, and it was being sold as Wagyu ... it only seems to be more recently (last 1-2 years) that I've people selling it in the US as 'Kobe'. Most of the "American Wagyu" has also been cross-bred with an American cattle. (The story I've heard is that the sperm was brought over, not live cattle, so they had to start with American heffers). So it's going to have some percentage of Longhorn or Angus in it.

The book that came with my bread maker machine has bread ingredients and quantities in the back but I note that they aren't very consistent in terms of quantities. Take a look at this sourdough: I note that the 1.5lb loaf uses the same amount of sugar as a 1lb loaf, but a 2lb loaf uses 3x the amount of sugar as a 1lb loaf I'm hence wondering if I should use 2tbs of sugar, this being the halfway point between the 1lb loaf's 1 tbsp and the 2lb loaf's 3tbsp? Similarly they all use the same amount of yeast; does that seem right? By that pattern I could make a tonne of sourdough using only 1/3tsp of yeast! :)

Would this kind of zester (eg: from Williams Sonoma) be what you're thinking of?

I came up positive on test for alcohol after eating sautéed onions. SCRAM bracelet recorded alcohol in my system from 5 pm to 7 am. I did not drink alcohol, or use alcohol to make the onions. I read on another site about how cooking process of making sauteed or grilled onions can produce glycerol from the onion sugar and the heat from cooking. Glycerol is actually two alcohols. Could the onions have caused this?

Some conditions can cause alcohol to be produced in the human body (look up auto-brewery syndrome). Sauteed onions are common enough that if they made people come up positive on alcohol tests, I bet we would all know it.

I have some frozen precooked crab meat that I was going to use in a sauce for pasta but thought maybe crab cakes would be a nice change of pace. Does the fact that it has been frozen make it unsuitable because of texture change?

Most crabmeat is pasteurized, so the texture has already suffered a bit. Crab cakes are basically a binder, crab meat, and seasoning. The binder can add all sorts of interesting textures. There are recipes with Panko, bread flour, flour, eggs, ... If you are worried about it being dry, add mayo as @Darin suggested or increase the oil a bit. Look at the packaging, the crab meat may be already cooked, so you may get away with cooking it less.