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I recently received some homemade unfinished wood salad serving utensils as a gift, and like a dummy, I figured it would be safe to rub them down with some olive oil. Now, I've learned that since olive oil turns rancid, this was probably not a good idea. What should I do now? Is there any way to remove the olive oil f... | Do nothing, or maybe give them a soap wash. You seem to be very worried about what are very small effects. Sure, the oil can oxidize over time. It won't turn your utensils into a big ball of funk. You probably won't notice that much difference in reality. Maybe, if you hold them under your nose, the whiff will be dif... | |
Is there any reason an IPA beer would be bad or not work for a beer bread dough? Does it take longer, the same or short than a typical beer bread to rise? | Different sugars have different relative sweetness (in %) (Elmhurst College): Sucrose: 100 Fructose: 140 High fructose corn syrup (HFCS): 120-160 Glucose: 70-80 Lactose: 20 Relative sweetness of some non-sugar sweeteners (NutrientsReview): Aspartame: 180 Acesulfam potassium: 200 (in some diet colas) Stevia: 300 S... | |
My grandfather-in-law was born in England in the 1920s and fought in World War II. Somewhere along the line he acquired the habit of salting his beer before drinking it, which persisted for the rest of his life. I'm as curious about the cultural genesis of the practice as the food science of it – was there perhaps some... | I can think of several reasons why you might salt beer: Salt is a natural flavor enhancer, so you'd be able to taste the hops and malt more Salt reduces perceived bitterness, so overly hopped beer would taste less bitter The salt crystals may nucleate bubble formation, giving the beer more head (briefly) I've heard... | |
I discovered that I can buy cream cheese at 1/4 the price per pound, but only if I buy it as a solid 10 cm x 10 cm x 40 cm brick. Assuming I only eat 1/10th of this brick per week, is there any way I can store it so it does not go moldy in the meantime? | Most farro enthusiasts would say that there is NO substitute for farro. More realistically, you certainly have options. It would help if you clarified what type of recipe you were interested in making - in the absence of that information, I would suggest you consider barley if you're making a soup and quinoa if you'r... | |
I have done some calculation. And I think that if I buy a jar of spice from the supermarket, it is about 25 times more expensive (it costs more and you get a fraction of the amount) that getting a bag from my local Asian store. I am perfectly happy with the cheaper alternatives. But I find it hard to believe that the... | I am going to slightly disagree with the other two answers. First, here is an excerpt summarizing Alton Brown's opinion: The first step in learning how to cook with spices is learning where to find spices. Now here in America, we do have some indigenous spices: allspice, vanilla, chili peppers, all from here. But ... | |
What started out as a variation on a Sacher Torte has turned into a roulade (mostly to justify my recent purchase of a jelly roll pan). I think I've got it figured out exactly how I want to do it, except for one thing. I want to coat the whole thing in ganache, kind of like a giant Ho-ho. I'm going to be using pretty e... | You'll definitely want to freeze the cake. Once it's frozen, use a spatula to apply a layer of ganache to the side that will be the bottom of the cake, then return it to the freezer. Once that has set, put the cake, ganache/bottom down on a cooling rack on top of a sheet of parchment paper or acetate. Slowly pour your ... | |
What word can I use to accurately describe brisket of beef in French? I usually go to the butcher with a chart of US beef cuts and point to it but it neer seems to correspond to the same piece. Does anyone know the definitive translation? | It's not that simple. Every culture cuts their beef differently (or not at all!) and therefore has different names for it Around the Belgium, Dutch, French low lands they call what the US call brisket and flank, just flank. And what other parts of France might call brisket is not always cut separately, it is just part... | |
I am infusing olive oil with truffles. How can I do it safely? Heating the oil destroys the truffle smell and pickling it is a sure way to do the same. Are there any other methods? Perhaps some type of filter that will eliminate the particulates? | In this recipe, the nibs are being used as an accent ingredient, adding some crunchiness and a burst of chocolate flavor, as well as some bitterness. They are not essential to chemistry or overall outcome of the recipe. You may: Simply omit them Chopped or coarsely ground roasted coffee would have a similar profile... | |
I purchased this nice whole-leaf oolong tea this afternoon. I steeped it in 200 F water for 3 minutes (as directed) in my tea steeping basket: And when I pulled out the basket, there were some uninvited guests remaining: Did I do something wrong? I thought this was the kind of results to expect from tea "dust" th... | In Chinese tea "rituals" they "rinse" the leaves with hot water before steeping. Fill the pot with water and dump it out right away. Then fill your pot and continue as normal. This gets rid of the majority of the "dust". Like the others said, yes it's normal. | |
What are some good guidelines for judging the consistency and texture of a good pizza dough? I would like to know so I could make some corrections before it's too late! Maybe some people have some good rules of thumb or neat tricks to share? I would be more interested in the thin base italian style. The thinner the b... | My targets for the final dough: when I stretch it over my fist, once it has got to the size where it covers my whole fist, it starts to stretch under its own weight if the inside of the dough is exposed it will stick to hands/surface need to use semolina/cornmeal to transfer the pizza around contains lots of visible ... | |
Recently I saw a video that shows powdered milk can be whipped with cold water to make topping for cakes. I did a research on Google and yes, some articles/blogs said that it can be whipped. I actually tried myself using half and half powdered milk and whipped it with a hand mixer but it didn’t work, running like nor... | There are methods that whip very cold (up to semi-frozen) low-to-no-fat UHT milk to a whipped cream consistency using an immersion blender with the whipping disk. The key factors are temperature and fat content, for both, the lower the better. I would not recommend using this product for a cake, because the stability ... | |
I have a very simple recipe for homemade pasta dough (one egg to 100g flour, some oil), and found this worked great on my first small batch. I mixed it in a stand mixer and immediately rolled it out, using lots of flour to keep things from sticking. It was a bit thick, but I chalk that up to inexperience. On my second... | Pasta dough has to be sufficiently moist to be rolled properly. Rolling the pasta (in a pasta machine) aligns the gluten strands so they stretch out and become parallel to each other. If the dough is too dry, it is more difficult to align them. This is why it's a good idea to coat unused dough in a thin coating of oil... | |
I'm having trouble getting my pizza crust light , airy and crispy. I'm not sure if it's the mixing of the dough because I'm using a smaller mixer 20qt as opposed to my old 60qt. The bowl is not smooth and shiny and the dough hook doesn't appear to get close enough to the bottom of the bowl. It looks like the bowl was u... | Your 60 qt mixer is going to mix dough at a much different rate than your 20 qt, even if their rotation speeds are the same. Your hook to bowl clearance shouldn't be an issue unless you're getting an excessive amount of crusty dough on the bottom of the bowl. The condition of the bowl is negligible too. Most likely you... | |
Chicory is a common additive in Indian Coffee. A quick search in wikipedia reveals that it is usually 20-30% in coffee powder. Can coffee be made solely out of chicory? Does the chicory root contain caffeine or just the flavor profile of coffee? | Roasted chicory root (which is what you are adding to coffee) contains no caffeine. What chicory does is add a nice, roasted flavor to coffee, which is desireable either for cultural reasons, or to offset the bitter flavor of over-roasted low-grade coffee beans. Originally, it was also added because it was much, mu... | |
When making a cold deli meat sandwich or a burger, does layering the solid ingredients and condiments in a different order change the taste or mouth-feel? If so, how and why? Are there reasons to prefer one order to another? | Yes, it can change the taste quite significantly. Here's an easy experiment that you can do: Make a sandwich, but spread mustard on only one of the pieces of bread. Take a bite of the sandwich, mustard-side up. Take a bite of the sandwich, mustard-side down. Mouth feel is affected as well, but not quite as dramati... | |
Bear with me... I'm working on a pretty amazing ice cream. It's Dulce de Leche, made the kind of scary traditional way of boiling cans of sweetened condensed milk, then mixing that with a custard and freezing it in my ice cream maker. As a recipe, it's getting there. I use the scraped seeds of a vanilla bean in the mi... | Thank you, all of you, who contributed by answers or comments to the thinking that leads now to this answer. I listened to all of you, and it worked. I can't describe how tickled I am. Your suggestions opened my mind to thinking that this could still "work" even if it didn't quite go as I had hoped. As it turned out, t... | |
I have a cake recipe which calls for 1 1/3 cup of vegetable oil. What are the essential properties of vegetable oil in baking? What changes would be expected if I were to substitute peanut or canola oil for the vegetable oil? | Peanut and canola are vegetable oils. Vegetable oil is a catch-all term, it's not asking for a product labelled "vegetable oil" although you can buy it in the store. Oils labelled vegetable oil are blends and can be any proportion of things like canola (rapeseed), peanut, corn, sunflower, etc. Just don't use Olive oil,... | |
As discussed in What are the requirements for a dish to be kosher?, kosher food must follow various rules and procedures. I noticed a pattern in these rules which suggests some consistency with modern food scientists' understanding of food safety and handling. For example: Shellfish often contains harmful bacteria w... | While some of the kosher rules are food-safety rules developed by the Israelite priests (or given by God), the prohibition against mixing meat and milk is because of an ancient ritual that involved cooking the meat of a slaughtered animal in its mother's milk, a religious practice forbidden in Exodus 34:26 "... You sh... | |
Not having used sherry before, what is the type used when a recipe just calls for "sherry"? I see cream sherry, dry sherry, and very dry sherry at my local grocery store. Does brand matter much? | Cream sherry is very sweet - likely too sweet for most recipes that don't explicitly mention it. If a recipe simply calls for "sherry", it usually means dry sherry, as that's the most common kind of available. In fact, I don't think I've ever even seen "very dry" around here. So I would definitely stick with the dry... | |
I accidentally cooked a metal lid from an olive can in my spaghetti, but didn't find it until everyone had already eaten. Could my family get sick from it? | Very unlikely. Cans are made from either steel (uncritical) or aluminum (dito), covered with a thin layer of tin (dito) or epoxy coating. These materials are explicitly choosen because they are food-safe1, even at higher temperatures than you use with home cooking: Tin cans are sterilized after filling to make the foo... | |
http://www.sanjeevkapoor.com/vegetable-hot-and-sour-soup.aspx Are we here talking about Bamboo trees? Can we have a picture of Bamboo shoot? In what forms is it available? | Bamboo isn't a tree, it's a grass ;) A bamboo shoot is just the budding new bamboo that's harvested before it grows and becomes hard and stringy. Bamboo shoots are generally available in 2 forms, fresh and canned. Fresh ones are sold whole and generally used in stir fries. Canned bamboo shoots are precooked and pac... | |
This morning I began crockpotting my first (ever) pork butt in an attempt to make pulled pork. In preparation of this, two days ago I smeared the meat with a spice rub and put it in a large sealed bag in the fridge. I did this because the recipe I was following stated that giving the rub a few days to "sink in" to the ... | Marinades and Rubs are "surface treatments" only, they do not penetrate deeply into the meat. A brine is a deep treatment, which does penetrate by way of osmosis. For a quick explanation of this see Alton Brown's Good Eats | |
Occasionally it happens that I add to much creme fraiche to a pasta sauce. Recently this happened with a pasta that contained aubergine, courgette, white mushroom, onion, chicken and some pepper and salt. I added the creme fraiche in the last stage. This made the dish creamy, but also neutralised the flavour of the in... | French fried potatoes (or as the British say, chips) are a deep fried food. In fact, the US term "to french fry" orignally simply meant to deep fry, although simply "french fry" has now come to mean the dish of french fried potatoes. As such, they inherently are not a low fat or small-oil-volume food. If you are ask... | |
What could I use in place of milk in pancake batter? Would rice milk or soya milk work? What about in scotch pancakes? | Soy milk works great in pancakes. My basic recipe for pancakes is about a cup of flour, about a cup of soy milk, a tablespoon or two of sugar and veg oil, and a few teaspoons of baking powder. Works great, makes nice, fluffy pancakes. (I know, not a "recipe" so much as list of ingredients with approximate proportions, ... | |
Is it possible to prepare a (large) batch of roux and then freeze it, or will the texture and flavour be destroyed in the process? | You can freeze roux and store it up to 6 months without any problems. I put them in plastic ice-tray forms until they are frozen, then move them to a refrigerator bag. Just keep following things in mind: Leave a bit of room in the container before putting it in the freezer - roux expands when freezing. Bring it to r... | |
Yesterday, I made a sourdough loaf with a high hydration (80%) and as usual, when I turned it out of its banneton, it simply couldn't hold its shape and became very flat; only about 1 1/2 inches at the highest point. The recipe follows: Sponge: 50g water 50g spelt flour 100g starter (100% hydration) Sponge 344g water... | Hydration numbers aren't that meaningful by themselves -- whether an 80% hydration level can produce a high-rising free-form loaf will depend on a lot on the types of flours or grains that are used. (Usually, 80% hydration is most appropriate for flatter or roughly shaped breads: ciabatta, focaccia, pizza dough, rusti... | |
So i've taken it on me to make fresh mozzarella. I've read up on the task in some articles and with multiple recipes but for some reason I never succeed. The seperated curds always stay little crumbs and never take up the shape of solid blocks/curds/strands. This is the recipe i'm following: I use 1L pasteurized orga... | The problem is the organic milk. Or rather, the fact that organic milk available in grocery stores is high-temperature pasteurized, rather than conventionally pasteurized. That helps it keep a lot longer, but it disrupts the proteins so that they don't coagulate well enough for cheese. I'm told that there are brands o... | |
The "wonder pot" is a type of stovetop bakeware that seems to have been popular in Israel during a period of austerity. I'm looking for a (preferably USA based) supplier for a new one. Here's a link to a page with a photo of the item in question. | My mother had a similarly shaped pan with a lid that she'd use for baking coffee cake and such when camping. It was all aluminum and much less complicated (and likely not as useful) as what your talking about. The closest thing I found is the Omnia Oven. It looks they may be had for about $50. | |
I'm baking tonight and I'm out of All purpose flour. I'm lazy to run out to the grocery store. Can I replace All purpose flour with Maida (Maida is better known to Asian Indians - we use it for making Naans and such) | Maida is wheat flour similar to what is sold in the US as cake flour. Like cake flour, maida is finely milled, and it has less protein than all purpose flour. You can use it for bread and cakes, as well as chapatis, parathas and puris. To achieve a flour more like all purpose or other flour types, you can add gluten to... | |
I have a new tool. At Walmart they didn't seem to have the kind of potato masher I'm used to, so I bought this thing. (The can of soup is there for size reference.§) From a young age I'm used to the tool with a long stiff steel wire extending out of the handle about 3", zig-zagging on itself several times in a flat ... | There is no need to remove potato from the holes on each stroke, which appears to be what you are describing doing. Just pick it up and smash it down on some un-smashed potatoes until there are no more of those. The potato already smashed through the holes will eventually fall back into the pot during this process. Th... | |
I use my oven a lot to bake things and roast vegetables, usually at 350 or 400 F. It stays hot for a while afterwards, and it seems like such a waste to not somehow use that heat. Are there any dishes or kitchen maintenance things I can do with an off-but-still-hot oven? | Drying herbs is what I'll use residual oven heat for. | |
What's the difference between the following chocolates? Milk Dark Semi-sweet Bitter-sweet If a chocolate only lists the % cocoa solids used, can I figure out which of the above types it is? | Milk chocolate is unique in that it contains a significant quantity milk, either in the powdered, liquid, or condensed form. Dark chocolate is a category of chocolate that includes semisweet and bittersweet chocolate. The US FDA actually does classify dark chocolate as anything containing 35% or more cacao (liquor or ... | |
It's fairly known at most supermarkets and stores you can get regular, cheap wine. However, at some stores who dedicate themselves solely to liquor and spirits, they sell incredibly expensive wine, even up to $2k from where I've been. As someone who has tried a bit of wine and not quite fond of the taste, I'm mainly ... | There are several factors that increase price. Some are related to the objective quality of the wine, some indirectly linked, other are rather disconnected from quality (but not necessarily irrelevant, as we'll see). It's also worth noting that being of high quality doesn't necessarily mean being appealing to the aver... | |
So, usually christmas cake recipes call for wrapping paper/cardboard around the cake to insulate it a bit. (See this question: Why should I wrap a cake tin in newspaper?) I find myself lacking in newspaper but with a plethora of shipping boxes due to all the online purchases I've found myself doing recently. I happen ... | Your dough should be fairly flexible by the time you are ready to stretch it. I regularly make Neapolitan style pizza, and use a long ferment. It sounds like you are on the right track, and your photo looks like a good start. Each time you manipulate the dough the gluten structure tightens and the dough becomes more d... | |
I'm cooking a 2kg octopus at home. Can I eat the head, or just the legs? Update: Thank you to both answerers for the useful info. The head was amazing, as delicious as the legs! | The parts that are inedible in an octopus of any size are the "insides" and beak. If you got it frozen, no need to worry about the insides but if you caught it yourself, you need to turn its bag inside out (it will fight but once it's inside out it will calm down!) and remove the white soft stuff in there with your fin... | |
Help! I bought a Philips Pasta Maker. I love pasta and Asian noodles. The first time I used this machine the pasta was wonderful. Ever since, there have been problems. Mostly, the pasta is dry and in some cases, half of it has to be thrown out. I was using the recipes that came with the machine. Searching online, I fo... | Even with restaurant and high end home pasta extruders with more power and brass dies, extruded pasta is extremely finicky and at the mercy of local ingredients and environmental conditions. I would begin with 25% water to flour (try all semolina first or your mixture), then adjust until you find something you are hap... | |
I have a really good chocolate chip cookie recipe. I'd like to convert this recipe to have a chocolate dough (ie make chocolate chocolate chip cookies). How can I convert it without losing the texture of chocolate chip cookies? Here is the recipe, if that helps 2 1/2 cups flour ¾ cup sugar ¾ cup brown sugar Tbs ... | Replace 1-2 tbsp of the flour with cocoa powder, depending on how chocolatey you like your cookies. | |
I live in Toronto, Canada. I buy my mussels from Diana's Seafood or Loblaws. I wonder if the quote beneath from Mussel Myths & FAQs - The Cornish Mussel Shack holds true for Canada too? Do I need to soak my mussels in water and oatmeal? No. This used to be done to help purge the mussel of any grit. All commer... | In regards to the first of the two questions you asked, " [does] the quote beneath from Mussel Myths & FAQs - The Cornish Mussel Shack holds true for Canada too?" Do I need to soak my mussels in water and oatmeal? No. This used to be done to help purge the mussel of any grit. All commercially sold mussels legally... | |
A long time ago, I read somewhere, that there is a very specific reason, why we put salt in the water for cooking pasta: The point is to hinder the water from absorbing flavor and nutrients from the pasta. With soup its the other way around: We want to absorb the flavors into the water, which is why we salt it only at ... | As a chemist, I'd say that you have it all wrong. You add salt to pasta water to have the salt infuse into the pasta. So as the dry pasta absorbs water, salt comes into the pasta too. Salted pasta tastes better than unsalted pasta. Salted soup tastes better than unsalted soup. Salt enhances our perception of the fla... | |
I have been buying fresh berries from the store on the weekends, and am looking for the best way to make them last throughout the week for use as either a snack or as a component for salads. The blueberries last the longest, and I can usually salvage enough by Thursday or even Friday, but the blackberries and raspberr... | Store them unwashed. Take out any "bad" ones. I've had decent luck adding some paper towels to wick away extra moisture that seems to speed up the spoilage. Martha Stewart suggest going even further and spreading them out on paper towels on a sheet pan. I have no idea who keeps a fridge empty enough that they can store... | |
My recipe calls for an oven temp of 425 degrees but my pan can only withstand 350 degrees per manufacturers instructions. If the original recipe called for 15 minutes at 425 degrees. How long would it be at 350 degrees? | The best solution is - use a different pan if you want the recipe's advertised results. If something is baking at 425 F for only 15 minutes, it's very likely that you need that high heat to get the result you want - which is generally going to give you a toasty, well-browned exterior and a cool, just done interior. ... | |
One of my coworkers had a curious question the other day: what kind of mixture or colloid is a roux? For example, whipped cream is a foam, mayonnaise is an emulsion, and gelatin is a gel. I know part of creating a roux is the gelatinization of the starch in the flour, but does that make a roux a gel? Or is it somethi... | I would suggest that a roux is a hydrocolloid. | |
Do pineapples ripen after they are picked? I had alway thought you could leave them on the counter to ripen, however, I recently heard they don't ripen after they are picked. | Pineapple softens, but not sweeten on shelf ripening. Fruit ripening is usually due to exposure of unsaturated hydrocarbons e.g. ethylene. This phenomenon occurs in fruit known as "climacteric fruits". Well known examples are banana, avocado, tomato, apple, pear, kiwi, to name a few. Pineapple is not a kind of clima... | |
If my espresso shot appears to be extracting too quickly, what factors could be causing this? What should I change to try to get a better result? | Actually they recently came up with a reliable test for civet coffee. Apparently a great deal of supposedly authentic stuff never actually traveled through the bowels of a cat. According to the abstract, the levels of citric acid, malic acid, and the inositol/pyroglutamic acid are so much higher in kopi luwak that the... | |
This weekend I attempted to make this recipe for brioche. I did the first step and combined the the milk, yeast, 1 egg and 1 cup of flour which caused very big clumps and then I added the sugar. I then did the 2nd through the 5th steps but the clumps stayed and the dough was really wet (like pancake batter) so I trie... | Well 1.5 cups is volumetric so the weight will depend on how tightly packed that cup is, if they are chopped, etc. On average though, 1.5 cups of chopped hazelnuts is about 6.08 oz (172 g) according to the USDA's averages. You can check the USDA's National Nutrient Database page for hazelnuts if you want to see estim... | |
So, I've got a 2-3dl batch of lacto-fermented hot sauce in the works. Approximately half the vegetables in the ferment are large brown habaneros and the other half is sweet pepper, ginger and some slices of carrot to get the ferment going. So, I expect the sauce to last me quite some time. Therefore, I'm planning on p... | According to the US FDA, normal pastuerization for fruit juice would be 160F for 6 seconds. This should be easily accomplished in a hot water bath; just heat up the water to 160f, and dip the bottles. However, a fermented sauce made with chopped peppers has poor circulation compared to fruit juice, and you are heatin... | |
The idea is, to put a regular pot in a larger pot full of water and heat the larger pot with a sous-vide stick. Would this accurately simulate a crockpot? The only downside I can see, is that typical sous-vide sticks can not reach the temperature of the highest setting on a crockpot. Are there any other important di... | Would this accurately simulate a crockpot? No. Most crockpots operate on the principle of having a relatively low-powered heating element that very slowly raises the temperature of food over several hours. In many slow-cooking dishes, that additional time spent at lower temperatures is useful in breaking things ... | |
I've bought and tried various types of glassware for cocktails. Glasses for typical shaken drinks include a cheap martini glass (165 ml), a nick and nora style glass and a coupe (125 ml), among others. This matches with sizes found in shops around the web, where they might even go higher in volume. However, the basic ... | Despite what many bars, convenience stores, and fast food restaurants would have you believe, drink glasses are not intended to be "filled to the brim" (or even close). This is particularly true of cocktails and other spirits. The 'head space' allows the drinker to swirl (or, if they have had a few, 'slosh') the drink ... | |
I put ground beef in the fridge 3 days ago and it's still frozen! Why isn't it thawing like normal? | Either you've insulated it or your fridge is really cold. I suggest using a thermometer to check your fridge temperature. Parts of your fridge may be at slightly different temperatures than other parts; it may help to move it to a warmer part of the fridge (if that can be done safely, you don't want it dripping on you... | |
I have my corned beef cooking in my crock pot for about 6 hours on low. Should the meat be falling apart by now? It is still one big hunk of meat. I thought it would be ready in about 1.5 hours. Should I bump it up to high? Thanks! | This year, I slow cooked corned beef for about 8 hours in my crock pot. The slow cooker was set to high for the first 4 hours and set to low for the last 4. The meat didn't "fall apart" when I took it out, rather it kept its form and allowed me to slice it (against the grain). I should mention that I had the corne... | |
I'm making a savory pie - basically stew in a pie crust. Do I want to parbake the bottom crust of my pie for this? Will doing so make it more or less likely that the bottom crust ends up as a soggy mess? I'm not sure if or how the contents being stew instead of fruit will change how the whole thing cooks. My plan for... | No, simply because there's no way to attach the top crust to the bottom crust, once the bottom crust is parbaked. In general, pot pies are not pre-baked. | |
I'm using the "Saturday White Bread" recipe from Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast. I'm very happy with the results so far, except for the irregularity of the bubbles. Here's my loaf: For contrast, here's a photo of the same recipe from Forkish's book: His bubbles are not perfectly uniform, but they are a lot more... | Given that the second picture is what you desire, your bread is over proofed. The large irregular bubbles and flat or sunken overall shape is indicative of such. There are a couple of things you can try: Make sure to form the loaf such that it has a nice taught skin on the outside prior to final proofing. You will no... | |
I forgot to fry the onions before grinding it. Now I have added the ground raw onions with masala to make semi liquid sambar(gojju), how do I get rid of raw smell? Should I keep heating the Bindi gojju? | In my experience, a combination of acid (lemon juice/tomatoes/tamarind paste) and heat(temperature) is used to cut the taste of raw onions. You will need to continue frying the raw onion and masala mixture until it separates from the oil, which is a good indicator of the doneness of the onions as well as the spices. If... | |
I use flour to coat, including the ends, and I use toothpicks to hold the wider part shut. Even when I try to fold the cutlet envelope style, most of my cheese melts out. I cook them on the stove top with butter. Is there another technique that would prevent that? P.S. I use Swiss cheese. | The most common reason for leakage with Cordon Bleu Chicken is that the packets are too thick, which makes it impossible to get a perfect fold; you need to pound the breasts very thin - less than 1/2", maybe a little more than 1/4". The other "trick" is to make a small cut along the folded edge of the breast after you... | |
I recently purchased a Dexter-Russell carbon steel Chinese cleaver, because they're supposed to be amazingly useful. I'm used to caring for good stainless steel knives, but don't know what special things I should do for carbon steel. So far, I always wash and dry it immediately after use, and do normal honing/sharp... | For my carbon steel knives (including my cleaver), I make very sure to wash & completely dry them after use. When I've used it on something acidic, this is especially true. I've never had a problem unless I've forgotten, or haven't completely dried it. When rust does happen in those cases, it's the only time my knife s... | |
I have a few recipes that call for flaked salt, I can only seem to buy it in bulk 1kg bags here. I want to know that if you use "salt" in a recipe does it really matter to the final taste what kind of salt you use. I do understand that for example when I use it on top of a foccaacia bread or something similar it does c... | Salt (Sodium chloride) is salt. As a topping, flakes are commonly used purely for presentation purposes only. The taste is the same, but gets more intense as the salt particles get finer, so use less if the salt is in powder form As an ingredient, use any form you are happy with, and is economical to use. Once salt is... | |
As I understand it, it is due to the relative atmospheric pressure that water boils at lower temperature further above sea level: 70C at the top of Mt Everest, for example. Surely, then, the water could not get hot enough (and remain liquid) to brew a cup of tea? Or is that the water be boiling the important property,... | Tea brewed under different conditions will taste slightly differently. So no, on a high mountain, you cannot get absolutely the same taste as when brewing at sea level. So no, it is not the boiling state of the water which determines the exact taste of the tea, it is the combination of all parameters, including tempe... | |
I've been making margaritas and I've found that, unlike fancy bar/restaraunt bought margaritas, my margaritas come out more like a liquid drink with shaved ice sitting in it than a mixture. I have a Margarittaville mixer for proper shaved ice, but the final drink lacks the same thickness I'm used to in a margarita; the... | If the restaurant or bar is using a margarita mix, they frequently contain additional syrups and stabilizing gums or starches which add body to the drinks. It could also be that the high powered blenders frequently used in bars will be better at creating a smoother and thicker texture, or a more 'emulsified' slush. If... | |
I am not a very good cook. I have tried making stews or casseroles. I put meat, vegetables and potatoes in a casserole dish in the oven, a slow cooker, or on the hob in a low heat. Sometimes the potatoes dissolve, and give me a delicious thick sauce. Very nice. Quite often, though, I'm left with tasteless white lumps ... | The effect you are looking for is not congruent with typical preferences. Most cooks and eaters, on finding that the potatoes have disintegrated in their stew, would call them "overcooked". So you cannot rely on recipes to produce this result - most are geared towards having potatoes remain in distinct cubes. There are... | |
Do they refer to the same kind? Or is there a subtle difference? And what essentially encapsulates the concept of a sausage being sweet? Is it typical sucrose driven sweetness inherent to the product...or the resultant chemical aftertaste on consuming it? Cooking geeks unite! We have a problem. | Both sweet and mild refers to the sausages without hot red pepper flakes. The fact they are called sweet Italian sausages doesn't mean they contain sugar. | |
My question is a kind of follow-up to this. When apples have turned soft or have started to shrivel, is it possible / advisable to but them through a juicer? From the linked question is would appear that they have started to dehydrate, so I wouldn't expect to get much juice from them. | It's not going to hurt anything. The apples they use for cider are usually pretty rough, so a little wrinkling isn't going cause a health issue. You very well may not get as much juice, but the juice you will get will be more concentrated. The same principle applies to grapes used for wine...Ideally they will get ver... | |
I don't normally make a lot of confections but decided recently to try a few new things. Yesterday I used this recipe for Turkish delight which I originally found on the Hydrocolloid Recipe Collection. It uses agar as the gelling agent and appears relatively easy to prepare (that's why I tried it). Basically you jus... | I've worked with agar a lot, and made a few things from the HRC. Of all of the things you've identified as possible problems, I think the biggest likely ones are the quantity of agar, and the agar powder itself. Everything else about the cooling issue is normal. Agar powders do vary. You want to find one that is pure, ... | |
I'm at the point where I will completely avoid certain recipes simply because they require sifting and I find it incredibly tedious. Is there a better method? A better tool? A magic sifter? | Use a food processor to aerate the flour and mix other dry ingredients in. As a bonus for me, the food processor bowl can go in the dishwasher. I have to hand-wash my sifter. | |
Macarons, financiers, ricciarellis are all made from egg whites and almond flour. Is there a reason why egg whites get along so well with almond flour, and why yolks do not have a place in these recipes? It is easy to see why in macarons since macarons are meringue based cookie, but financier does not use meringue and ... | There is nothing special about the combination, you seem to have stumbled over a case of confirmation bias :) Here I made a table with examples. The table is by no means complete, it contains the first things that came up in my head. As you see, all other combinations of whole eggs or egg yolks work with almonds, othe... | |
I was improvising with some scrambled eggs, and decided to put a spoonful of white sugar in while cooking them. The recipe was good, but the subsequent coating of egg on the teflon pan was very difficult to scrub off. I suspect that the sugar made it "stickier," perhaps, or maybe was more inclined to burn onto the pan.... | Melted and re-hardened sugar (including caramel) is very difficult to remove through mechanical action, but trivial to remove by soaking. Just pour in enough hot water to cover the sugar and wait an hour or so. (If oil was used, add some dish soap.) For a quicker turnaround, you can simmer the pot with the water on the... | |
One instruction in a new barbecue sauce recipe I'm trying out is to take the pot of simmering sauce and run it through a blender or food processor. I have now learned the hard way that blending hot liquid will cause the lid of the blender to explode off... there is barbecue sauce coating my kitchen, and I have some n... | It can be a bit tricky, here are a couple of tips: Use a lot less liquid in the blender than normal. Do batches if needed. Vent the lid so the steam can escape. A lot of lids have a center piece that can come out. Using less liquid will stop stuff coming out the top. As Ocaasi suggests, you can cover the open lid with... | |
I made bread the other day and kneaded the dough by hand. The recipes everywhere ask for warm water, which is understandabe for the yeast to rise. When my mother kneads dough using the same recipe, it turns out much softer and her bread in turn is softer. I wonder if it is because her hands are generally warm and min... | The temperature influences the speed of rising, but to significantly change the dough hardness, you need a very cold temperature. Even if your hands are "cold", they are certainly above air temperature, and firming up dough through coldness is only possible if you use very cold ingredients, below fridge temperature (4 ... | |
I have seen many videos online and by chefs on tv, showing how to truss a chicken. What is your way of trussing a chicken? They all seem to have a different technique, and I am interested in a possible easier method. | I always store mine in the pantry. I use it frequently enough that sprouting is rarely an issue. If you need it to last longer you can freeze garlic, though I have never needed to. Shelf Life An unbroken bulb of garlic can last 3-5 months in a cool (55-60 F) dark place. Once broken, the remaining cloves last only abo... | |
I've made a bechamel sauce and added sherry to it, herbs, etc; the sherry is too overpowering. How can I correct that? | Bechamel sauce is only flour milk and butter. Even with the sherry, it's not a big expense. If you make a mess of one batch it's probably best just to bin it and start a new. Diluting it down with more sauce may work by your probably just going to end up with loads and loads of sauce that you'll never eat. | |
I've been looking for a soda bread recipe to try and I notice that most of them contain buttermilk. Buttermilk is not a standard part of my pantry. Part of the appeal of soda bread is that it's quick to throw together, so having to go shopping for a specific ingredient interferes with the spontaneous aspect. I kno... | Buttermilk has a delicious flavor that is not at all approximated by lemon juice. It's true that lemon or vinegar with milk will clabber it a little and provide the acid that the recipe needs but the flavor will be distinctly lacking. Get some buttermilk. It's inexpensive and has a longer shelf life than normal milk... | |
I tried to improvise a tomato soup following these steps: Slice tomatoes, briefly stir-fry for aroma, together with some onions, garlic pepper, salt, and a bit of sugar. While still hot, purée all together into the blender. The result was quite bad: the soup thickened (a bit like jelly) and turned red-brown, rather... | One of the first things I learned in Indian cooking is that the combination of tomatoes, onions and ginger is self-thickening. As time went by, I realised that the thickening effect is far more noticable with old varieties of tomatoes - "beef" tomatoes and a lot of the modern varieties are difficult to thicken unless p... | |
What is the difference between Gammon and Bacon? Would it be generally reasonable to substitute the two as required? | According to my local friendly butcher, Gammon is a type of bacon that is specifically from the hind quarters. Bacon is defined as any pork that has been cured through a process of salting, either as a dry-cure or a wet-cure where the meat is either packed in salts or brine respectively. With wet curing, other ingredi... | |
Can you mix all dry ingredients for a cake and place ingredients in container and make cake the next day? | There are a few questions on this site about French fries, I'd suggest you take a look. But I think the best answer is: baked sticks of potato do not French fries make. French fries are deep fried. You can never get the same results in air, although air fryers do come close. A normal oven bakes, not fries. Here are so... | |
I have attempted to make thai beef meat balls for about 10 times now and failed almost everytime. Thai beef meat balls need to be stretchy and have a chewy texture when finished. I have tried mince with no fat, mince with 10% fat, high quality mince with no fat, still cannot get the right finished texture like the on... | I read the key is to keep the meat cold and to put in the freezer to keep it that way then take it out before it freezes solid and you do this several times during the process right up to cooking. | |
I made salsa last week, and processed the jars (quarts) for 20 minutes (may have been 25, I forgot to note exactly when the water started to boil). I got my times mixed up for the salsa and some applesauce that I was preparing to can also, so I didn't process the salsa long enough. Can I reprocess the salsa? Do I ... | In general, if jars are improperly processed or don't seal, you reprocess them exactly the same way you did the first time. This doesn't depend on the original recipe; you just have to do the exact same thing over again. In your case, since it sounds like your original process was hot pack, you would have to open the j... | |
My first ever stab at french fries, and 20 minutes with olive oil and seasonings in the oven preheated at 450*F was not enough to make them crisp. They were cut thick. Could I simply cook them longer to dry them up? They have the texture and consistency of a baked potato.... except the skins are crisp | There are a few questions on this site about French fries, I'd suggest you take a look. But I think the best answer is: baked sticks of potato do not French fries make. French fries are deep fried. You can never get the same results in air, although air fryers do come close. A normal oven bakes, not fries. Here are so... | |
I made some fresh pasta for myself, but the recipe made double the amount I need. I didn't have time to make the rest of the pasta and dry it, so I just wrapped the dough ball in plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge. How long will the dough last in the fridge? I can probably use it tomorrow or in the next 2 days... | Paul, I make my own pasta dough frequently. Since my standard recipe makes around 40oz (1 kg) of dough, I always have leftover, so I've had plenty of experience with saving it. Even with eggs, pasta dough will be fine in the fridge for a week; the texture will be unaffected (if anything, it will be better). If you ... | |
I used potato starch instead of cornstarch, as a thickener and forgot to make a slurry first. Unfortunately, the bisque isn't a pureed bisque, it's mushroom, celery and onion. After I realized my mistake, I then added more as a slurry and was able to properly thicken it. But it still has the slimy clumps, very unappet... | One possible option might be to pick out as many of the vegetable chunks as you feel reasonable, then puree the rest. You'll end up with a thicker soup body, and fewer vegetable chunks, but it might not be a bad tradeoff to get rid of the lumps. Or (depending on amount and proportion of liquid to vegetable) strain th... | |
A recipe calls for coating (slightly cooked) fennel bulbs in flour before roasting them, presumably to obtain a bit of a crust. Is there anything I could coat them with that is gluten-free? | Rice flour should work well for this; it produces very crispy crusts. | |
I have a "small" household dehydrator, it is similar to this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_dehydrator#/media/File:Tomato_in_food_dehydrator.jpg Now, I've tried to dry fruits (mainly bananas, cut into thin slices) with it several times. Usually I let it run for 6 to 8 hours at 70 °C (the machine has a power... | It is possible to dry fruit with a household machine. How long it takes will depend on the relative humidity. When I lived in Texas, drying would take 24 hours- sometimes more. Now that I'm in a high altitude desert drying is sometimes done in less than 6 hours. At very high humidity fruit may get moldy or just too o... | |
This is definitely one of the weirder questions I've asked, but is there any easy way to massage an octopus? I recently watched the movie "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" and in that movie they show the massaging of the octopus which Jiro insists must be done for 50 minutes. There is no way I am going to spend an hour massaging ... | In the olden days fishermen used to "beat" or hit the octopus against a rock on the shore repeatedly. The main purpose of this endeavour was to soften its hard texture, so that it would take less time to cook it. The other (and more modern) option is to put a fresh octopus in a freezer and let it deep freeze for at lea... | |
I received a wooden butter knife in the mail fairly recently: now my only question is this, will it need sanding to maintain its food worthiness or does it require something else to keep it food safe? I got it from Amazon.com if it helps. | It's hard to say exactly without knowing what wood it's made out of and how it was constructed - there are many factors to the durability of wooden tools and utensils. If all you are using this for is spreading butter, margarine and the like then you shouldn't need to do too much care, just wash it and especially dry i... | |
I really enjoy snacking on steamed vegetables lightly sprinkled with some salt and pepper, especially broccoli. However I find that steamed fresh broccoli has a slightly sulfuric smell that smells a little bit like fart. I was wondering if there is anything I can do to lessen that smell. | Cook it less, if you can. The more you cook it, the more you get that smell. Perhaps you are just more sensitive to it than most; I don't generally notice it until it's overcooked by my standards. Along with this, cook it as fast as you can. The flavor you don't like is produced by enzymes converting precursor molecul... | |
The last time I made pancakes, while they were nicely cooked on the outside, they were still a bit "battery" in the middle. Does anyone has a simple solution to try? | You might try reducing the cooking heat a little, say on medium heat. That way, the middle will finish cooking without the outside being overcooked. And usually when you flip a pancake it should be almost entirely cooked through anyway. You want to flip when the bubbles are pretty set on the top. | |
I have read somewhere (don't remember where, long time ago) that tea enthusiasts clean their tea pots only with water and without soap. Additionally they only rinse it and don't use a scrub to remove the residues. Is this actually a good practice or simply a quirk? Consider that I don't always drink the same tea, does... | How, and if, you clean your tea pot depends both on what your tea pot is made out of, and your personal preference. The only time I've ever seen it recommended that you avoid cleaning agents entirely when cleaning a tea pot is if it is made out of clay. The reason for using only water is because unfinished clay pots, ... | |
I am an amateur hobbyist cook. So a lot of the time I will toss in a dash of something, taste the dish, and add a bit more. Experimenting sometimes with disastrous results... but I learn :) One spice that I am having a hard time figuring out is the bay leaf. I use it when called for, and have sometimes experimented wi... | I don't know how you would describe the flavor of bay--I would call it a subtle savoriness, with a complex aroma. Bay is very tough--almost sharp. It is generally not eaten directly. Instead, the whole leaf (or several whole leaves) are put into a dish or sauce to cook with it, then removed prior to service. The s... | |
For scones can I mix cold butter with self raising flour and then add the wet ingredients the next day. This is to save time in the morning? | If it's only been soaked briefly, these options might be for immediate eating even if they'd otherwise keep. They're necessarily fairly general solutions as I don't know what sort of fruit you've got. Drain well and cover in dark chocolate. This works best for pieces that are 1-2 bites; smaller would be nice to eat ... | |
When heating up cold food in microwave it oftens comes out pretty dry, and I like juicy food. So I add 1 or 2 teaspoons of olive oil on the food before heating it. I'd be easier though if I had some kind of small device | I did a cheap kitchen hack by reusing an empty Sriracha bottle after cleaning and drying it up for my oil drops. Here is how the bottle looks: And it is perfect for dropping oil. The nozzle also lets me increase or decrease the diameter of the oil drop. If you don't happen to like this sauce, try it with some Asian... | |
I've made omelettes in this pan before without any problems, but fried eggs are impossible to make without sticking.I heat the pan, throw few drops of water and check if they move around (some would say like mercury), lower the heat, pour oil and then put eggs in.I've tried to monitor the temperature carefully to make ... | I solved this problem by using a spray on (canola oil), instead of liquid (canola oil). | |
I made chili and it's too hot! If I cook it longer will the heat calm down? | Acids tend to reduce the heat of chilli, so you could try adding some vinegar or lime juice. If that makes the dish too acidic, add some sugar to balance it out. Dairy also reduces the heat so you could serve with sour cream and/or cheese, or even stir some butter into the chilli, which would also give it a slightly ri... | |
I love fresh bread, and when I buy it I store it at home in a plastic bag. After 2-3 days it has probably lost about 60% of its overall quality. I've been using some vacuum storage bags and found that the bread can be great up to a week later! This made me think about how I'd love to have a box or chamber on the count... | Bread gets dried out and stale through retrogradation which requires moisture. Your vacuum bags are not keeping the bread fresh because of the vacuum, they are keeping it fresh by providing a very tight seal that prevents the bread from absorbing moisture from the atmosphere. A larger vacuum box would provide the sam... | |
I use an old convection oven. I usually preheat at 180°C for 10 mins. Recently I bought an oven thermometer and found that the oven temperature after the said duration was higher than 180°C, around 210°C-220°C. Is this normal? | Sadly, yes. Your oven most likely has been running too hot for a while and now that you are actually measuring it, you noticed it. We have a lot of Q/As on the site that recommend using a separate oven thermometer whenever an oven behaves strangely. Thermostats can fail or be generally incorrect, like too hot or too co... | |
I have a recipe for grilling a pear crisp that calls for grilling for 15 to 20 minutes over indirect medium heat. Can I instead bake this in an oven? At what temperature should I bake it? | The basic technique that I've found effective is to "dry fry" them in a pan to allow water to cook off before adding any other wet or fat ingredients, including oil or butter. If you skip this step, you'll often end up with a bit of a rubbery texture. I recommend cooking them in a small cast-iron pan, but a nonstick pa... | |
I have a bread pudding recipe I like, but would like to make it firmer. How would I go about this ? | Honey is acidic with a pH of 3.9- that's more acidic than some oranges. There is also quite a lot of honey in this recipe that will give the acid the baking soda needs to react. In this recipe, both the egg whites and the baking soda are going to provide some leavening. Without the soda the cake will undoubtedly be a ... | |
I noticed that my grocery store sells jalapeño that is "nacho sliced". How is this different (if at all) than just normal "sliced"? I do understand that the product on the right is labeled "no heat", and that is a significant difference between these products. I am not asking what the difference between these produc... | As near as I can determine, "nacho sliced" is simply a marketing term for such pre-sliced, pickled jalapeno peppers. A quick Google for the term brings up several brands which appear identical to one another. There are also similar combinations of the words such as "nacho jalapenos, sliced". The bottle on the right ... | |
I have high-ish blood pressure and the doctor said keep the salt under control. It is easy to ration controlled amounts of salt when cooking large amounts of stews and similar foods and you add salt by teaspoon. But I don't really make stews that much, most of my cooking are single or double servings that I just salt... | You may need to practice sprinkling salt -- Get a large piece of paper or plastic, that's preferably not white. Sprinkle some salt on it. Try from different heights. You might also try different types of salt (I find coarser salts easier to control) Roll up the paper (or plastic), so you can pour the salt back int... | |
I made a ginger carrot soup with coconut milk but accidentally made it too salty, how do i fix it? From some google searches - one said to put raw potatoes to absorb the salt. I am not sure if that will work for the soup as it is a thick carrot soup. Adding water would make it watery. Does anyone have any other method... | Steam a head of cauliflower, puree it. Add it to the soup. You might also consider some squash or sweet potato puree. | |
This question addresses how to keep pasta from sticking after it has been cooked. This question is what I want, but was wrongly closed. All the answers from the first address the sticking post-boiling, and my problem is the sticking during boiling. How can I prevent this from happening? | Simply put, you have to stir them the first three/four minutes of cooking. Be sure to boil them in enough water (at least 1 liter per 100 grams). In addition to that be sure to buy some good quality pasta. From my knowledge pasta tends to stick when the wheat used is of poor quality. A good pasta should not be transpar... | |
I've never canned or pickled anything; however, I'm keen to give it a shot. However, I'm the only one in my family who likes cucumber pickles, so it might take me a while to go through a batch. There are a lot of recipes out there for "refrigerator pickles" which only keep for a few weeks; what steps are taken in a rea... | Pickle recipes meant for longer-term storage will include instructions for sealing the jars. While some recipes may have you use hot jars and hot brine that will result in a fairly reliable seal ratio (meaning most of the jars will properly seal), other recipes will have you put the filled and closed jars in a boiling... | |
I am a relatively experienced amateur when it comes to making pizza, especially pizza doughs. I recently went to Italy and enjoyed some calzones with super-thin crusts. My standard recipe for a pizza crust is essentially the following: 1.5 cups bread flour 1 cup whole wheat flour (or all-purpose) 0.5 cups semolina ... | Don't use whole wheat flour if you want a strong or thin crust. The shards of bran in the whole wheat flour will cut the strands of gluten, weakening the crust, which prevents it from being stretched very thin. You can verify for yourself by performing the windowpane test. |
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