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Trouble making a crunchy dog treat
I am very new to recipe development and I am trying to replicate a dog treat. The store bought treat is hard and crunchy. Using just the ingredient list, when I try to bake the same thing, it comes out looking similar yet when I go to pick it up it immediately crumbles.
I have done some research and I think the issue is around the fat to flour ratio. Basically, no gluten is forming. I have adjusted ratios 4 different times but still no luck. I am wondering if anyone has any ideas on how I can use the below ingredients to make a crunchy treat.
Ingredients to work with:
Wheat Flour, Wheat Bran, Peanut Butter, Peanuts, Ground Brown Rice, Oil
I’ve adjusted the amount of peanut butter and oil to various ratios but every time it comes out crumbling to the touch.
The last thing I tried was:
1 c wheat flour
2/3 c wheat bran
1/3 c ground brown rice
14 tbsp peanut butter
2 tbsp corn oil
1/4 c ground peanuts
baked for 20 minutes @ 350
I can pick it up and turn it into sand in my fingers... | Right, I'm not a hands-on baking expert, but some of the reasons your gluten may be having trouble are that
the gluten-containing flour makes up a quite small proportion of the overall mixture,
you have other ingredients (namely: the oil, the fat in the peanut butter, and the wheat bran) that act to minimise your gluten development and
there's very little moisture in your mixture
Not much flour
This one's pretty straightforward; the less of your dry mass of ingredients is wheat flour, the less glutenin and gliadin (the precursors to gluten) you have in the mix, so the less gluten can be formed. It's possible that the amount of flour you have now is sufficient though, if its gluten development is not further sabotaged by the other factors. If you want, you might replace some of the ground rice, wheat bran, and ground peanuts with more regular flour, though I'd probably try that after I tried some of my other suggestions.
Anti-gluten ingredients
Fat has the effect of both lubricating the components of gluten against one another, making them more likely to slip and not form the tough, elastic mesh we know and love from our breads, and also of isolating the gluten from water, which it needs to form properly; there's a reason gluten doesn't form in a bag of flour sitting in your pantry and that reason is there's no water to activate it. The fat can coat your glutenous proteins and make it harder for the water to get in there and do its thing. Wheat bran, separately, has a bit of fat in it, but also has a lot of 'sharp edges' on a small scale, which can slice through gluten strands as they form and inhibit, again, the protein mesh from forming. Cutting back on these ingredients might help the gluten develop somewhat, though I'd still try that after my third suggestion, namely:
Add some water
As I said, gluten needs water to develop; bread doughs regularly have flour-to-water mass ratios of 2:1 or even 3:2, which would correspond to baker's hydration percentages of 50% or roughly 70% respectively. I don't think this recipe needs that much water, but right now the only ingredient in your list that I can see is adding any free water at all is the peanut butter, and even that isn't much. I imagine your dough for your past experiments has been very 'tender' and crumbly, barely held together by the fat content, more than the water and gluten. Try adding water, maybe a half cup at first, and probably more, until you have something you can vaguely knead. It won't be anywhere close to as stretchy as normal bread dough, due to all the non-flour ingredients, but there should be some amount of stretch to it. |
How can I render bacon fat without frying it?
I wanted to render the fat from some bacon to produce bacon grease.
The usual advice that you see on the internet is to simply fry whole strips of bacon at a low heat, for a longer period, and the fat will melt away from the meat proper. That normally works for me.
The other day I wanted to try someting different. I have previously rendered other fats in different ways. I've tried a 'wet render', by simmering at a very low temperature in water. That worked well for lamb fat. And I tried a 'dry render' by putting the fat in the oven at a lowish temperature (gas mark 3 = 160C), which worked well for chicken skin.
I tried these methods with some bacon fat, that I had cut off from the meat of back bacon strips. So it was just 16 white strips of cold fat. But they didn't work. With the wet render, no matter how long I simmered for, the water didn't get more than a tiny bit oily. The dry render behaved similarly, except that it did give a tiny bit of fat, but nearly all of the fat was still whole, the bits hadn't reduced in size at all after I baked for about 5 hours.
Why didn't it work? At first I thought the temperature might be too high, but it's not like the bits were getting blackened or anything. And surely a higher temperature would also show signs of rendering the fat, it wouldn't just arrest the entire process. | Chop bacon finely...or even use a food processor. Place in a pot. Add just enough water to cover the bottom of pan and prevent initial sticking. Place on very low heat. You might even need a heat diffuser. You don't want frying, just low, gentle heat. Too much heat produces off flavors. It might take a few hours. You will have rendered fat, but also the cracklings (the stuff that doesn't render). Strain. Use both the fat and the cracklings. Really, it's the same process for rendering beef, pork, duck...any type of fat rendering. |
USA analogue of EU Gastronorm standard
What is the standard for kitchenware tray and container sizes in the USA, that is the analogue of the Gastronorm standard in EU? For instance the standard sizes used in salad bars. | I haven't been able to find an official standard for US sized pans... the wikipedia even state : "used worldwide except in the United States, which has its own domestic system" but does not link to any reference to that system.
This seems to indicate that the Gastronorm was based on existing US standard :
"At this meeting the basic size of 530 x 325 mm, already in use with American standard steamable pans, was accepted."
This lists a series of sizes that seem to be accepted nationally in the USA and says that : "Gastronorm sizes are comparable to American sizes and can generally be interchanged." (bold by me)
So you can safely use GN sized pans everywhere. |
How to make authentic black Russian bread?
I'm trying to re-create the authentic black Russian bread that was first mass produced during soviet times. Nowadays you can find it in any Russian market and many international supermarkets in the US.
The problem is most recipes I can find online either:
Use a lot of additives such as cacao powder and coffee to color the bread, which don't seem historically plausible
or
Don't achieve nearly the same dark shade as the pre-packaged store variants
Anecdotally, my dad claims that this bread was sold in the Soviet Union in his youth as the cheapest bread available, for those who couldn't afford bread made from finely milled wheat. At its initial inception it was mass produced by the state and supposedly didn't taste great (although it did have that dark black color). Considering it was the cheapest bread around, it seems highly unlikely it was created with cacao or espresso powder in soviet times.
Eventually, people started prizing this bread more and recipes evolved until we got the modern variant which most people (at least in Russia) find appetizing. It's possible the modern variant uses the more expensive color impacting ingredients, but it seems more likely that some trick that was used to make the original "dirt cheap" black bread is still employed or borrowed from today.
I’ve made a number of different variants following the recipes online and overall I’m happy with the results in terms of taste, but it’s driving me crazy that I can’t figure out how to make the loaf authentically black. | There are two elements responsible for the darkness of “black bread”, which is a term used for different breads all over East, North and Central Europe
Whole grain flour, typically rye, but sometimes with a part wheat or spelt.
A low and slow bake, the probably most extreme example is Pumpernickel, which needs almost a day at 100-120 C and is more steamed than baked. Other recipes aim for 2.5 hours at 150 C. Above that, you will still get a good and dark bread, but more brown-grey than dark “black”.
The lower and slower, the darker will the bread turn out. Some sources claim that the darkness is caused by the Maillard reaction, but I am not sure whether this is the whole truth. Considering the temperature range, other factors like enzymes out of the grain are at least involved. The only “traditional” colorant I could find at a quick research was molasses or similar, which is used in some recipes. |
Instant Hummus Pre-cooking without Dehydrating
I would like to prepare my own instant hummus (dried, only add water) for backpacking. A commercial product is available, but I would prefer to start from scratch.
Normally, chickpea flour has to be cooked for around 3 minutes to make hummus, e.g. in this recipe.
I would like to avoid cooking the flour in a large amount of water, as dehydrating a paste is a big mess.
Is it possible to just moisten the flour with the right amount of water and then steam it, such that in the end it will still be mostly a powder and easy to dry? | Raw chickpea flour is unpleasantly bitter, but it becomes delicious when dry roasted or fried in a little oil.
It takes some practice to achieve exactly the right degree of roastedness. You will notice while dry roasting that the flour starts to become aromatic, and then smells slightly over-roasted and rather suddenly turns light brown. I recommend roasting it until just before the colour change for this purpose. Stir constantly and break up lumps to roast evenly.
This pre-roasted flour will not need further cooking. To reconstitute you simply add a little water, mix, add more water, mix, and keep going until the consistency is what you want. You can immediately eat it, you can use cold water for this, and you do not need to cook it.
You can also lightly dry roast and grind sesame seeds, probably along with the chickpea flour. Avoid grinding sesame seeds alone too finely, as they will turn into tahini.
Presumably you have access to garlic powder.
A dry substitute for lemon juice could be sumac (a type of berry which is dried and powdered), as suggested by Chris H. |
How can I minimize "stringing" of cheddar cheese
I like to add cheddar cheese to my chili.
However, when I eat it, it always has strings.
Which sticks to my whiskers.
Is there a way to minimize that?
Thanks. | 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. |
Are those skillets damaged?
I'm posting links to photos on Dropbox of 3 de Buyer skillets I own. They have been placed into the dishwasher over and over again against my advice unfortunately.
I want to know if what I'm seeing on them now is rust, and if so are they permanently damaged or is there something I can do to revive them?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/okzx2s5d68ajegh/IMG_3935.jpeg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3meqro6akl6e15i/IMG_3936.jpeg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gycyjwv5rdsp56f/IMG_3937.jpeg?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g01tpvixx6g2fsu/IMG_3938.jpeg?dl=0 | These appear to be carbon steel pans. Carbon steel pans are similar to cast iron in that they are raw/uncoated metal and need to be seasoned to maintain a proper (rust free) cooking surface. The big different from cast iron is simply that carbon steel is thinner, and less massive--which makes it more responsive to heat changes, as it holds less heat within itself.
Virtually all advice for care of cast iron pans also applies to carbon steel. How to care for cast iron advice is plentiful on the internet.
Stop using the dishwasher. The detergent in a dishwasher is far too aggressive and will wash away seasoning.
Dry the pan immediately & thoroughly after washing--popping it on the stove to heat it up works great.
To finally answer your question...
Your pans aren't ruined--they just need some love. Your carbon steel pans can be easily saved with re-seasoning. This is simply a matter of scrubbing the rust off, and going through a process to polymerize oil on the surface to prevent future rust.
Then, have an intervention with the person who loves to put them though the dishwasher, and explain that they are abusing these pans and need to start hand washing them. |
Is it safe to heat a sauce pan containing a glass bowl over an electric cooktop?
I screenshot 0:16. Won't the heat damage, shatter or explode the glass bowl? I'm not affiliated with that YouTube channel "missevabakes". | I don't think there's enough clarity in the video to answer definitively. So, a couple of critical points:
The glass bowl should be floating in the water. Otherwise, it could contact a much higher temperature at the bottom of the pan than whatever temperature the water is at.
The water should be heated with the glass bowl in it already. If the water is already very hot and an ice-cold bowl were dropped in it, the glass could crack or break.
Of course, different types of glass have different resistance to thermal shock. But regardless of the type of glass, treat it gently and with respect. Just because it's designed to withstand abuse, doesn't mean there's any good reason to subject it to abuse, and plenty of good reason to use reasonable precautions. :) |
How to extract mouth numbing effect from Sichuan peppercorn into a syrup?
I tried following the recipe here to try to create a Sichuan peppercorn simple syrup. The recipe is basically to add slightly crushed peppercorn to sugar and water, allow to simmer, take off the heat, and repeat. The end result was tasty, but it did not have the same mouth numbing effect that I was hoping for except for with the leftover peppercorn in the syrup.
How can I get the mouth numbing effect into a syrup, and why did the above method not work? The Wikipedia article on hydroxy alpha sanshool suggests you can extract it with a distillation method although that seems like a bit of overkill when I am just trying to make cocktails at home (and when I don't own a condenser or distillation flask). | The reason you didn't get the numbing effect is because the hydroxy alpha sanshool is an alcohol that is largely soluble in oils not water.
When boiled it will come off in the steam and escape the boiling process in that manner. If you distill it, it will collect as an oil not as an ethanol/water soluble product. I doubt that putting the lid on the pot will collect significant amounts, or if they do collect enough to form droplets, they will be as fine oil layer on the surface of the liquid or on the lid of the pot.
I note that the extraction protocol mentioned on its wikipedia page includes ethanol and notes that the yield is low (~60%) of the available chemical. Boiling alone in water is not sufficient to extract any significant quantity. |
Strong Yeast Taste on Japanese Milk Bread
I've recently started baking Japanese Milk Bread. However, each time I bake them they've always had a strong yeast taste and a 'wet' undone taste to the buns. How can I get them to be more fluffier and less yeasty?
This is the recipe I use:
350 grams all purpose flour,
12.5 grams sugar,
7 grams (1 packet) dry yeast,
4 grams salt,
200 grams warm milk,
30 grams butter.
I hand knead them for about 15 minutes each. For the first rise, I wait 2 hours and then shaped them and waited for another 30 minutes. Then I pop them in the oven for 18 minutes at 176 Celsius.
Could it be that I'm not leaving enough space for the buns to grow? Or bake? Because the buns are placed quite closely to each other.
Thank you so much! | If your buns are doughy they are probably underbaked. While 18 minutes sounds reasonable for small buns, you should be flexible about baking time. Ovens run slightly too hot or cold, different pans heat up faster and slower, and your buns may be slightly larger or smaller than the ones in the recipe.
The best way to check for doneness of bread is by temperature. After 18 minutes, use an instant-read thermometer to make sure the interior of your buns reaches at least 88°C (190°F). If they have not reached this temperature, simply return them to the oven for a few minutes longer.
It is also essential to let bread cool almost completely before cutting it open. As it cools down, it continues to set a little; if you cut too soon, steam will escape and leave a gummy texture. I recommend cooling 30 minutes on a wire rack.
Proper baking and cooling will make a huge difference for your buns, but you bring up two other issues we can address. In terms of the yeasty flavor, I think fixing the underbaking problem should remedy this as well. Raw dough can certainly have a yeasty note to it, but fully baked dough should smell and taste better. (It is possible to get off notes from overfermented bread, even fully cooked, but this should not be an issue with your relatively short rising times.)
For the issue of leaving space to grow, I suspect this is at most an aesthetic issue, but it is hard to tell how big a problem it is without a photo. As long you bake long enough your bread will cook. Using a correctly-sized pan effects shape more than anything else: closely packed together, you will get a batch bake where adjacent buns stick together; more spaced out you will get individual buns which are not connected and brown on all sides. Either format is suitable for milk buns. |
Burnt milk uses
Though infrequently, when boiling milk, it gets burnt if you forget about the milk on stove.
I usually boil 2-3L of milk in one big pan on stove/induction.
When it gets burnt, it develops a peculiar smell and taste and in our house nobody can bear it.
Even if I make curd or cottage cheese from that milk, they all have that burnt flavour.
Hence I have to throw that whole quantity of milk.
Hence, is there anyway of removing that bad burnt flavour or else, utilising that flavoured milk into something which can be consumed by us? | I'm sorry, but there are no good news here.
First, you cannot remove the flavor. Whatever you do, the flavor stays there. (This question goes into more detail about why you can't remove flavors).
Second, there are no culinary uses for it. Of course you can do stuff with it - turn it into yogurt, cheese, etc. But see point one: the flavor will still be there. So you will hate whatever you make out of it for the same reason you hated the milk in the first place. |
Steaming and steam temperature
With a boiling pot of water with lid on, can I get different steam temperature? This is without the use of a pressure cooker.
I understand the phase change process of water to steam and that steam contains higher energy than boiling water. But is the steam maxed at 100 deg C by boiling a household-pot of water and a lid? Or can I increase the steam's temperature further by applying more heat on the pot? Or will that just increase the production rate of steam? | The heat of steam is limited by the amount of pressure you can build. If you want much hotter steam, you will need some pressured vessel. Having said this a tight-fitting lid will increase the pressure somewhat. We know this increases the pressure as sometimes with a tight light you might have the lid bounce up off the pot. This is due to the pressure overcoming the weight of the lid. This happens even if the lid has a steam vent. Only so much pressure can be released through the steam vent.
Having said all that if I don't think this will be very useful but of course this depends on what you are trying to do.
To answer your question the question you posed in the comments: "So once i have an open pot of boiling water and I then increase the flame, what changes? Is it the steam production rate or am I just wasting energy/gas?" You are almost certainly wasting energy/gas. In almost all circumstances, more steam will be produced as you try to add more heat to the water. This will increase the rate of production of the steam, but unless you have a way to trap the steam and build pressure all you are doing is building up a diffuse cloud of water vapour across all of your kitchen.
If you tell us what is your use case perhaps we could help more? |
Experimenting with garlic, does cooking kill the flavour?
I have been experimenting by adding extra cloves of garlic into my pasta sauce every time I cook it. I make a quick pasta sauce by caramelizing onions in a pan, adding very finely chopped fresh garlic (its practically a paste), and whatever other vegetables is my pick for the night. Then I add chopped tomatoes/passata and reduce.
It seems to me no matter how much garlic I add, I do not get a harsh flavour. I just get a nice, deep, complex yet subtle flavour that I wouldn't instantly attribute to garlic.
I am currently at the stage where I am adding more than half a bulb of garlic to a one person sauce.
Is there any point in adding this much garlic? Is the garlic responsible for this "nice, deep, complex flavour"? Would the same effect be achieved with less garlic which is more coarsely chopped?
I understand that the longer garlic cooks, the weaker the "garlic" flavour gets, but is this flavour disappearing or is it developing into a new flavour? | Garlic mellows pretty rapidly with heat. Dropping it 2 minutes before you've completed sautéeing your onions is enough to knock the raw edge off it - in fact that's the common deciding factor as to when to add your liquids, "Fry until the raw smell is gone".
After that, the longer it simmers the more 'relaxed' it gets.
If you want more punch, try adding some more fresh right at the end.
You'd be surprised, too, how much punch you can get adding dried garlic powder right at the end too. I use it in tarka dal to really give some 'front' to the flavour & aroma as it is served. |
How to replace sugar with dry fruit in a cake recipe?
How do I replace all the sugar in a cake recipe with dry fruit e.g. dates?
should I rehydrate dry fruit and make it into a paste? how much liquid should I add to the dry fruit to make that paste?
what is the correct ratio of dry fruit paste to use compared to other ingredients in a recipe like eggs, flour and butter, in weight or volume?
I am trying to make any cake that allows me to replace all the sugar with dry fruit, I don't mind a denser cake.
Thanks | This will definitely require some experimentation on your part. As a starting point, I recommend comparing the sugar content of the fruit to the sugar content of sugar. Below, I use dates as an example.
48 grams of dates (approximately 2 dates) contains 32 grams of sugar (source)
48 grams of sugar contains 48 grams of sugar (source: common sense)
So dates are 2/3 (67%) sugar by mass. This means it takes 1.5 times the mass of dates as sugar, to get the same amount of sugar. For example, in a recipe with 100g of sugar, substitute 150g of dates.
Making the dry fruit into a paste seems like a good way to get the sweetness evenly distributed through your batter. I suggest re-hydrating in hot water. Then puree the re-hydrated fruit, and incorporate it into the wet ingredients. Measure the amount of hot water you use, and reduce the amount of liquid in the cake recipe accordingly. Depending on the type of liquid used in your cake recipe, you may be able to use that liquid to re-hydrate the dry fruit. I know from experience that citrus juice works well for re-hydrating dry fruit; I'm not sure about milk or cream.
Of course the results will not be exactly the same as the original cake recipe. Different types of fruit will seem more or less sweet. The fruit paste will add flavor and effect the texture of the cake. Typically it will probably make the cake more moist and dense. This technique will not be suitable for cakes which are intended to be very light and fluffy, such as angel food cake or sponge cake. |
Dried condensed milk
I want to make custard caramel. The recipe which I will follow requires condensed milk.
Now I have an opened refrigerated tin of condensed milk. Half of it is used. The other half is dried, though not expired.
So is it safe to use that? Also how can I melt the dried condensed milk?
PS: Dried in the sense that it has become little solid. | As @GdD said in a comment, it's probably better to just toss it. Although I will say that sweetened condensed milk actually lasts 2-3 weeks if refrigerated properly. After several months though, it's not worth the risk. In the future, you can store an extra half can in the freezer for 2-3 months without issue instead.
That said, sweetened condensed milk is actually just milk that's been reduced with sugar until it's quite thick. You can make a substitute at home by blending together fresh and powdered milk and sugar. I've seen multiple recipes, but have to admit I haven't tried it personally. So you might still be able to make your custard without a run to the store. Good luck! |
What does dry ice to to ice cream besides freezing it faster?
From what I've seen, using dry ice to make ice cream makes the whole freezing process a lot faster than a freezer. (Besides speed, the only other benefit I can think of is trapping some gas in the ice cream to make it fluffier/softer.)
What exactly can dry ice do to ice cream besides speeding up the freezing process? What kinds of ice cream are made with dry ice and not just a freezer? | The main reason for using something like dry ice is because of the speed in which it freezes the ice cream. The faster it freezes, the smaller the ice crystals, and the smoother the texture.
This is why thawed ice cream that’s refrozen in your freezer ends up so icy because it freezes so much slower than even a traditional machine, and has large ice crystals.
However, you may be thinking more about liquid nitrogen, which is used by some ice cream shops lately. Dry ice is harder to use because it leaves chunks in the ice cream that don’t melt (or “sublimate”) right away. Liquid nitrogen produces an incredibly smooth texture that I’ve never had from any factory or traditional machine. |
Is there any substitute for butter (or oil) on puff pastry?
I tried to create puff pastry.
For medical reasons I should minimize the fat on my recipe. Puff pastry is mainly made by 3 important ingredients, flour, water, and fat (butter or oil).
Unfortunately, I learned that butter and oil, consist of 100% fat. I've successfully created puff pastry using oil in a pan before. It works! I create 2 doughs, one dough is formed using flour and water, the other one is using flour and oil. Then, I do the pastry folding.
So as no-fat alternative I tried using a flour-water dough and a flour-applesauce dough, laminated as for regular puff pastry. The result was crisp at the outside, but uncooked on the inside.
I baked twice as long, and the result were very thick hard crackers. I can see the layers with different color, but there is no air in between the layers.
I've also tried only using flour-water dough pastry, folded. Again I can see different colors of the layera, but no air in between.
I haven't tried making the second dough with egg yolks though. It may interesting to see the result, since egg yolks supposedly have around 63% of fat.
Research
After that failed experiment, I read some articles about the science behind the pastry. It says that the pocket of air is formed because of the boiled water that becomes gas, trapped between the fat layers.
I assume, it happens because the oil and water are not soluble. On the other hand, the boiling point of water is 100 C (212 F), yet the boiling point of oil is around 300 C (572 F). I see here that vodka has a boiling point around 78.3 C, which is lower than water. I haven't tried vodka for the mixture with flour because vodka actually is also soluble in water.
My question is:
Is there any food grade liquid that has boiling point over 100 C and is not soluble in water? | No. An edible organic liquid that does not dissolve in water, almost by definition, is an oil.
That's not the important thing, though. Substances like mineral oil are edible yet non-nutritive; they pass through the body unchanged and would be compatible with any dietary condition. The problem is that, because they are not digestible and not water-soluble, they, ah... lubricate things. Down there. The amount you'd have to use for puff pastry would cause some real digestive issues.
Bottom line: there are no straightforward non-nutritive substitutes for fats and oils which do not cause diarrhea or loose stools. |
Old bread-slicing tool
Here is an image of an apparently old (and for me, unknown) bread-slicing device from Richard Bertinet’s book “CRUMB” (2019, ISBN: 9780857835543, pg. 105):
What is this particular tool referred to as? | I Googled for "Raadvad" which seemed to be the text embossed on the tool, and found this video suggesting this is a 'bread guillotine'. A subsequent search for "Raadvad bread guillotine" suggests either 'bread guillotine' or, simply, '(Danish/Scandinavian) bread slicer'. |
Can I make a buttercream using cacao butter?
My nephew have lactose allergy and I want to bake his birthday cake , were we live we don't have a lactose intolerance products but I found a cacao butter can I used to make buttercream frosting?? | Cocoa butter isn't like regular butter as it is very hard at room temperature. It's what makes chocolate so hard when cooled, so it's not ideal for a creamy frosting. There are many other alternatives that would work better, for instance vegan butters which are designed to mimic butter's properties. Some vegetable shortenings can work as well, although they don't have much flavor. |
What are ‘fresh noodles’ in a salad
I am missing my favourite salad. It’s 5 hours from my house so I am stuck trying to recreate it at home. It’s called an Asian Goi Mi Salad. As you can see by the photos it’s loaded up with yummy stuff. I will be able to figure out how to create most of it but the ‘fresh noodles’ has me hung up. What type of noodle are they? They were tasty and I would love to include them.
Here’s the ingredient list and hopefully you can zoom in and see the noodles (there’s bean sprouts in there too).
Sweet chilli pulled pork
Fresh noodles
Spicy sesame peanut dressing
Crisp veggies
Mint
Cilantro
Crispy shallots
Organic greens | Fresh - as opposed to dried.
Specifically in the UK, 'noodles' can only be Chinese/South-East Asian. Pasta is pasta, it is never called noodles over here, so we don't have the confusion the US has with the term.*
Fresh noodles you can find in the supermarket, usually refrigerated slightly, in with the 'delicate veg' section - near mangetout, pak choi, beansprouts, chillies etc.
There are usually a minimum of three types, The one you want will be just labelled 'Chinese noodles'[1] [pretty much the same as fresh spaghetti, made of durum wheat but has been through a fermentation phase giving a darker yellow/brown colour & stronger flavour, then tossed in oil to prevent sticking] alternatively, rice noodles [usually very skinny, vermicelli, very white, less oil] & then the bright yellow, pre-flavoured, Singapore noodles [again rice vermicelli but with 'flavourings' (avoid;)]
If you can't find them in the fridge in your store, then second best is 'vac-packed' which will be near the 'insta-food' sauces - [pad thai in a bag, just add chicken] type of things. These are similar to fresh, often with monikers like "straight to wok" etc. They're nowhere near as nice as fresh & always look to me more Japanese than Chinese, as they're quite white by comparison, so possibly not fermented].
If you can't get either of those, then it's back to dried. Soak in hot water 5 minutes, stir-fry.
Sometimes, I actually prefer dried. It depends on what I'm making.
The difference is very similar [unsurprisingly] to fresh vs dried Italian pasta. Some dishes are OK using dried, some have got to be fresh. Fresh doesn't have the bite, or al-dente that dried has. Just the same with noodles, except the 'bite' can often be slightly more rubbery [not in a bad way] compared to pasta.
One additional tip - you can pretty much pick the strength of flavour in dried noodles just by the colour. The browner they are the stronger the flavour [assuming no-one cheated & put colourings in them.]
If you're really really stuck, ramen noodles are very close to 'Chinese noodles' but only if they're good ones. Most ramen in cheap foil packs you can't see what's in it until you open it. Avoid unless desperate ;)
*Just to keep a balance, we have many other things we can get linguistically confused over… coriander, chili, to name but two ;)
[1] After comments, it's quite likely that these would be called 'chow mein' noodles in the US. |
What is the difference among these 3 food items: Flattened Rice, Chiwda and Poha?
In India, Poha is a famous dish especially served as breakfast.
I would like to know if Poha is the name of the dish or Flattened rice or Chiwda. | In India, flattened rice are Poha. Now poha/flattened rice come in packets with the picture you have put. There are a lot of recipes which we make from flattened rice.
Interestingly the most common recipe is known as 'poha'. Here the flattened rice are soaked in water and then they are heated in oil with spices, onion and/or potatoes.
Here is the recipe
This is a very popular recipe in Maharshtra and basically almost all Indians prefer this recipe for breakfast.
Now flattened rice are also used to make chiwda.
This is rather crunchy, unlike poha.
It is used as an in between meals' snack.
Here generally, the flattened rice are roasted or fried.
Now interestingly the varieties of flattened rice for making poha and chiwda are different.
For making poha and fried chiwda the flattened rice are long narrow type.
And for making roasted chiwda flattened rice is wider.
Hence, to summarise, the term 'poha' is both flattened rice, as well as a recipe made from flattened rice. Chiwda on the other hand is different.
If you go to an Indian restaurant and ask for poha, they will give you a dish made from flattened rice/poha.
On the other hand if you go to a grocery shop and ask for poha they will give you flattened rice.
I hope your doubt is solved. |
Which meringue is safe to eat without baking?
I recently got my meringue game down and though I wouldn’t eat French meringue without baking it, I’ve seen numerous videos where it’s said that Swiss meringue is delicious straight out of the double boiler. I’ve not seen the same about Italian, but I thought that is cooked in the bowl, too?
So which meringue is safe to eat direct from the bowl? | As you're in the UK, they're all safe. Raw egg is safe according to the NHS
Because of improved food safety controls in recent years, infants, children, pregnant women and elderly people can now safely eat raw or lightly cooked hen eggs, or foods containing them, that are produced under the British Lion Code of Practice (regarding hygiene and especially salmonella).
This doesn't apply to all other countries, but it's worth checking in many EU countries, where dishes containing raw egg are traditional (such as chocolate mousse and tiramisu). I've failed to find a single reliable source covering many countries, but Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway are essentially salmonella-free. I read enough French to make sense of some sources, but can't find anything definitive more recent than 2013 in which products made from raw egg are advised against for high-risk groups, but generally acceptable; in particular recipes assume that pregnant women will be avoiding raw egg. |
How should I clean this pan?
I've been using this pan for a while, and have somehow scorched the bottom of the pan. Can someone tell me how I should clean it? Thanks! | The discoloration is from overheating the pan, not from stains. The actual metal has changed color through accidental tempering, so you won't be able to clean it off other than by grinding the metal down or re-tempering it (neither of which is a good idea).
The color won't significantly affect the performance of the pan. Just ignore it. |
Additional flour threshold: when and how to perform?
For whatever reason (in my case, usually rookie mistakes), sometimes dough - after no additional flour - is worked/kneaded to a point where it does not reach a supple state/texture and instead is more porridge-like than anything else.
It is at this point I find myself sometimes, and I'm wondering how I can consistently and efficiently resolve this issue with a simple approach. I know more flour is certainly a way to mitigate this problem, but evaluating the quantity (and type) ad-hoc is something I simple do not know how to do.
What's a workable solution to this type of situation? | Adding more flour to a bread recipe until it looses stickiness is a mistake many inexperienced bread bakers make, and one I made myself. Dough recipes have a hydration level, which is a way of expressing the amount of water in comparison to flour by weight. A higher hydration level gives a more open texture with bigger holes, lower hydration gives a more dense loaf with smaller holes and a tighter crumb. High hydration doughs are stickier and looser than low hydration doughs, and it's nothing to worry about. Ciabatta is a great example of a very high hydration dough that is essentially a floury puddle, and that's normal for that recipe.
Recipes have a hydration level, if you add more flour than the recipe calls for you will reduce the hydration and you'll end up with a denser loaf. If you keep adding flour until it can't absorb anymore you'll get a barely edible brick. My focaccia recipe is very sticky and runny, but if I added more flour to it I'd ruin it.
I'm not saying I never add a sprinkle of flour to my bread if it's a bit too sticky or loose, but it's rare. If you are getting bad or inconsistent results I would try these things before adding more flour:
Weigh everything, including the water, in grams. My baking never got consistent until I measured by weight instead of volume, because you can never get exact with volume measurements. I convert all my recipes to metric, it's a minor one-time effort that takes the guesswork out of things. 10 grams of water is 10ml, i.e. two teaspoons. It may not sound like much but it can make a difference in a dough, and chances are you won't be able to tell 100ml from 110ml in a measuring cup. Weighing water lets you get the right amount of hydration
Take notes, if you follow a recipe and it still is a bit wet then take a note to lower the water content by 10-15 grams next time. Once you find the right balance note that too
Make sure you are using the right type of flour for the recipe. Bread flours contain more of the proteins that form gluten, and gluten formation absorbs water. If you are using lower protein flour it will absorb less water. If plain flour is all you can get ahold of then it will still make bread, you will need a bit less water. Course flours absorb less water than fine flour, so if you are using a coarse whole wheat in place of a finer flour you will need to adjust the recipe
Control the water, not the flour. If you have a recipe you suspect may have too much hydration it's better to withhold some of the water and add it in later if it's needed rather than adding it all and needing to add more flour. This way you keep the balance of flour(s), salt and yeast right
Remember that the purpose of kneading is to hydrate the dough and ensure a thorough distribution of the ingredients. Gluten forms naturally, helped by yeast, kneading doesn't develop gluten, it just gets it there faster by pushing all the water around. So when you start there will be a lot of unabsorbed water, and it will be sticky. This is natural, you just need to keep working the dough
Also remember that rising changes the dough structure through yeast action and gluten development, so a dough that is a bit loose and sticky may firm up after a rise
Kneading technique may make a difference, you may just need to do it a bit longer
So, before you think about adding more flour be aware of the result you are trying to get, and keep the above in mind. |
How to harvest peppers and tomatoes for later use in sauces without harming taste
Is there anyway I can pick my peppers and tomatoes now and freeze them immediately for later use to make hot sauces and tomato sauces? I am trying to find the most efficient way to process my pepper and tomato harvest.
The pepper stems and seeds would be removed, the tomatoes would be halved and cores removed before freezing in vacuum bags. Once I have enough peppers and tomatoes, I would thaw them and make hot sauce and tomato sauce respectively. Furthermore, I want to smoke my peppers to make chipotles (for chipotle hot sauce), however it is not really efficient to smoke 2 pounds of peppers every couple of days. I would like to smoke all 20+ pounds of peppers all at once. Its just that 20+ pounds of peppers don't ripen all at once.
I have several pepper varieties I use to make hot sauce and I have a couple different paste tomato varieties to make tomato sauce. I do not have enough peppers and tomatoes to pick right now, but over the next 3-4 weeks I will have over 100 pounds of tomatoes and over 20 pounds of peppers to harvest.
I know the peppers and tomatoes will be soft when thawed, I am worried that the tomatoes may taste sour due to the freeze. I am not sure how the peppers will take the smoke flavor when soft. I was considering dehydrating the ripe peppers as I pick them over the next few weeks. But when I want to smoke them, the dehydrated peppers might not take the smoke flavor. If I had to rehydrate the peppers before smoking, the "waterlogged" peppers might not take the smoke flavor.
I understand the flavor will not be the same as making sauce with fresh produce. It just doesn't make sense to make small sauce batches every 3 days for the next 3-4 weeks.
Let me know if you have any suggestions or how I should tackle this feat in a different way that I may not have even considered. There has to be an easier way to accomplish this. If I must freeze the produce, I would greatly prefer to freeze them the same day I harvest versus picking everyday for a week then a big freeze on the weekend. Those peppers I picked on Monday might start to soften by the weekend.
All sauces will be canned and spend 30 minutes in a boiling water bath. | We've been freezing both vegetables for years, with no loss of flavor.
Tomatoes
Unless your tomatoes have very thin skins, I recommend that you skin them prior to freezing. If you don't remove the skins first, you may wind up with the leathery skins floating in your sauce, which isn't really appetizing. To easily skin a tomato, press the back of a sharp knife onto the tomato, press gently, then rub the fruit to loosen the peel. Next, just make a small cut and start peeling with the sharp side of the knife. We also remove all seeds at that time. Alternatively, use a food mill (not a food processor) to process the tomatoes.
We freeze the tomatoes in roughly one-quart amounts, which is what we generally use at any one time.
Peppers
As you noted, you'll cut the peppers in half and remove the seeds, but we've found with experience that the frozen peppers, when thawed, turn mushy; we get around this by using the peppers as soon as we remove them from the freezer. They even retain a little crunch!
We freeze our peppers by cutting them into edible-sized slices (after removing the seeds), laying them out on a cookie sheet, and then putting the entire sheet into the freezer for a couple/three hours. This helps the slices to freeze faster (which we assume helps keep them move flavorful, but that's an assumption only); it also keeps them from sticking together after we bag them. When the slices are frozen, we bag them. We then use only the number of slices we need for a dish, cutting them up immediately upon removal from the freezer bag and adding to the dish mostly frozen to avoid the yucky mushiness.
Given that thawed peppers are really not appetizing, I don't know if you'll like the end results after smoking them. They will definitely NOT hold any kind of crunch and may even somewhat disintegrate in your sauces. Well worth a try to do it, though, especially if you do only a small test batch first. |
Can I make baccala (Italian salted cod) at home relatively easily?
I would like to make some Italian baccalà dishes. However, I am unable to get my hands on baccalà. Also I have a box of frozen cod fillets sitting in the freezer that I don't want to waste. Can I make baccalà at home? Any easy way to do so? All I can find on Google with "baccala" are recipes that call for baccala, not how to make this important ingredient. | Yes, you can. Instructions from the book The Cuisines of Spain:
Get several cod filets, preferably skin-on
Cover the bottom of a large non-reactive pan or dish with coarse salt (such as kosher salt)
Put the filets side-by-side on the salt.
Cover them with coarse salt. They should be completely covered, with no fish showing.
Place the pan, uncovered, in the refrigerator for 48 hours.
Every 12 hours, pour off any accumulated liquids. This will wash away some of the salt, so add salt as needed to re-cover the fish.
Lift the fish out of the salt and wipe it down with damp towels to remove the outer salt.
Use or freeze within a couple of weeks. |
How high is the bacterial reduction when using Lysol brand sanitizing wipes, when compared to bleach solution?
Suppose you have some utensils and dishes that came into contact with raw meat. After cleaning them with hot soapy water, if I also use Lysol sanitizing wipes, what proportion of the bacteria is killed? How does this relate to using a bleach solution for sanitizing? | Here is a good explanation of why hand washing is effective. The same applies to kitchen utensils. For home cleanliness in the kitchen, hot, soapy water is generally all that is necessary for clean up. There are, of course, situations where you want to sanitize, or even sterilize...for example, I sanitize when brewing beer, because I want only one strain of yeast (the one I add) to be active. Also when canning, one wants to be sure that jars are free of any contaminants. However, for normal, everyday clean-up...even with raw meat, soap and water gets the job done. |
Baking bread without yeast
Can I make bread without yeast? Thanks! | You could look into making flatbread, which often (though not always) gets its name through being unleavened, and thus, flat (yes, I am oversimplifying here). Common examples are tortillas or roti. |
Making large batches of syrups and sauces without reducing the majority of what I originally started with?
I've recently come across the recipe to make one of my favorite glazes, "Jack Daniels Glaze" from T.G.I. Fridays and am close to perfecting it. The only issue I'm currently facing is that in order to get it to the thick consistency I want, I have to reduce down it to 1/4 of what I started with. For example, I started with 8 cups of water and end up with 2 with my heat on medium high for about an hour. I've tried this on something as simple as a run of the mil pot to my higher end copper core All-Clad sauce pan both yielding the same results. What's the key to making large batches of my sauce? Do I need even more water? Note that I've tried high and low heat. Here are my ingredients:
8 cups water
1 cup teriyaki sauce
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
2 cups of brown sugar
1 lemon
1/4 of a yellow onion
1/4 cup Jack Daniels Whiskey
2 cloves of roasted garlic
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablesppon of crushed pineapple
Original Recipe: https://hostthetoast.com/jack-daniels-burgers-t-g-i-fridays-copycat-recipe/ | Follow the recipe and increase everything by the same proportion if you want to make more instead of just adding more water. You've octupled the water but kept everything else about the same. Of course you'll have to boil off all that extra water before the consistency is correct. If you had a recipe for a gallon of lemonade but wanted two gallons, would you add an extra gallon of water to the original recipe and expect it to taste the same? Or would you add more lemon and sugar in addition to the extra water to keep the flavor the same? Same thing here, adding more water will water it down, you need to increase everything to increase the yield and keep the consistency the same as the original.
Interestingly that page even has a button to scale up the recipe. Click it and you'll see it does exactly what I say here: it doubles or triples all ingredients. |
Can sour cherries be used in a semi-stable bar?
I have recently learned that my carb intake is insufficient, leading to so-called "glycogen depletion" while cycling. I have possibly spent too much time around folks who boast of equating a healthy diet with a diet that is partially or fully deficient in carbs. I followed, not realizing the consequences.
Mid bike ride it turns out that a cyclist needs (immediate) simple sugar, in addition to some more complex carbs. At this time of the year sour cherries make their way to the market in vast quantities, but they spoil extremely quickly and must be frozen.
I've tried in the past freezing in zipper bags, intending to eventually learn how to make a proper pie (I never did). Now I'm thinking that there could be another pertinent use for them: cherry bars that are dry enough to carry along on a bike ride, and where the cherries have stabilized enough so that they do not spoil quite as rapidly as they normally do. The need for simple sugars would be satisfied by the cherries; the need for complex sugars by the crust.
My first experiment was to simply add them, in large quantities, to a standard brownie mix. That didn't fare so well. The mixture was too moist to cook uniformly—edges cooked, inside not so much—even after leaving for extra time in the oven. Worse, after a day in the fridge some of the cherries have turned color from the characteristic "still good" bright red to a dull "likely spoiled" crimson red.
Can sour cherries be used in a semi-stable bar? The idea is that I'd use the whole lot (5 kg!) and have ample supply in the freezer.
Related:
Hungarian-style apple pie (almás lepény)
General ideas for sour cherries | I will have to preface a bit with bad news about food safety, but bear with me, not all is lost :)
As per standard food safety: "semi-stable" does not exist, at all, for anything. You either have "shelf stable" or "needs refrigeration". And the idea of having baked cherries being shelf stable is impossible. We have a writeup on food safety for beginners, it will likely clear a lot of things up for you: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/tags/food-safety/info.
Your own answer starts going into the right direction, but is not completely there. You can turn the cherries into a jam, but to be shelf stable, you will have to use a 1:1 jam recipe (1 kg sugar per 1 kg cherries), the lower-sugar-ratio recipes preferred nowadays are only shelf stable after canning, and as soon as you open the jar, need refrigeration. Once you have made the jam, you will find out that it is not "solidified", it's smeary. To prevent a mess during transportation, you will have to take a gasket-seal box along on your bike (are you willing to do glycogen-depleting tours with saddle bags?), and eating will require taking a break and doing cleanup.
The second recipe also produces "bars" in the "homemade baking" sense, not in the "convenience food" sense. They will not be shelf stable, and they will be prone to squishing and falling apart. You will need the same procedure as above to transport and eat them.
The only way I see this working is by drying the cherries - and by drying I don't mean such superficial measures as baking a bar twice, I mean using a proper dehydration technique. You have two options.
You start with whole, fresh cherries. You dry them (you can research recipes for this, don't just stick them in the oven and hope for the best) and the result is raisin-like, but intensely sour (if you want it sweet, choose a recipe with sufficient added sugar). Once you have the dry cherries, you can eat them on the bike one-by-one, or make granola bars with them, or bake them into some kind of scones/muffins/bars. Note that the third option requires you to use significanly more dough than cherries, else it will fall apart, so granola may be the way to go.
You make fruit leather. For this, you can start with the frozen cherries you have, or also use fresh ones. You have to juice them and dry the juice. When made properly (again, research recipes!) it is shelf stable and very bike-friendly. Also, it is very friendly to "using it up" projects, since a large amount of cherries produces a small volume of fruit leather. Here too, you may have to persevere through a few learning attempts when using an oven, but if all goes well and you decide to make it your go-to snack, an investment in a dehydrator would be advisable. |
White spots on the dough while it was rising
Yesterday I was trying to make Croissant. I started by making the dough that contained yeast as the rising agent, and after mixing all of the ingredients I left it to rise at room temperature.
After 2 hours when I checked it out I found that there were white spots on the dough, and they are similar to the spots forming on breads when they go bad.
It was very similar to this image except that the small spots in the image are flour but in my dough it were, I guess, fungal things.
I didn’t know what exactly it was or whether to continue the rising process or not, but I decided to wrap it and put it in the freezer until I know what to do.
By the way, I discovered that I forgot to add sugar (which was in the recipe) to the dough before allowing it to rise), and still I didn’t add it, could this be a factor?
Do you have any idea what are those white spots and are they harmful? And what should I do with the dough in my freezer?
Thanks in advance! | Those white spots are simply flour on the outside of the dough, it would take far longer for mold to develop. It's fine, continue your bake as normal. Leaving sugar out won't hurt anything except the dough will be less sweet. |
Are chocolate brands taking countries temperatures into account?
Today is an unsually hot day where I live in France, we are reaching 40°C in some cities.
As I grabbed a KitKat out of its bag, I noticed that it was completly melted. It's 35°C in my appartment.
It made me wonder: Does hot countries like Mexico, Spain or Algeria have chocolated products specifically designed to be more heat resistant ?
And how would you achieve something like that ? | It's simple: people in hot countries eat dark chocolate. In Southern Italy, chocolate is dark as coal and almost as hard. Mexican chocolate classically contains only cocoa, sugar, and spices.
Well-tempered dark chocolate, without dairy products, wax, or other additives with low melting points, melts at a higher temperature than your Kit-Kat does.
Per Gizmodo
Dark chocolate has a higher percentage of cocoa in proportion to milk fat, so it has a higher melting point. Dark chocolate melts in your mouth; milk chocolate is much more likely to melt in your hand. |
What is meant by "bring to the boil"?
A lot of recipes and videos say "bring the cream/milk/etc to the boil" - but to me this would be as in a kettle at the point it turns itself off. Clearly this is wrong for boiling things like cream, but what should the cream/milk/etc look like when it begins to boil?
Yes, I've screwed up my fair share of creme brulee, before you ask. | Just as simple as "When it starts boiling".
When a liquid is boiling, it starts making bubbles, at first, it starts with small bubbles, and those get bigger as the liquid comes to its boiling point.
When a recipe calls for that, you remove from heat when it starts boiling. |
Can I start to cook on a cast iron pan while it's smoking?
I like to think that I have nailed the Maillard temperature on my stove. It's my go-to temperature for preheating tri-ply pans, as well as teflon-coated hard-anodized aluminum pans.
After years of relying primarily on tri-ply for cooking, I'm now returning to cast iron. (I lost a perfectly seasoned cast iron pan during a move, and couldn't see myself going through the labor of starting another).
As I preheat my twice-seasoned (once at the factory and once upside down in my oven at 375F for 90 minutes) cast iron pan, I see smoke rising.
Seeing some liquid oil after the second seasoning, I had (carefully and gently) washed (with mild dish soap and the blue-variety scotch-brite) the pan and dried it thoroughly. As I preheat it, it's smoking—despite the washing.
Can I start to cook on a cast iron pan while it's smoking?
It continued to smoke for a few minutes, and I suspect that that means it's not ready for cooking, but I'm not quite sure what the smoke means. Does it mean that the oil has not properly polymerized and it's still burning? Would just leaving it like that (still on the stove at the Maillard setting, not in the oven) for 30 minutes do the trick? (I'm reluctant to use the oven because the drips from the upside-down pan were far too messy.) | Yes, you can - for foods that are cooked at high temperatures, like steak, the oil is commonly heated until smoking anyways.
I suspect that the reason your pan is still smoking is due to the fact that you put too much oil when seasoning it - "I'm reluctant to use the oven because the drips from the upside-down pan were far too messy". When seasoning your pan, all you need is the thinnest of coats, and if there is so much extra oil that it drips out, you should wipe most of it out. Having too much oil results in a sticky or tacky surface rather than a smooth patina, and even if you manage to polymerise such a thick layer of oil, it tends to chip off more easily. |
Avocado hard and grey inside
I had a batch of avocados from the supermarket, as I normally do.
I often have 3-5 days before they're past the point of being edible.
This batch was not more that 2 days old, and three out of five looked like the avocado below (this is probably the best of the bad bunch), despite being firm.
In fact I felt like I was being a little cheeky and risking opening an unripe avocado.
Is the greyness from damage or disease?
I tasted one, and rather that tasting over or under ripe it was just bland. | In my experience, avocados with this behavior are normally picked too early. Although all avocados are picked early in commercial settings because of transit to market timing, when they are picked TOO early they begin to mature as "seeds" before they actually ripen. The flesh becomes fiberous, rather than soft, as the seed prepares to germinate. Alas, I've never been able to tell if this will happen before buying them. |
Making tomato mix thicker without surge in calories
I got on trying to eating more healthy and as a part of that, I take a few tomatoes, cucumber and garlic and blend that into a sort of a drink. It's far more convenient and quick to smash a bunch of veggies into a blender and mix the crap out of them, rather than slicing and hacking. It also scales better - making a mixaroo of 3 or of 5 tomatoes takes the same amount of time, whereas slicing time is proportional. So I'm aiming at eliminating any obstacles along the way to wiser food choices.
I'd like to make it less liquidish, aiming for a thicker texture. I've tried adding broccoli, cauliflower, nuts and seeds. I tried adding oat flower and soy protein powder. It gave an improvement but to be acceptably substantial, I need to push in quite a lot, which kind of defeats its purpose.
Is there something very calorie thin but structurally dense that I could smash into my drink? Extra bonus if it's rich on fiber. | Your primary option if you want to add a thickener, you can use any hydrocolloid you wish. I will not list them here again, since it isn't necessary that every single question on thickeners on the site gets the full list. You can download Martin Lersch's free reference book, Texture: a hydrocolloid recipe book, and start experimenting. I can also not tell you which one will be the best for your case - they all produce different textures, and it depends on your personal preference which one to use, and anyway, you have to see which one is accessible for you.
A second option for getting any tomato based liquid thicker is to either cook it down on your own, or to replace some of the fresh tomatoes by concentrated tomato paste.
The third option, deseeding, was already given in Keith Ford's answer.
And you already mentioned the fourth, bulking up with dry ingredients such as your soy powder.
I would say the four together give you a pretty wide range of alternatives, try them out and see which one you can best live with. |
Enzymatic reactions that happen when water and wheat flour is mixed?
What happens when you mix water and wheat flour? A seed would start to sprout eventually. Does water start reaction inside of the flour? | Yes, flour contains enzymes, and they get activated when you mix the flour and water.
The enzymes in flour are diastase, amylase, and protease. The diastase breaks down starch into maltose, amylase produces other types of sugars from starch, and the protease breaks down the proteins in the flour.
Commercial flours are typically balanced for optimal fermentation with yeast, because these reactions are less important in other types of baking. But note that yeast brings in its own enzymes, which complicate the picture, and then, for some breads, enzymes are added from outside to get specific effects, such as using malted barley for dark breads.
This has nothing to do with sprouting, the parts of the seed which would sprout are removed when making flour. Unless you have real whole grain flour, but there the embryo is also already killed, and the producer has made sure that the enzymes are at the right level. |
Where did my creme brûlée go wrong?
I’ve watched and read a lot on creme Angela is, brûlée and caramel. In two attempts the final product has improved a lot, but I’m not sure where this is going wrong. Could someone help, please?
Recipe:
This is only a small, test batch.
150ml thick, double cream
3 medium egg yolks
2 tbsp caster sugar (sorry for the mixed metrics)
2tsp vanilla essence
Method:
Slowly heat the cream and sugar to just boiling, gently stirred with a wooden spoon.
Add vanilla essence and take from heat to cool. I poured into a glass jug and sat that in a bowl of cold tap water (no ice, just as it is from the tap) until the jug was not warm to the touch.
Use a hand whisk to beat the eggs until slightly lighter in colour and smooth.
Gradually (very!) pour in the cooled cream and mix the egg/cream mixture (not beating.)
Pour into 3 small ramekins stood in a baking pan.
Pour freshly boiled water into the pan and insert into a preheated oven at 140 Celsius (fan, though I don’t have an oven thermometer) for 25 mins.
Result:
At 25 mins the tops were I nice yellow, just turning very light brown but we risen in the middle with a gentle curve from side to side. Reminded me of baked eggs. | I see two problems going on here, 1) overbeaten eggs, and 2) overbaking.
Use a hand whisk to beat the eggs until slightly lighter in colour and smooth.
Don't use an egg whisk. You can use a dough whisk if you have one, if not, use a fork. Try to not get any air in at all (it's impossible to actually do it, but the closer you get, the better) and certainly don't beat until it has become lighter, just the lowest amount of gentle stirring until it becomes uniform.
Pour freshly boiled water into the pan and insert into a preheated oven at 140 Celsius (fan, though I don’t have an oven thermometer) for 25 mins.
I don't know if you mean you didn't measure the oven's air temperature yourself, or if your oven doesn't have a knob to set the temperature. But your oven was definitely way too hot if it managed to get this overbaked result after starting from such a cold mixture after only 25 minutes. So, whatever the setting was, use a lower one. Also, make sure that your water is high enough - ideally, higher on the outside of the ramekin than the level of the custard is within the ramekin. Disregarding the clock, take out when done (80-83 C with an instant thermometer - if you don't have one, you will have to wait until you have learned to recognize it by sight and jiggling before you get consistently good results).
When you get better at working with custards, you can also optimize the process and not go through this extreme heating, extreme cooling, then careful tempering (in fact, you don't need to temper at all, if you have waited until the cream is down to body temperature). But if for now, since you are combating overheating, you should probably first stabilize your process as it is, before playing with steps that might lead to an overheating before the oven.
I am pretty sure the association with baked eggs comes from the texture and taste of overheated custard. But if it turns out that you are still sensitive to it even when the temperature is managed correctly, you might look into reducing the yolk ratio. Be aware though that your recipe is not currently overegged, so you odn't have that much wiggle room before it gets runny when reducing the yolks. |
How much carrot is too much when baking carrot cake?
I am experimenting with increasing the amount of carrot in carrot cake. The original recipe uses 3 cups of carrots to 2 cups of flour; how much more carrot can I add in addition to the 3 cups without turning the cake into a dense carrot bar? | There is no exact limit, it's a subjective/linguistic question. With every carrot you add, the proportion of people who recognize your result as "cake" will go down and those who recognize it as something else will go up.
That being said, I now checked my preferred books for recipes that do quickbreads and muffins by the volume, and they tend to have a spread between 0.5 and 1.5 cups of add-in per cup of flour, with Ruhlmann's ratio also containing a fritter (not quickbread!) recipe at 2 cups of zucchini to 1 cup of flour. This means that, for typical tastes, your recipe is already on the high side of carrot. If you want to add more than that, do so incrementally, and don't be surprised when others dismiss it as not being a cake any more.
As mentioned in comments, you will be able to have a stronger carrot taste with a better texture if you would replace the whole fresh carrots for something more concentrated, e.g. partially dehydrated carrots, macerated carrots, or you can search for prepared carrot flavoring (some molecular gastronomy shops carry all kinds of flavoring) or also use something that is strongly reminiscent of carrots, such as a small drop of nigella oil. |
Ways/techniques to make things "fluffy/foamy" like whipped cream?
In general, if you want to make something fluffy like whipped cream, what ingredients/techniques should you use? Basically, I want, when you put it in your mouth, to almost be like eating flavored air. Like eating the foam on a hot chocolate or beer.
I would like to make dipping sauces with this fluffy like texture.
Thanks! | There is no single, universal technique for making random food "fluffy". And you may have to live with significant changes in the recipe and in the final results if you try it.
Classically, you have three types of foams. One is fat-based, the other is protein-based, the third depends on sudden gas production/dissolving.
The fat-based foam is only possible in liquids which are an emulsion of fat in water, and only functions within a certain range of fat/water, a favorable temperature range, and a proper size of the fat globules. This is what whipped cream is. Besides cream, you can whip that way a few other things such as ganache or mayonnaise (although mayonnaise is a bit more complicated, since it also has protein). It is almost impossible to make at home an emulsion which will behave that way, you may succeed with lecithine and very good equipment (a lab-style homogenizer will be preferable over blenders and other kitchen staples), and you will be very limited in the ingredients you use.
The protein-based foam happens when proteins link. This is also possible with only a few ingredients in the kitchen, most notably egg whites, aquafaba, and, under the right conditions, milk (that's what cappuchino wands do). It is even more finicky than fat-based foam.
The third one is the (more-or-less sudden) release of gas. This is e.g. how beer foam happens. They are always very short-lived for liquids, although in principle a sponge cake and similar baked goods are a batter that has been set into this bubbled-up state by baking.
None of the three types above are applicable to a random liquid or sauce. They all require that you start with a known ingredient that creates foams, and whip it under the proper conditions, with the least amount of additions.
A fourth, more modern way, is to try forcing a gas into the liquid from outside. This is how soda stream works, or whipped cream siphons. This can in principle work with a wide variety of liquids, but you have to do quite some food engineering before the resulting texture is acceptable. Most liquids won't hold the foam as-is, if they whip at all, so you have to add a binding agent.
So, if you want to really make a random sauce into a foam, the way to do it will be to purchase a siphon (don't forget to invest into enough charging cartridges, you will need a lot for your experimentation) and a variety of gums and other binding agents. Then you will have to experiment to determine the proper binding agent (and the proper amount of it) for your sauce. Since you probably don't want to run many hundreds of experiments per sauce, it is advisable that you also get the proper literature on the functioning of binders, and gain some hands-on experience by first following existing, optimized recipes for foams. After that, you can start designing your own recipes, and will probably get away with a dozen or two of experimental runs per sauce, depending on your level of experience and how exact your expectations of the outcome are. |
Making crisp hash browns
I buy frozen, shredded potatoes. What is the best way to drive off moisture to help make them crispy when cooked?
Would microwaving on a paper towel help remove ice crystals and help avoid soggy potatoes? | Would microwaving on a paper towel help remove ice crystals and help avoiding soggy potatoes?
I don't believe this would be a good approach. To microwave long enough to drive off moisture, you will wind up cooking the potatoes in the microwave. Then when you attempt to finish cooking, the interior of the potatoes will over-cook before you get the right degree of browning.
What is the best way to drive off moisture to help make them crispy.
First you need to make sure they are thawed. Per the other answer, rinsing in a colander under cold/lukewarm water will accomplish this. Of course, this will add moisture to what's already there, so it will be even more important then to remove the excess.
Once thawed, you can remove the excess water by wrapping the potatoes in a clean linen dish/hand towel, and then twisting the opposite ends of the towel to create pressure on the potatoes, which will squeeze the water out of them.
Then once you've gotten the water out, cook them as usual. Make sure you use sufficient oil or butter to ensure a nice browning rather than just drying out and toasting the potatoes.
Bonus tip: when I make hash browns, I use fresh potatoes and I find that the potatoes start to oxidize once shredded. This can result in a slight green tinge to the cooked potatoes, which I'm not a big fan of (it doesn't affect the flavor at all, but I prefer the fresh color). This can be avoided by tossing the shredded potatoes in a dilute vinegar solution; I find that an 8:1 solution, e.g. 1 cup water to 1 oz. vinegar is strong enough to prevent the browning while not imparting a vinegar taste to the potatoes. Naturally, do this before you squeeze the water out of them. Of course, if you like a little tangy flavor in your food, you might try a stronger solution, as well as experiment with other types of vinegar or acids (e.g. lemon juice). :) |
How much magnesium is in Hinode Calrose rice?
I was looking for foods high in magnesium and I stumbled into Calrose rice. One source said 3000% for a quarter cup which is rediculous must be mistake but there is no other source that talks about magnesium content.
So I assume it has probably never been measured. Does anybody know? | This shows that 1 cup of cooked brown rice contains 80mg of magnesium. and white rice contains 50mg.
The wikipedia for brown rice show that for 100g of raw rice it contains 143mg of magnesium, and for white rice it's about 127mg.
The wikipedia page for calrose rice does not display nutritional information.
I would imagine it is similar to regular white rice or it would be stated, especially if it was 3000% of the base value (or about 3810mg) which would be very high. |
Can I use Star San "no rinse" for sanitizing canning tools and utensils?
I've been brewing beer (totally amateur) for a few years as a hobby. I now want to get into canning my own garden-grown veggies.
I've bought several books and watched several videos (like this one from Ball) which recommend:
Using hot soapy water to clean all jars, lids and bands/rings; as well as all other utensils (ladles, jar funnels, jar lifters, cutting boards, etc.)
Keeping the lids in hot water (not boiling) until ready to be used
In brewing there is a product called Star San that is a "no rinse" sanitation solution. You basically dip your utensils into a tub of it, take them out and they are ready to be used.
I'm wondering if this product would be safe and effective for use in canning. Any thoughts? | No rinse sanitizer like Star San works great for sanitizing canning tools & jars. The sanitary considerations for canning and beer have quite a bit in common, so for the most part, if you sanitize things like you're bottling, you'll be in great shape.
Except...
You'll still want to follow the instructions to simmer your flat lids. The rubber seal on the lid needs the heat to "activate" in order for it to be appropriately soft to create a good seal between the lid & jar.
Edit
I just grabbed a package of lids to check the instructions, and they appear to have changed to no longer recommend / require the hot water simmering prep. A quick internet suggests this changed about 5 years ago. Who knew?!
I've been continuing to simmer the lids for about 5 minutes before canning--and probably will keep doing so out of habit. However, it would seem that based on the package directions, you just need to sanitize, not heat. So Star San should do the trick for the lids as well! |
How does Ball mason jar size affect canning processing time?
I'm new to canning and food preserving and bought a basic starter kit including a water bath canner (I'll get into pressure canners later if I have success with this method).
One thing that is often cautioned is that the size of the container (pint or quart Ball mason jar) affects the cooking/processing (boiling) time, as well as the altitude!
Interestingly enough, in most recipes I see specific values given to adjust the processing time based on altitude (for example: if between 3000 and 6000 ft above sea level, add 5 mins to the processing time, etc.).
However, I have never seen anything that tells me how the jar size affects the processing time! Does anybody know if there is a rule of thumb here? | As pretty much always in canning, there are no rules of thumb for calculations/changes (the altitude thing is an exception, admittedly).
Each recipe has been developed and tested for a given jar size, and the institution which developed it should give you the size of jar you have to use. You cannot change the size to a larger one and add some number of minutes.
In general, you can change the recipe to a smaller jar size, but without reducing the time. This ensures that you don't run into problems with food safety, but you will likely end up with an overcooked product.
Bottom line, don't change jar sizes on your own, use the ones in the recipe. |
What's this salad of gray lumps in white dressing?
I can identify the green lettuce at the bottom, but not the physical matter under the red maraschino cherry. I happened upon this on Open Rice for a popular Western cuisine restaurant in Central, Hong Kong.
What are the gray lumps?
What white dressing is this? | This is potato salad, cubes of cooked (boiled) potato in a dressing of mayonnaise. If you are looking to replicate this, the typical cha chaan teng (茶餐廳) style potato salad might have some sweetened condensed milk, something like a 4:1 ratio of mayonnaise to condensed milk. Also, the garnish appears to be half of a cherry tomato, rather than a maraschino cherry. |
How do you safely defrost a whole lamb?
Some supermarkets sell a whole lamb.
The food safety rules for meat dictate defrosting in the fridge, never at room temperature.
The next-size down, a turkey, doesn't even take 24 hours to defrost. It takes either 48 or, if very large, 72 hours to defrost.
How do you reconcile these two rules? In other words, how do you defrost a whole lamb before cooking it?
Is this meant for chefs who have a fridge that will fit a lamb?
Are folks meant to start roasting it while it's frozen? I doubt it would cook through, no matter how gentle the fire.
Do birds (turkey, ..) require special attention because they spoil particularly rapidly, and for a lamb one would get away with defrosting at room temperature? Would 24 hours do it? Would that be actually safe?
I suppose if it's October or March, then defrosting outside in some regions at +5C might work, except that the temperature outside is never constant, which doesn't help much (with either defrosting or with food safety), and that you'd have to stand guard overnight to make sure no other wild animal discovers what feast is ready for them. | Food safety rules are written around the ways bacteria reproduce, not around the chefs' convenience. There is no difference in the speed of getting unsafe between different types of meat (or any other type of non-shelf-stable food). Yes, the lamb is also meant to be defrosted in the fridge. And cooking from frozen is indeed not an option.
So yes, you are meant to defrost it in the fridge. You could do it whole, or you could remove parts of it while still frozen and defrost these, then cook, while the rest stays in the freezer. If you don't have the equipment to do either of that, then your kitchen is simply not ready to deal with buying a whole lamb.
I don't doubt that there are many people who buy it and defrost it outside of the fridge, they just either don't know the food safety rules or make the decision to not follow them. |
Why does some bacon contain whey powder?
I wouldn't expect bacon to contain cows milk, but it does in some cases in the form of whey powder. What's the purpose of it?
(My daughter is allergic to cow's milk and I have to check her foods carefully, including bacon, which isn't a food I'd expect to contain dairy.) | Whey powder is often used in processed meats for bulking and binding. In the case of whole muscles, they are often injected with a brine (an ingredient of which is whey protein) to "enhance moisture and tenderness", as the document states. I could also imagine it as a binding agent in turkey "bacon", where ground turkey is formed and sliced. |
How does my pre-cooked Costco chicken breast not expire for another 5 weeks?
I bought some "fully cooked chicken breast strips" that are seasoned and has grill lines on them. They're quite tasty. Ingredients also include salt, potato starch, and vinegar.
The label says "best before" a date that is 5 weeks from now. I don't think there is enough salt or vinegar to preserve these since the chicken tastes like normal chicken and these aren't "cured" or pickled or the like. My understanding is cooked chicken usually goes bad after about 5-7 days.
How is this possible? | Keep in mind that the best before date is only valid until the package is opened. Once it is opened, you must treat the chicken strips as if they were fresh and consume them within a few days.
Most likely the chicken is using 'modified atmosphere packaging' (MAP). It's a very common method used to extend shelf life of meats and vegetables but since it doesn't look a whole lot different than regular packaging, many consumers aren't aware of it. Wikipedia has explained the process fairly well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_atmosphere |
What to do with the olive oil from canned sardines?
Olive oil is good for you, and it seems wasteful to throw it away. Yet all recipes call for draining the sardines prior to usage.
Any good ideas on what to do with that olive oil?
Is it some bad kind of olive oil maybe? Very low quality? What would that even mean? Some of the canned sardines say it's "extra virgin olive oil", which should be a good kind. | First, if you are going to use it, do so within a few days, and if you are not using right away, put in another container and store it in the refrigerator. As for uses, you can employ it anywhere you would use oil, and where the flavor works. Certainly a vinaigrette or dressing. I've seen suggestions for using it when roasting potatoes, and even on focaccia. So, no need to dispose of it. It is not going to be the best quality olive oil, and in some cases it is other types of oil. However, if you enjoy the flavor and have a near term use in mind it can be used. |
What are the different flavors of sources for homemade baker’s yeast?
I have been making sourdough bread for about five years now, and have made my own starter several times. I've been beginning to use baker's yeast, but between an interest in not paying for things and an interest in not being limited by stores' supplies of yeast, I'm looking to make my own baker's yeast culture.
From what I've read, there are a variety of sources one can get such a culture from, including boiled potato water, garden-fresh tomatoes, and a variety of fruits. I've also heard that the resulting flavor of starter is a little different for each source, but I haven't been able to track down what those differences actually are. I'm considering just making one starter from each source I can get my hands on, but before I delve into that, does anyone know the differences in flavor between different sources? | The differences will be down to the strain or variety of the yeast that you cultivate from the source. Generally baker's yeast is considered to be Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is a eukaryotic organism with a large genome. Many of the genes produced are involved with metabolism of various sources of energy for different environments and disposing of waste compounds from metabolism. In addition, the yeast that you "isolate" is very unlikely to be a single strain or even a single species, all of which taste and smell subtly different to each-other. For instance another yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe is also present on grapes and is commonly used in wine making. If you used grapes as your starter source, you are likely to get this yeast too or maybe instead of baker's yeast.
Some of the waste compounds involved are things like esters which are produced as by-products of metabolic activity of different carbon sources. Esters are often short-chain volatile compounds with distinctive smells/flavours - if you like candy/lollies flavoured as "banana", the flavour is often the ester amyl acetate. These are the different flavours that you get from different yeast strains.
As to which flavours they are exactly - well that will depend on exactly which environment you have got them from - grapes will be different to tomatoes, which will be different to apples etc. Now you might think "well, I'll just get some [insert favourite yeast source here]" and that each time you did this you would get the same result, but it isn't that simple - the yeast that you get will also be dependent on where the yeast source came from, the time of year, the stage of fruit ripeness, how the grower treated their plants, what's floating around in the air at the time... etc. and finally exactly which mix of yeast strains are present at your location.
Some of this complexity is seen in wine and beer manufacture - not all locations are equal in terms of wine flavours because of the wild yeasts that are present on the grapes or barley when they are crushed/malted to get the fermentation started, so most vineyards and breweries now add bulk stocks of single-source yeast to overcome this problem and standardize the flavours their vineyard/brewery produces. |
Home-school science curriculum using cooking
My sister has decided to home-school her children (all daughters, ranging from 5-14 years old) this year and has asked me, her physicist brother, for help creating a science curriculum. I would like to suggest to her to teach concepts using practical things so at the end of the year they will have useful skills.
I would like to have most of the concepts taught by cooking, but I'm not a great cook myself. So, I'm looking for suggestions for things that I may be overlooking. There are other questions here asking about the science of cooking, but are generally geared towards adults. I'm hoping to get ideas for something that teaches science to children and is useful for everyday cooking. Here are some of the things I have so far:
Maillard reaction
fermentation/yeast (making yogurt, kefir, sourdough)
Carmelization
Osmotic pressure (pickling, curing meat, etc)
Altitude effects (boiling point, adding flour, pressure cookers, etc)
thickeners (molecular structure, etc)
germs and bottling/preserving
Thank you for your help! | Those sound like fairly specific and advanced topics for the age range provided. These standard guidelines might help you with a way to think about how to approach this. With some knowledge about what kids should learn at various levels, you can determine how kitchen experiences could meet those needs.
I don't know if this question will remain open. In fact, you might get better answers here by posing a question like: How can I use the making of ice cream to illustrate the concept of states of matter?
Anyhow....I think you need to begin more broadly at first, then drill down with the help of curriculum guides.
Concepts that could be addressed in the kitchen:
The scientific process
Observation
State of matter
Chemical reactions
Mass, volume, forms of measurement
Acids and bases
basic math
fractions
conversions |
Why store food in an airtight container when it's in the fridge?
The common wisdom for storing prepared food for later is to store it in an airtight container and put it in the fridge, the temperature of which should be at or below 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celcius). I understand the purpose of the temperature is to slow the growth of bacteria to prolong the shelf life, but what about the airtight container? Is that also to slow bacteria growth, is it more about preservation of quality by preventing oxidation, or is it something else?
For the purposes of this question, I am more interested in the food I am storing itself, from a food safety and quality stand point. I get why you would want to store something pungent in an airtight container lest its odor get into any of your other items in the fridge or if you trying to prevent cross contamination between raw and cooked items. I simply would like to know what effect the airtight container has on the food itself vs. if I stored it in a non-airtight container. | Airtight packaging doesn't slow down bacteria growth. There are a few myths about them which don't apply in practice:
Bacteria are not kept out, despite popular belief – the air within the container has as many bacteria as the air outside. The food in the container also has bacteria – cooking doesn't sterilize food! – so you cannot keep the bacteria out that way.
The container is still full of oxygen. You don't get the effect of lowered-oxygen atmosphere that is sometimes used in packaging from industrial food producers.
These two hold whether your food is in the fridge or not – so storing the food in an airtight container outside of the fridge doesn't change anything about its safety either. *
The one way it helps with food safety is an edge case: if you forget something until it molds or spoils, the now-high levels of pathogens won't contaminate something else, exposing it to more than the normal "background" level.
The airtight container doesn't help with food safety, but it is quite good for food quality and has other convenience aspects:
if you put fresh fruit or vegetables in it, or cheese, you get a nice level of humidity, and vegetables stay crisp longer/cheese and other stuff doesn't dry out
many foods either emit or soak up smells. The airtight container prevents it.
if you have a mishap and drop something in the fridge, or a fermenting bottle of something spills over, it won't land in an open bowl of something else
modern containers have an almost-rectangular shape, which uses up the space in the fridge very efficiently, and allows stacking.
modern containers, as well as humble jars, are mostly transparent – so if you store the food in them as opposed to the pot in which you prepared it, it is easier to see what is where without opening lids
if you prepared food in a reactive pan (or even something not-very-reactive like seasoned cast iron) and store the leftovers in it, you are giving the pan time to react with the food and corrode and/or change the taste of the food. Food storage containers are nonreactive.
So the airtight containers are best practice for quality reasons. And non-air-tight containers, which have a loosely fitting lid (no visible holes, but also no gasket, such as a stock pot or a skillet covered with a lid) will give you about 80-90% of the desired effect.
* to be pedantic, it can interfere in one way: if you intend to store hot non-shelf-stable food outside for a short time, and are afraid it will enter the danger zone, a closed lid will slow down the time it cools down. But I suppose not many people keep a wireless temperature probe in their airtight container, so the point is quite moot in practice. |
How to get spices off pan - even after washing
I cooked using spices a lot, and I notice this problem most after cooking with turmeric. I wash the pan after I'm done using it, with dish soap, and allow it to soak, then scrub with a scourer or brush. Then
I clean with tissue paper. Even after this, the next meal I cook is often coloured yellow. I don't think it tastes of the spices, but the colour is there for sure. How can I make sure the spices are fully off the pan before I next use it? | As the coloured component Curcumin is soluble in oils not water it may help to wipe the dry and washed pan with oil. Hopefully the colour will be absorbed in to that oil rather than into the next dish you cook. You may leave the oil on while the pan is stored and wash that oil off before cooking the next dish.
Turmeric does not seem to stain the plastic (ptfe) of non stick pans but it does result in hard to remove stains on some other plastic utensils, containers and surfaces. Neat household Bleach works to quickly remove such stains on counter surfaces but would not be the first choice to use on a food pan.
Soaking with "Milton" eventually removes stains on plastic containers so may work on Aluminium. I have also seen suggestions that vinegar or lemon juice may work. They are both acidic and could theoretically corrode Aluminium, but I doubt it has a noticeable effect. My sweet and sour source will be acidic as will be Rhubarb but I have not noticed them damaging aluminium cookware.
(Although I do recall a health scare about aluminium leaching in to acid food which may have some scientific backing e.g. )
Links
Milton Steriliser A traditional method of sterilising babies milk bottles etc.
It is actually based on a very dilute Sodium Hypochlorite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_sterilizing_fluid
And whilst I would not recommend drinking it to cure covid. It does have a history of dilute solutions being used as a mouthwash
14 methods to remove turmeric stains. It may not cover frying pans but may provide useful tips to experiment with |
Can I substitute vanilla powder for cocao in a quinoa cake recipe
ingedients:
2 cups quinoa
1/3/cup milk
4 lg eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup butter
1 1/2/cup granulated sugar
1 cup unsweetened cocao pwdr
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2/tsp salt | Typically no. You need much more cocoa powder for a chocolate cake than you need vanilla powder for a vanilla cake. Adding a cup of vanilla would be both very expensive and very overwhelming in terms of flavour. And the vanilla doesn't have the same chemical properties as cocoa. Cocoa has a bit of fat in it, so a substitute should include some fat. |
What is the je ne sais quoi flavour my green curry is always missing?
I've been making green curry for years, and it always sucks (It's actually quite sad). I've followed David Thompson, and I've found recipes from other top chefs, and they're all pretty much the same, and the flavour is always very meh compared to what I get at a half-decent Thai restaurant.
The general paste recipe:
(Blend or Pound)
galangal (1 thumb sized portion)
lemongrass
lime zest
shallots
garlic
coriander seeds 1 tablespoon
cumin seeds 1/2 tablespoon
bird-eye peppers * 5
(shrimp paste) (I don't put this in)
cilantro stems
For the sauce
Good coconut milk (Arroy-D or Savoy)
Thai basil
fish sauce
kaffir leaves
For the recipe:
Cook coconut milk until it cracks, throw in the paste, cook until aromatic, then throw in some water, meat and vegetables, cook to desired tenderness, and when it starts to cool off, top with some shredded Thai basil. Optional add lime leaves and fish sauce.
Honestly, I feel like a crazy person. I want to say that the missing flavour is not enough birds-eye green peppers, or not enough of the basil flavour. With the peppers, I've just never been able to do more than 5. I have a pretty high tolerance for heat, but putting them in the paste and then cooking them makes this awful back of the throat heat that adds nothing to the recipe. With basil I find that the raw basil flavour is a little overpowering, but if I cook the basil at all it loses all flavour. | It's not possible for us to know what flavor you are missing in the green curry paste; your comments in the question about basil and peppers suggest that you may have flavor sensitivities that others do not share.
That said, I compared your procedure and ingredient list against Pailin's recipe, and noted the following items in her paste which are missing in yours:
Basil
Cilantro stems
Makrut lime zest (you're substituting regular lime zest)
shrimp paste (I assume the parens mean you're omitting it)
around 10 chiles
I'd guess that it's a combination of the items you're omitting that make the paste unsatisfactory, rather than any one of them. That said, shrimp paste adds a pretty significant glutamate punch to the paste, so if you're omitting that, it could be the key piece. |
What oyster species is 砵酒焗生蠔?
Picture from Hong Kong restaurant. Hence oyster can be bought in H.K. What oyster species I buy to make this 砵酒焗蠔, which means Port Wine Baked Oyster?
Another picture. I won't post more two, but here's another view. | The type of oysters used in _ are Hiroshima oysters
Although many books say you can use any oyster but restaurants say Hiroshima oysters. |
Why is corn nixtamalized?
I am somewhat confused about the difference between masa harina flour vs. cornmeal. Wikipedia says the process of nixtamalization needs to be done in order for the corn to be nutritional, kill toxins and make it more palatable. Basically they use burnt ash or lye to break up the hull of the corn when they are making masa. I always use cornmeal and I don't die from toxins and I assume it is just as nutritional as eating tortillas. | Nixtamalization is a culinary process that begins with dried corn kernels (maize), and uses alkalinity to alter the chemistry of the corn. The process is thousands of years old, first recorded by the the Aztecs, but probably older and more wide spread.
This guide is very informative. Here the author describes the result of the nixtimalization process:
This practice accomplishes several things: soaking dried maize kernels in an alkaline solution makes it easier to remove the thin outer seed coat, or pericarp, that encases the kernel, either through grinding or by rubbing. Next, both alkalinity and heat treatment help to not only soften the kernel, but also chemically alter the endosperm and germ of cooked maize [...] (Bressani et al. 1958; Bressani and Scrimshaw 1958). Finally, nixtamalization flavors maize, altering the taste profile of the kernels, giving them a slightly bitter and earthy flavor (Briggs 2015).
...and of course, the added bonus is that it makes corn (masa) delicious! |
How to deal with foul fishy odor of frozen shrimp
Note: I can't actually cook, I am just trying to learn to roughly assemble and heat things. Explain things to me like I know nothing.
A few weeks ago I decided to try out cooking some shrimp for myself. I planned to start off simple: cut out the veins, boil, and panfry. So, I bought a few meals' worth of shrimp and froze them. Over the last few weeks I've defrosted the portions and tried cooking them as planned.
Every time I noticed a foul fishy odor in the defrosted shrimp that made me gag. When I cooked it, I learned that it did not go away like the lighter ocean smell of fish. Overseasoning could not make the smell or taste go away. I have noticed this in some cod before, but it wasn't nearly as consistent as this batch of shrimp.
What on earth is that smell? Did the shrimp go bad? If it did, was it bad when I bought it or because I froze it? If not, what should I have done to get rid of that foul odor? | Shrimp, but also seafood in general, should not have a strong smell. You should be able to smell a faint salt water scent from them when not frozen, and basically nothing while they're frozen. If they're smelling a lot, that's a sign they may have gone bad.
It's impossible to say exactly what went wrong with them. If it didn't smell when you bought them and froze them, my best guess is that you defrosted them in an unsafe way. Always defrost in the fridge or under running cool water. Never leave them out on the counter (especially not over night).
I will also point out that your cooking method seems like a bit of overkill. It's very easy to overcook shrimp and have them end up rubbery. Just pan frying is perfectly sufficient. There is not need to boil them first. Overcooking can cause a strong fishy smell in seafood as well. |
How do I determine roasting temperature as a function of time?
TL;DR
If it takes 90 minutes to roast a leg of lamb at some temperature (perhaps somewhere from 350 to 450 °F?), and it takes 840 minutes to slow-roast a leg of lamb of the same exact weight at some other temperature (possibly 175 to 275 °F?), what is the temperature setting that one should use if one wants the leg of lamb to spend 420 minutes in the oven? Is it suitable to calculate the temperature using linear interpolation?
The mid-length story:
The purpose of the question is to avoid the tyranny of recipes, where I have to go to my tablet, computer, or book shelves to do anything. I'd like to understand the ideas (in this case, for roasting lamb or beef) well enough to be able to cook without the handholding of recipe authors.
In this era of internet-sourced recipes, recipes seem to be, by and large, copied, or inspired (possibly even sometimes plain plagiarized). For example, search online for "roast leg of lamb" and you will find a hundred pundits claiming to provide a recipe. Search for "slow roast leg of lamb" and you will find more results. But these recipes are not gospel. We should be able to do anything we want, so long as it's flavorful and healthy. Is there such a thing as semi-slow, average-slow, and rather-fast-than-slow roasting, or are we stuck with just "roasting" and "slow roasting"?
The long story:
Cooking a whole lamb, starting by defrosting it, will have to remain a 5- or 10-year project, when I will know that I can nail every detail right, and when I will know that a 40-or-so-large family reunion will happen, if they're ever in the same place at the same time.
At this time I have the much more modest objective of properly cooking a leg of lamb, defrosted for 36 hours in the fridge
and smeared with mustard, rosemary, and garlic
My intention was to leave it in the oven overnight at 275 °F / 135 °C. Slow roasting is much more of a foolproof method, because I don't have to calculate precise minutes-per-weight numbers. If it's in the oven two hours more or an hour less, it's still perfectly alright. (Yes, yes, no need to lecture me about food safety; I do make sure that the internal thermometer reading reaches whatever the thermometer says.)
Here is the problem: I really don't want the flavor, the texture, or, as mentioned above, the time sensitivity of roasting at 375 °F / 190 °C. I would like the fall-off-the-bone tenderness of 275 °F / 135 °C, but.
I was much too tired (tennis for just one hour did it) to think about standing on my feet for the 5-10 minutes that it takes to prepare the roast before going to bed. I'm starting to roast early in the morning instead, for guests who will arrive 420 minutes after the roast went to the oven.
If I need 90 minutes at 375 °F / 190 °C and 840 minutes (14 hours) at 275 °F / 135 °C, I am speculating that there is a precise temperature that I can use for 420 minutes, and the roast will be just perfect when the guests arrive. (Then the roast will rest outside during chatting and appetizers.)
How do I determine roasting temperature as a function of time? Would, for example, linear interpolation
375 + (420-90) * (275-375) / (840-90) = 331 °F
make sense?
N.B.: This might be a difficult question, in the sense that cookbooks do not discuss it. Feel free to "throw me a bone", figuratively speaking, and make a suggestion that I can try. If the roast is under-cooked, I can always use one of various remedies and apologize that I didn't get it quite right. The guests will be gracious. But if a better answer comes along later, it's fairer, and better fitting for a reference site, that I update the "correct" answer. Cooking is an art form anyway. There isn't just "right" and "wrong". | I have not seen this discussed in terms of oven cookery, however, it is certainly a part of the conversation when cooking with sous vide. Douglas Baldwin, noted expert, has a guide. Here, I have linked his appendix, "The mathematics of sous vide." Now, I am certain that you CAN NOT use this guide for oven cookery, because in the oven, you have a significant amount of evaporative cooling happening, which I think would dramatically change these calculations (I'm no mathematician). However, I do include it to point out that the size and shape of your food must be taken into account. You can't just consider time and temperature.
How do you know you need X minutes at Y degrees? For how much lamb and bone?
I googled "slow roasted leg of lamb." There are plenty of recipes, I don't see anyone cooking them for 14 hours. I think you can achieve the texture you want in much less time. So, I doubt you need to be as precise as you are suggesting. You might err on the side of your roast being finished early, rather than late, but even if it were finished well before your guests arrived, that is workable for a delicious meal. |
Are there any particular type of corn chips that are made from masa flour?
I am wondering if the type "Mexican Style" or "Restauant Style" or "Tortilla" corn chips also means they are made from masa flour? I cannot tell from the ingredients list. It does not say what process was used to make the corn flour. | Tortillas are made from masa. So, if the chip is truly a "tortilla chip", then it was made with masa. Corn chips, like the brand Fritos, are made from corn meal, I believe. Masa is made from nixtamalized corn. Corn meal or corn flour is simply ground corn. |
Why does boiling water make dough taste sweet?
I was experimenting on dough for chapathi, which is basically wheat tortilla. This is how I normally prepare it,
Mix whole wheat flour and salt with room tap water, often 20 to 30 degree Celsius .
Knead with oil until I get a consistent dough.
Immediately press with a rolling pin and cook in a pan
In this method, the product is often crisp, never fluffy and no particular taste.
But today I experimented with hot boiling water as I read recently it denatures protein in food, which prompted me to experiment.
When I cooked my chapathi, those were extra tender but more importantly, it was very sweet, even though I added salt .
I hope to find a scientific explanation to this phenomenon. | Flour is mostly starch, and starches are long chains of sugar molecules. When you add hot water to starches they gelatinize and burst, and these gelatinized starches soften the dough. Gelatinization works faster at higher temperatures.
There are enzymes in the flour which break the starch down into sugars, and they work more efficiently at high than room temperature as well, say 65°C.
Both these processes work at lower temperatures, but they work faster a higher temperatures, which is why adding boiling water gave you that result. At room temperature gelatinization works faster than enzymes action breaking starch down into sugars, so letting the dough rest will soften the dough without making it much sweeter. |
Why did this bread not expand properly?
I made a loaf of bread and scored the top with a razor to regulate its expansion as it baked. However, it had its own ideas and pretty much ignored mine, as below:
Why? And how can I produce a more beautiful loaf next time? | Most of the expansion did occur at your score, and you got a good rise, so I think you should not be too disheartened! It looks like you cut diagonally rather than downwards: this works well for rolls and smaller loaves, but I'd suggest the simpler cut for a full pan loaf. Scoring techniques are discussed here: https://food52.com/blog/13136-how-to-make-pretty-bread-like-a-pro.
For loafs baked in pans, I suggest making multiple diagonal scores across the top. I find this more attractive than a longitudinal scoring, and it also gives more places for the dough to expand.
Generally it is important to knead (or stretch and fold) the dough quite thoroughly before it proofs. This removes any large air pockets and ensures the remaining air is evenly distributed through the loaf. If you underproof the loaf then it may expand in unexpected ways in the oven, breaking through the skin. I recommend the 'poke' test.
Finally, you might try turning down the temperature slightly in the first 20 minutes: if the oven is too hot then the outside of the dough sets before the inside has finished expanding, causing unpredictable ruptures. |
Chinese chicken balls - should the chicken be precooked?
There seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to cooking Chinese chicken balls. Some chefs pre-cook the raw chicken in simmering water (in a similar way to BIR take-away chefs) before coating and frying, others just coat the raw chicken batter and deep fry.
Which is the most authentic method used in Chinese restaurants? The only reason I can think of pre-cooking is to eliminate any risk of the chicken being undercooked, while the latter would allow for a more flavoursome chicken by using a marinade etc. | I think this is a heavily westernized version of, em, Chinese "chicken balls" (鸡球 ji qiu). The more authentic version comes without the thick batter; instead it's just slightly coated with potato starch. Also, they're not served directly as a dish, but instead used as an intermediate ingredient; you can make, for example, kung pao chicken balls, sweet and sour chicken balls, or spicy chicken balls. (That should explain the lack of batter.)
But in any case, no, you should definitely not precook the chicken. With or without the batter, the deep frying is enough to cook the chicken. If your chicken is precooked, then it is going to become overcooked. |
Baking with a drip pan
I want to bake cookies and croissant but I don't have baking trays. Can I use the drip pan that is removable and metal? It's shiny coated black metal ( not sure which type). | I assume you are talking about something like : https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/Frigidaire-5304442087-Range-Stove-Oven-Broiler-Pan-1-Blue/PRD2Z84UNVIFLYX
Yeah, you could do it.
If you have parchment paper or silpat silicon baking mat, it would be even better |
Why am I not getting any smoke out of my smoking pouch?
I am cooking some brisket on a gas grill. Following YouTube tutorials I made a smoking pouch/smoke bomb just like the ones they do on YouTube and filled it with newly purchased smoking pellets. As suggested I sealed the pouch, poked holes in it, placed it on top of a burner on one end, and turned the burner on high. I placed the brisket at the other end. Initially the temperature reached 300 degrees Fahrenheit with that single burner on high. Later I lowered it down to hold the temperature around 225-250. Strangely I haven't seen any smoke coming out of the smoking pouch. No action there whatsoever. One of the holes has gathered a tiny bit of brownish gooey stuff. That's it.
Temperature too low? A tutorial says hot smoking works in the range of 180 degrees and 275 degrees Fahrenheit.
For reference, I followed these tutorials: 1 2 | It is possible that you didn't poke big enough holes, or that the heat from the burner was not enough to cause the pellets to smoulder. You need to place the packet on the burner directly (actually on the rack above the burner, removing the diffuser), not on top of the diffuser (see Step 2 in these Step-by-step instructions). One way to test would be to fire up your grill, place a packet on the grill and visually check what setting you need to use to see smoke coming out of the packet.
Hot smoking is usually only done for a portion of the whole cooking time not the whole time. Generally you only need 30 min to 1 hour of smoking at the start, along with a long slow (~225 F/~110 C) cook for the rest of the time.
Also note that the temperature on the grill thermometer in the lid is not measuring the temperature at the cooking surface. The temperature on the lid is an indicator of the heat inside the grill at the point of the probe only! Ideally for smoking/slow cooking you need the temperature measured at the meat. This is especially the case with gas grills as they are not well sealed (won't work if they are), so a lot of the heat and smoke escapes out the gaps, but the probe is usually near the top of the lid, where heat accumulates. If you are inexperienced at smoking I wouldn't be too concerned about fine temperature control at this point - a little too hot at the start shouldn't matter too much in the long run. |
My black glutinous rice is not chewy at all?
I need some advice, I bought some Black Thai glutinous rice, but it just isn't getting the right texture.
I have:
soaked it overnight
soaked it over 2 nights
boiled it
slow cooked it
steamed it
I have tried various times from 1 hour up till 6 hours for the above.
No matter what I do, the texture isn't right. It's crunchy on the outside, like it has a shell but it's soft on the inside. It's not chewy and soft at all unfortunately.
The bag says it's glutinous rice. Could it be it's labelled wrong?
Any tips and insights would be helpful! | Black rice is "hulled", meaning the fibrous outer husk is removed, but not (or only minimally) "polished", meaning the thin but tough bran layer is left on. (It's the bran that provides the color to black rice.) Different varietals of rice, and different processing methods, will lead to a thicker or thinner layer of bran.
It sounds like the rice you have has a relatively thick bran layer, meaning a tough outer layer will remain after cooking. There's nothing you can change about your cooking process to address this.
From the picture, I note a pretty wide variance in color, indicating low-quality processing (the husk was left on a few grains, and the bran partially rubbed off others). If you have a choice of brand, look for black rice with as uniform a color as possible. |
Why not make sourdough bread from young starter?
I made my own starter 3-4 days ago, and it has been growing well; I have fed it twice so far. As far as I know, it is recommended that you feed starter for about 7-0 days before you use it to make bread. My question is, why? If my starter is already growing, it means that the yeast in there is alive and well. How would the bread be different if I made it from the starter I have today, vs the one I will have in a week?
Thanks. | The advice to let the culture mature before you use it is targeted to getting reliable results. A mature sourdough culture has a relatively small number of strains of microorganism, which have outcompeted the others and formed a relatively stable ecology (assuming a regular feeding schedule). At that point the culture is reliable because newly introduced strains can't compete with the established ones. A new sourdough culture may work fine (particularly if you're seeing vigorous activity), or it may be not great, or it may be the best sourdough you've ever tasted. But the bread you make with it today may be significantly different from next week's.
As an example, if you got a bit of commercial bread yeast in there, the bread yeast is going to go crazy. But that yeast strain doesn't do well with low pH, so once the lactobacillus gains a toehold it'll slow down and be replaced by a hardier strain of saccharomyces. Fine bread this week; fine bread next week; but two different breads.
Bottom line: if you like the look of it, no reason not to use it today. Just don't generalize from the results. |
Can you sharpen a Y peeler with a honing rod?
At 1:07, this man uses a Diamond Flat File to sharpen his Swivel fruit peeler.
But I own a Y peeler like this OXO one, and lack a Flat File. Can I sharpen my Y peeler with this Grosche ZWEISSEN Ceramica honing rod? | Honing and sharpening are two different things. When you sharpen a blade, you are removing material (metal) from the blade to create a new, thin edge. Sharpening leaves burrs on the edge, while use of a properly sharpened blade tends to round over the very thin edge. Honing the blade removes burrs and can straighten the edge.
Removing the burrs allows for a smooth cut, while straightening the edge puts the sharp part where it's needed. But in neither case is the honing actually sharpening the blade.
So, no…a honing rod cannot be used to sharpen your peeler. Note that the difference isn't the type of peeler, but rather the tool applied to it. If you want to sharpen the peeler blade, you need to use a tool that will remove material from the blade to restore a thin edge for cutting. |
What "paring knife" best sharpens a fruit Y peeler?
At 0:22 of this Oct. 5 2009 video, Douglas Jones (sous-chef of LA's Lucques) proclaimed that he "just bought a three-dollar paring knife". But his hand covers it, and I can't see what his paring knife looks like. | According to this article, there are 4 types of paring knife, the "spear tip", the "bird's beak", the "sheep's foot", and a "Western-style Japanese" paring knife.
From your image, it looks like the chef is using a "sheep's foot" paring knife. However, for the purpose of sharpening a vegetable peeler, you only need a small straight length of the knife's blade, so specifically which type you use won't make too much difference except for the "bird's beak" as it is curved. |
New to canning, first attempt Peach Jam
First time canning my ball wide mouth jar may have gone into the water bath with the lid depressed. Must it go in with the lid in a popped up position? Now cooled, it makes a thud sound when tapped with the side of a spoon, but the lid is stuck to the jar. Any opinions on if this is properly sealed? | It should come out of the bath with the button up and as it cools, the button will pull in with a satisfying pop.
If that doesn't happen the jar might be sealed, but there just isn't a good way to know short of forcing the lid.
If the lid is stuck firmly, without jam having leaked out onto the seal, I would be confident in the seal.
If you really want peace of mind, you can clean the rim, replace the lid with a new one, and process the jar again. |
Can ghee replace butter in lemon curd?
My mother-in-law believes she is allergic to milk solids, but that ghee has the solids removed. She loves lemon meringue pie. The lemon curd in the pie calls for butter. Can I substitute ghee successfully? | Yes, you can; for example, from Charlotte's Lively Kitchen we have the following remark:
Can lemon curd be made with clarified butter?
OK, this is maybe a slightly unusual recipe adjustment to have tested.
However, I decided that as lemon curd is such a classic recipe, I’d
see how it was made in an old Victorian cookbook I was given by my
Granny, and that recipe used clarified butter so I thought I’d give it
a try.
It was delicious. However, I didn’t think it tasted like lemon curd as
we know it today so I decided to stick with regular butter.
Note that butter is about 80% fat, 18% water, and 2% milk solids (varies according to the butter). So, you may wish to reduce the amount of ghee and adjust the moisture content based on your recipe. |
What's wrong with if you only sharpen, and never hone, your knives?
Pretend that whenever a knife feels dull (even if it isn't), you sharpen it on a whetstone, and never hone it. What do you squander if you only sharpen, and never hone? What are the drawbacks?
I'm guessing that only sharpening curtails or docks your knife's edge, and wastes your knife's length? Because you're wastefully removing the bent steel, rather than straightening it?
Top picture below. Bottom. | A kitchen knife has two different structures of steel in it; hard steel in the edge so that it can be sharp, and soft steel in the spine so that it can be flexible and tough. The real danger of too much abrasive sharpening is removing all of the hard steel from the edge of the knife, at which point it will become impossible to give it a good edge.
Where I've seen this happen in practice is cheap stamped steel knives (many of which have a fairly thin layer of hard steel to begin with) sharpened using an electric sharpener for years. My mother has some that are basically butter knives now. Forged knives tend to have more hard steel, so it takes a lot more over-sharpening to remove it (still, my mother-in-law has managed, after grinding off 4mm of the edge over 30 years). |
How does this microscope graph with 3 axes prove that a knife became buckled and bent?
Can someone please interpret the microscope image below? How does it prove that the knife "became buckled and bent"?
We examined hones and knives under a microscope at MIT. The cutting edge of a Victorinox chef’s knife became buckled and bent after being dulled on a glass cutting board.
I think that "cutting edge" above refers to "edge" below. | The edge of the knife (which you correctly identify in the second picture) is shown hugely magnified as the 'bottom edge of the grey slab' in your first picture. We clearly see that this edge is not straight and smooth, but roughed up and curved upwards. This is what is meant by "buckled and bent".
Note that your image does not show a "function of three variables", as was stated in the original question (unless you mean a function with a binary output describing whether there is knife material at a given (x,y,z)-coordinate); it is a (two-dimensional projection of a) three-dimensional microscope image. |
Can I substitute fresh tomatoes for canned?
I'm quite new to cooking. I want to make spaghetti and all the recipes I've found for spaghetti sauce so far have required multiple types of canned tomatoes. However, I only have fresh tomatoes, nothing canned. I do have the basic spices (garlic, sugar, salt, pepper, etc), just no canned tomatoes.
Should I just finely chop my fresh tomatoes and put them in a pan with the spices? Should I add water or some kind of liquid? | Recipes that call for canned tomatoes usually do so because these are picked and preserved when at peak ripeness, as well as saving you the trouble of peeling. For whole or chopped canned tomatoes, you can substitute fresh tomatoes (get the ripest ones you can) that you'll have to peel yourself. For other canned tomato products (like passata or paste), you will need to process the fresh tomatoes to get the same result.
Note that if the recipe calls for canned tomatoes and a pinch of sugar, you might want to omit or dial back the sugar. Recipes often include sugar to counteract the higher acidity of some canned tomatoes. |
is this mold on my kimchi or yeast?
I have been fermenting this kimchi for a month now and it has grown this white things above. I've stored it in in my refridgerator and I only opened it now. Is this poisonous and should I just throw it out or should i just remove the top?
It doesn't smell rotten or have any foul odor. | That looks like mould (mold). Kimchi typically only goes mouldy when the vegetables are not submerged, which looks like is happening here, probably because of your choice of container. Use a deeper container like a jar so that all the solids are submerged in the liquid, and continually pack them down so they do not dry out. Alternatively, use a pickling weight or even just a clean pebble. The mould here looks extensive enough to have contaminated the whole container, so you should not eat any of it and throw it away, unfortunately. |
I'm not looking to learn a new skill; how do I make my knives better at cutting?
I am a reasonably proficient casual kitchen user and I have a set of kitchen knives I bought from a (British) supermarket a few years ago. Recently I've noticed they've become less good at cutting things than they were before.
(I am purposely avoiding words like 'sharp', 'dull', 'sharpen' and 'hone' in this question because I don't want to accidentally misuse them.)
There are plenty of questions on this site from people who are interested in acquiring the equipment and developing the skills to maintain their knives – good for them! But this is a skill set I'm not particularly fussed about developing, and my knives are not high-quality enough to warrant paying someone to do something to them.
Instead, I would like to know the simplest thing I can do to make my knives better at cutting, preferably with equipment that's not too expensive and is easy to get hold of.
For example, I could get this 'knife sharpener', or this 'sharpening steel' at my local large supermarkets. But having seen the number of people on this website who seem to regularly damage/ruin their knives by doing the wrong thing, I'd like a little guidance that I'm on the right track before I start. | Yes, you can keep an everyday useful kitchen knife serviceable with the Anysharp you linked. For the majority of non-serrated knives sold in a supermarket it will be fine. I've got one, and use it on my Ikea, Sainsburys and Victorinox knives. I can get a better edge with stones, but only once I've got my hand back in, so I don't bother. I've got some better knives that it doesn't work on because the angle is different - so I end up not using those as much. It's a bit aggressive really, so probably wouldn't be ideal on a quality knife even of the right angle, except for restoring a chipped blade. It's not quite foolproof, but nearly. The suction cup needs a good surface on something heavy to stick to, end you need to be careful to hold the blade square to the grinders.
That steel is OK for finishing the job if you can be bothered, but it's optional (I've got almost the same one, and only really use it before carving meat, which I do about once a year).
This will seems almost heretical to some people here, but if you just want to cook and eat, and not play with knives, that's fine. But in that case don't waste your money on posh knives either. |
How to make profiteroles without a visible hole?
I get the choux pastry and how you put filling in it, but there's always a hole left and the filling shows. Does anyone know of a sure-fire way to make a profiterole that looks completely intact from the outside while the filling is in? | Fill from the bottom. Take a paring knife and cut a half-circle about the size of a dime near one end on the bottom, with the ends of the cut facing the end of the profiterole. This makes a sort of trap-door to get the filler tip into. Afterwards, you can use the paring knife tip to pull the trap door flush with the bottom. |
Can you preserve/can tomatoes of various sizes together?
I am new to canning and have a water bath canner. I have successfully (well...I think!) canned/jarred several dozen bread-and-butter pickles following a recipe I found in the official Ball Canning & Preserving Guide.
I am now trying to preserve/can/jar a bunch of my tomatoes following another recipe in the same book. The problem is, all of my tomatoes are drastically different sizes:
Is it generally OK to use the different-sized tomatoes when preserving them? Or do they all need to be the same type and generally same size? | Your intuition is correct here: cannng recipes are developed for a given chunk size (within a small range). If your recipe was developed for large chunks, the small ones will overcook and not taste as well, and if it was for small ones, the large won't heat up enough in the middle and thus it is unsafe.
Your options here are to:
sort the tomatoes into cans and use different processing times (unless you happen to find two recipes with the same time for large and small tomatoes because of different jar sizes)
cut up the whole tomatoes until they are roughly the same size as the small ones
find a recipe for hacked tomatoes and cut up all tomatoes before preserving them.
use a recipe for large chunks and see if the small ones still taste good enough for your personal standards
Hot water canning tends to be more forgiving than pressure canning, so if you find a recipe specifically intended for hot water canning tomatoes (hint, it will also require acidifying them), it might have a wide size range - you may test it and see if you are OK with the quality of the small chunks. |
Not Burning a Wood Fire Pizza
We cooked some pizza last night and had a good time. However, it cooked so fast that the pizza was really dark (burnt in places) and had cheese that didn't melt. On some pizza's, it was still doughy.
We have an Alphaforni 5 Minuti Wood fire oven running at 375°C (700°F). The temperature was measured using the built in thermometer. I had preheated the oven for two hours.
The dough was store bought and frozen. I thawed it out in the fridge overnight. Then it was sitting out of the fridge for about 1.5 hrs before we got it into the oven.
What would cause it to both burn and still have shredded mozzarella cheese not melt? The cheese was under the pepperoni. | A pizza burning on top while being undercooked on the bottom can be caused by uneven heat in the oven, as well as a pizza being overloaded with toppings. The former can be an issue with the oven itself, or can indicate that you are not drawing enough hot air over the top of the pizza. The latter is self-explanatory.
A trick sometimes used by pizzaiolos to prevent the bottom of the pizza from burning when the top has not cooked enough yet, is to lift the pizza closer to the top of the oven using the peel. This way, the top of the pizza gets some extra heat, while the cooking on the bottom slows down.
This image, which stems from a pizza oven manufacturer's Instagram post shows what I mean. The post also explains what is happening, and introduces the wonderful term "doming" for this practice. |
Cleaning chicken with corn starch?
YouTube recently started recommending Chinese cooking videos. This particular cook has a curious habit of rubbing cornstarch all over the chicken breasts before washing them off. Is there an advantage to cleaning chicken with cornstarch? Or perhaps an alternate explanation? Some people have suggested it's for tenderizing or velveting but those aren't particularly satisfying answers. | Some asian cultures clean meats with flour and/or cornstarch to remove the game-y smell from it. Since it's being washed off, I don't think it for the velveting. |
Can I just rinse the knife & cutting board, instead of washing it, after cutting washed vegetables?
I was wondering something I can't seem to Google anywhere, concerning food safety/hygiene.
And that is whether I can just rinse the cutting board/knife, after cutting up some washed vegetables (e.g. cucumber & tomatoes) or whether doing so could be quite unhygienic and I ought to just wash it every time
• By rinse I mean to just let water run on the knife and cutting board vertically
• And by wash, I mean use a detergent with a sponge or a brush | As a general food safety rule/best practice, you should still perform active washing, rather than passive rinsing, even for fruits and vegetables.
Fruits and vegetables are still vectors for food borne illness and cross contamination. Wide scale recalls of vegetables due to listeria and e. coli are not uncommon. Active washing with soap and water will combat this. A quick swipe with a soapy cloth followed by a rinse will clean up much better than rinsing alone.
Fruits and vegetables also contain things such as sugars, which passive rinsing may not fully clean. This can result in spoilage and/or mold growth on your cutting board. A great demonstration of this would be to cut beets, which have both relatively high sugar and an accompanying red color, and passively rinse up vs actively washing. Washing will clean up much better. The same is true for other fruits and vegetables, though the lack of red dye makes it less easy to notice. |
What exactly is the salt for when making oatmeal porridge?
As per the instructions on the oatmeal package, I make it like this:
I take a bowl.
I put 1 dl oatmeal into it.
I put 2 dl water on top of it.
I put 0.65 grams of salt on top of it.
I mix them together with a spoon.
I microwave it at 750 watts for 2 minutes.
I take it out and mix it with the spoon again.
I wait for a few seconds and then apply a spoon of lingonberry "jam" (the kind where you can see individual berries).
I pour some milk over this and eat it.
What exactly is the salt for? Is it purely for taste, or does it actually cause some kind of chemical reaction which makes it cook properly or something? | There are several reasons to use salt in cooking. From that source, the UK Salt Association (yes, that is apparently a thing!), salt is used as:
Seasoning
Preservative
Binding agent (in meat products)
Color Controller (in meat products and baked goods)
Texture aid (in meat products, baked goods and cheese)
Fermentation controller (in baked products and cheese)
The only one of these that applies to your recipe, is seasoning.
Note that apart from tasting 'salty', salt is also a known flavour enhancer which can improve the taste of food and drinks without making them salty. This is why salt is often used even in sweet applications, and occasionally even in cocktails. |
How do I wash farm-fresh eggs?
My aunt recently gifted us a carton of eggs fresh from her chickens.
I've been rinsing them off thoroughly with each use, but I'm not really sure if this is enough to make sure they're sanitary for consumption.
What's the appropriate way to wash eggs when they come directly from a chicken, instead of being store-bought?
Note, I'm talking about just before using an egg, not washing all of my eggs at once. | (from what I can see on the internets)
Just continue what you are doing.
Just before using:
Softly brush off dirt and debris and rinse for a couple of seconds under running water. |
How to get Palm Oil?
I am trying to make my own Nutella from raw ingredients. I have tried many recipes and eventually bought a wet grinder to make smooth hazelnut paste. Then I bought criollo couverture chocolate and I was able to make the most amazing hazelnut-cocoa-spread. But it has a flaw, it is too soft and it becomes almost liquid when spread on a fresh toasted bread slice.
So I tried to replace some of the oil I used with cacao butter and it was better. Then I used coco oil for the rest and it was perfect. But again this recipe have a big issue. coco oil and cacao butter are both worth than palm oil in terms of saturated oil.
Now I am trying to buy some "palm oil" but this looks like mission impossible. I either find cosmetic products, or articles about deforestation. When a find an interesting shop, it sells liquid reddish palm oil, not the white buttery paste I saw on how is it made.
Where can I find palm oil and how should I call it? | Based on your description of being more solid, I think you might actually want palm shortening. Shortening is 100% fat and doesn't contain any water, making it more solid at room temperature.
Palm shortening does look a little closer to butter
A quick google search shows that Amazon does sell palm shortening. |
What does it mean to let gluten relax?
I'm new to cooking and have no experience cooking.
I know a bit about gluten in that it gives bread the toughness for stretching, which is good for chewy bread and bad for soft cakes.
I've watched some baking videos where the cook says to "let the gluten relax". I just know it means to leave the dough alone to do something.
What exactly does it mean to let the gluten relax? What happens with the gluten and how does it change the bread/cake? | It means exactly what it says: the gluten relaxes. You can observe it for yourself.
When you leave the dough alone after vigorous kneading, the gluten relaxes and goes from a tensed up state to a mellow state, similar to how human muscles relax depending on the owner's emotional state. The dough goes from hard and modeling-clay-like to pliable and elastic.
The difference for the final bread is a bit indirect. While trying to bake with a completely tense gluten will probably lead to a bad rise, you actually would never do that, because you leave the dough to rise after kneading anyway, and it relaxes during that stage. The real advantage of giving the dough time to relax during kneading is that it lets you properly knead the dough. If your dough has tensed up too much, further kneading motions are not making the structure better, they are making it worse - breaking the dough, for example, and certainly not contributing to the pliable, resilient elastic mesh of gluten you want. If you try to force tensed up dough by kneading, you will end up with overkneaded dough, and if you stop at the point that it's tensed up and let it rise, it will be underkneaded. So instead, you give it a rest, the dough relaxes, and from that point on, you can continue kneading. |
Am I on wrong track or is my Apple Cider gonna waste?
I am new to this forum. I am questions regarding ACV. But for this I am writing the complete scenario for understanding.
Last year, I made ACV (watching some tutorials from YouTube) and ingredients I used were:
Water
Sugar
Apples as whole
During the making of it, I had the smell of something acidic going around in the kitchen and i guess it was fine but even after fermenting and preserving it for a long time, I couldn't see the Mother in it (the cloudy film in it).
Question 1: Did I do something wrong in it? Although I took care of everything even I tasted a bit sour and acidic too. I still have it preserved in a bottle.
Moving ahead, about 2 and a half week back from today, I started to make another batch of ACV and ingredients I used this time were:
Water
Sugar
Apples as whole
Yeast (a lil bit, not much)
Previous batch ACV (just a glass of it in a jar)
Problem is that I am actually worried about is, when I stirred it after one week of starting, I could see some bubbles in it, but after 2nd week when I looked at it to stir, I couldn't see any bubbles in it and majority of the apples were sunken to the bottom, I tried smelling it closely. Okay, it smells a bit of acidic of maybe alcoholic but it's aroma isn't spreading like the previous one in the kitchen.
Question 2: I am worried if this batch is waste, is the yeast in it is dead, if there is less sugar in it, is there something else or if it's going fine? (No, there is no mold or something in it, that's atleast a good sign)
Question 3: I am not clear till day that how long do we have to ferment apples then enclose the liquid to form the Mother?
Please guide me, because I really am worried about it.
Update: I read somewhere that it happens when sugar is in excess. I just added some yeast to it and i can see that bubbling going like right now that made clear that i think i got messed up with yeast since start because i think i made a mistake by adding a lil bit hot water not lukewarm water. Will check it regularly, hopefully I have to keep a strict check on sugar and yeast so that the process could proceed smoothly. | I just finished two batches of vinegar, one with apples and one with peaches. I use plain quilter’s cotton to cover my jars, as I think cheesecloth lets in too many bugs. At least where I live.
I use only fruit, water, and sugar. I stir it every day for about 3 weeks. You can smell it and tell when it goes through the alcohol stage. And you really should be tasting it every day. You shouldn’t need to add any yeast, or more sugar. Just let it do it’s thing for a while. You won’t always get a mother, either, although for my peach vinegar I ended up with 3. I would give it another week or two, stirring and tasting every day. If you can get your hands on some pH test strips, this can also help you to know when everything has converted to acetic acid. |
does leaving the pizza dough longer to ferment compensate for putting too low amount of yeast?
I don't have measuring cups or anything to measure how much dough:yeast ratio there should be. Is it okay to leave the dough for a longer period of time for lower amount of yeast to compensate? | In short and general: yes.
There is a dependency between the amount of yeast used and the required leavening time. However as a natural growing process it is not following a linear function but an exponential function to the basis of the Euler constant. But before doing an in-depth mathematical analysis of this problem, I would rather recommend to carefully watch your dough. As soon as it has roughly doubled in size it should be ready to use or to swap it in the fridge. In general long fermentation helps to develop more 'complex' flavours.
I personally use for most of my doughs 2-2.5g of fresh yeast for 1kg of dough, let it rise for 4-5h on room temperature and another 20-44h in the fridge. |
What is this Kenwood food processor attachment for?
We've recently acquired a food processor, and can't work out for the life of us what this attachment does. The manual, and Googling, hasn't helped. Here's the attachment:
And here's the food processor (Kenwood FDP30)
Any ideas? | I will assume the other end of the attachment is not for cutting. It looks like a tool for emulsification. You can make sauces like mayonnaise using the attachment.
Edit:
The comment of @steve-chambers confirms that it indeed is an emulsification tool. |
Solutions for a bland vegetable curry
Over the years, I have developed a recipe that is effectively aloo gobi and saag aloo mixed together: Potato, cauliflower, broccoli and spinach curry. (I used to make it with sweet potato, but to "please" all my diners, I've switched to regular potatoes...which is also more authentic.)
Anyway, the curry gravy is fried black mustard seeds, browned-off onions, ground fenugreek, ground turmeric, hot chilli powder, ground coriander, diced ginger, red chillies, dried curry leaves and chopped tomatoes. The vegetables are roasted and added to the gravy after it's stewed for a while (20-40 minutes, say). Then I mix through the spinach at the end.
When I first started making this, I remember it tasting better than it does now. It always tastes bland, nowadays. If there's any spice, it's mostly from the ginger; even if I minimise its quantity (or remove it altogether) and focus instead on the fenugreek and chilli. I roast the vegetables specifically for the Malliard reaction and to sweeten them up, but it doesn't help much. Often, the overwhelming flavour is the tomato, but the gravy dries out and burns if you don't use enough.
It's quite frustrating and, because there are so many variables, I'm not sure where I'm going wrong. I have tried adding more spice; it doesn't really make a difference. I have tried leaving the gravy to "infuse" for longer; that helps to a point, but with diminishing returns. My spices are just supermarket spices -- nothing fancy -- but relatively new, so shouldn't have lost their potency. Should I toast them first? Salting the vegetables doesn't make any difference. Some recipes I've seen post-fry the vegetables to crisp them up, but I don't see how that can work with a gravy-based curry.
What's the secret to a good vegetable-based curry? | Here are some suggestions-
I usually use freshly prepared spices. By this what I mean is I buy from the market not the powder but the whole spice. For example I buy green chillies from market. I dry them under sun, and then grind them for a fresh chilly powder. Also I use two types of chilli powers Kashmiri, for giving red color but it is not spicy and the spicy chilli powder. I also buy coriander seeds from market and grind them fresh wherever I want to make indian curry. The aroma while grinding is so strong compared to the powder packet spices from market, and obviously this enhances the flavour.
Spices used initially, eg cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, I usually roast them and then grind them. This gives an amazing flavor to my curries. If you are not using these spices, I will recommend you to use them especially for Punjabi Graveys
As you mentioned, you use potatoes. And you fry them before adding to curries. That's good. You can also make holes in potato so that some flavors penetrate inside the potato and it doesn't taste bland.
Whenever I use onions, I chop them finely. This enhance the flavor to a great extent. As chopping them finely and then using them their surface area increases, increasing their flavor.
I hope you use fresh tomato puree.
Whenever you add spices like turmeric, chilli powder, then cook them little while and then you may add little water so that their flavours blend nicely.
You can try adding some curd or cream to your gravy.
However make sure to mix the curd well before adding.
You can try add some cashew pastes, or muskmelon seeds to especially punjabi gravy
Whenever buying vegetables from market, you should one with best flavors. Tomatoes should have sourness and curry leaves should have good flavor. You should smell them before buying.
After I have prepared my gravy I usually give it an oil/ghee tadka. This enhances flavor to a great great extent. By this what I mean is that I heat some oil/ghee in a small pan, add Asofoetida(optional), cumin seeds, curry leaves chilly powder mix well and as they start to sprinkle I quickly pour this is my gravy.
I hope these suggestions help.
Will add more if I remember one. |
How to make marshmallow ice cream topping without it hardening in the icecream
My favorite flavor icecream is chocolate marshmallow swirl but the only brand I know of that makes it is Turkey Hill and I can't find it outside of Pennsylvania. I live in California now so that's a problem. I've tried to add my own kind of marshmallow topping but it always hardens in the icecream. Does anyone have a remedy for this? Thank you | I've seen this mentioned on the internet a couple of times...it's not a topping, so you won't get the "swirl", but a way to add marshmallow into your ice cream, like in rocky road.
Take regular sized marshmallows and knead them between your fingers until you get a soft pliable mass. Reserve on a plate until you have enough for your batch. When the ice cream is almost frozen, mix them in. Sounds like it takes a bit of work, but supposedly they don't freeze solid after this point. |
Why boiling water, then cold water for this shaobing recipe?
I'm trying to make this Chinese pastry called Shaobing. Some recipes I've found call for first adding boiling water then adding cold water. There's no yeast, just some salt and flour. FYI, these recipes are from pretty old cookbooks.
My question is, what does adding boiling water first, then cold water do to the flour? | Adding boiling water to flour causes the starch granules to swell and gelatinise, allowing the dough to absorb more water, resulting in a softer and/or fluffier finished product. However, a dough made entirely with boiling water lacks extensibility (i.e. can't be stretched) because some of the precursor proteins to gluten are denatured at such a high temperature. This may be desirable as less gluten means the dough is easier to roll out thin.
On the other hand, dough made entirely with cold water has high extensibility, especially when gluten is allowed to develop through time and kneading, giving the finished product more chewiness.
Your recipe uses a combination of both types of dough, balancing between both extremes so that the finished product is not too soft but not too chewy. |
Benefit to covering pasta while cooking?
Taking a quick poll of several bags of pasta in my kitchen, about half recommend keeping the pot covered while cooking1.
This is not very convenient for me, as I don't have a good tightly fitting lid and the pasta often foams and boils over and cleaning the stove takes longer than cleaning the pot and plates.
So what are the benefits to keeping the lid on while cooking pasta? The main ones I could imagine are less heat loss (but my stove even on min setting maintains a boil, so I can't save any gas) and hotter air above the water (but the pasta is full submerged, so this wouldn't seem to matter).
1 Admittedly, some of the packages were fairly ambiguous as to whether the covering should be done only for the initial heat-to-boil or for the entire cooking process. | I see a benefit to covering the pot while bringing the water to a boil, as you will reduce evaporative cooling and get to temperature quicker. I might also allow, that in some cases (maybe frozen pasta or too much pasta to water), when you add the pasta (thus cooling the water) replacing the lid will help return it to the boil quicker. However, boiling pasta with a lid simply invites a boil-over situation. Once boiling, covering is not influencing the cooking of the pasta. Just leave it off. |
Pressure cooking vacuum sealed meat
Can a meat that is vacuum sealed for sousvide cooking be cooked instead in a pressure cooker and appropriate results be achieved? | This probably isn't safe, and there's no reason to do it in the first place
The purpose of sous vide cooking is to get your food to a very specific and even temperature throughout, in order to guarantee a certain degree of doneness and minimise the possibility of overcooking. It achieves this by holding the food in a water bath at that appropriate temperature until the food has equalised with the water in temperature.
Pressure cookers, on the other hand, work by preventing steam from escaping from a boiling liquid, thereby raising the pressure in the vessel and hence raising the boiling temperature, which will allow certain reactions in the food to proceed more quickly than they would at a regular boil. This means that a pressure cooker is held at a much, much higher temperature than a sous vide water bath - indeed, if i wanted to overcook food without burning it, an extended stay in a pressure cooker is the most effective method I can think of.
If your sous vide bags can handle the elevated temperatures of a pressure cooker (and I don't think that's true for you; a quick Google suggests that pressure cookers are generally capable of hitting 250 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the number you provided for your specific bags) there may still be a danger in putting them in your pressure cooker; when you release the pressure, the liquid inside your pressure cooker boils rapidly to come back down to a temperature that makes sense at its new pressure; the liquid sealed inside your sous vide bags, however, can't vent to the atmosphere, meaning that your sous vide bags are suddenly themselves tiny pressure cookers, except they're not built to withstand internal pressure like that and will likely burst, spraying boiling liquid out of the pot.
In summary, cooking food sous vide inside a pressure cooker will generally drastically overcook it, and then, if you're not careful, spray boiling liquid around your kitchen. Personally, I wouldn't try it. |
Broil meringue cookies?
I wanted to make these meringue cookies. The instructions say to bake them for 90 mins at 100, but our oven only broils and we're still waiting to have it fixed. If possible, how long and what temperature would I bake the meringue cookies at? Ty! :) | I would just heat the oven with broil. Then switch if off, wait until temperature drop to around 110-120C and put meringue in. Then just wait until oven cool off.
Tat way the inside would be chewy, if you want more chrunch burn it with torch before putting in oven. |
Does it matter how fast you crank up your blender?
Cars aren't blenders, but I wonder if this analogy assists. "[W]hen you floor the gas pedal, your transmission will try to turn the axle abruptly just like trying to throw a bowling ball with the maximum force.". So you oughtn't constantly floor your car's accelerator pedal that can strain the drive train and fatigue the material.
So ought your notch up your blender slowly? Ought you always start at 1 and slowly notch up to 10? Will you damage your blender if "floor" your blender by starting the dial at 10?
If so, what's the safest "acceleration rate"? 1 integer/s (e.g. for the Vitamix below, you'd need 10 s to throttle up to 10)?
Full disclosure : I'm not affiliated with Vitamix. | I opened the first Vitamix manual that came up on an internet search, which is for the Vitamix 5200, available here. It says (on page 11):
Always start the machine with the left switch down in the Variable ( ) position and with the center Variable Speed Dial on 1. Slowly turn the Variable Speed Dial to the desired speed depending on the recipe used. If a recipe calls for processing on High ( ), slowly rotate the Variable Speed Dial to 10 and then push the High/Variable Switch up into the High ( ) position. Do not begin processing on Variable 10 or directly
on the High ( ) setting.
(The spaces in brackets here contain a triangle symbol in the manual).
It also warns not to use the machine for too long at a low setting as this increases the risk of overheating, and not to start on a speed above 1 with hot liquids to avoid the risk of burns.
To answer your questions:
Yes, you should start on a low setting and gradually increase to your desired speed.
No particular rate of progression is suggested.
I would speculate that the analogy with a car isn't quite accurate: for a car the issue is about torque (because the car is heavy and starts stationary) and metal fatigue, whereas for the blender the issue is risk of splattering hot liquid, and (I think) that starting to blend food requires more torque than blending food that is already partially blended. I imagine you could start an empty blender on high speed with no issues, but I don't have evidence to back up that claim. |
Can I Sear Sous-Vide Rib Eye Under Infrared Broiler?
I'm new to sous-vide and plan on trying it for the first time with a rib eye steak that is about 1-1/4" thick. I know when it's done cooking, I need to sear it. I was thinking of trying my gas oven's infrared broiler instead of a cast iron pan.
When using my broiler for a fish filet, the broiler element (not the flame) is about 3-1/2" from the top of the filet. This has always worked well for me, but I think it might take too long for the rib eye to sear at that distance (so might end up further cooking the interior of the steak). I can get it closer but don't know how close to try.
Question: Can a 1-1/4" thick steak cooked sous-vide be adequately seared under an infrared gas broiler? If so, roughly how close to the element should the top of the steak be? | You can do it. It really depends on the result you are looking for. The reason to sear is simply to produce a maillard reaction, and caramelization. The issue with sous vide is that you want to do that rapidly so as not to continue cooking the internal part of the protein. On the other hand, some people cook a couple of degrees lower, then take a little longer to sear. There are all kinds of options here and no perfect answers. I don't think you want it much closer, as you will likely have fat popping off the top of your steak. I would give it a shot and see if you like the result. There is no reason to discard the idea out of hand. |
Salmon turned green - is it safe to eat?
I left a meal with salmon in the refrigerator for 3 days. The salmon skin is turning green.
Is it safe to consume it? If not, is it salvageable at all? | I would strongly recommend against consuming this fish.
In general you should cook fresh fish on the same day you bought it and not store cooked fish in the fridge for longer than a maximum of two days. Changes in colour, smell or texture are commonly a strong indicator that the fish has gone bad and eating it comes with a risk of a scombroid food poisoning. |
Will seeds effectively sprout after blending and leaving them in water?
Title is the question.
I'm most curious about the results with pumpkin seeds. | It´s very likely that the blending will destroy the germ/embryo in the seed and also will separate it from the endosperm which delivers the required energy for the sprouting. So the seed will not sprout anymore when blended. But you could consider to let the seeds sprout first and then blend the sprouts. |
Modifications to a sourdough recipe
I'm using this recipe, with the following ingredients:
450 grams Strong White Bread Flour
300 grams Warm Water
150 grams* Active Sourdough Starter
12 grams Sea Salt
*This amount is can be adjusted to 50 grams for a longer 12 hour bulk ferment.
I want to take the option to reduce the starter from 150g to 50g in exchange for a longer bulk proof period. Should I replace the lost 100g of starter with an extra 50g flour and 50g water during the initial steps? | Good question! Yes, if you use a 50/50 mix to feed your starter then your approach will give you the same balance and you will get the same hydration, providing you use the same flour blend as when you feed your starter. If you use a different ratio to feed your starter then stick to whatever ratio that is.
This approach will slow down your proofing for sure, maybe more than you intend. It's not linear, as in you want to slow down your proofing by 2/3 so you remove 2/3 of your starter, so do this when you have lots of time to study it. Take detailed notes and see how you get.
Another approach to slowing fermentation is to control for temperature, i.e. to put it in the refrigerator. I'd prefer this approach to reducing the starter as I'll be starting with a good batch of yeasts and giving them more time to work. Reducing the yeast at the start will mean it takes longer to get going, but also a lot longer to see the benefits of that culture. |
Can I just rinse a shaker, solely used for immediate consumption of whey with milk?
...and wash it properly every 3rd or so day. Keeping the shaker inside of the freezer, to slow(/perhaps prevent?) the bacteria growth?
• By rinse, I mean to just shake it up with some water until all remnants are whisked away
• And by wash, I mean use a detergent with a sponge or a brush | So let’s be clear - rinsing with just water won’t remove all of the fats and proteins in your container. It’s definitely not “clean” afterwards.
But even for the bits left in the container food safety guidelines apply, so if you immediately freeze the shaker in between uses, you just have to add up the time the shaker spends in the danger zone and/or above freezing. Whatever value reaches the „no longer safe“ threshold first (two hours for the danger zone above 40°F/4°C, three days in the fridge) gives you the “now it’s really time for a real cleanup” trigger.
Off the cuff, I‘d say that your three day cycle would still be technically safe. Whether it’s really a good idea is up to you. I like my food prep equipment fresh and clean for each use. More frequent cleaning will also serve as extra safety net in case some cleaning cycle was not perfect. And of course in a commercial setting all food handling and cleaning regulations have to be observed independently of what I outlined in this answer. |
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