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What accounts for Dutch Oven price variation?
I have recently been looking to buy a good Dutch Oven that will last a while, and I am a little lost since there is so many options at many different price points.
I recall a few years ago I bought a cheap cast iron skillet and it was terrible, the season wouldn't last, the finish was very rough, and the edges of the pan to the bottom were not smooth which made washing very difficult; all of that was solved when I just bought a more expensive, brand name skillet.
Is the same true for dutch ovens? I find many options on Amazon for under $100, but there are also ones by Staub and Le Creuset up to $700; and ofcourse there are options at every price in between. They all seem to have the same weight in the specifications so I would assume the classic heavy lid is not a factor, would appreciate any insight into what accounts for this price variation, and if it is a notable factor. | I have owned many brands of cast iron and ceramic coated pans, here's the factors I've seen that effect the price:
Quality of materials: better quality coatings last longer and give better results
Refinement: some brands are more aesthetically pleasing, better designed, and have better finish than others. Some of these refinements may improve the cooking experience, some may just be looks
Name: This is a huge factor these days, some brands like Le Creuset have hiked up their prices enormously in the past decade to the point they are absolutely eye watering, yet their products haven't changed in design or quality
Of all these it's name that seems to have the biggest effect on price. I have some Le Creuset that I bought or got as gifts some time back, and I have since bought some department store branded ones (Linea, House of Frasier's own brand) which are 1/3 of the price. The department store ones look good, deliver good results and wear just as well as the Le Creuset ones. There are many brands to choose from, it's worth doing some research on what's available around you before you spend money. |
Does black interior of a cocotte/dutch oven such as Staub create problems with accidentally burning ingredients/fond?
The Staub cocotte has a black interior (in contrast to the Le Creuset) as can be seen below. Does this black interior significantly increase the chances of accidentally burning the ingredients and especially the fond which forms at the bottom of the pan. The fond is dark brown in colour anyway so I am worried that it would be very difficult to discern if it's starting to get burnt and turn black against the black interior of the cocotte. | I avoid dark-colored pans when I want to watch the color of a transparent or translucent mixture, such as cooking down fond or making caramel. (Situations where I need to make a split-second decision on when to stop cooking.) But I agree with GdD -- other things, like onions, are easy to watch in any color of pan. |
Can I substitute quark (40%) for cream cheese in basque burnt cheesecake recipe?
Here's the recipe I'd like to follow:
MAKES ONE 10" CAKE
Unsalted butter (for pan)
2 lb. cream cheese, room temperature
1½ cups sugar
6 large eggs
2 cups heavy cream
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
⅓ cup all-purpose flour
Sherry (for serving; optional)
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT
A 10"-diameter springform pan
I have all the ingredients except for cream cheese, I do have quark. Will it taste drastically different if I substitute quark for cream cheese? How about the texture? | When using quark instead of cream cheese, the main issue is that quark is overall “wetter” - especially when the recipe uses US cream cheese, which is pretty much a “brick” compared to the (same brand) product in Germany. You can mitigate that by placing the quark in a cloth-lined sieve overnight to drain it, but that’s optional. I find that most recipes that use quark instead of cream cheese are a tad crumblier, cream cheese fillings are a bit smoother (if you use a good brand).
That said, there’s a huge tradition of quark-based cheesecake in Germany and other European countries, and as long as your recipe contains enough binding agents, i.e. eggs and/or flour or starch, you will be fine. Looking at your recipe, it uses six eggs. That’s on the generous side even for a regular quark-cheesecake. So I’d say just go for it. If you are super worried, you could add a tablespoon of cornstarch, just in case, but I don’t think it’s necessary. I would suggest that you do a quick Google search for “Käsekuchen ohne Boden“ (crustless cheesecake) as that’s the German cousin of the basque cheesecake. You will see that the recipes are quite similar, just with quark and maybe a bit of flour, starch or semolina. |
How do I know a beaten egg has “set” while cooking stovetop rice pudding?
The pudding is good, nice and creamy. My concern is feeding people uncooked egg as the time to stir in egg mixture is more a texture while stirring than a time to be sure the egg is cooked into the pudding. | How hot is the pudding?
At or near boiling the egg will be set by the time you can stir it in, certainly by the time you can serve it.
One egg in a couple of pints of piping hot (semi) liquid will be at temperature almost immediately. |
Freezer doesn't have a temperature control. Does the fridge thermostat control freezer temperature?
I have a Midea 3.1 Cu. Ft. Compact Refrigerator. There is a place to control temperature in the fridge part but not in the freezer part. Does making the temperature colder in the refrigerator make the temperature colder in the freezer or does the freezer stay at a constant temperature? | A brief google will yield access to the user manual. I didn't do an extensive read, but it looks like one temperature control for both compartments. |
What was the original "Lea & Perrins" recipe from Bengal?
In the history of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce it is claimed that
The story of Lea & Perrins famous Worcestershire Sauce begins in the early 1800s, in the county of Worcester. Returning home from his travels in Bengal, Lord Sandys, a nobleman of the area, was eager to duplicate a recipe he'd acquired.
Does anyone know what that original recipe from Bengal might have been? Are there any Bengali dishes that might have been the inspiration for Lea & Perrins? | The trouble with the Lea & Perrin's story & Lord Sandys' "original recipe" is that it is mainly myth/fable/advertising copy (I'd hate to outright call it a lie…)
Worcestershire Sauce originally was basically curry powder and water, with anchovy sauce. It didn't start from a Bengali sauce at all, it started from curry powder, which someone decided to mix with water.
The rest is kind of true; it was too strong when freshly-made but after having been abandoned in a cellar for some time, turned out more palatable.
It's never been impossible to copy, though perhaps difficult to get exactly the same. HP Sauce did a similar thing with a thick sauce - they went the fruit route; somebody was thinking of chutneys when they modified to arrive at that. Some companies make both, thick and thin. A million others make generic 'brown sauce' all tasting just about the same.
Interestingly, a later Lord Sandys himself later tried to cash in on the story - http://lordsandys.com/product-info/ though never really gained the worldwide reputation Lea & Perrin managed to solidify.
From the lovely, if rather dated in its HTML skills, Science of Cooking - Worcestershire Sauce
at the date of the legend, "Lord" Sandys was actually a Lady. No identifiable reference to her could possibly appear on a commercial bottled sauce without a serious breach of decorum. It is likely her heir who agreed to sell the recipe.
To abandon the unrevised legend and substitute a more accurate version that was published by Thomas Smith, Successful Advertising, (7th edition, 1885):
we quote the following history of the well-known Worcester Sauce, as given in the World. The label shows it is prepared "from the recipe of a nobleman in the country." The nobleman is Lord Sandys. Many years ago, Mrs. Grey, author of The Gambler's Wife and other novels, was on a visit at Ombersley Court, when Lady Sandys chanced to remark that she wished she could get some very good curry-powder, which elicited from Mrs. Grey that she had in her desk an excellent recipe, which her uncle, Sir Charles, Chief Justice of India, had brought thence, and given her. Lady Sandys said that there were some clever chemists in Worcester, who perhaps might be able to make up the powder. Messrs. Lea and Perrins looked at the recipe, doubted if they could procure all the ingredients, but said they would do their best, and in due time forwarded a packet of the powder. Subsequently the happy thought struck someone in the business that the powder might, in solution, make a good sauce. The profits now amount to thousands of pounds a year.
There's a second confirmation of this being the potentially "true story" at https://www.foodbeast.com/news/worcestershire-sauce-history/
There's also a BBC News story about a potential discovery of the original recipe - Recipes for secret sauce emerge which gives this as the ingredients list, but no detail on how they transformed that into the famous brown stuff…
Sauce ingredients:
water - 20 1/2 lbs
cloves - 2 lbs
salt - 10 lbs
sugar - 34 lbs
soy - 8 gallons
fish - 24 lbs
vinegar - 18 gallons
acetic acid - 2 gallons
essence of lemons - 8 oz
peppers - 5 lbs
tamoraide - 14 lbs
pickles - 40 lbs
I don't think there's really any doubt that Messrs Lea & Perrin took the beginnings of an idea and turned it into something rather spectacular, just that the 'origin story' is perhaps best left to the mists of time. |
Can “quick cook” brown rice be cooked in an Instant Pot?
I have a package of “quick cook brown rice, and I am hoping I can cook it with my 2 quart Instant Pot. Will this work? How long should I cook it, what pressure level should I use, and what release should I use?
I’ve been able to find plenty of good information on cooking rice that is just normal raw rice or soaked, but not on “quick cook” rice.
Here is the package in question: | Instant or Quick Cook rice (whether white or brown) is partially precooked, meaning part of the cooking time is already completed to cut down on the wait time for the end user. So it can be cooked more or less the same way you would regular rice in an Instant Pot... just for less time.
There's a blog post that goes into a great deal of detail about parboiled rice in an Instant Pot, but the instructions boil down to:
Parboiled White Rice: pressure cook on High Pressure for 6 minutes.
Parboiled Brown Rice: Pressure cook on High Pressure for 8 minutes.
Once pressure cooking is complete, do a natural pressure release (NPR) or a 15-minute natural release if you're short on time.
Well-known brand Minute Rice has a shorter time recommendation:
Brown Rice: Use equal amounts of rice and liquid. Stir. Use the “manual” setting with High Pressure. Set timer for 5 minutes. When cooking time has elapsed, use the “Quick Release” to vent all the steam. Remove lid and fluff rice. Serve.
It looks like in the case of Minute Brown Rice, the stovetop cook time is 10 minutes, so an Instant Pot on High Pressure would cut the cook time in half. Since your rice's instructions call for 15 minutes, an 8 minute cook time would be more appropriate. |
Freezing sandwiches for toasting at work
There's a sandwich press at my work and I'm trying to think of a way I can meal prep sandwiches for the whole week in one go. I'm thinking freezing them is the best bet, but I want them to be healthy as well and I'm not sure how vegetables will go in the freezer (probably badly).
Ideally I'll make all the sandwiches on Sunday, then put them in the freezer (wrapped in baking paper). Then, I'll take them to work in the morning (straight from the freezer), put them in the fridge when I get to work, and then put them straight in the sandwich press (inside the baking paper). That way I don't have to clean the press.
What would be the best way to incorporate vegetables into the sandwiches (maybe after toasting them)? | Freezing them will cause the cells to break down slightly, leading to a mushier vegetable. However, since you're planning on heating them anyway, I wouldn't worry about that. Heating will also make the vegetables softer and mushier, so I doubt that the initial freezing will significantly change the quality of the final hot sandwich. I would personally attempt to cook them straight from frozen if you have a freezer at work. The vegetables can release liquid over a slow defrost in the fridge which may affect the structural integrity of the bread. |
Why is 45 degrees Celsius considered the optimal temperature for coagulating milk?
I heated pasteurized milk to around 80 degrees Celsius and let it cool down to 45 degrees Celsius (according to a few guides) before adding 50 mL vinegar. But I've been wondering, why is it considered the optimal temperature for coagulating milk? (Note: This was for an experiment and I don't intend to add any starter cultures. I'm just investigating the effect of acids on the coagulation of cow milk.) | 45C is not the optimal temperature for the acid coagulation of milk. There are a variety of methods for milk coagulation. Different variables are at play in each system. For acid coagulation, milk is heated to 80C for at least 5 minutes to denature the proteins. The addition of acid, and continued heating causes the coagulation. Perhaps you are confusing the necessity of cooling with adding live cultures, such as in yogurt making. In this case, the cooling step is necessary to provide an environment that supportive for the growth of the live cultures. |
Sharpening scissors with microserrations
I own Sabatier Proffessional scissors (like those). One of the blades has microserrations along the edge (see the picture below). How should I sharpen them? I presume that I'd destroy the serrations if I just tried sharpening it the same way as I do with non serrated edge?
As far as the tools go, I own Work Sharp Knife and Tool Sharpener (which I like very much) and Spyderco Sharpmaker (which I was not able to use to its full potential, hence replaced that with WSKT). | My experience is that you can't sharpen microserrated blades effectively, and generally end up damaging them.
I recommend contacting Sabatier instead, or talking to a professional knife sharpener. |
What is a vegan recipe for lasagne?
Do you guys have any idea how much I am craving a good old piece of lasagne. Since my girlfriend is vegan I wanna make the lasagne her way, of you now what I mean.
So any ideas how to best substitute the meat and still get the amazing lasagne taste we all love? | Holy Cow Vegan is a great site for vegan recipes. Check out their vegan lasagna recipe https://holycowvegan.net/classic-vegan-lasagna/
I have also used traditional lasagna recipes and substituted the cheese with a non-dairy alternative and if it calls for meat I've used a meat substitute such as ground meatless or mushrooms instead of meat. |
What's a fast way to make Furikake from Katsobushi used in making dashi
Making dashi uses about 10g of dried Katsobushi that ends up soaked.
Then soaked Katsobushi is then removed and tastes well. How can the soaked Katsobushi be reused?
The tricky part is that Katsobushi is preserved dried, after the dashi process it is rehydrated and hot. So Katsobushi cannot be stored for long and it is a waste to throw it away.
What are some key ingredients to make furikake and what is the basic process? | There's no set recipe for furikake, but you will commonly find sesame seeds (both black or white), katsuobushi (bonito flakes), and seaweed.
For dashi leftovers, just cut the kombu/katsuobushi into small pieces and toast in a dry pan with some soy sauce/sugar/salt/MSG to taste until the mixture is dry. You can toast the sesame seeds separately or together with the dashi leftovers, then add nori (cut or crumbled into small pieces). Let cool, preferably on a tray to help it dry out more.
For quantities, here is a recipe for reference. |
North African Dessert-Alexandria
I had a North African dessert when I was in Montreal called an Alexandria. I've searched high and low, but haven't been able to find an ingredient list, recipe, or any information on the dessert's origins. Does this dessert go by another name?
It was very similar to a baklava, but had almonds instead of walnuts and wasn't as sweet. It didn't appear to have honey in it.
I found it at a farmer's market so there isn't a restaurant site or number to contact. I've attached a photo in case that is helpful. | It looks to be from the "Le Ryad" Baklava place at the Marché Jean Talon.
You could get in touch with them via instagram or facebook; the product is in one of the photo on instagram.
It simply might be an inhouse product with a "Random" name that sound exotic. |
Why do I get a 'food burn' alert every time I use my pressure cooker?
I have an Instant Pot that I love to use to prepare food, and for the first dozen meals it operated without issue. Lately, however, I get a 'food burn' alert every single time I use it. As expected, my food has stuck to the bottom of the detachable pot and needs to be scraped off. What is surprising me is that it isn't happening when I cook a specific meal, it's on every meal I prepare using the pressure cooker.
The same recipes that used to be prepared without issue now need to be scraped clean from the pot. I'm not altering the recipes, except to perhaps add more liquid to prevent food from sticking.
Is there a common reason for this to happen? Is there a certain way I should load that Instant Pot that I may have stopped doing since I purchased it? Should I clean a certain part of the pressure cooker to increase the efficacy of the cookware? | A quick google search illustrates that this appears to be a common concern for instant pot users. Have you checked the sealing ring, steam release, and float valve to ensure that they are clean and working properly? You may just need some cleaning and preventive maintenance. You don't mention the brand, but you can begin with your user manual. Here is some information specifically about the Instant Pot brand cooker. |
My oven seems to cook the outside faster than the inside
I'm not in any way any kind of good cook, I just eat a lot of chicken breasts.
I used to have a bargain basement janky gas oven that I would run on full heat, and I would put a Costco precooked frozen chicken breast in ("cooking time 35-40 minutes fan oven 180 degrees") and after 43 minutes it would come out absolutely perfect, with crispy skin and not too dry or tough.
I moved house and now have a more expensive oven, which is electric.
I have tried to cook my chicken breasts but the results are always disappointing. Generally, the skin seems to cook then burn. The instructions say 180C so I have used a laser temperature probe pointed at the chicken and adjusted the dial so that this value is 180C.
I find that after 33 mins the skin starts to burn. So I often cook it for around 30 minutes but it's a little bit tough and doesn't taste as great as my old oven.
I can't really tell what I should change to improve it. I feel like I need to cook the inside longer without burning the outside, but I am not certain.
The variables I can think of are to increase/decrease the temperature and increase/decrease the cooking time.
Is there a general rule of thumb about temperature vs time based on what aspect of your food is cooking incorrectly? | so I have used a laser temperature probe pointed at the chicken and adjusted the dial so that this value is 180C
That's not how you are meant to do it. 180 C is the oven temperature, not the temperature of the chicken skin. If you turned it up until the chicken surface became 180, that's way too hot, and of course it causes the exact symptoms you describe.
You should just set your oven dial to 180 C and use it that way. If it continues to burn on the outside, go down in the temperature until you find one at which, when you wait until the inside is done, the skin is not burnt. Then write down the time and (dial setting) temperature it needs, and continue using that, no matter what the package says. |
Is Shochu an acceptable alternative to Awamori?
Some recipes I was looking at (Okinawan) use Awamori, but I can't find it. I can find various forms of Japanese vodka (Shochu), and sake. Would Shochu be the closest to Awamori?
EDIT: Was looking at this recipe specifically - Rafute (Okinawan Braised Pork Belly) ラフテ | I would say yes, both are distilled rice alcohol.
There might be some differences in the raw (uncooked) alcohol, but if used in a recipe and cooked, the differences will be less.
Curious, what recipes are you looking at ? it might help us find a better alternative if it exists. |
Is iron skillet seasoning a carcinogen
I switched to cast-iron skillet/griddle (dont know what it's technically called) recently for my omelette because I read somewhere that non-stick coating can leak carcinogen during cooking
For cast-iron pan, I see how it is recommended to season it via the oil-bake method - the coating that will then help avoid food sticking to the pan and for its longer shelf life
I want to understand that, will the oil, when heated to high temperatures for the effect of seasoning, will that oil become a carcinogen? Am I borrowing (carcinogen) from peter(cast-iron) to pay paul(non-stick)? | So, after a quick literature search:
There is no published evidence of cast iron seasoning carrying any special carcinogenic elements, aside from those carried by any kind of high-heat cooking in any kind of cookware. If there's a danger from cast iron, it's folks who season their cast iron in an unventilated kitchen, since the burnt oil fumes are not good for you, and the fact that folks sometimes heat cast iron to higher heats than they would other cookware, just because they can.
For that matter, quality modern nonstick cookware in many countries also lacks known carcinogens. Teflon coatings used to consist of PTFE and PFOA, of which only the PFOA is a known cancer risk. For that reason, most manufacturers in the US and Europe have made PFOA-free nonstick cookware since 2013. PTFE, the substance that actually resists stickiness, is so inert and harmless it's used to coat medical instruments. Like cast iron, the main danger is if you overheat the pan, which does release substances that are bad for your lungs (also ruins the pan).
Heck, you can even today choose from an array of pans that have a non-PTFE nonstick coating.
Given all this, there are many reasons for you to chose cast iron vs teflon cookware (or even carbon steel, or many other options), but cancer risk shouldn't be one of the reasons. |
Why do apples bleed after soaking in boiling water for 10 seconds and what substance is it?
I was trying to remove the wax. I don't really know what kind of wax is used. It is not listed as an ingredient. That's a mystery for another day. Nor do I know if it is harmful to eat but I thought I would remove it and enjoy an apple. I read a 10 second soak in boiling water and then I scrubbed with baking soda.
The apple skin felt dull and slightly able to be shifted so I assume all the wax was gone. I put the apple aside for an hour or so and it was bleeding a tear shapped sticky substance that I rinsed off with hot water. I sat the apple down and a few hours latter the same thing, Bleeding a sticky substance. I washed it off again and finally ate the apple. Does anyone know what the substance might be and why is it bleeding out?
A word of warning, You will need a heavy duty scrub pad for your pot if you boil apples in it. After the pot dried there was a sticky substance which I asssume is some unknown type of wax that covers the sides of the pot. I was able to get most of it off but not all of itf. The pot is stainless steel with copper bottom. | There are two types of wax on apples, both of them are from natural sources and are safe to eat. Occasionally other types of sprays are used on apples, including polyethylene (a type of plastic), which is derived from ethanol made from fermenting corn.
The first type of wax is produced by the apples themselves, and is called a bloom. These natural waxes are produced by the apple to protect it from drying out and from allowing fungal spores to penetrate and cause rot in the apple (this would damage the seeds and hence the chance of the plant reproducing successfully). The wax in blooms contain a bunch of chemicals (as one might expect), including ones found in petroleum.
Sometimes these waxes are removed from the apple by washing at the producer/growers after the apple is picked. In order to preserve the apple so that it appears on the shelf in a manner that most people like to eat, the apples are sprayed with the second type - a very fine wax coat which consists of about 3 milligrams of wax (3/1000ths of a gram, or 0.0001 oz) per apple. The waxes used here are from natural sources such as carnuba oil, candelilla wax or even shellac from the lac scale bug.
Boiling the apples as you did probably resulted in partial cooking of the apple (if the skin was loose at all, cooking is certain), this could result in releasing some of the fruit juice, much as you would when making apple sauce. As I am sure you know, apple sauce is sticky from the sugars in it, and this is likely the source of the sticky droplet - every time you picked up the apple or applied pressure to it, it squashed out some of the sticky sugar sauce.
Exactly what needs to be declared as a food additive is dependent on where in the world you are and often on the amount of additive added. It is quite likely that what you washed off the apple is a natural coating.
There is a basic description and some explanation of apple waxes at McGill University |
If one tomato had molded, is the rest of the pack safe to eat?
Yesterday I bought a pack of cherry tomatoes and after arriving home I discovered that one of them had developed some impressive black mold (it was bigger than the tomato itself!). Of course, I tossed the offending tomato and the packaging, washed the remaining tomatoes and put them in a clean box. Now I'm hesitating though; are they safe to eat? | Yes - the mold is an indication that the spores have entered that tomato, but do not indicate any problems with others. Mold usually enters fruits like tomato through the stem site or damage to the skin. The bits you see outside the fruit are actually the fruiting bodies of the fungus (equivalent of the bit you eat on a mushroom - the rest is below the soil). These fruiting bodies produce tons of spores. You should use the others fairly quickly before any released spores have a chance to potentially start growing in them.
Edited to add:
The general advice would be to discard any fruit that are attached to the main one by the fungal body, wash the others well to remove any potential spores off them, dry well (wetness promotes fungal growth) and use within a short time frame.
The USDA has some good advice here - with thanks to SnakeDoc for finding this one. |
What are good ways to flavor water?
I'm having a hard time to keep hydrated... and really, I think a good part of it is that straight water is really meh.
I know of ways to flavor water, but I find fruits to be a bother (you then have just soggy fruit at the end of your bottle, not always have access to some trashcan to throw them into) and most flavor powders are stupidly high in sugar.
So is there other good ways to flavor water that do not create a waste product and are not super high in sugars? | Lemon juice
This one is fairly obvious and self-explanatory. Although the idea is mainly associated with highly sugarey lemonade, just a few drops of juice in a bottle of water and no extra sugar gives it a nice touch.
Vinegar
A matter of taste. Many will find this just gross, but it has of course a similar tartiness as lemon and less sugar.
Cucumber
This surprised me a lot when I first tasted it: you'd think cucumbers hardly taste of anything at all. But put a few fresh slices in a jug of water for half an hour, and they'll impart a subtle, but astonishingly interesting and really quite refreshing flavour. |
Does soaking apples in baking soda for 15 minutes remove pesticides?
I read this on the internet. How can this be true when apples are waxed? Wouldn't the pesticide be under the wax?
If anybody has any ideas how to get rid of both at the same time without using boiling water which will trash the pot you use with baked in wax I would sure like to know. | There seems to be some truth (and this ) that baking soda helps removing some pesticides.
You can wash your fruits under running warm water to remove most of the wax and some pesticides and after that, use baking soda.
If all fails, you can remove the skin of the apples. |
Substitute Hon Dashi for Bonito
I understand that the ingredients are not even nearly the same
If making a bonito dashi, grams-for-grams, how much Hon Dashi granules to substitute for bonito flakes?
This could partly be worked out from dashi packet or powder package recipes, but the powders and packets are not just dried bonito flake extracts
I do understand all answers will be approximations, and approximations are appreciated
thanks! | Hondashi isn't really a substitute for the bonito flakes. It is a concentrate to make dashi...sort of like a bullion cube. It is made of msg, salt, sugar, yeast, and dried bonito. In general, one would use about a teaspoon to a cup of water to make dashi. If you are beginning with prepared dashi, and looking for more umami, I might just add a bit at a time (1/4 tsp) and taste until you are satisfied. Alternately, you don't need bonito to make dashi. It can be as simple as kombu and water. So, this might, in part, depend on your use. |
Can I add more cream to my thick and ready ganache?
The answer to this question might also answer this question.
I made ganache and it's ready, but to thick to work with (I probably messed up the chocolate-cream ratio). Can I add more cream to it if it's already ready? If yes, can the cream be warmed up before mixing it in? | Yes, you can try adding more cream in without hurting anything. However, when cooled it may not mix in very effectively, depending on how thick it already is. If you have trouble you just need to heat it up a bit and it will mix in no problem.
Of course, heating may be a better option than adding cream in making it more workable. If you add cream it will be easier to work with when cold but runnier, if you shape it when warm and it cools it stays where you put it better. |
Using over-rested pizza dough as old dough
I made pizza dough (flour, olive oil, 1 tsp salt, 7g instant yeast and cold water) last night but never got around to using it. It is still sitting covered in the bowl resting on the counter (temp ~ 20 C)(18 hours). I'd like to use it as PF (old dough method) but I am not sure the ratios are, PF to the dough I will be making. I am also not sure how long will the old dough keep. It weighs around 440g , and looks like this:
Since this is my first experiment, I'd like to know how the whole process of adding old dough to the next day dough works. I read a few articles online but they were either not very informative or too expert for my level!
This question seems to be asking the same thing but the dough was left in the fridge for four days. I am not sure if that makes any difference. | Primarily what is happening when you add an old dough/pre-ferment/pâté-fermentee to a fresh lot of flour etc is that you are inoculating it with yeast (see definition 1b). This is the equivalent of adding a pre-activated yeast (e.g. sponge) to your flour with some differences. It is also a more direct equivalent of using a biga or poolish. The reason why bakers in former days used to keep some dough over from the day before and use that to start the next day's batch is that they hadn't developed the technology to grow and store the yeast as we do now. The technique is still as legitimate today as it was then.
The major difference is that the yeast in the old dough has used up some of the sugars and other nutrients in the old dough and will have slowed replication as they run out of nutrients (for those interested this follows a classic S shaped/logistic growth curve), whereas in a sponge or other pre-activation there is still a surfeit of nutrients, so the yeast are actively and rapidly dividing. I doubt that the nutrients will be entirely depleted from the old dough, and this would depend on a huge range of factors as to how depleted they actually were, and without specialist chemical analysis you won't be able to tell. As a positive, this depletion of the nutrients means that the yeast have been metabolizing these compounds and releasing the subsequent metabolites as interesting flavour compounds, adding extra taste to your new dough.
The nutrients may be somewhat lacking in your fresh dough if you mix in a substantial amount of the old dough with your fresh ingredients, but in general this won't affect the dough formation as the yeast from the old dough start to grow on the fresh nutrients. You can mix in up to 1:1 ratio of old:new(see page 97; this is the English translation of Clavel's "Le Gout du Pain") and still make good dough. It is worth noting that most recipes that are old dough based also add some fresh yeast. The addition of fresh is not entirely needed, but will make the rise quicker as the inoculation will be larger and the growth lag shorter as a consequence.
How you store the old dough may affect how useful it is as a starter - If you could freeze, it would store almost indefinitely. In the fridge for several days, maybe a week or two. On the bench, a day or two at best. The colder you can make it, the better it will store, as the yeast will slow metabolism and growth (halted entirely if frozen), and so prevent them from dying. |
What could cause ice pops (popsicles) to go soft in the freezer?
I’m having a strange issue with the storage of ice pops (popsicles/ice lollies) in the freezer. I recently bought a new freezer and still have the exact same issue which we can’t figure out.
Whenever we buy ice pops in our house, we put them straight into the freezer. We sometimes leave them in the box but usually remove them, which doesn’t seem to make a difference to their texture. However, even if they’re rock hard going in, they keep coming out soft, sometimes even melted. Every single time.
Here’s the weird part: everything else in the freezer is rock solid frozen! No other foods go soft regardless of how long they’ve been in there.
Also, as I mentioned, it happened in our old freezer and now our new one (which is 4* freezing). How much or how little we have in the freezer seems to make no difference. This only happens with ice pops (and ice cream cones) but no other food.
This might sound silly, but the only change in my freezer storage habits since we first noticed this problem is that we bought silicone ice trays with lids a few months ago; two of them which we stack on top of each other in the very edge. Part of me wonders if there’s some kind of chemical (since they’re cheap trays that are no longer sold by the seller they’re purchased from online) that could be affecting the ice pops, since they’re usually the only food near the ice trays. Though I do switch foods around to check freezing is consistent in all parts of the freezer, which it is. But the tray idea sounds like superstitious logic even to me.
Am I missing some kind of storage wisdom in regards to frozen sweet treats? | Your freezer is set at too high a temperature, probably just below the freezing point. Pure water freezes at 32°F/0°C so your meats and vegetables are freezing just fine, however adding sugar and/or salt to water reduces the freezing point. A 30% sugar solution freezes at around 28.5°F, salt water is about the same. The fact they are mushy means your freezer is almost, but not quite cold enough to freeze your popsicles.
Frozen desserts aside your freezer is far above the recommended temperature, the FDA and virtually every other guideline I see says that freezers should be set to 0°F, which is -18°C, not because of the freezing point but because that's the highest ideal temperature for food to last long-term. |
Using both cook and serve pudding and instant pudding in pie
I have a layered Pudding Pie recipe that calls for Chocolate, Vanilla, and Butterscotch pudding. I have not been able to get the Butterscotch pudding in instant pudding (which is what the recipe calls for), only in cook and serve. Would it cause the milk in the other two to curdle when that layer is applied, and if so, how would I avoid that problem? I intend to let the pie set in the fridge overnight. | I doubt it would make the milk curdle, but it may mix with the other layers if you pour it in while still hot. I would cook the layer with cook-and-serve pudding and let it cool in the pot until it's more spreadable than pourable. It should be just about room temperature by then, and then you can layer it on top of whatever layer it's supposed to be on without any worries. If the butterscotch is the first layer, you can pour it hot into the pie shell and wait until it's cooled before adding the other two layers. |
What Cheese Culture is best to use in making Camembert cheese?
I'm planning to make camembert cheese but I'm confused on what cultures to add. Any tips? | I can see why! Let's do a round up:
Rikki Carroll recommends Flora Danica, Penicillium Candidum, and Geotrichum Candidum
Gavin Webber recommends Mesophilic direct set culture, plus Penicillium Candidum
Curd Nerd recommends Flora Danica and Penicillium Candidum
Country Brewer recommends "camebert cheese culture" which doesn't help at all
Food52 recommends either Flora Danica or Mesophilic culture, and Penicillium
Given the above, I'd tend to go with Flora Danica and Penicillium Candidum, at least for a first try. At least the amounts seem to be consistent: 1/4 and 1/8 teaspoon, respectively. According to Carroll, the Geotrichum helps give the Camembert a thick, fuzzy white rind, so use it too if you can get it.
Caveat: I haven't made this cheese myself, and my friends who have aren't available for questions this weekend. |
Is mechanically separated beef legal in products in the U.S.?
I was shopping on line at a major supermarket and noticed items from major brands that the ingredients list lists mechanically separated pork and chicken. I don't know about the pork or chicken but as for the beef I found the following link.
https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/What-is-Mechanically-Separated-Meat-MSM#:~:text=At%20that%20time%20the%20use,for%20use%20as%20human%20food. | My knowledge MSM Beef was banned in 2004 but had been used since at least the 80s before that. I originally heard about this from my dad who was and is still a butcher manager.
I just texted him and he said that MSM Beef is still prohibited for human consumption because of mad cow disease but mechanically separated Pork is legal and can be used when the package says so. He was not sure about chicken but if it's not banned then they probably do put it in products. he says he likes that they "use as much of the animal as possible but yes , its kinda gross." |
What's the biggest reuseable filter with smallest pore size?
I love clam and mussel broth, but they're always replete with grit and sand! I've been pouring it over a Stainless Steel Coffee Filter, but this takes way too slow if I'm cooking for many people and have much broth to filter! Don't recommend anything with a pore size > 10 micrometers.
There must be bigger versions of these Stainless Steel Coffee Filters? This isn't my direct question, but what do coffee shops and breweries use? They can't be using these teeny filters, because customers can't wait that long. Can I use what cafes use to filter mussel broth? | They can't be using these teeny filters, because customers can't wait
that long.
Specialty coffee shops that offer 'pour-over' (drip) coffee definitely make coffee to order using small filters like the one you show (although in my area, they usually use paper filters). Customers are fine waiting the 2-4 minutes this takes.
For larger quantities, what a coffee shop might call 'batch brewing', larger filters such as these are commonly used:
These come in sizes ranging up to 12 cups, but might be tricky to find. Alternatively, you could experiment using one or more layers of cheesecloth, which is perhaps more easily available and scalable, although it might not filter as well as you'd like.
As a final note, I think your demand for pore sizes <10 micrometers might be a little too stringent. The filter you link to lists a .2mm mesh (i.e., 200 micrometers). I found this page with an analysis of the pore sizes in various coffee filtering products, if you're interested. |
Should I marinate or dry-brine a steak first?
I've read that pineapple contains an enzyme called Bromelain that breaks down muscle fibres, and therefore a pineapple purée makes a great tenderizing marinade for tougher steaks.
I'm also a big fan of dry brining steaks, as in covering them with salt and leaving them for a day or so to absorb it all.
My question, is if I wanted to do both, which should I do first? I don't want the steaks turning to mush if there's any leftover enzyme on them after the marinade. However I also don't want the water in the marinade leeching out the salt that was absorbed in the dry-brine. | The only reasonable thing to do if you must do both separately is to start with a nice long brine and finish with a relatively short marinade.
If you start with the marinade, you run too much risk of any lingering acid/enzyme destroying the proteins during the long brine that follows. There's also the chance that any flavor imparted by the marinade would end up drawn off or diluted by the brine.
That said, I think you're going about this in the wrong way. Brining is a great technique for thick pieces of meat—big bone-in cuts, whole birds, that sort of thing. The main purpose of the brine is to keep them from drying out over their longer cooking time.
Thinner cuts, including steaks, cook much faster and are less likely to dry out. They also don't need a very long brine to be ready to cook. If you're finding your steaks that you've salted for a full day are tough, it's possible you're dry brining them for too long.
Of course, this is all going to vary by cut and thickness, but the indicators to watch for with steak are that after you salt it, the surface becomes visibly wet for a while and then that visible wetness goes away. When it looks dry again, that's how you know that the salt has penetrated fully, because the osmotic pressure has changed enough to allow the juices to be pulled back into the meat. This should only take about 45 minutes at room temperature. If you really need or want to do this overnight or the day before, I would try to make sure you keep it refrigerated from the start of the brining period and don't take it out of the fridge too early.
Continuing to salt a steak past this point seems to get into the realm of curing or preservation. That's all well and good if you're making corned beef, but it seems like a waste of a steak if you ask me.
As far as getting the tenderness you want, other avenues to explore are buying different cuts, looking for another butcher that may be of a different quality, alternative cooking methods.
But if it's the case that you're already buying the right cuts from the right butchers and cooking them the right way, then maybe you'll get some additional benefit from a marinade—in which case I'd do it after brining. |
Can I make lemon curd more sour/tart after it's cooked?
I prepared a batch of lemon curd using an unfamiliar recipe and it just doesn't have what I'm looking for in terms of tartness and lemon flavor. I'd hate to waste it, so I'm thinking of zesting and juicing more lemons to add to the prepared curd - but I'm worried this will ruin the emulsion!
Is there a way to salvage this batch and get the tartness I'm after?
For the record, the recipe I'm starting with uses the following ingredients:
3/4 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup cold water
2 egg yolks, slightly beaten
Juice of 1 1/2 lemons
2 teaspoons lemon zest
1 Tablespoon butter
Going purely by taste, I'm a good 2-3 juiced lemons away from where I'd prefer to be. | I have used both citric acid (food grade, sold for canning and jam making, not the descaler) and ascorbic acid (vitamin C) in similar cases when only the acidity of a dish was insufficient. Sometimes lemons are just not sour enough.
The powder comes in very fine texture and can even made finer with a mortar and pestle. A very small amount will go a long way and that’s why it won’t affect the ratios of a dish and a can be stirred into even thick preparations like lemon curd. You can gently warm up your curd so that the butter in it softens, if necessary. |
Is it safe to cook pancakes on a copper surface?
I've read a lot about copper cookware and how it's useful for heat management and its non-stick qualities, as long as it is tinned.
But after watching this video showing a Korean restaurant preparing pancakes on a copper griddle, it occurred to me to ask, is it safe to cook this way?
It looks like the original coating is gone, and the pancake is cooking on bare copper.
My further research said that it'll be fine as long as the thing I cook on copper is not acidic; is this true?
I've always wanted a pancake griddle but the cost is way out of my allowance, so I thought it might be better to just buy a copper plate and try it out. | Yes, copper is safe to cook on. The darker area around the edge of that plate is not an "original coating," it's just the area where the copper has tarnished over time.
The reason the copper has a "bare" look in the center is most likely because the cooktop has been maintained with a cleaning product specially intended to remove the tarnish. This is the appropriate way to maintain and use copper cookware. While copper work surfaces can be kept bare and allowed to tarnish, or intentionally colored through the application of e.g. particular acids and then sealed with a clear epoxy, copper cookware should be maintained with appropriate cleansers to keep the surface bright.
(NOTE: When I say "work surface" I'm talking about something that is not heated and usually doesn't come into direct contact with food. Commonly called a kitchen counter (AmE), countertop (AmE), worktop (BrE), or bench (AuE/NZE). When I say "cooktop" I'm referring to an appliance that produces heat for cooking, and when I say "cookware" I'm referring to the pots, pans, etc. that actually come into contact with the food.)
Natural and chemical weathering of copper surfaces can create a variety of different compounds, some of them dangerous. The only significant risk I'm aware of with naturally-weathered copper cookware is verdigris, the distinctive green patina seen on e.g. the Statue of Liberty. I manufactured my own copper countertops about ten years ago and did some research on safety to decide whether to seal the surface with an epoxy or let it weather naturally; I found only one notable incident of deadly verdigris poisoning, related to industrial cooking vats that were not cleaned and which developed a heavy patina that then leached into the food.
It's not difficult to remove patina from copper; anything acidic will usually do the trick, even ketchup. (Of course, you would wipe the ketchup away and dispose of it after using it to dissolve potentially toxic copper compounds. Better just to use a cleaner specifically designed for copper cookware. I do not recommend the readily available Bar Keeper's Friend products as they're designed more for SS and will produce a black byproduct on copper.)
All this said, I wouldn't recommend cooking on bare copper surfaces. They're a lot of work to maintain, we have better solutions in modern cookware that use copper as a conductive layer married with other metals for the cooking surface, and there is always the chance of an adverse reaction to the small amount of copper that does end up in the food. |
Weird residue left on pan
When I cook this particular sauce in this particular pan it leaves this weird red (slightly purplish) reside that doesn’t wash off with soap but does come out in oil. The ingredients in the sauce are “tomatoes, tomato purée, less than 2% of: salt, basil oregano, parsley, onion powder, garlic powder, citric acid, natural flavors. (Brand is giant foods which is a regional supermarket chain). The pan is a nonstick.
Does anyone know what this residue might be?
Also no idea what the tags should be. | I know this will sound disappointing, but I don't that you will ever find a non-trivial answer to the question.
First, what sticks is the sauce. Once it is made into a sauce, it is physically a single entity, no longer separable into tomato, basil, etc. Of course, it is not all of the sauce that sticks, for example the water is no longer there, and as somebody else mentioned, the red pigments like the lycopene are there - but it is practically impossible to sit down with a list and check off, "hemicellulose is present, sucrose is present but much smaller percentages than in the original, the eugenol is completely missing", but if somebody could, and would, do it, there would be no more precise a name for that wild mixture than "sauce residue".
The second part of your answer is the why. The problem is, surface physics is complicated, and the physics of something as wildly complex as sauce much more so. An expert materials scientist with access to enough samples of the pan, the sauce, a well-equipped lab and enough time could probably find out, and have some answer like, "the starch particles in this sauce are not as round as in others" or "this sauce uses powdered tomatoes grow d to the exact size to get stuck to this particular coating after they've been hydrated in sauce, then heated". Or sounding else of that kind. But without the experimentation, it is impossible to find out. |
How long will powdered turmeric last?
I have found a transparent plastic bag of 300g of powdered turmeric in the back of a cupboard, bought in Mauritius in 2011, with a best before date of December 2013.
The bag is still airtight, and the powder inside is still behaving like a dry powder. Nothing suggests that the turmeric inside has gone wrong.
Will it be ok? Will it last once opened? | Does it still smell of turmeric… or more like cardboard? Many herbs & spices don't 'go off' so much as eventually taste & smell of almost nothing.
Test.
Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil, drop half a teaspoon of turmeric into it. Stir briefly. Don't burn it.
Can you smell it properly?
Pour out & let it cool.
Once cooled try dipping some plain white bread into it & tasting.
Does it still taste of anything?
My guess would be it's now little more than yellow powder. Great as a dye, not so much as a spice.
I'd think its saving grace, if there still is one after all this time, is that you bought it close to source. Supermarket spices can be as dead when you first open them as good ones at 2 years.
2 years is really about as far as I'd ever try to stretch though. 10 is more than pushing it. |
Is it safe to add garlic powder to sesame oil?
I am making a Korean BBQ meat marinade sauce that requires 0.5 teaspoon of garlic powder and 1 teaspoon of sesame oil. I read that garlic combined with oil causes botulism. However, cannot find anything about garlic powder.
Would garlic powder be at a risk for creating a botulism environment? | The concern with garlic in oil leading to botulism is about long-term storage, usually in the context of garlic oil as a 'shelf-stable' condiment; the botulism needs time to grow in the anaerobic environment provided by the oil. If you're making a marinade and using it within a few hours or a day or two, as marinades tend to be, and especially if you're keeping it in the fridge, as marinades tend to be, you should be fine. |
What exactly is a boozy preserved egg and how are they made?
On page 431 of Fuchsia Dunlop's The Food Of Sichuan there is a sort of vague description of a boozy preserved egg (zaodon, 糟蛋) but I'm having trouble finding any more detail on how they are made.
This is the description of how the eggs are made in the book:
Zaodan are made by tapping duck eggs all over to crack their shells, while leaving their inner membranes intact. These fragile things are then steeped in a wonderfully aromatic liquid, dark as long-steeped tea, fragrant with fermented glutinous rice wine, strong baijiu grain liquor, brown sugar and spices, for up to three years.
I found this recipe which, when I passed it through google translate, seems to describe something similar, but most of the recipe has the eggs sitting in "sweet grains" and only at the end do you soak it in alcohol. I also found a couple youtube videos (here and here) of people eating some sort of preserved egg which looks like it might have been fermented in a grain but I can't tell if it is the same thing described in the book. All the other recipes, videos, and descriptions I could find seemed to be of tea eggs or century eggs and the English search results were mainly just about eggnog.
Should I be using other search terms? Are the eggs in grain from the recipe I found and from those videos the same thing as the eggs described in the book? How are these made, and is this something I could reasonably try at home? | Here's a (slightly abridged) translation of the recipe you found:
(i) Select clean and fresh duck eggs with even shells.(ii) Other ingredients: glutinous (sticky) rice, wine lees, salt, brown sugar etc.
(i) Soak the glutinous rice in water - 24 hours at 12C, an hour less for every 2C increase in temperature.(ii) Drain and rinse the rice. Steam for 10 minutes, then sprinkle on some water. Steam for 15 more minutes, give it a mix, then steam for 5-10 more minutes.(iii) Rinse the rice with cooled boiled water to cool it down to 28-30C.(iv) Mix the lees with the cooled rice, and pack it into a fermentation crock. Sprinkle a layer of lees on top. [Using a rolling pin or similar,] create a deep hole in the middle of the rice. When the hole is filled with liquid, mix everything together. Age for half a month.
Using a piece of bamboo [or a spoon], crack the eggs very gently, making sure not to break the membrane.
(i) Sterilise a fermentation crock by steaming it.(ii) For 100 duck eggs: prepare 5kg rice wine [made in part 2]; 0.8kg 65% alcohol baijiu; 0.8kg brown sugar; 20g each of dried tangerine peel, star anise, and Sichuan peppercorns; and 1kg salt.(iii) Combine the rice wine, the baijiu, and the salt and layer the mixture with the eggs in three layers and store at room temperature.
(i) Remove the hard eggshells.(ii) Soak the eggs in baijiu for 1-2 days until the egg white/yolk solidifies.(iii) Add the sugar and spices from before to the fermentation liquid, then add the solidified, peeled eggs back.(iv) Age for 3-4 months, stir, then age for a further 2-3 months, after which they are ready to eat.
As you can see, this is a very long and involved recipe. What you're doing in step 2 is basically making fermented rice or laozao- here's a good guide on how to make this. It's also very similar to Dunlop's description, so I think it's very likely that those videos you found are of what she's describing. You can see the shells have been removed to leave the membrane, creating a sort of "soft-shelled" egg. It's certainly possible to make at home, but quite complicated. |
How to preserve a spread in a jar
I am starting a business making a vegan chocolate spread. It is beginning as a small, family run operation, in a hired industrial kitchen.
We are stuck on how to 'treat' the spread when getting to the canning process (in glass jars) so that it will be as shelf stable as possible.
So far, our research has pointed us toward simmering the sealed jars in boiling water for 10-15 mins. (the jars are also sterilized beforehand).
Would this be sufficient? Does this suck the oxygen out? How do large manufacturers approach this process for similar products? | If you're working with something acidic like a jam, you can indeed process the jars in hot water. This is sufficient to kill any pathogens that got sealed in with the product and can thrive in an acidic, high-sugar environment like jam. Since the water bath also seals the jar, nothing can enter the sealed jars, the jam is now shelf-stable. In your case, the spread is unlikely to be acidic enough that water bath canning is sufficient to preserve it.
You should look into pressure canning instead. You would need a pressure cooker for this, which will let you process the jars at a higher temperature than a water bath allows. There's also some concern around the fat in your spread (I assume it's based on something like coconut oil?). Fat can interfere with the seal and prevent the jars from sealing properly, and it can also go rancid even if the jars sealed correctly.
You would need to reach out to the food safety agency in your country to see what requirements they have on similar products, and likely have a food safety lab test your sealed product to determine that it's safe for as long as whatever your best-before date says. |
Using both whipped egg whites and egg yolks vs whipped egg whites only?
Would you get more leavening if you used both whipped egg whites and egg yolks and folded them into a batter (pancake batter,for example)compared to using whipped egg whites only, and would it make a noticeable difference? If yes, then why is it more common to use just the whites? | Whipping egg whites is usually done to make a batter lighter and fluffier. In such a case, adding in egg yolks will likely make the batter denser and less fluffy.
On the other hand, if the recipe has substituted egg white for egg in order to make a recipe healthier by reducing fat content, you can revert to using whole eggs (1 for every 2 egg whites). The texture will still be different, but that might be what you want. |
Large milk dough for pizza; doesn't seem to knead at all
So I set out to make pizza dough, with these ingredients:
1.25 cups whole wheat flour + 3.75 cups refined flour(5 cups total; around 750g)
1 cup water + 1 cup milk
1 tsp active dry yeast
10 tsp olive oil
2.5 tsp salt
2.5 tsp sugar
The dough I made from this is yellow/white in color. The strange thing is that despite having 66% hydration ratio, it wasn't sticky when I started kneading it. It wasn't elastic either, so kneading wasn't optional(obviously).
The trouble is, no matter how much I kneaded it, it just didn't seem to "set" into that elastic dough ball that we're after, after normally about 8 minutes? I kneaded for more than 20 minutes and it was still breaking.
I had to literally pound it with my closed fist like a hammer. It wasn't done even after that.
Right now, it's in the fridge, and I'm letting it cold rise for 24/48 hours.
What's the issue here? Why didn't the dough come together even after all that kneading? | Probably a combination of causes. You're using whole wheat flour, which really does not knead like white flour, even used in moderation with other flour: in addition to having less gluten, the shards of bran cut through the dough structure as you knead. Particularly if the "refined flour" (hmm) you were using wasn't high-gluten bread flour, that could leave you with very little cohesion. The olive oil will also interfere with gluten formation, as will the milk to some degree, particularly whole milk.
Now, none of that may actually matter. Pizza doesn't need a gluten matrix for structure in the same way a free-form bread loaf does, and the recipe you've chosen indicates that you're not looking for the classic Neapolitan crust texture anyway. If you're forming the pizza on a pan, you don't need the gluten to pull the crust, and the starch gel that forms during baking will make it hold together just fine as a cooked pizza. Treat it like pie crust, and roll it out instead of pulling it out.
Oh, incidentally, 10 tsp is a real weird measurement. It's just shy of 1/4 cup; use that instead, and give your measuring hand a rest. |
safety of using chamotte stone from hardware supplies store for baking
Should I be concerned about heavy metal poisoning when I use said chamotte stone in an electric home oven? The dough would be placed directly on the hot stone.
I didn't want to buy a dedicated Baking Stone, because the dimensions didn't match as well as the prices seemed to be too high. So I picked up a chamotte plate from a hardware store. | General consensus is that you should not use something that is not food safe for cooking.
And in particular something made for construction/building, it probably contains lot of non-food safe chemicals, and they are probably not obligated to list the ingredients; so you do not know what is inside. |
Why remove the vegetables from vegetable stock?
Most meat stock is based on boiling bones, so it's not hard to imagine why you'd want to remove the bones before using the stock.
Vegetable stock, on the other hand, is broadly similar to the mirepoix that's used as the basis for a huge number of savoury dishes: onion, carrot and celery. When you cook something based on a mirepoix or soffritto, you leave those ingredients in. Yet most stock recipes suggest you filter them off and throw them away.
So why not do the same for a stock? I'm specifically thinking of ways to try and add flavour to the broth of vegan noodle dishes, and I'm struggling to see a reason why I wouldn't just grate the onion, carrot and celery and leave it in the stock for texture and better nutritional value. | The point of stock is to extract the maximum flavor from whatever you are using, be it bones or vegetables. Once extracted there's not a whole left, which is why you don't boil stock bones over and over. Vegetables will not have much left to give after being used for stock, you can still eat them but they may not be flavorful or nutritious.
Unless you're making a stew you're going to be cooking the stock, then removing the vegetables, then cooking the stock more with other ingredients. If you leave the vegetables in they'll continue to cook until they break down, and that's usually undesirable.
If you are making a dish where you want to eat the vegetables with it then you would either want to extract them while they still have some texture and then add them back in at the end to re-heat, or add them towards the end and cook them till done. |
Why are my Rucola and Lettuce washed in ice-water?
I bought rucola and lettuce at the grocery store today and on the packaging is said in Dutch Drie keer gewassen in ijswater which translates to washed three times in ice-water.
Is there a reason why ice-water seems to be the water washing of choice, instead of water in general? Is it for a longer shelf life or freshness? I might be missing something obvious here. Could someone clarify? | Using cold/ice water helps crisp up leafy vegetables. |
Does water "go bad" in this sense?
I have an electric water boiler in the kitchen. I put fresh tap water into it, boil it up, and use it for my coffee. Then, an hour later, I go back and press the button again and have it re-boil the now room-temperature water, and use it for another cup. Sometimes, several hours pass; sometimes, half a day.
When "too long" has passed, I tend to empty it and put fresh tap water into it, because it feels like it has "gone bad".
Is this silly? Can water really "go bad" like that? Is there any difference whatsoever between freshly poured water and water that has been standing still in the container half a day or even the entire day?
It's still gonna be boiled? Doesn't that "neutralize" basically any kind of water? | It doesn't go bad, but it does change the taste.
When water is just sitting there, water evaporates, but most things dissolved in it don't. Then, each time you boil it, the steam causes additional water to escape leaving the same amount of dissolved stuff in there. So, the concentration of dissolved stuff keeps going up.
Dissolved oxygen also decreases when you heat or boil water, changing the taste.
Finally, even if your kettle is stainless steel, it can eventually rust. |
What's this brush for a reuseable stainless steel mesh coffee drip filter?
I saw this on Amazon. What does this brush do? | It's to clean the filter. With the structure of a coffee filter, rinsing and using a towel or kitchen sponge won't be able to clean the tiny crevasses of the filter, hence the bristles are there to penetrate the tiny holes.
You would really want to properly clean out your coffee filters, as oils released by coffee could eventually build up in the holes, making your next coffee result in a bitter taste. |
How to make a good tasting pepper cream sauce without using premade fabricated stuff
When I buy a premade pepper cream sauce at the grocery store it tastes good enough. It is peppery, creamy and salty. But when I try to make this myself I can't get it to taste at least neutral salty or peppery. Either the taste is really weak or too strong.
I use this recipe:
Put dairy butter in pan (low heat)
Put some flour in it (give it a stir)
Put some water from the pan with vegetables in it
Add grinded pepper (all seasons)
Add peppercorns
Add salt
Now I could experiment, but I've done so a lot. The nice peppery creamy taste comes in very late when I make it myself. When I buy it premade it always tastes salty and creamy immediately and then the peppery kicks in. How do they do this? How can I make the taste better; what am I missing? | I haven't made peppercorn sauce for many years, but from recollection, how you combine the pepper and the fat is the key. Many sauces use cream, but it's not completely necessary. The pepper flavour is staying in the peppercorns, which is why it doesn't come on early.
I suspect you need to cook the pepper in the butter before making the roux. This will extract the flavour into the sauce better, as piperine (the most important component of the flavour) isn't really soluble in water.
Some recipes use alcohol, which also dissolves piperine, e.g. this one (in French) makes a reduction using cognac and adds the butter later.
I've started making it again recently, and tend to slightly crack the peppercorns and add them to hot fat (butter or olive oil; I normally soften some finely-chopped onions so it's in the pan already). Then I add alcohol - brandy is traditional but whisky is good here - and simmer as lightly as possible for a few minutes to reduce, before adding cream, If you want it thicker, you can add just a little flour before adding the alcohol, but then simmering to make a reduction from the alcohol is harder.
White pepper is also quite common; I can't instantly find a recipe but some use ground white pepper in a cream-based sauce, with whole black or green peppercorns. If you're using ground white pepper, buy it fresh; it doesn't keep its flavour very well.
As for the saltiness, are you adding as much as the commercial sauce? Commercial sauces often use shocking amounts of salt, but you might not need as much once the pepper flavour is dealt with. |
Capsaicin Measurements
I want to make a wicked spicy dish that involves Capsaicin, and regular chicken wings. I did the research to find two answers. "Capsaicin at the right amount can kill you" and "No amount of capsaicin can kill you but will result in massive pain".
My question is, for 20 decent wings, how much Capsaicin should I add to make it the equivalent to the taste and heat of a Carolina Reaper? | So the start of this is pretty simple math.
Carolina Reaper flesh is around 2 million SHU.
Pure capsaicin is around 16 million SHU.
So reaper peppers are 1/8th the heat of pure capsaicin crystals.
But, the second part is more challenging. Do you want to suppliment the wings with 1/8 the volume, weight, or surface area of capsaicin powder? Weight is the easiest to figure; it would suggest that you want 13g of capsaicin per 102g average-sized wing.
However, what you bite into is the surface of the wing, and there's a good argument to be made that's where you're concerned with capsaicin density. This is harder to figure though, partly because there are no published stats on the average surface area of a chicken wing, nor the average dispersion of pure capsaicin crystals.
So the best approach is probably to handle this experimentally: start with half the weight calculation above, adding 6.5g of capsaicin per wing. Take a bite of chicken, wash your mouth out with two gallons of warm milk, and then take a bite of reaper pepper. Decide which is hotter, and adjust.
Oh, and probably talk to your doctor before attempting this. |
How does invert sugar reduce crystallization in ice creams?
I have often read that invert sugar reduces crystallization in ice creams. But why would that be? Wouldn't dextrose/glucose also offer the same benefits that invert sugar offers? | Simple crystals generally form when you have a lot of a particular chemical with the same shape, and a tendency to bind together. If you stack them as close as possible, you usually get a regular three dimensional array, a crystal. Invert sugar, glucose plus fructose, does not look like or pack like sucrose (glucose-fructose). It does however Hydrogen bond to sucrose. If that sucrose happens to be part of a crystal, that binding introduces a flaw into the crystal structure. This flaw impedes binding of more sucrose to the crystal, hence, smaller crystals.
This phenomena is true not only in ice cream making, but in much of chemistry, where if you want nice big clean crystals, you have to start out with a pretty pure mother liquor i.e. crystallization solution. |
Reduce Sweetness in Fudge
I am currently living in an Asian culture where taste buds are apparently more delicate. Many first-time tasters of fudge almost gag due to the overwhelming sweetness of fudge. I have searched in vain for recipes that reduce the richness of fudge in order to make it more palatable. Any suggestions as to how to reduce sweetness in fudge but still allow it to be fudge? | Traditional "fudge" gets its structure primarily from the sugar, which forms fine crystals; the texture of fudge is a stiff suspension of the sugar in the fat. So simply reducing the proportion of sugar will mess up the texture, as GdD alluded to.
But fudge isn't the only thickened-fat confection out there! One dish that immediately comes to my mind is sesame halwa, which uses the sesame particles in the same way fudge uses the sugar particles. Nut butters generally have a similar suspension (if you've had "natural" peanut butter without hydrogenated oils, or tahini or sesame sauce for that matter, think of the extra-thick layer that forms when it hasn't been stirred).
So I think you could temper the sweetness by combining a fudge recipe with something like sesame halwa, or by adding peanut flour as a substitute for some of the sugar. If you use light-colored peanut flour I don't think it would even affect the taste too much (other than reducing the sweetness, of course). |
Why has my cold smoking stopped working?
I bought a cold smoke generator for a small meat smoker last year and the first go with 3 dry brined mackerel worked GREAT! But the next 4 attempts have FAILED. The meat has come out translucent and oily like lox, and tough. Not opaque and whiteish like the cold smoked mackerel I buy from my Polish baker. (I think he gets his from Canada) I thought perhaps the first batch I did succeeded because they were smaller but my last batch I fileted and got the same result. I dry brine OVER 24 hours in 1 part brown sugar and 3 parts kosher salt. Completely covered. I even tried brining TWICE on the last 2 batches.
The fish have been very fresh in all cases and my temperatures have been below 60 F in all attempts but the 2nd.
Please help. I wouldn't be so distraught if it hadn't worked PERFECTLY once, before I knew what details to pay attention to. | It sounds like you may be over-curing the fish. The salt and sugar draw water out of the fish, the longer it's applied the more is lost, and you can go too far. When I cold smoke a side of salmon it's only cured overnight, say 8-10 hours, not for a whole day. I imagine there wouldn't be much left after that.
Try reducing your dry brining time to 4 hours, then rinse, pat dry and let them dry out overnight in the refrigerator. |
Hersey Cookies and Creame Treat
I am planning on making a cute little desert for my family that involves steam melting (putting the bars in a glass bowl under steam) hersheys Cookies and Cream chocolate bars and then pouring them in a ice tray as a mold. However I want to coat the White Chocolate in the Milk Chocolate upon pouring them into the mold. Any ideas of how i could do that due to it seeming quite impossible in my mind? | Basically, you have to either pour the hot one over the cold one, or dip cold in hot.
Freeze the first solid section in the moulds, then set on a wire baking tray & pour over your second layer. This method will bind to the wire if you're not careful.
Alternatively, dip the cold in the hot & lay on a non-stick surface. This method tends to spread out a bit, so leave plenty of room around each chunk. Alternatively, don't dip to full-depth to allow for some run-off.
DaringGourmet has a recipe showing both methods, though over a different substrate - Marzipan Truffles |
What are these stones?
I am a fan of some YouTube channel, and back in 2018, he posted this video: Slav snacks - Slav party tutorial and I really want to try these foods because I'm an Asian.
In timestamp 7:00, he shows off these stones, which are sugar-covered. I'm certain that since this is slav, it is hard to exactly figure out what the stones are.
Search for "sugar-covered stones" and you won't find the similar dessert. What exactly are these given "stones"? | From the image, they look like jelly beans (or in Serbian, dželi bins) to me, based on the size, colour (including the slightly mottled pattern which tends to indicate better-quality jelly beans) and shine. The comment 'inside is a mystery' sounds to me like a clear reference to the fact that jelly beans often come in a variety of flavours, and it's not always easy to tell from the colour what the flavour will be.
The more general culinary term (although it's not a common one) for confectionery with a hard decorative outer shell is a dragée. The 'stones' in the video could be sugared almonds, although they look too small in my opinion, or something like coated raisins or other nuts. |
What cut of beef to use for Indian curries?
I am wondering what part/cut of the animal is best to make Indian/Pakistani dishes like curries, Biryani, fry etc.
This post says Chuck steak. But wanted to get more opinions.
Which cut of beef should I use in a curry?
Edit: I come from India and I know for a fact that any meat dish (even fish sometimes) is cooked atleast for 30 mins unless pressure cooked. There are very few exceptions. The problem arises because the wide variety of cuts available in the westerm parlance is simply not used in those countries, you just go to the butcher and ask for meat. So the question is more about buying beef in the western context, where you can only buy a specific cut and what you choose might affect how the curry turns out. Also its a misconception that beef is not preferred in these countries, especially Pakistan, Bangladesh, and many parts/cultures of India(ex:southern, eastern states) etc. I updated my wording in the above question to make it more clear. Thanks! | Supermarkets often just quote braising or stewing steak without detailing which cut. Any of those will work. Don't bother to trim the fat, it will disappear during the cooking.
The idea is to start with the opposite end of the scale from what you would consider a good quick-fry steak. You want the 'stringy' stuff, lots of collagen, something that will improve over 4 hours or so of gentle simmering [or 10 hours in a slow cooker]. Any meat that is good for a quick fry will be like dry bullets, tough as old boots after so long at a simmer. A coarse stewing meat will be just coming to its best. Don't let it bother you that these are the cheapest cuts you can get, it's what works best for any long-cook dish. By the same token you'd use chicken thighs not breast for a long cook.
See also What is the best cut of beef to use for stews? - which comes to the same conclusions. |
Best way - if any to "thin out" overly salty kimchi - already in jar
I made Kimchi and put it into glass jars, based on this recipe: https://www.feastingathome.com/how-to-make-kimchi/
I made it in 2 batches:
1 batch I accidentally put double the salt, but gave it an extra rinse after 4 hours. I also forgot to put the daikon in it.
1 batch I had normal salt and rinsed after 8 hours
When mixing with the paste I tasted the first batch and found it a bit salty, however I put both batched into jars nonetheless.
I'm concerned of both batches being to salty and inedible, so I thought of the following plan:
taste each jar after 1 week
if too salty, mix in another daikon to "thin out" and distribute the salt over more material.
To make sure I don't spoil the batches I was going to
use a fresh fork to taste each jar
get mixing bowls and forks straight out of a freshly run dishwasher
mix with freshly dishwashed cutlery only
Is this a good approach or is there a better way to check and fix overly salty Kimchi | Actually, your idea is pretty much exactly the method used in Korea to mellow out salty kimchi. Apparently it works via osmosis. Link in Korean
Just make sure to spread out the daikon, and let it sit for a few days before checking so that it can get the job done. Also, don't salt it beforehand (although this is admittedly quite obvious). |
How can I clean chia seeds?
I'm wondering about how to properly clean chia seeds since they cannot be washed in water as other seeds.
I've read that they need not to be washed, but then how to clean them? | Three main methods of cleaning dry seed:
Blow on it with a fan to remove chaff, dust and some leaf bits.
Sieve it to remove both the stuff that's too course or too fine.
Run it slowly down an inclined plane, like a breadboard. Seeds tend to bounce, crud doesn't and will stick to the board. |
Make aquafabe from scratch - can the soaking water be used for cooking
I would like to make aquafaba from white beans. I am going to soak the dried beans for a couple of hours and then boil them, the remaining water should be aquafaba.
I wonder if I need to change the liquid in which the beans have been soaked or if this will make the aquafaba have less of the desired properties.
I think I read once that you need to change the water if making aquafaba from chickpeas.
I would guess from this response
What is the food chemistry of aquafaba?
that changing the water does not really matter, but I would like to ask nevertheless. | If I understand correctly when you talk about changing liquid, you mean boiling the beans in a water different from the one in which you soaked them? In that case yes, generally speaking it is recommended to boil all your legumes in a different water, because cooking them in the soaking water will make them less digestible, but it shouldn't have any influence on the composition/consistency of your aquafaba.
The most important is the cooking water, because it is during this process that the carbohydrates and proteins of the legume will transfer to the water and make your aquafaba. |
How to get good color steak without sous-vide
The internet is filled with videos and pictures of people using sous-vide and obtaining rosy, almost red steak "fibers".
For the last couple of months, I've been making bone-in ribeyes by reverse searing from air-fryer oven to carbon steel pan.
The temperature I shoot for was always 55 to max 60, no matter how many times I try, the steak fibers always comes out not as bright colored or "pink" when sliced, instead they are gray-ish with lots of bright reddish colored "juice".
My wild guess is that the reason for not getting the rosy colored fiber in sliced steak is that the temp is not precise. Could it also be the steak itself and the diet of the cow?
Is the only to get good colored steak as seen all over the internet the sous-vide?
My ribeye cuts aren't very marbled, they came from a younger cow. | You can certainly get good steak without sous vide, both in color and taste.
The quality of the meat matters, but is not the only variable. You should get the proper cut, and while the cow diet is not necessary for a red color, if it was slaughtered too young, the meat will be lighter in color. Not grey though, just a less saturated pink-red. And make sure that you have a thick enough cut, something very thin will not get a pink center.
The more important part, especially with your greyish results, is the temperature. If you get grey meat that is not juicy enough, you are overcooking your steak. It could be that your thermometer is inaccurate (hopefully you have a digital one, the analog ones aren't very useful), or simply that you are not accounting for the proper cooking process.
The temperature you see on the temperature chart is the final internal temperature at the core of your meat. You have to account for additional temperature rises both from the sear and from carryover during resting. So, if you think you want a 57 C steak, you should stop cooking it at maybe 54 (depends on thickness), and even earlier if you are doing a sear. The sear itself should be on a really hot pan, so you get a very short duration, maybe 15 seconds per side. It could also be that your preference is for a steak that is rarer than the average medium rare (that would be at 57 C), and/or that your thermometer is consistently undermeasuring the temperature.
Whatever the reason, just continue taking the meat out at lower thermometer readings until you get a result you are happy with, then stick with repeating it that way no matter what the thermometer shows. |
How much weight of a whole life chicken is a supermarket whole chicken?
If you buy a whole chicken in the supermarket it is defeathered, without head and feet and with the inner organs removed (sometimes you get some organs in a bag but I'm going to ignore that for this question). What I would like to know is how much, in terms of weight of a living chicken is a whole supermarket chicken? How much weight are the various pieces that are removed? If this makes a difference, assume the supermarket chicken weighs 1.5 kgs (a little over 3 pounds). | Broiler chickens, at least in the US, are bred to grow quickly. They are usually slaughtered when then weigh about 4 pounds, which is at about 7 to 9 weeks. In general, a grocery store broiler weighs about 3 to 3.5 pounds. As the comments above suggest, this is a very general response. It would be difficult to be more accurate. |
Can you have straight up garlic oil?
Can you have straight up garlic oil or is it always garlic boiled in another oil so garlic oil always has another oil
As it’s ingredient?
Is there a reason why it always seems to be olive oil rather than others? | Garlic oil; that is, oil directly from garlic is certainly a thing. It is usually achieved using steam distillation. I have read that the undiluted oil has about 900 times the strength of fresh garlic. That's generally much more potent than any home cook or chef wants to deal with. For the vast majority of culinary applications, garlic is used to flavor oil. Any oil will work, and the way the garlic is chopped (or not), as well as how it is heated (and how long) in the oil, will have significant impacts on the final result. |
Will dry roasting a chuck come out tender?
I plan on dry roasting a beef chuck, I've only ever braised chuck before though. Is this cut suitable to a slow and low dry roast or will it come out tough? It's a 3 lbs roast, I'm thinking 300 degrees (convection) for and hour and 15 minutes. | Roasting is, by definition, "dry." Beef chuck can certainly be roasted, and your plan sounds reasonable. It can also be smoked, at an even lower temp. There are plenty of recipes online. Whichever your preference, I would measure temperature, rather than rely on time. I will also add, the texture will certainly be different from a braised chuck, if that is what you are used to. |
reheating leftover omelette on stove in pan without overdrying or making it too oily?
I am, probably, a beginner at cooking (can make a small variety of dishes well). Of late, I have been expanding my skill set and have been striving to reheat leftovers (no more than a day or two old) on stove.
For omelette leftovers, which I originally cook in butter, I add about half a tbsp butter for reheating. But it ends up oily in some places and dry in others.
Is there a particular amount of butter or other oil best for reheating omelettes? Should any liquids be added? | There is no way to reheat an omelette & arrive back at 'a fresh omlette'.
You serve it just before it's completely cooked, so it arrives at the table correctly finished. Five minutes later hopefully it's been eaten, before it's past its best.
Anything after that is going to be rubbery.
Reheated is going to be rubbery++, no matter what you do.
To be perfectly honest, if you really want to reheat one, put it in the microwave for 30s to 1m. It's never going to get any better than that… & it will add no oil.
Re-heatable 'omelette' might best be considered as 'Spanish tortilla', which is never meant to be light & fluffy in the first place & microwaves rather well. If you keep half for tomorrow, or buy one in a supermarket, ready-cooked, then the microwave is actually the best way to get it back to temperature. Re-heating in a pan is a) slow & b) will over-cook the outside before the inside is to temperature. |
How can I brew a stronger cocoa drink?
I read here and here that cocoa powder could be "brewed" like coffee for a cocoa-flavored coffee-like hot drink. Today I bought some cocoa powder and a reusable coffee filter cup, and I tried it out myself with a single-cup coffee maker. I got a drink that seems quite promising, but it brewed very weak and watery. How can I get a stronger cocoa powder brew? | You don't brew cocoa like coffee, with filtering. You drink the cocoa powder together with the liquid.
Making breed cocoa is super easy, just take a small pot, mix gradually the cocoa powder with cold water, them let it cook up like Turkish coffee. Then drink without any sieving or filtering. You can add sugar if you like.
If it is still watery, add more cocoa powder next time. |
Tofu cooking method
I ordered a delicious dish from our local Vietnamese restaurant. It came with tofu that was brownish on the outside but moist and softish but firm enough on the inside (see picture). Is anyone familiar with the cooking method to produce tofu in such a way? | The tofu was deep fried before being added to the soup.
If you don't have the equipment to deep-fry such large pieces of tofu at home, but you live in an area with a substantial Vietnamese population, you can probably find tofu already fried at a grocery that caters to Vietnamese customers, or at a tofu shop. |
cooking canned veggies in a Korean clay pot?
I just acquired a Korean clay pot. One of the first things I made was some celery and chicken. Both turned out great but the celery was esp great. Right now, I have a surplus of canned vegetables of all sorts--spinach, peas, mixed veggies, etc.
Can any of these be made in a clay pot without losing texture? I was considering making a stew using canned veggies but was unsure if they would turn into mush if cooked in a clay pot. | Generally, as canned vegetables are already cooked, they can be mushy regardless of the vessel you cook them in. Depending on the desired result, I would add canned vegetables near the end of the stew's cooking time, especially peas and spinach e.g. in some sort of pie filling. You could cook them further, but expect vegetables like carrots to disintegrate. |
What do you get from boiling dough
I was wondering about what happens to bread dough under various cooking conditions.
More explicitly: what do you get when you boil dough?
I know baking gives you bread and frying gives you donuts. And since I really don’t know so much about cooking, the one thing missing was boiling.
I think microwaving is going too far. | When you boil bread dough, you get a type of boiled bagel, I don't think it has a name in English. Dumplings are more likely to be made from other types of dough, like pasta dough. And while you don't have to boil your dough in a torus shape, it is the most convenient one since you cannot shape it thick and expect to cook through.
By the way, when you fry bread dough, you don't get doughnuts, that would be a different dough (although some bread doughs like challah might produce a doughnut like result). With standard bread dough, you get mekica/Lángos. |
Salt cured egg yolk storage life
Does anyone know long would salt cured salted egg yolks keep in the refrigerator?
I've seen a few articles including this one https://practicalselfreliance.com/salt-cured-egg-yolks which notes that its good for about "3-4 weeks if not longer", though some claim that it's only good for about 2 weeks.
Is there anyone here who could clarify which one is correct? | It depends on how you will store them ( individually wrapped, in a plastic box, vacuum sealed ?)
It can also depend on how dry is your fridge.
It also depends on how dry they are.
I'd say 2 weeks max; some say 1 month or more.
The Egg farmers of Canada advocacy group doesn't even say.
Don't make couple of dozen of them if you don't intend to use them relatively quickly or have access to vacuum seal equipment.
IMO, it's easy to cure 3, 4 yolks at a time and use them in that time span.
Anecdotal, I've kept vacuum sealed yolks (each one in its own little vacuum bag) for a couple of months with not issues.
(speaking of which I should do some today) |
Can you replicate grill or roasting on a stove?
I love fish and courgettes, tomato etc. don't in an oven. I'm gonna be on holiday in a third world country where people do not have ovens in their home and just usually use a stove of some sort.
How do people in this countries get food cooked, like an oven, grill etc. or are my only options stove top frying and wet heat methods? | Maybe they don't. You can't replicate roasting on a stove top. With a grill pan, you can get in the ball park of grilling, but you would miss the major flavor contributor resulting from drippings hitting hot coals or grill burners.
Rather than trying to replicate something you do at home, I would suggest, that when on holiday, you embrace the culture of the place you are visiting. Leave your favorites from home behind, learn about the culture of the place you are going, participate, and learn something new. You can return to the methods you use when you come home. |
Are cardamom husks edible?
I have a recipe for a South Indian "allspice" mixture that includes cardamom among other spices. One begins with whole spices, toasted, and in the end they are ground in a coffee or spice grinder.
Does one have to extract the black seeds within the pod and discard the husks before roasting and grinding? Or does one roast within the seedpod and grind the whole thing, husk and all? | The entire seed pod is edible. With a coffee grinder, you may not be able to reduce the husks to powder (that’s more of a job for a burr grinder), which may affect the mouth feel of the final dish slightly but should be fine. The cardamom taste comes from the seeds, so you can remove the husks if you want, but I wouldn’t bother.
If you do decide to remove the husks, the easiest approach is to squeeze each pod along its longest axis (so, trying to make it shorter). This will tear the sides of the pod and expose the seeds. For fresh cardamom they may be in the form of a slightly sticky cluster. Either push the seeds out with your fingers, or scrape them out with the tip of a knife. |
can light beer be used as substitute for white wine vinegar in marinade recipe?
A chicken marinade recipe calls for both 1/2 cup sour cream and 1/4 cup white wine vinegar. I was wondering if I can swap the vinegar with a light beer, and if so, would proportions remain same as if when using vinegar?
If not, can unfiltered apple cider vinegar work as a substitute for white wine vinegar? | The answer to this is: No, beer won't substitute, but another vinegar could.
The main reason here is flavour - beer tastes completely different to vinegar, and would change the flavour profile of your marinade substantially. This may work out, but it may not, and the only ways to tell would be to test it and/or look for recipes with the same ingredients as your marinade but beer instead of vinegar.
Another reason beer might not work work is that beer is not generally acidic, whereas vinegar has a substantial amount of acid (acetic acid in the case of vinegar from grapes) in it. The acid will help macerate/soften the tissue so that it is easier to eat. Having said that, beer will contain enzymes that break down protein, that might do the equivalent of the acid, but these may not work in the presence of other substances in your marinade recipe.
Interestingly, if you are going to marinade with beer, use a canned pasteurized beer or a fresh brew of unpasteurized beer as the proteolytic enzymes in the beer are broken down in unpasteurized beers (warning: PDF, possible paywall). |
What is the difference between cheap and expensive extra virgin olive oil?
I read that extra virgin and regular olive oil are different in the way they are processed. For example, regular olive oil can contain chemicals e.g. pesticides, but extra virgin will not?
Extra virgin also comes in cheaper and expensive brands for example fillipo Berio is a few pounds but it’s apparently genuine.
Does this mean the fillipo Berio does not contain chemicals and why are the other olive oil brands 4 times the price? | "Virgin" olive oil is mechanically pressed. "Extra virgin" olive oil additionally satisfies basic quality criteria, and is generally the first oil pressed from a batch of olives. The terms have nothing to do with pesticides or "chemicals".
Extra virgin olive oils vary widely, both in overall "quality" and actual attributes. Adulteration is common; something labeled as "extra virgin olive oil" may have non-extra-virgin olive oil added to it. It may have non-olive oil added to it. (My understanding is that walnut oil is a common adulterant.)
There's a lot of factors influencing price, including actual quality, brand recognition, and how nice the label looks. A more expensive olive oil is not necessarily higher quality. If there's a brand that's four times the price, that simply means that the store thinks people might pay that much for it. (Perhaps simply because people assume that price equals quality.)
Tetsujin's comparison to wine is a good one. There are reviews of olive oil out there, but they'll likely concentrate on really expensive olive oils, and probably not the ones available in your local shop. If you want a Decently Good Olive Oil, go with a well-known brand (they're less likely to be adulterated). If you want "top shelf" olive oil, go to a specialty store, pick something that looks tasty, and hope for the best. In either case, get a small bottle: It'll be fresher by the time you're done with it, and if it turns out not to be amazing, you won't have spent as much on it. |
Lasagna in a sandwich maker
I have some lasagna sheets that I would like to use, and our oven is rather unreliable.
Is it possible to prepare lasagna using only a sandwich maker? How could I go about doing this? | Why not; it can be a fun project.
It will need a lot of experimentation to make it work and it will not be a lasagna.
I'd completely cook the noodles, spread them on the sandwich maker, put a little bit of sauce and cheese in the middle, put another layer of noodles on top and press it down.
Depending on the size of your sandwich maker, you could even try multiple layers.
But it will be a kind of a pizza pocket. |
Cooking French fries with strainer from IKEA's Idealisk
I want to make French fries, but I don't have a proper deep fryer, but just a dutch oven and a strainer from IKEA, Idealisk.
Is it OK to leave the potatoes in the strainer and submerge them in the hot oil? Like leaving the strainer in the hot oil. Will the strainer be damaged from the heat? | If the strainer fits your pot so that it works as a fry basket, then it's fine to use it as such. As long as:
It'll sit flat in the pot so it doesn't spill all the potatoes out;
The handle is long enough that you can pick it up without burning yourself on the oil;
You're not concerned if the strainer gets burned-on oil which might make it less useful as a general-purpose strainer;
The strainer is all-metal, which that strainer is.
If any of the above don't work, consider just dumping the fries in the pot and using the strainer to fish them out, but not leaving it in the boiling oil. |
What would cause the peel of a lime to turn yellow?
About a week ago, I purchased two limes, a lemon, a couple of kiwi fruits, and some oranges. When I got home, I placed them in a bowl. One of the limes ended up at the bottom of the bowl but there were still enough gaps between the fruit that it wasn't completely hidden, and there weren't enough fruits above it that the lime was in danger of being squashed.
I've since used up all the fruit but the limes. This afternoon, when I picked up the lemon to use, I noticed that the lime that was partly underneath had changed color from green to yellow. Here is a photograph of the two limes:
Why has the lime on the right turned yellow? It was purchased at the same time as the one on the left and stored in the same bowl. | Ethylene, most likely.
You've said that that lime was at the bottom of the bowl, mostly covered with other fruit. I'll bet it was very close to some kiwis.
Fruit -- particularly "climacteric" fruit like kiwi which ripens after being picked -- produces and releases ethylene. Ethylene serves a key role in fruit ripening. This is why you're advised to keep bananas in a closed paper bag to ripen them: the ethylene gas produced by the bananas builds up and ripens them faster. In open air, ethylene concentrations (in the fruit, not just around it) remain lower, and ripening is retarded.
In fact, citrus producers commonly use ethylene gas to artificially ripen ("de-green") the rind of citrus fruit. This would normally be done for lemons and oranges, which are commonly picked when still slightly green.
While you didn't have a fully closed container, it sounds like the lime was deep enough in the bowl for some concentration of ethylene, produced largely by the kiwis, to build up around it, ripening at least the rind of the lime. (Yes, some limes are yellow when fully ripe -- limes at the store are picked unripe because consumers like the look of green ones.)
Congratulations on your accidental biochemistry experiment. |
Sweet = Sugar, Salty = Salt, Sour =?
I have thought of a funny concept on what makes things taste like this, taste like that, and it kinda looks like this:
Sweet = Sugar (C6H12O6)
Sour = ?
Salty = Salt (NaCl)
Bitter = ?
What I'm trying to figure out is what is the simplest substance that makes this taste like that. That's why it clearly defines that sugar is the simplest substance that makes things sweet and salt makes things salty. I wonder what substance makes things sour?
What is the substance makes things sour?
BONUS: Figure out what makes things bitter. | Sour flavours come from acids, like citric acid (in lemon juice, for example) or acetic acid (in vinegar). I don't think there's any one acid that qualifies as 'simplest'.
Bitterness is much more complicated; there are lots of different foods (coffee, uncured olives, citrus peel, alcohol, hops quinine) which are bitter to some extent but there isn't an obvious culinary ingredient/chemical that just gives 'bitter' as a taste. Our perception of bitterness is believed to have evolved to signal toxic foods.
It's worth pointing out that your existing examples are an oversimplification: C₆H₁₂O₆ is glucose, which is only one kind of sugar, and there are others which also taste sweet to us (as well as non-sugar sweeteners, some of which taste far sweeter by mass than sugar. There are also other salts, like KCl (potassium chloride). There is much more information in the Wikipedia article if you are interested. |
Recommended lemon juice to water ratio when making lemonade
A lot of recipes I see call for lemon quantity but this can be very relative as some lemons differ in weight/size, thus yielding to different amounts of lemon juice.
For instance, if I wanted to make half a gallon's worth of lemonade, what would be the recommended ratio of lemon juice to water be? I tend to use about 2 cups of sugar to give you an idea of level of sweetness in half a gallon's worth of lemonade. | According to this lemonade recipe Best Lemonade Ever rated by 3K people, averaging a rating of 5 stars, the ratio is
1 ¾ cups white sugar
8 cups water
1 ½ cups lemon juice
Since you're using 2 cups of sugar, I recommend you follow the recipe:
2 cups white sugar
9 cups water
1 ⅔ cups (27 tbsp) lemon juice
As for lemons to lemon juice estimate, from How Much Juice Can You Get From One Lemon?:
1 Small Lemon (4 oz.) = 3 tbsp fresh juice.
1 Medium Lemon (5 oz.) = 4 tbsp fresh juice.
1 Large Lemon (6 oz.) = 5 tbsp fresh juice
So...
using small lemons, you'll need about 9
using medium lemons, you'll need about 7
using large lemons, you'll need about 5 |
Do yeast pancakes contain alcohol?
I fed my 2 year old pancakes that required yeast: yeast, mashed banana, warm water, whole wheat and buckwheat flour, and salt. I left the batch in the fridge overnight, and in the morning added a teaspoon of sugar, some more water, and a bit of oil. Fried them up on a shallow pan for just a few minutes and served.
My concern? How much alcohol/ethanol would yeast pancakes contain? Should I be worried about having fed these to a two year old???? I feel ridiculous in all sorts of ways... | Yes, yeast-risen foods such as bread will contain trace quantities of ethanol. The concentration will likely be lower than that found in fresh fruit. |
What is the best way to turn soup into stew without using flour?
I was hoping to make stew, but I made soup by forgetting to add thickener--my intended thickener was keto flour because, due to an autoimmune disease, I cannot have wheat or corn or potatoes.
I was just looking up how to turn soup into stew and found a recommendation of mixing flour with cold water, and adding that mixture to the soup.
Is there a way to thicken soup without use of flour? | I wouldn't actually call a soup with thickened liquid "a stew", for me a stew is a cooked dish with very little liquid altogether, be it thick or thin.
Because of this, I would suggest a very simple solution: pass your soup through a colander, catching the liquid. Then return as much liquid as you like to your vegetables, to get your stew. Keep the rest of the liquid to use as stock for another dish, or to drink pure as broth (you may have to freeze it if you don't plan to cook with it soon).
The second workable solution is to add more vegetables, grains or noodles and cook it more, as one of Juhasz's suggestions, but it has two drawbacks. First, it contradicts your keto restriction, and second, you will likely overcook the original vegetables, if you used sensitive ones.
All other solutions, including the starch, will produce a thickened liquid, but not actually a stew-like dish. |
Is panko just pretentious breadcrumbs?
My local grocery store actually currently sells panko crumbs for more money than beef mince, which to me is incredible. Is there any sort of justification for this or is it just expensive because it is foreign?
Maybe there is some culinary justification in using it that I'm unaware of, but to me its inflated price seems rather ridiculous for something that is still in essence breadcrumbs. | The big difference between panko and "regular" breadcrumbs is that panko is more like flakes, so it creates a much different texture when used as a breading.
It's more similar to using cracker or cereal crumbs than regular bread in terms of shape, but the texture is more bread-like.
For a picture comparison, and explanation of how panko is made, see UpperCrustents's how panko is made.
The difference is lost when using it as a binder in something like meatballs ... similar to using flake salt vs. other shapes of salt. So in some cases, using it might be considered pretentious. (or just using whatever's on hand). |
Why does this custard say to boil milk cool and boil again
I have this recipe (from a really great book that has never failed me) for a custard and it says to
Bring the milk to the boil.
Put to the side for 10 mins.
Whisk the yolks and sugar.
Return the milk to the boil.
Add milk to eggs.
Heat till thick.
But why the double boil step?
It has made a lovely thick custard, my best recipe yet.
Edit: I have eaten it now and it was the most scrummy custard I have ever eaten. but that may be the 4 egg yolks and double cream :) | I can't say about this particular recipe, but 'scalding' milk was a commonly used to change the milk (cooking proteins, deactivating enzymes, etc) in the days before pasteurization ... but that was normally done when the milk was to be used at a non-boiling temperature.
It's possible that this 10 minute cool down gives it sufficient time for the desired changes to the milk to happen, without the problems of boil-over and evaporation that might happen if you tried to hold the milk at a boil for an extended period.
It's also possible that this is related to another question on here in which someone noticed that re-boiling milk was less likely to foam up. (but then couldn't re-create it, so there might be something else going on) |
how to not get burned keto flour pancakes?
I make keto pancakes out of a bought keto flour pancake mix (almond flour and cassava and coconut flours are main components). I mix these with either water or whole milk, making not too thick mixture, and cook on a cast iron pan with a pad of butter placed on heated pan first.
A problem I run into consistently is this: the first pancake cooks very well--well browned outside and cooked inside. But subsequent pancakes come out slightly burned outside while under-cooked inside.
I make sure to keep the pan on medium heat throughout and add butter in between pancakes in order to keep the pan well-greased. I make sure to turn pancake from one side to other when bubbles form. However, that doesn't help it.
Is there something else I can do to make sure to have several pancakes in a row come out well-cooked inside and not burnt outside? | Your pan is getting too hot.
Cast iron has a lot of" thermal mass", which means that it takes a good bit of energy (and time) to heat up, then it holds on to that heat and takes time to cool down.
Most likely, your pan is still heating up when you cook your first pancake. It's at the right temperature, but still on the upswing and getting hotter. By the time you get to the other pancakes, the pan is too hot.
There are two easy solutions to try:
turn the heat down a bit, and also wait longer to cook the first pancake. At a lower temperature, it'll take even longer to reach maximum/equilibrium temperature, with the goal to max out at the temperature of your first pancake.
use the same procedure for your first pancake, but once it's in the pan, turn down the heat, just a little. You've hit the ideal temperature, but you need to reduce the heat to maintain it at this temperature, rather than continuing to get hotter.
It'll take a little experimenting on your cooktop to find just the right adjustment of heat, but it should just be a matter of finding a slightly lower temperature. |
browning meat in Dutch oven--why doesn't it work for me?
A stew recipe I was using said to brown the meat in the Dutch oven first. I tried to--added oil and let it get hot on the stove top with lid off. However, the meat did not appear to brown as much as, I think, broil. I am unsure if I waited long enough to get the Dutch oven hot all the way--but the oil seemed to get hot in it. I was wanting to let the meat stay longer in the Dutch oven but it began to stick to the bottom without looking browned. I made sure not to crowd the bottom of the oven and the oven itself is a 4.3 quart cast iron enameled one.
Is there a particular approach to browning meat in a Dutch oven vs a pan? | A few things that I would suggest for browning in general, some of which moscafj has already hinted at:
Dry your meat: Any surface moisture has to be evaporated, cooling down the meat and the pot. A dry piece of meat will brown more easily. For grilling, many people use paper towels, but for stews you can also roll the chunks in flour so it later acts as a thickner ... but if you do this make sure to shake off any loose flour before adding it to your pot.
Work in small batches. You want to have a bit of space around each piece of meat so that any moisture given off can quickly evaporate, rather than pooling and cooling off the pan. (if you're not using flour). Generally I try for at least 1cm (about 1/2 an inch) gap between the various chunks when browning meat.
Be patient. Browning takes a little bit of time. If the food sticks, just leave it alone. This is a sign that the proteins are starting to change. Once they're fully browned, they'll release their hold. (this is a useful test for if it's browned in a large pot, as you can't easily see under it ... just wait until you can prod it from the side and see if it releases ... but don't push too hard, as you can end up ripping the crust that's starting to form and leave that stuck to the pot; if this happens, deglaze before your next batch, and save the liquid (to add back to the stew later).
But specifically for a dutch oven:
If you have a fan near your stove, use it. The high-sides of a dutch oven prevent the moisture from escaping easily, leaving you with steamed meat. If you don't have a fan, you may want to leave a little more space between your chunks of meat.
If you're crunched for time, it's often quicker to brown large batches of meat chunks under the broiler (grill / top heat) of your oven, rather than in a dutch oven, but you need to keep a closer eye on it. |
Good book on the chemistry of cooking?
What is a good book on the chemistry of cooking? I am looking for a book that discusses fermentation chemical reactions and reactions that occur when food is heated. | The standard and most commonly referenced home-cook-approachable book on the science of cooking is On Food and Cooking, by Harold McGee. |
Do blini have to be thin?
In case you're wondering, Blin (or Блин) is just Pancake in Russian.
It was given by my favorite YouTuber that these pancakes have to be thin to be a proper blin. Is this true? | This seems to be more of a linguistic question to me.
It depends on who you ask. In the region where I live: not necessarily, both the American style and French crêpe style pancakes are sometimes called "блин" and "блинчики" (little pancakes).
But for a lot of people it's only the French thin ones. And they call the other one "оладушки". (Read: oladushki)
It's not exactly defined by region as much as simply what you're used to.
Also: the word is also a curse word, although a very childish one. The English version might be 'crap', I think. |
Does pouring water on burning charcoal when grilling make the meat more smokey?
Does anyone know if pouring water during grilling on the charcoal, which makes the fire smokey, would actually make the taste of the meat being grilled more smokey? | No, as that isn’t creating smoke. It’s creating steam. A steamier cooking environment may actually inhibit desired grilling flavors as it could inhibit browning via the Maillard reaction. |
How to heat up a pan on an induction burner?
When it comes to a cast-iron skillet, the benefit of using traditional methods is that if you want a super hot pan, you heat it for a long period of time before adding fat to the pan. The instructions say never place an empty pan on an induction burner. So for me adding oil at the beginning was non-sensical, Within a very short period of time the oil was smoking but the pan itself was cold except for the bottom. So how do you get a screaming hot cast iron pan before adding any fat? | The instructions say never place an empty pan on an induction burner
"Never" is a strong word. Too strong.
Of course, you deviate from the manufacturer's instructions at your own risk. But as long as you are careful to not cause harm to the pan or the burner, it should be fine.
The main risk to the burner is overheating the pan, which then gets hot enough that the heat coming from the pan back to the burner is too much. Any decent burner should include a thermal cut-off feature in its design though. The most likely outcome here, at least if you don't do it over and over again, is that the burner simply will turn off. Not a desirable outcome, but at least you can recover from it.
The main risk to the pan is to heat it too quickly, rather than too much, with the heat gradient causing the metal to warp. See e.g. Do induction cookers increase risk of cracking cast iron?. How big a risk this is depends on how powerful the burner is, and how high you set the power.
An induction burner can indeed heat a pan very quickly, and it's tempting to take advantage of that. But if you're heating up an empty cast iron pan to sear something, it will pay to be patient. A radiant electric or, especially, a gas burner heat the area around the pan to a significant extent, which allows the whole pan to heat somewhat more evenly. With the induction burner, you need to let the heat move from the bottom of the pan to the sides by heat conduction through the metal itself, which takes more time.
Note that while cast iron is immune to permanent damage to the finish from high heat that is a risk with other types of pans, especially non-stick surfaces, you can still burn off the seasoned coating if you leave the empty pan at too high a heat for very long. It's simple to fix, just by re-seasoning the pan, but it's certainly inconvenient.
So…go ahead and heat up the empty pan on the induction burner. But increase the power gradually, allowing the sides of the pan to heat up along with the bottom, until you get the whole pan at a suitable temperature.
(For what it's worth, the main issue is the health of the pan. As far as actually cooking goes, if you're just searing or frying something, it doesn't matter very much if the side of the pan are still cold. You're not using the side to cook, so it can be whatever temperature it winds up at, as long as the bottom of the pan is hot enough. Though, keep in mind that having heat in the side helps as a reservoir of heat to reduce the temperature drop of the pan surface when you put something in it.)
Additional reading:
Wikipedi |
Undoing the flavor effects of baking soda in cooking
I recently learned that if you put a bit of sodium bicarbonate on onion when frying it, the onion will literally melt away. This is absolutely amazing, and I love that trick.
But I tried it now when I was cooking some tomato sauce, and while the mouthfeel was incredibly creaming (as opposed to a bit chewy when I do without), there was a clear and ever present sensation of the baking soda at the back of my throat.
Is it just because I've put too much baking soda (about half a teaspoon for one small-medium onion, and also two and a half plum tomatoes that came in shortly thereafter), or is there something else to do to resolve this without changing the intended flavor profile too much? (I don't want to add vinegar, for example, if that causes the sauce to taste like vinegar) | You cannot remove a flavor that's been added to a dish once. There are very few exceptions to this, and I would say this isn't one of the exceptions.
You will find people telling you that baking soda is neutralized by acids. While chemically, baking soda can react with an acid, I would say that this won't help you here:
baking powder is a combination of baking soda and acid and I personally easily notice the metallic taste in anything made with baking powder. So the reaction products don't taste much better than the baking soda itself.
a tomato sauce likely also has fat. Some of the unpleasant soapy taste of adding baking soda to food happens due to its reactions with fat, and I don't think that the products of this reaction will react with acid.
your sauce has quite some acid already, through the tomatoes (and possibly more, if you used canned tomatoes or more ingredients which add acid, like vinegar). If acid was enough to prevent the bad taste, it would have happened already.
So, if you want to enjoy the effects of baking soda, you generally also have to live with its taste. |
What is the pho "original" chile?
Every Vietnamese restaurant I've eaten in (in the US) uses jalapeno peppers in their pho. I assume that's an American adaptation to the dish. Is that correct? If so, what kind of peppers are used in Vietnam? | Chilli is a strictly optional condiment to phở and many Vietnamese will eat theirs without it. In Vietnam, if fresh chillis are served, it will likely be one of two types:
Ớt sừng trâu, literally "buffalo horn" chilli, large and fairly mild. One of many cultivars of C. frutescens, typically sold in the US as "Red Cayenne" although that label is unfortunately also applied to many other chillies as well.
Ớt hiểm, aka bird's eye chilli, small and very spicy.
Not coincidentally, there are also the two most common varieties of chilli eaten in Vietnam.
Jalapeno peppers are somewhere between the two: a C. annuum cultivar like bird's eye, but not nearly as spicy. To my taste, using this is a far lesser sin than getting the other herbs wrong. |
How to check if a vegetable is bitter without eating it
I want to know if my cucumber or ridge gourd is bitter before cooking, but for some reason, I can't eat or smell a slice of it to check. Is there any other way to check its bitterness?
(I'm hoping that there will be another way, for how else would factories that produce bulk food products use cucumbers or ridge gourds unless they have an army of workers whose job is to eat slices of each cucumber :-)) | No, there is no other way. You have to taste it. Smell is a second best, but not as reliable, and almost unusable on a whole cucumber.
In recent years, there has been some quite good research on automated sensors for the detection of flavors or specified substances, and they can probably do it too. But beside all the obvious drawbacks, they are not magical, and they also need a slice of the cucumber to "test".
As mentioned in other answers and comments, companies don't have a way to escape that either, they use produce that is grown to be non-bitter (very interesting information from ChrisH how this happens for cucumbers) and they also have people whose job is to taste-test. |
Is there a way to make a generic cheese sauce?
Scenario: I have some nuggets, and thought it would be nice to dip them in some cheese sauce. I do not have that, but I thought I could make one with the ingredients I have. But I am not sure if there is a way to make a MORE OR LESS generic cheese sauce.
This is the cheese I have:
Ingredients in dutch: melk* (milk), zout (salt), zuursel (starter culture) and stremsel (which is Rennet, I am not sure what kind of cheese that is).
My main idea was melting the cheese with an amount of butter, salt, and maybe some milk or cooking cream. (No need of quantities right now but more of the process to follow).
I think that adding flour would be like making a cheesy bechamel, and I don't know if that is good to dip (or put on top of nachos, whatever is fine, as a cheese sauce, it's nice anywhere). But maybe flour is necessary for this process (specially if the cheese may be quite generic as well). | 'Cheese sauce' is really anything semi-liquid that tastes a bit like cheese & can be poured or dipped, depending on how liquid.
Some fast ideas:-
Camembert, brie etc - put it in the oven for 20 mins. Cross-cut the top, dip.
tbh, you can do this with most cheeses, just the French-style crusted cheeses provide a cool looking container.
Generic roux - oil or butter in a saucepan, add the same quantity of flour. Combine 2 mins, add milk slowly, stir. Add cheese, stir, serve.
Welsh rarebit - throw cheese, flour, milk, beer, worcestershire sauce in a pan, heat & stir until it's homogenous.
There's not really much you can do to hot cheese to spoil it ;)
The only two cheeses I can think of that don't work are haloumi & paneer, because they're both pre-cooked & don't melt. |
Where did the first kombucha SCOBY come from?
I haven't been able to find any information on this online. Kombucha recipes always suggest to either get a bit of the starter from someone else who makes kombucha or to grow the scoby from a storebought bottle, but both of these presuppose the existence of someone else's kombucha.
Some research:
The SCOBY Wikipedia page does not give any history
Neither does The Kombucha Wikipedia page
This answer is related but suggests you need a lab to do it which I find unsatisfying
How did someone make the first batch of kombucha? Is it possible to make from scratch? | I work at a large kombucha brewery and my wife is the head brewer(13 yrs combined experience).
As with vinegars and sourdoughs, the kombucha cultures(yeast and bacteria) are generally present in most environments. They can be created "from scratch" under the right conditions. It's much easier to start a vinegar from nothing, as the variety of yeasts and bacteria is smaller.
No one is quite sure of the exact origin of kombucha, but it is likely that it was created by accident or casual experiment involving sweetened tea and an existing vinegar ferment. The microbes that ended up thriving evolved or were selected for their ability to utilize the caffeine and other components present in the tea, and were then propagated forward.
Most folks find it easier to pitch kombucha from an existing set of microbes that to select gradually over time for the flavor and microbial content, as there are many wild yeasts and bacterias that create funky, not so fun flavors and smells, like "foot" or "body odor". |
Bean substitute for lamb in moussaka?
I need a recommendation. I have had success substituting beans for meat in a number of baked-bean dishes using spice mixtures from cuisines around the world. I'd like to apply this idea to Greek moussaka, but I can't decide what (dry) bean to use. My gut instinct says, "black beans," but memories of the complete transformation of Navy beans in Boston-style baked beans gives me pause.
Any suggestions? | It's a while since I've made (vegetarian) moussaka but as Max says in the comments, lentils are a decent substitute here. I've used Puy lentils or lentilles vert*. You want something that holds a bit of texture/doesn't fall to bits too easily, unlike red lentils. A mix of red lentils and lentilles vert works well in other things for giving the sauce some body and maintaining texture. I haven't tried this for moussaka but do use this mixture for lasagne.
For flavour, I'd also add mushrooms, but you don't have to.
Another thing I'd be tempted to try is urid dal (the larger of two things called black lentils) as I have them for making dal makhani. These would need pre-soaking and longer cooking.
*yes, that is what they're called in my English supermarket; they also sell "green lentils" that are paler and larger. |
Substitute clarified butter with sunflower spread
Background
I am making a sweet recipe of Baklava, which calls on ghee or clarified butter.
So the butter substitute would be used to paint on the layers of filo pastry before baking.
My problem
When reading the ingredients list I instinctively substituted butter for sunflower spread as an acceptable dairy free alternative, not realising the process I would have to expose it to.
Question
Now given what is the desired outcome of clarified butter, I’m assuming this wouldn’t work by using sunflower spread? .. Or would it?
If not, any suggestions to how I can get around this mess without butter?
The instructions I have for making clarified butter
Melt the 1 1/2 cups (340g/ 12oz) butter slowly over medium low heat until the milk solids have separated from the butterfat. and collected on the bottom of the saucepan. Remove the pan from heat, let the butter settle for 10 minutes, then carefully skim the foam from the surface with a spoon. Slowly pour the clear butterfat into a bowl, leaving all the milk solids behind in the saucepan. You should end up with about 1 1/8 cup (255g/ 9oz) clarified butter.
Any thoughts, suggestions or workarounds much appreciated!
I'm making baklava, so the butter substitute would be used to paint on the layers of filo pastry before baking. | "Spreads" are not an effective substitute for clarified butter for filo pastry, because they contain water and emulsifiers. The purpose of the clarified butter in filo pastry is to keep the layers separate, and water-containing spreads will encourage the layers to stick together. If you don't want to use butter, substitute vegetable shortening, like Crisco. |
Pie crust too soft to put in pan
My pie pastry is too soft that I can't pick it up to put in pan after rolling it. The softness/pliable is like the butter/shortening too warm needs to be refrigerated. I tried refrigerating it overnight (this delayed the completion of my pie) but next day it was still too soft and I am still unable to put into pan. I ended up pressing it into the pan, making it less flaky but at that point was reaching I give up point.
Should I add more flour but isn't sticky? Or more cold water but won't that make it more soft and overly pliable?
I want to try again to make pie crust but want to figure out what I can do to fix it. Note: This pie crust comes from Joy of Cooking and uses shortening and butter.
Update:
I followed the recipe so here is the recipe. It's from Joy of cooking. I've never tried this recipe. I made pie with all butter crust and it worked well so thought I'd tried the more traditional one with shortening and it was very soft.
2.5 c all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
3/4 c cold lard (155g) or vegetable shortening (145g)
3tbsp or 45g butter
Used food processor to blend the added
6 tbsp ice water mixed with 1 tbsp vinegar.
I put in fridge for 30min then tried to roll out but was too soft. Put it overnight, hoping would be better but still top soft.
One thing is that with all ingredients, I used cups except butter since 3 tbsp is hard for me to figure out amount and so I weighed that bit.
As I type this out, I notice the lard and vegetable shortening weights are different. I just used 3/4 cup vegetable shortening. Could that be the reason? | That's an unusual problem, rollable pie crust recipes will in my experience always get hard enough in the fridge and actually too hard/brittle after a full night there.
Troubleshooting should go in the following order:
Make sure you are using a recipe that was designed to be rolled. Pressing is a legitimate way of making a pie crust, and maybe you had a recipe intended for it.
Make sure is that you are working from a good quality recipe. You mention yours comes from a reputable book, so we could assume that it's good, but keep in mind that sometimes older sources have more elaborate/difficult recipes than newer ones.
Make sure that you are following the recipe exactly. Possible sources of error include
absentmindedly mismeasuring something, forgetting an ingredient or adding it twice
measuring by volume instead by weight (if your recipe is only given in volume, try to still measure accurately, but in the end you can't really be precise that way),
making a substitution in ingredients (maybe you substituted the fat, e.g. used some kind of plant-based spread when the recipe asked for butter?),
not following the steps to the letter,
using the ingredients at incorrect temperatures (although the fridge should have fixed this in your case),
if the recipe requires you to add something by feel (common with the water in German pie crust recipes) maybe your feel is off.
If the recipe still behaves weirdly, you can try workarounds. In your case, I see two possibilities. One, maybe you are rolling out using modern techniques (silicone or fibreglass mat, or on an oiled surface) while the recipe might assume that you will be rolling on a thick layer of flour, hardening your crust. If this is the case, roll on flour. Two, you can roll using the plastic wrap technique, then transfer to the pie dish while still on the wrap, then peel the wrap off.
If all else fails, just look for another recipe until you find one that functions.
Update: What you posted is an absolutely standard recipe with the most widely used ratio for American crusts. Typically, a recipe with this ratio will be not too soft, but too hard after a night in the fridge, being too brittle to place in the pie dish. This means that you can exclude points 1, 2 and 4 from my answer.
It is highly likely that it was a fluke that happened once, maybe because you made a mistake without noticing. I would give the recipe another try and see how it turns out, and measuring everything by weight. If it keeps turning out too soft in that case, you must be doing something very unexpected, or maybe using not classic shortening but some kind of modern product intended to stay soft at fridge temperatures. |
Pudding vs. laundry starch - Add water gradually or all at once?
I recently watched a YouTube video "How to use old fashioned starch" by Constance MacKenzie about how laundry was starched in ye olde time. The only relevant information for my question is that you can use potato, wheat or rice starch and that it must be made into a paste with water and boiled, very similar to a pudding / blancmange / custard. Laundry starch has only those 2 ingredients: starch and water.
The process in the video started by mixing the starch into a little amount of cold water. This was then put on the stove at medium heat and roughly "a kettle full" of hot (but not boiling) water was added in very small increments under constant stirring. The mixture only started boiling after all of the water was added.
This process reminded me of making a roux sauce. You start with melted butter and flour and have to add the liquid in small increments to avoid lumps. It makes sense to first evenly mix butter and flour because the butter would probably stay seperated otherwise. But laundry starch doesn't contain any butter or fat.
If you added some flavors to the laundry starch you would end up with an edible pudding / blancmange / custard. Those are usually made by mixing all the ingredients and then heating them up with all the liquid already incorporated. This has the benefit or avoiding lumps. So I see no reason why the laundry starch needs to start with such a small amount of water that needs to be tediously increased in increments.
On the other hand, I learned that our ancestors weren't half as stupid as we make them seem and probably had reasons for starting with less water. They may not have understood the chemistry and physics behind the process, but they had much more practical experience.
My question is:
Is there a difference in the physical or chemical properties of starch if you:
start with a small amount of water and gradually add more while heating the mixture, or
add all the water before heating the mixture
assuming you never stop stirring during the process and you let the mixture boil until it looks translucent? It may be important to keep in mind that the quality of the end result (starched laundry) depends on the properties of the dehydrated, coocked starch. | Yes, both processes are valid ways of making pudding (not roux). You can either dissolve the starch in a little cold water first and then gradually warm it up, or you can dissolve the starch in all of the cold water and then start warming it up. After it is warmed up, you can bring it to a boil.
The "dump all together" method is the more tedious one, because you have to stir constantly until you are ready, else the starch sediments and burns on the bottom, especially if you are an old-time cook using direct fire. If you warm up most in the water in a kettle first, your time of cooking the slurry (and stirring it) is reduced a lot, which makes it the preferred method.
Another reason is that most people cook blanchmange with milk, not with water. To reduce the amount of water used, they make the slurry with only a little water, then add the slurry to the warmed milk. |
Why can't you susbtitute oat flour for wheat flour 1:1?
Wheat has gluten, and oats have avenin (which are similar proteins).
What is different about avenin that you can't substitute oat flour for wheat flour when baking cookies, breads, etc? | I don't know what you mean by avenin being "similar", but it doesn't behave like gluten at all. Oat flour behaves like any other gluten-free flour and is a poor substitute for wheat flour. You can only use it in recipes which are specifically engineered for gluten-free flours. If you try using it in recipes which rely on gluten, you will fail for certain.
It is somewhat interchangeable with some other gluten-free flours like chestnut or sorghum flour (also buckwheat if you don't need the flavor profile), but gluten-free recipes being fickle, you always run a risk of failure, unless you have a pretty forgiving recipe like crepes. It is not a good substitute for nut-based flours, and is a mealy, not waxy starch. |
What effect does closing a lid in some recipe do?
In cooking meat like chicken, I've noticed that recipes say to close the lid and wait for few minutes. I'm trying to figure what exactly the effect created by this is. Any insight will be appreciated. | It holds in steam.
This increases the air temperature in the pan, which allows for more even cooking instead of just cooking the the food in contact with the pan.
It also slows down how quickly the food drys out, and may have other secondary effects, such as how fat renders from a piece of meat. |
Add sugar to Taco Seasoning?
Do I add sugar? So many people have told me they put sugar in their seasoning and I don't understand why. What does sugar provide to this recipe and how much should I experiment with?
This is the recipe in progress.
4 Tbsp smoked paprika
4 Tbsp sweet paprika
2 Tbsp dried oregano
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1 Tbsp finely ground kosher salt
1 Tbsp freshly ground cumin seed
1 Tsp freshly ground coriander seed
1 Tsp freshly ground pepper
1 Bulb garlic
1 Red onion
1/4 lb cayenne peppers
Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, and Cayenne Powder
Prepare Garlic
Break apart garlic bulb into cloves
Remove all Garlic sheaths from cloves
Finely slice all garlic cloves
Lay sliced garlic cloves in a single layer on a baking sheet
Prepare Onion
Remove the outer skin of the onion until you have a nice looking skin all the way around
Remove the top 1/4" and bottom 1/4" of onion
Slice the entire onion very thin
Place the onion in a single layer across a baking sheet.
Prepare Cayenne Peppers
Cut the ends off the peppers
Dice them finely
Arrange the diced cayenne peppers in a single layer on a baking sheet
Dehydrator
If you have a dehydrator, that's much quicker and faster.
140° F for about 5 hours should do it all
Oven Dehydration
Place baking sheets into the oven and turn to 150° F
Release vapor every 1/2 hour by opening the oven for 1 minute
Process should take about 6 hours
When the dehydration process is complete, then grind each of the spices into their own bowls and measure out 1 Tbsp of each.
Place all ingredients together in a medium bowl and then seal in an air-tight container.
I use 3 Tbsp of the mix per lb of anything I want to mix it in with.
If there's anything that I'm missing, please let me know. It tastes great to me, but if I can make the ritual better, I'm all about it. I just typed this out from my memory as most of my recipes come from imagination. | You will find that adding sugar to some recipes is controversial and highly subjective.
Me, I almost never add sugar in situations like yours. But sugar can do something valuable: decrease bitterness.
I knew an Italian woman many years ago that made the best "gravy" (tomato sauce) and her secret? A pinch or two of sugar, she claimed it made her sauce less bitter. Whatever her secret I tried the sugar thing and found no discernible difference between the gravy with sugar and the same recipe without.
But again that is subjective, EG literally "a matter of taste."
Try your recipe both with and without sugar, and decide for yourself. |
What is the difference between how nut flours and nut butters are made?
Nut flours are made by grinding nuts. Nut butters are made by grinding nuts as well. Do nut flours have the oil removed, or are they just ground a different way? | It is both, depending on what you understand under "nut flour".
The first kind of "nut flour" is something that may more precisely be called "nut meal" or "ground X" (where X stands for the nut, as in "ground almonds"). Nut meal is simply nuts reduced to small particles (larger than flour particles though) and is created by cutting up the nuts with bladed machines. You can make it at home in a food processor.
The second kind is true nut flour. It has finer particles, good water absorption, and behaves more like an actual flour in baking. For that product, they de-fat the nuts, and then I assume they actually grind them up instead of using a bladed machine. I am not entirely sure how these flours are produced, AFAIK there is no way to make them at home.
Nut butters are created by grinding in a mill, using actual shear force and not cutting, and may need adjusting the ingredients by adding more oil, but that depends on the nut, with e.g. peanuts grinding up nicely without needing extra fat.
I also suspect there may be a difference in water levels, with nut butters working better with fresh nuts, nut meals getting no special processing (but they do dry out quickly after grinding) and true nut flours probably needing a dehydration before they can work well. This is more of an intuition of mine, I don't know if producers actually have to do it that way. |
Preheating oven increases temperature?
I use an old convection oven. I usually preheat at 180°C for 10 mins. Recently I bought an oven thermometer and found that the oven temperature after the said duration was higher than 180°C, around 210°C-220°C. Is this normal? | Sadly, yes.
Your oven most likely has been running too hot for a while and now that you are actually measuring it, you noticed it.
We have a lot of Q/As on the site that recommend using a separate oven thermometer whenever an oven behaves strangely. Thermostats can fail or be generally incorrect, like too hot or too cool. Plus many ovens fluctuate quite a bit.
If you noticed that your recipes didn’t turn out the way you expected or were used to, getting that oven thermometer was a smart move. Either adjust the temperature to the desired value, if possible (and note down what setting that corresponds to), or consider having the oven serviced or repaired. In some models, the temperature knob can be adjusted, which would be a super trivial thing and may even explain why the oven is set to a wrong temperature.
If your question was wondering more about the still rising temperature - ten minutes preheat is on the shorter end of preheat time, especially for old ovens. You can be dealing with quite a bit of thermal mass. |
Tenderizing vegetables (chili pepper)
I am trying to emulate a hamburger recipe I ate at a restaurant with some green chili pepper (Chile Verde) which I really enjoyed.
My problem relies on how to cook it, if I just use the pan it burns or does not reach the soft consistency I am looking for.
Is there any way I can easily tenderize the chili pepper? | Roast in a hot oven, over grill or direct flame, or in cast iron. Whole...until skin is dark and blistered. Remove from heat carefully. Place in a bowl and cover with plastic. Allow to cool. The peppers will continue to steam as they cool. Wipe off skin. Then de-seed and dice. They will be tender. |
Need advice re chance of damage to a stainless steel tray in a very hot oven
I need to heat a clean stainless steel tray to the temperature of boiling water. Would the self-cleaning cycle of the oven damage my tray in any way? | The temperature of boiling water is 100° Celsius or 212° Fahrenheit. This is considerably colder than the self-cleaning cycle in your oven. It would be perfectly sufficient to set the oven temperature to about 120°C/240°F to heat the tray. It would not take long to reach the desired temperature for the tray at those lower temperatures since metals conduct heat well. |
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