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In which cases is it best to cook in either a regular non-stick pan or a wok?
In my home, we use 2 types of pans most of the time when cooking, apart from our rice pot and some other equipment, I don't know what to call it. These pans are a big wok, and 3 non-stick pans, small to large. We usually use the large pan since we're family.
I'm asking this question since this is something that came to my mind in case I have to cook for myself when I grow up. If I have to chose any of the 2 types, in which cases do I have to use one of them? | The wok is a single-purpose tool. Use it for stir frying. You may find some creative ways to repurpose it on case-by-case basis, although it won't be what it was designed for.
The non-stick pans are versatile, use them for anything that requires low- bis middle temperatures. The size choice is related to the size of the batch you are making. Some foods are more sensitive to the total thickness of the layer in the pan than others, but it is impossible to list them all, learning about them is a part of learning to cook. |
Why did this gallon of milk stay fresh for so long?
A few months ago I had a gallon of milk in the back of the fridge that stayed fresh for over a month - maybe even two; I lost track.
Our house is only me and my wife. We don't drink milk often. I use it more for recipes, and maybe an occasional iced coffee. Since I couldn't repeat this feat I have gone to half-gallons.
What I noticed about this gallon in particular is that its plastic container was more opaque than what we normally had been getting. Previously I was getting the supermarket brand with the semi-opaque plastic container. I had gotten this one, white, 100% opaque at another store.
I also thought maybe it had something to do with it being in the back of the fridge. Also, being packed in by other fridge mates. But this is something I have always tried to do.
Are there steps to try to get milk to last this long? Especially since I don't use it that often.
Further Clarification:
There seems to be some question about how spoilage was determined.
I have always and forever smelled my liquid dairy before using. I stand by my nose to let me know when such a product has gone too far. In some cases I have chosen to go a day or two beyond the onset of spoilage. This onset can be detected by a sweet-sour smell.
In the instance of this gallon I have posed above, there was no such indication in smelling the milk for at least a month beyond the Best By date. Of that I am sure. There was a period when I hadn't used it. After which I smelled it and it became obvious it was too far gone. | Milk goes bad because it gets colonized by bacteria. There are two sources for this bacteria; ones already present in the milk because pasteurization didn't kill them, and from the environment (that is, bacteria in your fridge).
The "expiration date" for milk is therefore a conservative estimate of the time when the milk might start turning bad. Note that many political regions have specific regulations on setting those expiration dates, which might cause them to be set way early from a probability-of-spoilage perspective.
Thing is, that probability-of-going-bad date is more of a half-life, and many factors can affect when it actually goes bad. And just like milk can go bad early because of those factors, it can also go bad late. Particularly, in this case, I'd guess that pasteurization of the milk was unusually effective, and either you didn't open the milk or your fridge is exceptionally cold and bacteria-free.
I, too, have had some dairy products last for weeks beyond the expiration date, particularly half-and-half. However, you can never count on it.
If you're looking to maximize milk lifetime, then, you create the best conditions:
Find brands whose pasteurization seems to be extra-effective
Keep your fridge cold and squeaky-clean
Open the jug/carton as little as possible
Never leave the milk out on the counter
Don't drink straight from the carton. Seriously, did your mother teach you nothing? Jeez. |
Fermenting sauerkraut - during the massage phase the cabbage got REALLY bubbly
So I massaged the cabbage heavily with salt to get the brine water going, but then it got REALLY bubbly... it looked like I washed everything with soap! Is this OK? One side effect is that it made it really difficult to visually tell that the cabbage was below the liquid level... I tried to add a bit of water to help dissipate the bubbles but it didn't quite work, so now I'm just hoping I did a good job of pushing anything under.
See pic | There isn't anything wrong the the amount of bubbles you are getting; your brine looks fine.
Take this from A Beginner’s Guide to Sauerkraut (+ Fermented Vegetables), for example:
How quickly and how much it bubbles will depend a lot on room temperature. If your jar is narrow or filled to the top it can be helpful to place in a bowl as it might bubble over!
I tend to keep my sauerkraut on the kitchen counter, covered with a tea towel (to also exclude light) until the bubbling subsides, which takes 1 – 2 weeks.
So all you'll have to do is wait and the bubbles will go away naturally. |
What are the safety and warranty implications of steaming bread in a domestic oven?
There are lots of recipes online that suggest mimicking commercial bread ovens by using a water bath and or ice cubes to create a hot, steamy baking environment. I have always been very wary of doing this with my domestic electric oven for a number of reasons, and only spray my french loaves on top with a very fine water mist. The risks, as I see them, are as follows:
Potentially, any cooler water splashing on the hot glass oven door could cause it to shatter
Any steam penetration could have an adverse affect on the live circuit boards or controls causing them to malfunction e.g. a partial or full short circuit
The enamel coating and other parts of the oven itself etc. could be more liable to corrosion
Am I being too conservative here? I would think that if a domestic oven failed due to such usage, the manufacturer would refuse to repair it under a regular domestic warranty as the oven was not used according to the manual. | I think you are being too conservative. The oven door and glass in there is built to handle some temperature differences. When someone opens an oven door and sets a room temperature pan or cooking container on it while moving racks or other food around, I can't think it would be THAT different that water splashing around. If this were an issue, we'd probably hear about it, a lot.
Pretty much nothing you put into the over starts out as completely dry. Steam gets released from food all the time. Ovens are built to handle steam.
I've used water baths for stuff like cheesecakes. It's very common and if an oven failed because of this, it would be a defect in the oven, and covered under warranty. |
Traditionally, is prosciutto never to be cooked?
In a discussion about pancetta and prosciutto in sauces (specifically, bolognese), a friend said that
"Traditionally, prosciutto is never to be cooked."
I have not heard that before. I also cannot find anything in searches for "is prosciutto supposed to be cooked" and "is prosciutto never to be cooked". There are many search results around "does prosciutto need to be cooked?" but nothing about "never to be cooked".
I'm skeptical because prosciutto is a salted and dried meat, like other preserved/smoked/salted/dried/fermented protein stuff like salami, ham hocks, dried squids, dried shrimps, etc. As such it seems reasonable that they could be, and would have been, used as flavoring or condiment for other dishes.
So, is prosciutto traditionally never to be cooked? | 'Never to be cooked'… nope. Cook it if you need it cooked.
Saltimbocca alla Romana I'd think to be traditional enough to refute this easily. Jamie Oliver's recipe. There are a million others, but the main ingredients are veal, sage & prosciutto… cooked.
For those questioning Jamie Oliver's credentials on this - Wikipedia lists the same major ingredients - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltimbocca
as does this one - in Italian too - https://www.tavolartegusto.it/ricetta/saltimbocca-alla-romana-ricetta-originale/ |
How long would I have to microwave corn syrup to get it to the hard ball candy stage?
I have 0.3 kg of corn syrup at room temperature (294 K). The specific heat of corn syrup is [2.72 kJ/(kg K)][1]. I want to heat it up in a 1,000 W microwave until it reaches 394 K.
I know that
q=mcΔT
so
q = 0.3 kg * 2.72 kJ/(kg K) * 100 K
q = 81.6 kJ = 82 seconds in a 1,000 W (1 kJ/second) microwave.
From my experience, it takes longer than 82 seconds to heat up corn syrup that much.
How should I account for extraneous variables?
From Chris H's Answer: 82 seconds to raise the temperature + 111
seconds to boil off the water = 3 minutes, 13 seconds in a 1,000 Watt
microwave.
[1]: https://www.teachengineering.org/content/uoh_/activities/uoh_magic/uoh_magic_lesson01_activity1_worksheet_new_answers.docx | A major factor to note is that to get the corn syrup to 394K you don't just have to heat it, you have to concentrate it by boiling off some of the water. You need to take into account the latent heat of vaporisation of water, about 2,260 kJ/kg in the temperature range of interest. It's easy to see that this can be a major factor.
Hard ball candy is 90% sugar (Wikipedia), while corn syrup is more like 76%. From your 300g you thus need to drive off 49g of water; that will take 111kJ in addition to raising the temperature, more than doubling the energy (and time) required |
Are heavy-bottom stock pots called something else?
I would quite like to get hold of a large stock pot with a thick base so I can make things like preserves as well, but whenever I look at kitchenware in my local shops (I'm in NZ if that makes a difference) the stock pots I see always have very thin bases, no thicker than the walls. Are the ones with heavier bases called something else, or am I just finding poor quality pots? | Try searching for "laminated base pot", alternatively 'sandwich' or 'encapsulated'.
Other terms tend to be more trade markey, multiclad etc.
You could always buy a cheap pot & an even cheaper simmer ring instead ;) |
What is a “small cup” in Australia and/or old recipes?
In older or Australian recipes, is “small cup” a specific (if not quite standardized) measurement? If so, what, approximately, is that measurement?
I’m going to be making a recipe from an Australian cookbook this weekend, “Jet Age Cookbook… compiled by The Royal Australian Air Force Women’s Association”, circa 1969-1976.
The recipe calls for “1 small cup boiling water”. This is a sauce that is basically a syrup, so I suspect that the water content does not need to be exact. I plan to use ½ cup. I’m also aware that in older recipes, measurements such as spoons, teaspoons, and cups (and in some countries such as Australia, dessert spoons) weren’t necessarily standardized but could refer to the various tableware the cook happened to have on hand. In those cases, however, they are referring to specific measurements even if it isn’t a standardized measurement—a spoon used for tea, a spoon used for dessert, a half of a specific cup (it makes little sense to call for half of a random cup out of the cupboard). I’m wondering if “small cup” is also a specific measurement, whether a standardized one or not.
It’s difficult to do a search on merely “small cup”, but I did find a few references in older recipes (that they’re older is not necessarily indicative of anything: I added “vintage recipes” to the search in an attempt to weed out mere references to smaller drinking vessels).
In some older recipes, a small cup does (to me at least) clearly refer merely to a smaller drinking vessel. These Martha’s Vineyard Hermits, for example, tell the cook “In a small cup, stir the sour cream and baking soda to mix well”.
Others seem to refer to a specific measurement. In Mrs. Edison’s Old Fashioned Recipe for Chocolate Caramels I found the only reference that might be a clue as to the size of a small cup. It calls for “1 small cup of butter (size of an egg)”. If that’s the approximate size of a “small cup”, even my ½ cup estimate may be too much.
But one reference is difficult to base a philosophy on.
I did a search for “small cup” limited to the Internet Archive, and found the reference in several very old cookbooks.
The 1809 Complete Confectioner has a recipe for Naple’s biscuits that calls for “one small cup full of orange flower water”.
The 1895 Universalist Social Circle Cook Book has a recipe for coffee bread that takes “1 small cup butter”, a recipe each for crumb pie and corn oysters that take “1 small cup flour”, a recipe for graham pudding that calls for “1 teaspoonful soda dissolved in small cup milk”, and, very interestingly, a recipe for steamed roly-poly pudding that calls for “nearly a small cup milk”. If “small cup” was another way of saying a scant cup (another of my guesses), this is a very odd phrasing.
The 1908 Council Cook Book has a recipe for fruit icing wafers that calls for “One small cup of sugar”, and a recipe for leb-kuchen that calls for “one small cup each of chopped nuts and citron”.
The 1909 Recipes of the Woman’s Club of San Mateo has a recipe for onion cream soup that says “Put small cup of cream in a heated soup-tureen…”.
The 1910 Magnolia Cook Book has a sponge cake recipe that calls for “another small cup sugar” and a fig cake that calls for “1 small cup butter”. It also has one recipe that calls for “a small ½ cup of sugar”. This might indicate that small refers to the opposite of heaping, similar to a scant cup, but that doesn’t seem to fit all of these recipes. And in my particular recipe, a scant cup of water would seem to me to be a lot (see below).
While some of these references seem as if they could be just saying “a little bit of”, others do seem to use the phrase “small cup” to reference something reasonably specific. It seems unlikely, for example, that a recipe would call for “nearly a small cup milk” if they’re just calling for a random small cup from the cupboard. Am I reading that right? What is the likely range of measurements if so?
I’m asking for an answer for either older recipes in general or for Australian recipes in particular because other research I did involving teaspoons, tablespoons, and cups indicated that measurements tended to be similar, though not exact, throughout the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia before standardization. While I would prefer to know what a small cup is in this particular Australian recipe, I will accept knowing what a small cup used to be within the core Anglosphere.
Note: Jet Age Cookbook does not mention a year; I’m estimating the age via addresses in the advertisements in the book: two businesses used addresses of shopping malls that opened 1968 and 1969, and another business’s address diverged from the address they used in this book in 1976. The book itself seems like it ought to be older, to my American eyes. From the two-color cover, the cover font, and the interior typing, to the near-universal use of “moderate oven”, “hot oven”, or “slow oven”, it seems more like what I’d expect from the fifties.
Note: I’m also aware, from looking up the definition of dessert spoons, that the modern Australian tablespoon is four teaspoons, not three.
Full recipe for reference:
Jam Roly Poly (Noela Pomery)
1 cup Lion S.R. Flour, 1 tablespoon butter, 1 teaspoon baking powder,
salt.
Mix into paste with little milk. Roll out and spread with jam or
syrup. Roll up not too tight and put into pie dish and pour over
sauce.
Sauce: 1 small cup boiling water, ¼ cup sugar, 1 tblspn butter pour
hot over roll and bake ½ hour in mod. oven. Bake 1 hour for apple
roll. | TL;DR: Based on early British and cooks' resources, "a small cup" was probably equivalent to "a teacup", which is 1/4 pint, or around 142ml. However, there are a lot of caveats to that.
First, I cannot tell you for certain whether "a small cup" in any particular recipe was a specific measurement. Until the very late 19th century, "a cup" was not a standard measure of anything. The standard measure that was smaller than a pint was a gill (1/4 pint). So in pre-Victorian and many Victorian cookbooks, "a cup" meant "whatever cup you happen to have around" and could thus be equivalent to anything from 75ml to 400ml. This kind of loose usage persisted well into the early 20th century, so one can never assume that "a cup" means precisely anything.
Second, British and American measurements diverged in 1824, so one cannot assume that anything in one system is necessarily true of the other. Since Australia was still British possession until 1942, I'm assuming that any measurement trends in mid-20th-century Australia would follow the British standard. The caveat is that I don't know that to be true; the simple truth is that sources for early Australian weight and measure practices are scarce-to-nonexistent in my library (I live in the US).
Thirdly, understand that volume measurements were not standardized between materials until the Victorian period in Britian; there, a pint of flour, a pint of milk, and a pint of beer would have all been different sizes in the mid-19th century. And in the US, they weren't standardized until the mid-20th century. We're going to assume that Australia standardized shortly after England, but that could be wrong.
Fourthly, I'm assuming (like you are) that your book is relying on older measurement systems, since "a small cup" is not a standard measure for any post-metrification Australia.
With that preface, I consulted British cooking references: the classic Mrs. Beeton's and Around The Clock Cooking. The first is one of the most published and updated cookbooks in the British world. For the second, a South African cookbook historian claims it was very popular across the Commonwealth in the mid-20th Century. I also consulted The Victorian Way cookbook.
While none of these references mentions "a small cup", both of them distinguish between "a breakfastcup" and "a teacup". The former is 1/2 pint, and the latter is 1/4 pint. The Epicurean, and excellent early American reference for measures, also uses breakfastcups and teacups, but puts them at 1/2 pint and 1/3 pint respectively, although the American pint was smaller (the Epicurean also has "a coffeecup" which is 1/5th American pint, so if the teacup still seems too large, try that).
This strongly suggests that "a small cup" is the same as "a teacup" which is 1/4 pint. However, how big was a pint?
In most of Australia today, a pint is 570ml, and only a little smaller before metrification (567ml). But in South Australia, it's 425ml, similar to the American pint. Since cups are defined in relation to pints, your "small cup" could be 142ml, or it could be 106ml, depending on where the author and their teacups were from.
The reference to the Edison recipe where "a small cup" is "the size of an egg", which would be about half that size, doesn't contradict this because Edison was American, and not British or Australian, and the notation "the size of an egg" suggests that the author knew they were not using a standard measure. |
Glass pot on glass top stove
I have a lovely glass double boiler which I would love to use on my glass cooktop. Cooktop already has scratches so that doesn't worry me, but will my pot break if I use it? | This is probably fine. A double-boiler should be designed for stovetop use, and a double boiler shouldn't reach high temperatures.
Most glass cookware (Pyrex and such) is tempered glass, which isn't really safe for stovetop use. Stovetop puts stress on glass because all the heat is coming from the bottom and highly concentrated, so if you put a tempered glass casserole dish on a burner, it is likely to shatter. However, there is also borosilicate glass, which handles this better, and would be safe to use on the stovetop. There isn't a great way to tell the difference between these two visually, unfortunately. You can inspect your double boiler to see if it states the material. (Or other identifying markers that can be looked up.) If it doesn't, I'd just assume it's using borosilicate, and move on, because tempered glass for stovetop use is a stupid idea, even for a double boiler.
You do need to look for cracks and chips, though. If glass cookware is damaged it is not safe to use.
The handle will get hot. Have a oven mitt or something handy. |
Which utensil or device can be used to make spirals or conveyor screws with vegetables?
I don't know if there exist some tool or utensil to make these spirals or screws.
I mean the shape which I am intending to replicate follows the idea seen in the figure from below:
Another example of this shape can be seen in this site
In other words what I intend to do is to make this sort of accordion or screw sonveyor shapes with cucumbers or perhaps potatoes, and yes without that metal rod in the middle connecting the spirals.
But I don't know if there exist some tool for that? Does anyone how a way how to make this? Please don't say to replicate this using a regular knife because that's now the way how I intend to do this, and kind of it looks difficult. Can someone help me here please? I browsed for different tools on Amazon, but none of those seem to display exactly the result which I am trying to get. So any cooking expert can help me? | My favorite tool is a spiral cutter sold for apples or potatoes, here’s an example.
(Source)
A tiny screw-plus-rotating-knife gadget is often used for Bavarian radish spirals, e.g.:
(Source)
Note that both types will produce spirals without waste, so to achieve the look in your question, you have to gently pull the cut vegetable lengthwise. Depending on the vegetable, the spiral will be more or less inclined to spring back.
For potatoes, frying the stretched spiral will set them, that‘s a common fair food in some places, sometimes going by the name “Tornado Potatoes” |
Non-fat way of preventing legumes from frothing during canning
I have been adding fat to each jar of canned legumes to prevent frothing during processing (pressure canning). The fat looks unappetizing in the final product, especially if the beans are used cold such as in a salad. I have tried oils and solid fats and do not like the results in both.
Is there anything other than fat that I can put into the beans to prevent frothing during processing? | I have finally found a solution to the frothing issue in the USDA recommendations for canning legumes.
In addition to soaking the beans (they add salt to the soak water), par-boil them in plain water for about 15 minutes. Drain the water, then add fresh water to the jars.
I am not sure if it is the fact that they add salt to the soak water or the par-boiling, or both. But the beans did not froth during canning using their method without adding any fat at all. |
Leaving cake's dry ingredients together for later quicker preparation?
Let's say I want to bake a cake specifically on Monday night, so it can be fresh for Tuesday (no, I don't want to do it on Sunday). But I know that on Monday I am going to be extremely busy. So I thought, why don't I measure all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, spices like cinnamon, and baking soda/salt), beforehand, a few days before, and leave them already mixed in a container/tupperware? In this way I already measured, cleaned everything, and I save up that part of the time.
Is it bad for these common cake ingredients to be together for some time? This is in a few days, but let's say you want to prepare for a day you are lazy but fancy baking a nice cake, but quicker. It would be like "homemade instant cake mix" but needing to add butter, eggs and milk, basically. | There's no issue with doing this, as you are no doubt aware ready-made cake mixes are sold boxed in stores and they aren't much different than you describe. Boxed mixes will often have anti-caking agents to prevent the dry ingredients from clumping up after a few weeks on the shelf, this won't be a concern for you if the mix will only be made a couple of days in advance. |
How long does homemade yogurt take to waste
I have been making yogurt this last weeks with a yogurt maker. Just heat milk and add ferment or a previous yogurt (not sure if this is the correct word in English)
Easy and delightful. I store the yogurt in the fridge.
How long it takes to this homemade yogurt to go bad? Also, how long it takes until I shouldn't use a previous yogurt to make new ones? | Most information I see says that homemade yogurt is good for two weeks when kept under refrigeration. |
Can I freeze pre-cooked chicken?
I am looking for a way to precook chicken and preserve it for later use. The idea being that I precook the chicken (1 hour at 150 C) then freeze it, then when I need it, defrost and pop onto the flame grill, then baste and season. Secondary cooking/grilling will be around 10 minutes.
Issue would be freezer burn. So can I use a brine, or oil or something to stop freezer burn (if I can even do the rest of this)? | You can freeze cooked chicken. Freezer burn is dehydration...moisture loss in the freezer. Your best protection is good packaging. If you can vacuum seal your packages, that will be your best defense. |
How to distinguish correctly if a long stored coconut oil is still usable?
I have just discovered there is a passed BBD (best before date) purified coconut in the storage.
This is also the first time for me to know what is a purified coconut because of the search/research of the captioned matter.
It appeared to be pale yellowish with white precipitation (photo is 99% matching the actual situation).
It is never opened before. I did try to smell and taste, because it is purified from aroma, no odour is smelled. It tastes neutral, tasteless, no bad taste or odour particularly.
I wonder if it is still safe to consume.
Why does it become more yellowish even if it doesn't open?
And since it is summer here, it is supposed to be in full liquid form, I wonder what is the precipitate?
Here is the photo for reference. | Oddly [at least to me] the shelf life of refined coconut oil is much shorter than that of virgin.
The 5 signs of it going off are:-
Yellow colour
Blotchy or chunky
Black oil spots
Bitter or sour smell
Sour flavour.
Now, to me that looks a tad yellow - but as I live in the UK where coconut oil is generally a solid except for a week in July, it's not something I'm used to seeing. Melt point is about 24℃
I've had jars of virgin coconut oil that are still good three years past their sell-by, opened from new & just left in the pantry, but I don't really have any experience with refined. I buy it for the huge coconutty flavour-boost so refined doesn't suit my use-case.
The sediment doesn't really bother me, though again it's something I almost never see in liquid form in the jar. Personally, I'd call it OK if it doesn't smell or taste - perhaps try gently heating some just to see if any odour is being masked by it being cooler. It's unlikely to have gone mouldy if unopened, so there's only the slightly yellow colour that bothers me at all. Maybe shake it up & put it in the fridge for a day to see what it looks like as a solid. It should look like a jar of fresh snow. |
What determines if something is easy to chew? A lot of liquid or totally dehydrated?
On one hand, we have foods like jelly or melted cheese which are primarily liquid and seem very easy to eat and swallow. On the other hand, we have astronaut food or some pastries (or cotton candy?) which have no liquid at all. They essentially crumble and turn into dust in your mouth, and are easy to eat as well.
Recently I've had some dried mango and beef jerky, and my understanding is these aren't perfectly liquid-free, and these are really hard to chew!
So why is it that something that's mostly liquid is easy to eat, something that's not liquid at all is easy to eat, but somewhere in the middle we have to put in a lot of effort to chew food? What determines how "chewy" or difficult a food is to eat? | It depends on how well the "building blocks" of the food stick to each other. The "building blocks" can be different things, whatever you have in the food you are considering: small molecules, polymers, cells, tissue formations, globules, bubbles, films, and probably some more.
If they are not soluble in your saliva and they hold onto each other tightly, you won't be able to separate them well by crushing and shearing with your teeth. If they are loosely held, the food will be easy to chew.
The effects of moisture will be varied, depending on how it contributes to the structure of a given food. You cannot make a general statement based on water content only. |
Why does cooking fewer eggs require more water/steam?
I have purchased a Nutri-Q 34360 Healthy Eating Egg Boiler:
How does it work? - The eggs are cooked through hot steam. The instructions will guide you on the amount of water that is required depending on the quantity of eggs.
It comes with a little measuring cylinder for the amount of water to add which has gradations that look something like:
Hard boiled
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6/7
Medium
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6/7
Soft
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6/7
I understand why more water is required to hard boil eggs compared to medium cooked eggs (they need to be cooked longer).
However, I don't understand the gradations within each range (the number of eggs to be cooked).
Why does, for example, cooking 1 medium egg require more steam than cooking 3 medium eggs? Surely it should be the other way around?
Can someone enlighten me?
Photo of the parts: | These egg cookers work by simply heating the water until it all evaporates. Most cookers sense when all the water is evaporated, and automatically turn off and/or alerting with a beep or noise. They have a sensor under the hot plate that detects temperature. When water is still in the pan, it keeps the pan cool, and when water evaporates completely the pan bottom will start to get hotter.
The water is heated in the pan in the bottom, works it way past the eggs, and eventually out the holes in the lid.
So why more water for fewer eggs?
The tray that holds the eggs has a bunch of holes in it. Each egg cup has a hole in the bottom so that the steam has direct contact with the bottom of the egg. When the tray is full, it reduces the number of outlets and traps more steam under the tray. Similar to putting a lid on a pot, this reduces the speed of evaporation.
With only one egg blocking one hole, the steam can escape more readily out from the bottom of the tray to the top, and steam will escape out into the room more quickly.
To compensate for the fact that steam is escaping the egg cooker slightly faster when there are fewer eggs, you use slightly more water when there are fewer eggs.
A fun experiment
You could use eggs (or a heat proof substitute... Maybe something ping pong ball or golf ball sized (but not ping pong balls--they melt at 80°C)) to block off the "egg holes" and collect a series of timings for how long it takes for all the water to evaporate as you vary the number of eggs & water.
You should find that when you follow package directions, the timing of the cycle is approximately the same.
Similarly, if you use only one egg, and the "6/7 egg" water amount, you'll find the cycle (and complete water evaporation) faster than the full "1 egg" water amount. Again, this is just because there's an easier path for the steam to escape. |
What kind of yeast is this?
I have a type of yeast that I'm finding hard to identify by English standard.
These are picture of it:
Whole, uncut.
cut in half
In my country, Bulgaria, we call it "live" yeast, despite that both kinds of yeast sold here are actually live. The other kind sold here (called "dry" yeast) is sold in little packets of 7 or 10g and inside it looks like a lot of tiny cillindrical thingies with tiny holes in them. I always thought those are the yeast creatures, themselves, but it might be a way of packing them.
Anyway, since there isn't much information about such things on the Bulgarian internet I want to look things up on the English-speaking one but I don't know if the yeast in the pictures is what you'd call "instant" yeast, as it doesn't look anything like what I've seen on the 'net for it.
The reason I want to know what it would be called in English is that I want to know if there is any difference in the bread product depending on the type of yeast used. From all I've read, both in ENG and BUL 'nets, the only difference between the "live" and "dry" yeast ("instant" and whatever the other kind was called) was that you have to "activate" one kind and you can straight up use the other kind right off the bat.
Is that the only difference between the types of yeast? If I don't care about "activation", can I use either one to the same effect? | In addition to the accepted answer:
This is called Fresh Yeast in English. There are two other types of
yeast commonly available in the English speaking world, called
instant (bread machine) yeast and active dry yeast. Both of these
last two are more commonly used as they keep very well for extended
periods of time.
Fresh yeast is basically a cake of yeast that has been filtered and pressed to remove most of the growth medium. It should be active as it is without any further additions. However, it does not keep for long in the fridge as the yeast are all active and need nutrients to survive.
You can not just substitute 1:1 fresh yeast with active dry or instant. They require different amounts for each. Because fresh yeast has some water in it, it requires a bit more yeast than you would use for the other two options (which also differ slightly as well). You must also check for activity (because the yeast doesn't store well) by placing a small amount of yeast into some warm water with a "pinch" of sugar and checking for foaming. The Spruce Eats has a good article on this. To quote the article:
Because fresh yeast has moisture in it, you should use 3 times the
fresh yeast in weight for the same rising ability of instant yeast
and 2.5 times the amount of active dry yeast.
7 grams instant yeast = 1/4 ounce instant yeast = 2 1/4 teaspoons
instant yeast = 21 grams fresh yeast or 1 1/4 blocks (0.6-ounce
size) or about 1/2 block (2-ounce size) fresh yeast.
1 teaspoon instant yeast (3 grams) = 1/2 block (0.6 ounce size)
fresh yeast.
7 grams of active dry yeast = 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast =
17.5 grams fresh yeast = 1 block (0.6-ounce size) or 1/3 block
(2-ounce size) of fresh yeast.
1 teaspoon active dry yeast =
1/3 block (0.6-ounce size) of fresh yeast. |
How can I tell whether a jackfruit has yellow or orange flesh by looking at the exterior of the jackfruit (i.e., without opening it)?
I prefer jackfruit with orange flesh over jackfruit with yellow flesh. How can I tell whether a jackfruit has yellow or orange flesh by looking at the exterior of the jackfruit (i.e., without opening it)?
Jackfruit with orange flesh:
Jackfruit with yellow flesh: | It will be a bit hit and miss because you don't have all the information required to know which variety it is - like the tree itself or even information from the shop the same way as you have with other plants (like apples, they're often labeled with the cultivar name e.g. royal gala, jonagold, red delicious, etc.)
You can check some cultivar guides, like this one, which is pretty comprehensive:
https://www.growables.org/information/TropicalFruit/jackfruitvarieties.htm
This one has more pictures of the fruits, which might help when looking at the shelves:
http://www.virtualherbarium.org/tropicalfruit/jackfruit-cultivars.html |
What is this stainless-steel item's intended use? Is it a cheese grater?
Found in a drawer. I did a google image search but that turned up either handheld graters (but with clearly abrasive grating surfaces) or shower heads.
What irritates me is the surface seems to be not abrasive enough to be useful for grating anything.
It could be for grating poatatoes into a fine starchy slurry?
The make is WMF. It is ca. 30cm long
(We are trying to downsize our kitchen stuff and I would like to know what it is so I can decide if it needs to go or if I would like to use it.) | It's a parmesan cheese grater. The idea is that for a dry, crumbly cheese the flat holes work well enough. The one time I used one I didn't find it to be terribly effective, which is probably why they're no longer made. |
Reheating a charcoal grill
I use a covered charcoal grill (Weber 26") and can get the grilling temperature I want pretty reliably by setting the vents. The problem comes when I have a roast that wants 350F and I want to grill some vegetables at 400-450. The roast can come off and rest for the time the vegetables take, but I can't get the grill to heat up even if I open the vents all the way. Any suggestions? | I suspect what's happening is that you've depleted your fuel, charcoal's just wood at the end of the day, and after an hour or so it will have a lot less to give. If you want a hotter flame you can:
Scrape the remaining coals together to concentrate the heat, this will give you high heat in say half your grill
Replenish your fuel: there's two ways you can do this, a) you can use a chimney starter ahead of time and add the fresh hot coals or b) you can add unlit charcoal directly to the fuel bed say 10 minutes before you want to grill. Some webers have hinged side panels on the grill surface you can swing up to add fuel, personally I found this was a great way to singe my arm hair off so I would just lift the whole thing off and add it that way
Use a long lasting charcoal: not all charcoal is created equally, some lasts much longer. I've found that Heat Beads or Weber brand charcoal lasts a lot longer than your standard supermarket stuff or lumpwood. It's more expensive, but if you don't want to have to add fuel it's the way to go |
Reduce flame maximum on cooktop
My wife always uses the maximum setting which results in flames shooting around the outside of many pots melting their plastic handles. Is there any way of reducing the maximum to keep the flames under the pots? | The short answer is no, there's no practical way to reduce the heat output of your cooktop without so much modification you may as well buy a new really horrible one with pathetically small burners. Then you'll hate it because it takes a calendar year to boil water for pasta.
I feel your pain with this, I've had family members break my good kitchen knives and burn the non-stick off brand new pans before I've had a chance to use them, and it is frustrating. Education and a bit of zen are what is required. |
(Safely) Making Rosewater for Cooking
There are a lot of roses in my garden at the moment and I've been wanting to make rose-flavored turkish delight. Looking online, most recipes for rosewater appear targeted towards using it as a cosmetic fragrance (rather than a food ingredients). I know that flowers can sometimes be toxic or gross if not processed in the correct manner / generally chowing down on flowers from the garden is ill-advised.
Other than washing the roses, are there any particular considerations in ensuring that homemade rose water is food safe?
Which roses should I use if I have access to several varieties (e.g. white/red/pink)? | The biggest issue with what's essentially a foraged food is identification. Luckily for roses that's quite easy. You do need a lot of petals, and well-scented ones; many pretty varieties are bland, but wild species can be very good. Scent is crucial, colour is optional, but (pale) pink rosewater is traditional and is what you'll get if use use a mix of colours including a little red or plenty of pink.
The link above says that all rose petals are edible, a statement I've seen elsewhere too. Cultivated roses, or those in hedges right next to farm fields, may have been exposed to pesticides. In particular those pesticides used on ornamentals may be long-lasting and not wash off, unlike those used on crops. That would rule out roses bought as cut flowers, which are almost guaranteed to have been sprayed.
If you've grown them yourself and know they've not been treated with anything that isn't suitable for use on food crops, then a good rinse and inspection for bugs is all that's needed. Some recipes start with boiling water and soak, some simmer, others do something close to distillation (that recipe doesn't use many roses, and probably makes very little).
I once made a very small quantity using white dog roses and the traditional simmering recipe in (I think - it's at home) Jocasta Innes' Country Kitchen - you really do need a lot of good fresh but ripe petals, ideally just before they start to turn brown.
Storage - unless using quickly I'd freeze it (in ice-cube trays perhaps); lifetimes in the fridge aren't well-established for home made versions and we can't extrapolate from commercial preparations. |
Can red lentils be used for mujadara?
I feel like making some mujadara, but the only lentils I've got currently are red lentils - no green or brown lentils. Many recipes I've read have specifically said that red lentils are to be avoided, as they will lend themselves to a mushy consistency.
I understand that red lentils take less time to cook than green or brown lentils, but I don't understand why they supposedly won't work for mujadara. Would adding them into the pot with the rice later than most recipes call for work well? Since that would result in them cooking for less time. I ask in part because if substituting for red lentils in this way were so simple, I'd expect recipes would note it as a substitution, rather than specifically cautioning against it. | I think red lentils are just the insides of green/brown lentils. Without the seed coat, they disintegrate very quickly. That’s desirable for some applications but I think it would be a little unsatisfying in a mujadara where I enjoy the textural contrast between softer rice and more toothsome lentils. |
Is there any way to increase the shelf life of mixed egg
I poured the leftover mixed egg white and yolk into a container and I didn't refrigerate it. When I opened after a day there is a bad smell come from the container. Is there any method to preserve the mixed egg without refrigeration?
Since, I'm not in my home and don't have any refrigerator nearby, should I add any add food preservatives to prevent it from getting rotten? | The answer is a general "no", not just for eggs, but basically for any food. When you store it under the usual conditions, you already get the maximum shelf life possible.
Methods of food preservation do not magically make the food last longer, they actually produce a different food that is shelf stable (e.g. turning vegetables into pickles). Preservatives can have a role in that process, but only as one component in a specially engineered recipe.
For your broken eggs, the shelf life is 2 hours at room temperature and 3-5 days in the fridge, less if you see signs of spoilage. There is nothing that can be done to prolong that. |
Is the water released from mushrooms during stir-frying edible?
After I wash mushrooms in salt water, I dry them in a salad spinner. Then I insert the spinned mushrooms into my wok, that's hot with safflower oil. At this point, the wok has no water.
After 3 mins. of medium heat, the mushrooms release water. Is this water useful? Are there safety concerns with it? Or can I use it for stock?
I'm guessing that it's safer to dispose it, because this water probably hails from the growth and cultivation of the mushrooms, and we can't know what quality of water they use. Some of the water may hail from the tap water + salt that I cleaned the mushrooms with. | The water from cooking mushrooms is good for flavour.
When making vegetarian pasta sauces, I often add mushrooms and their cooking water to the sauce, for example. These get well-fried, but not typically until the water evaporates, which of course concentrates the flavour - that's still good.
The only time I waste it (and it does feel like a waste, perhaps I should freeze it for pasta sauce) is when I cook them to add to an omelette, either by frying or in the microwave. That's because I don't want the water in the omelette.
I do lightly rinse mine before use, but let them dry for a few minutes so they add very little water to the pan. I find this more effective in removing dirt than wiping, and don't have a soft enough brush.
As an aside, plants are quite good at turning dirty water into clean juice (and sap etc.). Mushrooms aren't plants, but I would expect something similar. Anyway, they're usually grown under very controlled conditions, so the water isn't likely to be contaminated. |
Kimchi air bubble removal
I'm making Kimchi for the first time and I have two questions about air bubble removal.
First, all the recipes I've seen say to press the Kimchi down to remove air bubbles. My batch had a few small bubbles lower in the jar, probably the size of a lentil or less, and when I tried pushing down deep enough to get them out, it tended to just introduce more air bubbles around the muddler I was using to press it. Short of putting the jar in a centrifuge, I don't see how I could get these small bubbles out.
How strict should I be about initial air bubble removal? Is it ok to have a few very small bubbles like the one highlighted below?
Second, I see after the first day that some larger bubbles have formed lower down in the jar. This picture shows a larger bubble after 24 hours of fermentation which was definitely not there when I initially jarred and packed the veggies down:
Recipes I've seen tell you to push the solid contents down below the surface of the brine periodically as it ferments.
Should I also try to remove new/larger bubbles as they form during fermentation? I.e. by pushing deeper into the jar with a muddler. Or does doing so risk contaminating the environment with new external bacteria? | Small air bubbles are normal and make no difference to kimchi fermentation, nor do larger bubbles that form during fermentation. As long as the kimchi remains more or less submerged in the liquid, there’s no need to remove the trapped gas. Kimchi is an extremely difficult thing to mess up - once established, the lactic acid bacterial culture will murder any microbes that get in its way - so i think that manually degassing it would probably be okay, but it would serve no purpose. |
Can falafel be made using previously frozen chickpeas?
Many falafel recipes caution against using canned chickpeas. For example, this recipe has this to say about using canned chickpeas for falafel:
No canned chickpeas (very important!) If you're after the best texture and flavor, you need to start with dry chickpeas. Many falafel recipes use canned chickpeas which is not authentic and will cause the falafel patties disintegrate in the hot cooking oil.
Because of warnings like this, I'm wondering if using previously frozen chickpeas is fine. I had some dried chickpeas which I soaked overnight, but I soaked too many of them, so I froze the remaining ones. If I thaw these frozen chickpeas, will they work well for making falafel? | I made 4 test case batches:
Dried chickpeas, soaked for 24 hours
Dried chickpeas, soaked for 24 hours, frozen, then thawed
Canned chickpeas
Canned chickpeas, frozen, then thawed
I tested with canned chickpeas even though it's well known that they don't work well for falafel so that I'd be able to provide more points of comparison.
I started with the dried but never frozen chickpeas, and it went great! No surprises there.
Next came the previously frozen chickpeas. The consistency of the batter made with them was, as far as I could tell, practically indistinguishable from that made from the never frozen chickpeas. When I deep-fried them it seemed like they bubbled more, so maybe freezing them resulted in the chickpeas holding onto less water. The batter held together just as well as the batter made from the never frozen chickpeas. After eating some of both types, I think the falafel made from previously frozen chickpeas were a bit drier, but still good.
Finally came the (never frozen) canned chickpeas. The batter had a finer consistency than the other ones. When I put the first ball of batter into the oil, it began bubbling much more than the previous ones, and within about 45 seconds the ball had broken apart, and had seriously dirtied the fry oil. I tried again with another ball, this time a bit smaller, and made very carefully, but the same thing happened. After that I called it off, since the canned chickpea batter clearly wasn't working. I made the (small amount of) remaining batter into patties, and shallow-fried it. It was edible, but it wasn't falafel, and so I can't meaningfully compare it to the falafel - at least it didn't go to waste.
In conclusion, falafel can certainly be made using previously frozen chickpeas. It may be a bit drier than falafel made using never frozen chickpeas, but is still quite good, and it comes with the added convenience of being able to soak the chickpeas in advanced. |
Are the oats in overnight oats processed differently by milk than by milk substitutes?
I've read some recipes/blogs that say that overnight oats can be made with milk substitutes such as almond milk. Other recipes/blogs I've read say that enzymes found in milk help to break down the oats, which allows for the long soaking process to serve as an alternative to cooking them with high heat.
Clearly many people make overnight oats using milk substitutes, so it works to some extent, but does using actual milk make a notable difference in how the oats end up? Does the choice between milk versus milk substitute affect their nutritional profiles (as one can break down more/different substances in them than the other)? Does the choice between milk versus milk substitute affect their texture?
Perhaps the claims about enzymes in milk being important for the oats are simply incorrect. After all, processing techniques commonly used for milk (e.g. heat treatment) destroys/deactivates many of the enzymes in milk. | The main enzymes found in milk are: alkaline phosphatase, lactoperoxidase, lysozyme, lipase, proteinase, cathepsin D. (Jimenez-Flores, 2013). These enzymes appear in very low concentrations in pasteurized milk. Most of them have to do with protein digestion for the calf (to make proteins in the milk itself more accessible to the calf) and some antibacterial action. I did not see any carbohydrate enzymes - which would soften or otherwise digest the oats in question.
The real impacts on your overnight oats will come from the type of oats. Rolled oats will soften much more than steel cut oats as they have more surface area exposed to the liquid. Instant oats have less of the germ left so may be less nutritious. Also anecdotally the rolled oats taste chewier for a better mouth feel than moist instant oats.
My family has made overnight oats both ways, and the verdict among us seems to be that the oiliness is what gives a smoother overnight oats. Therefore oilier milk or milk substitutes tended to get a better reaction than more watery substitutes; think soy milk (generally more oily) vs. Oat milk (generally more watery).
There is a way to have the best of both worlds: use 1/8 cup chia seeds for every cup of oats. They release a gel that really helps the mouthfeel of the meal, especially if using a waterier milk substitute like almond milk.
A lot of this is necessarily anecdotal, but it seems at least agreed upon among my close ones after about two years of trial and error. |
How much oil can flour absorb?
I know that flour can absorb about 60% of its weight in water. Hence, the 5/3 flour to water ratio when making bread
How much oil can flour absorb? | You have misunderstood the article you linked. There is no such thing as "how much flour can absorb" in general, so your question is unanswerable. You can make a mixture of flour and water (or flour and oil) in any ratio you want, except for some very low ratios (one drop of water in a kilogram of flour won't give you a kilogram of dough).
What the article refers to is "farinograph water absorption", a rheological property of flour which can be used by bakers to adjust their recipes for a given batch of flour. It is defined by an ISO standard as the amount of water which is needed to get 100 g of flour to the consistency of 500 farinograph units.
This makes the FWA simply a technical unit. It is informative for bakers, but it is not the maximal amount of water which flour can absorb.
As far as I know, nobody has created an analog unit for oil absorption. And if it exists, it would still not be reflective of a putative maximum amount of oil that can be "absorbed" by flour. So your question is not answerable. |
Why do my mini pizzas have microwave trays?
I have these frozen mini pizzas which come with a silver piece of cardboard (see image at the end). I disregarded it at first, but then read the cooking instructions and it says that it is a microwave tray, which you put between the pizza and the plate.
What is the purpose of this silver cardboard tray? Does it make any difference, or would the pizza be identical without it? | The piece of cardboard is a microwave browning element.
Ordinarily, most of the heating energy in a microwave is absorbed by water in the food. The result is similar to steaming. The material on the cardboard is designed to absorb microwave radiation and convert it into heat, attaining a higher temperature than boiling water would reach, to allow the bottom of the pizza to crisp up a little and keep it from getting soggy. |
Can I add lentils to a baked chicken-and-vegetable stew?
I plan to prepare healthy lunch quickly by having everything tossed in to oven together. I have even brought an IKEA tray (with grate) for this purpose - https://www.ikea.com/de/de/p/koncis-ofenform-mit-rost-edelstahl-10099053/
If I also want to bake some lentils together with it, can add some water + lentils in the same tray? | I would strongly suggest boiling the lentils first and then adding them to the bake or to the semi-finished product.
Keep in mind that when baking at 325 F lentils may easily take 30-60 minutes.
Adding the lentils separately, once cooked, will let you control the flavour and texture of the respective dishes as well. For example let’s say you were to bake for 60 minutes to ensure the lentils are cooked. However your other meal ends up possibly over cooked, and it could easily ruin the meal’s nutritional content and unique textures, especially for denatured protein such as chicken or pork.
Regardless of cooking via stovetop or in the oven it will be critical to know what type of lentil; different varieties can range from 30 minutes at 325 for red lentils to as much as 60 minutes or more in cook time for brown lentils.
If you’re mixing everything in the stove it’s hard to control water content
Lentils absorb water quickly when cooking, up to 100% of their volume in water. If you’re just throwing them into a low-moisture dish in the oven they may not cook at all, and trust me, it’ll back you up if you eat uncooked lentils. |
Best way to prepare multiple pans of lasagna
I need to prepare ingredients to make three pans of lasagna. Should I prepare one batch at a time, or mix ingredients for the three batches at one time and divide among three pans? | That’s a very clear “it depends”.
Theoretically you can just triple all ingredients, cook the sauces and assemble factory line style. One big batch cooked, one round of washing up.
However, there are a few details to consider:
Are your pots and pans large enough? Also consider the ratio of surface area to volume, this can affect evaporation and change how long a sauce needs to reduce or reach the desired thickness.
Can you handle the amounts comfortably? For example, making a large quantity of roux needs quite a bit of strength and quick action or you may end up with uneven texture and lumps.
Does it matter if the cooking times are different because of the difference in volume? For a regular bologna it’s probably not an issue (the mirepoix would fall into the upper category again), if you are working with vegetables that are supposed to keep a bit of a bite, it may. You need to cook to the desired doneness, not going by the time in your recipe.
If the caveats above are not a problem for you and your recipe, go ahead and do a large batch. |
My roasted vegetables turned out soggy, can I roast them again to make them crispy?
I was attempting to roast a head of cauliflower with olive oil and seasonings so it comes out crispy. Following the instructions, I roasted it for 35 minutes at 450°F (the recipe said 30 minutes, but it didn't seem done), stirring once halfway through. However, after they cooled, it appears that they've steamed instead of roasted. My guess would be that I put too many on the sheet. Can I stick them back in the oven for another try? If so, for how long, and should I use more oil? | No, cooking them for too long will make them mushy, whether they’re roasty or not. You could try oiling then a bit and sticking them under the broiler for a couple of minutes (watch them closely!), but i wouldn’t cook them longer than that. |
Mold on Canned Cherry pie filling
I have cherry pie filling (from a can) which grew some mold. Can I remove the mold and eat the rest? | I would not eat this. Various molds can impact food beyond what you can see. There are some instances where mold can be removed, for example the white mold that sometimes forms on the surface of a ferment. However, in this case, I would err on the side of caution, discard, and open a new can. |
How many calories are in a cup of rice?
Typical googling tells me a cup of white rice has ~200 calories, but the bags of white rice I purchase tell me a quarter cup of dry rice has 150 calories (Jasmine, in this case, but others have been about the same), which would mean a cup would have 600 calories.
Which is it? And what's the reason for the discrepancy? | I’m afraid you may have misunderstood some results (or they were unclear in their descriptions).
A ballpark number for rice volume is that cooking white rice will give you about triple the dry rice volume.
So let’s look at your dat |
Hot Water Crust Pastry: effects of different ratio of ingredients?
Based on a comment made here Australian Meat (Chunky steak) Pie: loss of Gravy/Sauce after cooling/freezing - Seasoned Advice (which I thankfully read before it was deleted by a moderator), I have been looking into the making of a Hot Water Crust Pastry.
The process itsself seems to be clear.
I swiftly found, however, that the ratio of the 3 main ingredients (flour, water and lard) vary considerably in almost every recipe.
What effect do these different ratios have on the final result?
Samples found:
The Wikipedia Cookbook:Hot Water Crust Pastry - Wikibooks
suggested ratio:
water: 100% of flour
lard : 50% of water
Liam’s Nan’s Sunday Dinner | The Great British Bake Off
suggested ratio:
water: 38.46% of flour
lard : 60% of water
Scotch pies recipe - BBC Food
suggested ratio:
water: 44.44% of flour
lard : 75% of water
Glasgow Guide: Scottish Recipes: Scotch Pie
suggested ratio:
water: 45% of flour
lard : 35% of flour (77.77% of water)
Easy & Authentic Scotch Pie Recipe - Scottish Scran
suggested ratio:
water: 48% of flour
lard : 83.33% of water
Scotch Pie Recipe with step by step instructions and photos
suggested ratio:
water: 51.11% of flour
lard : 86.95% of water | So, first of all, the method you chose for listing the ratios is not exactly the most effective in depicting the ratios for comparison...
Usually we just list ratios as parts or with the quantities themselves (using g = mL for water is acceptable), makes everyone's life easier when trying to troubleshoot a recipe. Example for the first recipe:
2 flour : 2 water : 1 lard or 170g flour : 170g water : 85g lard
Now onto what should be expected
Pastry crusts in general have 3 basic ingredients: flour, solid fat and water.
Note that I use the term "solid fat" because it is not necessarily lard, it can be butter, shortening, or other fat that's solid at room temperature. Why is this relevant? Your 2nd recipe (Liam's Nan) uses both butter AND lard, so your final ratios look more like this:
2.6 flour : 1.1 solid fat : 1 water or 650g flour : 275g solid fat : 250g water
Doing the maths, there is no much variation between your recipes, all of them are roughly 52-56% flour, 19-23% fat and 21-26% water, except for the first one, which is 40% flour : 20% fat : 40% water.
A crust with a higher water content, like your first recipe, tends to be more elastic before baked, and tougher / chewier after baking, and they can also take a filling that's richer in liquid without getting soggy, and the crusts with a higher fat content tend to be harder before baking and crumblier / flakier after baking, and require a filling that's drier or has the water "bound" with a starch, like cornstarch or flour. |
How do I find a toaster that doesn't "leak" crumbs from the bottom?
Every toaster I've owned seems to "leak" crumbs from the bottom, requiring constant clean up. You could put it into a tray of some sort but unless you 3D-print one, its hard to find a tray that exactly fits it. Is there a magic keyword of some sort that would let me find a toaster that doesn't have any holes at the bottom? | Many toasters have removable crumb trays, where crumbs collect instead of falling out the bottom. You then empty the tray once a week or so.
Not all such trays are equally effective, so I suggest using your usual sources of reviews to find the ones which are (Amazon, Consumer Reports, etc.) |
Can distilled water in gallon plastic bottles expire?
I am puzzled about this. Depending on what article I read I get different results. There are no experts per say. It's just a bunch of people voicing their opinion concerning distilled water expiration date.
The water is sealed in plastic containers from the factory processed it.
The container is HDPE #2. Some bottles say "bestby" but others say "expiration". They have a seal around the cap but I can't say if it was intended to be airtight. | There is no reliable expiration date for commercially bottled water, apparently because relevant authorities (such as the US FDA) have declined to scientifically test for it. Per bottledwater.org:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates bottled water as a packaged food product [in the US], has determined that there is no limit to the shelf life of bottled water ... Because it is packaged under sanitary, good manufacturing practices; is in a sanitary sealed container; and does not contain substances (such as sugars and proteins) typically associated with food spoilage, bottled water can be stored for extended periods of time without concerns.
As such, any expiration dates you see on bottled water are the result of either the manufacturer's idea of when you should change bottles (which might be wanting to encourage stock rotation) or because you live in one of the places where your local authorities set an expiration date on a political, commercial, or consistency basis.
Theoretically, since consumer plastic packaging is not 100% impervious, any bottled water will get contaminated by outside organisms eventually. But no study I've been able to find has good data on what "eventually" looks like, and even baseless estimates range from 2 to 10 years. |
Question about cooking meat from a beginner
This is the first time that I will cook meat. My question is that in the method of boiling/simmering meat, the foam of fats I see and I remove it with a large spoon. If I use another method for cooking meat (such as frying or grilling) will the fat remain in the meat? | What you are skimming certainly is some fat, but it is probably mostly comprised of denatured proteins. We can't answer questions about healthy or not on this site. That is all relative to you and your preferences. Salt enhances flavor. Salting well in advance, removes moisture, concentrates flavor, and enhances flavor by penetrating the meat. |
Why do I need to use the oven to make crème brûlée? Or do I?
I really don't get it. Yolk must coagulate at 83 °C (181 °F), so why doesn't any recipe tell to simply put it into a water bath on a stove? Or are there any such recipes?
My intuition tells me to simply put it in a water bath, low heat, no cover, and the thermometer into the custard set to 83 °C (181 °F).
Edit:
I did it. I was doing several other things, so it took several hours. It was very good on the top, but on the bottom it was like cottage cheese with whey and something crumbly. Did I start to make a cheese? | You can certainly use the stove, it is just that using the oven works better.
on the stove, you will have to babysit the water bath so it doesn't get too hot. In the oven, it is less likely that this happens, because the oven heats up slower, and if it starts getting too hot, you will have more time to notice and react.
the oven will heat your custard slower, resulting in better custard.
the oven heats from the top too, resulting in more even temperature throughout the custard.
if you are cooking with other people, somebody could accidentally stir your custard on the stove, maybe mistaking it for a creme patissiere or another type of stirred custard.
And in general, even if it there were no technical reasons, it is just normal to use the oven for the "stick it in and forget it for several hours" dishes and the stovetop for the dishes which need a concentrated blast of heat. So it would be natural to see this kind of recipe to be written for the oven, instead of trying to find workarounds to make the stove do the job which the oven was invented for.
To address your update, you didn't make cheese, your creme brulee curdled on the bottom. This means that you didn't manage to make a setup that heats low enough (point one) or evenly enough (point three). You will have to fuss more until it starts going right. |
I started cooking my steak before adding seasoning, how can I save my meal?
I was having a busy day yesterday and wanted to cook a small sirloin steak. I preheated and oiled the skillet, patted dry my steak, got distracted by my dog, and put the steak in the skillet, unseasoned.
After searing I went to flip the meat and realized my error. In a panic I added my seasoning, flipped the steak over and went to season the now-seared side. It didn't stick to the meat well and in the end I ate a pretty bland steak.
If this happens again what can I do to recover from my error and save my meal? | Many people don't season their steaks before cooking and they still get tasty meat by seasoning it after. Salting beforehand helps release juices and gets a bit of flavor penetration, but it won't ruin it if you skip that step. Peppering before cooking is a bad idea anyway as the pepper will burn and turn bitter, so you should always pepper the steak straight after you take it off the pan.
Next time just finish cooking it and sprinkle some salt and pepper on it straight after cooking. |
Can one make a pourable custard by baking in an oven?
Making fresh custard with eggs and milk isn't really difficult, but takes time away from preparing other bits of the meal, and can go wrong (e.g. bits of scrambled eggs from too fast heating). Thinking about this question - Why do I need to use oven to make creme brulee? - about why crème brûlée is cooked in the oven rather than the hob, my question is:
Is it feasible to make a pourable custard just by mixing eggs, milk (or cream?), vanilla and sugar and baking it in the oven? If so what time and temperature should be used? | As stated in my answer to the question you reference, my experience is using sous vide to achieve these results. You will need about 180F (82C) for about 40 minutes using sous vide. It can probably be done in the oven, keeping track of temperature and viscosity, but in this case, it's probably quicker to use the stove top. If you are worried about curdling, use a double boiler (or stainless bowl over a pot of water). It really doesn't take that long to thicken in this manner.
However you choose to do this, the solution is to agitate, stir, or pour during and/or after cooking. Custard is an egg fluid gel that sets because of the networked structure of proteins. If you disturb that network, you have a pourable custard that will likely not set up. This is why set custard is prepared in ramekins or vessels in which it is served. |
What caused this "lunar egg"?
A friend boiled this egg using the Food Lab method, and it came out like this: with a ton of little perfect craters like some kind of cartoon moon. He's never seen anything like this before, and neither have I. He did not make pinholes in it or crack the shell or do anything not described in the cooking method. Also, he's used that way of making boiled eggs before and this hasn't happened.
The method is as follows:
Pour the water into a 3-quart saucepan, cover, and bring to a boil over high heat. Using a large slotted spoon or spider, carefully lower the eggs into the boiling water and cook for 30 seconds. Add the ice cubes and allow the water to return to a boil (be patient, this could take a few minutes) then reduce below a simmer, about 190º. Cook for 11 minutes. Drain the eggs.
What causes a hard-boiled egg to turn out like this? | I'm not 100% sure on why this happened, but I know what those "craters" are. They are where there have been bubbles of gas (likely air) definitely under the shell, but possibly under the membrane too. I see things like this on a regular basis in agar plates used for microbiology.
There could be two causes of this that I can think of:
A minor leak in the shell, maybe not visible to the naked eye, but enough that when the eggs were lowered into the boiling water, the gas expanded and bubbled away from the gas entry site. If you look closely and rotate the egg you may be able to see a higher concentration of craters nearest where the entry was. You may have seen a trail of bubbles coming off an egg shell when heated slowly in pre-boiling water - that's the gas escaping from a pin-point hole. If the egg were lowered into boiling water fast enough, with the hole down, the heat would seal the hole by congealing the white and the gas would be forced up and away from the hole into the egg.
The air pocket at the end of the egg ruptured its membrane and small bubbles of gas from that spread around the surface. Same mechanism as above, just different source of gas.
Now I wonder if it can be recreated experimentally? - I bet those things would make a cafe famous if it could be done consistently. A small gauge hypodermic (26+) needle might work. |
Sharpen a blue cheese dressing?
My penecillium rocqueforti ripened blue nutcheese still hasn't sharpened in flavor ie ketone development which takes 6mo or more.
Otherwise flavor and aroma fine at this point.
Would like to use in dressing.
Adding bit of sharpness to mix desireable.
Sodium citrate suggesting in this post: How does kraft mac and cheese or velveeta get that tangy flavor?
Any other suggestion for rocquefort-like tang? | As per old chef acquaintance:
dry mustard and white pepper.
I also added a couple drops prickly ash oil (sichuan pepper)
And that perked things up immensely. |
How might these prawns have been cooked?
Bought these prawns from Tesco. It says already cooked but not how, would these typically have been steamed or baked etc.?
When it says ready to eat, does that mean nothing the same way that raw fish is ready to eat since these would not have been reheated? | They are cooked...likely boiled (sometimes this happens on the boat, sometimes on shore...it depends on the processor), then frozen very quickly. "Ready to eat" simply means that they are already cooked. You just need to thaw (though, I suppose you could eat them frozen if you like), and they can be eaten cold. |
Can German potato salad be served cold?
I usually make the mayonnaise type potato salad which is served cold. I wanted to try German but I want to serve it cold. Recipes I found serve it warm.
No problem is obvious to me, what am I missing? | Actually, what do you expect from „German“ potato salad?
There are many potato salad traditions in Germany, including mayonnaise based salads that are usually found in northern Germany.
As you mention warm potato salads you are propably refering to vinaigrette or broth based salads found usually in the south (Schwäbischer Kartoffelsalat or Swabian potato salad)
It is important that you peel and marinate the potatos while they are hot as the cold potatos won‘t absorb the marinade and will lead to a salad with some dressing but not the desired „infused and emulgated“ potato salad you are looking for.
If all you have is cold potatos, do a mayonnaise based salad, or try a yoghurt based one.
Either way the southern type potato salads can be (and are) eaten either warm or cold. It‘s only in the making where the temperatures matter |
Which one of these lamb meat parts has lowest fat (shanks, loin or shoulder)?
Which one of these lamb meat parts has lowest fat -because I don't like the taste of fat-, (shanks, loin or shoulder) ? | As someone who also hates fatty meat, with lamb honestly it doesn't matter.
It's very fatty meat, all cuts.
My local supermarket's "low fat" lamb is still 20% fat. They don't tell you what the rest is.
The trick is to cook it for a long time - 4 hours or so, or all day in a slow cooker. The fat doesn't magically disappear, but it gets rendered down into something far more tasty [& incidentally, if you're like me, a whole lot less 'gribbly' to chew;) Far more palatable. Cook it long enough & you really can't tell the fat was there.
That's how any good 'curry restaurant' manages to make lamb curries that taste great & don't feel 'fatty'. |
Best time to benefit from dough mixed with baking soda
I am preparing a dough with all purpose flour, salt, sugar, oil, curd, lemon juice and baking soda. I am not using baking powder. Within how much time should I complete my baking to reap maximum benefit of the leavening effect? I know that dough with baking soda needs to be cooked sooner, but is there any specific time that my baking should be completed? | No, there is no such time. The formulation you used, "needs to be baked sooner" is indeed the correct one. If you bake it without any delay, it will be better (the baking soda will have more effect) than if you delay for one minute. If you delay one minute, it will be better than when delayed two minutes. And so on.
At the other end, there will be a moment at which the baking soda turns from having almost-no-effect to having absolutely no effect at all. But since nobody would want to eat the food even if the soda had next-to-no-effect, trying to predict this moment is not really relevant to cooking. |
When skimming fats (while boiling meat), what percentage does it reduce?
If I have a meat contains 10% fat (assuming it is 1 kg, fats are 100g), how much -approximately- can I reduce in this technique ? | Your picture shows someone skimming scum. The scum contains some fat, but is mostly made of water and proteins. The technique is not intended for removing fat and is not effective at doing so. (In particular, it is best done early in the cooking process, before much fat has been released.)
It is, of course, also possible to skim fat off the surface of a liquid. If the liquid is allowed to settle first and careful technique is used, most of the separated fat can be removed through skimming. The percentage reduction would depend on how wide/deep the pot is; it's easier to skim a narrow/deep pot than a shallow/wide one. For even more effective removal, a "fat separator" can be used, and is capable of removing virtually all the fat, as long as the liquid is not too turbid.
Of course, that only relates to how much fat is removed from the liquid. Simmering/boiling pieces of meat is not an effective way to remove much fat from them; most will remain in the meat. |
Getting even heat on a gas stove
I am cooking on gas stoves very seldomly, mostly in some hotel/airbnb's with a small personal kitchen. I often have this problem: the gas comes out in a ring of blue flames. I think more expensive stoves may have more than one concentric ring, but the ones I encountered always had only one circle of small flames.
If I put a large pot or pan on a large circle, then it seems to me that the outside portions of the pot are heated much more strongly than the center due to the direct contact with the flames.
If I put a large pot on a small circle, it seems more even as the gas hits the center first but then flows outwards more or less uniformly. But the small stove then usually does not have enough oomph to heat a big pot efficiently.
How do you do this? Is it just as I noticed, and there is no real solutions? Would a really good gas stove always have concentric rings and thus a more even heat distribution? Or is there some other technique to work around it? | As these are rented places, I suspect part of the problem is cheap thin-based pans, especially very thin steel.
I have similar gas rings at home and mostly don't have an issue - but I have a choice including cast iron and sandwich base if I need even heat. I'm currently using a fairly thin aluminium pan for omelettes, and even that is OK.
The exception on my stove is the only concentric one, the biggest, because the inner burner is pathetic. It's meant to be for woks (which of course are thin) but the hottest bit by far is halfway up the sides.
Note that your small burner towards the middle heats the pan more efficiently but less effectively, i.e. more of the heat from the flame gets into the pan, but there's not a huge amount of heat to start with. This is good for saving energy when heating up or simmering, but useless if you want high heat.
As for what you can do - not always very much unless you carry your own cooking gear. Sometimes there's a sweet spot using a fairly large burner turned down (as the circle gets smaller but the power is still greater than a little burner). Sometimes extra preheating of the pan and any oil is helpful. Stirring more than you might expect works for some things, but if that's not an option, sliding the whole pan around might be, so moving the hotspots every few seconds. |
Bagel Sponge: Room Temp or Proofing Temp?
I have a new recipe to make deli-style bagels. It calls to let the initial sponge stand in a large mixing bowl at room temperature for 2 hours, sealed with cellophane.
I have had troubles in the past with initial sponge/proofing. I am fortunate now to have an oven with a proof setting that keeps the oven at a constant 90F.
I am worried that leaving it at room temperature won't be enough. Would proofing at 90F be bad? | The purpose of a sponge is to create more complex flavors by giving the yeast the opportunity for an additional low-and-slow fermentation step. If you speed the fermentation up by using a warmer environment, you won't get the intended flavors.
If your priority is on quick proofing, it would make more sense to use a recipe written for that, not to change the temperatures in a recipe optimized for other endpoints. |
Is there any way to rescue a mayonnaise-based spread?
A friend brought me some whitefish salad from New York, and I froze what I couldn't use that week since it's highly perishable. However, since the salad base is mayonnaise, on freezing and thawing it separated -- all the oil de-emulsified, turning the salad into a greasy slurry.
Is there any way to restore this to a creamy, spreadable consistency? I don't know of one, but maybe you do? | Well, If it were just the mayonnaise, it would be easy. I’m sure you already know all this, but for future visitors to this question: mayonnaise, like hollandaise and bearnaise, is an oil-in-water emulsion, with microscopic droplets of oil suspended in the water phase, with lecithin from the egg yolks stabilizing the mixture. The higher the oil to water ratio, the thicker the mayonnaise. A split mayonnaise occurs when the ratio gets too high and the droplets of oil break out of the mixture and merge together. To rescue a split mayo, you simply start a new mayonnaise with an egg yolk and a bit of water, and then slowly blend the split mayonnaise into it, re-establishing the emulsion.
Now, usually when people are rescuing mayonnaise, it has just recently split and is not particularly separated; as a result the oil and water end up getting mixed into the new mayonnaise at about the same rate. If one were to accidentally add all the oil first, the ratio of oil to water could become too high, resulting in the mayonnaise breaking again. In contrast, adding all the water first would be fine.
So if you were to separate out as much of the oil as possible, beat an egg yolk and a bit of water, slowly beat in the watery post, then slowly beat in the oily part, I think you’d end up with a stable mixture. The open questions would be, would the whitefish and other solid ingredients interfere with the re-emulsification? And does the texture of the spread rely on an oil-to-water ratio which is not achievable without industrial emulsification equipment? So I’m not sure whether it is possible to rescue your spread, but that’s how I’d try to do it. |
Does food steamer require ventilation
I am considering getting a food steamer but I don't have access to a kitchen. I have a microwave in my room but I think I could use a steamer as well to cook vegetables. I've never used a steamer before and I won't be able to use it if it gives out a lot of steam due to damp issue.
Do steamers require ventilation? Or is it internally a closed system so nothing comes out? Can I use it in a closed room without having to open the window? | The amount of steam released is comparable to boiling a kettle for a few minutes. Without knowing what your room is like we can't provide a general recommendation, since the answer would depend on the preexisting humidity, size of the room, height of the ceiling, temperature, ventilation etc.
I would expect that if the room is sometimes ventilated (i.e. sometimes you open a window), using a steamer to cook some vegetables once in a day wouldn't be a problem. If you were using it very frequently with no ventilation you could find the room getting humid (and the room getting hot!) fairly quickly. If you notice water condensing on surfaces or everything feels damp then reconsider. |
Which cut of beef is the leanest?
Which cut of beef has the least amount of fat? (loin, rib , round, etc.) | While it is not generally considered a cut, the heart has no fat tissue at all between the muscle fibres (the marbling in skeletal muscle). Depending on how it is trimmed, it can have a significant amount around the outside of the atrioventricular junction, but this can be removed prior to cooking fairly easily.
At my butchers it is the cheapest muscle available. When roasted it is delicious, as the structure holds in much more of the juices than more traditional cuts. It is worth bearing in mind that it does not fall apart with long cooking times as the structure is not maintained by collagen but the branching structure of the muscle cells, so has a very different texture in stews. |
What was Country Herb Chicken Sauce Blend?
An old hand-written recipe calls for one package of "Country Herb Chicken Sauce Blend", a presumably retired McCormick product. The recipe is quite similar to this one:
https://www.cookingindex.com/recipes/38300/country-pot-pie.htm
Whatever was in this packet, it seems it was designed to be mixed with water and milk and brought to a boil to make a sauce.
We'd love to re-create the recipe. Does anyone know what was in that packet? | The McCormick website has a recipe for "Country Herb Chicken and Dumplings." That might be a good starting point.
Here is someone else's recipe for the spice mix.
It looks like you can still get the McCormick spice blend, here, for example.
These products are not a "just add water" solution, but you can probably get reasonably close between the recipe and spice mixes. |
Clams frozen before purging
I got excited to find out my friends family vacation home is on a river where a ton of delicious clams live. TI caught a bunch of live clams, then hastily put the whole lot in a bag of water and threw that in the freezer while making dinner with my friends.
I didn't realize that freezing them would kill them and make it impossible to purge them.
Is the whole lot spoiled now? Is there still some way to eat them? | There’s no way to make a dead clam purge sand etc.
You can always try to cook a few and see how gritty they really are, then decide. You may be lucky and find that they have a good mouthfeel, or you may find out that your entire catch inedible and needs to be discarded. |
Is there any food ingredient that tastes like diesel smells?
I like the smell of diesel, and other heavy oils.
Are there any food ingredients, i.e. safe to eat, that have a taste similar to diesel.
I think it would be an interesting experience to eat or drink something that had a taste that I associate with something that is most definitely not food.
The question was prompted by a dispersible aspirin that has a chemical taste vaguely reminiscent of fuel oil.
A beer or tea that tasted like diesel would be fascinating.
I'd be interested in any other "not food" scents that have food safe sources, beyond the more familiar dichotomy transpiring from butyric acid. | Retsina immediately springs to mind; it's a fortified wine stored in pitch-sealed barrels, and it develops a slightly kerosene-like aroma from that. Certain tequilas and mezcals also have a subtle diesel-like aroma. |
Is it a good idea to put desiccant packs in the freezer?
Is it a good idea to put desiccant packs, like those you get shipped with electronics, into a working freezer to help prevent it from frosting up inside?
I open our freezer quite often, and the humid air getting closed in there seems to be causing it to frost up quite quickly. I know the contents of those packs are toxic — so that’s a worry — but if they’re sealed, they should be OK, right? I presume for a volume the size of a freezer, you’d need a few and have to replace them regularly... | You would need a tremendous amount of desiccant to make any significant temporary impact on ice build-up in a freezer. The only major drawback of ice build-up is that it takes up space in the freezer… and the desiccant would take up more space.
BTW, the normal material used as a desiccant is silica gel, which is non-toxic. |
Bourboning up a ganache
I'm making this bete noire for tomorrow: La Bete Noire I have yet to screw up this recipe. It's easy, and will satisfy most hedonists.
It is a little one-note though. I'd like to add some bourbon to the ganache, which is just 1 cup heavy whipping cream and
8 ounces bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, chopped, in the original recipe.
How much bourbon would be safe to add, and do I need to alter the recipe in any other way? It would be bad if it failed to set. | The rule of thumb when spiking a ganache is to
either reduce the cream by the same amount or
add double the amount of chocolate (by weight).
So for one ounce of alcohol you either leave out one ounce of cream or add another two ounces of chocolate.
That said, yours is a slightly lighter ganache than the usual 1 part cream / 2 parts chocolate and a slight variation in texture probably won’t be much of an issue as long as it doesn’t flow down, so I wouldn’t worry too much. Aim for an adjustment roughly as given above and you should be fine - start with one shot, see how that turns out. Too much alcohol is probably overwhelming rather than interesting, but there’s no absolute scale for taste. |
What does yeast do to flour?
Does yeast overtake flour?
if yes then does it become protein from carbs?
When we start with 100% flour does it become 70% flour 30% yeast germs after fully fermented dough? | Does yeast overtake flour?
That depends on what you mean by "overtake". The most obvious interpretation is that you are asking if you wind up with more yeast than flour. If so, then the answer is no, not even close.
if yes then does it become protein from carbs?
Yeast begins its process by using enzymes to break down the complex carbohydrates that are in the flour (starches), into simpler sugars. They then eat the sugar, producing carbon dioxide in the process which causes the bread to expand (rise).
The process can be accelerated by adding some simple sugar (e.g. table sugar, a.k.a. sucrose) so the yeast has something to eat before it has broken down the starches.
As part of its biological process, the yeast does have to build protein molecules, so technically, yes. New proteins are added during the process of the yeast consuming the starches in the flour.
When we start with 100% flour does it become 70% flour 30% yeast germs after fully fermented dough?
No. Almost all of the flour remains, even after extended periods of time.
The use of yeast in bread-making is highly varied. Some breads use very little and rise for short periods of time. Other breads use more, and/or involve multiple rises, during which a relatively large number of yeast cells are able to reproduce.
As a very rough estimate, one might use a 0.5 to 1.0 grams of yeast for 500 grams of flour. (It doesn't need to be precise; if you start with less yeast, you can just let the dough rise for a longer time…the yeast you put in makes more yeast!)
In ideal conditions, yeast can double in population in about 90 minutes. A short rise for bread might be 45 minutes, increasing yeast population by about 40% at most. Other breads might rise long enough for the population to double or even triple. These are optimistic numbers; very long "rises" often involve cooler temperatures, and even a normal rise generally isn't actually going to produce the maximum reproduction rate.
In the end, you might wind up with at most two or three grams of yeast for 500 grams of flour, a very much not-significant amount compared to the total weight of the bread (which also at the very least includes added water, and sometimes eggs, oils, or other ingredients). At the most extreme, you might start with 0.1% yeast by weight and end up with with 0.6% yeast by weight, with practically all of the flour you started with.
The amount of added protein is negligible, and likewise the amount of reduced carbohydrates. |
Sourdough pizza crust for wood-fired oven
I can consistently make a nice, well-blistered, chewy pizza crust in my wood-fired oven. My recipe is Caputo flour (the red bag), 60% hydration, 2.5% salt, 0.25% instant yeast; knead until smooth; form into balls; age at 9 C for four days.
I've tried to expand into sourdough, and I can't get satisfactory results. My best approach has been to use the starter (also at 60% hydration, doubled every day and kept at room temperature) for 1/4 of the dough volume. This produces a reasonably okay dough, but without much sour tang, and with less elasticity (difficult to keep the thickness consistent, and stretches out of shape when pulled onto the peel). I've also tried fermenting at 35 C initially and reducing the fermentation time, as well as a long ferment at 100% hydration and adding flour to bring it down to 60% hydration an hour before forming.
In all cases, whenever the dough develops significant sourness, it also becomes completely unworkable for forming and transferring to the oven floor. I assume that the acidity is simply destroying the gluten structure, which wouldn't be a big problem in a pan but is impractical for baking on the oven floor.
Any secret technique, for getting a pronounced sourdough taste in a pizza crust without it turning into goo? | I have done some experimentation very similar to yours and ended up with the same observations. I also can confirm your assumption that the acidity breaks down the gluten is right. Creating a sourdough pizza with good taste that is still good to stretch is an art that is not easy to master but it can be done (though I have given up this path for me at least for now).
A 4-day rise at 9°C seems to be very long and warm to me, which probably also contributes to the transformation to goo.
I suspect that most folks doing sourdough pizza are maintaining their starters at rather warm conditions, which should result in a milder, more lievito madre (LM) like composition, which is more on the yeast/lacto-acidic side, than on the acetic. But given that you are striving for a pronounced sourdough taste, this also seems not to be the right approach for you. Maybe it is possible to use a regular yeast dough as base and work in sourdough for the tase just before the final ball rise. |
Products that can be microwaved and "pop" just like popcorn
What makes corn pop and is it possible to microwave any other type of food into the form of pop-something just like sweetcorn? | Popcorn should be considered one of "nature's little miracles" - & a way to make a huge profit out of air.
Yes, you can pop other dried grains/seeds, but don't expect anything quite so bag-filling as maize.
Quinoa, chia, sorghum & amaranth will all pop [in a dry pan, not sure about microwave]
See
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/puffed-grains-popped-corn_n_6107716
or
https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/how-to/article/get-it-poppin |
Difference between Thai ingredients ginza and galangal?
I have a cookbook from a Thailand cooking school for tourists that lists
1 Tbsp galangal chopped finely
and then
6-8 cm ginza, skin removed (substitute: old dull ginger)
I assumed from this recipe that they’re separate ingredients but in looking online I’ve found some few sources containing both terms and they seem to indicate they are the same ingredient.
Are they the same? Different? It’s difficult to find information on “ginza” as an ingredient, and much easier to find articles on galangal. | Welcome to the extremely confusing world of rhizomes! Thai cuisine uses different rhizomes for curry pastes extensively, and naming of these is not at all consistent. For example, any of the following three roots might get referred to as "galangal":
Greater Galangal, also known as "Thai Ginger" or Kha
Lesser Galangal, also called Kha Tadang
Fingerroot, also known (confusingly) as Lesser Galangal, or Krachai
However, none of these appear to be commonly referred to as "ginza", or any word that could be poorly transliterated that way. However, I have found a handful of references to "ginza root" and they seem to always refer to greater galangal. So in the recipe that refers separately to "galangal" alongsize ginza, the second reference probably refers to either fingerroot or lesser galangal. I'd try fingerroot first, since it's more common. |
How do egg whites help to keep fats inside a cake?
Recently I tried to bake a cake (Caprese) from:
ground almonds
butter
dark chocolate
sugar
eggs
I melted chocolate and butter, mixed all of this with whipped sugar yolks, and then... totally screwed the whipped egg whites, and decided (for science!) to skip folding the egg whites as part of the recipe and just add almonds. As a result, when the cake has actually started to bake, most of the incorporated butter rose to the surface as one slimy puddle.
Why and how egg whites help keep fats inside of cake? I'm mostly interested in chemical or physical explanations of the effect. | Egg whites are mostly protein. Long chain polymers like proteins typically have regions that are both hydrophilic (binding to water) and hydrophobic (preferring to bind to fats), so are great at forming emulsions and stable gels. When cooked (or even beaten long enough) the long chains unwind and the proteins denature, making it easier for these emulsions to form.
In your cake, the role of the egg whites is to form a stable emulsion trapping fats from the butter and chocolate, as well as air. As you found, the egg whites are a structural essential. |
Why Does My Sugar Wax Turn Out Different When Scaling Up The Volume?
I'm in the process of making sugar wax made of heated sugar, lemon juice and water. I have found a ratio that works great when it's heated up to 119 C (246.2 F). It gives me a wax that has the perfect consistency and firmness. The problem is that this ratio and temperature works fine only when making one jar of wax. When I try to scale the volume up (using the same method, recipe and temperature) it turns out different. The more I scale it, the more runny it turns out even though it reaches the same temperature. I'm using the stove (electric) to heat up the wax. I've been consistent with using the same pan and same temperature setting for the stove every time I make the wax.
I'm trying to understand what is happening when combining these three ingredients. Why do I get a different consistency when increasing the volume? (even though I'm using the exact same recipe and reaching the same temperature). What are the parameters that play an important role? Until now I've thought that the volume (as long as the ratio is the same) doesn't matter, as long as it reaches the right temperature. This turned out wrong, and now I'm interested in knowing what is causing it to turn out different.
Does anyone have any experience of something similar? Maybe there is some chemical theories I'm missing? I would appreciate all the help I can get. Thanks! | I will throw out a suspicion, although I am not certain that it is the correct one.
What you are doing here is to create invert sugar with the lemon juice - if you didn't use that, you would end up with hard candy, not a malleable substance. The acid in the lemon is not an ingredient in the reaction, it is a catalyst. So I wouldn't wonder if your scaling up means that you get a higher proportion of the invert sugar, making the whole mass softer.
If my theory is correct, you should get something closer to the desired result by scaling up the sugar and water, but keeping the lemon juice the same as in the original recipe amount. "Something closer", but not exactly the same, because while the acid will be the correct amount without scaling, it might need longer time to create the same proportion of invert sugar in the increased mass - but you cannot really give it more time, since you are restricted by the maximum temperature reached by the sugar syrup. So in the end, if you want the exact same result, you will have to find out empirically exactly how much lemon juice you need. But as things stand, there is a good chance that using the unscaled amount will be a good starting point. |
How to clean food that may have been contaminated by a cockroach?
I have seen a post on how to keep roaches, etc., away, but let's say I did see a cockroach on my kitchen counter, and it did crawl on surfaces and food (let's say, some avocadoes that were out, ripening, as well as some Nespresso capsules). What might be a good way of cleaning food like avocadoes that may have been contaminated by the cockroach, but that we would still like to consume safely, if possible? How about Nespresso capsules?
In both of these cases, we don't actually need to consume the surface (of the avocado, of the capsule ..) touched by the cockroach, but wouldn't like to spray any kind of toxic substance on them nevertheless.
I found, in this healthline article
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), cockroaches carry bacteria that, if deposited on food, can cause salmonella, staphylococcus, and streptococcus.
and
According to the World Health organization (WHO), cockroaches have been known to play a role as carriers of intestinal diseases, such as dysentery, diarrhea, cholera, and typhoid fever. | Fruits and vegetables are obviously natural products that are exposed to the elements, and a variety of insects and other wildlife during growing, harvesting, storing, packaging, and distribution. Whether the roach crawled across your avocado (for example) on your counter, or (potentially) the store room of your local market, matters little. For produce that has an edible exterior, I rinse well. Sometimes (depending on the product) submerge in a few changes of water (fresh greens, for example), and spin dry. For products with an exterior that doesn't get eaten, a quick rinse and wipe is probably all that is necessary. |
Using the plastic tray liner from meat packaging as a cooking aid
My wife says that she has gotten advice on Facebook that using the plastic absorbent liner from packaging can also be used in the oven to distribute the heat more evenly. I am hesitant to put plastic in the oven in temperatures of 325 F.
Are there BPAs in the material? Is this a safe practice? | I can't imagine there's any benefit in using the tray liner as a cooking aid, anything about them distributing heat evenly is a load of garbage, that's what pans are for. Plus, cooking your food on a sponge of silica gel and plastic that's absorbed a bunch of blood is just plain gross.
It's impossible to say whether the plastics have BPAs, different manufacturers use different plastics so there's no way to know. Regardless of the BPA question melting plastic is never a good thing.
Please don't do this. |
Are tuna pouches still good after being in fridge?
I have unopened pouches of tuna in the fridge with expiration date of 9/1/23.
My question is, are they still good if I take them out of fridge and store at room temperature? We are moving and I have several pouches that I would like to take with, me as long as they are still good! | Your product is shelf-stable. The expiration is a "best-by" date, meaning the quality degrades, but it remains safe. Refrigeration has no relevancy, unless you opened the package. |
Why can you make hard candy with maple syrup, honey, and corn syrup, but not agave nectar?
Maple syrup is mostly sucrose.
Honey is a mixture of glucose and fructose.
Corn syrup is glucose.
Agave is mostly fructose.
I have read that the chemistry of candy involves a disaccharide (sucrose=glucose+fructose)
So, why does corn syrup harden when heated to a certain temperature, but agave syrup does not? | Okay. So now that I understand the question: the reason you can't use agave by itself is simply that it is mostly fructose, which is more hygroscopic than its friends.
Table sugar, which most recipes call for, is a disaccharide called sucrose. It's composed 50-50 of two monosaccharides called glucose and fructose. When sucrose is heated with water as many candy recipes call for, it begins to break down into its two components through a process called hydrolysis. So instead of having sucrose+water, you have glucose+fructose.
One big concern in candy-making is how to keep your candy solution clear and smooth. The best way to prevent re-crystallization is to throw off the balance with an interfering agent. Glucose (in the form of corn syrup) is commonly called for in candy recipes for that reason. Fructose can be used as well, but the two monosaccharides have different properties, and glucose is generally preferred.
Because once your candy is done, the biggest concern is to keep it from dissolving. Sugar is known to be hygroscopic, and candy will slowly leech humidity from the air and start becoming sticky and soft. It's inevitable.
Which leads into the answer: fructose is far more hygroscopic than glucose. Fructose is so hygroscopic that it can make a hard-crack peanut brittle... Less brittle. If you make a batch of brittle with corn syrup and another with agave, both will work. Both will make hard candy. But the stuff made with corn syrup will maintain a nice crunchable texture, while the agave stuff will start softening and melting right away. It may well get to be chewy like taffy if you try to let it melt in your mouth!
On the same note, you could make stable candy with pure glucose.... But it wouldn't be as sweet, and the texture would tend to be more hard than shattery in my experience. Not bad but... Dull.
And some people think that putting candy in the fridge is the best way to cool it off. If you used agave to make hard-crack candy and then stored it in a high-moisture environment like a fridge, before removing it into a warmer and therefore more humid environment where water will start to condense on its surface, it might seem like it never made candy at all.
High-fructose candy is going to have textural differences no matter what. If that's what you want, then it's no problem. But if you want candy that stays crunchy or melts slowly, then fructose, and consequently agave is not your friend. |
What to do to cool down oven after grease fire?
I have cleaned the grease out the oven but the oven is still warm and it’s not on. What do I do to get the oven to cool down so it’s back to normal? | So long as the fire is truly out, then just give the oven time. It may take a few hours to cool the metal back to room-temperature, just as it would if you had baked something in it. |
Why is my soft serve too stiff?
Is there an intelligent commercial machine soft serve calculator? I'm a noob at this, bag powder mixes taste like crap, can't find any fresh dairy mixes here in central Florida.
So far, the best I can find is 6% fat, 12% sugar, 14% MSNF, and 0.1% xanthan gum and .3% lecithin. And some vanilla. I made a spreadsheet to calculate it all based on a gallon of milk as a starting point, but what do I know? (very little...) I'm using milk, evaporated milk, heavy cream, dry skim milk, sugar, and the rest.
I mix it well, put it in the machine. Texture comes out smooth & creamy, but stiff. It won't lay down and curl like soft serve should. It just wants to stick straight out and stack up.
Too much MSNF?
There seems to be a dearth of decent information on the internet for soft serve.
Any help out there?
I've got my calculator sheet on Google, I can share it so maybe someone who knows what they're doing can help point me in the right direction. | I'd suggest taking a look at the excellent book "Ice Cream" by Goff and Hartel (ISBN: 978-1-4614-6095-4). It covers all aspects of making ice cream commercially, and is very thorough. Chapter 8 is titled "Soft-Frozen Dairy Desserts" and page 252 has a table of example formulas for soft-serve ice creams.
For example, one column of the table shows the percentages to use for 6% milk fat:
Milk fat: 6.0%
MSNF: 12.5%
Sugar: 12.0%
CSS: 4.0%
S/E: 0.4%
TS: 34.9%
(MSNF: milk solids-not-fat, CSS: corn syrup solids, S/E: stabilizer plus emulsifier, TS: total solids.)
To take a guess at your actual problem, I'd say if it's not soft enough, you might try lowering the MSNF and xanthan gum first. |
How to season home-made cheese?
I have made my first ever cheese (a very basic recipe: heat the milk to 95C, add citric acid, drain the whey, press together - see below), now I need to season it.
I definitely need to add some salt. For this, I can add some salt to whey and soak my cheese in it - this is simple enough. But I wonder if it would be a good idea to combine salting cheese with marinating it like it's done with feta (the usual marinade is olive oil with rosemary, lemon rind, and chilies).
Woult it be a good idea to add salt to the marinade I have described above and to marinate and salt the cheese in one go?
Source of the recipe:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://finecooking.ru/recipe/adygejskij-syr-v-domashnih-usloviyah | That recipe is very similar to Indian paneer. The downside of salting the whey is that most of the salt gets poured away, so you have to use lots (or soak in a small amount of whey.
When making paneer, one good approach is to salt the curds after draining (though before pressing out the last of the whey). These acid-set cheeses tend to not keep very well, and become too soft for many purposes if kept in the whey, so they're normally stored dry in the fridge, and for only a few days. |
Is it a good idea to add salt to egg whites before beating them?
It seems to be conventional wisdom to add a pinch of salt before beating the eggs.
However, this website gives a scientific explanation of why it's a very bad idea.
Could you tell me who is correct?
Agitation causes the little bunches of proteins in the white to unfold, at which point the individual molecules start to collect around air bubbles and bond with each other. If there’s salt in the mix that bonding process is slowed as the salt dissolves into its component parts — sodium and chloride — and those ions start to adhere to the bonding sites on the protein molecules, preventing the proteins from using those sites to bond with each other. The result is that the foam takes longer to whip up and is less stable when it finally does form.
Edit: Harold McGee's book "On Food and Cooking, The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" states that egg white foam (whipped egg whites) is harmed by the addition of salt.
Source: this question. | There is a great deal of contrary advice on adding salt to egg whites. From my research, what I gather is that this mixed advice comes from the fact that it probably depends on how much salt is added.
These researchers found that foam volume and stability increased with a small amount of NaCl, then decreased with increased amounts.
This research did not find a significant difference in foamability or stability. You can look see the details beginning on page 79.
The author did reference the first paper I shared and stated:
The mechanism behind the adverse effect of salt addition on foamability may be attributed to the reduction in protein solubility at high salt concentrations. This decrease was due to a high level of protein aggregation which diminished protein adsorption at the interface and decreased foamability (Ercelebl & Ibanoglu, 2009).
From my reading, I would think that the impact of adding a "pinch" of salt (or leaving it out altogether) would hardly be noticed in the home kitchen. |
Do I need to re-pasteurize my soft serve mix?
I'm using all prepackaged ingredients, and following good sanitization (QA) procedures of utensils and work area. Do I need to re-pasteurize my mix before feeding it into the machine? The machine has been sanitized using QA as well. | I would think that if all the ingredients are pasteurized then you wouldn't need to re-pasteurize anything.
Where I've heard of people getting into trouble is when they add something like raw fruit to an ice cream mix, and the fruit hasn't been pasteurized (cooked to a particular temperature for a particular amount of time).
But note that just because it's prepackaged doesn't necessarily mean it's safe for raw consumption. For example, you can make "cake batter ice cream" by adding boxed cake mix to an ice cream base, but the flour from the cake mix isn't pasteurized or safe to eat raw. |
Slow-roasting top round beef
I wanted to try out a recipe for a slow-roasted eye of round roast. However, I was unable to find this cut at my local market, so I purchased a top round roast instead. Can this cut be prepared the same way, or should I use a different technique?
The technique outlined in the recipe is as follows:
Salt the exterior and let sit for 18–24 hours
Season & oil the roast, and sear the exterior in a pan
Roast at 225°F for about 2 hours
Turn off oven and let roast sit undisturbed in the oven until it reaches an internal temperature of 140°F. | The two cuts come from the same general area. They eye of round is more lean, and generally tougher and less flavorful, given the lack of fat. There is no reason you cannot use the cooking technique described on the top round. Using a thermometer will ensure proper done-ness. It will probably take a bit longer than the more narrow eye roast. |
In what order should I put various "masalas" in chicken curry?
In what order, should I put the various masalas (en:spices) in my general Indian-style spicy chicken curry?
I have the following:
Chicken masala
Garam masala
Jeera masala
Chilli powder
Dhaniya masala
Ginger-garlic paste
I usually marinate everything (except Garam masala) together and fry the chicken pieces after the chopped onions get fried.
Extra details:
Oil: Mustard
Type: Thick greavy
I add the amount of onions equal to that of chicken. Chicken pieces are of the size 1.5 inch x 0.5-1 inch. Usually I take legs. | It sounds like you are on the right track. Most spices are meant to be added towards the beginning of the cooking process because frying the spice helps release the flavorful oils and keeps it from being gritty. Pastes like garlic and ginger paste likewise should be fried off before adding liquids. The only exception to your list is garam masala, which is a finishing spice that should be added at the end of cooking. |
Dirty cutlery holder hanging over glass stove lid with drip container
When I cook, I use cutlery to get the food from the pan, and after using them I put it on a plate that is on the table.
But I thought I could do better, putting a frame of hooks to hang the cutlery in the vertical direction having a container underneath to contain dripping broth that runs off the used cutlery.
I searched for a long time on the internet and I didn't find anything like that.
I'm thinking of making a frame like this with aluminum alloy metal blades and solder.
But I decided to come here first and ask if anyone knows the name (if there is this silverware holder) or if they could give me clues.
I decided to draw the cutlery holder I'm trying to find positioned over the open lid of a stove (I'm not a great designer). | What you're looking for is a utensil rack with drip tray, one example here on Etsy.
The design seems to have phased out of fashion, all the items I can find that resemble your drawing are labeled "vintage" and have this older look to them - including construction materials (enamel instead of SS / plastic / aluminum).
I get not having enough bench space and wanting to save as much as possible, and your design in specific would work if it was NOT attached to the stove lid, but instead attached to a wall to the side of your stove so you don't have the following risks (pointed out in the comments by myself and others):
Stove lid closing under the weight of the tools (@Stephie)
You reaching out over steam / oil spatter / other hot surfaces to hang your tools (myself)
Dripping tools going over other pans (@Johannes_B) |
What are the effects of various dairy ingredients in quiche?
What are the effects of various dairy ingredients in quiche?
Leaving aside the fact that a dish using cheese is not, technically, "quiche", I've looked into 5 different websites and cookbooks or so and there seems to be no agreement on the dairy ingredient. Some say cheese, others cream cheese, still others heavy cream or combination cream and milk. Surely there's some physics and/or chemistry to be done here? What would the effects be of the various fillings?
I'm using a toaster oven, if that helps. | Quiche, at base, is a custard. And a custard, at base, is a water-based mixture thickened with egg yolk. Milk and cream are the traditional liquids. You could make a custard with just water and yolk, but you'd have a hell of a time keeping it from curdling. The proteins and especially the fat in milk and cream stabilize the custard, as well as adding taste and texture. The higher the amount of fat, the more unctuous and creamy the custard will be; a high level of fat also retards curdling when the custard is overcooked. A custard with more yolk per amount of water will, of course, be thicker.
Cheese is often included as well, though I don't recall seeing a recipe which called for cheese and no milk or cream. Cheese adds, well, cheese flavor. It is lower in moisture than milk or cream. |
What defines the type of the fermentation (alcohol/lacto)?
What defines the outcome of the fermentation?
You put the veggie, fruit in an anaerobic environment and you either get "Alcohol fermentation" (ethanol) or "Lacto fermentation" (lactic acid). What is the different input to make the different output?
I know the key difference is the saccharomyces and lactobacillus. But what decides which of them start the party? | The factors that decide what starts the party as you say are the starter and the environment.
The yeast and bacteria are already present. If one of them is in the majority, then they'll get a head start without any intervention. It's just survival of the fittest.
But for the most part, fermenters intervene. We add starter cultures for one, and we control the sugar, salinity, and oxygen for another.
Yeast are everywhere. They love sugar and oxygen, but don't need oxygen. Yeast ferments typically start with sugar and oxygen. Lactobacilli are strictly anaerobic, and can thrive at higher salinity and acidity than yeast, so a ferment that calls for salt is often lactobacillic. Acetobacter feed on the alcohol produced by yeast but require oxygen.
So if you want alcohol, add yeast starter, sugar, and let air in at first. Then cut the air off before acetobacter start taking off.
If you want vinegar, leave your alcohol ferment open to the air.
If you want a lacto-ferment, add a starter (or not. These are easy.), salt, and no air.
That's basically it. |
Wild Sourdough Starter Never gets more than 1/3 bigger - Am I doing something wrong?
I made a wild sourdough starter back in July of last year. Did some baking with it, but it has never doubled in size the way that I see described in articles online.
I initially started it with all-purpose flour and aired-out tap water, but I've moved it to Bread Flour and Spring water. At best, I'll see it increase in volume by roughly 1/3.
I keep the Sourdough Starter in a pair of Ball Wide-Mouth pint jars, and feed the starter twice per day. The method I've been following for the past month has been:
Stir the sourdough starter thoroughly.
Pour 2 oz (56g) by weight from the old jar to the new jar.
Add 2 oz of spring water by weight to the new jar. Stir thoroughly.
Add 2 oz of Gold Medal bread flour by weight. Stir thoroughly.
Mark time and initial level on new jar.
Cover with two coffee filters, and screw the lid rim on to hold them there, and allow for outgassing.
Lay the lid insert on top to reduce drying.
Wash the old jar to get it ready for use as the new jar in the next feeding
Temperatures in the apartment are typically about 75-80°F by day, 80-85 by night. Starter typically peaks in 8-12 hours,
These images were taken a few weeks ago, after about 8 hours after feeding, when the starter was peaking. The black line is the original level after mixing, and the blue line is at about the peak. As I said, I've never seen my starter increase in volume by more than a third.
Why isn't my starter doubling or tripling? Am I doing something wrong? Could I remedy this? | Your starter is at 100% hydration. It's a thick liquid, not a springy dough. As bubbles of carbon dioxide form, they're free to combine into larger bubbles, rise to the surface, and pop. So the volume isn't going to increase much. The peak volume will additionally be significantly impacted by the temperature and the type of flour. And a starter not growing in volume is not strong evidence that bread dough made with it will not grow in volume.
If you want to check on starter activity, look for bubbles at and near the surface. But really, the best way to maintain a starter is to have a regular feeding schedule and somewhat consistent conditions. Then it isn't so much a matter of measurement, as it is one of being confident in your process. |
Day 3 My Preserved Limes Are Not Filling the Jar
I packed all the nearly quartered limes I had tightly into a quart jar with plenty of salt. When I finished, there was about 1/3 of the jar empty. I put them in the dark cupboard because I didn't know what else to do. Now I have more limes. Would it be safe to scrub, cut, salt, add them to the jar, and mash them down until the jar is filled? | Yes, that’s fine. Not much to say here, really. It’s okay to have a head space in the jar (the high acid and salt content makes the limes inhospitable for all microorganisms that might otherwise colonize the surface), and it’s also okay to add more salted limes. |
Can I whip cream that is past its use by date?
I was going to make a dessert with whipped cream but events interfered and I now have a large (sealed) pot of double cream left in the fridge. My next opportunity to make the dessert will be next weekend when the cream will be about five days past its use by date.
Experience tells me that cream will still taste fine well past its use by date, so I am not worried the cream will taste sour. However I have never tried to whip cream that is past its sell by date. Googling has found sites with advice ranging from "it'll be fine" to "OMG throw it away now" so I'm no further on. The question Can sour cream be whipped? tells me that soured cream won't whip, but this cream is going to be nowhere near sour by next weekend.
Does anyone know if I'll face problems trying to whip it? If so I'll try to find another use for it or throw it away (though that seems a shame).
I should add that this is ordinary pasteurised (not UHT) double cream from a UK supermarket, so it's 48% fat, and it has not been opened so no bugs will have got in since pasteurisation. | It depends on how the cream was treated. If it has buttered up, or is just on the cusp of either buttering or turning sour, you can no longer whip it, it will coalesce and curdle instead of creating a foaming. It is a gradual thing, you cannot say when a given batch of cream will whip well and when it will curdle. The most you can do is to note the relative probability of 'not whipping' compared to a cream that has been treated in a different manner.
These probabilities are, in increasing order of success:
raw milk from the cow, left to cream up
cream that has undergone traditional pasteurization, no further treatment
cream that has undergone some heavier pasteurization method, like UHT
cream that has been stabilized by microfiltration
cream that has had chemical stabilizers added (usually carrageenan)
The effect of the treatment interacts with the effect of the aging (the older the cream, the less likely it will whip - this effect exists even before the expiry date) and with how strictly you follow best practices when whipping. |
Is lactic acid a vinegar?
'Saccharomyces' gives us 'ethanol' (i.e. alcohol).
Then
'acetobacter' makes 'acetic acid' (i.e. vinegar)
On the other hand,
'lactobacillus' gives us 'lactic acid' (i.e. pickle brine)
My question is :
Can that lactic acid be used as vinegar? | The answer to this depends on the brine in question. Both vinegar and a lactic brine solution are obviously acidic, but vinegar is sold at different concentrations. If you have a lot of leftover lactic brine, you don't know its concentration. So you'd have to take your best guess at that aspect.
The main thing however, is taste. Vinegars are generally made from fruit or grains, which have lots of sugar. Lacto fermentation usually uses vegetables or dairy... And salt. The flavor profile is going to be completely different, even if you don't care about saltiness.... Which saltiness would become more pronounced when cooking.
That difference in flavor is the only real problem I perceive. |
Eggs whites on top and side of yolk
When I make a sunny side egg, I notice that the yolk can be sunny side up and ready to eat, yet sometimes there is what seems to be a "ring" of egg white around the perimeter of the yolk and also a small coating of egg yolk surrounding the egg.
Is it okay to eat that or do I have to make sure that the egg white liquid turns solid first? One of the issues with that is that it makes the yolk cook longer and gets harder. I just want to make sure what is safe to eat. | You can eat eggs raw, so long as you're not pregnant or in an at-risk health group.
Fry them however you like them.
UK chickens are vaccinated against salmonella. Elsewhere, less so. Apparently the US doesn't do it at all, hence their tougher handling regulations.
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/01/poultry-vaccinations-credited-for-uks-big-drop-in-salmonella/
sorry, wrong link - fixed
The UK's National Health Service goes so far as to say
There have been improved food safety controls in recent years. So infants, children, pregnant women and elderly people can now safely eat raw or lightly cooked hen eggs, or foods containing them. Make sure that the eggs you buy have a British Lion stamp mark.
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/eggs-nutrition/
There was a furore in the late 80's when a British politician, Edwina Currie, falsely claimed salmonella was a high risk in eggs. After that all died down [which took quite a while;) safety was increased still further.
Historical précis from the BBC -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/3/newsid_2519000/2519451.stm
Old, non-https link. Should be safe enough from Auntie Beeb |
Boudin Balls, Isaac Toups - Question about cooling/refrigerating the boudin
I'd like to try Isaac Toups' recipe for boudin balls, for a cooking get-together with a friend of mine. We'll start in the afternoon; ideally, we'd like to have it done for (late) dinner that day.
The recipe specifies 2 refrigeration steps: one overnight, the other for 2 hours (overnight for the boudin, 2 hours for the rolled boudin balls before deep-frying). From what I understand, this is so that the balls don't explode when deep-frying, because there's a lot of moisture in them (although I don't understand how the freezing helps - they will cook through completely anyway, right?).
I was wondering whether the refrigeration times can be shortened - less time, and also by using the freezer. This post seems to hint at it being possible (?)
Beginner cook, so would appreciate any advice and explanation! | The refrigeration steps have nothing to do with moisture / exploding - they're there so the batter thickens and can hold a shape without falling apart.
This is also done for roux-based croquettes, like the Dutch kroketten and Spanish croquetas
I'd be careful with refrigerating in the freezer for the 1st cooling as you don't want your boudin to be frozen solid - you'll have to keep a close eye on the timing. Alternatively, you can spread your boudin as thin as possible into baking trays to have maximum contact surface and speed up cooling in the fridge
For the 2nd cooling you can do an open freeze (line them up in the tray with space between them, so they'll become individually frozen balls) and then fry them straight from freezer to fryer, no thawing needed. |
Would some dry herbs sprinkled on the surface prevent water from superheating in the microwave?
I know about the risks of superheating water in a microwave (and some countermeasures), but suppose that someone didn’t have any sort of wooden skewer, tooth pick, or something like that to act as a nucleation site.
Would some herbs sprinkled on the top of the water be sufficient to prevent superheating? Or would I still be in danger when removing the water from the microwave? | The problem with sprinking herbs on the top, would be that the container of water can be superheated at the bottom and not superheated at the top. (In fact, the top tends to be much cooler than the bottom, because of evaporation.) |
How to clean aluminum with lye "stains"
I got careless and used a lye solution to clean an aluminum moka pot. The end result was that the whole thing was covered in sodium aluminate with some stains standing out from the rest.
Here's what the bottom looks like after a whole lot of scrubbing:
Can I get it any cleaner than that, or is this just the corrosion? Is there, in general, a good way to get the aluminates off with a minimum of effort? | A weak acid solution should do it - you could use a dilute (white) vinegar solution for some time. How dilute, I don't know, but I would start with a 1:100 dilution, then incubate for an hour and see how it goes. If, after a few (3-4) hours there's no change, go for a more concentrated solution. |
Pulled beef in pressure cooker: Is it necessary to sauté beef before pressurizing?
In most recipes I've found about pressure-cooking pulled beef, the meat is sautéed before the pressure is applied. Why is this? Could I pressure-cook pulled beef without first sautéing it?
Example recipe: https://theblondcook.com/instant-pot-mexican-shredded-beef/
Also, I've noticed there's a lot of similarity between making pulled beef and beef broth. Can it be done in one go? | The reason for steps like this when slow-braising meat is to brown the meat (or, if we're being fancy, to cause the Maillard reaction), which will make the dish taste...more like browned meat. You'll note that in the linked recipe, the sauteing step occurs before the liquid is added to the pot, and emphasizes browning the meat on all sides:
...
Pour oil into your Instant Pot and set to saute. When oil is heated, sear roast on all sides until browned. Turn off Instant Pot.
Pour beef broth mixture and salsa over roast.
...
If you skip this step and throw everything into the pot at once, you'll end up with perfectly cromulent shredded beef. It just won't have the flavor notes of browned meat that would have been introduced by searing it first. Many people (including me) think that the final product won't taste as good without the browning step, but it's not absolutely crucial to the structure of the dish. |
Too tomatoey gravy?
I saw this video. He is cooking Paneer Tikka Masala. He used 6-7 tomatoes to make gravy for the curry. My question is that, when I cook and add so many tomatoes its taste is too tomatoey. Am I missing something?
Paneer Tikka Masala Restaurant Style | पनीर टिक्का मसाला | Chef Sanjyot Keer
Also I'm making paneer Tikka masala which needs to spicy. Is adding sugar to neutralize the taste of the tomatos good? (I've read somewhere adding sugar can neutralize the sour taste in the gravy) Is it the right approach?
Tell me in depth how can I deal with this situation. Almost every time I cook I face this. | The video recipe uses a lot of tomatoes, and the resulting curry appears to be heavily tomato-flavored. The quick paneer butter masala I make myself is very tomato-flavored, on purpose, because my sweetie likes it that way.
So if you want a paneer curry that's "less tomatoey", my suggestion is to use a different recipe, one with fewer tomatoes in it, and more onions and peppers. Adding sugar won't help, unless the specific flavor you're trying to change is the acidity. |
Am I calculating bread dough hydration correctly?
I know this seems like it should be obvious; calculating bread dough hydration isn't rocket science.
My recipe is 600 g of flour, 270 g of water, 57 g of butter, 46 g of honey, 1.5 tsp of salt, 2 tsp of yeast. Salt and yeast are in tsp because at those light weights, there's a significant difference in volume in fractional grams but the idea is 6g of yeast and 7g of salt.
I've read that butter and honey both have about 18% water so I add that to the water and I end up with 48% hydration. Everything I read says this is way too low. The dough in the bread machine seems very moist and is quite sticky. I used a batch for making hamburger buns, using the dough cycle, and it was so sticky and wet I couldn't work with it. But baked in the machine, the bread comes out pretty good, rising to within 1/2 inch of the machine lid and it holds up well to slicing, sandwiches, etc.
So, what gives? Is my calculation wrong or is there some reason I'm succeeding at 48% and, at 48%, the dough is very wet and sticky?
I also make sour dough bread at higher hydration, about 60%, without the breadmaker but it is never as sticky as the bread machine recipe - using the same flour. The flour is Montana All Purpose Flour - a premium flour sold at Walmart.
Is this experience normal or am I doing, measuring, calculating, something wrong? | Hydration is an idea to help you predict the dough consistency/workability based on the ratio of water to flour - but with a highly enriched dough, the effect of the additional ingredients is so strong, that it loses its predictive value. It is also no longer perfectly defined when you have ingredients which make the dough softer without clearly being water/a liquid.
When you calculate the hydration as normal, it is 45% (270/600). It makes no sense to look up the percentages of water in butter and honey and add those, because you didn't add separate water and separate solids; you added one product (actually two here) with its own physical properties, which "acts" as a whole in the dough.
If the low number shocks you, you can try making some kind of creative adjustment, maybe counting all of the honey as a liquid. But really, whatever number you arrive at, you should no expectation that the dough behaves the same way as an unenriched dough of the same hydration. Personally, I would just stop stretching the concept and trying to fit it into situations it is not meant for. You already know how the dough from this recipe feels, there is no need to attach an abstract number to that. |
Cooling coffee rapidly without dilution
I like iced coffee when the weather is hot, and I like to drink it black (or nearly black) and undiluted. What is a good setup for cooling freshly brewed coffee quickly, without a lot of hassle? I'm talking about normal brewed coffee, not cold brew.
At Starbucks, they seem to put ice in your cup and then pour coffee directly over the ice. This works, but it uses a lot of ice, and by the time you're done drinking it, the melting ice has started to dilute the coffee. You also just can't fit very much coffee in a cup this way, because so much space is taken up by the ice.
I've tried putting a whole bunch of water in a big pan, then sticking a thin-walled metal cup in the water and pouring the coffee into the cup to cool. This cools the coffee rapidly at first, but then the cooling process gets extremely slow. I think part of the problem is that the conduction and convection processes are slow, and also that the water's heat capacity isn't super huge, compared to the heat of melting of ice.
I homebrew beer, and to cool my wort, I have a coil of copper tubing that I insert into the pot and run water through from a garden hose. This is pretty efficient, but works for a quantity orders of magnitude greater than a cup of coffee. It uses a huge amount of water.
Below is a method that I'm currently messing around with. The pan of water is to take the initial heat off of the coffee and make sure the coffee is cool enough so that I don't melt a hole through the plastic parts or release bad chemicals into the coffee from the plastic. I then put some ice in the ziplock bag and stick it in. After a few minutes I can take the cup out of the pan. The ice melts, and then I replace it with fresh ice. This setup seems not too bad, but still kind of slow and wasteful. It uses up a lot of ice. I can wash and reuse the bag.
Is there a better way to do this? I'm fantasizing about weird gadgets such as an aquarium pump sending pre-chilled vodka or ice water through a closed loop of tubing. Or maybe putting pieces of brass or copper in the freezer. | Make ice cubes out of coffee.
Depending on how you brew your coffee, you might even have some surplus coffee from time to time. Just pour it into an ice cube tray.
Then put the coffee ice cubes into your freshly brewed coffee, as usual. |
Rescuing a tough brisket roast
I let brine overnight a 450 g piece of point cut beef breast. Then I dry rubbed it with spices and put in my small crock pot with 150 ml of Guinness, a couple of carrots and baby potatoes on LOW for some hours.
I stuck a probe thermometer in the meat and set an alarm at 65 °C (having in mind the target temperature of 72 °C and thinking of carryover cooking).
It must be said that the meat was not submerged in liquid as the vegetables were on the bottom.
But I didn't hear the alarm and the temperature went beyond 72 °C. After about 8 hours, the meat was shortly broiled and, after some rest, sliced.
Tough as a rock.
Now I'm not very sure I know how the graph tenderness vs temperature goes for this kind of meat.
Hence some questions:
How would have my meat been if I took it out when the alarm sounded?
If I wanted a roast, did I "miss my train" by not hearing the alarm and what I have now is an overcooked roast?
Is it now an undercooked braise so a way to rescue it is to let it cook again partially submerged in liquid? (still got some gravy that could be watered up)
Which internal temperature should I aim for? I was thinking to use the crock pot again since my stove burners are too aggressive, and it sounds like it's going to be some more hours on LOW. | Brisket is not a roasting cut; you didn't miss your train, it never left the station. Brisket is a very tough cut because of the presence of collagen, which breaks down at 72°C, and needs the presence of liquid, so roasting is not a good technique for this cut. If you'd taken it out when the alarm sounded it would be even tougher.
You can't roast things in a crock-pot, you have to have food mostly submerged in liquid for it to heat. There's no real target temperature for brisket in a crock pot in the sense of 'when it hits this temperature it's done' because you need to get it to at least 72°C and keep it there for hours so the collagen breaks down. If you use a temperature probe 72°C is when the cooking clock starts.
As for what to do now I would put all the brisket in an oven dish with a lid, put in some stock to about 2/3 of the way up and then braise it for at least 3 hours at about 145°C. Braise it until it starts to get tender, then braise it for a bit longer. |
Disolving chocolate in vodka?
I wanted to make a chocolatey drink, but creme de cacao is way too sweet. So I decided to try making chocolate vodka. I added about 3/4 cup of 63% chips (Guittard extra dark) into a small magic bullet blender cup. I then covered it in vodka, plus an extra ~1/2". I blended it a bit, opened it up, and decided it smelled too sweet, so I added 1-2 tbsp cocoa powder. I then blended it until almost all the chips were pulverized. I poured it into a jar and left it overnight.
That was last night. This morning, I shook up the jar, to help it infuse more. I thought it looked strange, so I opened it up. As far as I can tell, everything but the largest chunks of chocolate has dissolved. It looks and pours like chocolate syrup. What happened? I guess the fat and sugar dissolved into the water & ethanol, and the solids are suspended? | So the sugar is most likely dissolved in equal parts in the water and ethanol, while that fat is dissolved completely in the alcohol.
The most likely reason why your drink solidified would be in my opinion that it was a bit warmer while blending because of the friction so the fats partially melted, which also helped the dissolving into the alcohol process and while cooling down the chocolate fats solidified and now it has this syrupy consistency. Carefully warming it again would most likely make it liquidy again. Tho alcohol does work as an emulsifier for water and fat so this might have also happened, so it might not become completely liquid again
For the solids: In a portion of 15g there are 5g of fat and 6g of sugars in it. With an additional 2g of other carbs. Meaning there is about 2/15 g or about 15% of additional weight in there. Coincidentally the water content of chocolate is somewhere between 10 and 20% so that extra weight is going to be mostly water. |
For what dishes I should wash starch off red lentils?
I usually wash grains and beans before using them. I wonder how/for what dishes I should wash red lentils?
When I washed them, the water looks "soapy" (lots of foam) until I change it cr. 8 times.
According to this blog, this is a correct procedure, I should wash the lentils until the water runs clean (i.e. no foam).
But obviously, it takes time, and starch (?) is sometimes beneficial for the dishes.
So my question is: for what dishes I should wash red lentils until the water becomes clean, and for what I should wash just once or twice, to wash off the dust?
Dished I have used red lentils so far are red lentil burgers (cooking them in boiling water, mashing, forming patties, and then pan-cooking them), and Dal Adas (soup). | The main reason why you rinse lentils and beans is to remove debris or shriveled lentils. Also for hygiene reasons, depending on where and what lentils you bought, they might include little stones, sand, or dust.
In general, if you don't rinse your lentils/beans they will foam more while cooking. The foam is caused by starch and denatured protein from the beans.
Rising your beans or lentils does reduce the foaming.
As a result for dishes where you’re not planning on draining the lentils (for example, you want to add extra veggies to make a tasty lentil soup), you probably don’t want to have foam floating on top and I would recommend to rise and/or soak your beans and lentils.
For dishes where you're just cooking lentils on their own, you’ll probably end up draining the liquid away once they’re cooked, so the majority of the foam will be drained away anyway and you don't necessarily need to rinse your beans/lentils.
Some people say that rinsing or soaking the beans/lentils also helps against flatulence, etc. but there is no real evidence for that as it seems. I only have been able to found a roughly related study from Harvard here.
I hope this helps! I found a lot of forum/chats and blog articles that argue the pros and cons of rinsing but the reason above seems to be receptively the main reason and is also my own experience. |
What determines spice level in Indian cuisine?
When I dine out for Indian cuisine, I prefer to order my food hot on the mild/medium/hot/spicy scale. This question is two-fold.
For cooking Indian cuisine at home, what ingredient do I adjust
(from an online recipe) to achieve a "hot" spice level (i.e, what
are the ratios for certain levels of spice)?
What (red pepper flakes, a chile pepper?) most commonly determines
the spice level in Indian cuisine? | Several of the spices in 'indian' cooking will impart a sense of heat - ginger, peppercorns etc - but the single ingredient used in restaurants & take-aways as a last-minute heat booster is Cayenne chilli powder. The basic curry sauce will be mild, so none is added if you order mild. The hotter you order it, the more they add. They will use many other last minute additions to make your specific curry 'type', but the heat is chilli powder.
The upside of cayenne is it doesn't add a lot of flavour, mainly just heat, & it doesn't need to be cooked in for hours to give the heat boost. It will come in a couple of minutes. You can even mix it in at the table, if you're feeling the need of a booster.
'Cayenne' is not one specific chilli, it is a type of chilli; often mis-labelled & sometimes to avoid the mis-labelling is just called 'hot chilli powder' [though in the UK you sometimes need to check the ingredients list to make sure it's not actually a mix for chilli con carne].
Though it's a specific a type of red finger chilli, the name has kind of been used to cover many similar chillies, and the powders you buy are often blends of many similar types. Getting 'exactly cayenne' isn't actually important. Very few people will ever be able to tell the difference. |
I have some slow-cooked pork in the freezer and just need to warm it up
I slow-cooked this meat about six months ago and had a lot left over which
went into the freezer in a tightly-wrapped plastic bag. It does not really
matter now when I eat it, but I do want the quality to be as good as
possible (and I want to eat it in a sandwich with the meat at least a
little warm).
So, thinking about quality, how should I get this meat warm?
Conventional thinking is to let the meat unfreeze over two days in
the refrigerator and then warm it (maybe over 15 minutes) in a covered
pan with a little water added.
An alternative might be to just go directly from freezer to covered
pan and give it lower heat for a longer time (maybe over 60 minutes).
Or is there a better approach? Is there a secret here or does it taste
the same either way?
One reason I'm thinking that the "alternative" above might be better is
because, when freezing meat, we want to freeze it as quickly as possible
to avoid large ice crystal formation (which affects the taste). So, it
seems natural to do the reverse process as quickly as possible too. But,
the trade-off then might be that a fast-reheating method will tend to
burn the outside and leave the inside cool. Still, if the frozen meat
were stored in a thin enough layer, the "alternative" above seems better.
By the way, I think this question
is more about thawing raw meat. It seems to indicate that there really is
not a noticeable difference, so I suspect the same here in the already-cooked
case...but I wanted to ask because I really want to eat this pork. | Hair of the dog?
You got a slow cooker. And this meat has been in there before. Putting it back in the slow cooker will do it no harm and will get some good juice back in. |
What kind of butter do restaurants like olive garden use for their pasta?
I am trying to make pasta at home that tastes like Olive Garden pasta (which I have with butter instead of alfredo). I believe that the reason that my pasta doesn't taste the same is because of the butter I use. I use Land of Lakes salted butter and I noticed that when I add the butter to the pasta the butter isn't very visible vs. when Olive Garden uses butter it becomes a darker yellow liquid that ends up tasting much better. What brands of butter do restaurants like Olive garden use? Or is there something special they do to the butter to make it taste better (I just add 5 tablespoons of the butter to a pound of pasta after I take it out of the strainer and then I mix the pasta). | What you are describing is probably browned butter. It's not the butter they use but the technique as any butter will do. Pasta is usually cooked with its sauce before putting it on the plate, you can re-create this very simply.
First get a pan big enough to toss your pasta in, then get it on a high heat and add your butter. Melt it, then cook it until it takes on a slightly brown tint and smells a bit like nuts, then get your cooked pasta in and toss it or stir it around to coat. A small scoop of the pasta water will keep it from drying out and give it a nice sheen as well. |
Oven management in restaurants
Background: I'm an ERP consultant and one of my customers is a metal works factory in which they have an oven. This is an expensive piece of hardware so they have only one oven. It is important to schedule the jobs that use the oven in order to use it as efficiently as possible.
And now to the question: after cooking my lunch of baked fish, I wonder how restaurants manage their oven/s. Do they have only one oven, using it for all dishes, and filling and emptying at 15 minute intervals (or similar)? Do they have several ovens and somehow manage which dishes (for which diners) are in which ovens, and at what time the dishes entered the oven?
A curious mind wonders. | tl;dr - they never turn off.
I've never worked in a kitchen with only one oven. I'm sure they exist, but I've never been in one. That said, contrary to moscafj's answer, I've certainly used ovens heavily during service.
These examples come from a kitchen that had two combi Rational ovens (i.e., an oven and steamer in one). Typically one was kept on steam, switching as needed, and the other on roast (for service). To give you a rough idea of what a daily rotation of oven usage was like:
Breakfast (starting at 5:00 AM): one on steam, one held at 350 F. The roaster is primarily used to cook sheet pans of bacon/sausage/home fries which are then transferred to hot holding, either on the line or in a hotbox for the buffet (the steam is used for hot-holding for the line/buffet backup). During this time, other miscellaneous prep could also be cooked in the same oven (assuming 350 F is an appropriate temperature). Par-grilled chicken breast would frequently be roasted off and cooled during this time (either to be re-heated later, or further processed into chicken salad or the like).
Lunch (starting at 11:00 AM): turned up to 450 F and held. Lunch service was typically too hectic to get any sort of significant prep done, so it would be used primarily for service (personal pizzas, heating crab cakes, the odd person ordering a steak or roast chicken off the dinner menu, parbaked rolls for the table, etc). The cold line might be able to sneak a tray or two of croutons in the oven at this time, but it wouldn't be a sure thing. The "spare" oven/steamer might be switched over to a slow-roasted prep item - say, roasted garlic or braised meat - depending on prep/service needs.
Mid afternoon/bar service: (2:30 PM - 5:00 PM): still held at 450 F, although with the lull in orders, you could switch one up if you really needed to (most dinner items would be prepped at 450 anyway). This time was largely used as a mad dash for the dinner crew to set up and get as much prep done as possible. Usage at this time is highly dependent on hot line prep/service needs.
Dinner (5:00 PM - 11:00 PM): held at 500 F and kept there. God help you if you changed an oven without explicit permission from the line. Primary usage is for service - pan roasted fish/chicken, heating/reheating various apps, finishing grilled steaks, etc. The oven is constantly being opened and closed as orders come in and out, but never cooled.
Overnight (11:00 PM - 2:30 AM): a deep self-cleaning cycle is run on the service oven. The "spare"/steamer is switched over to roast for service orders and miscellaneous prep.
Late night (2:30 AM - 5:00 AM) - hot food isn't served. A "quick" clean cycle is run on the steamer/overnight oven, and the main service oven is set up for breakfast.
From the comments:
How do the staff know which item in the oven belongs to which order?
The answer is a combination of "just remember", "it doesn't matter", and whatever personal system the cook has to keep track of things. To explain: the system I used was essentially "ascending temperatures". I would use this system for the oven, the grill/range, and resting tray: from left to right/bottom to top, rare -> well done. As a random example: an order comes in for a mid-rare tenderloin and medium well sirloin, followed by a second order for a mid-well tenderloin and medium seared salmon. I'd put a tenderloin on the center left section of the grill (mid rare), a tenderloin and a sirloin on the center right (both mid well), and start heating a sizzle platter in the center burner of the range.
At this point I can effectively forget about the ticket for the time being - all of the order information that I need to know at moment is embedded in the location of the food.
Once the steaks were sufficiently marked to count as "grilled", I'd move the center-left tenderloin to the bottom rack in the oven (rares wouldn't make it into the oven, so the racks went mid-rare / medium / mid-well / well done), the two center right steaks to the second from the top rack. Ditto the salmon, once the sizzle platter was hot, I'd add the fish and move it to the second rack.
Now it's a question of monitoring what's in the oven/waiting for my internal timer to go off. Once the [item] in the oven reaches the temperature the it's position tells me it should be, I move it to the resting tray (which is just a sheet pan with a rack on it), again in the appropriate [rare | mr | med | mw | well] position. At this point I can check the tickets to see if anything's ready to sell from my station, if so, I call to the expediter "ready to sell [table number]". The expediter will either tell me to hold off (either the table's not ready or the server isn't ready or we're still waiting on food from other stations) or sell it.
If we're holding, I forget about it and move on. If a solo MR tenderloin walks in, I can immediately sell the one I have on the resting tray to clear that order and start working a new one for the holding table. If we're selling, I move the relevant proteins from the resting tray to the salamander (still following the left->right placement rule) to bring them back up to an appropriate plating temp and start laying out plates (any guesses as to how I'm going to arrange the plates?)
The "just remember" part comes into play with special orders or just juggling random ticket information in my head so I don't have to go back and refer to the hanging ticket - but 95% of the information I need at give time is in front of my face and it usually doesn't matter which table this particular item is going to - a medium steak is a medium steak is a medium steak, all I need to know if how many I have working, how long they have left, and what's ready to sell. |
When does baking soda make a dough taste bitter?
There are times when I have accidentally mixed up baking powder and baking soda in a recipe resulting in a bitter, almost metallic tasting dough. However, my signature pancake recipe uses a mix of baking soda and baking powder and there is no issue with taste.
When does adding baking soda make something taste bitter? When you do mix up baking powder and baking soda in a recipe, is there anything that can be added to fix it if caught in time? | Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) is an alkaline compound. As such, it tastes bitter and metallic. It is often used in amounts where you can’t perceive that, but if you slip up it can be quite noticeable. There are various substitutions, the most common is to add cream of tartar to baking soda (1/2tsp cream of tartar + 1/4 tsp of soda to sub for 1 tsp. baking powder) to substitute for baking powder. A true fix if you already added the soda might be tricky. |
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