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How to clean caked on stains from juicing vegetables?
I've got a "Green Star" twin gear juicer which I have used to juice a variety of vegetables, but mostly carrots and celery. I always juice the celery last, as that seems to minimize the amount of direct orange staining from the carrots. But over time I have noticed a buildup or "caking" of stains on various surfaces that the juice touches despite cleaning after each use with warm soapy water. The stains are brownish in color and form a "film" that seems to increase in thickness over time.
In the past I have found that once the stain gets "thick" enough I can scrape it off if I have the appropriate plastic tool or even my fingernails, however only on certain surfaces (some are hard to reach or I don't have a suitable edge for the shape of the surface). This has also worn the tip of my plastic cleaning device that came with the unit down to where it's not much good for cleaning any more anyway.
I have recently tried a cleaner that contains oxalic acid, and while this seems to help, the directions say to not leave it on the surface for more than a minute but even 5-10 minutes applied directly to part of the stain doesn't break it down. I have tried soaking the strainer in vinegar for half an hour, but this also was insufficient.
Here are some pictures showing the staining:
This picture is of the end piece which controls pulp ejection. I did a test where I left a blob of cleaning with oxalic acid for 10 minutes. As you can see it helped somewhat but did not remove the stain:
Update:
I have tried soaking in water and after around 36 hours it still isn't loosening up any.
As a note, I also have a similar problem with the glass bottles I store the juice in until I drink it. In this case it's a much thinner film, but it does not completely rinse off and also builds up over time. I used to use a plastic bristle cleaner and it worked presumably because the film doesn't stick to glass as well as it does plastic, but I kept breaking the bottles trying to pull out the cleaner - the mouth is very narrow and it was very difficult to get something that would both fit into the opening and be wide enough to reach all the insides. I'm using a thinner scrubber now but it can't reach everywhere. I tried soaking a patch overnight in lime juice as well as an hour with oxalic acid and neither really made a noticable difference. | This doesn't look like a stain, it is more of a buildup. It seems to consist of fruit pulp which has dried onto the juicer parts.
Getting rid of the buildup
Luckily, fruit pulp can be softened by water, even though it may take some time if it is very ancient. It will be indeed better to add something to the water, but as you note, the stronger acids like oxalic acid may be too aggressive to the plastic itself. The weak culinary acids like citric acid or ascorbic acid are usually made from fruit itself, so they are not only rather weak, there is also good reason why fruit matter will be quite resistant to them.
So, my suggestion for the buildup is to soak all parts for maybe 2-3 days in water with some dishwasher detergent in it. The water itself will already soften quite a bit of it, and the detergent is your best bet for attacking dried-on food. If you are afraid of damaging the plastic because it is exposed for such a long time, you can also leave it for only a short time in a detergent bath, maybe as short as 3-4 hours, and then pour out and continue with clean water.
Once the whole thing has softened, you should be able to get it off by diligently working with a brush. If you have lost or used up the small brush that comes with the juicer, use a toothbrush. Then rinse and let dry.
Once you have got rid of anything that is caked on, you can again use the juicer. It may have gotten actual stains - that is, the plastic may have gotten a different color - but that is only a cosmetic problem.
Regular maintenance
These juicers are intended to be taken apart and washed after each use, or once daily if you are using them throughout the day. When you switch to a daily washing, you won't get such a buildup any more. The juicer parts will only have some wet fruit pulp on the surface, which can be handwashed in a basin easily, just like you would with a bowl that held fruit salad, except that it's a bit of a chore to get all the nooks and crannies. The exception is the screen, where the pulp clogs the holes, and lodges itself in the place where the perforated metal meets the plastic frame. There, you have to spend some minutes with a small brush (again, the original one or a toothbrush) to get it clean. The body of the juicer can also be wiped easily with a damp cloth, but not dripping wet, because the casing is not waterproof.
If you only make your juice in the morning and don't have time to wash everything before you leave, it is sufficient to take it apart and dump the parts in a basin of clean water, they will still be very easy to clean in the evening.
If you happen to get to a point where you have dried-on juice and pulp which wasn't cleaned in the first couple of days (but not hardened to the state you are showing in your pictures, more a fruit-leather state), then a handheld steam cleaner works much better than any firm tools. It is especially good for getting the gunk out of the front rings where the casing meets the removable parts. |
What are the tables called where food is delivered for service to dinner?
In formal dining rooms there is often a long table set to the side and the servers use it to stage dishes before they are served to the table. What is that appurtenance called? | I know a few names for them, but one of them I have no idea how to spell.
As has already been mentioned, ‘sideboard’.
Also buffet table when you’re looking through furniture listings.
I think the name I’m trying to spell is banquette, which looks to be built in seating in America, but was also the name for the narrow walkway around a castle wall. It’s what I grew up calling it, but I don’t know if I got that from my dad’s side (French Basque/Argentinian married to an Italian-American trained in Russian Ballet) or my mom’s side (Sicilian x4) |
Dirty sheet pan left in oven for over a month. Is the oven safe to use?
I just discovered a sheet pan in my oven that must have been there for well over a month or more. It looked like it had been used to bake chicken and there was a burnt outline of the pieces, but there was no mold, only a rancid oil smell. I took the pan out and have had the oven on at 450 degrees for about an hour. Is the oven safe to use to bake cakes and cookies? | The oven is safe. When you bake chicken plenty of fat ends up on the inside of the oven, the chances are there's more on the oven walls than the pan you left in there. You don't need to run the oven for hours to make it safe -- by the time it's up to temperature any nasties will have long been fried.
The pan should be fine, too, after a good soak and cleaning. |
Why are chef's knives wide?
I understand that a western style of blade is meant to fix the point and chop behind it while a santoku is intended to slice with.
I also find the width somewhat useful for carrying cropped ingredients around. But what is the main purpose of the blade vastness? Why not skinny(following image but curved)? | There are a few advantages:
A wider knife makes it easier to have more curve at the tip, which is important for a style of chopping in which you rock the blade back and forth quickly
The weight of the material helps to cut through things when you blade is sufficiently sharp— you lift the blade, then guide it down, rather than trying to forcibly push it down (which is more dangerous if it slips)
It moves where the center of balance is
It allows for a knife to have a longer life, as you’re removing a little bit of it very time it’s sharpened
Obviously, you can have a more saber-like design, and still have the curve, but without the weight of the blade, it’s more difficult to chop. And you can add more weight at the bolster to keep it from getting too tip-heavy.
But if you have a store that sells knives near you, ask to try out a ‘carving knife’. It’s shaped similarly to a chef’s knife, but lacks the height. If you’re mostly slicing and not chopping, you may prefer it.
(Note that some people sometimes call slicers carving knives, but those have a perfectly straight blade, and are typically rounded at the tip) |
Why is my onion pickle taking super long?
I made an onion pickle recipe I saw on YouTube.
It was a brine of water and vinegar (1:1) and salt.
You boil it, then pour over onion. Let cool. Store in fridge.
It's very common on YouTube. They say, it gets done in overnight.
I made it and next day it wasn't done. I left it for 2 more days and still not done. I took it out of the fridge. And 2 days later and still not done!!
Why is it not done? and how do I make it ready quicker?
** My "doneness" meter is the color. Onion gets fully purple and so does the water. Mine is still just the outer surface purple and the flesh is white. The water is just semi opaque. Far from what I saw in the videos.
Edit : extra details
Here is the video pickled onion
Many other videos on YT under the name "pickled onion" share the exact same recipe.
And here is a picture of my current onion
And here is what it's supposed to look like
Update : results
I tried using this patch as is.
But it was sharp and had a bitter aftertaste.
So I decided to "fix" it following your recommendations.
Here is what I suspect went wrong. First thing as you guys mentioned below, my onion was pretty thick. Also, I realized that my vinegar was very stale and I still went with (1:1) ratio with water. Also, I didn't pour the brine immediately after boiling. And I just left it outside until it just cooled down to room temp.
So here is how I tried to reverse that.
I separated the onions from the brine to change a few things :
I cut the onions more thin
I increased the vinegar concentration (by adding extra amount then boiling it)
I added more salt
I poured the boiling brine immediately on the onions
I left it outside the fridge for more than 3 hours
I left them for overnight because it's extremely cold here.
The results :
Color was way off than presented (very pale greyish purple).
The onion slice has a uniform color now.
Isn't vibrant whatsoever. but better than before.
Texture was amazing. (Crunchy as desired).
Taste was pretty good. (very tasty and vinegary).
I don't know if that what it supposed to taste like. But I like it so much.
If I made a new patch (I know I will) I will post if the results are different. Thanks for your time and help. | Refrigerator "pickles" are generally "done" when the flavor and texture is to your liking. There is no reliable color indication. There is no fermentation expected. It is not a long term preservation technique, but rather, a flavor enhancer. You can eat refrigerator pickles after a few minutes, or keep in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks. Just keep tasting until they are what you like.
Some things to think about: the onions in your photo are sliced more thickly and irregularly than the sample video. The thicker your slices, the longer it will take the cell structure to break down and for them to soften and take on the flavor you are looking for. If you want to replicate what you see in the video, you have to use the same onions, and slice them the same way.
Other variables to look at, are the type of onion itself, as this will, of course, impact the flavor. Also, consider the type of vinegar you are using. These vary in acidity and flavor.
Finally, if you intend to use them over a few days, I would certainly not stick my fingers into the storage container, as the person in the video does. Doing this increases the likelihood that you will introduce bacteria or mold spores into your pickles, greatly diminishing your storage time. |
Boeuf a la ficelle - cooked in bouillon?
I'm looking to make boeuf a la ficelle as part of Christmas dinner this year, but am struggling to find a consensus on the execution.
In the Les Halles Cookbook the recipe says to add the beef to water (alongside vegetables and bouquet garni). Other recipes online appear to add a bouillon cube to the water, or make up bouillon and add the vegetables and beef directly.
Is there any consensus on the right/best method? Anthony Bourdain says on pretty much every other recipe in the book to use a good homemade stock, so if it is bouillon the beef and vegetables need to go into it seems a pretty glaring omission...
I also have some guests that prefer well done beef to rare - recipes online say that the cooking liquid can be ladled over rarer slices to cook through - how effective is this?
Finally - is it worth blasting the exterior of the beef after it has been in the cooking liquid and before resting to establish a darker crust? | "Is there any consensus on the right/best method"
As long as you start with good ingredients, using either bouillon or stock will both impart good flavour to the meat.
"cooking liquid can be ladled over rarer slices to cook through - how
effective is this?"
This technique is used for Vietnamese Pho, so as long as the broth is boiling hot and the meat is cut thin enough then YES it does work. If you think that the way you are making the beef is by boiling in liquid, this is simply an extension of that.
"is it worth blasting the exterior of the beef after it has been in
the cooking liquid and before resting to establish a darker crust?"
Since the meat is boiled it does not have a "dark crust" at all, so YES basting with hot fat/oil will make it darker than it would have been.
If you mean "blasting" as in with a blowtorch, it may get some colour, but a quick brush with oil would be helpful for that too. |
Will substituting evaporated milk for whole milk change the flavor or texture of custard
When making custard if I substitute evaporated milk for whole milk will it change the flavor or texture of the custard? | As evaporated milk is a condensed product, you would need to reconstitute it with water to approximate fresh milk. Carnations's recommended dilution is 1 part (by volume) of the evaporated milk to 1 ¼ part (by volume) water.
The evaporation process results in the caramelisation of some of the milk sugars, which is why the product is darker than milk. This will introduce a different flavour, but one which is likely to be compatible with custard.
There are lots of recipes online for using evap in custard, so it would seem to be well accepted practice and one that some people actively prefer. |
What is the difference between fondue and cheese sauce? And do both need to be kept warm to be remain melted?
I like KFC style cheese sauce that is (optionally) served with breaded chicken. And now, at Christmas, I found that a kitchen appliance labeled "raclette and fondue" is at discount. But I made mistakes before and I bought things I do not need because I was not informed.
Is a fondue appliance necessary to keep cheese sauce melted? Or will the cheese sauce remain spreadable even if left to become cold? In other terms, can I make cheese sauce with a regular pan and serve it hours later, or do I need something to keep it warm? | To address your title question.:
What is the difference between fondue and cheese sauce
Fondue is typically made with Gruyère cheese, and generally (though not always) is made with wine. Some varieties are also made with some Emmental and/or other cheeses of Swiss origin.
Cheese sauce, on the other hand, is typically made with Cheddar cheese.
do both need to be kept warm to be remain melted?
A fondue warmer is more due to the food being a warm cheesy dipping sauce rather than it simply becoming "too hard" to spread.
Is a fondue appliance necessary to keep cheese sauce melted? Or will the cheese sauce remain spreadable even if left to become cold?
Commercially available Nacho Cheese Sauce is spreadable and does not need a warmer, and depending on the consistency of your sauce when cool/cold this will also be true for yours.
can I make cheese sauce with a regular pan and serve it hours later?
A fondue pot is not necessary to make cheese sauce, so yes you could make it in a pan. You could then allow it to cool, then refrigerate until prior to needing it, then reheat it (so it is not so cold) to the desired temperature and serve without needing a warmer, however its consistency, as already mentioned, will be the deciding factor if you think the warmer will be needed to prevent it from becoming too thick before it is consumed. |
Roasting nuts with versus without oil. Is there any significant difference?
What is the difference?
Does the oil protect the nuts from oxidation?
Does it make it taste better?
Does the type of oil / nuts matter? | The primary reason to toast nuts with oil is to get better heat transfer from the pan/oven to the nuts themselves; this is particularly important if toasting nuts on the stove, as you can end up with very dark brown spots on otherwise raw nuts, where a small part of the surface was touching the pan. Oil helps to increase the effective area of heat transfer, jut like it does in any sort of frying. You can toast nuts without the oil, but you have to be extra vigilant about keeping the nuts moving so no one spot gets too much contact with the pan.
Of course, adding oil also adds the flavours of the oil - usually one would use a neutral oil to toast nuts in, but if you were looking for a specific effect there'd not much stopping you from toasting in something distinctive.
In terms of protecting the nuts from oxidation, a coat of oil will technically block oxygen from getting to the nuts themselves, but all that achieves is that instead of the oil in the nuts going rancid from oxidation, the oil in the coat of oil goes rancid first, which isn't any better from an 'I'd like to eat this' point of view. |
Why is churro dough created with boiling water?
Every recipe I have found for making traditional Spanish churros or porras calls for adding the flour to boiling or near-boiling water (or, less commonly, milk).
These are very simple pastries, usually there are only three ingredients: flour added to boiling salted water, then piped into hot oil and fried until golden.
When I tried using room temperature water, the churros ended up heavy and greasy.
Edit: Some answers have maintained that this dough is a Choux pastry. Choux pastry is also made with boiling water or milk, however, it is always made with eggs and butter, and sometimes milk. This seems to be a huge difference, especially when talking about so few ingredients, so I find it dubious that this is even "a variant" of Choux. | Churro dough is a variant of choux pastry. While yeasted doughs rise through the expansion of gas created by the yeast, and "quick bread" batters rise through gas created by chemical leavening agents, choux pastry rises simply by pockets of water boiling into steam.
For that to work properly, the dough needs to have a high hydration yet also be cohesive enough to trap the steam. That's achieved by adding boiling water to the flour, causing some of the starch to gel.
If room temperature water is used, gelation does not occur. For a given quantity of water/flour, the resultant mixture is less cohesive, and it does not expand as effectively during cooking (the steam boiling out rather than being trapped within). |
Accidentally left the oven on overnight, do I need to do anything?
I turned my oven down to around gas mark 3 last night while I finished the rest of dinner. After taking the food out of it, I accidentally left it on for about 5 hours overnight.
Our CO meter didn't go off, and I've turned the oven off now.
Besides having switched the oven off (if it wasn't obvious) is there anything I need to do to make the situation safe or prevent oven damage? | No, ovens are designed to function for long periods if necessary, for example in overnight cooking. You might have some burned-on dirt that is harder to clean than usual.
I've done this before and been spooked about having a (mild) fire risk due to my own negligence; to reduce the likelihood of it happening again I try to incorporate checking the oven/hobs are off into my routine as I take the food to the table. |
Reheating roast with crisp crackling
I want to buy a pork roast on the evening of 23d December, and eat it on the lunch of the 26th (here it is).
It is a crispy crackling roast, the skin will inevitably harden in the fridge. What is the best way to reheat it?
It is quite a big piece of meat, so I'm afraid to dry it. An option might be to put the roast for some time in the oven (say, at 150°C), then, turn on the grill and crisp up the skin again.
Could this work? Do you know of a better option? | There are a couple of issues here - you want the roast re-heated (without being dry and/or tough), and you want the crackling crunchy. Unfortunately, these two things don't necessarily go easily together.
As I see it, there are a few options:
Reheat the roast as a whole in 1 step, covered. To prevent being dry and over-cooked, you will need to cover it to prevent water loss. No matter how you reheat it (microwave, regular oven...), this will mean a loss of the crisp crackling, but the meat should remain tender.
Reheat as a whole, uncovered. This is basically just re-roasting the meat, but for a shorter time. This should allow crisp crackling, but will probably make the meat dry and tough.
Reheat in parts - remove the crackling, wrap/cover the roast and heat as desired. Reheat the crackling separately under a grill/broiler to re-crisp. This should result in tender meat and crisp crackling, but you lose the visual appeal of the whole roast package.
Combined options 1 and 2. Cover the whole roast, reheat partially, then remove the cover to crisp the crackling. The trick here is to get the timing right - too short a time uncovered and the crackling is soft, to long uncovered and the meat dries out. This is the most technically challenging option, get it right and it is good, but very easy to get wrong. It is possible to salvage if you have too short an uncovered time though - simply revert to option 3 and remove the crackling for crisping.
Slice the meat/crackling and reheat in portions. A couple of sub-options here - reheat dry (risks being tough/dry) or reheat in a gravy (retains moisture, but loses flavour of meat often). I would keep the crackling separate here. This is my least preferred option
Have the meat cold. Cold roast pork is delicious. This tends to lose the crispness of the crackling, but you can remove and crisp that up if wanted.
See if you can buy a portion of uncooked skin for (extra?) crackling. I don't know about in Germany, but it is an option from many butchers' shops in parts of the world. Crackling the skin is easy on a flat slab - simply score in a grid pattern, rub in salt and oil, then grill/broil until puffed and crisp. |
Can you identify these items?
Is anyone able to tell me what these are?
The openings are tapered as though whatever is placed in them is meant to be easy to remove. They don't look like the shape of anything I can think of, especially the semi-circles. I don't think they are pastry cutters, they are too thick and would be made of metal, plus...the shapes. I doubt they are molds, they wouldn't have an open bottom. | Oh...wait...I should have thought of a reverse image search.
It seems they are dumpling molds. https://rotanya.com/product/magic-dumpling-model/ |
Standing rib roast and safety standards collision
Some seemingly respectable sources (e.g. this and this) recommend bringing the meat to room temperature for as long as four hours. They then instruct you to slow roast it to the internal temperature of 120°F (49°C) to 130°F (55°C), for medium rare, which could take anywhere between two and four hours, depending on the weight, and let rest for up to an hour. All in all the meat spends about twice as much (or more) at the "unsafe" temperature as the common practices and various health authorities suggest.
How can I reconcile this conflict? Should I stop respecting such sources and disregard their advice? | There's a couple things to unpack here but I'll start with the idea of bringing the meat to room temperature before cooking.
This is a myth. Despite the ostensible respectability of those sources (though honestly I find NY Times cooking to be extraordinarily overrated) I defy you to find anyone who has done a side by side comparison and found the room temperature version to be superior. There are however no shortage of sources debunking this myth, e.g.:
https://www.seriouseats.com/old-wives-tales-about-cooking-steak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZx2n_sOGj8
The theory is that this will cook the meat more evenly, and this is perhaps true if your goal is in fact to have something that is gray from center to exterior, but that is NOT usually the goal. Rather the goal is usually to have a nice brown crust and a medium rare interior. If the meat is cold when it goes in the oven, that means the center will take longer to come to doneness - giving your exterior more time to dry out and develop a nice crust when you do your final sear. And before you ask, "won't that lead to the dreaded gray band?", no, it won't, at least not at a slow cook temp, because the heat of the oven will be fighting against the cold of the interior to keep the meat between at a pretty even temperature up to the edge. IMO you're more likely to get the gray band if the meat is room temperature at the start of cooking, because the center will pull in less heat from the surface, allowing that heat to cook the outermost parts of the meat faster.
So, point #1, just ignore this advice, please. If you want to take the roast out an hour before hand and dry brine it, absolutely do that, and if you want to leave it out or put it back in the fridge during the dry brine that's up to you, it really won't make a difference. Personally I dry brine in the fridge for several hours, maybe as much as 24 for a large roast, and I like doing it in the fridge because it makes the surface nice and dry.
As for the safety issue, at 4 hours out of the fridge you are definitely bumping up against the possibility (even if low) of spoilage on the surface of the meat. And as has been noted elsewhere, this is the kind of spoilage that cannot just be cooked away because the stuff left behind by the microbes is nasty and doesn't get destroyed from cooking. So from that perspective too, leaving the roast out for that long is just not worth the risk, even if it isn't a huge one.
However, I should point out that you seem to also be counting the time while it's in the oven, and I do not believe that is an issue. The concern generally is what's going on on the surface of the meat, which is exposed to air where microbes, molds, etc., live. For a healthy cow there shouldn't be anything nasty living inside the meat which is the very reason we can eat it raw. Once you put the meat in the hot environment, the surface becomes sterilized pretty quickly. Whatever time it was exposed to the "danger zone" temperature before and after cooking definitely counts, but there's no reason it should count during cooking. Otherwise sous vide, smoking and other ultra-slow cooking methods, where the interior of the meat could be spending several hours in the "danger zone", would be much less safe than they are.
For GROUND beef, liquids, mixtures, etc. that is a different story of course, because there will have been exposure to air and microbes throughout the entire volume of the food. But if you're cooking a solid roast for 2, 3, 4 hours or longer in a 200-300 degree oven - or even a whole prime rib sous vide at 125F for 10 hours! - and don't leave the surface exposed to room temperature air more than a couple hours before and/or after cooking you should have nothing to worry about. |
If 2 cups of Himalayan salt is used in making 60 gallons of soup, how much sodium does this contribute to a 24 oz. soup serving?
We have a local soup kitchen that provides 24 ounce containers of soup. There is no nutritional profile posted on the containers, and I'm curious as to how much of the standard (American Heart Association) daily sodium limits 1500 milligram=0.05291094 ounces (for high-blood pressure people] and (FDA?) 2300 milligram = 0.08113011 ounces (for people in general) is provided.
I've been told that 2 cups of Himalayan salt are used for each 60 gallons of soup.
Even though Himalayan salt and table salt are both about 98% sodium chloride--perhaps Himalayan is less densely packed--I have before me a Trader Joe's bottle of Pink Salt Crystals (which I'll assume qualifies as Himalayan). The label says that one teaspoon provides 4 x 470 = 1880 milligram, while the web says a teaspoon of table salt has 2,325 milligrams (as indicated closely above, i. e., 2,300). | This is one part math problem, and one part cooking.
First the math
In a 60 gallon batch, there are 320 24-oz servings.
2 cups is 96 teaspoons...divided into 320 servings is 0.3 teaspoons of salt per 24oz serving.
Now, one teaspoon of table salt has about 2,325 milligrams (mg) of sodium (though, this will vary a bit depending on your salt source, grind size, etc--coarser grinds will have more air between the grains of salt for the same volume). Your salt sample is 1880 mg/teaspoon, so we can consider that a lower bound.
0.3 teaspoons salt will be about 560-700mg of sodium.
Therefore, each 24oz serving of soup would have roughly 560-700mg of added sodium...
And now the cooking part
Salt isn't the only source of sodium in a dish. Particularly when other ingredients might be prepared separately. In a soup, there may be ingredients like broth, bullion, beans, seasoning mixes, canned tomato, bacon/ham/sausage, etc which can all contribute sodium.
The added sodium would be around 560-700mg per 24 ounces of soup, but the total sodium may be higher. |
Why does flipping something seem to always require turning up the heat?
Let's say I'm grilling a sandwich or a burrito. One side gets done nicely after a few minutes, but when I flip it over it takes 5 to finish the other side unless I turn up the heat. Why? I can't imagine flipping it reduces the burner temperature to such a degree that it takes 40% longer on the other side. | The issue is that the first time, the pan has been pre-heated, so you’re both absorbing heat already stored in the pan as well as trying to absorb heat coming from the burner.
If we assume that you pre-heated the pan for 5 minutes before putting the food in, if the pan had had perfect conductivity to the food and zero loss to the environment (which is basically impossible), you’re actually absorbing 10 minutes of heat in the 5 minutes the food was in contact with the pan.
Because the food is limiting the temperature of the pan in the spot it was in contact, as it tries to reach thermal equilibrium, the areas of the pan in contact with the food are going to be slightly cooler than those that aren’t in contact (assuming your burner is heating the pan evenly, which isn’t perfectly true, but is typically close enough).
And as I mentioned in my comment, liquids will hit their boiling point and can’t go beyond that until the finish evaporating. So if you still have moisture in the surface of the food, it can’t go beyond 100°C/212°F.
For this reason, when flipping food over, I try to flip it onto a section of the pan that had been empty. For items like a burrito, that may take up most of the pan, I may turn them 90 degrees, so at least the ends are using ‘new’ sections of the pan. |
Does peppers (capsaicin) actually burn?
I know that capsaicin just triggers a receptor TRPV1 that senses heat. Therefore makes you feel pain.
But, my question is, is it just a fake sensation or there is real heat involved?
Scenario 1
Eating spicy food in winter makes you feel warm.
Does that mean your temp is still the same but you just (mentally) feeling warmer?
Scenario 2
If you got peppers oils on your hands while cutting them and preparing food, your hands feel burning all day. Is it only an illusion? If we took thermal camera, would that spot look more "red" in the camera? Or it would be the same as the body?
Scenario 3
When you eat spicy food, you actually turn red. It's visible to the eyes. If we took your body temperature with an infrared thermometer, will it give higher reading than before eating? Or just normal?
Maybe it DOES heat but that's the body reaction to it? Like somehow the body is trying to get rid of excess heat through skin or something? I didn't fully think this part but that depends on if there is actually heat involved or not.
Edit (kinda answers my question)
So, I found this video
in which they used thermal imaging
and the person did get more red.
they said :
Superhot nuclear wings arrived. Almost immediately the heart rate increases, pumping more blood. Literally raising body temperature.
So, the pepper itself doesn't heat you directly.
But it raises heart rate.
Thus, increasing your temperature.
However, I also found that video.
It's in Russian, so, I don't understand what they are saying.
But, he put a pepper on his skin and chewed on one. The temperature of the spot didn't go up.
That was so interesting to watch. | The "heat" associated with capsaicin isn't something that would show up in thermal imaging. Spicy foods will not be warmer on your plate or in your mouth than a non-spicy item exposed to the same temperatures.
However, capsaicin can induce a response from your body that increases blood flow. Food (particularly spicy food), trauma/stress, and other experiences can result in dopamine and endorphins being released, which will increase blood flow within the body. Increased blood flow will cause affected body parts to become warmer.
When you're embarrassed and turn red, this is caused by increased blood flow to the surface of your face, which has a corresponding increase in the surface temperature of the skin on your face. The same can happen when you eat spicy food. However, your body's response is separate from the "hot" sensation that your body feels when it comes in contact with capsaicin. The "hot" feeling in your mouth (or eyes should you be so unfortunate), is not due to thermal heat--just your body interpreting similarly. |
dissolving sugar in chocolate truffels
200g of molten butter, with 1.5 cups of sugar; nearly half an hour of mixing on medium-low heat barely persuaded sugar sand to half-dissolve, with a couple of tablespoons of water poured in.
Once 1 cup of milk powder pre-mixed with half a cup of cocoa powder was folded in, the sugar sand reappeared, as can be seen in the photograph. And a liquid separated - probably water with some cocoa powder dissolved in it.
Any ideas on how to get the sugar dissolved?
My only idea currently is to throw cooled down mixture into sharp-blades blender - maybe, the sugar will be turned into icing sugar. But the quantities are too high, will take a while in this tiny blender. Oh, and throw some coconut oil into the mix.
There is another question like Sugar won't dissolve in cacao butter which suggests using finely powdered sugar, but I would prefer to start with normal sugar and figure out how to dissolve it.
Many thanks. | I don't think this recipe is possible to turn into truffles. The ingredients you name will not turn into a smooth, stable mixture on their own. Truffles depend on chocolate: without actual chocolate in the recipe, you will not end up with a truffle. And turning fat, sugar, and cocoa into chocolate is not possible by just stirring, you would need a chocolate conching machine to make a stable emulsion.
If you hadn't mixed the ingredients yet, my suggestion would be to melt the sugar before adding the remaining ingredients, making a sort of chocolate caramel. However, if you try to do that now, the cocoa (and possibly milk powder) will likely burn and turn everything bitter.
My suggestion to attempt to salvage the mixture at this point would be to add three eggs, a cup of flour, and bake as a brownie. |
Trouble with making Vegan Pastila
I've been trying to make Pastila from the following blog post.
However, I can't eat egg whites, so based on a conversation I had in the comments, I was suggested to use aquafaba as a substitute.
Here's my progress:
Peeled some granny Smith apples and cored them
Baked with a quarter inch of water for an hour, and then extracted the applesauce.
Mixed in aquafaba in a ratio of 1 apple to one tablespoon.
Whipped it for 20 minutes in my stand mixer (didn't turn out white as in the guide, but still was foamy)
Poured into a pan and have been baking for 8 hours at 180 F
However, it's still very loose. Any ideas? | As Billy Kerr commented, pastila is really quite similar to a meringue. Aquafaba sets to produce fine meringues (I did this the other day while I was making vegan pastila, in fact!) so this substitution itself likely isn't the problem.
I think the issue is more likely (a) the amount of water left in the apple sauce affecting the ratio of water to aquafaba (I cooked the puree down on the hob for about twenty minutes) or (b) the consistency of the sauce - did you blend the sauce or leave it fairly chunky? I think it needs blended. My guess would be option (a). |
Turkey crown cooked to temperature but pink juices after resting
I cooked a boneless 1.8kg Turkey crown at 170C (340F) fan for 90 minutes with foil on top to protect the skin from burning. I removed the foil and cooked uncovered for another 30 minutes, this brought the internal temperature to just under 70C (160F). As a precaution, I cooked the crown for a further 30 minutes, bringing the internal temperature up to 72-75C where I probed. The meat has been left to rest wrapped in foil before being refrigerated for consumption the next day. This should bring the meat up to > 75C (165F).
When I went to place it in the refrigerator, the juices on the plate were slightly pink.
Will this be safe to eat cold or if I reheat the slices in a stock to 75C? | The color of the “juices” is not an exact indicator of whether food was cooked to/held at a safe temperature. If the thermometer is accurate and was properly placed, then that’s what you should trust. |
How can I increase white wine shelf life specifically bought for cooking?
In the answers to the popular question What defines cooking wine? one common recommendation seems to be to simply use regular wine.
However, it seems that wine goes bad in a few days. I don't consume wine, except for cooking wine, which from the answers to the above question seems to be a suboptimal choice.
Hence the follow-up question: How can I increase the shelf life of regular wine? Is it possible that a wine that has gone bad/sour is still useful for cooking while it is unfit for drinking?
The closest answer I could find is linked below. There the recommendation is vermouth. But that perhaps is a preference. I am curious if there's a simple answer to elongate shelf life where a wine can be used for months for cooking.
https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/3034/33912
My primary use case is Adam Ragusea's veg soup recipe. Currently I am using cooking wine (with a fair bit of salt as well as potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite). | Freeze it in cubes and use it as required. Wine should be low-alcohol enough to freeze in a regular freezer, although you might find you get 'slushier' parts – if you do, these will have a higher alcohol concentration – so be careful about the container you use.
To answer your other questions, wine going 'bad' is a taste issue rather than a food safety issue, so if the wine tastes fine to you it is fine to cook with and if it tastes bad to you I wouldn't cook with it. Sure, you might put sour wine into a recipe and notice the sourness less than if you just drank it, but it's certainly not improving your food at that point and I wouldn't use it.
I will say that when people say wine lasts only a few days they're often taking from the perspective of someone with a very particular palette, and if you're aiming at 'tastes like wine' you'll likely be fine for at least a week, keeping it sealed in the fridge to slow oxidation. |
Is this safe to eat?
I am immunocompromised.
Is this safe to eat? https://emalm.com/?v=Fn4vm
Look at its texture. I DON'T KNOW IF IT IS RAW OR COOKED.
What it is: 5 organic medium egg yolks + 80g organic cow butter. Stirred on LOWEST heat. | The sauce you are making is essentially Hollandaise Sauce; you're mixing eggs with warm, clarified butter until they emulsify.
If you are immunocompromised in a way that makes foodborne pathogens super-risky, then you are right to be cautious. Eggs in hollandaise are not fully cooked, and it is difficult to hit the exact temperature (62C/145F) where the sauce is too hot for bacteria but not hot enough to curdle and break the sauce.
As such, you might want to consider making your sauce with pastuerized eggs. |
How to efficiently squeeze lemons by hand?
How to squeeze a whole lemon so that as much of the juice as possible is extracted. And as a second priority none/not many of the seeds?
What alternatives do exists for properly squeezing lemons?
Differences to that question:
whole lemon/s, not just a slice, I know the trick with the fork
no lemon crusher, I don't do that often enough to motivate the investment. | Roll the lemon on a surface, squashing it slightly, before cutting it in halves. It will be easier to release the juice using hand pressure.
Beyond that, accept that your hands will get covered in juice and press it until you can't get more juice out. You can apply more pressure by applying it to a small area and working around the lemon's circumference.
If you want to avoid the seeds, you can remove some of them before you crush it. To be certain, squeeze it through a filter or into a container before adding it to your food. |
What will happen if I make a parisian flan with all 1% milk instead of whole milk and heavy cream?
All the recipes I've seen for parisian flans use a combination of whole milk and heavy cream. What will happen if I only use 1% milk? Will it affect just the taste and a little bit of texture or will the whole thing just not work? | It will work. Egg custard can be made with basically any liquid, the fat in the dairy is just for taste. Go ahead and make it, it will still be a flan.
Note that the chemistry of custards is somewhat finicky, and certain ingredients, including the fat, increase your leeway. When you make it with your low-fat milk, you should be extra careful to not overcook it. |
Is it safe if I use house hold scissors instead of special kitchen scissors?
I used scissors to cut a straw for my hydroflask, then I drank out of it. Is is safe if I used plain household scissors? I rinsed the straw before I drank out of it, right after using the scissors to cut it. | The problem is that we don’t know what you did with the scissors, how well you cleaned them before and the straw after cutting.
If you used reasonably clean utensils (using the standard you would apply to regular kitchen tools like knives), there’s nothing in the material per se that would be problematic if used occasionally.
Many even professional chefs use tools that came from a hardware store rather than a cooking supply store. Once the grease from manufacturing is removed, the metal should be fine. Note that they are probably not stainless steel and thus require special care to prevent e.g. rusting, but that’s doable. I would however warn you against regularly mixing uses back and forth, especially when working with unsafe substances - even good cleaning has a small risk of leaving hazardous materials behind, a mistake is easily made and nobody wants to garnish dinner with a bit of weed killer or something alike. |
Can I use frozen fish in a fish pie suitable for home freezing?
In the UK (and probably elsewhere), frozen fish is considerably cheaper and more common than fresh fish. In an ideal world, I would use fresh fish along with a cream or milk based bechamel sauce, spinach, cheese and potatoes then freeze any leftovers, but this is really expensive. How would a reheated frozen dish using fresh fish compare with one made using frozen fish? Assuming there are no intrinsic food safety issues associated with this practice, would the quality of the dish suffer from using frozen fish that was reheated twice? I've heard that most "Fresh" fish in UK supermarkets was already pre-frozen then defrosted, which would make it pointless purchasing it specifically for this dish. | I think your question needs clarifying, and better limited to a single question. However, freezing and thawing, repeatedly, particularly with fish, generally impacts texture in a negative way. There is not safety issue, per se. Given your preparation, you might not be too concerned about the texture, but that is probably the main issue. |
To concoct 糟溜鱼片, what lone American alcoholic drink can substitute 米酒, 糟鹵, 花彫, 酒釀?
I travelled prior COVID. This Hong Kong restaurant served 糟溜鱼片. I am trying to reconstruct it at home. But my American town has no Asian stores, and nowhere sells the 3 Chinese wines listed below.
Undeniably, using 1 ingredient is simpler than 3 wines. Thus what SINGLE American alcoholic beverage can substitute these three Chinese wines?
http://www.misandao.net/1.%20Chinese%20Food/1.2%20Seafood/WB008.%20FishFilletInWineSauce.htm itemizes 3 Chinese wines:
米酒(rice cooking wine) 1大匙 (tbsp)
上海老大同香糟卤(rice wine sauce) 75ml
酒酿(sweet rice wine) 2大匙 (tbsp)
And this chef itemizes 3 Chinese wines too.
糟鹵 50克
花彫 50克
酒釀 15克 | I think dry sherry might work. Not certain. |
How to salvage bitter homemade mustard?
I made some mustard but it turned out bitter.
I saw similar question here but their case was a bit different than mine.
I used only small yellow seeds. Didn't use any dark ones.
Which is supposed to make my mustard mellow.
Here is the recipe I followed :
• yellow mustard seeds (1½ cup)
• water (2 cup)
• vinegar (¼ cup)
• salt (¾ tbsp)
▫ put everything into a mason jar
▫ let ferment for a week
▫ blend all well
The first thing that didn't go according to recipe was the water absorption.
It was supposed to suck up all the liquid and get swoll.
It only buffed a very little. And I'm left with half the jar liquid after a week.
Then, after I blended it,
it had a sour smell, very acidic taste. And of course, very bitter.
It tasted nothing like a mustard.
How do I salvage it? | I do not think you can salvage anything here, since you already blended everything together. I would guess the mustard seeds are the culprit here - maybe they were too old? The recipes for mustard - particularly this one from seriouseatsI found on the quick follow along the same route (mustard seeds, water, vinegar, salt into a container, let ferment at room temperature, blend), so I think the basic process should work. Your recipe does however have a lot of extra water...maybe the environment was too watered down for fermentation to kick in, and you were left with extra liquid.
I suggest buying fresh mustard seeds and trying again. |
Is there a way to re-crystallize or temper goat butter?
I received a small tub of goat butter for Christmas, and unfortunately I left it too close to my stove last night, and the whole thing melted. (just the butter, nor the plastic obviously.)
I read that melted butter doesn't solidify correctly because it has a crystalline structure that's broken by the heat.
... Which sounds an awful lot like cocoa butter to me, and I've successfully tempered chocolate (or close enough) by using seed crystals of not-melted cocoa butter until it reaches the correct temperature.
Google is very confused by my question, so I'm reaching out here. Is there a way to temper melted animal butter to return it to its original crystalline structure? | No, you cannot temper it. Chocolate is pretty much the only edible product where tempering is worth it.
"sounds an awful lot like cocoa butter" - only because the explanation you came across was not detailed enough. Cocoa butter is a much simpler case. Only three fatty acids (oleic, stearic and palmitic acid) account for over 95% of its composition, and it so happens that, when cooled under the right conditions, they form a regular lattice with very pleasant sensory properties.
Butter, on the other hand, is not just any old crystalline lattice. It is a complicated emulsion:
The fat globules, solid crystals, and water droplets are embedded in a continuous mass of semisolid “free” fat that coats them all. *
So you start out with the mammal's udder packing fat into globules, which have their own membrane. When the butter is churned, most globules split, and out comes the semisolid fat. The solid fat crystals start clumping into each other, and some of the water comes out of emulsion (=buttermilk, in the original meaning of the word). Then you remove that free water, and you are left with a mix of structurally complicated components. It is not a single regular structure, and there is no mechanism for it to self-order, the way cocoa butter does.
Bottom line, you are left with goat butterfat now. It will never go back to be butter, but as a consolation, it is still perfectly edible.
* McGee On Food and Cooking |
Adding oil/fat to bread dough
I make bread by mixing whole wheat and white flours 50-50, yeast and water, let it rise 24 hrs, shape the dough and roll it in flour to get some semblance of final shape and let it sit for 2 more hours, then bake it for an hour.
I love the bread but I wonder if adding olive oil to the dough would make it more pleasantly moist. Before I experiment in practice, what results can I expect by adding (a few tablespoons of) olive oil to bread dough? | It will have less of an open crumb but will be softer and more moist. |
Reduce heat of mustard condiment
I have been given a jar of homemade mustard as a gift. It is apparently a dijon-style made mustard for sandwiches. Luckily I tasted it before using it. Even a tiny taste almost blew the nose off my face.
Despite this I don't want to bin it. Firstly, it was a gift. Secondly, what I tasted had a lovely creamy texture. It would be a shame to waste it.
What I want to know is, is there anything I can mix this mustard with that would considerably tone down the "heat", preferably without ruining the flavour and texture too much?
I know that there are things that work with chilli, but presumably this is a different chemical. | You could mix it with mayonnaise to make Dijonnaise, which is an excellent sandwich spread. |
Why would using a tall baking pan cause the top of a cake to be darker?
I'm reading a review of cake pans.
Most of the round pans in the review are 2 inches tall. However, there is one round pan in the review that is 2.5 inches tall, and the review had the following comment about it:
It baked an evenly golden cake, but it was half an inch taller than any other pan, tall enough to bake the top of the cake darker than any other.
Why would baking a cake in a tall pan make the top of the cake darker? | Very theoretically: if the pan is filled to the brim, the upper surface of the cake will be closer to the heating element, so the cake will be somewhat darker.
I am actually quite skeptical that this is what happened here. I looked at the review you linked and don't see any indication that they scaled the recipe for the taller pan. Also, they only baked one cake per pan. Also, I wouldn't intuitively expect only half an inch difference to create a marked change in color.
Whatever the reason for the darker cake - whether something inherent in the pan, or a random difference because of the small sample size - the attribution to the taller pan sounds like a just-so story to me. |
Russian Pie Recipe breaks into little pieces?
I am trying to make Russian Pies, I tried following the recipe in this video.
I put 3 1/2 Cups of All Purpose Flour in a bowl. And then I put 2 tbl spoons of baking powder and a small table spoon of table salt. 3/4 of a cup of canola oil. 1 cup of milk. Mixed them together, divided the dough into 4 equal pi on an electric stove, let them rest for 2 minutes. Start putting them in a pan with oil to cook one layer of the Russian Pie and spray the pan with oil and put it on the medium heat and leave it in the pan for 2 minutes, and at the end it turns brown and breaks into little pieces, not like what is in the video.
And it has a bitter taste.
What did I do wrong? | If the bread is breaking up and turning brown, I think the heat is too high and/or there isn't enough oil in the pan (possibly both). Try a lower heat and slightly more oil (making sure to let the oil heat up before adding the bread). Electric stoves can be unpredictable!
The bitter taste might be from the burnt elements, but I think it's more likely that you're adding too much baking powder, which tastes unpleasant if it hasn't fully reacted (and could also be contributing to breaking the dough up). Try one teaspoon instead of two tablespoons (drastically too much for the amount of flour you're using).
I'm not sure from you description, but are you cooking one side before joining it to the other? That won't work - you won't be able to press them together, as one will be a cooked bread rather than a dough. Form the whole bread before putting it in the pan.
I'm afraid I don't speak the language in the video you've linked, but I think I recognise what you're trying to make - a filled khachapuri (a Georgian rather than Russian dish). |
Stop Hummus from darkening
I want to use hummus in a catering product, but I noticed it changes colors when left out for too long. The problem is that it needs to look appealing for a few hours.
Do you have any tips on how to make hummus look fresh for longer? | Sure, a few tips below. Note that you're not going to be able to keep it from drying/darkening entirely; the below is intended to keep it as appetizing as possible despite this.
Use a higher % of tahini (sesame paste) than you might otherwise use. The extra oil content slows drying, and has the benefit of making the hummus creamier and better-tasting (although more expensive to make).
Also add some additional lightly salted cold water when making the hummus. The higher water content also slows drying.
When plating, cover the hummus in a heavy swirl of olive oil to prevent drying/oxidation.
If folks are going to be serving themselves, after which the hummus will sit out for a while, you can take either of these additional steps:
Spritz the hummus with water or olive oil from a mister.
Portion the hummus into several small containers, and uncover them one at a time as the others are used up. |
What is the functional purpose of straining out shallots from a Beurre Rouge (Red Butter Sauce)?
Curious as to the reasoning behind why the French favor straining out shallots. Specifically I'm wondering if this is a purely textural thing, or if leaving in the shallots causes the sauce to have too strong of a shallot flavor. Usually I see shallots used when a recipe is looking not to overwhelm the dish with onion-y flavor. | It's a texture thing. Most classic French sauces are strained for texture and appearance reasons. Also, some versions of beurre rouge have more than just shallots in them, making it more necessary to strain lest it be more of the chutney than a sauce.
If you don't care, you can mince the shallots and leave them in the sauce, per Spruce Eats. |
Have they done something to onions recently?
Not long ago -- possibly less than a year -- I bought onions from the same store in Sweden, as medicine. I would chew on a segment so that my mouth "burned", and then wash it down with some "sour milk".
Recently, for the last few months at least, I find that they barely taste anything. It puzzles me. It's not in my head. It cannot be. They used to be much stronger in taste. Now, it's like they barely taste anything at all in comparison. It no longer "burns". It doesn't feel like it does much good as medicine.
Have they started doing some kind of "GMO" thing to onions now or what? Or does it have some other explanation? | No, the onions you're buying have not been genetically modified. The EU regulates GMO foods very strictly and hasn't authorised any GM onions.
It's possible that you're buying a different cultivar of onion which may have a different taste. I've never heard of the alternative medicine practice you're describing, but some onions (e.g. vidalias) are easier to eat than others and may not taste as strong to you if you're looking for a cooking onion rather than a sweet onion.
Another explanation might be more likely - you had Covid several months ago and it's still affecting your sense of taste. Even mild cases can have lingering effects.
Edited to add: you say you're going to the same store. Consider going to a different one and comparing the flavour of the onions there. |
If milk bottle says BEST BY JUNE 10/22 , how long does it last in the fridge if the bottle is opened and unopened?
Google says all opened milk lasts 4-7 days. It also says all unopened milk lasts 5-7 days.
But my bottle has a BEST BY date of JUNE 10/22 , that is 5 months. Both can't be right, Either the article is wrong or the date on my bottle is a mistake of some kind. It's Nestles brand milk. Does someone have a clue.?
As you can tell I don't usually buy milk. | Was the milk stored at ambient temperature in the place you bought it? If so, you’ve probably bought ultra heat treated (UHT) milk. This kind of milk has been through a more aggressive sterilisation process than regular milk (which is pasteurised). UHT milk lasts much longer unopened because the bacteria that make milk curdle have been killed, but has a different taste (which most people find less pleasant than fresh milk). |
Category name for restaurants NOT dressing food?
Is it there a specific category name or whatever, defining restaurants that serve food without dressing, or any kind of food art or dish decoration, despite still serving good quality, tasty food, fill-me-up dishes? Not to mistake with low quality inns or cheap diners. | There are several types of restaurant that might fit your description. I am working from a US perspective here.
Fast food - Quick counter or drive through service. Mostly processed food in a restaurant that has a very casual ambiance. Food is mostly served packaged and/or wrapped.
Fast casual - Often sit-down service (though can include counter service), more expensive than fast food. Can still be processed food. Nicer ambiance, but still casual.
Family style restaurant - sit down service, where food is served to share on larger platters.
Casual dining - ambiance is still fairly casual, but nicer, less "corporate" feeling than fast casual. Sit-down/table service and higher prices.
I guess I could also include cafes in the list...coffee shops that serve food.
None of the above place a great emphasis on the aesthetics of plating food, though each has its own aesthetic.
You could certainly find "quality" in each category, though there is definitely a range. |
Why does my deep fryer say not to use peanut oil?
I got a Tefal deep fryer for Christmas (yay!) which has an automatic filtering system so you can re-use oil multiple times. When reading through the manual it says 'Do not use groundnut (i.e. peanut) oil', without any explanation as to why. My understanding is that refined peanut oil has a high smoke point and is a widely used choice for deep frying, but I suspect they have a good reason for this very prominent recommendation.
Why not use peanut oil? Is it due to a relatively high gelling point, does the oil break down in storage, or is there some sort of property I don't know about? | On the T-fal USA website, they address this in their FAQ section. (A quick check on the UK Tefal site shows the same question.) Regardless of which model of fryer you have, it seems that all of their home fryers have the same question & answer regarding peanut oil--indicating it is a recommendation that applies to all T-fal fryers.
Frequently asked questions --> Various Topics:
WHY DO YOU NOT RECOMMEND USING PEANUT OIL?
Peanut oil has a lower smoking point than most vegetable oils, so it may slightly smoke at frying temperatures. It also imparts a slight flavour that may or may not be desirable.
So, it would seem this isn't necessarily a functional detail specific to this fryer, but rather an opinion on peanut oil itself. |
Wild Salmon from grill is too dry
my local restaurant served me recently some wild salmon (slice) from the grill. It tasted delicious, but was pretty dry.
I'm aware that wild salmon has much less fat. So I'm wondering, is there any preparation or cooking technique for barbecuing wild salmon on the grill to avoid that the fish gets dry?
note: Placing the grill a bit higher, is not an option for a restaurant, where they grill several kind of fish at the same time
P.S.: there is a similar question here, but the answers focus on how to cook farmed salmon | The answer to "how do I grill plain wild salmon without it being dry" is both simple and hard: don't overcook it.
Wild salmon fillets are thinner, with less fat, than farmed salmon. As such, They go from "done" to "overcooked" in less than a minute. For a thin tail piece, for example, time on the grill should be only around 3-4 minutes. If you're not sure it's completely done, it's already done.
For this reason, I only order wild salmon at restaurants that are specifically seafood-focused, because I know that more general restaurants will overcook it.
Above is based on my experience as a resident of the US Pacific Northwest with a grill and a subscription to a wild salmon CSA. |
What meat can I substitute for lamb in Scotch Broth?
A traditional Scotch Broth calls for lamb. However, my partner does not like the strong smell, and lamb is not so easy to get a hold of anyway.
What meat can I substitute for lamb in Scotch Broth while still getting something approximating "what mother used to make"?
(I may also try a pure veggie option, but some meat seems to help it "stick to the ribs" on a cold day.) | I'm Scottish (and live in Scotland). Traditionally, Scotch broth was made using cheap cuts of mutton, often on-the-bone. I make this soup regularly in winter. It's real winter comfort food!
However, you can use any meat you want, or none.
Meats I've personally tried include: cheap cuts of lamb, beef, chicken, even ham. Leftovers are also a good option. A left over roast chicken carcass is as good as anything. In my opinion it's best if the meat is on the bone. It adds something extra special. On occasion I've also used supermarket cartons of meat stock, or even stock cubes. The absence of one ingredient (meat) would never stop me from making one of my favourite soups!
I've also made it completely vegan before by using vegetable stock cubes as the base for the soup. The rest of the ingredients are already vegan, basically root vegetables, onions, leeks, pearl barley, peas, pulses etc. Whatever you have available really.
At its core, the broth itself is really just a vegetable soup. The uniqueness of the flavour (the thing that makes it "Scotch" broth IMHO) comes from the use of pearl barley which is used to thicken up the soup. Without the pearl barley, it would just be a vegetable broth. The other ingredients are variable/optional. |
Advantage of flexible cutting mat?
For anyone who owns and uses a flexible cutting mat, what do you enjoy about it?
Thanks | I can cut/chop ingredients then curve the mat to transfer them to a pan/container without spillage ...
They also take up less space and I have four colour code mats for meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit. |
Are there any ways to make rum cookies other than baking them?
In the 1935 Walt Disney animated short `The Cookie Carnival' three tipsy rum cookies sing that all other cookies are baked in a pan but a rum cookie always is stewed.
Is that just a play-on-words or can rum cookies be prepared without baking? I have read about boiled cookies but, like bagels, the last step is to bake them. | Rum balls are prepared without cooking. I’m not aware of any cookie-like thing which is simply boiled or “stewed”, and I doubt anything one could produce that way would be recognizable as a cookie. |
Do French/International chefs really use/talk about Fahrenheit instead of Celsius degrees?
Example: https://youtu.be/lVcTvHTn6Dw?t=325
This chef is very French, yet he talks about Fahrenheit. In France, which is in Europe, surely they use Celsius? He seems to "think" in American terminology, which I find puzzling. I really expected a French chef to be all about Celsius, kilograms and other typical European conventions/measurements. To be fair, I don't remember if I've heard him refer to "cups" or other American measurement units. | His target audience is American, hence the Fahrenheit reference. His other videos mention 'eggplant' and Thanksgiving. |
Difference between dense materials and materials with high heat capacity (e.g. for pans)?
TLDR: In the context of pans/cooking, is high density and high heat capacity basically interchangeable?
If I have two pans such that it takes approximately the same energy to heat them to the same temperature, one with a high heat capacity but a low density and one with a low heat capacity but a high density, which are otherwise similar, how will this affect the results when using the pan? | Sort of.
Specific heat capacity has units J kg^-1 K^-1; that is joules per Kelvin per kilogram, and is defined per material; (a given kind of) steel has one specific heat capacity, water has another, and so on, regardless of how much of that material you have. Heat capacity (note, no 'specific') is what you get when you have accounted for that mass; water, the material, has a specific heat capacity of a little over 4 kJ kg^-1 K^-1; one kilogram of water has a heat capacity of a little over 4 kJ K^-1, two kilograms has a heat capacity of a bit over 8 kJ K^-1, and so on.
There's also an issue of volume versus mass; for example, aluminium has a specific heat capacity about twice as great as that of steel, but is about one third as dense; as such, an aluminium pan of the same size (i.e. volume/displacement) as a steel pan will have about two thirds the heat capacity; the better SHC is not enough to make up for the lower density.
Finally, none of this information says anything about conductivity, which is the other important property re: heat transfer in a pan.
In your example, where you have two pans with similar heat capacities, one made of a high-SHC, low-density material and one made of a low-SHC, high-density material, I don't know that the question of how they'll perform differently can be adequately answered without knowing the conductivities of the two materials; as it stands, there are only so many materials and constructions that we generally make cookware out of, as such, it's probably most efficient to look at the properties of specific techniques over hypotheticals like this. |
What is the brown wormlike stuff on the outer edges inside my boiled egg?
I almost ate the whole egg before noticing this gross thing I have never seen before. I feel stomach upset in near future!? | These are a normal part of eggs, albeit an unusually large one. If you have ever broken open an egg and noticed reddish flecks in the albumen or around the yolk, then you have seen smaller versions of this one.
Basically these small red bits are bits of the oviduct of the chicken that layed the egg, and are perfectly edible. There should be no reason to cause gastrointestinal problems from consuming these, other than the not-so-nice-to-look-at component. |
Deidre's bread getting HUGE in the oven
I have made Deidre's Ultimate Keto Bread 2.0 for years with generally consistent results (though a bit uneven on the top). I made a couple minor tweaks recently, and the last 2 batches have risen properly, but got ENORMOUS in the oven (see photo)! Then they collapsed while cooling, making a weird and dense inside. There was no giant air bubble - just huge. I know if it works, don't fix it, so why I am tweaking it, but I was hoping to get the top to rise a bit more evenly. Here were the tweaks:
I make it in the Kitchen Aid and need the paddle to get it to come together, so maybe 5 minutes with the paddle, then reduced the time with dough hook to 5 min (I used to do 10+). (In making some non-keto bread for hubby, they warn against over-kneading, so figured I'd try it).
I used to flatten the dough, put it in the bottom of the loaf pan, let it rise ~2 hours in a microwave warmed with boiled water. It always rose fine, sometimes rose a bit more while baking, but mostly came out looking like it did after the rise, and never collapsed. Based on another non-keto bread technique, this time I made a 9" rectangle, rolled it up from the short side, and placed it in the loaf pan. The first time I did my usual 2 hour rise and it was a nice even, normal-looking rise, but when it got so huge in the oven, I figured it was over proofed. So I then tried only a 45 min rise (which was enough to look like a normal rise), and it got even bigger in the oven!
Any thoughts on which of these tweaks may have caused it to expand so much during baking, and collapse? Could the rolling up of the dough make such a difference? Did I need to knead longer? (NSGod - Once I figure this out, I plan to try your updated version with the increased dry ingredients. Thanks for your experimentation toward perfection.)
Recipe:
84 g golden flaxseed meal 28.19% 84.0 g (flour)
60 g oat fiber 20.13% 60.0 g (flour)
154 g vital wheat gluten 51.68% 154.0 g (flour)
100.00% 298.0 g (total)
------------------------------------------------------------
¼ tsp xanthan gum 0.25% 0.8 g
1 tsp salt 2.01% 6.0 g
2 ¼ tsp instant dry yeast 2.60% 7.8 g
1 tsp honey 2.35% 7.0 g
1 cup water 79.53% 237.0 g
2 large eggs 33.56% 100.0 g
2 Tbsp oil (canola) 9.14% 27.3 g
Instructions 1. Proof yeast in honey and warm water; mix all with paddle attachment 3-5 min, then dough hook for 5-10 min. | Well, I have good news and bad news. I attempted a ½ size test loaf using my 1st recommended recipe below. The bad news is I had the exact same problem as the OP did. The good news is that now that I can reproduce the problem, I can better reason what might be happening. I will leave the answer and update it as I continue to make tests.
I've had this happen before myself, from time to time. After doing some testing, I’ve come up with some recommended changes to the recipe.
TL/DR: The primary cause for the great expansion during baking and collapse afterwards is a combination of excess amounts of water, honey, and yeast. The biggest contributor was the amount of water, with the other 2 less so. I arrived at this answer by first inadvertently reproducing the problem the OP had, and then tested several variations until I came up with the desired result.
Before I get to that answer, however, a bit about how this recipe works: vital wheat gluten mixed with water makes a virtually solid rubbery mass. It is highly elastic. If you managed to trap air in that water + vital wheat gluten mix, and applied heat to it, the air and moisture would expand and it would blow up like a balloon. Once you remove the heat, however, it will deflate just like a balloon will. Pure VWG won’t expand and then hold its shape. That sounds a bit like what might be happening in your case.
So, what happens in a “normal” wheat flour bread recipe during baking: can it expand and collapse like this? To be honest, I’m not sure, and hopefully some more experienced traditional bakers can help fill in the gaps. That said, here’s how I imagine that it works. In a regular wheat flour bread recipe there's not nearly as much gluten, and it's also not nearly as fully developed and elastic as VWG is. In addition, there are starches that "set" and help the bread hold its expanded shape.
In order to accomplish the same effect, Deidre’s recipe works by adding 2 important ingredients to function as flour along with the VWG: oat fiber and flaxseed meal. Oat fiber is a pure insoluble fiber that interferes with the gluten networks by getting between the VWG particles, thereby preventing cross-linking. This allows for air holes to develop during fermentation and baking. Unlike vital wheat gluten, oat fiber has no structure building characteristics at all: it’s simply a filler. In contrast to vital wheat gluten, which tends to want to hold onto moisture during baking, oat fiber has a neutral effect on the water-retaining characteristics of the dough: it neither retains moisture, nor acts as a drying agent. Flaxseed meal contains soluble fiber in the form of a mucilage network that can be woven in between the gluten network to help open up the crumb somewhat. Flaxseed meal does have gelling structure-building characteristics, but it also has a tendency to want to hold onto moisture. So, while the oat fiber and flaxseed meal help tame the elasticity of the vital wheat gluten somewhat, they don’t add any “setting” ability. The recipe does include 2 eggs which, while providing moisture, also act as structure builders and drying agents (particularly the egg white proteins). They do aid a bit in helping the bread to “set” during baking.
Given those thoughts, I do have some suggested modifications to the recipe to try. First, I'd lose the xanthan gum, as it inhibits gluten development and results in a tighter crumb. While the oat fiber and flaxseed also do this, by eliminating the xanthan as a variable, it can make reasoning about what’s happening a bit easier. I also noticed that your vital wheat gluten % is a tad high. That, and not enough oat fiber could potentially cause the loaf to be too elastic, especially when mixed in a stand mixer. I try to keep the weight of the oat fiber about equal to the weight of the flaxseed meal. If you’re having issues with it blowing up and collapsing, I’d probably lower the vital wheat gluten proportion down to around 46% rather than 51%. (Increasing the amount of oat fiber can cause taste to suffer, so you may want to add a Tbsp or so of a keto sweetener to offset that).
My original recommended recipe following the advice in the previous paragraph (which actually ended up producing results similar to OP):
85 g golden flaxseed meal 26.98% 85.0 g (flour)
85 g oat fiber 26.98% 85.0 g (flour)
145 g vital wheat gluten 46.03% 145.0 g (flour)
100.00% 315.0 g (total)
------------------------------------------------------------
1+ tsp (6.3 g) salt 2.00% 6.3 g
2 ¼ tsp instant dry yeast 2.46% 7.8 g
1 tsp honey 2.22% 7.0 g
1 cup water 75.24% 237.0 g
2 large eggs 31.75% 100.0 g
2 Tbsp oil 8.65% 27.2 g
-------------
hydration(water:237, eggs:76.2g) 99.43% 313.2 g
This dough was extremely wet, and as such, expanded greatly during baking. While this recipe has a hydration rate (ratio of the weight of moisture to the weight of the flour) of around 99%, I’ve found that the bare minimum amount needed for the dough to come together is in the low 80% range. This overly wet dough was providing extra lift in the form of moisture turning to steam to push things outward. Forgive the bad focus, but you can see from the image below what happened after baking:
After baking and while cooling, the sides of the loaf were almost sucked back in towards the center. During baking all that extra moisture turned to steam and expanded the bread outward, but as soon as that source of heat was removed, the excess water cooled and created a vacuum and started to collapse the loaf. Because the crumb was so overly open as well, it doesn’t have much structure to resist the forces.
While I immediately dismissed the amount of honey (sole source of food) and yeast as a contributing factor, I definitely think this is also part of the problem. So, did Deidre’s recipe just call for a ridiculously high amount of yeast? Not necessarily. The performance of this bread depends greatly on how well the dough is mixed and kneaded. I think with an undermixed loaf and higher amount of yeast, you could probably create the equivalent of a fully mixed loaf and a lower amount of yeast. In the former’s case, much of the extra gas produced would simply escape out of the loaf during proofing and baking. Based on how well I mixed the dough and how well you mixed the dough (and the roll-up method you used), the amount of yeast likely needs an adjustment.
So, here is final revised recipe:
85 g golden flaxseed meal 26.98% 85.0 g (flour)
85 g oat fiber 26.98% 85.0 g (flour)
145 g vital wheat gluten 46.03% 145.0 g (flour)
100.00% 315.0 g (total)
------------------------------------------------------------
1+ tsp (6.3 g) salt 2.00% 6.3 g
7/8 tsp instant dry yeast 0.95% 3.0 g
½+ tsp (4 g) honey 1.27% 4.0 g
200 g (~6.75 fl.oz.) water 63.49% 200.0 g
2 large eggs 31.75% 100.0 g
2 Tbsp oil 8.65% 27.2 g
-------------
hydration(water:200g, eggs:76.2g) 87.68% 276.2 g
You’ll notice that I ended up reducing the water from around 99% to 88%, the amount of yeast from 2.46% to 0.95%, and the amount of honey from 2.22% to 1.27%. I mixed this just like the others, first with the paddle attachment, then with the dough hook, then by hand for a couple minutes until I could tell it was ready. I placed it in the loaf pan and allowed it to rise (I take a large bowl, lay a heating pad in it, then set the loaf pan on top of that, then cover it all with saran wrap and a towel). I place it on low heat or medium if I'm in a hurry. I let it rise for about an hour or so, until it was at the top of the pan. With this final loaf, I decided to slash the top of the loaf before baking. While normally this is a way to help allow for maximum expansion during baking, it's possible it had the opposite effect for our loaf. In any case it only rose about another inch or so during baking.
This resulted in a loaf that didn’t cave in after removing from the oven: |
Oatmeal Peanut Butter Raisin Chocolate Chip Nut Cookies
I have a large oatmeal cookie recipe. For the oatmeal, choc chips, raisins and nuts they say to stir them in by hand but the recipe is so large that I can't stir them. Due to getting older I no longer have the strength in my arm to do that. Is it possible to mix them in the standing mixer without changing the texture of the cookies. Thanks. | It is likely the hand mixing is to avoid breaking the nuts apart and smearing chips and/or raisins. Just use the mixer on a low speed, and only until mixed. You should not have a problem. I always use a mixer for cookies, regardless of add-ins. This step will have minimal impact on cookie texture, whereas, the proper creaming of butter and sugar, as well as emulsifying/whipping in eggs will. |
Any way to keep a chicken baked in the oven dry?
My SO has a big thing with the textures of what she eats. And a 'moist' chicken is definitely something that is not on her OK list.
So when baking a whole chicken in the oven, is there tips and tricks to have a chicken that is NOT moist? | Just follow any recipe for oven baked chicken and add roughly 15 to 30 min of extra cooking time. By then, the internal temperature of the meat will definitely have exceeded 66°C/150° F, after which the breast meat begins to dry out (see seriouseats link below).
Seriouseats guide to spatchcocking chicken could give you an idea on how to purpusefully overcook a chicken by not spatchcocking it. This way, the breast will likely be overcooked, and thus dry, while the drumsticks should be "perfect" (by the credo that dry chicken = not perfect).
This way, your SO could enjoy a dry breast, while you could eat juicy drumsticks and thighs. |
Is adding butter to caramel sauce essential?
I doubt that omitting butter in caramel sauce will have a significant effect on the texture or the taste of the caramel sauce. May I know about the reasons of adding butter inside? The aim of the caramel sauce is to act as the chocolate ganache drip on a cake. | Yes, you can make a caramel sauce without butter, but you have to add either water or... something else.
If you use water, you'll get a pure caramel syrup that looks like honey. Personally, this is what I'd recommend because it's versatile on it's own, and can be repurposed into a different caramel sauce if you add another liquid, and patiently cook the mixture back to the proper temperature.
In order to make a pure caramel syrup: Cook your sugar up to the desired temperature in a very large pot. Then, remove the syrup from the heat (I usually move to the sink to be safe), stand back, and using a towel or oven mitt to protect your hand, pour water into the pot. There will be lots of steam and bubbling, so please be careful. Then return the caramelized sugar and water to the heat, stir to dissolve the solid bits of caramel, and continue to cook until you've reached the consistency you desire. For a drip/glaze, you'll want to cook it to between 225 and 235 F, I'd think. It would be best to keep a cool plate to the side so you can drip a little of your caramel syrup at a time and judge its thickness as you go along.
Keep in mind this will be a syrup by itself, so it will drip... and keep dripping. It will not set up, unless you cook it to the point where it's chewy/tough like @rumtscho warns. However, an easy workaround is to make a piping gel, either with gelatin or cooked starch using your caramel syrup in place of corn syrup or sugar.
If you want an opaque syrup that has a more complex or creamy flavor, you'll need to use a dairy product instead of water. Butter is a go-to because it lends the most richness with the least amount of steam, and least dulce de leche/cooked milk flavor, and accordingly the least risk of curdling. Heavy cream is also a go-to because it's a very stable emulsion, which will help prevent any greasiness from separation, is still unlikely to curdle, and doesn't produce a lot of steam. Some of us really enjoy the tart dulce de leche flavor as part of a caramel as well.
You can use lower-fat dairy products like half and half, or even whole milk. I can't tell you if 2% milk, skim milk, or non-dairy options will work, but if they can handle being boiled without curdling, then they'll probably work. I just can't promise it. The lower fat and higher protein your liquid has, however, the more danger you'll have of curdling. This danger is exacerbated by the high temperatures, and by the darkness of the caramel. The darker the caramel, the higher the acidity. So, if you use a lower-fat liquid (other than water, obviously), I would recommend letting the caramel syrup cool down significantly before adding the liquid. That will be more time-consuming, but will hopefully prevent curdling.
Regardless of the substance you add, the basic procedure remains the same: Cook sugar in a big pot until it's the right temperature/color for your needs. Then, (allow the molten sugar to cool down if adding a low-fat liquid, or else take measures to protect yourself from the steam, and) add the butter or liquid. Return to the heat, stirring to re-melt and combine. Continue stirring and heating until it reaches a good temperature/consistency for your application. Consider using it to make a piping gel if you need more stability.
Also, in case it's relevant-- I've tried making caramel using coconut oil, but that did not work. It totally separated. Adding heavy cream managed to emulsify it, but it still had a distinctly oily taste and feel to it, which I did not enjoy. I did not test using coconut milk or coconut cream, but considering that those tend to separate in the can, I'm skeptical that they would work well either. |
24 hour yogurt calcium content
How much calcium in 24 hour yogurt? I use a half gallon of Organic whole milk & starter. I have heard yogurt has more calcium than milk after fermentation, but can find no measurements (or %DV)for calcium on homemade 24 hour yogurt. | Calcium is an element, so the biological-chemical processes of fermentation can neither create nor destroy it (and it does not become a gas which could float away). Therefore, the calcium content of your end product will be exactly the calcium content of your ingredients, so you if you know how much calcium is in your milk and starter then you have your answer.
Note that:
This is true of the absolute quantity of calcium, not the proportional quantity (to take an exaggerated example, if 1 litre of ingredients produced 0.75 litres of yoghurt then even if the quantity of calcium was the same the proportion would be much higher).
It may be that the calcium after fermentation is in a different form which the body is more or less able to use (this is called bioavailability); you would need to research that question separately (my instinct, though, is that this is not the case).
As rumtscho's comment points out, if your recipe involves discarding whey or some other part of the mixture then this reasoning no longer applies, and you would have to investigate whether the whey/discard contains proportionately more or less calcium than the remainder of the ingredients. However, the recipes I have seen for 24-hour yoghurt don't involve discarding whey or any other part of the mixture. |
What to do with a large bag of dried fennel seeds
I've come into the possession of half a kilo of dried fennel seeds. I don't generally cook with it or have any meal prep ideas that I can add it to... except maybe some sort of pasta sauce? It's too bitter to snack on by itself. What's a good recipe that I could use this in bulk? I don't want it to go to waste. Last resort I'll do a month of fennel tea :) | Fennel seed is a very strong spice, so you're just not going to find any preparation that uses a cup of it. The best you can do is recipes that use a few tablespoons, like Fennel Butter and Tomato/Fennel Pickle.
However, the nice thing about its strong flavor is that it stores for years. Vac-pack it in 100g pouches, and you should be able to keep using it ... or giving it to friends ... for a good long while. |
How to (Safely) prepare brine for corned beef?
I have a brisket flat in my freezer, and I'd love to make corned beef. It would be my first time. When I searched the internet for preparation ideas, I found preparation instructions that called for kosher salt, sea salt, pickling salt, pink salt ( Prague Powder # 1-not Hymalayian) for the brine. I'm a bit hesitant to keep a 5-6 pound brisket in my fridge, as some suggest, 8-10 days in a sea/kosher salt brine. Wouldn't the meat go rancid? Do I need curing salt, such as Prague Powder # 1? How much should you use per pound if the Prague Powder is necessary? It sounds a bit intimidating. | This is probably the 5th time I have said this on this site but make sure the meat is completely thawed. Brine is the process of using a saline solution to dehydrate and hydrate protein molecules. This has the effect of increasing moisture retention of the protein molecules. This just leads to more juicy meat. Often done to tenderise tough cuts of beef or very lean poultry. This process cannot happen if the protein molecules are frozen solid. Putting frozen meat in water could have some safety concerns as well.
As for the curing salts, it is optional. Sodium Nitrates is the active ingredient in Saltpeter. Something humanity has used for many centuries. It is just a more potent and reliable version of a naturally occurring mineral. What it gives to the brine is rose pink color and a very pleasant Smokey flavour, but a 6 - 8 % salt solution will preserve the meat exactly the same with or without the nitrates. In the case of brines you add nitrates for flavour and color not for any additional preservation effect.
Curing salts are coloured pink so that they are not confused with regular salt. Some care should be applied when dealing with it. Even just consuming a tiny bit can be dangerous. Keep it away from children and pets and mark all containers clearly. It is very potent.
As for salts for brines you really need a fine salt. For curing whole cuts of meats coarse salt is what you need. I dislike using finishing salts for curing. I just find they have to many added minerals. This is not a problem when used as a table salt, but for curing it just complicates things unnecessarily. I also dislike using salt with iodine or anti caking agent. Anti caking agent leaves a very unpleasant sediment in your brine. Will not kill you but can lead to some off flavours. For a brine I would just use as pure a fine sodium chloride as you can find.
A 1kg pack of sodium nitrates is probably be enough to cure anywhere between 1 to 3 metric tons of meat. For a 2 - 3 kg brisket I would use between 1 - 2 grams in a 5 liters of water.
It is also worth noting the difference between the two types of Prague powder. Any nitrates labelled type 1 is sufficient for most applications. Prague powder type 2 is specifically formulated for products that cure for many months, like cured sausages. They have a preservation effect that last a lot longer.
As the nitrates are done for taste in a brine you can find a dose that has the correct smokey flavour for you. In any other types of curing like cured sausage, for example, you use the curing salts exactly as the recipe demands.
As for regular sodium chloride it is important to weigh the salt. Different brands of salt vary greatly in volume and you need to be precise with this. As a general rule 6 - 8 % salt by weight per liter of water. This means 60 - 80 grams of salt per liter of brine. If we are using a 5 liter brine that means 300 - 400 grams of salt in the 5 liters.
Lastly, you mentioned corning your brisket. If you want to corn beef then you have to use pickling spice. A Texas brisket is often brined but it only becomes corned beef if pickling spice is used in the preparation. |
Is it safe to eat homemade yogurt after a sugar ant fell in it?
I'm so frustrated right now. I just made a gallon of homemade yogurt, only to find a tiny sugar ant has been marinading in it at the top for 24 hours(it's a 24 hour ferment). Is the whole batch spoiled? | Most ant species are edible. One ant in a gallon of yogurt probably doesn't matter much, aside from you being put off by it. I would scoop it out and proceed as if it was never there. |
Why does spatzle dissolve in water?
We've made spatzle a bunch of times with great success. Tonight, we put it in the boiling water like many times before, and it completely dissolved, resulting in cloudy water rather than anything resembling spatzle. We followed the recipe exactly. It's the first time making this at our new location, at a higher altitude, with colder and drier conditions and well water. What happened? | A strong boil will break up the spaetzle batter. Keep it at a simmer. |
Getting well domed muffins
Seems to be conflicting info on achieving well domed muffin tops. None seem to offer science based references.
These two are good examples of conflicting advice.
Higher temp seems to be all that is agreed.
https://www.bakingkneads.com/how-to-make-muffins-rise-higher/
1 – Get the Temperature Right
400f
2 – Use Room-Temperature Ingredients
3 – Don’t Wait Too Long to Put the Muffins in the Oven
4 – Try to Make Thick Batter
5 – Fill the Muffin Tins Properly
3/4 full
https://www.thekitchenwhisperer.net/2012/07/22/bakery-style-high-domed-muffins-how-do-they-do-that/
Let the batter rest at least an hour or overnight in the fridge (preferred)
Do you know why you should let your muffin batter rest? During the resting period, starch molecules in the flour are absorbing the liquid in the batter.
This causes them to swell and gives the batter a thicker, more viscous consistency. Any gluten formed during the mixing of the batter is also getting time to relax, and air bubbles are slowly working their way out.
Instructions
Always use a From-Scratch muffin recipe, never boxed!
Never use a mixer to incorporate your dry ingredients to your wet. Use a spatula or spoon.
Do not over mix your batter.
Cover your batter tightly and refrigerate for at least 1 hour (can go overnight as well).
Preheat your oven to 425F. Yes, I know the recipe calls for 350 but trust me on this. I typically bake my muffins in the upper third of the oven. You see placing the muffins in the upper third of the oven it tends to be hotter and the heat more constant. You can most certainly use the middle rack as well if you want.
Spray the top of your muffin pan with non-stick spray. Line the pan with cupcake/muffin liners.
The batter will be THICK. You can gently stir it first. Just try not to deflate it. Fill the muffin papers almost ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP OF THE PAPER. (just leave about a 1/8″ from the top).
Yes I know, it’s spilled over before but this works.If you have empty cavities in your muffin tin (not enough batter), remove the liner and add 1/2 cup water in each.
Bake 6-9 minutes at 425. The muffins should be about a 1/4″-1/2″ above the paper. That’s the sign the heat can be turned down.
Reduce heat to 350 (DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR TO DROP THE TEMP.. sorry for the YELLING.. lol) and bake for 6-10 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out barely clean (crumbs are OK).
What does the science (and experience) tell us? | The only thing the two sets of instructions disagree on is waiting to put the batter in. The high temperature, need for a thick batter and filling the muffin tins up are in both sets of instructions. The differences are due to the ingredients and how they work.
The rationale on baking right away versus waiting is due to chemical leavening agents, the two most widely used are baking soda and baking powder and they work differently. Both work on the principle of an acid reacting with a base creating carbon dioxide bubbles in the batter. Some of these gases are trapped in the batter, causing it to rise, the rest escapes. Baking soda is a base which reacts to acids in other ingredients in the batter (lemon juice, buttermilk, yogurt, honey, etc), and starts to act as soon as the ingredients are mixed. If you leave it too long the baking soda will get used up and you won't get any rise in the oven. refrigeration will slow that chemical process but not stop it, if you refrigerate the batter overnight you'll lose it all.
Baking powder on the other hand is a combination of baking soda and a powdered acid. You use baking powder in a recipe where there isn't enough acid from the rest of the ingredients to activate baking soda. Baking powder is "double acting" in that you get an initial reaction from the baking soda reacting to the acids available in the batter, which is the first action, but the powdered acid is heat activated so you can put it in the refrigerator and it will react very slowly. If you refrigerate a baking powder batter you will lose the first action's rise but the second action will mostly be there.
So if your batter uses baking soda you should bake it right away, if it uses baking powder you can refrigerate it. If it uses a mix of baking soda and baking powder I'd bake it right away.
The theory behind resting the batter is not about starches absorbing moisture, it only takes a few minutes for the starches in ordinary white flour to gelaltinize. You can see this in pancake batter when it thickens up a few minutes after mixing - this is why you should let batters sit for a little bit after mixing to test consistency. The real reason for letting a batter rest is to allow natural enzymes to break down starches and proteins, the theory is this will improve the structure. This is sounds advice if you are making Yorkshire Puddings, but I'm not convinced for a cake/muffin batter. This site details an experiment where two types of batter were baked right away, after refrigerating one hour, refrigerating for 24 hours and freezing a week. There was no improvement found from waiting to bake the batter, if anything it was more dense after 24 hours in the refrigerator. |
What is this seed pod?
Every now and then I come across this seed pod when I order Baingan Bharta (aka Punjabi Eggplant) from my favorite Indian restaurant. They're roughly 2cm (3/4 inch) long and about as thick as a wooden pencil. The taste is strong and earthy and rather savory to my palate. The pod has three folds, for lack of a better word, and the seeds are smaller than okra/gumbo but have similar texture.
Thank you for your time. | Looks like cardamom to me, regularly used in Indian and other South Asian cuisine and often left as whole seed pods in dishes for unsuspecting diners to accidentally chew on. |
What are the best practices when making chapathi like a pancake or dosa?
Normally, chapathi/roti is made by kneading wheat flour, letting it rest a while, then making balls of them and rolling them into flat circular shapes and then heating them.
This answer describes how letting it rest, allows gluten linking and the transformation of starches into sugar.
After many years of making chapathi, I felt this process of kneading and rolling is time-consuming and cumbersome. Besides, the middle layer and some edges often do not get cooked fully and many people end up overheating it, so it gets burnt spots. Since the process of making dosa's and pancakes are simpler, I wondered if flour can be used similarly. Turns out there are indeed recipes for doing this.
If I may call this a way of making chapathi like dosa (chaposa), it involves taking equal proportions of water and flour, mixing it while ensuring there are no lumps, and simply spreading them on a heated pan, and preparing it like how a pancake or dosa would be prepared. I prepared one today, and it turned out ok. It was soft enough and seemed properly cooked. I figured that this may be a good way to make aaloo parathas too, by throwing in mashed potatoes, onions, coriander leaves and other ingredients. Kinda wish even puri-making could be made this simple.
In terms of the gluten linking and starch converting to sugars, are there any best practices that need to be followed for preparing it? Time allowed for resting etc? | Ok, so I tried making aaloo paratha using this method, and it worked out a lot better than the conventional method.
Some best practices:
Once water is mixed into the flour and whisked, let it rest for at
least five to ten minutes. It allows it to thicken a little. If not
allowed to thicken, the disc tears easily while flipping.
Use a low flame when spreading the batter on the pan. It helps
spread it out properly before it solidifies due to the heat. Then
use a medium flame to cook it.
During the cooking process, you'll notice brown spots. It does not
mean that it has got cooked fully. If the middle layer feels
slippery/mushy, you should continue cooking it until it gets cooked
through-and-through. Don't worry; the outer layer won't burn very
early like it would in a chapathi/roti, because it has a lot of
moisture.
Advantages of preparing chapathi/aaloo-paratha this way:
Any salt, chilly, coriander leaves, onion, ghee, oil or masalas you mix into the
batter, blends in well with the flour and gives a better flavour.
It's a very forgiving batter. When spreading out the batter on the
pan, you can continue adding batter to the sides and spread it out
well even a minute or two after you spread it out initially. If it
tears, you can apply more batter on the torn area like glue, and the
end result will be a seamless flat-bread. I believe the extra water content helps cook it evenly too.
It's a lot less time consuming and less messy to prepare the batter.
I made a few parathas and left the batter at room temperature for two
hours, returned and made a few more parathas, and it worked out
perfectly fine. Unlike kneaded dough, I didn't need to do anything
extra to make the batter retain moisture. It didn't get thicker and un-workable either.
Disadvantage:
It takes more time to cook. |
Can I fry food with solely essential lemon oil?
Is it safe to consume lemon oil in the quantities that would be found in fried food? Could I fry corn tortillas, for instance? Would it fry? | It would be dangerous to attempt to fry in lemon oil
Lemon & other citrus oils are primarily (90+%) made up of Limonene, which has a "fire diamond" of 2-2-0:
Flammable
The red 2 indicates flammability:
Must be moderately heated or exposed to relatively high ambient temperature before ignition can occur (e.g. diesel fuel, paper, sulfur and multiple finely divided suspended solids that do not require heating before ignition can occur). Flash point between 37.8 and 93.3 °C (100 and 200 °F).
Limonene has a flash point of only 50°C (122°F). Canola oil & most "frying oils", by contrast has a flash point of closer to 315°C (600°F).
Note that the "flash point" is the temperature where flames & active combustion take place. This is generally a good bit above the usual "smoke point" which is used to rank cooking oils. The flash point is the more dangerous temperature, as it equates to fire.
This limits the feasibility of doing any cooking in citrus oils, due to their flammability. The high limonene content would render lemon oil to be a fire hazard well below "frying" temperatures. If you've ever seen a flamed citrus peel used as a cocktail garnish, you would have witnessed the flammability of citrus oils.
Health risk
The blue 2 indicates a health risk:
Intense or continued but not chronic exposure could cause temporary incapacitation or possible residual injury (e.g. diethyl ether, ammonium phosphate, carbon dioxide, iodine, chloroform, DEET).
As mentioned in another answer, even if flammability wasn't an issue, this could be dangerous. Contact with the skin can cause a rash ("contact dermatitis" if you're being technical about it) in certain cases.
Even if it didn't burn at such a low temperature, the quantity of limonene needed for cooking, and the direct contact with your mouth while eating would result in a potentially dangerous situation.
Small amounts are considered safe for consumption (and even used in supplements), but any significant quantity of lemon oil should not be consumed directly. |
Do these lines in ceramic pie plate mean cracks?
Noticed a few spidery lines in this pie plate before using in the oven, then many more appeared after use. The glazing on the outside is still solid and smooth and the lines aren’t seen from the bottom. Is the plate going to crack apart? Still safe to use? | TL;DR: that's just surface crazing, it's probably fine, but ...
Potter of 30 years experience here.
What you're seeing there is called "crazing". It happens because the glaze doesn't "fit" the underlying clay perfectly, and as a result it has hairline cracks all over the plate. This is very common with high-silica clear glazes, and pretty much universal with celedon. Those cracks were always there from when the plate was made, and you're just seeing them now because they got stuff into them (more on this below).
Surface crazing is generally considered harmless, except that it can lead to other problems in foodware. First, the crazing weakens the underlying clay, and can lead to cracking while in use. The second problem is that liquid from food can seep into those cracks, and into the clay body if it's porous even after firing (non-vitreous). Given the "bleed" you seem to be getting around the cracks where the plate has had pie in it, I'd be concerned about this. Bacteria can grow in those cracks and even in the clay body during storage, making the pie plate unsanitary, particularly if then used for low-temperature pies (like key lime).
So, this is a case of "use it if it's the only pie plate you have, but if you have others, switch to them". |
What temp is considered “room” temperature? Our home is at 68-69°F. If the butter is very soft and the flour and sugar are warmer does that help?
What is considered room temperature? Should the butter be quiet soft and the flour and sugar warmer than 65-69°F degrees (18--20°C)? | There is no standard "room temperature". Everybody assumes it to be the temperature in the place they live. For recipes with Western European or US origin, you can assume the range to be somewhere between 18 and 25 Celsius (64 to 77 Fahrenheit), but for others, it can be very different. Finns sometimes use their balconies as an extra freezer, and Indians moving to other continents notice that their batters don't ferment properly when left out at the new "room" temperature.
Deviations from that range (or within it) have different effects on your cooking, depending what you are dealing with. So if you want to research the consequences of suboptimal temperature and the optimal temperature range, you have to do it separately for each ingredient and each role it has in a recipe.
The butter temperature is relevant in two cases. When you need very cold butter (e.g. for a liaison or for a pie crust), any room temperature is far from optimal, so you should use a fridge or a freezer. When you need soft butter, the softer the butter, the better, up to the point at which it starts melting, which is closer to 30 C. So with this room temperature, you will have butter that is colder than optimal. But you also probably don't have any realistic option of getting it better (quick-heating methods such as a microwave are more likely to melt it than to get it to the perfect stage), so you just have to use it as-is.
For flour and sugar, I cannot think of any situation where their temperature matters, at least in the context of room temperature. So no concerns there, use them as-is. |
Beating eggs for brownie
This brownie recipe (from this book) calls for eggs, beaten. I'm not entirely familiar with US recipes. What does it mean that the eggs have to be beaten? Is it sufficient to do this lightly with a fork or maybe they'd be better beaten using food processor? | The eggs should be beaten until roughly homogeneous; that is, there should be no "pieces" of unmixed egg white left. (If left in, those pieces would cook and harden, leaving you with, essentially, pieces of boiled egg in your brownies.) With some eggs there will be small strings of connective tissue from the egg that tend to float to the surface and appear as (slightly lumpy) bits of the white; these may be picked out with a fork, but they're unlikely to be noticeable in brownies.
Assuming you're adept with a fork, beating an egg or two shouldn't take more than 60 seconds.
BTW: In this recipe, there's no fundamental reason to beat the eggs before you add them to anything else. As long as they're thoroughly mixed in before you add the flour and other dry ingredients, you'll be fine. |
What is considered "mild" vs. "hot" in different countries? (measured empirically)
In different countries, what is generally considered "hot" for local residents dining on local cuisine?
I'm an American and have experienced this at a number of Thai, Korean, and Indian restaurants around the United States. When ordering, guests are given an option of spiciness between mild, medium, hot, or "Thai hot" (or "Korean hot" or "Indian hot"). The implication is that what an American person would consider to be spicy, a Thai person would consider to be medium or maybe even mild.
Now, I'm a lover of spicy food and order the "Thai hot" almost every time, but it makes me wonder: is this an accurate interpretation of the perception of spiciness for different countries around the world? Or are they just presenting guests with a 1 to 4 scale on spiciness that has nothing to do with the nationality?
I have a good feel for what is considered "hot" or "spicy" in American restaurants, and I'd liken it to the spiciness of a jalepeno pepper (about 5,000 to 8,000 Scoville). I would say "mild" is up to maybe 500 Scoville, and "medium" is somewhere in the middle. There are exceptions in different regions and restaurants, but I'd think that's pretty typical.
Measured in Scoville (or maybe some other unit), what is generally considered "hot" in Thailand, Korea, and India? I'm looking for an empirical measurement of spiciness rather than a comparison between nationalities (e.g., "hot in Thailand is #,### Scoville", not "Thai food is hotter than American food").
I have not experienced this with Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Caribbean, German, French, Scottish, or any other national/regional restaurant that I can think of. For me, it's unique to Thai, Korean, and Indian restaurants in the United States. Others may have had different experiences. | Nobody has published reports on this kind of empirical evaluation, and there's a few reasons why not (in the below, "heat" refers to spiciness from capsaicin):
Heat tolerance and preference varies not just from region to region of a country, but also from one individual to another, just like it does whereever you live. So finding "how hot is Thai hot" would require a survey of a large number of individuals across the whole country, and would give you a heuristic distribution instead of a specific level. Nobody cares enough to fund this.
It's difficult, if not impossible, to measure the heat of finished dishes. The scoville measuring process is not designed for peppers mixed into foods, particularly since texture, competing flavors, cooking techniques, and even dining practices can affect the perception of heat. For example, there are quite a few Chinese dishes which include dried whole chili peppers that are not meant to be eaten (like bay leaves).
"Local cuisine" is a squishy concept that defies empirical evaluation. For example, is Anglo-Indian cuisine "local" or not? An awful lot is eaten in British pubs. And whether or not you include it makes a huge difference in any evaluation of "how hot is British food".
Further, lemme add that none of the above would tell you anything about how restaurants outside the original culture evaluate "hot", which has more to do with their local clientele than their home country. |
How to measure half and quarters with tablespoon or teaspoon
I had my measuring spoon but lost it, now I am totally confused about what is 1/2, 1/4, 1/3, 2/3, etc. With normal tea or tablespoon, how can we measure the above-mentioned measurement? I am a visual person to it will help to have a chart that show it visually | In an emergency you can measure half a spoon relatively precise with just a normal spoon (either a table spoon or a teaspoon) quarters are less precise.
Take your spoon and fill it as normal for the spoon measurement. Now take a knife or an almost sharp plastic object and 'cut' the filling of the spoon in half, cutting from the handle to the tip.
Next you put one half of the content of the spoon back in the container. (So doing all this over the container or a clean plate will work.)
For a quarter spoon you do the same but repeat with a second cut at a 90 degree angle, which is harder to guess.
I would likely use the plastic dough scraper which lives in my kitchen drawer but I remember my mother using a small and not too sharp knife, as you do not want to damage your spoon. |
what about peanuts that makes them more nut like than bean like?
As we all know, peanuts are actually legumes and not nuts. But they taste and function much more like nuts. They can be cooked quickly like nuts while beans take a long time to cook.
What about their chemical makeup, etc., that is the reason for this? | I don't think this is a result of what you call "chemical make up." It probably seems more nut-like because they are commonly roasted. If you eat a raw peanut, it is certainly more bean-like. |
What is this yellow substance that came out of a pressure-cooked pork butt?
I pressure-cooked a pork butt tonight, and this yellow substance was on it. There's no rotten odor, or anything to suggest it'd gone bad. This had never happened to me before. Can anyone identify it? Is it safe?
Edit: The other ingredients: 4 New Mexico peppers, 1/2 dried Carolina Reaper pepper, 1 onion, 5 cloves garlic, 12 oz beer, 6 cups water, 6 teaspoons chicken bullion. | Based on your description of the process and ingredients, and your photo, I agree with bob1's comment that this is congealed pork fat which has been dyed yellow by your chicken bouillon and perhaps also by your peppers.
If that's the case, it's certainly safe to consume although many people remove excess fat which has separated like this (or use it for other purposes like making a roux). |
Are grocery store tuna steaks safe if cooked but rare?
We got 2 tuna steaks from a grocery store, and we are pretty sure they they are NOT sushi grade. We cooked them tonight for a bit, and left the middle of the steak pretty rare.
How safe is this? I should've asked this question before cooking obviously but hindsight is 20-20. Everything I have read on other sites states that there is "some" risk of parasites but it's hard to get a straight answer as to how safe this food was. We got the stakes at our local H-mart, an Asian market. | Relevant US and Canadian food authorities all recommend that undercooked (i.e. seared but red in the middle) tuna should only be eaten if it was properly deep-frozen to kill any parasites first. And even that isn't completely risk-free.
Studies of the current tuna supply shows it to be widely infected with parasites, to the point that the majority of tuna you're likely to buy had at least one parasite that could affect your health. Most of the time, though, health effects are mild (although uncomfortable at the time).
However, most tuna is flash-frozen at sea when caught, whether sold as "fresh" or not. As such, your odds of getting tuna with viable parasites is still low, whether or not it's labelled "sushi-grade". In my non-expert opinion, you're more at risk from bacterial contamination introduced at the grocery store than you are from fish parasites. |
What is this Spanish dessert?
I recently ate one of these in a restaurant in Gran Canaria - they didn't have a menu, you just pointed at things on a trolley. I loved it and asked what the name was but we couldn't quite communicate. I assume it's a Spanish dessert as it was a small, local-ish restaurant, but it might not be.
The bottom layer is some sort of dark caramel sauce, then there seems to be perhaps crumbled biscuits, then on top is what I think is Chantilly cream? It's quite a thick cream.
I'd like to try making the dessert myself, but Googling these things together hasn't come up with anything useful.
Thanks! | This is a variation of "Polvito Uruguayo", which is a typical dessert of Grand Canary Island, that is made with cookies, dulce de leche (caramel), and chantilly cream, and which can also be topped with a "suspiros de moya" (a type of sweet meringue).
NOTE: suggested edit of "suspiros de monja" (nuns sighs) is incorrect. The meringue is in fact named after the location "Moya" (a town on Grand Canary Island) which famously produces them. |
Why is wheat flour more popular than corn flour?
If I understand correctly, one of the major reasons that corn syrup is so popular is that it made corn syrup cheaper than sugar. This makes sense to me.
However, it seems odd to me that this never really happened with corn flour/cornmeal vs wheat flour. While they definitely taste different, they still can often fill similar roles, and assuming that corn flour was cheaper, I'd expect it to gradually take over recipes in the US.
Was US-subsidized corn flour not cheaper than wheat flour?
Was there another reason corn flour didn't take over?
(I'm obviously not talking about countries south of the US, where corn is everywhere) | They are functionally quite different. Corn flour does not contain gluten, so is not useful as a direct substitute. It has little to nothing to do with cost. |
Pulled pork slightly too tart and watery
I made some pulled pork over the holidays in an Instantpot which came out fairly well.
3 pounds boneless pork butt roast. 40 minute cook time.
bbq sauce based on ketchup and cider vinegar
more cider vinegar in the liquid
It came out pretty good for a first try, no complaints. Shredded fine, tasted good. Still, it felt a bit too tart and thin.
I think I can fix the tartness by cutting down on the cider proportions a bit, maybe add some more sugar too.
But how do I get a creamier, more unctuous mouthfeel? If it was a curry dish, I'd probably think I was skimping on the coconut milk, as usual. If it was a mac and cheese, maybe my roux would need to be thicker, with more butter and flour. But there are no such ingredients involved in this recipe.
There's a related question, Fix for Greasy Pulled Pork? that is making me think that maybe one possibility is to cook it a bit longer than 40 minutes. Or should I uncover it and continue on heat for a while to reduce the liquid? | When the meat is done, remove the meat from your pressure cooker / slow cooker / Instant Pot.
While you are shredding/pulling your pork, put the Instant Pot on simmer with the lid off and reduce the sauce down until it is thickened and has the desired consistency. You could also transfer to a wide pan to do this on the stovetop more quickly (higher surface area + higher heat = faster evaporation), but that ruins the "one pot wonder" of the Instant Pot
Reducing can take a bit of time, depending on how "watery" the sauce is. My last pressure cooker pulled pork, I reduced the sauce to about one quarter the volume to get the desired saucey consistency, which took about 25 minutes. This is also an opportunity to adjust the sauce for seasoning, sweetness, acid, and spice. I usually try to do this at the end of the process, as flavors will become concentrated as it reduces, and a well-seasoned starting liquid may be too salty, or too sweet or too spicy once reduced.
Once the sauce is reduced, you can re combine your sauce and pulled pork for serving. (If the pork has cooled off from resting, the hot sauce helps to reheat it.) |
3 day old sourdough starter splits after feeding
My starter consists out of 150gr All purpose, 60 grams of whole wheat and 210 grams of water.
On day 2 it bubbled nicely, but I fed it only with half a feeding fearing it would otherwise not stay within the jar. It then rose within hours to double size and then starter to split (hooch). I then fed it again (10 hours after 1st feeding on day 2) with a full feeding (1:1:1 ratio). So in total it received 1,5 feeding on day 2, half in the morning and regular feeding in the evening.
The next morning it did bubble on top, doesn't rise and stays splitting (although very slowly). Now, halfway through day 3 without additional feeding nothing changed.
Should I feed it again? I don't think it already processed the last feeding on day 2.
Temperature is constantly between 20-25degrees Celsius.
Help please.. | Stir. Remove half. Feed. Continue the process. You should always remove some at each feeding, to keep the acidity in check. I sometimes remove up to a half for each feeding. It should take at least a week to become usable. |
What happened to my frozen yeast?
I had a leftover block of commercially bought frozen yeast. I kept it it the freezer, well below 0 celsius. I'll admit I didn't check on it for years.
I opened the container today. It was stinking like nothing I've ever seen. But it was also... liquid ? What on earth happened ? It stank so much, I just threw it all away without taking pictures or anything. But I now wonder, is this alive enough to generate enough heat to thaw itself ? What processes were going on ? Is this a typical/known issue ? | TIL that there are organisms which not only survive temperatures under 0 Celsius, but are able to actively live in that range, as opposed to just hibernating. Nevertheless, I doubt that baker's yeast falls under them - it is the kind of factoid one would expect to read in popular books on food science. Also, it is unlikely that something adapted for life under such conditions would be most vigorous at +35ish, as yeast is.
My guess is that it thawed in much more prosaic manner. You either had a power outage that you were not aware of, or the cumulative effect of years of self-defrosting cycles was sufficient to enable several generations of proliferation.
You describe it as being both liquid and stinky - this sounds like they produced stuff and they suffocated in it, just like in overfermented dough. It would have been mostly ethanol, but mixed with other waste compounds. A pure water-ethanol mixture created by yeast won't freeze (it shouldn't go above the alcohol content of wine), but it is not outlandish that, with enough other molecules swimming around, the whole mixture was not frozen solid at slightly below zero. So once their "civilization" had multiplied enough to drown in its own waste, it may have stayed liquid, even though it was in the freezer. Also, for such a long period of time, some enzymatic reactions might have happened even at those unlikely temperatures, leading to further decay.
Bottom line, it seems that the yeast had an opportunity to multiply (at above zero) and took it. |
Tea temperature for preparation
If I understand correctly, a good temperature to prepare green tea is roughly 70°, 80° for oolong (it might depends of course) and 90° for black tea or pu erh. Hence, it seems that the most oxidized a tea is, the higher the temperature is.
However it seems that a recommanded temperature for white tea is 80°, while this is the less oxidized type of tea. Why is that? More generally, how to choose the best temperature for a tea in general (I guess the answer is "trial and error", but I'm not an expert in tea so I'd appreciate some basic guideline) ? | I'm going to start by saying: The directions listed on the box or in a guide are good general-purpose directions, for when you don't really want to pay attention to your tea brewing parameters. They're designed to be accessible - not to produce the best brew, but to produce the most consistent one, and one that's acceptable for the tea and for most people. However, the brewing parameters that come with a tea, or 'match' the type of tea, are very often non-optimal. But if you enjoy them, that's usually good enough.
However (counterintuitively), most tea can be brewed at most temperatures. This is why I'm posting this answer - because the question you've asked touches on some of the complexity and subtlety involved in getting what you'd like out of your tea. If all you're interested in is making one consistent cup, follow the above paragraph. If you're interested in the 'why' of tea and temperature, read on... and disclaimer in advance that there are no universal truths in tea. Also, this is a bit of a long deep-dive.
Compounds in tea extract at different rates. Most of the compounds that affect the flavor of a tea are quite sensitive to the parameters used in both the production of the tea leaf and the process of brewing. Factors include but are not limited to:
The original grade of the tea leaves (are they whole? are they little crumbly bits?)
Structural changes made to the tea leaves during preparation by the tea-maker
What temperature you brew the tea at
The ratio of tea to water you brew at
How long you steep the tea for
The composition of the water used to make tea (and if you doubt that last one, check out the Tea Curious blog - they have a series on developing a specialized mineral water for brewing.)
There's no a priori reason to believe that any temperatures should be 'off limits' for brewing any type of tea. In fact, "oolong" is not even a single type of tea - it's a very generic name for an extremely broad class of preparation styles, which often call for different temperatures, not a generic 80C.
In the generic, all that's known is that many teas become bitter if it's pushed 'too hard': temperature up, time up, amount of leaf up. And the opposite is often true: if you lower temperature, time, or amount of leaf, you can avoid bitterness. In practice, this means that you can, for many teas, compensate for increased temperature using other factors in your brew.
Importantly, though - even if you can compensate for a higher temperature by changing the other brewing parameters, the overall flavor is unlikely to remain constant if you change anything at all. Extraction rates for flavor compounds in tea are highly sensitive and change differently relative to each other when brewing parameters change. Maybe, for example, at a higher temperature you'll get more astringency, but other flavor compounds come out much faster, so you can lower the time and make a fine (but differently-flavored) cup. There are even methods that involve 'flash steeping,' where you pour boiling water on a tea and take it out just about as fast as physically possible, and it comes out delicious!
Some teas may have an upper bound on temperature, where past a certain point the tea will 'scorch' and become too bitter / astringent before enough flavor really extracts properly. But with the exception of Japanese green teas, this isn't really true on a category-by-category basis as much as it is on a tea-by-tea basis. And even Japanese green teas can sometimes be brewed successfully with boiling water! Generalizations are hard to come by.
In order to talk about oxidization and brewing temperature, we first need to talk about where the temperatures on tea containers and websites come from. It's important to know that the instructions listed on a tea packet are written for an audience to give them a place to start - an audience you may not be a part of. For example, a box of sencha teabags I bought on a whim because it was $1 and I was curious says to pour boiling water on the sencha and steep it for 2-3 minutes. To me, that notionally reads like a preposterous set of instructions, but in reality, it means those instructions were not written for me. They were written for someone without a temperature controlled kettle, making an enormous mug of tea - not someone with dedicated teaware making a small amount of tea at cooler temps.
So, oxidization. Oxidization does affect the extraction of flavor from tea leaves, and it has several critical steps in changing the flavor composition of a tea. But it's not nearly as consistent as "always brew 80C." More oxidized oolongs are often able to be brewed at higher temperatures when compared with less oxidized/"greener" oolongs, controlling for all other factors, because at those temperatures they will pick up somewhat less bitterness in the tea. However, you can just as easily steep any oolong at a high temperature for less time by controlling the other parts of a brew - and in fact, this is what I do with most of mine.
So, white tea. I'm not sure exactly where the idea came about that white teas are exceptionally delicate and must be brewed with care at a specific temperature, but in general, white tea is not (generally) particularly delicate. In my opinion it's one of the hardiest teas, because most white teas can be brewed effectively at essentially any temperature, without much worry about astringency coming into the brew.
The thing is, under most circumstances, you can brew a good white tea at a boiling temperature. That's how I do it, most of the time. But if I'm looking for a different kind of flavor palette, maybe I'll turn down the temperature...
tl;dr: Don't let the temperatures on guides and boxes constrain you. They're an OK starting point, but most tea can be made at most temperatures. The numbers you see are just there to provide a broadly consistent brew that most people will probably enjoy - not because they are some theoretical optimum for brewing.
As always, the best cup is the one you enjoy. |
Is Moulin Rouge Ground Cinnamon the Cassia or Ceylon type?
I bought this big container of cinnamon a few months ago and I can't find any info as to the type of cinnamon it is: Cassia or Ceylon.
Can anyone identify the type of cinnamon here?
https://www.amazon.ca/Moulin-Rouge-Ground-Cinnamon-Kilogram/dp/B07ZPQ3SWL | The rule of thumb is "if it doesn't say Ceylon, it's Cassia." Ceylon can be up to 10 times more expensive than Cassia. You simply won't find Ceylon for $22 per kilogram. |
Pressure canner physics
I have this pressure canner at home which unfortunately does not include a thermometer. The vessel has a volume of 18 liters. The procedure that I am following is this : pouring 3 litres of water inside it with the lid slightly open and waiting for the water to boil. After it boils I wait for around 10 minutes so that any air trapped inside the canner is squeezed out. Afterwards I close the lid. Can I assume that if I reach 1 bar pressure inside the pressure canner I will have 120 degrees Celsius inside it?
PS: I live at an altitude of around 700 meters. | pouring 3 litres of water inside it with the lid slightly open and waiting for the water to boil.
Good. You definitely want to get everything up to local boiling. The amount of water is reasonable for many canners, but depends on the model and size.
After it boils I wait for around 10 minutes so that any air trapped inside the canner is squeezed out.
If you haven't closed the lid, this serves no purpose doesn't do anything about "squeezing out the air". However in many canning recipes there is a boil period with your jars in the water before the pressure phase. If you had room temperature food in the jar it can take a while to come up to temp. A 10 minute boil gets the food heated up so the (later) pressure cook phase doesn't have to last as long.
Afterwards I close the lid. Can I assume that if I reach 1 bar pressure inside the pressure canner I will have 120 degrees Celsius inside it?
The operating pressure indicated on a pressure cooker is the target additional pressure over your local atmospheric pressure that should be maintained during cooking. (The operating pressure may be lower than the maximum on the relief valve).
At 700m altitude, the ambient standard pressure is 930mbar (but can be lower with low pressure systems). Let's say on a rainy day that it's as low as 900mbar for you.
IF your cooker operates at a true 1 bar, then the internal pressure will be 900 + 1000 or 1900mbar (27.5 psi / 1.87 atm) absolute. Using a calculator you can find that water will be at 118.6C/245.5F when it is boiling under such pressure. |
How much potato to add to reduce saltiness
I've heard that adding potato to an overly salty dish can reduce the saltiness.
I prepared 500g of rabbit meat in a pressure cooker. Realized that I had added one teaspoon worth of salt more than what was necessary. Since the meat seemed to need a bit more cooking anyway, I peeled and sliced a medium sized potato and dunked it into the pressure cooker which still had the rabbit curry in it, and re-cooked it on medium flame until steam formation. I assume this is the right way to add potato. Not sure if the potato can be boiled separately and then added to a curry to reduce saltiness.
Two hours later I opened it and I'm not quite sure if the saltiness reduced...though it seemed like it did a bit.
So in this kind of a situation, for the proportions I mentioned, how much potato (in grams or size) would be required to reduce excess saltiness? Perhaps the saltiness could be quantified as excess by the number of teaspoons added beyond "just right".
I know different people like different proportions of salt. Please dont focus on the salt. The question is about how much of potato to add to 500g of any dish to have a noticeable reduction in saltiness. | Let's talk potatoes
Potatoes are kind of bland & starchy on their own. If you boil potatoes & eat them with no salt, they just taste like nothing. Most "plain" potato preparations will use salt & a bit of fat to make the potato taste more like potato. On the other end of the spectrum, you can put a lot of salt onto potatoes without them tasting "too salty." Fast food french fries can have quite a bit of salt on the outside, and the starchy, bland inside will offset all that salt.
Potatoes to fix salty food
That last bit of the above paragraph basically explains why adding potatoes to a salty dish can work. Potatoes "take" a lot of salt themselves, so if you've put too much salt in a soup or curry, adding unsalted potato will equalize that as the potatoes "take on" and "absorb" some of that saltiness from the liquid they are in. Other bland, starchy foods work well as a "salt sponge" too--rice or pasta or even bread or flour tortillas. Potatoes have an advantage that they can either be broken up & kind of turned into a thickener for the sauce/soup/whatever, or they can be left in big enough chunks that you can fish them out easily and not include them in the final product--where rice, pasta, bread, and tortillas are more difficult to make disappear.
How much potato you need will vary, and in my experience there is no "1 potato per x quarts of liquid" formula, because there are just too many factors (including personal preference). The easiest way for me to estimate how much potato to add is to think in terms of "how much extra salt did I add?"
You mention that you probably added 1 teaspoon too much salt, so per my advice, you'd think backwards to "how much potato do I need to cook to directly add 1 teaspoon of salt to season it?" and go from there. You might be able to add less or need more than that guess--but that's essentially what you're doing.
If you were cooking 1 potato by itself, how much salt would you use on it? If you would use 1 teaspoon of salt on 1 potato, then you need 1 potato to try to "fix" your "1 teaspoon too salty" curry. If you would use 1/2 teaspoon of salt on 1 potato, then you need 2 potatoes to fix your curry. Practically speaking, you probably need several potatoes (or many potatoes if they are small) to offset 1 teaspoon of salt by themselves.
But it doesn't always work
There's always an exception. If everything in the dish has absorbed too much salt, potatoes might not be enough to fix it. Potatoes do really well at taking on the salt from the sauce or liquid that they are cooking in. However, if there are meat & veggies & other things that have already absorbed "too much" salt, potatoes might not do the trick. |
Is exposed copper pan safe for frying fish?
I restored this copper pan that has exposed copper areas. I will only use it for frying fish. It's safe to use? Any advice on use/care for the exposed copper? | It is not safe. You should have that pan retinned, after which it can provide you with many years of safe use, as well as restoring its original beautiful appearance.
Exposed copper can we dissolved by acidic or alkaline foods, and over time this can result in copper poisoning, which is serious and sometimes fatal. This is why the US FDA prohibits copper(PDF) in contact with any acidic food. The Iowa ABC even banned the use of copper Moscow Mule mugs(PDF), and the FDA has advised against them.
Now, you might say that you're only cooking fish, and as a result the copper will not come in contact with acids. However, many fish dishes are finished with wine, lemon juice, or other acidic sauces, and you'd have to make sure never to use any of those -- rather limiting the use of the pan.
Get it retinned, instead. |
Spice blends have no flavor?
I recently purchased a local taco spice blend (basically: chili pepper, paprika, garlic, cumin and oregano) but it tastes bland when I cook with it. In fact, I often find this when I try to use spice rubs (even mixing things from my spice cabinet) on meat.
What is the right technique to maximize flavor?
For example, I will take my chicken breasts, coat it in the spice mix, and add a little bit of oil and salt. From there, I'll cook in the pan. Food comes out under-seasoned, and I don't really get any of the flavors/aromas that I'd expect.
When I use store-bought seasoning, like this one, I always get a better result: good flavors, good "stickiness" to the food. Or, when I use a glaze (eg, a char siu sauce) then I'm able to get great stickiness, coating, and flavor.
Is there a trick to getting home made blends and seasonings to "work" on meat? Seems like just mixing and sprinkling on are not sufficient! | Salt
TL;DR,
The ingredients you list in your local spice blend doesn't include anything that would primarily hit the salty, sweet, sour, bitter, or umami tastes. The commercial product you link to has ingredients that hit four of those five tastes. Primarily, you probably need to use a bunch more salt, and maybe a touch of something sweet, sour (acidic), and/or umami. In nearly all cases, commercial products taste better because they are heavily salted--but depending on your personal taste & palate, you might also be missing some of the "background" flavors brought by other ingredients.
The product you identified as consistently giving good results has this ingredient list (Ingredients are listed in order by the amount of each item--that's important to remember):
Yellow Corn Flour, Salt, Maltodextrin, Paprika, Spices, Modified Corn Starch, Sugar, Citric Acid, Yeast Extract, Natural Flavors, Silicon Dioxide.
You can look at this ingredient list to get a better idea of differences between what you might be putting together at home, compared to this product that you know you like. Hopefully, by looking closely at the one you do like, it will help you identify what you're missing (and why) from the other mixes that fall short.
Yellow Corn Flour
You'll notice the first ingredient is corn flour (corn starch is also listed separately further down). In the context of taco seasoning, this is a binder & thickener for the "sauce" that coats the meat. But you'll often see starches & flours used as a sort of binding "glue" to help seasoning stick to the (wet) surface of food.
Salt
The second ingredient is salt. This means that there is more salt than any other spice or seasoning. Salt is a fairly critical ingredient to make food taste like itself. This is why "a pinch of salt" is so ubiquitous in recipes, even for non-savory things. If you're finding that you use a bunch of spices, and it still tastes bland, my first guess is always that you didn't use enough salt. There are some alternative methods, but when comparing homemade spice blends to commercial spice blends, it is almost guaranteed that a major taste difference is that commercial spice blends have a lot of salt.
Maltodextrin
Maltodextrin is another bland-tasting ingredient that serves as a binder or thickener, rather than a flavoring.
Paprika, Spices
Finally, the 4th & 5th ingredients represent the actual "spices" that make up this taco seasoning. These two ingredients alone represent the entire list of ingredients you noted on your local taco seasoning mix (chili pepper, paprika, garlic, cumin and oregano).
Modified Corn Starch
More binding/thickening.
Sugar
Sweet is another "base" taste, where a little bit of sweet can make other flavors "pop". This is another spot where adding just a little sugar to homemade spice blends can help them taste more like commercial products you love.
Additionally, it seems that Americans love sweet things, so this pops ups in most commercially available products in US groceries, especially seasonings & condiments. Sugar can also help with browning, and as it melts (around 367°F), it will get sticky.
Citric Acid
Salt, sweet, and acid (which is sour) are three of the main "base" flavors, and this item in the ingredient list brings the third one into the packet. Having all three in the right proportion can help food taste well-balanced or "well-rounded". At home, a squeeze of citrus juice, or splash of vinegar can replace citric acid in commercial products.
Yeast Extract
This bring umami to the party. Umami is another "base" flavor, which is usually described as "savoryness" or sometimes "meatiness" (many sources of umami are not meat, so while I don't love that description, many people find it helpful). Yeast extract has glutamates, which are the food science word for the compounds that taste umami (like the way sugars taste sweet). Another popular glutamate is monosodium glutamate (MSG), but many manufacturers shy away from including MSG on the label because of it's (IMHO unfounded) reputation. You can get yeast extract or MSG for your home spice cupboard if you're missing that background hit of umami from this.
Natural Flavors
There's a long list of things that this could be, but most likely they are just very small quantities of things that are tasty.
Silicon Dioxide
This is another utilitarian ingredient, rather than a flavorful one. It is an "anti-caking agent," which just means that it keeps your spice blend from clumping together. Spice blends that don't contain anti-caking agents tend to stick together, and you get one big lump, particularly when the air is humid. |
Will frozen mangos work as a substitute for apples?
So, I have an old box of Koopman Oud-Hollandse Appelkaneel cake mix, which lists on its ingredients "Raising Agents 450 and 500", and looking online, it appears that Raising Agent 500 is baking soda, from some online research.
The recipe for baking it requires you to add 1 large or 1.5 diced apples to the cake mix. I was thinking about replacing this with a roughly similar amount of frozen mango chunks instead, since I have then readily on-hand.
Would this be a workable substitution? Would the acidity of the mangoes suffice to activate the baking soda, if that was part of what the apples were for? Would the fact that the mangoes are frozen while the apples called for in the recipe affect things? | You probably don't need to worry, but I'd add a little lemon juice anyway.
E450 reacts with baking soda (technically E450 can describe a few related compounds, of which only some are used as raising agents.
So the raising isn't wholly reliant on acidity from the fruit. However it's possible that there isn't enough pyrophosphate to fully react with the baking soda. You need around 3× as E450 much compared to E500 by mass to complete the reaction depending which exact compositions are used, and all you know from the ingredients list sequence is that there's more E450 than E500.
You're right that mango isn't as acidic as apple and a large apple (assumed to be 150g) would have very roughly 1.5g of malic acid, which we might want to replace Within the accuracy we've got here, malic acid and citric acid require the same mass to react completely with baking soda. A teaspoon of lemon juice has about 0.25g of citric acid, but I'm not going to suggest you add 6tsp of lemon juice to the mix, partly because mango definitely contains some acid (mostly malic)of its own. Unfortunately I don't have access to the right journal papers to find out how much; anyway it reduces as the mango ripens and you don't know how ripe your frozen mango is. Besides, chopped apple won't release anywhere near all of it acid to the mix.
I suggest that it would do no harm to add a teaspoon or two of lemon juice. It might even improve the flavour as mango tends to be sweeter than apple meaning the cake could end up too sweet otherwise. |
Can I use an immersion blender instead of a mixer to cream butter?
I have an old box of Koopman's Oud-Hollandse Appelkaneel cake mix.
The recipe calls for you to whip some butter using a mixer before adding the cake mix and eggs. Then it should be beaten some more with the mixer. Presumably, this is to include air into the mix and assist in the leavening process.
However, I don't have a mixer. I do, however, have a handheld immersion blender. Would it be possible to use thus tool for this purpose? If so, should I add a bit of full-cream milk to the butter to help it whip, since it should still blend as long as it has a fat content above 30%? | I no longer have an immersion blender, but the one I used to have wouldn't do a very good job. It had a whisk attachment (replacing the stick part of the blender) that would have helped, but only with really soft butter.
The problem with immersion blenders and solids that stick themselves back together (like butter) is that very little actually ends up reaching the blade.
But it's worth a go: I'd try it if I had nothing else on hand, starting by softening and chopping the butter. Then I'd beat in the egg (by hand) but not yet the cake mix, and at this point really go for it with the blender. That's your best opportunity for getting some air in there. Then I'd mix in the contents of the packet by hand. As it's got raising agents in there, it's not a purely whisked cake - I'd just fold it into the beaten egg/butter mix, rather than beating. |
Can frozen mango spoil?
When I opened my package of frozen mango pieces for my cake, I saw that the mango pieces were absolutely covered in sheets of ice across both sides of the package, and the mango themselves looked brown instead of the yellow-orange I was expecting.
I decided to play it safe and not use them for the cake, substituting in some frozen mixed berries instead, but that leaves me with one big question: can mangos spoil when left in the freezer too long? The best before date on them was several years ago, but they've been stored in the freezer in an airtight plastic bag (never opened). Would this just be freezer burn? I don't think that they could have fermented or rotted while at frozen temperatures, right? Could there be some other spoilage reaction (oxidation with the air in the bag)?
If they were just freezerburned, they'd still be safe to eat, right? | This sounds like freezer burn to me. Freezer burn is dehydration that is often the result of less than optimal packaging. This is not a safety issue, but it can certainly impact flavor and texture. Oxidation is usually not a safety issue, rather a quality issue as well. In addition, as you probably know, "best by" dates are quality indicators, rather than safety indicators. If you can guarantee that they remained frozen (there were no power interruptions...they never thawed...etc.). Then they are probably not a safety risk. Having said that, frozen mango is fairly inexpensive, and yours sound less than appetizing. If it were me, they would go into the compost. I think your substitution was the right move. |
Bartenders friend left on too long
Is it safe to use stainless steel pot after left bartenders friend on for 25-30 minutes? Noticed it left a dark ring on bottom edge of the pot. If I rinsed it thoroughly, is it still safe to use for cooking? | According to the directions on my can, one is to rinse thoroughly within one minute of application. From reading the mentioned ingredients on the can, and seeing the warning about potential "etching or dulling" of some surfaces, it appears that the acids and salts in the product are the most active ingredients. I would think as long as you've rinsed your pot thoroughly, it is safe. I think you do have some surface discoloration from leaving the product on so long. If you want to be absolutely certain though, there is a telephone number on the can that invites questions about the product: 1-800-433-5818. |
What would be the best way to freeze and reheat home-made pizza
I have been baking home-made pizza (home-made dough, toppings etc.). with great results, using a pizza steel and a ripping hot regular domestic oven. The base is crispy with leopard spots, and the crust puffy and chewey. The end result is far better than any of the pre-packaged supermarket varieties.
I'd now like to freeze individual pizzas so they could be reheated from frozen in a regular oven without a pizza steel for friends and family etc. What would be the best way to do this to get a pizza close to the original? I'm guessing the best approach would be to part-bake the base, leave it to cool, then add the cold toppings and freeze. My pizzas only need 4 minutes to fully bake, maybe 5 if I am baking a lot as the oven temperature falls.
I'm thinking of part-baking the base for 2 minutes. Would I need to do anything else for best results, including pricking the base or using pie weights to stop the dough rising? Is it worth adding a thin layer of olive oil to stop the dough drying out in the middle of the pie? Are there any toppings that would not freeze/reheat well? As to reheat times, I'm assuming 20 minutes in a 220C fan oven will be adequate, but advice much appreciated.
The dough recipe I use is a regular twice-proved one (4 hours max), with bread flour, water, salt, sugar, yeast and olive oil. I don't use a poolish or long fermentation times, and knead this for 10 minutes in a stand mixer. | Based on personal experience with both my own pizzas, made in a pizza oven and reheated in a regular one, and professionally made high-quality frozen pizzas from a wood-fired oven (Vicolo in San Francisco and Renata in Portland):
Cook the pizza 80-90%; that, is, a "light bake", but almost all the way done, with toppings. Freeze, vacuum-packed.
Instruct your recipients to heat a baking stone, broiling pan, or heavy, inverted sheet pan near the bottom of their oven to 225C/450F without convection for at least 20 minutes, long enough for the oven and the stone/pan to be hot. Slide the still-frozen pizza onto this stone/pan, and heat for 4 to 25 minutes, depending on thickness (4 = Italian thin-crust, 25 = deep-dish).
This gives the reheated pizza a nice toastiness of the crust without overcooking the toppings or drying it out.
As for toppings that work poorly: anything with high water content. Thick slices of zucchini, fresh peppers, chunks of tomato, whole shrimp, etc. Any of these will give off water each time they are handled and make the top of the pizza slimy and damp. |
What are the tradeoffs between soy sauce and salt to pick when to use which between the 2?
What are the tradeoffs between soy sauce and salt to pick when to use which between the 2?
Does it come down to dry vs wet? Both seem to do the same job of being mediums for adding sodium/saltiness to something. One in a dark liquid form and the other in solid form. Are there other subtleties and nuances for optimizations? I've personally mostly phased out soy sauce out of laziness and minimalism, salt doesn't have an expiry date unlike soy sauce to my understanding. I'm curious as to what I may be losing out on in terms of options. | Soy sauce is not just salty, it has a strong taste of its own. So, to answer your question: you would use soy sauce when you want the taste of soy sauce, and salt when you don't and just want saltiness.
Your question is a bit like comparing pure sugar and mint syrup: both add a lot of sweetness, but the syrup has a lot of extra flavors, you can't just substitute one for the other. |
What went wrong with my walnut brittle
I have been making this recipe for the past 10 years for Christmas. This year every batch has turned out bad. By bad I mean it doesn't have that brittle snap when I break it. The brittle is soft and dull looking not shiny. I have always cooked the sugar, butter, maple syrup and water to 290 F for a softer crack and then stirred in the walnuts. I did test my candy thermometer and it was off 15 F, I got a new thermometer and tried again cooking it to 290 F but got the same results. I make sure to only stir the mixture in the beginning until the sugar is dissolved and then leave until I mix in the walnuts. After I mix in the walnuts I pour it onto a silpad and let is sit on the counter. | You are absolutely right to use a candy thermometer; when used properly, it is the most reliable way to get good candy.
What happened here though is that your recipe is not optimal. The brittle is soft, because you took it to a stage called "soft crack". If you want it to be hard, you have to take it to "hard crack", which charts place at 300 to 310 F.
The reason it worked the past 10 years was probably either measurement error from the old thermometer, or some consistent handling error, such as not cooling the mixture quickly enough after the thermometer reached the 290 F, so it had a chance to heat up more even after being removed from the stove. |
How can I melt mozzarella balls?
Basically, I am trying to melt mozzarella on top of bread. I've tried both pan and microwave, but it doesn't seem to work out. I also tried to heat the balls separately in a microwave, but even that doesn't seem to show any progress.
This led me to wonder... How exactly do people get mozzarella to melt on pizza?
Perhaps is it that low-moisture mozzarella cheese melts better than mozzarella balls? | Very simply, with heat from above.
I cannot comment on the microwave, since I have almost never used one, but a pan is clearly the wrong tool for the job, since there you are heating the bread from below, and the cheese only gets slightly warmed, if at all.
Using an oven, I have never noticed a need for reducing the moisture, as other answers suggest. The mozzarella straight out of the brine might make your bread somewhat soggy, but there is nothing wrong with that for me.
The best device for doing this will be a grill/broiler, but a toaster oven and a normal oven will also work. All you have to do is slice the mozzarella, place it on the bread, and bake. Place the sandwiches as closely to the upper heating element as possible.
Using this method, I have made sandwiches with up to 1.5 cm thick mozzarella slices. They are quite decadent :) but my point is, the thickness is not a problem at all, nor is the moisture.
Above, a picture of some mozzarella I melted on bread in an oven. It is the high-moisture mozzarella sold in apple-sized balls, sliced thickly. I placed it as close as possible to the upper heating elements, and it fared quite well. |
Why is my red cabbage suddenly turning blue when cooking, while it never did so before?
I've made fresh red cabbage (not canned or frozen) a few times. Back when I was still living with my parents, it always turned out fine. Now that I'm living on my own, I'm still using the same recipe, with one minor adaptation, which is leaving out the chunks of apple my mother always wanted me to add. I've never been a fan of those chunks, and I prefer eating mine with apple sauce, added after cooking.
But now, when I cook the red cabbage, it suddenly (and always) turns blue. The taste is still pretty much the same, it's just a colour difference. Still, I'm wondering what causes it, and if there's anything I can change to get it to look red again? | The red in red cabbage is Anthocyanin, which is a natural pigment which turns blue in the presence of a base. Apples are slightly acidic, adding apples kept the cabbage's ph towards the acid side, keeping it red.
Adding a squeeze of lemon juice will do the same thing as apples. |
Substitutes for yak butter in butter tea
I'm interested in making the sort of butter tea drunk in the Himalayan regions. However, one of its key ingredients, yak butter, is not commonly available in Europe where I live. What can I substitute it with such that my butter tea will taste as close as possible to the Himalayan original?
The shops here sell butter made from cow's milk, goat's milk, and (rarely) buffalo milk. Which of these three, if any, would most closely match the flavour profile of yak butter? I understand that yak butter has a very high fat content, so is there any way I could process the cow/goat/buffalo butter, or anything else I could add to the butter tea, to raise the fat content? | Based on how I remember it from when I lived in Nepal, buffalo milk butter would be the best substitute. In fact, given the popularity of water buffalo as herd animals in the Kathmandu Valley, it's even a local alternative there.
Goat butter isn't any more like yak butter than cow butter is, and is generally more expensive. Your ideal among cow butters would be some brand of cultured butter, which you could even make yourself. This will give you some of the funky flavors in the homemade yak butters that Tibetans traditionally use.
Also make sure to have the right kind of tea. And yes, it's supposed to be that salty. |
What is the normal shape of Zojirushi rice cooker's inner pot?
I possess an 8-year old Zojirushi rice cooker Model NS-LAQ05, which is marketed as the ‘international’ model, as its electronics are suited for places where the electrical grid’s voltage is something like 220 – 230V.
I recently purchased a replacement inner pot (labelled on the box as a Model B250-6B) from a vendor in the United States. Unfortunately, the new inner pot does not fit into my rice cooker.
The diameter of my old inner pot’s lip is perfectly round, and it slides into place easily. The replacement pot’s diameter is not round. It seems to be slightly asymmetrical, as though it might have been damaged/bent/crushed, or manufactured incorrectly.
So, I’m trying to diagnose whether the problem lies with the replacement pot, or alternatively, whether this pot is simply not compatible with my NS-LAQ05. I haven't been able to find any details on the web. All the pictures make them look pretty round/symmetrical, but its hard to tell.
My question:
Does anyone know if the Zojirushi rice cooker Model NS-LAC05 (the US model) uses the same inner pot as the Model NS-LAQ05? Or whether Model NS-LAC05 inner pots normally have round diameters? | Following @Joe's suggestion, I contacted Zojirushi customer service in the US zojirushi.com/app/customer_service/entry. They were able to confirm that the Zojirushi inner pots for these models should be quite round. They also said that the inner pots should slide into place easily, and be able to spin around freely. For legal reasons they declined to comment on whether this inner pot (whose packaging said it was suitable for Model NS-LAC05) was appropriate for the NS-LAQ05. All told, based on the shape of the inner pot, it's reasonable to conclude that my replacement inner pot is defective or damaged. |
How does freeze-drying ice cream work?
How do they make freeze dried ice cream (like for astronauts)? How does freeze-drying work?
It just seems like we should be able to make it at home, or at least buy it in the supermarket or a specialty market. | From the Wikipedia article on freeze-dried ice cream:
Freeze drying (or lyophilization) removes water from the ice cream by lowering the air pressure to a point where ice sublimates from a solid to a gas. The ice cream is placed in a vacuum chamber and frozen until the water crystallizes. The air pressure is lowered, creating a partial vacuum, forcing air out of the chamber; next heat is applied, sublimating the ice; finally a freezing coil traps the vaporized water. This process continues for hours, resulting in a freeze-dried ice cream slice.
Summarizing without the technical language: by using a vacuum chamber and controlling the temperature carefully, you can get the water out of the ice cream without it melting (the water goes straight from ice to vapour) and ruining the structure.
Unless you have access to specialist equipment you will not be able to make it at home. You can buy it online pretty easily but it's mostly interesting as a novelty; it's not actually that great as food (certainly much less enjoyable than regular ice cream), so I doubt demand is high enough to sell outside science museum gift shops. |
Does blanching cause loss of mass/weight in the vegetable?
Let's say I am water-blanching 100g of green beans. After the blanching process will the resulting weight be less than 100g?
I aim to dehydrate the blanched 100 g of green beans. Will dehydrating 100g of blanched beans and 100g of unbalanced beans result in the same dried mass? | The weight is more likely to increase than decrease when blanching as some water or (condensed steam if you do it by steaming) will stay on the surface. With something like broccoli that has a lot of surface area that could be quite a lot. With beans less, unless you cut them up and immerse them so the water gets inside.
The dehydrated mass should be the same though. You're aiming to get the water content down to the same level. If you start the dehydrating process with extra water, it will take longer to reach the same point.
You may be concerned about the loss of things that dissolve in the blanching water, and thus losing weight that way. I really don't think you need to be. Most vegetables (including beans) are high in water to start with, and most of what's left is insoluble. This nutrition information table has fat+protein+carbs adding up to about 10%. Of that only the sugar (3.6% of the total weight) is soluble. But (i) blanching is brief and (ii) most of the sugar is trapped in the plant's cells so it won't dissolve out easily until cooked to mush. |
When soaking beans, should I throw away the floating ones?
Soaking beans before cooking is a widespread practice. Another widespread practice is, before cooking rice, to spread it on a flat surface and remove stones or rotting grains.
After soaking beans, some separated skins float. Even some beans float. Should those be discarded? Are the floating beans infiltrated by some insects?
EDIT:
So the last comment and the only answer contradict each other. Which one is it?
In other news, the beans in question were dirt cheap and turned out completely tasteless. However, when I've soaked beans in the past I've always gotten some separated skins (but no floating beans) - just not so many. So I don't know if these were tasteless because of being old or some other reason. | I often purchase beans from Rancho Gordo. I am not shilling for them, but happen to really enjoy their beans. They are bean experts. It's just about all they do. I bring them up because their advice is to simply cook floating beans. That is what I do. After cooking, I've never noticed them. |
How can oak leaves be made edible?
Based on some research, it seems the leaves contain tannins and so I imagine some number of rounds of boiling are required to extract those/reduce them to an acceptable level.
But the texture of oak leaves isn't ideal for eating based on what I remember as a kid. So I'm curious how to deal with that issue. Some type of fermentation seems necessary to break down the leaf compounds into softer/more edible compounds, and maybe even just pickling with vinegar might help?
I was curious if anyone has tried this before and had success rendering oak leaves edible. | I cannot find any internet source that recommends eating oak leaves, however treated. The level of tannins in oak leaves isn't just bad-tasting; it's sufficiently strong to cause kidney or liver failure. This is probably why there are extensive records of Native Americans tribes eating acorns but none of them eating oak leaves.
It's dubious that any amount of soaking of oak leaves could remove sufficient tannins to render them safe. Some recipes for Oak Leaf Wine involve soaking them for 5 days. If that actually leached the majority of the tannins, the wine would be toxic, and there's no evidence that it is.
So my overall answer is: you cannot eat them, use something else instead. |
Want to supply Hot Indian Tea to few companies, How can I keep it hot for hours withot losing taste
I Tried Milton 3ltr with press button on it but after few hours the taste gets change. I want a right product to keep it fresh as prepared for more then 6 hours. What's the right way to do that so that I will increase the supply area to reach maximum. | There's a reason it's termed "Fresh Brewed". Tea and coffee only stay fresh for so long. It can be kept hot, not fresh. |
What's the difference between omelette/frittata/quiche?
What is the culinary difference between these dishes?
It seems to me that they are all egg dishes that are cooked with some fillings in them (onion/tomato/ham/cheese etc). Is quiche just a frittata in pastry? | Quiche has a crust, while the other two do not. But it’s also not stirred while cooking, so the texture is different, especially if you add any milk to it so it’s more of a custard.
There are multiple types of omelette (French, italian, Japanese), but in general they’re egg dishes that are cooked stovetop with fillings typically added after the egg has begun to set up.
Frittata is stirred as it’s cooked at the beginning, with the fillings often cooked first then the eggs added in, then put in the oven to finish.
And had been mentioned there’s also the Spanish tortilla in which the filling is cooked, then added to the beaten eggs, then put back to the pan, then flipped to finish cooking
I would also add the Italian pizza rustica which is an egg pie, so it’s quiche-like but also has a top crust.
And there’s a style of ‘egg roll’, which can be rather omelette like, in that it’s a thin crepe-like omelette that’s then wrapped around a filling.
… and then you start getting into various types of sweeter quiche-like dishes, like Italian cheesecake (aka ‘ricotta pie’) and custard pies |
Chemistry of adding maple syrup to marinade
Game recipe calls for olive oil, ginger, garlic, balsamic vinegar, Worchestershire....and a tiny bit of Maple syrup.
Not enough for glazing.
Why add the maple syrup? | To add sweetness and the taste of maple to the marinade, of course. Many marinades have some form of sugar in them. |
Focaccia dough perhaps not able to get at room temp before baking
The classical Focaccia Genovese proofs three times.
First in bulk (right after partition if making more than one)
Then flattened and topped with coarse salt in order not to let a film form that would prevent the dimples later.
Apply a water/oil mixture, make the dimples and in case some topping and let it raise again.
Edit: in the first two phases the dough rose, that's why I think the yeast itself and its activity were OK.
At this point, as I needed a freshly baked focaccia on the next day when I didn't have time for 1--3, I decided to refrigerate at 5 Celsius. The pan had walls higher than the dough, so there was a gap between the focaccia and the film covering the pan.
On the day in question, I took the pan out of the fridge and let it warm up in the oven with the light on.
The time I waited was of course longer than the one I'd let for phase 3 above, but this time just didn't rise much and, at baking, became very thin and dry (considering the embarrassing amount of oil inside the dough that's quite annoying :))
So question one: can it be that, since I forgot to remove the film, the dough just didn't get warm enough to rise before baking? That is my guess but it looks like the onion part raised OK.
Back to the embarrassing amount of oil inside a focaccia genovese, can they be the cause of these unaesthetic albeit totally safe white dots that showed up during baking? | I am guessing that this is a dough formula that contains a proportion of yeast that is designed to be appropriate for a relatively quick rise (a few hours). Even though you chilled your dough, the activity doesn't stop entirely. My hypothesis is that your focaccia was simply over-proofed. Especially if you've had success before and this was the only variable you changed. Also, as I mention in my comment above, the white dots are simply from the salt. Some (or all) dissolves on the surface. Then, when baked, because of dehydration, you see the salt spot. Just like if some salt water stayed on your countertop until it dried, leaving behind the salt residue. |
Best way to bind crab cakes
What is the best way to bind crab cakes? I cannot, ever, use any kind of flour or breadcrumbs, no even NG flour/bread; no bread, cracker, flour G or NG.
Would just an egg or egg white be enough to bind the crab cake? | It probably depends on how you’re planning on cooking your crab cakes.
There’s a style of Maryland crab cakes that are baked or broiled (top heat only) in an oven that don’t require as much binder as you don’t need to flip them or need them to hold together in a fryer.
For this style, it might be bound with just egg, or a mix of egg and mayonnaise.
Here are some example recipes:
using egg, egg yolk and mayo
using just mayonnaise |
cooking dried legumes
most recipes I've tried say soak legume overnight and then cook for hours. with chick peas I found cooking for minutes was right and hours far too long. with lime beans even an overnight soak is too much. why is there a huge discrepancy between recipe and actual? are some dried legumes pre-processed even though the packet doesn't say? | The variation of cooking time is simply based on the specific plant. Legumes have an outer skin around a starchy center. This protects what is essentially a seed (and only when they are in the right environment with sufficient water will they start to germinate). To soften, water has to permeate the skin and get inside the seed, giving us the soft mushy inner part after cooking.
The rate at which this happens depends on a few factors, the thickness of the skin being one of them. Ph level of the water can also be a factor. As a rule of thumb, true beans with their thick skin need a long time to soften, peas (whole) are kind of in-between and the thinner-skinned lentils or chickpeas are amongst the fastest. From a culinary perspective, removing the skin (often done for red or yellow lentils) or opening up the seed (split peas) will change the time significantly.
You may also want to consider that while the legumes (fabaceae) are related and occasionally used interchangeably in cooking, they are diverse enough to have different physiological characteristics, so that soaking and cooking times have to be adjusted. (This Wikipedia entry on “beans” gives a nice overview.)
And lastly, storage time can be an factor. While legumes can be stored for a long time (often multiple years), the skins will get tougher and it can get difficult to get very old beans to soften up at all. |
Cracked oven proof dish - trying to understand the physics of what went wrong
I was baking bread for the first time in years the other day, and the instructions said put a baking tray full of water in the bottom of the oven. I didn't have a metal baking tray, so I put a ceramic ovenproof dish in the oven, and let it warm up. Then I boiled a kettle and poured it into the dish. DISASTER! The dish cracked immediately, spilling water into the bottom of the oven.
Obviously this was a dumb mistake. Next time I'll use a deep metal baking tray etc.
However, I'm trying to understand why this happened, because when I make a stupid mistake I like to fully understand what went wrong. I wouldn't have thought the temperature differential between the ceramic dish and the boiling water was sufficient to cause the sort of rapid expansion that would cause this to happen.
Any insights? | You have answered your own question, it was the rapid change in temperature which caused the ceramic to crack. Oven temperature for bread baking is usually somewhere around 200°C/400°F, whereas water is 100°C/212°F, which is not a trivial difference. Everyone thinks boiling water is hot, but it's cool compared to a hot oven. Rapid changes of temperature aren't ideal for glass or ceramic.
That isn't to say that your ceramic dish should have shattered, but it isn't a surprise. Next time feel free to use a ceramic dish but put the water in it at the outset, although they aren't ideal. I prefer to use a wide metal baking tray instead because it has a lot of surface area for water to evaporate, baking dishes won't get your oven moist as quickly. |
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