instruction stringlengths 2 23k | output stringlengths 3 23.1k ⌀ |
|---|---|
When should I add coriander to macaroni and cheese
I am fairly new to food connoisseurship, so I have a couple of what may appear to some to be stupid questions.
Basically, I am making Macaroni Cheese and Garlic Bread for dinner, and I have some spare dried Coriander leaves. By what method and process is Coriander best added to Macaroni Cheese? Should the Coriander be added during cooking, or after cooking? | This is kind of an subjective question. I have never seen a recipe which adds coriander to mac and cheese, but that doesn't mean you can't add it. I love coriander to a point where I would eat it poached like vegetables in a Japanese shabu-shabu, so I would definitely try.
If your coriander is fresh, you can do a coarse chop and add towards the end of cooking similar to how you would garnish a dish with parsley. This will prevent the coriander leaves from wilting too much and preserve the freshness and fragrance of the herb.
If your coriander leaves are dry, I would try adding it when you make your roux, or when you are heating the milk/cream/cheese sauce to allow cooking time for the coriander to infuse into the sauce.
If you are American and by coriander you actually mean the coriander seeds and not "cilantro", I recommend the same method as the dry coriander leaves. |
Can you make butter-cream icing with margerine?
I want to make a tipsy carrot cake. One where I make a nice sugar pickle with brandy, treacle sugar, powdered ginger and nutmeg. Grate the carrots and let them marinate overnight in the sugar pickle and then add the brew to a pre-mixed bran muffin mix to get carrot cake.
I have a question on the icing. I'm pretty allergic to dairy. Can you make butter-milk icing with icing sugar beaten into margerine?
Im sure it will be different and maybe not as nice but will it be a flop? | Yes, you most definitely can, and I have done so many times, since I often can't use dairy in cakes. Of course the flavor will be different, since margarine doesn't taste quite like butter. But the texture is fine, and if you're putting flavorings (such as vanilla) in anyways, your frosting should taste quite fine!
Note that I am assuming actual "margarine" available in the US, which by the standard of identity for margarine must be at least 80% fat. If you wish to use "vegan butter" (which has no labelling requirements and often contains less fat), then be sure that it contains at least 79-80% fat, otherwise the texture of your frosting will be off. |
Is it possible to substitute banana for the egg when making French toast?
I want to make a few slices of banana bread for breakfast, but don't want to have to purchase the flour and make the bread from scratch, so would rather use existing bread already made, however I can find no recipe on the internet which gives instructions for this method. So, I was just wondering if I can start out with existing bread, and then use a French toast method to infuse the banana flavor. I want to use banana instead of egg in the batter.
Will this be successful? What can I expect the result to look and taste like, will it be close to banana bread? If not, will it at least be reasonably edible?
For anyone that is unsure about the process I am referring to, to make eggy bread/French toast, then I shall leave a link to the instructions I am following below.
BBC goodfood | Banana bread is actually a kind of cake (quick bread) made from bananas. It is not the same as regular bread, and there is no way to turn regular bread into banana bread, any more than you can turn it into chocolate cake. If you wish to make French toast with bananas, you would still need to use them in addition to the regular eggs/milk/etc, since bananas are too viscous to be absorbed by bread and won't cook in a pan the same way that eggs do. Regardless, the result will not be banana bread, but rather banana-flavored French toast. |
Should I boil lentils before adding to curry?
I bought some black beluga lentils, i heard that you were supposed to boil them before using them, i want to add them to a curry that will simmer for 2 hours, should i boil them first or just throw them in to the curry? | It is common for dal or curry recipes to involve cooking the lentils separately, and then adding them to a fried spice and/or vegetable base. This is particularly common with long-cooking lentils like brown lentils or chana dal.
However, beluga lentils are quick-cooking, done in about 20 minutes. As such, adding them to the rest of the curry ingredients directly should work fine. In fact, if the curry needs to simmer for 2 hours, you might consider adding them after 1 hour. Just make sure that the curry as a lot of liquid in it, though; the lentils will absorb twice their volume in water. |
Cleaning with baking soda stains?
I cooked some ribs and used a baking sheet under my rack.
Later I cleaned the greasy bits by soaking the baking sheet and rack in a baking soda solution until the water was gone. Then I added vinegar and scrubbed it. The rack is stainless steel and is doing great.
The sheet seems to be aluminum and has visible baking soda stains on it(even minimal powdering). I added more vinegar and scrubbed it but it persists.
Is there a way to clean the baking soda stains? | Aluminum is attacked by alkalies - while lye (typically from automatic dishwasher detergent) is the more common issue, baking soda is a weak alkali and will have the same issue.
Other than re-polishing (to physically remove the corroded layer on the surface), I don't think you can "remove" the stain. You can choose to live with the staining (it's only cosmetic.) |
I want to cook brown and white rice together
I want to cook brown rice and jasmine rice in the same pot, or normal white rice whatever works better with brown rice. Is it possible to do so without having mushy white rice. I love brown rice i want to mix it up | That is possible, but you need to stage the cooking process. If your preferred cooking method for brown rice takes X minutes and for white Y minutes, start cooking the brown rice as usual, and add the white rice after X-Y minutes.
For example (and those numbers may vary depending on your rice and preferences):
Brown rice needs 40 minutes, the jasmine needs 18 minutes. Then add the jasmine after 22 (40-18) minutes.
If you usually cook the rice at low-low heat, you may have to crank up the heat for a short while to bring the pot back to a boil after adding the white rice.
If you cook by the absorption method, you can add the whole amount of water at the beginning (for both kinds) and perhaps add a tablespoon or two to compensate for the loss when you open the pot to add the second batch of rice. |
How long can I store raw red meat at -16 celcius?
So I have a small freezing section in my fridge that reaches -16 celcius (according to my food thermometer). Recommended storage durations are always for -18, but I want to know how long I can store things at -16. Can I safely store raw red meat at this temperature, and if so, for how long? | It seems that the situation is not discussed much in English-speaking sources. But in Europe, freezers with differently-graded compartments are available. So I was able to find a German-speaking source, https://www.gefriertruhen.org/bedeutung-der-gefrierfach-sterne/.
no stars, or 3 to -4 C: 1-2 days
1 star, or -6 to -12 C: 1-3 days
2 stars, or -12 to -18 C: 3-14 days
3 stars, or -18 C: 2-6 months
4 stars, or below -18 C: 6-12 months
I suspect that this chart assumes already-frozen food, since by food safety standards, non-freezer-requiring food can be kept at 0-4 C for 3-5 days, with a few exceptions like ground meat.
Your freezer falls into the 2 stars category, so by these rules, the food is safe for up to 14 days.
Also, you said that this is a freezing compartment in a fridge. In this case, there is a single compressor, regulated by the dial in the fridge. If you value longer storage times over energy usage, and can accept a colder main compartment, you might be able to regulate it to lower temperatures and make it -18 and below. You'll have to experiment if it really would go that far, and also it may have side effects, such as finding frozen food items in the main compartment. |
How can I safely store garlic and ginger in oil without preservatives?
Storing garlic, ginger and certain other vegetables etc. in oil is a well documented botulism risk if preservatives are not added. As a consequence, I always make my pastes fresh immediately before use. I have considered freezing them, but due to the amount of oil used I am concerned they will not freeze well. I have had reasonable success freezing ginger and garlic pastes made with water, but the taste is obviously very different.
I am due to have guests for a curry evening and it would be helpful if I could do a lot of the preparation beforehand. One of these steps would be the prep of ginger and garlic pastes with rapeseed oil.
Taking into account that the pastes will comprise of pure garlic with oil and ginger with oil (I don't make a combined garlic/ginger paste), what factors other than acidity etc. will eliminate this risk? I don't intend to store the paste more than 24 hours in the refrigerator and the quantities of oil used will be just enough to make a smooth paste. I can potentially add salt, sugar or freshly squeezed lemon juice, but ideally I would prefer to omit the latter which is the only ingredient I assume would change the pH to safe levels.
(For clarification the water and oil are not essential ingredients here, I use them purely so the solid garlic/ginger will process into a smooth paste in my blender). | According to these CDC guidelines regarding botulism, storing fresh garlic in oil in the refrigerator is safe for up to 4 days. Very little information is available about fresh ginger in oil, but there seems to be little reason to assume it would develop botulism faster than garlic in oil, or that there is some relationship between the two that would cause faster development of botulism, since garlic in oil is already a close-to-ideal environment for botulism to develop (low acid and low oxygen). |
What is the difference between castor, confectionary and icing sugar?
I see these labels used and was wondering what exactly they mean? | These are the British names for different grades of granulated sugar.
Castor/Caster Sugar is a granulated sugar with crystals around 0.2mm in size. It is equivalent to Superfine or "Baker's" granulated sugar in the US.
Icing Sugar is granulated sugar that has been pounded to a fine powder (50μm grain size), sometimes with starches added to prevent caking up. Confectioner's Sugar the same as Icing Sugar, and either is called Powdered Sugar in the US. Some sources will tell you that the difference between the names is whether starch is added or not, but no brand consistently makes that distinction. |
Can I reprocess jars that have sealed?
We lost track of the venting time but since it was a strong heavy steam, husband put the weight on. Regulating the jiggles was hard to do and finally we just turned the heat off. Thinking to start over. We opened up the canner after it set an hour. Opened it, pulled the jars out. But some of the jars started to ping. Must we open them up, and put new lids on? Or can we put the jars back in to reprocess as is? | Official advice (which is the only sort here on food safety issues) is to empty, and repack into a clean jar with a new lid.
But why? It sealed, and I'm going to process it more?
Because the processing times published are (usually) based on the hot jars being packed with hot food, not room temperature jars of food being subjected to heat. Particularly with any thick pasty food, the center of the jars may not heat adequately from "just reprocessing" and the odds that your family will show up posthumously in one of those cautionary tales about doing canning wrong go way, way up...
Sealed is NOT "safe" if the path to sealed was not the path in the tested safe recipe.
While most "reprocessing" advice assume the seal failed, failing to maintain the time/temperature as specified in the tested process is a path to jars that look sealed, but are not safe. Reprocessing them without emptying, reheating, and repacking is likewise unsafe.
You describe a pressure canning process.
Jars seal just fine in a boiling-water or steam process at much lower temperatures, which will result in unsafe food if following a recipe intended for pressure canning (low-acid.) |
Cooking rice in bulk and adding to stew for weekday meals
I usually cook a stew of some kind on a Sunday, put it in a container in the fridge, I then eat it for an evening meal during the rest of the week up to Friday or Saturday. Each weekday evening I cook a portion of brown rice and once cooked I add it to the stew.
Would it be safe to cook 5-6 portions of rice on the Sunday, then mix it in with the stew and store in the fridge? My reasoning for doing this is because it would drastically reduce my energy usage. I guess I am paranoid about rice not being safe to store?
In typing this question a previous similar question came up, Cooking and storing rice for a whole week, but it doesn't answer my question because it is about cooking rice and then storing it separately. | I'd freeze it instead; prepare individual portions.
You could use freezer bags or plastic containers.
In my experience, rice starts to go bad (mostly texture and taste) after 2 days. |
Can I place an induction cooktop on a 3/4-inch wood cutting board on top of a metal gas stove?
The cutting board is large and covers the top of the stove but not the side and back metal strips. Will this interfere with the use of the cooktop? Is it dangerous? Should I just remove all metal from around the induction cooker? | I put my portable induction single burner stove unit on top of a breadboard on my stove w/ no problems. However, I have now switched to a large stainless steel cookie sheet (in case someone accidentally lit the burner on the stove.) |
Why doesn't Greek cuisine use a lot of spices, compared to neighbors?
According to what I know almost all countries in the Mediterranean which surround Greece use a lot of spices in their cuisine. Greece itself has been occupied by such countries for hundreds of years. There has always been trade and travel between Greece and the other countries. So how come spices aren't being used that much at all?
Compared to say, Turkey, or Italy, Greek food is not spicy at all. I am not saying this is a bad thing, or that it is bland - I just find it curious that over the millennia no significant use of spices has developed like it did in Italy, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Bulgaria. Out of those countries most use a lot of spices including capsicums, and the few ones that don't, still use a lot of spices (like say Syria).
It's known that even in antiquity spices were known in Greece and used for medical reasons. This makes it even more curious. Are there any historical reasons for that perhaps?
Thanks. | The question of "why not" is difficult to answer definitively, or really at all. We can't ask folks 2000 years ago why they didn't care about cumin. However, there are some historical impacts on Greek cuisine that bear on this, so let's explore them:
You mention Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon as Greek neighbors. But consider that Greece is also historically next to Austria, and currently next to Romania and Bulgaria, and is closer to Slovakia than it is to Lebanon. So if you look at Greece as being midway between Syria and Kosovo, the frequency of spice use also puts it midway.
Greek cuisine doesn't rely heavily on spices partly because it does rely heavily on herbs and alliums. Because of the climate, onions, garlic, leeks, parsley, dill, oregano, thyme, and others grow readily and plentifully all over the islands and peninsulas. So do citrus, also used for seasoning Greek dishes. Many Greek dishes will have onions, garlic, lemon, and as much as 2 cups of minced herbs in them. Given this, one can see why Greek cooks didn't feel the need to add two teaspoons of cumin and dried peppers as well. Italy, having a similar climate, largely takes a similar approach.
One place where Greek spice usage is on a parallel with Syria is in sweets. The palette of spices used for Greek pastries, cookies, and cakes is as great as -- and extremely similar to -- the ones used in the Middle East. This is undoubtedly because most places in the region got their sweet recipes from the Persian and Ottoman empires, so they're really the same recipes.
Greece, like other ancient regions, includes multiple cuisines. Some of these use more spices than others, particularly Thrace.
Note that above I'm using the term "spices" to refer to its accepted use, of "aromatic seeds, stems, and bark". |
What's the best way to remove melted plastic from a glass cooktop?
We have a glass/ceramic electric cooktop (standard, not induction). A couple nights ago one of us bumped the knob and turned it on without noticing. This caused a plastic bag touching the electric burner to melt onto it. I scraped off most of the plastic, but some is still stuck to it.
What's the best way to remove the rest of the plastic so that I can use that burner again? | Been there done that…
First, make sure that the cook top is cold, this will solidify the plastic again and make it come off easier.
Then use a scraper for glass cooktops - the kind with the razor blade. (I always have a pack of old fashioned razor blades in the kitchen, but the scraper thingy is a bit easier to grab and use.)
And finally polish away any potential remaining bits with an abrasive cleaner, there are some that can be used for glass ceramic cook tops.
You should be good to go after that, although you may get a hint of a “burnt plastic” smell the first time you use that burner again. But it should be really minute. |
Garlic with the olives... what happened?
Something strange (but nice) happened and I hope someone can explain.
Here is the story: I had a glass jar of olives (Kalamata Pitted). They come in a "brine" with the ingredients listed as Kalamata Olives, Water, Salt, Vinegar, Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
I had some extra garlic and on a lark I pealed some of the cloves and just tossed them in.
The next day I tried them and the results were amazing! A very spicy taste that was unlike fresh and cooked garlic. It has a super sharp taste -- almost like a hot sauce.
Does anyone know why this happened? Are there are techniques or recipes to make a consistent and flavorful addition to my cooking ingredients? | Garlic has an enzyme called alliinase that converts sulphur-containing compounds in the garlic into forms that your taste receptors recognise as hot or spicy (alliin > allicin & diallyl disulfide, other compounds).
The alliinase is released and becomes active when the cells in the bulb are disrupted by cutting, chopping, crushing, etc. Normally alliinase activity is reduced in an acidic environment like the kalamata olive brine - though since the cloves were left whole, the brine didn't fully penetrate and interact with the alliinase, allowing it to form its products inside the cloves.
The same principle is used for making aioli, where garlic is mashed with a mortar and pestle. Time affects how quickly it reacts - in dry garlic powder, you can get full alliin > allicin conversion in 30 seconds [i] after adding water.
You can easily replicate this by crushing and rolling the cloves to break up cells and let them sit in plain water in the fridge, or crush and paste them and add vinegar to stop the enzyme activity once the spice reaches your preference. Use fresher garlic for faster/more consistent activity, as the amount of time affects how much alliinase remains active; conversely, use older garlic for slower or reduced spice.
You can easily replicate this by doing exactly what you did the first time - put peeled garlic in the olive brine. If the olives were originally displayed at room temperature when you bought them, then the brine is formulated with enough added salt and vinegar for osmotic stress and acidity to inhibit C. botulinum, and little enough oil to not form a gas barrier at the top.
Add refrigeration temperatures and free oxygen exchange with the aqueous part of the brine after opening, and the risk profile for C. botulinum toxin formation is similar to jarred capers - negliglble.
In the comments below:
Hogan:
Wow thanks for the quick reply Borky. So what caused the allicin to form since I put the cloves in whole and didn't crush or slice? Was it the salt in the brine?
Answer:
That's a good question, and one that I don't know for sure, but can guess at:
Like you mentioned, the salt in the brine could be the cause - the osmotic stress could cause the cells themselves to leak while the cell wall structure remains intact due to the acidity strengthening the pectins present;
The olive oil could have interfered with the cell phospholipid layer, also causing leakage. This can be seen with some herb-in-oil mixes where internal components end up in the oil carrier solution.
Any slight bruising or damage to the garlic during peeling and handling could trigger alliin release - the allicin is part of garlic's natural defense response to pests.
The acidity from the vinegar affects the cell membranes, releasing the alliinase and precursor compounds. This mechanism is used in a northern Chinese pickled garlic food, "Laba" garlic [ii]. Laba has a milder spice due to the use of undiluted vinegar with a pH around 2 - a relatively small amount of allicin is immediately produced before enzymatic activity halts, then breaks down into diallyl disulfide and other less reactive compounds.
[...]As compared to the unprocessed garlic (0 day), most organosulfur compounds showed a significant change from day 3. This change could be
explained with the damage of garlic cell membrane by vinegar.
According to the report of Bing et al.,8,9 the permeability of both
plasma membrane and intracellular membrane of garlic are improved
after the garlic being soaked in vinegar. Thus, alliin and alliinase
in garlic react rapidly to form allicin. -Liu et al. [ii]
In contrast, the kalamata brine likely has vinegar at <4% formulation, yielding a brine pH roughly between 4-5. This is still a range where alliinase is active, though less optimally.
Fig 3. Effect of pH (A) on the alliinase activity at 25°C.[iii]
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248878.g003
Further reading and references:
Garlic and Organosulfur Compounds. Jane Higdon, Ph.D., Victoria J. Drake, Ph.D., Barbara Delage, Ph.D., Karin Ried, Ph.D., MSc. Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University. https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/food-beverages/garlic
Pungent products from garlic activate the sensory ion channel TRPA1. Diana M. Bautista, Pouya Movahed, Andrew Hinman, Helena E. Axelsson, Olov Sterner, Edward D. Högestätt, David Julius, Sven-Eric Jordt, and Peter M. Zygmunt.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0505356102
[i] Allicin Bioavailability and Bioequivalence from Garlic Supplements and Garlic Foods.
Larry D. Lawson, Scott M. Hunsaker.
https://doi.org/10.3390%2Fnu10070812
Storage time and temperature affects volatile organic compound profile, alliinase activity and postharvest quality of garlic.
Richard A. Ludlow, Marianna Pacenza, Adriana Chiappetta, Sarah R. Christofides, GarethEvanscMichaelGrazcGraciaMarticHilary J.RogersaCarsten T.Müllera
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.postharvbio.2021.111533
[ii] Investigation of the dynamic changes in the chemical constituents of Chinese “Laba” garlic during traditional processing.
Jian Liu, Wei Guo, Minli Yang, Lixia Liu, Shengxiong Huang, Liang Tao, Feng Zhang, and Yongsheng Liu.
https://doi.org/10.1039/C8RA09657K
[iii] Effect of physicochemical parameters on the stability and activity of garlic alliinase and its use for in-situ allicin synthesis.
Petra Janská, Zdeněk Knejzlík, Ayyappasamy Sudalaiyadum Perumal, Radek Jurok, Viola Tokárová, Dan V. Nicolau, František Štěpánek, Ondřej Kašpar.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248878 |
Baking muffins filled with cream cheese frosting instead of cream cheese filling
I wanted to make 'stuffed' carrot cake muffins. I checked a few recipes, like (carrot cake muffins with cream cheese filling), (stuffed carrot cake muffins) or (carrot cheesecake muffins), just to follow methodology of the filling part, as I have done tons of carrot cakes before, and also carrot cake muffins. My guess was:
Making a regular carrot cake muffin dough (whichever your fav recipe), pour in baking moulds until half (or whatever preference), pour filling, pour the rest (to close/complete the muffin shape for when it bakes).
Then I noticed the 'filling' part, as I did not consider it would be different to the classic frosting in a carrot cake (hence why I thought and used the 'stuffed' word in the beginning of my question). I've seen there are differences between filling and frosting, and here. I always filled and topped my carrot cakes (and other cakes, chocolate cake with choco frosting unless I did a ganache, Red Velvet, etc) with frosting. Never did I consider that they should be made different (if they should at all).
The ingredients of a cream cheese filling seem different than cream cheese frosting (recipe example). More specifically, I've noticed that butter is not present. Just cheese and sugar (+vanilla).
So my question: is there any difference in BAKING filled muffins with filling (as all recipes I've seen) and baking filled muffins with frosting. Does adding butter to make it from filling to frosting, change anything in terms of baking it? In the SA.SE answer to the question, it is stated:
You can therefore have a filling made of frosting, but you cannot have a frosting made of filling.
But I'm assuming it's for already baked goods. What about for to-be-baked goods? | It took me some time. I did a baking experiment and decided to bake Cream Cheese filled Carrot Cake Muffins. Half of the muffins filled with cream cheese filling and the other half with cream cheese frosting.
What I found curious about this filling (not frosting), is one of the 3 ingredients it has: flour. The ending result for these ones is nice.
As stated in my question, prepare carrot-cake muffins batter/mass/dough.
For the frosting, the recipe stated
120g of butter
120g of cream cheese
250gr glass sugar
I used half the ingredients (And there was a some left over, so I guess dividing by 3 would have been fine. I used less sugar though. Beat well sugar and butter until specially creamy (5 mins), then add cream cheese.
The following pictures show the end result. Filling: left muffins, Frosting: right muffins.
For the filling part, I first filled the base, filled a sphere of filling/frosting (seems small in the picture but I added more after taking it), fill sides with muffin, repeat 2-3 times overall. I tried to do it equally for all muffins. It's quite some process, troublesome and gets everything a bit dirty.
I filled 5 muffins on the right with frosting, 5 on the left with filling. The ones with filling seemed perfectly fine. The ones with frosting on the other hand, exploded. The texture might seem foamy, but it was actually like grilled cheese. I would post another picture with the looks of them after some resting, the cavities of the now missing frosting inside. But this answer already has too many picutres, sorry. They were empty on that side, so the butter not only melted into the muffin but also helped some of the frosting firm up, and made it into some kind of sweet grilled creamcheese.
And the final result, on the right, "cut in half" is a frosting filled muffin, and on the left is a filling filled muffin. It had a texture similar to oven cheesecake. I guess flour as a main ingredient made it's wonders. So as a final answer: If you want to bake filled muffins (not filling them afterwards), use filling, not frosting (for these specific muffins and this specific filling). |
Is there a known point of origin for Brined Cheeses?
Heavily brined cheeses, such as feta, akkawi, haloumi, and sirene are popular throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.
It is difficult, however, to find good information on where the practice of submerging cheese in brine originated. It seems to have been present as early as 5000BCE in both Cyprus and the Middle East (according to the Dairy Encyclopedia). Unfortunately, each nationality in the region claims the invention of brined cheese for themselves.
Are there any evidence-based archeological theories about where the practice of brining cheese actually originated? Was it a single place or an innovation that was repeated in multiple places? Or is this one of those things that's so far back in food history that we'll never know? | Archaeologists have evidence of salt used as a preservative for at least 8000 years, and in locations around the world with widely varying temperatures and humidity. The ubiquity of salt, simplicity of the chemical process, and necessity of preserving food have lead to the same techniques (e.g. dry salting, salt and smoke, seaside surf hanging, brining) being discovered in parallel by numerous cultures.
There is no reason to believe a single common origin exists for brined cheese or that one must exist. |
Can you make extracts faster by heating the alcohol?
I tried making cherry extract recently by storing cherries and vodka in a jar, but after 2 weeks, it was more like cherry flavored vodka than extract. Some extract recipes I've seen suggest letting the extract sit for 5 weeks to a year. I don't have the patience to wait that long for something I'd like to bake with in the next couple of weeks or so.
I've seen articles and videos that suggest using an Instant Pot to make (vanilla) extract within an hour. Since I don't have a pressure cooker, I was wondering if it was possible to jumpstart the process of extracting the cherry flavors by simply heating the vodka, like you would with coffee or tea.
Can you speed up the process of creating extract by heating vodka? I would most likely bring it to a simmer on the stove, pour it into a jar with the cherries, and let it come to room temperature before closing the jar. Could this work, or would I just inhale vodka vapors and accidentally get drunk?
Update
This has kind of turned into a science experiment. I grabbed 2 (2oz) bottles and added pureed cherries to one and a mixed of pureed and dried cherries to the other. Then, I filled each one with about an ounce of heated vodka. I'm operating on the premise that heat will jumpstart the extraction process and not expecting it to extract more flavor. I may add a third bottle with just dried cherries. It may never be as intense as an actual extract, but I want to get as close as I can. | Vanilla (a spice) is different to fruit in that it's a very concentrated flavour to start with. Cherries aren't that concentrated. Eating a handful of cherries is normal, but eating a vanilla pod would be overpowering in its flavour.
The strength of flavour you get out is (very approximately) proportional to the strength in what you're starting with. In the case of cherries, of course they're full of water to start with, which further dilutes the flavour. But even drying them (which helps) doesn't get a strong enough source.
If you want a strong extract, you'll probably have to concentrate it after extracting, though
You just might be able to get something strong enough for your needs by using a lot of dried cherries in just enough liquid to cover them. Heat would speed up that process, but wouldn't really extract more flavour. You can simmer alcohol safely, but you'll also evaporate some of the flavours you want (even with a lid, which you shoudl use anyway. If simmering spirits in large quantities you might want to ventilate, but the amount of alcohol vapour you'd breathe in from simmering a little vodka is a tiny fraction of what you'd get from drinking the same amount. Don't forget that if you eat something made with alcohol-based extract you're consuming the alcohol too - little of it boils off in baking - but the total quantity is usually small enough that it doesn;t matter.
The alcohol in the vodka may or may not help in the extraction process with cherries, but it will certainly act as a preservative. |
How safe and durable is commercial meat packaging when exposed to alkaline and acidic marinades?
This question is born more out of sheer laziness than curiosity, but preparing two marinaded meat dishes the other day (Char Su pork and pork vindaloo), it struck me that I could have saved myself a lot of washing up if I marinaded the meat in the plastic packaging they came in.
Would there be any danger of chemicals leaching from the plastic if either a yoghurt or acidic marinade was used? The meat would be stored in the refrigerator for a maximum of 24 hours. | Low and high density polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) are the two common plastics used in food packaging and food storage containers. Your Ziploc/Rubbermaid etc. containers and bags are chemically identical to most flexible packaging materials used for meat. Polystyrene (PS) in the both the extruded foam and rigid forms is common as well for meat trays.
All are considered chemically compatible and inert to most aqueous food acids:
CP Lab Safety LDPE Chemical Compatibility Chart - https://www.calpaclab.com/ldpe-chemical-compatibility-chart/
CP Lab Safety Polypropylene Chemical Compatibility Chart - https://www.calpaclab.com/polypropylene-chemical-compatibility-chart/
Dutcher PE, PP, PS Compatibility Chart (PDF) - https://www.dutscher.com/data/pdf_guides/en/CCTPPA.pdf
Note that the LDPE table lists 'severe effect' with citric acid, but does not specify concentrations like for acetic acid and shows excellent to good compatibility with fruit juices, cider, and malic acid. The Dutcher chart has fewer entries regarding food and food acids at specific concentrations. All were tested at ambient temperature, so you can expect even less reactivity under refrigeration.
Additives may be used in these plastics (UV protection, antioxidants for stability, plasticizers for flexibility) and should all be rated for food contact. They're typically oil-soluble organic molecules, and generally won't leach into aqueous solutions; however, they may leach into oil-based, high fat, or alcohol-containing marinades.
Pthalates in polyethylene terepthalate (PET) are a plasticizer of concern, though in my experience PET is rarely seen in North America in my region PET is rare other than in specialty beverage bottles and imported Japanese beverages.
References and Further Reading:
Characterization of plastic packaging additives: Food contact, stability and toxicity.
Meriem Cherif Lahimer, Naceur Ayed, Jalel Horriche, Sayda Belgaied.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arabjc.2013.07.022
Food Safety Focus (60th Issue, July 2011) – Incident in Focus: Plasticisers and Food Safety.
Melva Chen.
https://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/multimedia/multimedia_pub/multimedia_pub_fsf_60_01.html |
What specific vegetables, variables, or other things can I add to food to make it less greasy
My mother is bringing home Kevins Seafood. If u don't know what it is know that its fried fish thats very, very greasy. I was thinking about making some potato salad to go with the fish. I could even make something with tomatoes to cut through that greasyness. Maybe even a salad or just some stir fried vegetables. But I need a common opinion. I do not want to eat all that oil. Thanks in advance :D | There is no way to actually reduce the oil content (though, in reality, it is probably less than you think), but often acidic accompaniments are served with high fat or rich foods, to cut the perception of "greasiness" and clean the palate. Tomatoes are a good idea, as is a salad, especially with a vinegar based dressing. I would say you are on the right track. As for not wanting to "eat that much oil", all you can do is eat less or choose an alternate for your main course. |
How do I fix over-salted dry brined chicken wings?
I am dry brining chicken wings for the first time. I used fine sea salt instead of coarse kosher salt to dry brine my chicken wings. I also used baking powder. 1 tsp of each per pound of chicken. The wings are cut and separated into drums and wings, the drums being significantly meatier than most of the wings.
They have been sitting in the fridge for about 4 hours now, and I test-cooked the skinniest piece of chicken. It’s pretty salty.
What can I do to reduce the salt levels in chicken at this point? Can I soak them in cold water to draw out some salt?
Thanks | What can I do to reduce the salt levels in chicken at this point? Can I soak them in cold water to draw out some salt?
Yes. Use plain water and cover the wings, stirring to agitate and changing water every 5 minutes or so to maintain the sodium concentration gradient, and test cook a batch for taste after each water change.
If not using right away, add ice cubes to the water to target <4C/40F and refrigerate overnight, replacing ice and water at least once partway through, evenly spaced intervals if doing multiple changes.
For future brining, use a scale and target a salt amount between 0.5%-1.0% of the total mass of wings. The fine sea salt is denser than kosher salt, meaning you put in much more sodium by mass in this batch.
The baking soda (NaHCO₃) contributes sodium as well - approx. 27.3 g sodium per 100 g baking soda, compared to ~39.3 g sodium per 100 g pure sodium chloride salt. Account for that by multiplying the mass of baking soda used by 0.7 to get the mass of salt to subtract. |
Can I substitute sambucca in my pie crust instead of vodka?
I accidentally put sambucca in my pie crust instead of vodka. Will it ruin the taste of my pie crust | It will add a taste of sambuca (as opposed to vodka's neutral flavour) and lots of sugar, which might affect the texture of the pastry a little. But if the dough came together and felt normal it should still bake decently. The vodka's role in the recipe is to reduce gluten formation, and the alcohol in the sambucca means it will still achieve that purpose.
Whether it will 'ruin' the taste depends on your preferences and what else you are putting in this pie. |
How can I turn the leftovers of my Sunday chicken roast into potted meat?
I remember when I was a young boy my grandmother used to make potted meat and I absolutely loved it. It must be about thirty-five years ago now since the last time I tasted it, and the product can no longer be purchased in supermarkets, but it is something I would like to taste again. I want to make some potted meat using the leftovers from my roast chicken, but I have no idea how to make potted meat. As the product has mostly been discontinued, I cannot find any substantial instructions on google, and the instructions on the wikipedia article that I will link to below, I find rather vague.
Wikipedia
Potted meat is a form of traditional food preservation in which hot cooked meat is placed in a pot, tightly packed to exclude air, and then covered with hot fat.[
Question
How can I turn the leftovers of my Sunday chicken roast into potted meat? | I guess the question here is really ‘are you just trying to recreate the flavor and texture’ or ‘are you trying to do this for food preservation’?
Because unfortunately, those basic instructions you gave wouldn’t be considered to be shelf stable.
I’ve done similar things in the past, and kept it in the fridge for up to a week, but I have a higher risk tolerance than most (bit overly young or old, not immune compromised, and wasn’t already unwell at the time)
Basically, you need to cook the meat, heat the fat or gelatinized liquid, and work while everything is hot (not just warm—it needs to be hot), then cap and get it into the fridge. You can also use a hot water bath after it’s in the container to pasteurize the whole thing before you chill it down for storage.
You want to really pack everything in, and maybe run a sterilized knife or other implement in there to knock loose any air bubbles.
The proper way to do this (ti make it shelf stable) would be a pressure canner, but that might overcook your meat past the texture that you want.
If you’re not sure about the whole process, it might be better to look up recipes for ‘confit’, which is a process of cooking in fat. You then just let the whole thing cool and solidify, which I suspect would have similar texture.
I’d also recommend looking in ethnic grocery stores. I can get canned meats, but they’re usually cooked in their own juices (during the canning process, I suspect), not just fat, so it may not be exactly what you’re looking for. |
What is the best way to approach thermos cooking?
I have a series of hard days in my near future. I want to prepare quick and easy lunches. I have the idea of taking lentils putting them trough a blender to get lentil flour.
If you add the lentil flour to a thermos flask add salt and spices and add boiling water. Could you then have lentil soup of some sort to help you get trough the day?
You would off course preheat your flask. Would it better to prepare the lentils on the morning you consume them or is it possible to do this the previous evening?
If the soup is only luke warm after 12 hours in the flask it is OK.
Even if it is cold a minute or two in the microwave is still OK.
What would be the best way to do thermos cooking? | In general, when using a thermal cooker, the basic procedure is this:
Start some water boiling
Bring your soup base to a boil (separately)
Pour the boiled water into your insulated flask
Make your soup and let it boil for a few minutes (fully cook any meat, typically, but not more than 5 minutes)
Dump the water out of your flask (it was just to pre-heat it)
Pour the soup into the flask with any items that shouldn’t be boiled and seal it
Wait a few hours
Eat
You can find recipes by searching for ‘thermal cooker recipes’, but some are for appliances which have their own cooking element in them, so don’t require the pre-heating step. You can also try searching for ‘soup bento’ recipes to try to find something similar to base your initial ratios on, and then adjust from there to your taste and time delay. |
Yoghurt starter says to make the yoghurt at 20C/68F. What's different about it instead of the usual 43C/110F?
Yoghurt starter says to make the yoghurt at 20C/68F. What's different about it instead of the usual 43C/110F? Does the incubating temperature depend on the type of starter? | Yes, it certainly depends on the type of starter.
Just like penguins and cockatoos prefer different environments, most bacterial strains have a specific environment in which they thrive. Going slightly away from the optimal conditions will result in lower quality, since it will shift the microbial balance in your yogurt. Going further away is a safety risk, since it will shift the balance far enough that pathogenic bacteria might get a foothold, instead of being outcompeted by your starter. And going very far off (such as trying to ferment a 43C starter at 30 C) will likely result in complete failure, because your starter won't multiply.
So, the main takeway: Always follow the exact procedure prescribed for your starter. This will not only give you the best quality and eliminate quite a few typical problems, but is also safest.
As a small aside, I haven't yet encountered actual yogurt cultures that use a 20 C temperature, this sounds more like a kefir or a buttermilk culture. Regardless, the same rule applies. Stick with the temperature prescribed by the culture's producer. |
What can you do with leftover corn husks?
We made tamales today, and had a lot of corn husks left over. Any suggestions on how they can be used? | Options:
Traditional: line the bottom of the tamale steamer basket with them.
Modern: Steam something else in them, like halibut.
Marie Kondo: Compost them. |
What liquid should I use in a mango curry?
I want to make a curry using mango (frozen as there aren't any fresh mangos where I live). I usually use tomato puree for curries, but I am never happy with the result.
Even after simmering for two hours with generous amounts of spices bloomed in oil it still just ends up tasting like tomato. I tried coconut milk, but it just caused the same issue, but even worse. Is there something I'm doing wrong? Should I use a different liquid? | If you want a curry to taste strongly of mango then the liquid you should use is...mango. Eaten by itself mango is very flavorful, especially when fresh and ripe, the frozen mango I've used is not that strong and can be overpowered by other flavors. So start with mango as the base, and add other liquids like stock, yogurt or coconut milk sparingly.
If it's the spice not coming out then you may need to rethink the definition of generous. Good, strong curry flavor needs good, strong heaps of spices, especially if they aren't fresh or are weak to begin with like you get in many supermarkets. If you can source your spices from an asian supermarket, health food store or anywhere else that they get good quality. Buy small amounts often rather than big packets which then sit around for ages losing flavor. |
"Room temperature" and "cool, dry place" -- are there actual temperatures associated with these canned phrases?
When a product says "refrigerate" or "freeze", the temperature they're asking you to keep it at is not a mystery -- most refrigerators and freezers maintain an expected temperature range.
But other products indicate "room temperature" or that they should be stored in a "cool, dry place". Are there actual temperature ranges associated with these set phrases?
I grew up in North America, in a household where we couldn't afford to overly heat the house in the winter, or cool it in the summer. "Room temperature" was, therefore, 50-55°F (10-12.7°C) in the winter, and 85-90°F (29-32°C) in the summer. My perception of "room" temperature is similarly skewed -- this isn't at all "normal" from a N. American perspective, where most of my peers like to keep their houses at around 77°F/25°C in the winter, and 67°F/19°C in the summer. But I remain confused, at least, from a culinary perspective of what exactly I'm being asked when a product indicates these set phrases.
As a concrete example: I recently bought a tub of ghee. It indicates to me on the labelling that it does not require refrigeration, can be kept at "room temperature", and should be stored in a "cool, dry place". My apartment is 80°F/26.6°C right now -- is this "room temperature"? (It'll cool to ~61°F/16°C overnight.) In the meantime, it's significantly warmer than the store shelf I bought it from, and the ghee has gone from a soft solid to pure liquid. This change of state (solid -> liquid) is what prompted my concern that I'm misinterpreting "room temperature" in terms of food temperature and safety. | "Room temperature" as used for testing, analysis, and validation purposes generally falls within the range of 65F-75F (18C-24C). Published research will typically specify temperature ranges used.
Both the FDA Food Code (2017) and Canadian Food Retail and Food Services Code (2016), providing guidelines for inspection activities, take an outcome-based approach and do not reference specific storage temperatures or humidity levels as products stored unopened in these conditions are designed to be safe or are self-evident if spoiled/unsafe - mouldy potatoes, rusted or swollen cans, etc.
In most jurisdictions in North America, refrigerator and freezer temperature conditions are often codified in laws and may be required to be explicitly labelled for consumer protection since pathogen activity is not as readily evident as spoilage - some Listeria, for example, can reproduce in food below 40F/4C, making both maximum storage temperature and duration needed.
A better source for optimum room temperature conditions would be your local building code, though most will specify the same range noted above and humidity <60%. If it's comfortable for humans, it's most likely suitable for products designed for those conditions.
For your ghee example - it originates in India for preserving butterfat at 30C+ temperatures and seasonal relative humidity close to 100%. When properly stored in an airtight container there is no water available for microorganism activity, and the concern is more for long-term quality decline due to oxidative rancidity. |
What is the shelf life of dried lotus seeds?
Since the Mooncake festival is coming. I am thinking of making Mooncakes with some dried lotus seeds I bought a year ago. Could they still be safe to eat? | Since bacteria and other pathogens can't really grow where there is no water, dried seeds and other dried items will remain safe to eat for quite a while. However, how tasty they will be depends on the quality of the seeds and how they were stored. Seeds can go stale and lose flavor over time, or the fats in them can become rancid. You can try tasting one to be sure you'd still want to eat them before making a larger recipe. |
Is there any benefit in adding egg to a durum semolina pasta?
I'll be extruding pasta this weekend to use in a constructed food. I have good durum semolina but I'm wondering is whether adding egg will increase the overall strength of the macaroni and spaghetti. I understand that egg is often used when the protein content of a flour is low. In this case I have no doubt about the protein content of my semolina, I'm just exploring options to increase overall strength once dried. | Off the top of my head, the albumin should assist with holding it together while fresh, though the yolk fat may interfere with gluten linking. I'd imagine an end result similar to spaetzle with a softer chew than durum-only pasta.
There's a resource regarding egg use in pastas, specifically mentioning albumin/yolk ratios in the abstract, but it's paywalled:
Egg Innovations and Strategies for Improvements - Chapter 24 - The Use of Egg and Egg Products in Pasta Production.
Cristina Alamprese.
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-800879-9.00024-X
Another resource that may be helpful for you, full text available, discusses the effect of extrusion vs lamination for dough texture between durum-only and egg pasta (section 3.7). Edit: Section 3.2 also mentions higher lipid contents in dough lubricating extrusion dies, resulting in lower extrusion pressure:
Pasta-Making Process: A Narrative Review on the Relation between Process Variables and Pasta Quality.
Andrea Bresciani, Maria Ambrogina Pagani, Alessandra Marti.
https://doi.org/10.3390/foods11030256
Edit: An article referenced by the above mentions how extruded egg pasta differs structurally from durum-only, but would not be noticeable to most consumers:
Effect of extrusion process on properties of cooked, fresh egg pasta.
Stefano Zardetto, Marco Dalla Rosa.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2008.10.027
On a side note, are you following Alex French Guy's pasta series on YouTube? |
What is a safe amount of juniper?
I have some berries of alpine juniper. I read that in big quantities they can be toxic. So for the moment I tried them in small amounts. Last time I took a couple of pinches, about ten berries, I crushed them I threw away the peels, mixed the rest with the food and cooked everything. I liked the taste, but it was faint, not very spicy.
Roughly how much juniper could I add to the food and still be on the safe side? | All juniper berries contain thujone, which is the primary source of toxicity concern. Thujone is psycoactive in minute quantities, but in larger ones is a convulsant and disruptor of the digestive system. Different varieties of juniper have different concentrations of thujone and other chemicals (like sabinylacetate), resulting in vastly different levels of toxic risk (particularly, Savin Juniper is dangerous with just a few berries).
Alpine juniper are Juniperus communis, which is the "safe" variety usually used for culinary purposes. So you're OK there.
Per the excellent scientific papers linked by @Ecnerwal, toxicity levels of Juniperus communis fruit (Juniperi fructus) are extremely low. To quote the veterinary paper:
the Committee for Veterinary Medicinal Products concludes that there is no need to establish an MRL [maximum residue limit] for Juniperi fructus
... in other words, toxicity is low enough that it's not worth establishing specific safe amounts. For example, strong alimentary reactions in rats were observed only at a level of 0.5% juniper oil in food -- the equivalent of consuming a teaspoon of pure juniper essential oil in your meal. Or, more to your question, two US cups of juniper berries. Abortifacent reactions with Juniperus communis were even higher.
Similarly, US food authorities regard Juniperi fructus as Generally Regarded as Safe, and do not establish specific amount limits.
So the overall question of "how many juniper berries is potentially toxic" is "more than you're going to be willing to eat".*
All that aside, the flavor of Juniper berries should be very strong. I usually only add about 4-7 of them to a large pot of rotkhol. As such, if you're getting little flavor from 10 berries, it may be that you don't want to use these particular berries because they're just too bland.
(* caveat: you, personally, might have a specific allergy to juniper, which would lower the amounts that would provoke a reaction) |
Why are canned beans softer than the ones I soak myself?
I've been experimenting with making my own hummus from both canned and dried beans that I soak and cook myself, and the canned ones inevitably come out creamier and blend more smoothly. Does anyone know what the "magic" is that makes the difference? Thanks! | Since it sounds like your goal is just to make creamy/smooth hummus, not necessarily to exactly duplicate canned beans, I'd suggest soaking with salt and baking soda (15g salt and 5g baking soda per liter of water is a good starting point; be sure to rinse before cooking). Baking soda alone will improve texture, but if you're going to be adding salt at any point during cooking, this is a good time to do it, since it helps with texture as well. It may take a bit of experimentation to match your preferred saltiness, but the point is, get the baking soda and any salt in there during the soak, not just during actual cooking.
I picked this up from Serious Eats, and my experience is consistent with that article: with every type of bean I've tried, I've gotten really wonderfully creamy beans, and they cook quickly too!
One other factor might be the liquid from the canned beans, if you haven't been rinsing them. In that case I'd try to cook your own without a ton of excess water, so that you'll have more substantial liquid, more similar to canned beans. |
Crack at the bottom of bread
During the last weeks I have repeatedly failed to get a decent bread out of the oven and most of them shared a prominent characteristic: a crack or tear at the bottom as shown (image shows the underside):
This happened with various recipes but all of them used dry yeast as you get it in Germany. All breads were baked in a sort of Dutch oven. I proof them seam-side down, then the seam-side becomes the top and is supposed to rip and produce an open crust - which never worked with the crack shown below: These problems seem to be obviously connected. I used to get nice breads and don't know what changed in the process.
Do these cracks at the bottom look familiar to anyone? | Based on the yeast being weeks old from purchase, I'd agree that the issue was caused by underproofing due to age of yeast reducing viability.
Ideally you'd get a new packet of yeast, though the same old yeast can still be used by 1) adding additional yeast to account for reduced viability, or 2) gently nursing the yeast to recover while rehydrating - both will require some experimentation.
For option 2), assuming you are mixing the dry yeast directly into the dough and not rehydrating and tempering the yeast beforehand, there is an article published on rehydrating lager yeast for increased viability referenced below - in short:
sprinkle mass of yeast onto 10x yeast mass of water at 25C-30C
allow yeast to slowly hydrate undisturbed for 15 minutes
gently stir yeast and water to form a slurry
allow yeast to acclimate undisturbed for at least another 15 minutes
Figure of one rehydrated yeast from "Rehydration of Active Dry Brewing Yeast and its Effect on Cell Viability". A=immediately after sprinkling on water, B=15 minutes after sprinkling, Cn=15 minute intervals after forming slurry.
An additional step you can add is 'proofing' or 'proving' the yeast with some added sugar - generally, a step used to verify yeast activity with gas formation, though it will also provide some nourishment to restart yeast metabolism before incorporating into dough. The King Arthur Baking Company and a MasterClass article describe the procedures; you can also replace a quarter of the added sugar with flour to provide the yeast with protein for reproduction and to acclimate it to amylose metabolism. I'd recommend forming the slurry before adding sugar and flour to avoid further osmotic stress during rehydration.
Rehydration of Active Dry Brewing Yeast and its Effect on Cell Viability.
D. M. Jenkins, C. D. Powell, T. Fischborn and K. A. Smart.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.2050-0416.2011.tb00482.x
Additionally, the small cracking throughout the top surface of the loaf and the 'pinched' appearance of the left two score marks suggest the scoring might not be deep enough - the cracks specifically are a sign that gas expansion is being restricted by the hardened crust until pressure builds up enough to tear the crust.
You may have better oven spring by scoring a little deeper as well. |
Can I freeze quince fruits before making jelly?
I have recently unexpectedly acquired a decent harvest of quinces. I would like to make these into jelly, but don't have time right now.
Can I freeze the quinces for a few months and then use them to make the jelly later?
If so, should I freeze them whole or prepared in some way?
Or is there a better way I can store them? | Quinces have similar storage properties as apples. This means storing them in the fridge at temperatures slightly above freezing and with high humidity will easily allow you to keep them for several weeks. If you have too many to put them in the fridge, keeping them in a cool, unheated basement or cellar will also work for multiple weeks. In both cases, sort out fruit that already have bad spots or other signs of decay and store the rest whole without any cutting or other preparation. |
Seasoning ceramic pan just gets sticky
I have a set of Caraway ceramic pans which started out fantastic. One of them has completely lost its nonstick coating now and I’m trying to season it to regain some nonstick back.
I cleaned the pan well with soap and warm water and there are no scratches or baked on food residue. I used a tiny amount of avocado oil and put a thin glaze on the pan (just barely enough to see a slight sheen on the surface, not so much that there’s any to roll around) and heated it on medium for I’d say about 20-25 minutes to try and reach the smoke point. I never saw it smoke but it did start to discolor so I took the pan off and let it cool naturally back to room temp.
However, the result was a sticky surface instead of a rejuvenated nonstick pan. The pan now has some mild discoloration due to this even after washing.
I have read avocado oil is good because of its high smoke point. Though I’m not sure I even reached it.should I be using more?
What am I doing wrong? | Ceramic coated cookware should not be seasoned. You'll note that on the Caraway site, in the "Before Cooking" section, it reads:
3 SKIP THE SEASONING
Ceramic comes naturally non-stick, so no need to season your pan beyond a dash of oil.
While there are food bloggers that, I'm not aware of any manufacturers of pans that provide that advice for ceramic coated pans, like cast iron manufacturers do.
Traditionally, ceramic (or enamel) coating was used on cast iron cookware (like Le Creuset) specially to prevent the need to season the cast iron.
More recently, companies have started selling ceramic coated stainless steel and aluminum pans, as an alternative to Teflon nonstick coating. I believe this is the type of pan you have.
Like Teflon coated pans, the nonstick surface eventually loses it's nonstick properties, and food begins to stick. In my experience with modern ceramic coated nonstick pans, the "stickiness" can be caused by either not being completely clean--such as a thin bit of polymerized oil--or from use/abuse causing putting or imperceptibly small scratches.
I find it to be tricky to maintain perfectly--if you don't wash it well enough, food starts to stick. If you wan too aggressively, you create micro scratches and food starts to stick.
The manufacturer Made In has an article with more info on the pros and cons of ceramic coated cookware.
By trying to add a seasoning coating, you've created or exacerbated the "not clean enough" scenario. You'll need to scrub that coating off to get back to the pristine ceramic. However, getting it back to pristine ceramic will likely require pretty heavy scrubbing or harsh cleaning chemicals--both of which are likely to cause pitting or micro scratches. Your pan may be unsalvageable.
Regardless of the type of coating, nonstick pans eventually degrade over time & need to be replaced. Some folks admit defeat and buy less expensive pans to replace more frequently, and others buy higher quality and longingly care for them, and others simply avoid nonstick pans and go with uncoated pans that last longer in exchange for more cleaning.
I personally keep dedicated nonstick pans for delicate things like omelettes so that they last longer, then use uncoated stainless steel cookware for very high heat (which causes oil polymerization to build up faster), and less delicate, less finicky food. |
How do you prevent your spongecake from shrinking radially?
How do you prevent your spongecake from shrinking radially? I mean I have a smaller mold so I just put the cake there to do away with any gaps (I then pour a liquid over it that cools down to become mousse of sort, that's why I don't want gaps). But what if I hadn't? Did I do something wrong? 30 g of flour per yolk (4 in total) + half a cup of milk + 40 g of melted butter, I then mixed it with whites whipped with sugar and honey. 150°C, 45-50 minutes, with a basin with water on the bottom of the oven | The issue is caused by heat distribution from the pan and oven to the centre of the cake compared to the outside edges.
The edges have much more surface contact with the pan to cook and set sooner, and as they pull away from the pan more surface area is exposed to oven air for more moisture loss while you wait for the centre to set.
Most sponge cakes I've seen reduce shrinkage by maximizing surface contact with the pan, minimizing surface area open to the oven, and minimizing distance from edge to centre - like with bundt pans. cube loafs, and muffin cake styles.
If you need to maintain the radius, a bundt pan works best and you can fill the hole with other fillings or a smaller cake you bake at the same time.
If you can only use round cake pans, try one or a combination of these:
Bake part way with the top edges covered with parchment, with the centre still exposed. You'd need to cut a circular piece for this to work, and the trapped steam at the edges will affect the rate of browning and texture.
Add lots of steam while baking, more than currently. Preheat the oven with a dry spare sheet pan at the bottom, pour boiling water on the pan at the start and whenever it dries for faster steam generation than a standing pan of water. The rate of drying may slow if the oven air is closer to full saturation, though this may have random effects on cook time - increase from heat loss with opening, decrease from more efficient heat transfer to the surface with steam.
Increase batter adhesion to the pan sides. Dust the sides with flour instead of greasing, or other methods to prevent the cake from pulling away until you separate it after baking. If the rate of evaporation is still high, you will likely develop cracks on top as it shrinks while sticking - though this may be easier to cover up with your mousse topping.
Bake multiple thinner layers and stack them. The goal is for the centre to set sooner with less mass to heat and less depth for heat penetration. |
Where to find missing pages from "The Spice Cookbook"?
I purchased The Spice Cookbook by Lillie Stuckley at a thrift shop. Awesome book, but it's in bad shape and is missing a few pages..
How can I find them? Without buying a whole new copy? | Borrow it from The Internet Archive, or from your local library, and copy out the missing pages. |
Can the dumming step of biryani be skipped by pressure cooking biryani rice and chicken separately and mixing them after cooling?
Although I figured out the right amount of water and salt for making biryani, at times, it still gets messed up if the amount of water in the cooked chicken is too high or if the rice cooking duration is not right. There are also plenty of people ending up with burnt food (1, 2, 3).
So my objective is to understand and simplify the process and have a foolproof way of cooking it. The idea is to cook the rice separately, cook the chicken separately, allow them to cool and then mix them together.
Question
1. I've noticed a recipe for preparing biryani rice separately. I'd be fully cooking the chicken separately in another pressure cooker. Once the chicken cools and the cooker is opened, if the gravy is watery, should it be heated a bit more until the water evaporates, before mixing the chicken with the biryani rice or is it better if served separately with the rice, so that the person eating it can choose how much of gravy they want with the biryani rice, or would it be better to not use a pressure cooker, and cook the chicken in an open pot, using a recipe which results in a thick gravy (objective is to ensure spiciness, flavour and minimize cooking time)?
2. Traditionally, biryani is not cooked on a direct flame, but if the rice is pressure cooked with spices, it'd have flavour, and then when chicken is mixed with it, the taste and flavour from the gravy will also add to the taste and flavour. So can this process of cooking the rice and chicken separately and mixing them later, qualify as a biryani? Does the dumming step really make such a difference that it should not be skipped? | I don’t know it’s regional differences in how it’s prepared, or just simplifying the preparation for lazy English speakers, but I’ve seen plenty of recipes where biriyani is layered after cooking the meat and rice separately… but it’s done while they’re still hot, not after they’ve cooled.
I would suggest trying it once, and see if it creates something acceptable to your taste. Some people might complain ‘that’s not a real biriyani’, but if you like it, who cares?
I would assume that you’d cook the meat in an open pot so you can reduce it to the proper consistency, but you could also cook it on a pressure cooker, then move it to another pot to reduce some while you’re cooking the rice (especially if you don’t have two pressure cookers) |
Garlic paste vs whole garlic for long braise
I have fresh garlic paste on hand I'd like to substitute for whole garlic in a braise (chicken adobo). The estimated braising time is 30 - 40 minutes.
My concern is that due to the insane amount of surface area exposed in the garlic paste, the garlicky flavor will all but have been cooked off by the time the braise is finished.
Any thoughts? | You're right to be concerned. Garlic paste does generally cook off a lot faster than whole, minced, or sliced garlic, and could become bland after 40 minutes of cooking. Given the long braise, my suggestion would be to figure out a way to introduce the garlic paste later in the cooking ... say, 15 minutes before the chicken is done. |
Do foamed eggs whites thicken liquid in a batter?
Do foamed eggs whites, folded into a batter including some liquid, contribute to the thickening of that liquid?
A class of English 'puddings' are those derived from 'lemon surprise pudding'. In these baked puddings a sponge forms on top and a flavored custard below.
Here's an archetype recipe demonstrating the general approach.
Butter is creamed with sugar, egg yolks beaten in and a liquid (normally dairy), a small amount of flour and then also flavored liquid, e.g. lemon juice, orange juice, puréed fruit etc. Finally, foamed eggs whites are folded in.
In deciding the quantity of eggs required to thicken the liquid, should I consider the egg whites, or do the egg whites solely provide leavening/rising potential? Should I just consider the thickening power of the yolks? | The egg white foam has an effect on holding the whole mass together. In a normal custard, you have a fine network of bound proteins, with an emulsion of fats in water being trapped in that network. In a custard with foamed egg whites folded in, you get a more complicated network of proteins, in which the egg whites participate too. So you cannot "just consider the thickening power of the yolks".
The egg foam will thicken the whole thing - but neither to the same degree, nor into the same kind of texture as a custard made with whole eggs. So there is no formula, you will have to finetune your recipe empirically. |
Why remove blossom ends for canned tomatoes / marinara sauce?
I was looking at recipes for canning marinara sauce and the Ball jar's recipe notes to remove the blossom end from the tomatoes.
In trying to search for the rationale I couldn't find anything. The way I've been preparing tomatoes for canning is to skin them and trim just a bit of the stem/core (I've been growing paste varieties and they don't have much of a stem).
What difference would removing the blossom end from tomatoes being prepared for canning make? | Ultimately the only way you're going to find out is to write Ball and ask. The recipe is strange in several ways, and atypical of canned tomato sauce recipes in general. For example, most canned sauce recipes have you peel the tomatoes first before cooking them with the aromatics; filtering them after saucing them is highly unusual.
That said, I can think of two possible reasons for the instruction to remove the blossom end. One is that somehow it works better with the whole idiosyncratic make-sauce-then-sieve approach.
The other is preventing rot from getting into your sauce. Among the most popular tomatoes for sauce are romas, San Marzanos, and similar Italian "paste" tomatoes. These tomatoes are also prone to blossom end rot, where the bottom end of the tomato has black rot that may even be hidden by an intact tomato skin. So cutting off the blossom end could be a way of checking for rot. |
What veggies give the best results in a mirepoix?
I want to make consomme. I think I have the general theory down. Im just wondering what veggies works best in the mirepoix, and in what way they should be chopped?
I wonder if the French tradition teaches something specific in this regard? | Do you mean mirepoix? The standard combination is 2 parts onion to 1 part each of carrot and celery. See that linked Wikipedia article for alternatives and the related sofrito and Cajun "holy trinity". |
Can I cook Tandoori chicken, chicken kebab, grilled chicken, and barbecue chicken on the gas stove?
Suppose I change the spice mixes for those four types of nearly identical recipes.
All these items are generally cooked either in an earth oven or on charcoal.
Can I cook them on a gas stove? If so, apart from changing spices, what should I do to make them look different so that people can distinguish those dishes and don't know that they were cooked on a gas stove? | The spicing is a red-herring. It doesn't matter all that much for your question. Aside from the kabab, all can be cooked in the oven, and finished on a grill pan on the stove top....or a regular cast iron pan, if you don't care about grill marks. The kebab can be cooked entirely on the grill pan. While you won't get flavor from smoke and drippings hitting coals, you can achieve the grill marks and appealing burnt part. They are going to look different, because they are different recipes. Tandoori chicken tends to take on the color of turmeric, kababs will be chunked and probably on a skewer, BBQ chicken will likely be sauced... |
Can you save canning jars after you've realized they've been improperly sealed for a month?
My family decided to can pasta sauce, salsa and whole tomatoes about a month ago. A few days ago I was talking with a friend about how we canned our sauces, and they told me it wasn't safe and that we didn't boil or sanitize enough. I'm worried about botulism. My question is- should we throw away just the contents of the jars, or all of the whole unopened jars? | Food spoils, glass doesn't, so as long as the jars are cleaned thoroughly they are perfectly safe to use. If you are very concerned then you could sterilize them as well using a bleach solution, or by using heat, there is no reason to throw them away. |
Is this process of canning jars safe?
Recently my MIL came over to show my husband and I how to do some canning. We made diced tomatoes, salsa and pasta sauce. We cooked the diced tomatoes, placed in jars and put in water bath. We did the same with the salsa. We realized though, that the water in the water bath was only going to 190 degrees Fahrenheit and not boiling, so we left the jars in for 45 minutes. We did have to press down on some lids, but they all stayed down. Is this safe?
My MIL had us wet the jars, place in oven at 250 degrees Fahrenheit and place boiling pasta sauce in jars. Same thing, we had to push down the lids eventually but all stayed down. Is this safe?
Lastly, we weren’t aware that you should take the rings off the jar for storage, and we didn’t for a couple weeks. Is this a problem?
I’m new to canning, and also very weird about food not being stored correctly.
Thanks so much. | No, it is not.
Diced tomatoes and tomato sauce can be low-acidity foods, Nearly all recipes call for adding an acid. Without adding an acid and proper processing of jars, you risk botulism and a few other toxins. They can be canned in a water bath (if acidified below pH 4.6) or pressure canner (if not). Follow the recipe!
The odds of getting botulism for any particular jar are very low -- folks are able to can unsafely for years. But the consequences of doing so are severe. Most of the botulism deaths in the USA have been related to home-canned tomatoes.
Removing the rings prevents rust. |
Can you can items using a deep frier instead of a pressure canner?
In this question about canning safety, the answer states that the only safe way to can low-acid foods is by using a pressure canner, since only they will be able to reach the temperatures required to sterilise the food.
However, I can think of another, fairly common piece of kitchenware that can also reach the temperatures involved pretty easily: the deep frier. While boiling water is limited to the boiling point of water, oil can reach much higher temperatures.
As such, would it be possible to safely can low-acid foods by immersing the sealed cans into a deep frier? | In theory, it may be possible to kill all of the contaminants inside your jars using a deep fryer. However, I would not call it "safe," since there is possibly more risk of getting hurt from hot splattering oil than there would be from improper canning methods.
Water at sea-level air pressure boils at 100C. This means that a pot of water will never reach more than 100C, unless the pressure is increased. A pressure canner increases the boiling point of the water inside, so that the contents of the canner can reach the higher temperatures necessary to kill all bacteria and such. Since heat moves from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration, eventually the temperature in the canner equalizes, and all of the jars reach the same internal temperature as the water inside the canner. This means that the jars themselves must also be at high pressure, since otherwise the (mostly) water inside of them would never have been able to reach such high temperatures.
Which brings us to the other thing that pressure canners do: they provide a "counter-pressure" to the pressure inside the jars, which prevents the jars from exploding. The "absolute" pressure on the jars is mostly irrelevant, but if the pressure inside the jars was much higher than outside, then the force pushing the glass of the jars "outward" might be more than they were built to handle, and the jars can explode. If the pressure outside and inside the jars is the same, the jars are safe and stay intact.
A deep-fryer does the first step (allowing the cans to reach high temperatures), since oil boils at a significantly higher temperature than water. The cans will get heated by the oil, which is at atmospheric pressure, and therefore the pressure inside the cans will increase. This is because the water inside "wants" to boil, since its temperature is greater than 100C, but it has nowhere to go, so the pressure just builds up. If the jar is not able to handle the stress of the high pressure inside of it, it can explode. And to make things worse, it's submerged in a bunch of really hot oil when it does so.
I'm pretty sure that's not something you want in your kitchen.
(As @JohnEye pointed out in a comment above, it is possible that the "weak spot" in a jar would actually be in between the lid and the glass, so that instead of exploding to relieve the pressure, the contents of the jar would just leak out and the jar would never get much above boiling point. This is prevented in a pressure canner because of the back-pressure from the contents of the pressure canner that keep the jar's contents in place. If this is the case, then even it theory the jars would never become safely canned). |
Is sugar in syrup necessary?
I regularly make syrup from herbs (mint, lemon leaf, basil, etc.), usually with the following recipe: 1l water, 500g sugar, boil, let it cool to 70°C, add herbs, let it seep a day, strain it, add lemonic acid + some preservative, boil again and bottle.
What is the role of sugar in this syrup? (I know syrup is sugar + water by definition.) Does it have any role here besides making the liquid sweet? (e.g. flavor extraction, preservation, etc.)
Why I'm asking: I'd like to make a diabetic variant, without sweeteners (can cause digestion problems). Would it work without sugar? | As you said, syrup is sugar with some water and some flavorings, in your case herbs. It is frequently used as a concentrate for flavored drinks.
If you instead boil herbs in water, you are not making syrup, you are making simple herbal tea. So, the consequences will be
taste. People enjoy drinking sugared water, and they are OK with a bit of herbal taste in it. If you instead give them diluted tea, they will likely not enjoy it. Tea is much tastier when consumed at full strength. So, you won't have a concentrate, you will have a drink-it-straight liquid.
conservation. You will have to find an entirely new recipe, one which is engineered around conserving tea, as opposed to one which is engineered around conserving syrup. And what you do is so unusual, that I highly doubt that such a recipe has been developed. So you will have to can it using unsafe methods.
An exception to the safety problem would be if you acidify it sufficiently to do a water bath canning, but then people will no longer want to chug it from the bottle. They might, or might not, enjoy it after dilution - but it will be a sour drink, unmoderated by sugar, which runs counter to the taste of most people in our culture.
And in the end, the question is why you would go to all that trouble. Tea is easy enough to make on the spot, and tastes better fresh. Why bottle it at all? |
How can I improve my noodle soup?
I boiled one chicken breast in three litres of water with three medium-sized raw onions, two teaspoons of ginger powder, two teaspoons of dried garlic flakes, 10–15 whole black peppers, two table spoons of canola oil, and three teaspoons of salt.
After boiling for almost 35 minutes, the water is reduced to two litres. Then I added three coils of egg noodles and cooked until the noodles were soft.
I tried the noodle soup, and it tasted bland. It felt like this soup was missing a lot of things. I finished eating the noodles, but I still have the breast piece and almost one litre of soup.
What can I add more to improve the taste of this soup?
N.B. I am allergic to bell peppers or chili peppers. | Chicken breast is bland; you won't get much flavour out of it.
There are a couple of things you can do :
Roast the chicken and onions before to add some depth, you could also use some tomato paste (cut the onion and mix with the tomato paste); add some more vegetables like carrots, celery, shallots or whole garlic heads.
Instead of salt, you could add some soy sauce, usually at the end. |
Should pasteurizing homemade hazelnut spread and storing it in a sterilized container keep it fresh as long as Nutella?
I consider making a Nutella-like spread on my own, seeing how it would be much cheaper and also could be made to contain more hazelnuts and less (non-palm) vegetable oil or sugar.
Looking at Nutella's ingredients, it contains no preservative: sugar, vegetable oil (probably palm), hazelnut (13%), skimmed milk powder (8.7%), low fat cocoa powder (7.4%), soy lecithin, flavoring (probably synthetic vanillin). 30.9% fat, 56.3% sugars.
After opening it doesn't seem to mold or anything even after several months outside of the fridge.
Yet someone asked a similar question here about their hazelnut spread going bad within weeks. The answers weren't that clear.
The person said they added a small amount of hot water to the mixture, and it isn't mentioned the mixture was heated at any point. Some people commented that might've been the culprit, but beyond mold the risk for botulism was also mentioned.
So my question is whether using an almost-exact replication of the Nutella ingredients, no water and heating it up to a certain (?) degree (plus storing in a sterilized container) could promise long-term consumption safety? Is there a minimum % of sugar recommended? And is botulism an actual risk with such a product? | In short: your recipe for a heated hazelnut spread is safe.
The previous question and answers did not address the effect of water activity (Aw) on microorganism growth and safety. The added water in conjunction with the sugar and added protein were the root cause of mould growth in that scenario.
In most foods, the water present may be bound to components within the food like salts and sugars, making less of it available for use by microorganisms. The amount of available water, Aw, is a measurement of how much water is not bound - typically, a value below 0.92 inhibits Clostridium botulinum growth, and below 0.85 most organisms including yeasts and moulds will not grow at all, making the food shelf-stable. This is just for stopping growth, and does not account for other effects in the food - i.e. stress or lethality from osmotic or acid stress.
The presence of Salmonella on raw hazelnuts is documented and cited by the US FDA, though at a lower prevalence than for other tree nuts [1] - roasted and other processed forms are not included.
Nutella relies on the effects of water activity to prevent pathogen/spoilage growth and survival after a lethality cook process from roasting. The added dry ingredients and hazelnuts themselves start at a water activity less than 0.85 - some articles cite a range below this for quality purposes to inhibit lipid oxidation [2,3], and the Oregon Hazelnut Industry claims a range of 0.46-0.49 for dry roasted products. Under the ideal drying and storage conditions for hazelnuts, Salmonella viability decreases as well [4].
Findings of Salmonella in raw tree nuts. From:
"Prevalence of Salmonella in Cashews, Hazelnuts, Macadamia
Nuts, Pecans, Pine Nuts, and Walnuts in the United States". [1]
Physical characteristics of hazelnuts. From:
"The hygroscopic behaviour of the hazelnut". [3]
[1] Prevalence of Salmonella in Cashews, Hazelnuts, Macadamia
Nuts, Pecans, Pine Nuts, and Walnuts in the United States.
Guodong Zhang, Lijun Hu, David Melka, Hua Wang, Anna Laasri, Eric W Brown, Errol Strain, Marc Allard, Vincent K Bunning, Steven M Musser, Rhoma Johnson, Sofia Santillana Farakos, Virginia N Scott, Régis Pouillot, Jane M Van Doren, Thomas S Hammack.
https://doi.org/10.4315/0362-028x.jfp-16-396
[2] Effect of drying methods on long term storage of hazelnut.
Ali TURAN, KARAOSMANOĞLU.
https://doi.org/10.1590/fst.20518
[3] The hygroscopic behaviour of the hazelnut.
A.Lopez, M.T.Pique, M.Clop, J.Tasias, A.Romero, J.Boatella, J.Garcia.
https://doi.org/10.1016/0260-8774(94)00021-Z
[4] Salmonella Survival Kinetics on Pecans, Hazelnuts, and Pine Nuts at Various Water Activities and Temperatures.
Sofia M Santillana Farakos, Régis Pouillot, Susanne E Keller.
https://doi.org/10.4315/0362-028x.jfp-16-392 |
Alternative Flours Tortillas
Trying to duplicate mom's fluffy soft all purpose flour tortillas but I want to use Chickpea + oat flour mix. I can't find a recipe with this combination which uses the same ingredients and methods as regular flour tortillas, and my efforts haven't produced the desired affect. Any solutions? | This is because your plan is contradictory - the flours you have chosen are not suitable to producing a fluffy tortilla.
The largest problem is that your flours don't contain gluten. Without gluten, you can't get a fluffy dough that holds the miniature air bubbles contained in wheat flour doughs. The second problem is the chickpea flour - it is a rather chunky flour, which stays hard-ish even after full hydration.
The closest solution you will get is to start with oat flour only, without chickpea, and add vital wheat gluten to about the same percentage as found in all-purpose flour (8-9% of total weight, if your gluten is pure). Then do a couple of batches to test and fine-tune the recipe.
Once you have oat-with-gluten tortillas working, you can start doing new batches, gradually adding some chickpea flour. Make sure to leave the dough rest for a several hours, to hydrate the chickpea properly - or maybe even ditch the flour and use cooked, ground chickpeas, just like you'd prepare for hummus. You will soon find the proportion at which the chickpeas can be added without ruining the texture. |
Knowing temperature in oven with no preheat indicator
My college apartment is furnished with pretty basic appliances and the oven has just a knob to set the temperature, an indication light to show that it's on, and a switch to turn the oven light on and off.
I've only used digital ovens that beeped when the set temperature was reached, but this one doesn't have any sort of indicator. How would I know when the set temperature has been reached? | You don't mention if it is an gas or an electric oven, but if it is the latter, there is generally an easy way to tell if the oven is up to temperature without a thermometer.
Give the oven about 10-15 minutes to heat up then rotate the temperature dial back and forward a few degrees (decreasing and increasing the temperature respectively). Listen carefully, and you you should hear a very slight "Click" when the thermostat kicks in. Immediately stop rotating the dial, and read the temperature off the scale. This will be roughly your oven temperature.
This method won't work with all ovens, gas specifically. It may not work with other exotic electric ovens that don't have a basic bimetallic thermostat either. |
What is the correct way to use plastic wrap?
There seems to be two different ways of storing food in bowls with plastic wrap between countries (Saran wrap, Cling film etc). Method 1 is to stretch the film tightly over the opening of the container, leaving an air gap between the food and the film inside the container. Method 2 is to place the film directly over the food and press it onto the side of the bowl, thereby creating a seal and eliminating any air gap.
All things being equal and the risk of modern films leaching plasticiser being minimal, what are the pros and cons of each method? The only benefit I can see from Method 2 is that it would prevent any skin forming on custards etc. That is the only downside I can see for Method 1, although it does entirely remove any risk of plasticiser contamination. Method 1 also provides a slightly better seal, especially if the container has a lip.
(Confession: I'm a diehard "Method 1" man. Part of my childhood amusement was to "Ping" the taught film on various dishes, as pitched by the advertisers of this new technology at the time ('It stretches as tight as a drum')). | Method 1 will usually allow for a water-tight seal along the container-film interface, good for when you expect sloshing of liquid contents. It'll also slow down cooling of contents in a refrigerator as the headspace forms an insulating layer - instead of a food<>cold air heat transfer interface, you'll have:
food<>warm air<>film<>cold air
for multiple heat transfer interfaces, with the film surface area a likely limiting variable - before even considering vapour enthalpy.
Method 2 allows for the film to conform to the food surface, and when done correctly eliminates insulating headspace. As you noted, it will prevent skin formation from dehydration, and as @Joe noted it will inhibit oxidation - it's the ideal method for guacamole.
Another effect for method 2, as a non-polar surface, is that the film can adsorb certain non-polar compounds. For example, it can pick up unwanted green or yellow lipid-soluble pigments on the surface of a cream soup, or the 2,4,6-trichloroanisole responsible for cork taint in a glass of wine. A downside effect is that it can wick oils from the surface of the food over the rim and onto the exterior of the container.
My preference is method 1 with two opposing sides lifted for convection then sealed when fully cooled, and method 2 for for specific use cases. |
Food safety when making Koji rice / kojikin
I want to understand the process by which koji rice is not effected by Bacillus Cereus et.al.
The basic instructions for fermenting your own koji rice is:
Steam rice
Let it cool to around 35℃
Inoculate with Aspergillus Oryzae
Keep the rice warm (34-36℃) for ~5 days
Occasionally separate and aerate the rice grains during this time.
Some government food safety sites report issues with bacterial-caused toxicity if cooked rice is not cooled quickly before storage. Obviously the fermentation procedure above purposefully keeps the cooked rice at a high room temperature.
Koji rice is often used in situations where it is not re-cooked (e.g.: Amazake, Sake). Millions of people eat koji rice derived products every day without issue, so one must infer that it is a safe product.
Is there some biochemical process caused by the fungal growth of A.Oryzae that is preventing the growth of B.Cereus ?
Further reading: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/food-science/koji | The biochemical processes for A. oryzae inhibiting the growth of B. cereus involves the production of a range of metabolites that exert antimicrobial properties [1,2,3,4]:
"The exAP-AO17 protein strongly inhibited pathogenic microbial strains, including pathogenic fungi, Fusarium moniliform var. subglutinans and Colletotrichum coccodes, and showed antibacterial activity against bacteria, including E. coli O157 and Staphylococcus aureus." [1] Park et al.
"Besides its potent secretion machinery, A. oryzae is a generous source of various secondary metabolites [...]. Many of the metabolites secreted by A. oryzae have different reported bioactivities such as anticancer, cytotoxicity, antimicrobial, antihypertensive, and antiviral activities (Table 2)." [2] Daba et al.
Table of metabolites from Daba et al.
A mutated strain of A. oryzae also produced an unknown compound with antimicrobial effect, suggesting antimicrobial potential outside of the stable domesticated strains:
"Over 3000 EMS-treated, putative mutant A. oryzae cultures were tested in the described screening assay for antibacterial activity. A single EMS-treated A. oryzae isolate, named CAL220, exhibited antibacterial activity in the screening assay as indicated by complete lack of visible MRSA growth in the assay." [3] Leonard et al.
As you're aware, Koji itself is an inoculum rich in enzymes for further fermentation of soy and grains, but also contains easily digestible sugars derived from A. oryzae breaking down the rice [4]. Combined with the near-neutral pH (>6) throughout and increasing at the end of fermentation [5], Koji would be very hospitable to B. cereus without the antimicrobial metabolites. As only a relatively small amount of Koji is used for the second stage of fermentation, the concentration and effect of these metabolites is diluted, hence the need for added salt for pathogen inhibition for this stage.
Figure of pH over time from Chancharoonpong et al.
Given the innumerable regional strains of A. oryzae in koji manufacture, and other species of fungi involved, there are countless other undocumented metabolite compounds that we're only beginning to identify - and biochemists outside of the
field of food technology are very interested in these as well. [6]
But to simplify things, yes, there is a single (group of) biochemical process responsible for A. oryzae outcompeting B. cereus, and it's the production of antimicrobial compounds.
[1] Isolation and Characterization of an Extracellular Antimicrobial Protein from Aspergillus oryzae.
Seong-Cheol Park, Nae Choon Yoo, Jin-Young Kim, Hae Kyun Park, Byung Jo Chae, Song Yub Shin, Hyeonsook Cheong, Yoonkyung Park, and Kyung-Soo Hahm.
https://doi.org/10.1021/jf802373h
[2] The ancient koji mold (Aspergillus oryzae) as a modern biotechnological tool.
Ghoson M. Daba, Faten A. Mostafa & Waill A. Elkhateeb.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40643-021-00408-z
[3] Random Mutagenesis of the Aspergillus oryzae Genome Results in Fungal Antibacterial Activity.
Cory A. Leonard, Stacy D. Brown, and J. Russell Hayman.
https://doi.org/10.1155%2F2013%2F901697
[4] Fermentation and the microbial community of Japanese koji and miso: A review.
Joanne G. Allwood Lara T. Wakeling David C. Bean.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1750-3841.15773
[5] Enzyme Production and Growth of Aspergillus oryzae S. on Soybean Koji Fermentation.
Chuenjit Chancharoonpong, Pao-Chuan Hsieh, Shyang-Chwen Sheu
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apcbee.2012.06.011
[6] Medical Application of Substances Derived from Non-Pathogenic Fungi Aspergillus oryzae and A. luchuensis-Containing Koji.
Hiroshi Kitagaki.
https://doi.org/10.3390%2Fjof7040243 |
How to make a gratin dauphinois stay together?
I cooked a gratin dauphinois: basically sliced potatoes covered with a mixture of cream and milk baked in an oven for about an hour.
The taste was good, the texture of the potatoes was good, but the dish did not stay together. When cutting a piece of the dish, I barely managed to move it to a plate and it kinda slid into pieces. It is as if the dish was too liquid and nothing kept the potatoes together.
When I have it at a restaurant, it is a compact dish: layers of potatoes held together that you can cut without the slices trying to escape. If you look at https://youtu.be/Gv0BroAQcG8?t=3 this is what it should like (the dish is not exactly gratin dauphinois and there is no cheese - but it is how it should look like and behave).
I did not wash the potatoes after slicing them (hoping that the starch would be enough to hold them together) but it was apparently not enough.
What can I do to "solidify" my dish? | A few suggestions:
Before the final cooking in the oven (in the method I use, the sliced potatoes are first boiled with cream and milk before being assembled in the dish), place in the fridge with a weight on top to compress the potatoes a little.
Cook (perhaps leave off any cheese you'd put on top) fully, store overnight and reheat to serve.
Perhaps reduce the liquid a little, either by using less to begin with or by boiling for longer to thicken it (the starch from the potatoes helps here too).
When you cut it to serve, use a sharp knife and try to avoid pushing on the potatoes either laterally or downwards, as both can cause them to slide out of formation.
Regarding the video you linked, notice that they are giving themselves a few advantages: each individual gratin is composed of individual slices of the same size stacked (rather than having multiple pieces of potato in each layer) so it cannot come apart horizontally before cutting, they are careful to use the fork to keep it together and there is cheese in the middle which melts onto the outside providing structural support.
On the whole, even when I've seen professional dauphinoise portions that look beautiful and neat as served, they come apart once the diner starts cutting into them (unless the diner is very careful), so be aware that your expectations might be higher than is needed. |
What baking sheet material(s) are best, and at least safe, in temperatures up to 550 (°F) degrees?
My oven goes up to 550 Fahrenheit degrees and it seems the sheets I've found so far are safe up to 500-450°F. Are there concerns with potential chemical releases that buyers should be familiar with if cooking at 450-550°F?
Is lining the bottom with any specific material enough to protect food from the dangers of using cookware above the suggested safe thresholds? | Most good plain aluminum baking sheet will survive high temperatures like that, that's what restaurant use, they can take a beating, will last forever.
for example : https://www.bonappetit.com/story/just-buy-it-sheet-pan
Don't get a non-stick baking sheet.
If you really need something that will go to very high temperature, but might not be very practical, you could use a steep pizza "stone". |
What is the function of this tool of my scissors?
What is the function of this part of my scizors. | This feature is described as a bottle/jar opener on a product page for shears that look like yours from the photo:
Source: Royal Norfolk via DollarTree: "Also, has bottle/jar opener inset on the handle for added convenience."
Looking at other available scissors with this type of feature, the manufacturers describe it in various ways:
Williams-Sonom |
Can you successfully use a wet filling with hot water pastry?
Having recently discovered the delights of home-baked hot water pastry (it is easy to make and absolutely delicious), I'm looking to use this with a chicken and white sauce filling. Traditionally this pastry is used with dry fillings such as sausage meat etc.
Is this combination at all possible while retaining the crispness of the pastry or will I inevatibly be heading towards "Soggy bottom misery" ? | In short:
Yes, with some easy modifications for more safety margin:
blind bake the bottom with egg wash,
coat the inside surfaces with melted shortening/lard/clarified butter and allow to cool before filling,
add extra gelatin to the filling,
dust the inside with a bit of corn or rice starch, or gelatin
or all of them together in that order.
Longer answer, taken from the relevant bits of another question:
Using the recipe ratios from the King Arthur Baking Company page for hot water pastry, we have:
4 cups (480g) Flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (227g) water
8 tablespoons (113g) unsalted butter, beef suet, or lard
The process for making and using the dough, where the water and fat are added and kneaded together, results in the flour starch absorbing and partially gelling from absorbing the hot water, then coated with lipids once all the moisture is absorbed.
During baking the pre-gelled starch heats and gels further until the water is driven off as steam, then the starch dehydrates and fries with the lipid coating.
The composition of fillings and pastry, broken down into 3 general
groups, are:
water
fats and oils (lipids)
non-fat solids, i.e. milk and meat proteins, starch
Pastries baked with liquid fillings typically rely on the insolubility
of oils and water to keep the fillings from leaking through. This is
usually done with high fat/oil content in the pastry and high water
content, low fat/oil content in the filling:
fruit pies, strudels, and tarts with puff pastry made of mostly starch and fat
cheesecakes with graham crackers bound in fat
various applications of Greek phyllo pastry
Since pastries will usually heat from the exterior to the centre, steam from the pastry will be forced toward the filling. This low steam pressure, along with the hydrophobic/water-repelling lipid coating, is typically enough to prevent water in low moisture fillings from penetrating and remoistening the starch.
With higher moisture fillings the increased mass of water may overcome the exterior steam pressure. To counter this, we can 1) make the pastry more hydrophobic, 2) make the filling release less water, or 3) intercept the released water before it remoistens the pastry:
Blind baking the pastry with egg wash will give the inside surface a set egg protein layer that acts as a slight barrier to moisture. Coating the inside with more fat/shortening will accomplish the same - though not with regular butter, which will release water.
Adding a small amount of gelatin to the filling (~1 tsp/cup) will bind some moisture and add extra viscosity to the filling with protein, binding more strongly than starches in béchamel/white sauces. At this low amount of added gelatin the filling will still be liquid when served warm.
A light dusting of starch or gelatin under the filling and on top of the pastry and fat layer will hydrate as the filling releases moisture, with the goal of retaining the moisture that would otherwise seep to the bottom. Gelatin is preferred due to the properties described in 2) above, dry pre-gel starches the next ideal option with a higher moisture holding capacity and lower risk of graininess from underhydration, then corn or rice starch next for their higher gelling point before over-gelling and losing viscosity. Flour is not ideal. |
Alternative to plain chocolate in pot de creme
Pot de creme, a semi-set dessert consisting of double cream, sugar and chocolate, is traditionally made with dark, bitter chocolate. I have one family member who hates dark chocolate, but I'd like to make this with milk chocolate for them instead.
To my palate, using cream plus milk chocolate will make this quite sickly and overpowering. Is there any way to get the same consistency and texture as with the dark chocolate while using milk chocolate without it being too rich? | Food and Wine says to use mostly milk chocolate, with a little dark chocolate for balance. |
Could overfrying and/or undersimmering the Spanish rice have caused it to develop a cardboard-like taste and a pungent odour?
Growing up, my mother always made me one of my favourite treats, which was arroz Guizado, or Spanish fried rice. It was the only kind I had ever tasted up until I was around eleven or twelve. When I went to visit my friends' houses, and if they had Mexican food that I didn't like, they offered to give me whatever leftover Spanish rice they had. I immediately noticed the difference: it was rich and flavourful and perfectly balanced, plus it was a little bit creamy.
I recently got enrolled in my state's independent skills-training programme because of my blindness and other disabilities, and my skills coach and I found a basic Spanish rice recipe that had the following:
2 US cups of rice
1/8 cup of vegetable oil
6 stems of cilantro (optional)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp minced garlic
4 cups water with 1 cube chicken bouillon or 4 cups chicken broth and no bouillon
a dash of cumin to taste
a dash of garlic pepper to taste
We started by browning the rice before adding the minced garlic, letting it saute for about a minute. Here's where things get a little weird. I will differentiate the different method that my mother did it versus how my skills coach taught me to do it using A for my mother and B for my trainer. I told my mother exactly how to follow the directions, but being blind, she could've done something that I couldn't see.
A. Let the rice fry (with onion) for about five to ten minutes until they are really dark before adding the tomatoes.
B. Let the rice and garlic fry for about a minute or two before adding in the tomatoes.
A. Since we didn't have any tomato sauce, we blended the tomatoes thoroughly and poured them into the rice.
B. Boil the tomatoes until they are soft and mushy, and then mash them up thoroughly before pouring it into the rice since we didn't have any tomato sauce.
A and B. Add the bouillon cube and spices.
A. Pour four cups of plain water.
B. Add four cups of the water used to boil the tomatoes so as to add more tomato flavour.
A. Cover the pan and simmer for about fifteen to twenty minutes (this is where it starts to smell strong).
B. Cover the lid and let simmer for about forty-five minutes (doesn't smell as strong).
The result is that the rice my mother made has almost no flavour, tastes like cardboard, and has a weird smokey-like aroma to it, whereas the one my direct support provider and I tastes much more palatable, has a creamy texture, and feels much more fluffier in general. When I asked my mother why it had that strong aroma, she simply claimed that it was the onion, but I don't think that is the case.
could overfrying and/or undersimmering the rice caused this to happen?
If not, what else could've gone wrong to cause such a thing to occur? | The simple explanation is that your mother regularly burned the rice. That would cause all of the off flavors you mentioned. The fact that she says it should be "really dark" would indicate that it was. She may have burned the onions as well.
Mexican tomato rice is often heavily fried before boiling. However, it doesn't change color much -- maybe a tiny bit of tan in spots. You mostly have to judge whether it's ready by smell; the rice starts smelling "nuttier" and then you know it's time to add the tomatoes.
For example, here's the instruction from Mexican-American chef Pati Jinich's recipe for red rice:
Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat until hot but
not smoking. Add the rice and cook, stirring often, until the rice
becomes milky white, 3 to 4 minutes.
She's frying it for longer than your instructor did, but you'll notice it's still not "dark". |
This dal makhani recipe has two water discard steps. Any idea why?
I’m following the dal makhani recipe by Dishoom in London.
The recipe has two steps where the water the lentils are in is discarded and replaced with fresh water.
The first is the water the lentils are soaked in prior to cooking, which is a common step for dried pulses and beans.
After this the lentils are cooked in fresh water. This is then discarded and replaced with fresh water for the final cooking phase.
Is there a reason why both are discarded? Could one water replacement be skipped?
Edit: the recipe as written works fine, but I was curious why the water might be discarded twice as I’ve not encountered that with other recipes using dried beans/pulses. | It's probably worth following that recipe as written at least to start with, but in general it's not necessary and may not be desirable to discard all of the cooking water.
This recipe discards the soaking water, but drains and retains the cooking water so some can be added back in.
This one seems to use all the cooking water but might be quite wet at the end. However it uses far less water for cooking the dal than the Dishoom recipe.
Skimming the foam off the top is necessary in both of these.
I suspect you could get away with reserving the water drained off in step 5 of Dishoom's recipe, then re-adding the quantity needed. It does seem a little wasteful given that replacing this water isn't an absolute requirement. You could try it both ways and see if you can detect a difference.
I can't find the recipe I use, but it's for a slow cooker, and definitely doesn't discard the water. Slow cooking also avoids skimming. |
Why do metal utensils scrape teflon pans more than wooden?
It is said metal utensils scrape teflon coated non-stick pans and should not be used on them. All sources I found say just that. But when my metal utensil doesn't have sharp edges and I am not pressing on it with more strength than a wooden one, why should I use a wooden one over a metal one? Is there any chemical or other reason beside scraping the coating with the sharp metal edges? Not all metal tools are sharp. | Metal is a lot harder than wood, which means when it hits another surface, it won't deform on a microscopic level the way wood does. This means that, while a wood utensil rubbing against a nonstick pan will get compressed a bit, the metal utensil will rather cause the nonstick surface to get compressed, which results in scratches and other damage to the nonstick surface. You can use a fairly large amount of pressure with a wooden utensil and still not damage the nonstick coating, since the wood is not nearly as hard as the coating. However, metal utensils don't need to do much more than brush the surface of some coatings to scratch them, since they are much harder.
For this reason, metal utensils don't have to be very sharp in order to scratch a softer surface. Think metal balls rolling on a glass/plastic surface: they will scratch and scuff the surface, even though they are not "sharp" at all. |
Preserving beef stock concentrate
I've been looking for the most convenient way to preserve stock at room temperature. It seems that Bovril preserves just containing a 14% of salt, while every powdered product contains 50% of salt. I was wondering why so much salt is needed for powdered stock and if it's safe to try this kind of preserve at home. | If you are starting with your own beef stock, the best way to preserve it long term is to freeze it. If you are lacking on freezer space, reduce it by half...or even three quarters, then freeze. You can add the water back when you thaw and use. If you concentrate it a lot, you can even freeze in ice cube trays for convenience. This will be far superior to any bullion cube (like Bovril, which has very little relationship to stock, and BTW, 14% is a lot of salt).
These commercial products are using dehydration, salt, and other ingredients to create an environment that is inhospitable to pathogen growth. The flavor likely does not even come from stock. You are probably not able to reproduce the industrial process that they follow.
I would suggest your time is better spent making a good stock, and following my suggestion above. Your food will be better because of it. |
When whipping cream, what is “custard-like consistency”?
I have a 1934 Borden pamphlet with a recipe for Frozen Egg Nog. The directions say to “whip [½ cup whipping] cream to custard-like consistency” before folding it into the mixture as the final step.
Not only have I never seen this phrasing before for whipping cream, I have whipped a lot of cream and never have I seen it reach a consistency that I would call “custard-like”.
I’ve done a search on the phrase "whip cream to custard-like consistency" and found several vintage recipes that use it, such as the 1934 Peppermint Stick Ice Cream from The Library of Congress’s Cool off this July with Vintage Ice Cream Recipes!
I’ve done a Google search on "Frozen Egg Nog" "condensed milk" and found some recipes, all old, but none that call for either that consistency or even condensed milk.
Alice B. Parmenter’s Frozen Egg Nog on page 65 of The Guild Cook Book
Ann Dunkelberger’s Frozen Egg Nog on page 17 of The American Legion Auxiliary Cookbook
Betty Barclay’s Frozen Egg Nog on page two of the December 28, 1938 North Canton Ohio Sun
They all just say to add (or fold in) the cream, whipped. Which is what I plan to do if I can’t find any evidence otherwise.
What does “custard-like consistency” mean in the context of whipping cream? Perhaps custard meant something different in earlier cooking eras? | The answer appears in another Borden cook book, the ca. 1942 This is My Book of Magic Recipes on page 3 under “Hints for making Ice Cream in your Automatic Refrigerator”:
Whip heavy cream to a foamy, fluffy thickness—not until stiff. Cream is of a thick, custard-like consistency when whipped enough.
The same terminology is used on page 16 of Borden’s 1935 Magic Recipes: Quicker, easier, surer to succeed:
Please note that you don’t whip the cream stiff—just to a foamy, fluffy thickness.
A similar instruction appears in several recipes in the 2016 British Recipes Series’s Desserts and Ice Creams; an apparently more modern cookbook that dispenses with the phrase “custard-like consistency” and simply says to:
Whip the cream to a foamy, fluffy thickness…
Based on @rumtscho’s comment to the question, it appears that they were referring to one end of a very wide variation in custards as being “a variety of culinary preparations based on sweetened milk, cheese, or cream cooked with egg or egg yolk to thicken it [which] may vary in consistency from a thin pouring sauce (crème anglaise) to the thick pastry cream (crème pâtissière) used to fill éclairs”.
Speculatively, the use of “custard-like” to describe the desired consistency probably never caught on because of that wide variation in consistencies, as indicated by later Borden publications having to define it. The definition, “foamy, fluffy thickness” is almost as short as “custard-like” and both more descriptive and more precise. |
Sifted rye flour bread why is syrup needed
There is a tasty recipe for bread "rågsiktskakor" with sifted rye flour, butter, milk, syrup, yeast and spices.
I am wondering why syrup is needed, is the sugar in the milk not enough for the yeast? What would change besides maybe the taste without the syrup? | The yeast feeds on the flour (after it has been broken down to sugar), not on the lactose in the milk. Too much added sugar even inhibits the yeast - although there are very few bread recipes which go into that range, maybe some richer brioches and pannetones.
Sugar is added to bread for taste and texture - and I will speak generically of "sugar" here, because the differences between adding syrup, crystal sugar, honey, etc. are minimal. The taste gets obviously more sweet. The texture becomes more cakelike - the bread is moister, less elastic, with thinner crust, and easier to brown. It is also more breakable, but in a "plump" way, not in the "short" way that is characteristic of adding fats. The crumb will have smaller, more even bubbles. In total, the whole bread tastes differently with sugar than without. |
For smash burger patties, are you supposed to wait until the meat releases from the pan before you flip it?
This is what I've read about stainless steel pans:
You are supposed to preheat the pan up to the Leidenfrost point (379 ℉ / 193 ℃).
You can test that the pan has reached the Leidenfrost point by throwing a bit of water onto the pan and seeing if it forms a ball that exhibits the "mercury ball effect". I have an infrared thermometer, but apparently those are inaccurate for stainless steel.
When searing meat in the pan, the meat will stick to the pan at first, and when it has finished searing, it will naturally release from the pan.
I've been trying to make smash burgers in a stainless steel pan. This is what I do:
form 80/20 ground beef into 2 oz balls and use paper towels to get rid of some of the moisture
don't put any oil in the pan because I read that you don't need oil if you're using 80/20 ground beef
heat up the pan and keep tossing in 1/8 tsp of water until it shows the mercury ball effect, then wipe away the water
use a burger press to smash the balls into thin patties on the pan
let the patties sit for 45-60 seconds, then flip them
The problem I've been running into is that after 45-60 seconds, the meat is stuck to the pan and very difficult to scrape off the pan with my fish spatula. The first time I tried it, I scraped the patties off the pan but left all of the crust stuck to the pan - totally defeating the purpose of a smash burger. The second time I tried it, I managed to scrape most of the crust off the pan, but tore up the patties in the process.
Should I be letting the patties sit longer in the pan until they release naturally? I'm afraid if I let them sit too long, the patties will be overcooked/burnt. | don't put any oil in the pan because I read that you don't need oil if you're using 80/20 ground beef
This is your problem. Stainless steel is one of the stickiest kinds of pan there are. You always need sufficient oil with it, the fat in the patties is nowhere near enough to let them release. The Leidenfrost is only one of many effects that happen during cooking, and the sticking properties of the beef proteins will easily overcome it even without the intentional smashing. It is a nice indicator of preheating, but you cannot rely on it to prevent sticking. You are right to think that the meat will stick more and burn, instead of releasing on its own.
To sum it up, use oil, and in sufficient quantities. |
Do modern food stores have a code for "this package of ham was from a bad pig"?
I have noticed that sometimes, something like a package of ham slices will be heavily rebated. You can buy several at once for a much smaller price than usual. Even though the product is normally expensive.
I'm not talking about the expiration date being "short". Nor is there anything printed or stamped onto the package.
Whenever I have taken such offers, it seems to me that the product is much worse than usual. Basically, the ham is full of disgusting pieces, so the meals are not enjoyable at all, and I keep thinking to myself that I would rather have paid full price for a non-disgusting package.
Is this a known "thing"? Obviously, each pig is not identical, and inevitably there will be "bad batches", known at the slaughter/manufacturing facility. Is there an industry standard where they make some subtle addition (such as a bar code having a different last digit or something) on the packages which are "known bad" (but still edible) so that the store gets it much cheaper and can include that batch in "3 for the price of 1" offers and whatnot temporarily for the product in question? | At distribution level products can have varying quality grades and corresponding prices, and stores may purchase both higher and lower grades for sale - though it's common that the packaged-for-retail units will be higher quality in terms of uniformity and appearance, while the lower quality units are sold in larger bulk quantities for further packaging or use as an ingredient in store. There are completely separate barcodes and product codes for these purposes.
However, a packaged product sold at a previously negotiated specification should meet that specification between batches.
What could have happened was the store purchased the product, which normally exceeds minimum quality specifications, and found it of poorer quality due to batch variation, but within acceptable specification from the manufacturer - they took the loss or got a credit for a markdown to clear inventory. You can always ask the department manager for the reason for the markdown.
Greybeard:
What about items that come in pre-printed manufacturer packaging "3 for 1" etc? Economics would suggest that these items are a lower quality, yet being passed off as the same quality as the single, more expensive product?
Answer:
That's a question that comes with a lot of answers based on the retailer, producer, agreed upon specifications, etc.
Products like household name-brand cereals, dish soaps, etc. that come in "Family Size" or larger bulk/multi-unit packaging are the same as the smaller counterparts, there's just lower per-unit profit. These are available based on consumer psychology and retailer demand - consumers receive better perceived value for dollars spent, retailers catering to that segment like Costco almost exclusively stock these value sizes, and the producer, while making less profit, still generates revenue instead of no revenue at all in that market segment. The inverse is also true, where upscale retailers and producers may avoid these value sizes due to the perceived "cheapening" of their brand.
That being said, certain discount retailers will have specifications and purchasing decisions based solely on lowest cost and cater specifically to that segment of the consumer population. The products they purchase may also be produced by licensed manufacturers of name-brand products, though failed to meet the brand specifications and were sold as off-label products; or, were sold by the name brand company in packaging formats specifically for retailers in that market segment.
Durrah's scenario sounds like a product from a smaller scale producer, likely without supplier guarantees for uniformity of incoming meat specifications or using smaller scale farms with much greater variability, and are unwilling or unable to incorporate trimming/processing for better uniformity or quality control. |
Is a polypropylene container safe for sous vide use?
I have recently purchased a 10 litre semi-opaque (grey) plastic container which appears to be ideal for sous vide cooking. It was sold as food grade, freezer & microwave safe, and has all the relevant marks on the bottom to confirm this rating. It is manufactured from polypropylene and is (PP5) graded.
Looking online, all the other sous vide baths I see are manufactured out of much more expensive polycarbonate, and this container was a fraction of that cost. I assume here that polycarbonate has been chosen because it is more rigid than polypropylene.
I have tested this up to 85 Centigrade and the walls of the container flex and bow only slightly more than they do when cold. I doubt if I will sous vide beyond 75 Centigrade, am I taking a risk using this product here? | Polypropylene is fine for use up to (or even past) boiling temperatures. I scald milk for yogurt by steaming it in used PP5 yogurt containers.
Indeed, this list rates PC as 10°C lower service (90-125°C) than PP (100-130°C), or basically equivalent for "high heat" PC at 100-140°C). |
Can I add thick cream to whipping cream to increase fat content and make the whipped cream more stable?
In the UK we have double cream which has about 42% fat and whips up beautifully so that its quite stable and can be piped on top of cupcakes and in between cake layers without being squeezed out by the cake layer.
I’m now in a (hot) country that doesn’t have double cream. It has general whipping cream that has a fat content of at most 33% and gives me very soft airy whipped cream which is not what I’m after.
However, they also sell a very thick type of cream that you can spread with a knife. Like the extra thick double cream you get in the UK.
If I mix the thick cream and the whipping cream and whip them together, will I get a more stable and denser whipped cream? | It depends on what the "thick cream" actually is.
If the cream was made by taking milk (plain or cultured) and then mechanically churning it to a specific consistency - basically making dairy cream with more fat than your double cream - it will work. Any percentage cream or milk is mixable with any other, and you can calculate the resulting percentage in simple linear fashion. That is, if you mix equal parts 30% cream and 50% cream, the result will behave like 40% cream. The same will work if it was made by scooping up the butterfat risen to the top of cooked milk - which is the original, homemade meaning of "kaymak", but is almost never made, because of the huge expenditure of milk.
I am a bit skeptical about your product being exactly that though, so I will also mention other cases. First, if it is indeed made by churning, but the actual goal is butter, and it is simply not-yet-quite butter, it is questionable whether it will work, but I suspect that it won't. An elderly relative used to make homemade butter that way, and it was unlike commercial butter, but white, with higher water content, spreadable - and with a clearly crystalline structure, with the butterfat already coalesced. If you live in a place where this product is made but called "cream" instead of "butter", you can try it, but the chance of success is not all that high.
The second thing that could work is mascarpone. It is nominally a cheese, but in fact its texture combines with cream quite well, and the mixture can be whipped (I have tried it personally). Also, the taste is so bland that the result will taste like whipped cream, not salty or with cheesy notes.
There are a lot of other dairy-based spreads though, made in different ways, and pretty much none of them will work. Some are actually cheeses, like cream cheese (not only the American style, but also variations like Krema on the Balkans), ricotta, and others. There are also cultured dairy products (créme fraîche), reduced milks and creams like katmach and evaporated milk, and modern technological creations that use thickeners (frequently labelled just "spread" in the supermarket, but modern kaymak from the store is also made that way). If you don't know exactly how your spread is produced, it is more likely to be one of those, than to be churned-cream-halfway-to-butter.
So, if I were you, I would certainly do it if I knew it for sure to be a churned cream. Else, I would not expect it to work, but maybe make an experimental batch just to see what happens, fully prepared for it to not whip. |
Do stocks made with less water lack the same flavor as a stock made with lots of water?
I am interested in knowing whether there is a difference in flavor between a stock made in a small pot, with just enough room to cover the ingredients, vs a large pot with the same amount of ingredients and double (or more) water. For the sake of comparability, they cook for the same amount of time, same heat, same yield (adding water to the smaller pot as it evaporates, but not doing so for the larger pot). | The less water you use the more concentrated the flavor of the stock. Adding lots of water doesn't extract more flavor from the ingredients, it just dilutes it.
If you add too much water to the pot you'll have to cook it down much more to concentrate it, there's two effects to this:
It will waste energy, therefore money and be bad for the environment
The extra cooking time will cause a loss of flavor. The longer you expose it to heat the more volatile organic compounds will break down or evaporate
So, use only the amount of water you need. |
How to dispose large amount of wet sugar?
I semi- regularly make my own dried, aged meat. As the first step, I keep it for 24-48 hours in sugar. Sugar sucks water out beautifully and when I'm done with it, it's dripping wet.
So I have 10kg of dripping wet sugar that cannot go into compost bin (meat byproduct, not allowed by law where I live), and cannot be put in the general trash bin (trash should be dry). How can I get rid of it, without using large amount of water and risking pipe clogging? Environmentally friendly ways preferred. | There are a couple options, in increasing order of effort:
Pour it down the sink. Sucrose forms a saturated aqueous solution at ~200 g sucrose per 100 g water at 15C/~60F - for 10 kg of dry sucrose, you'd need a minimum ~5 L tap cold water to dissolve it - without accounting for the water it's already absorbed. You can add this water to the sugar before pouring down the drain to dissolve it first, and if you knew the mass of water absorbed you can subtract that amount.
There's low risk of clogging since sucrose readily dissolves in water - and if it does, add hot water.
Added clarification for dissolving sugar:
~5 litres of tap-cold, 15C water is the minimum amount physically required to dissolve ~10 kg sucrose for energy and water-saving purposes. More water can be used to dissolve this.
Dissolved sucrose flows easily and further dilutes very readily. The same cannot be said for other types of fluid sugars, i.e. high-fructose corn syrup, honey, caramel - these flow and dissolve very differently, and in the case of honey, may rapidly crystallize before dissolving.
The experimental solubility of sucrose in water (grams per gam) is 1.94 @15C, 1.89 @10c, 1.85 @5C, 1.81 @0C. Given a worst-case scenario with 10 kg sucrose saturated solution at 15C being instantaneously chilled and ignoring the enthalpy of crystallization:
At 10C, 258 g sucrose will precipitate, requiring an additional 138 mL of water (slightly more than half a cup) to remain dissolved;
At 5C, 464 g sucrose will precipitate, requiring an additional 251 mL of water (one cup) to remain dissolved;
At 0C, 671 g sucrose will precipitate, requiring an additional 371 mL of water to remain dissolved - if your indoor pipes are at 0C, you've got bigger problems to worry about.
The kitchen sink and not flush toilets is the preferred disposal receptacle for both efficiency of water use and ease of addressing clogs.
Both should have p-bends/air traps to stop sewer gases entering the home, though the kitchen sink will 1) be more easily accessible with the trap normally in a vertical line under the sink drain, 2) the toilet's thermal mass may rapidly cool any added hot water, and 3) some toilets may feature multiple bend traps, leaving undissolved sugar stuck in harder to reach areas. Regardless, both sinks and toilets will clog if enough solid sugar is dumped in as it settles.
Figures of toilet cross-sections from Wikipedia.
Graph from The Engineering Toolbox.
Store the sugar in the fridge uncovered and allow it to slowly desiccate before disposing in garbage. Requires space, preferably at the bottom for food safety, and a larger surface area for faster drying.
Air dry the sugar outside and then dispose in garbage. There is a risk that it may generate odours and attract pests during drying.
For future projects, would you consider reusable silica dessicants? Dehydration time would be longer and you'd need a larger volume container, but you would also not need to have it in direct contact with the meat.
Unconventional option: heat the sugar to boil off the water and make meaty caramel. If you enjoy salted caramel flavours, this might add extra Maillard browning complexity from the dissolved meat proteins and other compounds. |
Is quickly soaking beans or dhal etc. equivalent to an overnight soak?
If a recipe calls for beans etc. to be soaked overnight, it is seemingly possible to recreate this process quickly. One method advocated would be to rinse the beans, add to copious amounts of water then boil vigorously for 5 minutes, leaving them to soak for 1 hour in the liquid. Another method is to pressure cook for 5 minutes and naturally release the pressure. The beans etc. are then rinsed and used as they would be after a long soak.
Are these methods genuinely equivalent to a proper overnight soak? Is there any downside to this quicker process? | I think the only downside of not soaking is that your beans might split open when you cook them (especially if you boil them hard).
Soaking them overnight will rehydrate them more "naturally".
Soaking them will also let you time the cooking more precisely, if you start from dry, it might take X amount of time, or can take double that time.
From what I can see on the internet, for all purposes and intents, the end results will be nearly identical in most applications. |
Cooking (not baking) adjustments for altitude
I currently live at altitude (5,280 ft/1609 m), but I grew up and learned to cook at sea level, so my recipes are written with sea level temperatures and cooking times in mind. This isn't particularly high altitude -- you definitely don't need to do the crazy stuff necessary for 10,000 ft -- but it starts to get noticeable here. Water boils at about 200 degrees instead of 212, for example, which simplifies making certain kinds of tea. You do need to do slight adjustments when baking or making griddlecakes/pancakes.
I have a specific problem, where when I make bean soups using the same recipes I used at sea level, I find that I need to greatly extend the cooking time in order to get the beans to the correct consistency and not crunchy. Short of using a pressure cooker, I'm wondering if there are specific ways I need to change my technique or adjust the recipe to deal with altitude.
A specific recipe I've made at both altitudes goes like this:
soak dry beans
drain beans and put in a soup pot along with a ham hock and 7 cups cold water
bring to boil, reduce heat, simmer until beans are tender
There are additional steps, but this is where things are getting tricksy. The recipe I'm following suggests that you simmer approximately 1.25 hours -- and this is just about accurate for sea level. Following the same steps, at altitude, however, the beans are crunchy and not tender at all at this same point in time. I made this soup a few days ago and ended up having to simmer for nearly double the time (2h 20m roughly) in order to get the beans to the desired consistency. Even though there's 30 minutes of additional simmering after the addition of carrots, celery, onion, garlic, potatoes, the recipe as originally written leaves the beans under-done and unpleasantly firm or crunchy.
Other than doubling the cooking time, are there other ways to adjust this recipe so that the beans get tender? I don't have a pressure cooker and really am not looking to increase my collection of kitchen gadgetry. Otherwise, will increasing temperature help? For example, cooking at a low boil rather than a simmer? I don't think the addition of salt will help since depressing the boiling point further doesn't seem like a good idea. | I haven't tried this specifically at altitude, but baking soda does wonders for softening stubborn beans in general. Serious Eats recommends soaking them in it; I've had success with adding a pinch to the cooking water (not so much that it damages the flavor!). On the flip side, make sure you're not adding acidic ingredients like tomatoes, which lengthen the cooking time |
Best mixer for large amounts of scone dough
Which is the best mixer to use for large quantities of scone dough? I've researched Spiral mixers and they seem like the best option perhaps. I usually mix everything by hand but I'd like to scale my business and would like to make up to 12 batches at a time. Also with making larger quantities is there a formula that should be used to alter the rising agent, baking powder in particular? thx! | Based on my professional experience of making 2000 scones* a week for a bakery in Los Angeles:
If you're in North America, get a Hobart. They're quite expensive, so your best bet is to shop restaurant resales and auctions for a used one -- they're also very durable. If you're in another country, find your region's equivalent professional-bakery-grade mixer. A home-kitchen mixer won't last, and could easily die on you in a few months.
You do not want a spiral mixer. Spiral mixers are designed for kneading yeasted doughs with a lot of gluten development, like breads and pizza dough. With scones, you do not want gluten development. On the Hobart, you would use the "flat beater" mixer attachment, not the dough hook.
If you supply the details about actual batch size, I could even recommend a specific Hobart model.
(* this is the American definition of scones which is a large, sweetened shortbread, and not the British ones, which are more like what Americans call "biscuits" and not at all like what the British call "biscuits") |
What's the optimal temperature to dry cheese using oven or dehydrator?
I want to make a dried cheese powder to use as seasoning and, if possible, extend shelf life and reduce weight.
I don't have a freeze dryer so I'll need to use air for that. Problem with using dehydrators for cheese is that above certain temperatures protein matrix gets destroyed, fat escapes, and you end up with a sub-par, separated product. It's still edible and it still has somewhat extended shelf life, but it's oily mess not pleasant to use and needs to be refrigerated, freezed and preferably vacuum sealed.
I can use my oven in dehydrator mode, and I can set any air temperature between room temperature and baking one. I usually dry meats, fruit and vegetables at around 40°C / 104°F. For fastest drying, I of course want as high as I can get, but what's the temperature I need to be below to keep cheese from separating?
If cheese kind matter, assume inexpensive European Gouda. Specifically this one* if it matters, but I hope for answers to be as universal as possible.
* I'm not affiliated with this brand, it simply was cheap enough to experiment on, but tasty enough to make it worthwhile, in my purely subjective opinion. So that's what I got. | Short answer: slow-dry the cheese under refrigeration.
Long answer:
The cheese protein matrix (casein micelles) relies on a fine balance and arrangement of milk fats finely dispersed in small globules within the protein to maintain its structure [1,2]. Heating the cheese has multiple effects - the fats flow more easily, allowing the fat globules to coalesce and break the balanced arrangement. The micelles themselves also lose their structure when heated [3,4], though some may remain intact up to 70C[1].
The milk fats, however, have a wide range of melting temperatures from -40C to 37C [5,6]. Some will remain liquid under refrigeration and most will be solid up to and above room temperature.
Fatty acid composition and melting points in fluid raw milk.
From Fee & Chand, Table 3 [6].
The table above highlights the major fats fatty acids in liquid milk, and will vary in cheeses.
The freeze-drying suggested by FuzzyChef relies on sublimation to remove water at or near room temperature; a more home-chef friendly option would be to simply use relative humidity gradients (drier air) to dehydrate the cheese, though much more slowly. This post and answer (work-in-progress) What is the science of drying/dehydrating meat? Biltong, jerky, etc explains the basic concepts for dehydration.
For your equipment, you can use room-temperature air at a high flow rate to dehydrate your cheese, though for food safety it's preferable to perform this under refrigeration - it's much slower, but you can increase surface area for drying by thinly slicing or coarsely grating the cheese, then grinding to your desired final particle size. More fatty acids milk fats will solidify as well, helping the casein retain its structure better during water loss.
You could also lightly dust the cheese with a neutral easily soluble starch, i.e. corn or rice, to sequester some of the fats that will be released.
Basic biology clarification regarding the table of fatty acids above:
'Milk fats' are triglycerides composed of three fatty acids attached to a glycerol chain. The melting points of the component fatty acids affect the melting point of the triglyceride as a whole, and will occur between the highest and lowest fatty acid melting points. The melting point of each fatty acid does not in itself present an 'upper limit'.
Triglycerides in milk tend to present with three different fatty acids unless one component presents at higher than 33% of the total, due to environmental or animal variation factors.
The following excerpts from Principles of Dairy Chemistry [Robert Jenness and Stuart Patton, 1959, New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1959, p38, 45-47] provide a more technical explanation and reference a complete milk fat melting point of 41C:
[1] The cheese matrix: Understanding the impact of cheese structure on aspects of cardiovascular health – A food science and a human nutrition perspective.
Emma L Feeney, Prabin Lamichhane, Jeremiah J Sheehan.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-0307.12755
[1] On the Stability of Casein Micelles.
Pieter Walstra.
https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.S0022-0302(90)78875-3
[3] Lipids in cheese.
Michael H Tunick.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/lite.201500015
[4] Effects of Homogenitation and Proteolysis on Free Oil in Mozzarella Cheese.
Michael H. Tunick.
https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.S0022-0302(94)77190-3
[5] Physical Properties of Milk Fat.
J.M. deMan.
https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.S0022-0302(64)88880-9
[6] Capture of lactoferrin and lactoperoxidase from raw whole milk by cation exchange chromatography.
C. Fee, A. Chand.
https://doi.org/10.1016/J.SEPPUR.2005.07.011 |
Why is Diamond Crystal most usually recommended for kosher salt?
In a number of recipes, I see Diamond Crystal recommended as the kosher salt to use.
Where I live, only Morton's is available.
Is there some superior quality to Diamond Crystal kosher salt that I might not get out of another brand? | Many recipes specify salt measurements by volume, but different brands of salt vary by density. In order to consistently predict the weight of salt used, recipe authors fix the density by fixing the brand.
If you want to know whether you can use the brand that's available to you, the answer is yes. You just need to convert the units to weight.
From Simply Recipes:
By weight, the brands are the same and can be used interchangeably. This is why you should ideally always measure large amounts of kosher salt by weight to be precise.
But if you’re measuring by volume — or if a recipe only lists the kosher salt by volume — you can run into issues. Since Morton kosher salt is has a finer grind, you’ll pack more into a cup than if you’re using Diamond Crystal. This can really throw off a recipe!
First off, look for (or ask!) which brand of kosher salt is recommended in the recipe, especially if the recipe calls for larger amounts of salt. (If you only need a teaspoon or so, you're usually ok using either brand without throwing off the recipe that much.)
Then either use the brand specified, or follow this conversion chart:
1 cup of Morton’s Kosher Salt = 241 grams = 1 3/4 cup minus 1 teaspoon of Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt
1 cup of Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt = 137 grams = 1/2 cup plus 2 teaspoons of Morton’s Kosher Salt
137/241 is approximately 0.568, or a bit more than half. If you need to be precise, measure by weight. |
When to put a dry cloth over an electric rice cooker?
I have bought a (roughly five litre volume) electric rice cooker that looks like this:
Notice the small hole at the top lid, that I suppose is for letting out steam.
During cooking, is it ever needed to put a dry cloth to cover the hole? And, if I do put a dry cloth while it's in cooking mode (or warming mode), are there any risks? (for example, my food will be burnt)
I am mostly using this electric rice cooker to cook rice, oats, boiled vegetable, pulses, etc. The idea to put a dry cloth covering the hole comes from my mom who has been using old pressure cookers for years (like this one). | Very simple: don't cover it at all, ever.
There is a reason for the hole being there. It is there to let stuff out! Usually clean steam, but if you loaded the cooker wrong, a bit of mess can come out. Then you should be happy that 1) it is coming out and not interfering with the cooking process inside, and 2) drawing your attention to the fact that you have loaded it wrong, so you know better next time. Just clean the mess.
In a pressure cooker, it is doubly important to not cover it! It is there as a safety mechanism, to prevent an explosion. Yes, I mean a real explosion, which will damage not just the pressure cooker, but also a good part of your kitchen! While pressure cookers made for home use are very safe, this depends on them being used as intended, and especially on not obstructing their safety valve in any way.
If you want a cleaner kitchen, simply position the rice cooker in a place where its steam hits something wipable, like a tiled wall. You can also put some kind of easy-washable foil on the underside of your upper cabinets above the cooker, or attach some multi-layer paper (an old magazine will do) which you then exchange regularly. But you have to live with the fact that you will have steam (with slightly dirty aerosol) coming out of that hole, that's what it is for. |
Why do the whipped egg white and syrup for my sorbet not combine?
For some fruit sorbet recipes, eg lemon sorbet, the recipe has three fundamental components:
a syrup (maybe cooked with lemon zest etc)
the juice of your fruit
whipped egg whites
It is simple: Prepare all three ingredients, allow them to cool down, carefully mix together and fill the mixture into the ice machine. My problem is: The egg white will not combine with the juice and syrup. During freezing I'll get a very unpleasant and inhomogenous texture as a result.
Does anyone know why the egg whites won't combine and what I can do to fix this? | Simply whipped eggwhites are not especially stable, and don't have a nice texture. They are OK to be used in some applications, but rarely the best option.
Given that you already have syrup here, what I would do is an Italian meringue. For that, you stream the hot syrup (115 C/240F) into the mixer while whipping the egg whites, and do it long enough to get a glossy, small-bubbled foam. It is a much more stable substance, with friendlier behavior.
I haven't tried diluting Italian meringue with fruit juice, but frankly, I imagine that sorbet made with fruit juice won't be especially good, because of the high amount of crystals. I always use puréed fruit for sorbets, which works very nicely. It should be not so difficult to first fold some purée into the meringue, then fold the mixture back into the remaining purée. |
Do electric tea kettles make chlorinated water taste worse than microwaving it?
At work I frequently brew my own coffee. I use a "coffee cone," which works very easily when you pour boiling water over the grounds - coffee simply drips through the filter.
I am not terribly picky about my coffee. Until recently, I filled a glass measuring cup with tap water (which is chlorinated), microwaved it until it was boiling, and used it. Coffee was OK.
Recently a co-worker brought in one of those electric tea kettles. She fills it with water, hits the switch, and it boils. I used it today for the first time and my coffee was awful. All I could taste was the chlorine! We used the same water. Do these tea kettles make chlorinated water taste worse? | This has nothing to do with chlorinated water, but some low-quality kettles, especially ones made of plastic, may leach a chlorine-like or plasticky taste (according to commenters in this iFixit thread).
You can determine this by boiling spring water (or other non-chlorinated water) in both the microwave and kettle, and tasting them plain. If the kettle is indeed low-quality, then the non-chlorinated water boiled in it should taste weird as well. |
How much free space do sous vide items need in a water bath?
When placing food items in my sous vide bath, often the pouches will rest on the bottom of the bath or against the sides of the container.
I've also seen dedicated sous vide magnets used for attaching items to the side of the bath that prevent the bags from floating. This will press the bag even closer to the sides of the bath.
I would assume that even worse case, conduction through the food itself would bring the item up to temperature. On that basis I generally leave food in at least 30-60 minutes over time to compensate for this when a bag is very close to the side or resting on the bottom.
Is it essential then that any food cooked sous vide is totally surrounded by water? If so, by how much? 1mm? 1cm? 10cm? | Remember, if the food is touching the bottom, or other food, you are, essentially increasing the thickness of the item. That means the time to heat/cook will increase...and dramatically, it is not linear (thickness and heat transfer), it is logarithmic. So, it could take much longer...to the point of being unsafe. So, food should be completely submerged, and there should be enough space completely around the food for water to circulate. Using a trivet, as @borkymcfood suggests is great for keeping it off the bottom, but also pay attention to the space between. You simply should not over crowd...it is better to just get a larger container. |
What do American chefs mean by "Red pepper flakes"?
I see the term "Red pepper flakes" used often by American chefs, but to the European mind this term is very confusing. It could mean flaked and dried:
Red chilli (e.g. Kashmiri, Birds Eye etc.)
Red pepper (Capsicum)
Red pepper (Jalapeno)
Other pepper variety (e.g. Aleppo, Spanish, Turkish etc.)
What exactly is meant by this term? Does it have a unique taste profile? Also, if the ingredient is difficult to source over here, what would be a good substitute?
(There is a generic US/UK/EU comparison for red pepper at Translating cooking terms between US / UK / AU / CA / NZ but this doesn't adequately cover some usage/recipe contexts. Revisiting one specific recipe, I realise now the chef probably meant Turkish/Aleppo pepper as the dish was Turkish/Moroccan in origin.) | Per commentary by the OP, apparently what's needed in the answers here is a catalog.
American Red Pepper Flakes: Dried and crumbled flakes of cayenne peppers per other answers. Used extensively in general American cuisine as well as Italian-American cuisine. In the US, often substituted for harder to find pepper flakes that would be more culturally appropriate to the dish (such as those below).
On the occasions that Italians in Italy use "red pepper flakes", they are more likely to be Calabrian Peperoncino.
Turkish/Syrian/Lebanese Red Pepper Flakes Most of the time the crumbled flakes of dried "Aleppo Pepper" (pul biber). However, the civil war in Syria has restricted supplies of this pepper, so often what is labeled "Aleppo Pepper" is actually Marash Pepper or Antebi pepper instead -- which are both tasty but hotter than Aleppo, so adjust accordingly. The Turkish also use Urfa Pepper flakes, so if your recipe is Turkish and doesn't specify, it could be any of these.
Korean Red Pepper Flakes: gochugaru, the flakes of the Korean red pepper, a medium hot pepper. Used liberally throughout Korean cooking, in flake, powder, and fermented paste form. Possible the best substitute for Aleppo pepper if you're completely unable to find any Turkish/Syrian pepper varieties.
Mexican Red Pepper Flakes: varies, and you really want to read the label. Frequently crumbled chile de arbol, which are screamingly spicy. But ... could also be flaked chipotles (dark and smoked) or ancho chile (medium-hot), or other peppers. Take nothing for granted. Ancho Chile is also the main chile used for American "chile powder".
Chinese Red Pepper Flakes: usually flakes of the Sichuan "jin tao" pepper, used in Sichuan and Hunan cuisine, but could be a different pepper if the recipe is from a different region. Spicy and fruity.
Indian or Thai Red Pepper Flakes: these two cuisines very rarely use peppers in flake form; they generally use whole peppers instead. As such, any mention of "pepper flakes" in an English-language Indian or Thai dish is likely to be a substitution for whole peppers, and as such probably means the American cayenne flakes. However, various Indian peppers are available in flake form in the US, so could also mean those.
Undoubtedly there are other cuisines that use something described as "red pepper flakes", but this should give you an idea of the breadth of ingredients that label could apply to. You need to depend on context -- or, ideally, a glossary in the cookbook -- to figure out what's actually meant.
Your case is an example of the problem with American-Ethnic recipes. A recipe for Turkish Meatballs written by an American could mean Aleppo pepper, but could also have been adjusted to use the common cayenne pepper flakes. Without specific information in the recipe, there's no way to know -- but it's also hard to fail by using Aleppo pepper. |
My jars sealed, cold packed raw chicken quarts, but canner ran dry towards the end. Can I reprocess within 24 hrs when my new canner arrives?
They are bone-in chicken parts, and the jiggler never stopped jiggling. Raw cold packed quart jars. Realized the canner was dry upon removing the lid. They are still sealed 6 hrs in. I need a new canner now, can't get one until tomorrow, but would be within 24 hours. | No, they are not safe to re-process. This essentially has become a "can I partially cook foods, cool and then finish cooking" question (such as the linked one).
Without the proper cooking time, you can not be certain that pathogenic bacteria have been properly inactivated and they could grow over the intervening time. Re-cooking does not prevent production of any toxins, some of which are heat stable (heat stable enterotoxins) and can still cause serious illness, even if the bacteria are killed off. |
Adding baking powder to wet instead of dry didn't work. Why not?
I was making some banana bread. I didn't have any self-raising flour so made my own by adding baking powder (BP).
An unfortunate senior moment saw me add the BP to the wet ingredients instead of into the flour...sigh...
I figured it would still work. After all, the BP is just another ingredient, right?
The final result tastes great, but it didn't rise at all. I don't understand why that would happen, can someone explain why the BP should be added to the flour? | First, I would point out that it actually did work. You say
The final result tastes great
Have you ever forgotten the baking powder in a cake completely? It doesn't taste great; it is a stodgy lump, wet and "unbaked". It is nowhere near "great", almost inedible. The baking powder probably worked, and the banana bread was properly leavened, just without reaching some spectacular extra volume.
So here are a few possibilities for your observation of a reduced effect:
Mixing. It is easier to mix baking powder with flour than with a thick liquid. If it stayed localized in a single clump, the rest won't have risen.
Timing. Baking powder relies on a chemical reaction which produces bubbles. The gluten in the batter doesn't let these bubbles rise up and disappear right away. This is why you don't want the reaction to start before the flour is in the batter. If you first mixed the wet ingredients, and they stayed around a bit before adding the flour, you may have spent the baking powder. This is especially problematic if it isn't double-acting (most current ones are, but there are retro, tartarate and organic brands which aren't). The same thing can happen if you let the batter rest for a long time before baking.
If you had another mishap and used baking soda in a recipe intended for baking powder.
Proportion. This may be simply due to the proportion of baking powder you used. If you normally use self-raising flour, you may have miscalculated the amount needed. |
How would I manipulate this recipe (or another) to make Jäger Bomb flavoured macarons?
It's my brother's birthday and he loves Jägermeister so was thinking of making Jäger Bomb flavoured macarons. Red Bull flavoured pastry and Jäger flavoured cream.
I saw this recipe: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/macarons
How would you manipulate (or is there another you'd recommend) to make Jäger Bomb flavoured macarons?
I was thinking add few tablespoons of Jäger to the cream but I'm worried the pastry will be too wet if I add Red Bull. | Macaron halves aren't pastry, they are a type of meringue, I'm assuming you aren't making pastry too.
You can't add red bull to the macaron sides, it will ruin the consistency and you won't get lift. Instead you need to add a flavoring concentrate, and you are in luck because you can actually buy red bull flavoring in some places,or energy drink flavoring which is similar. This is likely pretty strong so you'll want to be careful adding it, too much will be overpowering. In fact, if you are new to macarons I would suggest making at least one batch beforehand as they are tricky little so-and-sos to make.
The cream is much more flexible, you can add Jagermeister to that and still get a good consistency, again test how much works. A handy trick is to coat the flat side of the macaron halves with a thin layer of white chocolate, this will keep them from getting soggy from the cream.
Asking for recipe alternatives is off-topic, my advice would be the same for most of them anyway: don't use red bull but a flavor concentrate. If you are looking for something less technically challenging you could do a cake and icing, as those work well with flavorings, just start with a cake that is unflavored to begin with or your flavorings will clash, a white cake recipe for example. |
How do tamales cook?
We just steamed a couple dozen tamales and I'm entirely baffled by the idea that they cook over hours. How? Why? What's happening?
I initially figured I could check for doneness with a temperature probe. After less than 30 minutes, the probe read 212 degrees throughout -- and obviously the tamal cannot heat beyond this point as we're steaming.
It was doughy and undercooked.
We left the tamales for another couple hours, as instructed, and voilà, the husk fell off neatly and the tamal was solid.
I don't understand.
212 degrees is well below the point where the Maillard reaction takes place. Is something else chemical going on? Is it purely physical -- maybe as simple as water boiling off?
I'm at a total loss as to the science behind cooking tamales, and it's driving me crazy. | Cooking isn’t instant. You don’t just bring food to a particular temperature and then the physical reactions have happened and the food is done. Many of the processes happen slowly at the target temperatures. In fact, many of them also happen at room temperature - just way too slowly.
In the case of tamales going from squishy to not-squishy, that’s the starch granules hydrating, absorbing some of the water from the dough and cohering. This isn’t instant because it takes a while for the water to diffuse into the granules. |
Dehydrating herbs
Can I dehydrate different kinds of herbs on different trays at the same time in my dehydrator? Or, can each tray be a different herb. I am drying sage, oregano, parsley, and thyme. | Yes, there is no issue with that. If you have specific drying times for each herb then I guess you might need to take them out at different times but I can't see it being an issue.
At worst they may absorb a little of each others' odours but the effect should be small and not really change the flavour when used in coming. |
Why is it that veggies, fruit, and meat need to be salted or sugared when fermented to avoid pathogens, but milk and yogurt don't?
Haven't been able to find a clear enough explanation for this. When it comes to fermented milk products like clabber and milk kefir, you don't seem to need to do anything other than in the first case, let it sit at room temperature in a clean jar, and in the second, do the same thing, but with kefir grains.
Yet with other foods, you need lots of salt or sugar, to keep pathogens out of the fermentation process. I know dairy and yogurt both have carbs, but I'm not getting confirmation if the amount of carbs present in them is the explanation for this. | With all fermentation the goal is to create an environment where tasty microbes will thrive and harmful microbes won't.
One way to do this is by changing the chemistry or temperature of the environment. Adding a lot of salt will create an environment where only salt tolerant bacteria can thrive. Luckily tasty lactobacilli can handle more salt than many nasty bacteria.
Another way to encourage tasty microbes is to make sure you start with so many more of them that they will out compete everything else by inoculating the food with the desired microbes.
The trick is to create a process with a very high chance of tasting good and not making people sick.
Milk is really nutritious stuff and microbes like it as much (if not more) than we do. Raw, unpasteurized milk comes teeming with microbes that would love to devour it. If the raw milk was very carefully handled the majority of those bacteria can be tasty and just letting the milk sit and be eaten by them might produce something good. Clabbered milk is risky. If the milk is contaminated or you are just unlucky the wrong bacteria can get the upper hand and produce something ranging from disgusting to dangerous.
Solid foods don't have the likely-to-be-beneficial microbes distributed through them like milk can. They have also existed outside for a long time so their surfaces are covered with a variety of bacteria and fungi. Just letting them decay on their own is very unlikely to taste good so their environment must be changed to encourage only the good microbes.
As Ecnerwal commented, fruit juice can sometimes be fermented on its own and hope tasty yeast will win.. but sometimes they won't. It's much less risky to force the win by killing all the microbes and just adding the kind you want.
As a side note, another fermentation method that works with grain is a sourdough starter. In this case tasty microbes will outperform bad microbes in general so to keep bad microbes from establishing colonies we regularly add fresh food. This constantly gives the tasty bacteria the upper hand.
I've never heard of heavily sugaring a food for fermentation. Sugar preserves food by making water unavailable to microbes. It works indiscriminately. |
How do I make boiled or steamed veggies and meat taste good – without fatty condiments?
Oil and frying naturally brings out the flavor. I'm so used to it! But now I can't fry for health reasons and I can't to begin to imagine how to get satisfying results with boiling, stewing and steaming only. It's incredibly bland! To add insult to injury, fatty condiments are off limits too (ones that involve animal fat, including butter and yolks). How do I make boiled or steamed veggies and meat taste good – without fatty condiments? I may start to oversalt things, just to feel anything at all, which is bad too! Only recently have I managed to wean myself off tons of salt. I got used to lesser amounts, and it even started to taste like food. But it was fried! | The basics : salt, spices, herbs, acid.
There is an infinite variation of the above components.
Most often, you will use acid like lemon/lime juice or vinegar to bring out vegetable flavors.
Also, you can also roast vegetables in very little fat like olive oil, you can also experiment with roasted without any fat at all. |
My eclair filling is very runny. How do I make it thick enough?
I tried this eclair recipe. I bought a pastry bag with a set of nozzles (never used it) and embarked on it. My nozzles were a bit tiny, it turned out, but the real problem was the filling. Boy, was it a mess! It was incredibly runny, it spilled over the nozzle, the bag, it was all over the place. But I followed the guidelines properly: 200 g of butter and 300 g of condensed milk. My guess is that her butter and/or milk were fattier so it was thicker. I could cool it beforehand, but she insisted on that room-temperature aspect of it. How was I supposed to make it thick enough? You can't just mix in some flour, obviously. Gelatin? I doubt its feasibility in this case (you need to dissolve it in some hot liquid, then you have to cool it...)
(in case you're wondering how this fatty, eggy recipe conforms to my new liver-friendly diet, it doesn't! I had had a plan to try making eclairs before my doctor advised me against that type of food, I wasn't going to cancel it ♂️. Sorry, liver, you have to take it on the chin!) | This seems to be a mistake in the recipe. I have made a condensed-milk-buttercream a couple of times, and my recipe uses a 3:4 ratio, not 2:3, and I don't even think it was a good pipeable consistency, I used it as a frosting.
So, to repair it, cream more butter (I would go for maybe 100 g more), then add the too-runny filling and continue beating. For next time, use more butter or less condensed milk from the beginning.
The room temperature requirement is indeed correct, especially for the butter.
Update I noticed on another post of yours a picture of the products you are using. You caught your can of condensed milk too on the picture, and its label stated the food standard it fulfuills, the Russian ГОСТ 31688/212. This standard happens to be available online, and it prescribes "no more than 26.5% water, 43.5 to 45.5 sucrose, no less than 8.5% fat, no less than 34% protein in the milk dry mass". The West seems to use a different standard for condensed milk, and I found a FAO standard that describes a sweetened condensed milk with "Minimum milkfat 16% m/m, Minimum milk solids-not-fat(a) 14% m/m, Minimum milk protein in milk solids-not-fat(a) 34% m/m".
This makes me think that you should try making the recipe with condensed cream, which has a minimum of 19% milkfat in the Russian standard. I am not certain that this is the problem, since I haven't seen the condensed-milk-buttercream variant in Western recipes, but it is worth a shot.
Also, make sure to beat the butter fluffy enough before adding the condensed milk or cream. At least 5-6 minutes with a good stand mixer, or longer if your mixer is ancient or does not come from a brand with good reputation. It should be visibly white, fluffy and voluminous, maybe watch some videos on buttercream - some intended to show the technique in detail, not the one with your recipe. |
Sous vide timings for different cuts of steak?
There are lots of generic guides out there for cooking steak sous vide to different levels of "doneness", but are there any that calculate the timings based on the actual cut of meat? This is particularly relevant as US cuts of meat differ considerably from British ones, and I assume each would require slightly different cooking times (e.g. rump, topside and silverside versus round). See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cuts_of_beef for the classifications.
My intention is to cook four rump steaks simultaneously, two well done (I know, but guests) and two medium rare. Apparently I might run the risk of the fat turning gelatinous on the well done rump steak if it is left in the bath too long. The goal here is to get juicy and tender meat as much as possible irrespective of doneness.
Using generic timings and temperature, I was going to cook the well done steaks for 2 hours at 70C, lowering the temperature to 56C and cooking the medium rare steaks for 2 hours, keeping the well done steaks in the bath for a total of 4 hours, two at 70C and then two at 56C. All steaks will be browned in a very hot grill press (more for the grill marks than anything else), the juices from the sous vide bags being used to create a pan sauce. If need be I can cook the steaks the night before and reheat if this would be a better method. | Collagen should break down and proteins denature at the same time and temperature no matter what muscle it came from.
Of course, the size of the cut is going to affect how the heat makes it into the meat, which is why Baldwin’s guide focuses more on the size and shape of the meat to achieve a specific doneness
https://douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html#Beef
He does call out a few cuts and how far to cook them, but it’s more about level of doneness with level being a second order thing. |
Are chemical ice packs as efficient as regular ice?
I live in a moderately temporary climate and our fridge freezer does not have an built-in ice maker.
I want to rapidly chill food after cooking it sous vide. Would cold water from the tap supplemented with 2 or 3 plastic ice packs (the type used in cool boxes etc.) suffice or must I use a 50/50 mix of ice and water?
I will not be chilling thick cuts of meat (e.g. roasts), mainly just chicken breasts or steaks etc. | Those ice packs are full mainly full of water, with dye and some sort of preservative. You can tell they're water because the liquid expands on freezing and only water does that.
A given quantity (weight) of ice will take the same amount of heat to melt whether it's in plastic or not. So, apart from a small error from the weight of the plastic, ice packs will be as capable of cooling as the same weight of ice.
Ice packs won't, however, cool a water batg quite as quickly as ice cubes, for two reasons
the plastic shell acts as an insulator
they have less surface area (one big lump compared to lots of little ones)
The latter point also means they won't cool the bath as evenly.
But having said that, they'll be fine if you're sensible:
use fairly small containers with gaps between them (that's important with vacuum sealing as you can't stir the food) . This is a good idea anyway
use more, smaller ice packs to increase the surface area
stir the chilled water bath, or move the food around in it.
seal the containers well (of course you're doing this) as any leakage will contaminate the outside of the ice packs rather than going down the drain.
In practice, for fairly small quantities, even cold tap water chills small portions fast enough to go in the fridge with plenty of time for them to finish cooling within safety guidelines; ice can provide convenient speed but isn't absolutely necessary except for thick pieces. |
What is the purpose of adding egg when flouring and deep frying chicken?
Many recipes (e.g. orange chicken) call for the chicken to be coated in flour, the beaten egg (whole, whole with a dash of milk or just the whites), coated again with flour and then deep fried. The flour can be plain flour, plain flour with cornstarch, cornstarch and potato starch etc.
I've had excellent results just coating the chicken with seasoned flour (or a flour mixture) and then deep frying after leaving it to air dry for 15 minutes. I have never had any problems with the flour coating coming off while it is cooking. Is this because the chicken breasts I use are particularly "wet" due to the water injected during processing or am I just fortunate that my chicken has not come out particularly dry inside? | The added egg serves 2 purposes:
The albumins form a protein mesh suspending the starch components that also crispens with the starch as they dehydrate along the exterior,
The water content generates more steam than the coated food alone, directly at the dredged surface area, that helps expand and puff the above starch and protein mesh.
Eggs when implemented correctly will usually contribute a finished texture with more volume than a dry flour/crumb dredge alone.
The finished texture and moisture of the breast meat is almost entirely dependent on the highest internal temperature achieved during frying and the temperature at which it is served.
Dry dredges may provide an earlier visual indicator of doneness for home chefs since they tend to brown and burn faster than more hydrated or egg supplemented batters. |
How to prevent olive oil from forming a single puddle near the edge of my frying pan?
The recipes I cook usually use either butter or 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil. With butter, everything is fine and the pan gets an 'even' coating of small droplets of fat. But whenever I use olive oil, it tends to all form a single big puddle at the edge of the non-stick frying pan, even if I empty the measuring scoop in the middle of the pan. One of those puddles recently splashed when I added vegetables to the pan, and I burned my finger quite badly, so I want to prevent something like it from happening again.
I found this post asking why oil does this, and the answer there gives some ideas on what to do, but the circumstances there aren't really applicable: I checked and my frying pan is level which makes sense as the butter also doesn't run off to the sides. Also, I've been using my frying pans for close to a year now, so more than the 'few months' the answer there mentions as being needed to build up damage and allowing oil to spread more evenly. So neither of the two things mentioned there already seems like a possible solution for me.
How do I prevent my olive oil from forming a single puddle at the edge of a frying pan? | Generally this shouldn't be too much of a problem; by moving food around once it is in the pan you will naturally spread the oil across both the food and the pan. You can also use a spatula to spread the oil a little before putting the food in, and tilting the pan to get the oil to run to the far side also helps.
If the puddle of oil is significantly splashing you that might be a sign there is too much oil for what you need, but you can also reduce splashing by gently lowering food in (possibly using tools like a spatula or tongs) and putting the side closest to you in first so that any splashing is away from you. |
I need to judge whether my bread flour is ok or not. 50LB bag 11 months old
The bag was packed tight. It was in standard flour sack and inside a thick cardboard shipping box, there were a few hundred pounds on top of it, on a skid. It was not wrapped in plastic. Mostly the room is pretty dry, but there was humidity in the summer.
When I open the bag it is hard like concrete, but breaks apart once I start busting it up and its light, fluffy once I crush it in my hand. I think there might be a light must scent to it, but its sort of tricky, like is it there or not, seems to disperse after a little while. Color is good.
I am really interested in any seasoned opinion on this situation. I don't want to make anyone sick, I also don't want to over-react and toss out $100 worth of flour. I am going to test it also for rolls, I should have those in a few days.
Thanks! I think these responses cover it. I baked some bread to test from the same batch different bag today, Bread was good. I will test run the bag we talked about here in a few days as well as make sure my digestion/energy/flavor don't show any impacts. I broke up the chunks some and put in a giant plastic bag to see if it airs a bit or what. If any aspect of it fails I will make paper mache halloween ghouls. :) | It's impossible to say whether the four is safe for certain, given the conditions you describe it is likely fine but there are no guarantees. It's very possible that the flour has simply gotten compacted by the weight on top of it rather than from moisture, if the flour is dry it's much more likely to be safe. A year is a long time to store flour, though, so you may be smelling some of the oils in the flour having turned rancid - even if it's safe it may not be good.
To test for moisture you need an accurate scale and an oven. You take a decent sized sample, say 100g, spread it out on a tray and bake it for an hour at medium temperature (130C/260F) to drive the moisture out. You weigh it straight after taking it out of the oven and measure the difference. If the water content is above 15% it's been exposed to too much moisture. So if you bake 100g and it comes out at 86g or higher at least you know it's not damp.
If you do decide to use the flour you'll want to sift it at least once to aerate it and bring back its fluffiness. |
How do you secure a nozzle on your pastry bag?
Ok, so I remade my eclair filling with a 1:1 butter to condensed milk ratio. It was a pain, but it seems I did it! The thing is I don't want my cooking to be a pain, I want it to be enjoyable. The piping certainly wasn't. The filling, even though it was apparently thick enough, still partially leaked over the nozzle and not through the opening. I had to manually push it against the bag which, given everything else I had to simultaneously do, took active participation of every finger I had on my hands. I can't just duct-tape it to the bag, can I? That particular nozzle was purchased separately from the bag
UPD: @rumtscho Golly, I thought it was just a weird-looking nozzle! But I need a wider connector for that needle-like nozzle I bought separately | I have never run into such trouble. Are you trying to keep the tip on the outside?
For work with the same tip, as you have in eclairs, it goes inside the bag. You start by cutting a hole in the bag that is smaller than the tip's upper diameter, then slide it in. Then you fill the bag, knead it, and pipe. If the tip slides out, the hole was too large, use another bag.
If you want to change tips on the same bag, you have to use a special holding ring. There is a connector that goes inside the piping bag, the tip gets slipped onto the connector, and there is a ring with screw threads that comes from the outside and secures the tip to the connector. These connector-ring-sets tend to come with sets of tips, or sometimes with non-disposable bags, but you can probably also get them solo.
Oh, and there is no rule saying you can't duct tape in the kitchen (your home kitchen, at least). You'll have to do it before it comes in contact with the greasy filling, though. And cleaning your tools afterwards might be difficult. |
Is there a distinction between fleur de sel and sel de guérande?
On a recent trip to Paris, I wanted to buy some fleur de sel as a gift, but I found nothing that was specifically noted as such. Instead, I found sel de guérande, which largely seems like the same thing? Watching this video, I understand that:
La fleur de sel c'est le sel qui va cristalliser à la surface de l'eau. Le gros sel ce sera le seul qui va cristalliser au fond de l'eau sur l'argile. Donc c'est ça qui fait la différence entre les deux.
The fleur de sel is the salt that will crystallize on the surface of the water. The coarse salt is the only one that will crystallize at the bottom of the water on the clay. So that's what makes the difference between the two.
I wonder if sel de guérande is perhaps the name given to the salt colored by the clay? Or is there a difference? The only other question I saw was this one, whose answer notes "Salt is salt is salt". I realize I'm splitting hairs, but I'm curious nonetheless. | Fleur de sel is a flaky salt (same as Maldon salt).
It can be from Guérande or from other sea salt fields.
Guérande salt can be any type of sea salt from that region.
It can be fine, coarse or Fleur de sel.
Anecdotal, I buy coarse grey Guérande salt (still wet) and use it as my main salt, I use it coarse or I grind some for regular use, I also use local flaky salt (from Québec). |
Best way to sous vide food in large vacuum pouches
I know there is no reason not to trim oversized vacuum pouches to fit the contents, but if you are not able to do so, what is the best way to deal with the excess pouch during cooking?
If you leave the top part out of the water you risk cross contamination of the food from any uncooked juices that have crept up the inside of bag during the sealing process. If you fold them over you risk uneven cooking as one side of the pouch will be double thickness. | Ideally a large enough container to fully submerge the entirety of the pouch should be used.
You're correct that unsubmerged parts of the bag pose a cross-contamination hazard, though the concern regarding the thickness of the bag impeding heat transfer is negligible:
For regular FoodSaver bags specifically, the smooth side has a thickness of 3mil/0.0762mm while the textured side already has a thickness almost quadruple that at 11.5mil/0.2921mm.
Folding over the excess pouch onto the smooth side would give you a total thickness of 3mil+3mil+11.5mil, 17.5mil/0.4445mm.
The above combined thickness does not affect heat transfer however, as the combined thickness is not bonded as a single layer on the folded side preventing water flow between the layers. The surface in contact and acting as a heat transfer surface between the food and water will still remain 3mil and 11.5mil.
The more realistic concern would be the excess bag obstructing water flow and creating a cooler spot in the container; this can easily be prevented by placing the folded excess flap in line with the heater's outflow path so that the heated water travels between the food and excess bag flap. The excess can be oriented underneath the food (and weight, if using) to prevent it from flapping in the flow. |
Freeze or refrigerate dough?
Refrigerating is detrimental to bread; it's better to freeze it or simply leave it at room temperature. Does the same hold for bread dough? | Storing bread and storing bread dough are two entirely different decisions, depending on completely different factors.
Baked bread is a finished product which will keep both in the fridge and in the freezer, but in the fridge, the starch will undergo a special process which makes the bread dry and unpalatable (the same as at room temperature, only quicker). This is why the linked answer tells you to choose a freezer (or for short terms, room temperature).
Bread dough is a living ingredient. If you leave it out at room temperature, your biggest worry is overproofing - letting your yeast colony overcrowd and produce too much waste products, and of the wrong kind. And yeast is still very much active at fridge temperatures, so if you don't want this to happen, you have to stick your dough in the freezer. It hits the "pause" button on biochemical processes, while the fridge doesn't.
This doesn't mean that bread dough cannot go into the refrigerator. If the recipe has been designed to foresee a fridge-temperature proofing step, then you should use the fridge, as prescribed. But then you aren't storing the dough, you are proofing it as part of the recipe (or you are caring for an indefinitely lived preferment, such as a lievito madre). For actual storage purposes - as in, you started baking a recipe that is proofed at room temperature, but realized you have no time to finish it, and will continue later - the fridge will only work if you resume within 6 hours or so, somewhat longer for low-yeast recipes. Else the dough will overproof right in the fridge. |
Is leftover whey after making 'this' cheese useful?
I know cottage cheese as it's from warm temperature of milk and rennet, and ricotta cheese from high temperature of whey and acid.
So what is the cheese from boiling milk and acid, and does the leftover water from this and ricotta cheese have few meaningful ingredients? Has most of protein been extracted and could I discard it? | The cheese made from heating milk to 85C and then adding a coagulant is generally called Farmer Cheese, as it's the easiest useful cheese to make from whole milk. While this coagulant is generally an acid, it's still farmer cheese if you use rennet.
That's 85C, though. Neither ricotta nor farmer cheese get quite boiled. The only cheese where bringing the milk to a boil is common is paneer.
You will note that this is very similar to recipes to make cottage cheese. That's because the two cheeses are the same, up until it comes time to handle the curds. Farmer cheese is cut small, cooked, and drained, resulting in a creamy or chalky spreadable cheese, and cottage cheese is cut large, chilled and salted, resulting in larger, softer curds.
Note that a lot of the "ricotta" sold in supermarkets in the USA is actually farmer cheese, since it's made from whole milk rather than whey.
The whey leftover from either farmer cheese or cottage cheese is not useful for further cheesemaking. Due to the high-heat cooking, all useful solids have been removed from the milk. The whey can be used for other purposes, such as wet-packing feta and mozzarella or making bread. |
What is the best way to set hot water pastry?
Some hot water pie recipes require the pastry to be moulded into shape and left to dry out and set overnight or up to 24 hours before filling and baking (e.g. Scotch pies).
Is it best to leave the pastry open to the air or place it in the fridge? Will covering the pastry (e.g. with clingfilm etc.) hinder the drying out process? | The refrigerator would be safer and effective for drying and setting the shape.
The hydrated cooked starch would support pathogen growth. Dehydration occurs more slowly, but still occurs under refrigeration temperature. The cooling would also solidify the milk fat and partially retrograde the starch faster than at room temperature, so it may be set solidly enough to work with without needing an overnight rest. |
Spread butter flavored with brown butter is too grainy. How to make it silky?
A friend of mine tasted a nice butter with brown butter named "Bregott Brynt". I wanted to replicate it and make some at home.
So I started by cooking brown butter that I filtered. I then used 70% swiss alpine butter, 20% brown butter and 10% double cream. I mixed well for a few minutes with a stand mixer.
Then I refrigerated it for a couple of hours and tried it. The taste was there, but the texture was horrible. It is grainy/sandy.
The brown butter by itself was grainy and very dense (due to the water evaporation). I read that crystallization or graininess occurs when the butter melts.
What could I do to make a ghee/brown butter have a soft silky texture?
The original product is on the top, brown butter is on the left and the final preparation is on the bottom right. | For some reason, butter (any kind of butter?) crystallize when cooled down to slowly. You must do a tempering similar to chocolate.
First eat your butter to a certain temperature for a certain time
Quickly cool the butter by putting it in the freezer.
When back to 15-20°C mix it well to homogenate it. Salt is not soluble in fat so, during the tempering process, it will float.
You will get soft and silky butter.
From my experience, you can heat it at 80°C for 20 minutes, but the phase transition of butter isn't very clear. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.