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What is a good substitute for cheddar powder?
I’m making cheddar popcorn and most, if not all, call for cheddar powder that has to be ordered online. This is more of a project/curiosity, so I’d like to try with something I have on hand first.
I have packets of powder that come with Kraft Mac and Cheese and I also have the ubiquitous Kernel Seasons nacho cheddar sprinkling.
Will either of these work or should I try the internet? | Both of those options could certainly work. Both are dehydrated powders that consist primarily of dehydrated cheese. Which one is better is going to be a matter of taste. The Kernel Seasons is specifically designed to go on popcorn, so it's more promising. However, it also adds a bunch of extra spices, so if you just wanted "cheddar" flavor, it's not your best friend.
The Mac and Cheese packet is also primarily dried cheese. However, it includes starch and emulsifiers, which might give the popcorn an unpleasantly gummy mouthfeel. You'd need to try it to see.
Other things I would personally try if I was substituting here include:
Cheddar low-carb cheese crisps, powdered in a blender
A mixture of dry "grated parmesan" and brewer's yeast (if you live near a natural foods store)
Good luck, and have fun with it. |
How to convert fluid double strength espresso to instant coffee crystals?
I am using a recipe that calls for double strength espresso, but I would like to use instant coffee crystals instead in order to reduce the overall amount of liquid in the dough. The recipe, Union Square Cafe's Chocolate Biscotti, tends to produce a very wet dough that is difficult to work with. I'm having a hard time deciding how much of the instant coffee to use to get the same amount of coffee flavor as I would get from double strength espresso. Thoughts? | That recipe only calls for 1 teaspoon of liquid espresso; there is no way that the espresso is the liquid that is making it hard to work with. The liquid in the recipe is coming from the eggs.
That said, if you wanted to substitute that 1tsp, I'd use 1/2 tsp instant espresso powder. Since the mix of instant espresso powder for making a fake espresso is almost 1:1 by volume, you can cut it in half any time to use dry.
Do not use instant coffee, it will not work. The goal of adding espresso to a recipe like the biscotti is to make the chocolate taste "richer" by adding additional roasted and bitter notes. Most instant coffee lacks these flavors. There are exceptions, such as Cafe Bustelo, that are specifically formulated to have a darker-roasted flavor and would work as well as espresso powder. But anything described as "crystals" is probably better simply omitted. |
Why is my spatchcocked chicken bloody?
I cooked a medium sized chicken spatchcocked with the backbone removed and the bird flattened after I cracked open the breastbone "star" with a sharp knife. The bird was placed skin side up on a sheet tray, seasoned with salt, pepper and olive oil. It was then baked in a 220C non-convection oven for ~ 90 minutes and the meat was tender, juicy and opaque. The bones pulled easily from the drumsticks and thighs and multiple tests on the thickest part of the meat with a calibrated thermometer showed the temperature to range between 85-95C. The food safe temperature for cooked chicken is 75C.
Today when I came to remove the rest of the meat from the carcass, I discovered this bloody piece close to the breastbone. The meat surrounding it was cooked, it was almost like a small island amongst the sea of cooked meat.
Did this happen because I split the breastbone with a knife to flatten the bird?
What is the best practice under these crcumstances? I have discarded this piece and intend to stir-fry the remainder
How can I avoid this again? The rest of the bird was delicious, but this is my first attempt at cooking a bird this way but I don't want to risk food poisoning in future. | This is likely a harmless vein. I often find veins close to the breastbone or drumsticks. They don't look appetizing, but are usually nothing to worry about if the bird is cooked to proper temperature. |
How much sugar and/or milk do I need to turn 99% chocolate to 70% dark chocolate?
I ordered 70% dark chocolate from an online store but they sent me 99% chocolate. I've been trying to find measurements on the Internet on how to turn it into 70% dark chocolate, but most of the sites don't say a specific amount. As Christmas comes closer, I'm starting to panic.
Any help would be much appreciated. | If it's any help the precise conversion for any two concentrations is
C1xV1 = C2xV2
where C = concentratiion and V = volume or weight.
So, for 1 unit of 70% from 99%:
70 x 1 = 99 x V2
rearrange to make V2 the subject:
V2 = 70/99 = 0.707
So, if you took .707 g or 0.707 oz of 99% and added it to something to make up to 1 g or 1 oz, technically you would have 70%. However, adding sugar or milk won't make you chocolate that will set like a block. For that you need to add cocoa butter and likely some sugar. How much sugar would depend on the style of block you aim to make.
If you take your favourite brand of 70% chocolate and look at the dietary information on the back (assuming you are in a country with this information provided), then it will tell you how much of your 70% block is sugar, though if you are in the USA, you may need to do a little conversion from servings to percent.
The popular brand Lindt, has, according to this website 12 g sugar per 40 g serving (4 squares) in their 70% block; so 12/40 = 30%, so almost all of the remaining 30% is sugar. I don't know how much of this is natural sugars present in the cocoa to start with. However, if it is any help, the same site has the 90% as 3 g sugar/40 g = 7.5%, so less than the 10% you might expect if the sugar makes up all the additional mass. |
Will cross-contamination not happen when deep frying breaded chicken and battered fish in the same oil?
Two restaurants I know fry battered fish and breaded chicken in the same oil. I asked one of them how they prevent cross-contamination in that case and I received the following reply:
Our fish is hand battered which helps lock in the flavours and juices
and we have not seen any leaching of flavour from the fish into other
products. Foods are typically fried between 300 and 400 degrees
(depending on product and stage of cooking) which is a very harsh
environment for flavours or contaminants to survive. Even celiacs are
generally fine eating products from a fryer that had other flour based
products fried in the oil.
They essentially said that the heat will kill contaminants and hence cross-contamination won't happen. Is this correct? Please comment on the above claim.
EDIT:
By cross-contamination, I mean one food simply affecting or mixing with another (e.g. should someone with a fish allergy be concerned about chicken fried in the same oil?) | Pasteurization is usually done between 63-90 °C, (145 - 194 °F) steam sterilization at 120-130 °C (248 - 266 °F). So you can consider long frying oil at 150-200 °C (245 - 392 °F) safely to be free from any microbes.
For flavours it depends, some will vanish even at temperatures far below the boiling point, some will change and some will reman stable even at high temperatures. Also many flavours are very well soluble in fats, so there is a possibility of carrying over the flavour of one food to another. And while you probably don´t want to prapare donuts in an oil that was used for fish and onions it remains a question of personal taste if this is neccessarily is a bad thing.
Gluten needs a temperature of at least 300 °C (572 °F) to denaturate, which is beyond the temperature used for frying. Also note that as long as the dough also contains some water it will not surpass the boiling point.
Parvalbumin the proteine which is the main reason for fish allergy seems to be relatively stable against high temperatures, so it might be an issue. If you have a reason to fear it as a serious hazard for your health it probably is safer to avoid it. But for advice on personal health threats and how to deal with an allergy you better should consult a doctor or another professional with an deeper insight into your specific situation and its reguirements than this community can provide. |
Are whole dried Shiitake sufficient for complete flavour extraction in my stock, or should I cut them to increase surface area?
I usually bring my soon to be vegetable stock to a boil and then let it simmer for about an hour. One of my favourite ingredients is dried Shiitake, which I tend to buy whole and in bulk.
Should I go with the common wisdom of increasing the surface area by cutting the dried mushrooms into smaller pieces to extract the most flavour, or does it not really matter under the conditions of making the vegetable stock? Perhaps dried Shiitake, at that temperature, already gives me complete extraction from the interior, and I get to indulge in keeping them whole and pretty. | Are whole dried Shiitake sufficient for complete flavour extraction in my stock
Of course! Don't bother cutting them up, as that would make them prone to releasing too much of their flavor long before the stock is ready. |
Frozen turkey cooking? Not for thanksgiving!
I bought a turkey right after thanksgiving to turn into broth but didn’t the day of so I froze it and now I don’t know if I can put the frozen turkey into a pot as is or if I’d have to thaw it like normal first. I’m considering cutting the turkey in half to put in two pots to make more broth and have more space.
So, can I put a frozen turkey in a pot of water on the stove and cook it? Or do I need to thaw it first? | You can make stock with a frozen turkey. There is no issue. Ensure your stock comes to the boil and that you simmer until the meat is fully cooked. |
Toasting dry rosemary
When I want to flavor my focaccias or bread loaves with spices or herbs, I add them dried to the dough instead of topping the final product before baking. In this way, I don't lose them when I slice the final product and I don't make a mess.
As seeds I use sometimes fennel seeds, that I toast before use. As herbs I use oregano, thyme, herbes de Provence or rosemary. All dry store-bought (or homemade mixes of store-bought).
Does it make a difference to toast the herbs in a dry hot pan before such use? Would it amplify flavor like it does for seeds/spices? | You just have to be much more careful about burning, but toasting dried herbs can be useful. For example, it is quite common to toast dried oregano in some Mexican preparations. There is no problem giving it a shot to see if you appreciate the effect. |
Lost water in sous vide container overnight
I had 2 roasts in my sous vide at 132 degrees for 10 hours and went to bed at 10 and checked at 7 this morning and had no water as had sprung a leak
Planned on cooking for 36 hours so started again
Will the meat be safe after sitting with no water for that long | Your meat was in the danger zone for too long, basically sitting at the perfect temperature for pathogen growth for many hours. I would say that it is risky to continue. "Two roasts" suggest you are feeding a lot of people. Consider your guests. I would go to plan b or start over with fresh product. |
Should I remove the inner parts of marrow vegetables?
Should I remove the inner parts of marrow vegetables, like this zucchini (or whatever this is)? You generally want to avoid any seeds in your food, but there would be hardly any zucchini left if I do this! | No. The only cooking preparation where the seedy core of summer squash is removed is for stuffing them. Otherwise, that's part of what you eat. The seeds are soft and pretty much the same texture as the flesh. |
Safety of chicken after thawing temperature at the wrong temperature
I tried thawing chicken breasts in my refrigerator, but after leaving them in there for 1.5 days, I took their temperature with a meat thermometer and found them to be 47 degrees Fahrenheit.
From what I have read, I should have set my refrigerator to between 31-40 degrees to avoid the "danger zone" (40-140) where bacteria multiply (source, source).
Because the raw chicken has been left at the wrong temp for hours, is it unsafe to cook and eat? | This question is not answerable with the given data. After 1.5 days, the chicken should be the same temperature as the fridge (or colder, if not fully thawed).
So we have two possible scenarios, that hinge on the used thermometers
The fridge is set correctly, the thermostat & temperature probe working fine and the whole setup is not cycling (much) outside the safe zone. That would mean that the thermometer you used on the meat was incorrect and the meat stayed in the safe zone.
The fridge is cycling outside the the set temperature range. Note that temperature distribution inside refrigerators can differ quite a bit from the nominal value the fridge was set to. This is why some websites recommend that different food groups should go on different shelves, depending on how sensitive they are. In that case your meat thermometer would be correct and the meat unsafe.
Unless you can verify your data with a calibrated thermometer, we have no way to determine whether we are looking at case 1 or 2 here. So from a food safety perspective, we must draw the conclusion that your chicken is not safe. Note that this doesn’t mean that the meat is spoiled, just that the requirements for food safety weren’t met with reasonable certainty. |
Protecting gingerbread house windows from humidity
We made some pretty good windows for our gingerbread house this year, by putting crushed boiled sweets (hard candy) in the cut holes for the last few minutes of baking.
But since then they've absorbed enough moisture (at least I assume that's what happened) to run and in some cases collapse.
We've had some unusually cold weather recently, followed by a thaw and damp weather, so the humidity indoors has got quite high (especially at night when the heating is off). This probably hasn't helped. I have a dehumidifier, but cooking steam followed by cold nights can get a bit much for it. Currently the relative humidity is about 65%, and the windows feel slightly tacky. The way the windows look like they're crying indicates deliquescence, which requires over 85% RH at 15°C - possible if the temperature fell overnight after steamy cooking.
Here's the whole house - under-decorated in my opinion, but I'm not in charge of decoration. This is after applying melted coconut oil to the bottom left and top right panes, and all 4 lower right panes (see WillK's answer)
The appearance of these windows was just what we were going for, but is there a way to make them last longer if indoor humidity can get quite high? Ideally this would be a vegetarian (no gelatine) change to the ingredients, or something in the process of making it. | Coconut oil?
Give them a smear. You might need to take them out and bake off the moisture they have absorbed, then let them cool. Coconut oil will be solid at winter room temperature. It will serve as a moisture barrier for your sugar windows.
An alternative to coconut oil would be Chapstick or some similar lip balm. You can get it in minty flavors which would smell nice for people who were closely inspecting the house. |
Can I Sous Vide a roasting joint?
With the end of year Christmas shopping panic, the only beef joint I could get for Christmas day was a 1.6kg roasting joint. There is no other marking on the pack, so I assume this is either silverside, topside or salmon cut.
I was intending to sous vide this for 24 hours at 60C. Would I achieve better results following the instructions and cooking it in the oven? | No, sous vide is an excellent method of cooking this type of meat. The best results will very much depend on the precise cut of the meat, the temperature used and the amount of fat and marbling.
I cooked this joint (which had very little connective tissue or fat) for 20 hours at 60C. The meat was tender, moist but not overly juicy and was somewhere between a medium and medium-well doneness. I had to split in into two pieces as the whole joint would not fit in a standard vacuum bag.
Guests all said it was the tastiest beef they had sampled in a long time. |
Why does using very unsaturated oil for seasoning cast iron make the coating brittle?
It's a point mentioned in this video. I don't quite get it. The more polymerization= stronger coating... till a point? Why does too much polymerization make the actual coating ultimately weaker? | I can indeed confirm that flax oil is a very poor choice for seasoning, and it is indeed due to its being overly reaction-friendly. * Let's look at the seasoning process in depth, first taking the average case
Case |
Can you make red bean paste from bean flour?
I was having a conversation with someone about making a dessert from red bean paste and they mentioned the process being arduous because they had to cook the beans for two hours, and then mash them.
I knew that bean flours like besan is commonly used in cooking flatbreads in Indian cuisine, and those are made by grinding down chickpeas - something that takes hours to cook normally, gets reduced to five minutes as a flour.
Since red bean paste seems to be made by boiling beans and then mashing them, would the same step in reverse work? That is, grind them down to a flour first and boil them to form a porridge, as that should take far less time.
Secondary question: what is the difference between porridge and a paste, in this contex? Does cooking the beans and mashing them produce a different result from grinding them down and boiling the flour? (My intuition tells me no, but I'm not a chef) | Yes, it's possible and in fact sometimes done in Japan, but doing so creates a specific type of red bean paste called sarashi-an (晒し餡, "dried/bleached paste") that is only used in a few recipes, primarily soups.
More broadly, Japanese bean pastes are usually categorized by their texture. The three types mostly commonly used in Japanese confectionery, pastries, desserts and cakes are tsubu-an (粒あん), which is simply boiled beans; tsubushi-an (潰し餡) which is boiled and mashed; and the most common, koshi-an (漉し餡), which is boiled, mashed and sieved to remove the skins. These have a range of textures and flavors that simply can't be replicated by using powdered beans. And if time or efficiency are a concern, you don't need to boil your own, since you can easily and cheaply buy ready-to-use bean paste in cans or shelf-stable bags in any Japanese grocery. |
How can I make my Christmas dinner less dry?
For Christmas, I make the same thing every year. My family loves it, I never get any complaints, and they really won't let me leave out or substitute any of my staples. Nobody has a problem with it, but me.
My staples are spiral ham, roasted potatoes, this brussel casserole thing with breadcrumbs, sweet honey orange carrots, and crescent rolls. The dishes by themselves are fine, but everything is dry, sweet, salty, and hot. The cumulative effect kind of just dries my mouth out.
I make a sauce for my ham to try to put some zest back into the meal, but I need more tips. As I said, they won't let me substitute a dish out, so is there anything I can add to the meal to switch it up? Can I "alter" them in any way to keep the same spirit of the dish, but less dry? More sauces? Drinks?
Thanks in advance! | In our family tradition there is always a kind of fruit in a main dinner.
This can be as simple as a can of mixed tropical fruit, it can be prunes which have been soaking overnight or flash cooked, it can be cranberry in sauce out of a jar or self cooked.
Adding a simple bowl of fruit will add a different and not dry mouthfeel.
As indicated in a comment, some communities use pickles in this place. And in the English traditions there are some sauces which are often served with meat, like mint sauce with lamb, red current jam or horseradish with beef, chutney from apple and curents with pork.
All of these can be served straight out of a jar or can, just tip in a bowl or arrange on a dish for pickles or bigger pieces of fruit, which can be done in advance, adding very little work when serving the dinner. |
How long to heat up a cast iron pan for cooking
There are many articles and Reddit posts saying to heat the cast iron on low for a long time and then cook in it. Apparently it’s a bad idea to heat the cast iron on high as heat doesn't flow easily through the metal bulk.
So, how long should I heat up the cast iron?
Normally I put a few drops of water in the pan to check the temperature, but clearly that is not a good idea with cast iron. | You heat it until it has reached the heat you need for the recipe you are going to make. It doesn't matter how long.
You can use any method you like to decide when it's ready. You mention that you are comfortable with a water drop method; that's great. You can use it on your cast iron pan, there is nothing to speak against it, and it will work.
Also,
Apparently its a bad idea to heat the cast iron on high
This is nonsense. Of all pan materials that exist, cast iron is the one that is most forgiving to overheating. It also takes longer to preheat than others, so using a high setting for preheating is really practical. |
Urgent help for cheesecake
I just baked a chocolate chip cheesecake in the oven for 65 minutes and forgot to put a water bath in there! what do I do to make sure that it's done okay? I don't have a thermometer. Did I ruin the whole thing? | If the recipe called for 65 minutes with a water bath and you baked it for 65 minutes without one, it will certainly be done and almost certainly taste good.
The texture might be different than the recipe intended because you've effectively let it get a bit hotter, and the surface might have cracks (which is only an issue if you care a lot what it looks like). I'd be very surprised if it's ruined! |
How to quickly thaw frozen goose?
I have a 5kg goose, frozen at -18C. I guess that even at room temperature, it won't be ready in about 15h to cook. What are my options? How quickly would it thaw in cold water sousvide? Its packaged airtight. Or should I simply put it in the oven early and run it on very low temp for some extra hours? | Set it into the largest pot you own (that it will fit in) and fill the pot with cold tap water. Set it in your sink or set the pot on top of towels on the counter (to collect the condensation from the sides of the pan). Leave the goose/poultry in the water, turning it occasionally so that it thaws more evenly. It should thaw in plenty of time to go into the oven on schedule. |
US food label of organic lemon juice
100% Juice 59 servings 1 tsp per serving (5ml) Ingredients: Organic Lemon Juice
Calories zero, everything is zero on the nutrition facts and nothing mentioning sugar.
Is only organic maple syrup required to state the sugar content but not organic lemon juice? Is this due to a rounding rule (arbitrary power to select serving size?) or some other technicality / what should the nutrition facts say to more accurately represent the reality of what is in this bottle of lemon juice?
The reason I mentioned the maple syrup is because I thought it was inconsistent that a 100% organic maple syrup manufacturer is now forced by the FDA to include the natural sugar as added sugar but here I am holding a bottle of organic lemon juice with zero calories and sugar (maybe it really is zero?) | According to the USDA, one teaspoon of lemon juice has around 1 calorie and .1 grams of sugar. FDA regulations allow listing anything under 5 calories per serving as "zero calories" and less than .5 grams of sugar as "sugar free". So the reason you see no calories or sugar listed is that the serving size is so small (1 tsp compared to 1 cup for other fruit juices) that the amount of sugar in one serving is negligible. |
How to have a swiss roll keep its shape
I made a bûche de noël this Christmas, using a rolling technique, like a swiss roll. I tried my best to get a good shape: I rolled the sponge sheet right out of the oven and let it cool down in the proper shape. When it was cool, I unrolled, smeared the filling onto it, and rolled it tightly. Then I packed it in permanent "baking paper", and placed two rubber bands on the two ends. Then I let it rest in the fridge (also to give the filling time to set, because it contained gelatine - but note that the filling was not all that liquid when smeared).
When I took it out the next day, the "log" had slumped, and was about twice as wide as tall. It looked more like a badly made stollen than like a tight cylinder. It was cohesive, in that it didn't try to unroll or break apart, it was just not round. The taste was good, but the presentation was disappointing.
What additional steps can I take to make sure that I get a nice, tight roll that keeps its shape in storage? | Next time place the rolled swiss roll in a narrow container, as wide as the roll in its packaging, by preference with a round bottom. Otherwise fill the bottom corners of the container so that the roll is cushioned over its full length and can no way drop down in the corners.
And when plating up as a roll you might still want to add a cushion under the sides of the roll, so it can not break when cutting. |
What does salt do in bread dough?
I'm making a bare-bones bread recipe, but I was wondering what the salt does. It looks like it helps it rise, but how does it compare to sugar? How do they interact with each other? | Salt has three functions in bread.
It changes the flavor, making it more savory.
It inhibits the yeast. In fact, it makes it more difficult to rise, not easier - as you see, the effect is not that pronounced, to the point where it was easy for you to mistake its direction from casual observation.
It makes a somewhat firmer gluten structure.
It doesn't really interact with sugar at the amounts used in bread recipes (and in a barebones recipe, there is no sugar anyway). Also, it has different effects from sugar, so there is no common dimension on which to compare them. |
How to store opened canister of butane?
I opened a canister of butane last night to cook, and it's now half empty. What is a safe place to store it? Can I leave the canister in the stove? (note - stove is disengaged) Or do I have to take it out and put the cap back on? | If you're talking about this kind of cannister:
Then disengage it, but you can leave it stored in the stove. That's probably the best place for it. |
Is it dangerous to stack stainless steel cookware?
I have a set of stainless steel tri-ply cookware (non-coated). To save space inside my cabinets I stack fry pans and saucepans inside each other (smaller in bigger ones). I wonder is that safe?
They are all made of steel, so I imagine they can scratch one another. Instructions for my cookware set recommended to avoid using metal utensils to avoid scratches. | If the inside of your pans has some kind of non-stick coating (for example containing PTFE), it's advisable to avoid scratches.
There are pans with no coating, like many cast iron pans or uncoated stainless steel pans; scratches are not an issue with them, except for deeper scratches, which might cause sticking of proteins or might be hard to clean. Since your instructions tell you to avoid scratches, I'll assume your cookware is coated.
To avoid scratches while stacking, many people use some kind of felt mats to protect the coatings (for example these) or anything else which cushions the cookware. |
How many times (and ways) can you reheat honey safely?
We have an old house that is quite cold especially in winter. As a result, the bottled honey we buy solidifies in the squeeze bottle. The manufacturer recommendation for this is to gently reheat the bottle (although it doesn't state exactly how).
I have in the past placed the bottle in gently simmering water and even placed it in the sous vide bath @ 60C (140F) which works reasonable well. The only downside is that it takes a good 5 minutes to heat through and I have to dry the bottle off.
I tried tonight nuking it in the microwave for 30 seconds, giving it a good shake and resting for a minute. While not quite as effective as the water method at loosening the honey, it did avoid the hassle of drying the bottle off.
Are there any health risks associated with reheating honey and am I breaking any food safety guidelines by microwaving it multiple times? In both examples I am not reheating all of the honey to a liquid state throughout, just enough to get a portion out of the bottle. | Honey crystallizes in a natural and spontaneous way, specially when stored in low temperature or due to aging. It changes from a liquefied to a semi-solid state.
The recommended way is to heat crystalized honey in a water-bath around 35ºC. It will take a while and you'll have to dry off the honey container. I didn't find any scientific paper mentioning health risks related to heating honey.
Actually this paper says
honey prepared for commercial market is usually heated and filtered to
avert crystallization since the heat helps in melting invisible
glucosecrystals present, thereby keeping the honey in liquid state for
many months.
and
unprocessed (e.g., unheated and unfiltered) honey is prone to
fermentation at ambient temperature within a few days of storage;
therefore, honey is typically heat-processed prior to storage.
From where we can take the conclusion that heating honey doesn't bear any health risks. With higher temperatures it may improve the antioxidant potential while the antimicrobial activity decreases.
The antimicrobial activity of honey decreased and was even lost with
increases in heat treatment. Therefore, though prolonged heat
treatment was recommended for enhancing the antioxidant potential
of honey, the temperature should be limited to preserve honey’s
antimicrobial activity.
comments: by @FuzzyChef:
Confirming that you can reheat honey many, many times, for years,
without associated health risks. Honey is a strongly antibacterial
environment: Antibacterial Potency of Honey |
What is the packet of stuff inside a package of ground turkey?
When I buy ground turkey from Publix, under the ground turkey in the package there is a packet of something pinkish colored than isn't mentioned on the label, what is it? Is it maybe something from the turkey used for flavoring a broth or something? | Where I live most prepackaged meats come with a kind of fluids sponge or mat.
Those can be part of the packaging, can be clearly recognizable mats between the meat and the packaging, or it can be a bag shaped package which looks like it could contain something edible.
As it is something made to contain the liquids drained out of the meat and hold it, I do not think you should use it or anything coming out of it, as you can not know what they put in to hold the liquids. (Although it should be food safe as it is in contact with the meat.)
I see that @Tetsujin in a comment calls it a meat diaper, which seems to fit the bag and mat types. |
Wrong ingredient order for dried cranberries?
I am looking at the nutritional label for Mariani Dried Cranberries. If I'm reading the label correctly, the serving size is 40g, 26g of which are added sugar (yep, 2/3 of this product is sugar!).
According to FDA regulations, since sugar is the ingredient of the largest amount, shouldn't it be listed first in the ingredients list? | The ingredients reference the, well, ingredients. They are listed in the order of what goes into the product. So, they start out with more cranberries than sugar.
The nutrition information references the finished product. The now-dried cranberry matter contained in the product may well be less (by weight) than the added sugar. This doesn't contradict the statement that the weight of the fresh cranberries which went in as an ingredient was larger than the weight of the sugar as an ingredient, before starting the processing of the food (in this case, drying). This is a general statement about reading these labels - the ratio of ingredients doesn't have to be the same as the ratio of "components" of the finished product. |
What is the proper way to trim green asparagus?
I've heard of several approaches to cutting green asparagus to remove the woody ends from the bottom which are no good to eat. In general, none seem to take account of the thickness, or the age or freshness. For instance:
Alton Brown recommends grabbing the asparagus from either end and bending together, creating a tighter apex until it naturally snaps at the "magic point".
My mom's approach is just to take off about 1/5 of the bottom with a knife regardless of shape or apparent age
In fact, in some episodes of BBC Masterchef, the Professionals, I noticed that the chefs will trim or peel the exterior only around the bottom 1/5 of the asparagus. I've been totally unable to replicate this method, it usually snaps off the whole end - could they perhaps trim the asparagus after cooking? | So, first, let's look at what you're doing when you trim asparagus. Like most other green "stalk" vegetables, as asparagus gets larger and older, the stalks get more fibrous as a way of supporting the plant. In addition to asparagus, this is true of broccoli, kale, and many other vegetables. One way to avoid this fibrousness is to eat very young "baby" plants. For example, if you simply buy asparagus that are pencil-thin or smaller, you often don't need to trim them at all.
If you do need to trim, though, Serious Eats covers techniques in some detail. The "snap at the natural breaking point" thing for asparagus is a pervasive cooking myth. It doesn't hold up under testing, and tends to result in removing much more of the asparagus than just the fibrous portion ... up to 50% according to Cook's Illustrated.
I trim my asparagus with a knife. In my personal experience, the best indicator of where the fibrous portion ends is to look at the color of the asparagus; the fibrous portion is usually paler, shading to white at the bottom. This can mean trimming some individual stalks separately.
In other words: your mom is one-up on Alton Brown, here.
As both you and Cook's Illustrated note, there's an alternative, which is to peel the asparagus. The inedible fibers form mostly in the skin and outer flesh of the asparagus, while the core of the stalk remains tender, just as it does in broccoli. And just like broccoli, you can remove these fibers with a sharp peeler or paring knife and still cook and eat the core. Personally, I rarely do this because it's a lot of work and here on the West Coast of the US asparagus is pretty affordable. But it's very common, even standard, in Europe. |
Substitute for Beer in a savory flatbread recipe to make it halal
Several recipes for savory flatbread call for light beer as an ingredient. What would be an acceptable Halal substitute that would preserve the taste and texture of the bread?
The bread is typically fried in a pan rather than baked in an oven, and contains a mixture of green herbs and cheese. It is not left to rise. | Beer is added for two reasons: flavor and - especially in rather liquid, pourable batters - for the fluffiness due to the carbonation.
The latter can be achieved with any fizzy drink, typically carbonated water.
For the former, decide whether you want/ need the slight bitterness contributed by the beer and of it’s not super important, just skip it (but use another liquid, see above). Otherwise aim for a slightly „sharper“ cheese or a higher ratio of bitter herbs. Some leftover black tea could also work, but substitute only some of the beer and the rest with water.
My gut feeling would be to not bother, just add regular water for firmer doughs and carbonated water (soda water) for batters. |
Why is the butter and flour mixture used in cast iron pan recipes?
Consider this recipe and this one. In both butter and flour is mixed before cream is added. What is the idea behind mixing flour and butter?
Here are quotes of the relevant parts (in case of link rot):
1.Meanwhile, in a large cast-iron or other heavy skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Stir in flour until smooth; gradually whisk in cream. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Cook and stir until thickened, about 2 minutes. Reduce heat; stir in cheese until melted.
In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Stir in the flour and salt until smooth. Gradually add milk. Bring to a boil; cook and stir until thickened, about 2 minutes. Stir in cheese. Pour over meat mixture; mix well. Reduce heat; cook, covered, until heated through. If desired, serve with biscuits.
From first and second recipes respectively | This is called a roux, a common way to thicken sauces; there is nothing about it that is specific to cast iron pans. By first cooking the flour in butter (or another fat), the taste improves and the grains of flour are coated in fat so that they do not clump together when the rest of the liquid is added. |
Can I use lemongrass instead of lemons?
I haven't really worked with lemongrass before so I just wanted to know if lemongrass essence tastes quite similar to lemon, and if I can make tea with it. | Lemongrass is quite a common ingredient in herbal teas. But it has a different taste to lemons.
It is milder than lemon.
Lemongrass essence should be food quality and as such you can also use that in drinks, but it will require even more testing how much you want to add. It might be a good option for people who can for some reason not use lemons, but it will not be the most natural choice for everybody.
So yes, you can use it but it will result in a subtly different drink. |
How do I know what kind of coating is on this pan?
My family bought a pan in France. There is very little information about this pan (it's a Monoprix brand), but the label attached to the pan says that the pan's material is aluminum and the coating is "Anti-stick Whitford". The pan itself looks like this:
And the label is like this:
After some online searching, it appears that "Whitford" is actually a company, not a coating type, and that company makes several kinds of non-stick pan coating. Is there some way to determine which one was used in this specific pan?
It might also be the case that "Whitford" is a common name for some specific coating type in France (where the pan was bought) or in Italy (where it was made). Then what coating is that? | Whitford is, in fact, a chemical company that makes nonstick coatings, so the label makes sense. Since 2016 they've been offering PTFE (Teflon) without PFOA, so that's most likely what the coating on the pan is. While Whitford does make more exotic coatings, it's not clear than any of them are used in cookware, and your pan certainly looks like regular PTFE.
Whitford also has brand names around specific coatings like Eterna, but that's just a specific application of PTFE.
So what you have is Teflon. Enjoy! |
Why do my sautee'd onions remove grill marks from my steak?
When I make steak, I sear it on the grill at high heat, then transfer to a pan of already cooking onions, mushrooms, butter to finish on low. Sometimes I've left it a little too long in the pan and notice sear marks and some of the color has vanished. I notice something similar if I put sautee'd onions directly on top of steak; after a while, the grill marks disappear. Why?
My assumption is maybe there's an acidic compound in the liquid that leeches out of the onions when cooked, essentially washing away the sear marks. Or, perhaps with the butter for the same reasons. | Grill marks are a product of the Maillard reaction, which is accelerated in an alkaline environment.
Onions are slightly acidic and like mushrooms, also release a lot of water upon grilling. This has a two-fold effect.
The flavour compounds that form the grill marks get washed away by the introduction of moisture. You can emulate this by getting a similarly grilled steak, and then transferring it to another hot pan with some water in it. The mushrooms and onions were simply a vessel for this water.
The acidic environment discourages further Maillard browning from occurring, even if the second pan is at a sufficient temperature for it to occur normally.
The mushrooms and onions in the second pan most likely still had moisture left to release. I am willing to bet that if you had grilled them further and then transferred the steak, the grill marks would have stayed. |
Why not use alcohol ice?
I don't really drink alcohol so it's more of a theoretical question.
I know that some people don't like ice because it dilutes the drink, so they prefer to use metal or stone cubes instead.
However they have smaller thermal capacity and thermal conductivity than water ice.
So my question is - why not use ice made from the very drink you are trying to cool?
Granted, some cocktails may be ruined by freezing but something like whiskey or bourbon or gin should be fine, I think.
Sure, freezing alcohol requires much lower temperatures then water but the whole glass shouldn't be too cold; such ice won't dilute the drink and should have reasonable thermal capacity/conductivity.
Sure, it may require a specialized freezer (in a bar or a restaurant) but a simple dry ice box should also work. | Ethanol has a much lower freezing temperature than water: -114°C. This is considerably colder than dry ice and would require expensive specialised equipment to make and store. It would also be dangerous if it made contact with skin or was swallowed.
Freezing an alcoholic drink, which is mostly water, mostly freezes the water while mostly alcohol stays liquid, so it wouldn't be feasible to have a solid that was the same mixture as the drink itself.
Using frozen alcohol would be dangerously cold and would immediately melt anyway. What is commonly done if someone wants a very cold drink without ice is to store the ingredients and glassware in the freezer so that they start very cold (but still liquid). |
Why is the outside of grilled cheese buttered?
Most grilled cheese recipes call for the outward faces of bread to be buttered, while the inside faces have the cheese inserted.
However, this tends to cause your hands to become very oily when eating them. What's the motivation behind buttering the outside, as opposed to the inside with the cheese? | The part that is buttered is the part that comes into contact with the cooking surface (a pan or a toastie maker). By adding fat the surface of the bread is fried rather than merely toasted, giving a different flavour and texture. |
Correct use of a wood fire oven
I'm planning to build a small traditional wood fire oven, and I'm wondering how is the correct usage of the fuel (I'm planning to use regular firewood):
Do I have to wait, until all the wood burned down to charcoal or can I close the oven front door with some logs still burning? I don't want smoke to interfere with my cooking. I'm mainly thinking of cooking stews or making roasts, so cooking time will be about several hours, so do I have to wait until the logs are transformed into charcoal?
The oven will be located outside on a terrace and looks similar to this picture: | A lot of the "cooking" with an oven like that is intended to make use of residual heat stored in the brick, etc. The process of burning the wood down to coals heats up the brick oven itself which provides a easier, more consistent radiant heat. You're not really looking to do "campfire" or "fireplace" cooking here. Letting the logs burn down will also help reduce smoke, etc.
You might need several hours to get the oven up to temperature to do any actual baking. Or, you could cook something like a lunch pizza making use of the smoky fire while the oven is heating up, and then slide in your dinner stew/roast to cook as the oven begins to cool down. Properly constructed the oven should hold heat for many hours. In some circumstances ovens like yours are kept at temperature for days on end and used for multiple baking tasks throughout the day.
Here's a breakdown of how to get the most out of residual heat and meal planning for wood https://www.fornobravo.com/brick-oven-cooking/brick-oven-cooking-techniques/retained-heat-cooking/
I imagine you might already be aware of this website (Forno Bravo) but it's a great source of information on wood-fired brick oven cooking, construction, and other resources. It also has a vibrant community of enthusiasts. There are many others available as well. |
What methods for cooking fish with dry heat remain after eliminating oven, cast iron, and Teflon?
Though lately quite fond of experimenting with different marinades on fish steaks (of various kinds), and briefly baking in a preheated 400F/200C oven, I'm unhappy with how wasteful it is to do this on a regular basis. It takes too much energy to preheat the oven for a few minutes of cooking.
Finding something else to bake just after is not always feasible, and one-day-old baked fish is less than palatable.
Substituting by frying in cast iron would be ideal, except for the lingering flavor in the patina, and we're no longer using Teflon-coated pans (out of health concerns) and so that is no longer an option.
What substitutes are there to high-heat baking fish? | You have a number of options:
find a substitute for teflon that doesn't give you health concerns. There are dozens of nonstick "titanium" "diamond" "rock" etc etc pans on the market
use a stainless steel pan and a little oil
cook your fish at the same time as something that reheats well (meatloaf, lasagna, oven-braised anything). Eat the fish right away and the other thing the next night. (These other things tend to need a long cook so it's great to start them, slip the fish in for a few minutes and eat right away, then let them keep cooking through the early evening in what is basically "free time" for you, then put them in the fridge for the next day and a very quick meal with all the benefits of slow cooking.)
use a countertop "air fryer" which is actually a very small convection oven
broil the fish, which doesn't require preheating the whole oven
This is without getting into steaming, poaching, adding to a stew or soup, or all the other non-"dry" ways to get a fish cooked. |
How much baking soda should I add to a cup of hunts tomato sauce to neutralize the acid?
I have Hunts 100% natural no salt added tomato sauce. There is only one variety that Huntz makes that says "Tomato Sauce".
I am wondering how much baking soda will be enough to neutralize the acid. The can is exactly 8 ounces. | It is not possible to solve this analytically and give an answer, because tomato sauce is not a simple solution of a single acid in water, but more complex - and besides, producers tend to keep the exact amounts of ingredients a trade secret.
If you want to neutralize the acid, you will have to use a pH meter of some kind (the paper strips will not be a good choice though, because the tomato will likely color them) and titrate. |
Caldeirada - the Portuguese fish soup
Caldeirada is a fish soup/stew very popular in Portugal, which has several recipes (mainly suggesting different kind of fish). It is cooked in a large(r) pot and these recipes have all in common to start covering the pot with a layer of sliced onion rings. Then you add layers of other vegetables and the last layers would be the fish. You are not supposed to stir while cooking.
Why is the first layer always onions? Is this just a question of adding sufficient onion flavor to the dish or is there another reason?
some recipe's excerpts and respective links (all in Portuguese)
https://pt.petitchef.com/receitas/prato-principal/caldeirada-fid-1512802
- In a reinforced deep pan arrange the ingredients in alternate layers, starting with a layer of onions followed by garlic, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes and fish
https://www.pingodoce.pt/receitas/caldeirada-de-peixe/ - Step 3:
Pour half the olive oil into a large pan and layer the vegetables on top, starting with the onion.
https://www.vaqueiro.pt/recipes/caldeirada-a-moda-de-peniche-198125 -Peel the onion, cut them into thin slices and spread them over the bottom of the pan. Peel the potatoes, cut them into rounds and place them on top of the onions. Wash and cut the peppers into strips taking care to remove all the seeds and white skin. Spread the pepper strips over the potatoes. Wash the tomatoes, cut them into pieces and arrange them on top of the remaining vegetables. | Tradition counts for a lot in many cuisines, so the answer may be 'because that's the way it's always been' in Portuguese cuisine. However, I would put the onion at the bottom because it takes the longest to cook. By putting the onions at the bottom they will get the earliest and therefore longest exposure to heat. Although you don't include the recipe, I would suspect that the layering starts with the longest to cook ingredients at the bottom and the shortest at the top, with the fish requiring the least cooking. |
How safe is it to have raw cracked eggs uncovered in the fridge?
At my work we crack maybe 400 to 500 eggs as prep in the morning into little cups and put them in the walk-in fridge. I’ve noticed after some hours if I make myself some eggs to eat later in the day I feel really gross and bloated. But if it’s freshly cracked I feel fine! Even if I make the eggs into a sandwich way later that day I’m ok eating them. I can’t find anything on google about it being safe or not uncovered raw cracked eggs in the fridge and how long they last! Would anyone know? | The main risk to cracked eggs in a fridge is contamination, either by other food or by things like mould spores in the air. Assuming that the fridge and the containers you are using are clean, there are no food safety issues with leaving them out of their shells in the fridge for a few hours. (See e.g. this US guidance which suggests 2–4 days.)
The feelings you are having are most likely caused by your own expectations, or otherwise something else about the situation (perhaps when you have eggs later in the day you are more likely to be hungry already, or too full, or whatever) or a coincidence.
However, assuming that you are cracking hundreds of eggs a day because you are working to make food for people, I would encourage you to educate yourself more about food safety guidance – not just to protect yourself legally but also for your own peace of mind and to protect the health of your customers. |
Why might my fermented garlic purée have an incredibly bitter, ammonia-like smell?
I've made fermented garlic paste many times before.
It's essentially a bunch of raw garlic cloves blended with 2% salt by weight, then left in a container to ferment at room temperature for 2-3 weeks before being stored in the fridge. The paste turns a deep amber colour and should have a deep, savoury garlic smell.
However... my latest batch had a problem. I made it exactly as before except this time I made more than usual and stored it in a large, deep, bucket-like container.
I used it for a few weeks and it looked/smelled/tasted totally fine, until one day I went to use it and I noticed that the paste beneath the surface in the middle of the container looked a lot lighter in colour (white instead of amber) and it had a really strong, acrid smell.
It wasn't a "rotten" or mouldy smell; it just smelled extremely bitter, like if you've ever put a pill in your mouth without water.
There was no sign of mould but I discarded the entire container anyway (3KG of garlic wasted!).
What might have happened, and how can I avoid it happening in future? Is it possible the garlic under the surface didn't ferment at all? That would explain the difference in colour. Or was there some other chemical reaction? | It must have fermented with a different strain than usual.
Fermentation is a process in which you start out with a food contaminated with dozens of species of bacteria, all competing with each other. You provide conditions known to be perfect for the development of a desired strain (or multiple strains) and that strain outmultiplies all other bacteria, taking away the resources they'd need for a living. In result, your preferred strain colonizes the food completely, and you can eat it.
This tends to work, but there are ways for it to fail, by either having the wrong conditions, or the wrong bacteria present. The conditions can change even when you don't realize they are different - maybe the ambient temperature is different, or the garlic heads were drier or wetter than usual, changing the water activity, or they were from a batch that was invisibly different from typical batches (just normal cultivar variation) and hadn't produced something that inhibits a given bacterial strain or had a slightly different pH. Even if the change was minimal, it might have brought the system over a tipping point
The other possibility is simply a random contamination. The conditions prescribed for a ferment are supposed to favor a given strain above others typically present on garlic. But it is possible that an unexpected bacteria or yeast strain was present, which likes the fermentation conditions just as much, or even more than, the desired one. Then it was the one to outcompete all others, including the one you want.
Because now your garlic is thoroughly colonized by an unknown bacterial strain, it is not safe to consume. It doesn't matter if the new smell is off-putting or not; you just cannot know what lives in there and what it will do to a human. Only successfully fermented products are safe to eat.
There are no feasible ways to prevent this in the future, as a normal person who does a few batches of fermented food at home. You just have to live with the fact that a few of your batches will be duds. If this was happening too frequently, it would be a sign of a recipe not suited to your environment, and you should be looking for different recipes. But if it is only once in a while, everything is as it should be. |
Trifle without custard
I recently had a slice from a bowl of what was presented as a cake containing:
Soft biscuits
Cheesecake
Raisins
Strawberry jelly
The design was as you would see in a bowl of traditional trifle.
I called this dessert a trifle because of the soft biscuits and jelly top layer, but is this Correct or is it more accurately a cheesecake? | Questions like 'does this thing count as X' are hard to answer because terms for food don't generally have strict definitions and they vary hugely between regions and cultures. It's most useful to be pragmatic, to try to describe food in a helpful way that doesn't confuse people or lead them to expect the wrong thing.
As a British English speaker, what you've described doesn't sound like what I would expect from the name 'trifle', because in a trifle I would expect:
Sponge or biscuits (AmE cookies), usually soaked in something alcoholic or at least moist. I'm not sure from your description if that is what you have here.
Jelly (AmE Jello) with or without fruit.
A somewhat set custard. Absent here as you note.
Whipped cream.
You mention cheesecake which is normally a baked or set cream cheese mixture, so I assume that the overall experience of the food is substantially different to a typical trifle. But if you're trying to convey the visuals, then something layered in a bowl certainly looks more trifle-like than the typical cheesecake. Use the words that you think will be helpful. |
Why is my combi oven fan on long after cooking?
My Whirlpool combined oven has a cooling fan that is on while heating. But when the time is up, it often remains on for several minutes after that.
We noticed the following:
While oven cooking, the fan remains on for around 5-6 minutes, then it turns itself off. Sometimes it turns on again after a couple minutes, then off again for good.
When in microwave mode, the fan does turn off when opening the door. But over a certain threshold of time/power (ca. 2 minutes at 900W) the fan stays on for 8-10 minutes before turning itself off.
For the first X minutes nothing can stop the fan, except unplugging it off mains. No knob rotations, no button presses, no door open/close. Between X and Y minutes the fan with can be turned off with the stop button. After Y minutes it shuts itself off.
The oven is less than 2m far from the dining table and the fan noise is quite annoying. We're tempted to unplug it when we're ready to eat, but I'm worried it may get damaged.
Why is this post-cooking cooling necessary? Is it to protect the oven itself from overheating? Nothing stops me to finish a 90-minute cooking at 250°C and immediately start another one, so the oven wouldn't have time to cool off anyway. Even more so when microwaving, since it only heats the food and not the oven itself.
Is it a fault or is it done by design?
If the latter, does it have a name? Can't find anything on the manual.
Do other ovens have the same behavior? | As this is a cooling fan, and not a fan to circulate air within the cavity, it probably does need to stay on for most of that time after a long cook, for 2 slightly different reasons.
In microwave mode the electronics heat themselves up, and some components can get pretty hot.
In oven mode the heat from the oven warms the electronics. This heat can keep working its way out of the cavity for some time.
It's possible the manufacturer has built in a worst-case assumption combined with a timer, in which case it's likely to be running for longer than necessary. They may alternatively have used a thermal switch. In this case improving airflow through the cooling vents will help - ensure you at least meet the requirements in the manual, and don't place stuff on top.
The turning back on again after oven mode suggests a thermal switch, at least in this mode. If it's built-in you might need to look further at the ventilation, and maybe vacuum some vents. |
Why does baking cooked rice not overcook it?
Many recipes like stuffed peppers call for baking already fully cooked rice for upwards of an hour at ~375 F. I’m surprised the grains come out intact and texturally not that different than before they were baked. Why does the rice come out not tasting overly mushy or over cooked? | Rice does taste a little different after baking, and its texture is also a little different, but the reason it is not mushy or overcooked is that the recipe controls the moisture levels. Totally uncovered it would dry out completely in the oven, and with too much water it would become mushy, but inside something like a stuffed vegetable or sealed pot the extra cooking time doesn't have too much of an effect. |
Substitute peanut butter instead of peanut butter chips?
Can I use creamy peanut butter instead of peanut butter chips for easy microwave peanut butter fudge with sweetened condensed milk? | Possibly, but probably not. Peanut butter chips are made from partially defatted peanut powder (the stuff that’s left behind after squeezing out peanut oil from peanuts) combined with hydrogenated oils which are solid at room temperature. If you substituted peanut butter (without the hydrogenated oils), the result might not thicken properly when cooled.
If you try this out, also keep in mind that peanut butter is denser than a pile of peanut butter chips. Measure by weight, or just eyeball it and use 2/3 or so as much. |
What should I do to repair the surface of this cast iron pan?
I got this cast iron pan several years ago, and tried more than once to season it according to recommendations from articles I read. Each time, the process involved something like rubbing it with oil and sticking it in the oven, upside-down, for some amount of time. And each time, the pan came out not with a nice new seasoned surface, but just hot and wet.
So, I gave up and figured I'd acquire a seasoning naturally over time by cooking with it. And by now, I think I have - but the surface is highly pocked, and the sides are really rough and feel caked-up. In particular, there's a large section on the edge of the bottom (on the left in this picture) that simply flaked off last year when I was scraping particularly aggressively to remove some burnt-on food.
What's the best thing to do for this pan? Should I strip the seasoning entirely somehow and start over? | Personally, I would strip it and start over -- you have some serious caked burnt oil and charcoal on that, and the seasoning is never going to "even out". And probably use different instructions this time*. Check the many questions linked by @Tetsujin in the comments.
(* judging just from that photo, I'd say you were using way too much oil. One seasoning "coat" should be like, 1-2 teaspoons of oil, no more) |
Pre-treatment of wet mozzarella balls to reduce moisture for pizzas - thoughts on method?
During my journeys of homemade pizza making I've come across the classic problem of it coming out as a wet mess, due to excess moisture of the toppings. A prime culprit of this was my use of supermarket wet mozzarella balls in the bag, and so have been hunting for a way to get around this issue.
The classic methods seem to be cutting into slices and drying it out with paper towels, which seems to take 10 towels or so to actually achieve much (wasteful!) or leaving it to hang in a cheesecloth to air-dry for x amount of days (too long!)
I came across this method which involves gently heating mozzarella slices in a saucepan to dehydrate them.
Is there any obvious downsides to this method such as ruining the flavour of the cheese/something along those lines as it otherwise seems to do an excellent job of removing the moisture and having a useable cheese in a reasonable timeframe. I cant seem to find much on this method other than that forum thread which makes me think there may be some downside an untrained pleb wouldn't be aware of.
(n.b yes, I am aware that low-moisture pre-grated cheese exists that completely eliminates this issue) | I think you are overthinking the problem. The biggest issue with homemade pizza, especially Neapolitan style, is that people generally use way too many toppings. Cut back on your toppings (sauce included), and as you tear apart the mozzarella to use, simply blot it quickly on some paper towel. It should not require more than one sheet of paper towel. If you don't think this will resolve your issue, please update your question with amounts of ingredients and (if possible) a photo of your pizza. |
Why did my smoked boneless chicken breast come out dry and without apple flavor?
I have a Pit Boss Lexington grill. The lowest temperature setting is smoke which is about 50-160 degrees. The setting above that are marked in degrees. I was using trager apple pellets. I had a skinless, boneless chicken breast. I cut the breast in half and used a dry rub on one piece and nothing on the other. I smoked it for about 3 1/2 hours on the smoke setting. I used the lower rack with a pan of water for moisture. Internal temperature was about 152 degrees. Not only was the chicken dry but it had no apple flavor. What did I do wrong? | As moscafj's answer correctly states, the lowest average temp on that grill is more like 180-200F so you annihilated that poor bird! Even though the final temp may have been 150, it was almost certainly much hotter than that at some point (if the internal meat was firm and white this is certainly the case). But also, the idea of "low and slow" for BBQing is because your typical BBQ meats, like pork shoulder and beef brisket have tons of connective tissue which breaks down over time, along with tons of fat which keeps things moist throughout the cook (because it slowly gelatinizes into deliciousness). Skinless breast has none of that and is notoriously hard to keep moist regardless of how you cook it.
So really unless you know what you are doing it's a horrible cut of meat to smoke -- and it certainly should never be smoked for that long regardless. Whole chickens should be checked after an hour with an average smoke temp of 200 and will probably be done by 1.5-2 hours. In practice, since opening smokers is undesirable (you lose a lot of heat), you should have an oven-safe type thermometer so you always know what temperature the meat is. Ideally, have one with multiple inputs so you can monitor multiple zones in the meat and/or also monitor the temp of the air in the grill.
Additionally, apple wood is not a super strong flavor to begin with, but it's also important to keep in mind that smoke adheres and penetrates the meat best when it's cold and stops "sticking" to the meat once the outer layer gets fairly warm (and pretty much stops doing anything good after 130-140). Given the grill temp you would have hit that fairly quickly and thus the smoke really was only flavoring the meat for ~30 mins. This is why when you are smoking something like pulled pork you are only trying to get the good 'blue' smoke for the initial hours of the cook and after that it's much more about applying low and slow heat to bring the internal meat to temp -- you really don't want to be smoking it the whole time. In fact, it's often bad to do so because smoking can quickly go from adding a nice flavor to adding a lot of bitterness and unwanted flavors if you overdo it.
So TLDR, wrong cut, wrong amount of time, and wrong temp. |
What's the best way to store the dark green tops of spring onions (scallions), specifically without them growing any further or turning yellow?
When my local store has spring onions (a.k.a. scallions or green onions), I like to buy a lot of them. I mostly use the green tops as a garnish in soups or ramen, and toss the lower white parts into the freezer to use later in stock.
The problem is that no matter how I store them the green tops of the onions always decline in quality really quickly:
If I store them whole in a bag in the fridge, the onions keep growing (albeit slowly) and the dark green tops become lighter green and eventually a flavourless pale yellow.
If I keep them in a jar of water on the windowsill the same thing happens.
If I slice the green tops off and store them in a bag in the fridge, they go a bit slimy.
If I slice the green tops into rings and store them in a tupperware jar the same thing happens.
If I freeze them they turn to mush.
So... anyone have any tips on how to store spring onions specifically to keep the green parts nice and fresh without them wilting, going yellow, going slimy, or going soggy? | You seem to want to "freeze the onions in time", which is impossible.
Onions are a living plant - and continue living after they have been harvested and even cut up. You cannot stop a living thing from, well, living.
When you keep the onions whole, they continue growing. If you can ensure optimal conditions, they will become big, rough plants with a tough green part. Apparently, you cannot provide good conditions even on your windowsill, so they etiolate instead. But they continue to grow, because that's what plants do.
If you cut them up in pieces, they are no longer able to grow, because there is too much "missing" within a single ring of onion greens to sustain growth. Depending on how long you are trying to keep them, the sliminess is either their juices bleeding out a bit, or, more likely, the plants slowly dying and decomposing, helped along by bacteria.
As a hint: you used the word "fresh" yourself. This word is only applied to things which deteriorate over time and so are not suitable for buying in bulk (we never speak of fresh cardboard or fresh bricks, but of fresh fruit or fresh coffee). It is the fact that they cannot be stored that makes people pay attention to the distinction between "fresh" and "old. With any such thing, you just have to buy it fresh. |
How can I filter the solids out of my homemade pumpkin spice syrup?
I'm a big fan of pumpkin spice lattes, and I've been experimenting with a few recipes for making my own pumpkin spice sauce at home. It's pretty simple; simmer equal parts sugar and water with varying amounts of pumpkin puree, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, ginger, etc. for about 20 minutes or so. The problem is that none of these spices are soluble in water, and I can't seem to strain out the solids enough to where it won't make my coffee "gritty."
I've tried filtering the mixture through a metal sieve used for cold brew, but the grains are much smaller than ground coffee, so it (mostly) passes through the pores. I tried cheesecloth, but it clogs up quickly and turns into a mess. The most success I've had was pouring the mixture through paper coffee filters straight from the stove while it was still boiling hot, but this has a few issues:
The mixture forms a "skin" at the bottom of the coffee filter and the flow slows to a few drips at a time as it cools.
To hurry things along, I wind up going back and forth between two containers using a clean coffee filter each time, but I wind up wasting a ton of filters this way.
Doing it like this takes hours and it still laves a gritty, sludgy mouthfeel in my coffee.
Honestly, this process is making me feel quite stupid. What do I do? | Straining
Use cheesecloth.
You don't describe your process with cheesecloth in much detail, but I would suggest
line a colander with a couple of layers of cheesecloth, and place that colander over a bowl to collect your pumpkin spice syrup;
pour the mixture of spices, simple syrup, and pumpkin puree through the cheesecloth;
let this stand for five or ten minutes;
(this is the step you seem to be missing) gather up the cheesecloth into something that resembles a bindle, and squeeze; you should be able to get a good amount of the remaining syrup out of this mass.
As an optional final step, run the resulting syrup through a coffee filter.
Whole Spices
You don't describe the state of the spices that you are using, but it sounds like you might be using ground spices. If so, and especially if you are using pre-ground spices from the grocery, I would suggest not doing this. Use whole (or slightly broken up) cinnamon sticks, use whole (or gently crushed) cloves and allspice, and use (maybe) diced crystalized ginger.
You will likely have to steep these things a bit longer, but the advantage is that the spices will be large enough to mostly strain out with a strainer, and should not clog up a coffee filter or cheesecloth.
Recipe
It might also be worth noting that the "traditional" pumpkin spice latte is made with a pumpkin spice syrup, which contains the flavors of spices which one would use in a pumpkin pie (clove, ginger, cinnamon, etc), but which does not actually contain any pumpkin or pumpkin flavor. If you are looking to reproduce that latte, you might be better off making a simple syrup with those spices, and omitting the pumpkin puree entirely. |
Can fat be used as a sugar substitute?
I'm not so concerned about obesity — I feel that's about portion control. Rather, I'm concerned about sugar being a carcinogen. | We can't speak to health or medical issues on this site. Beyond that, I don't see how fat can be used as a sugar substitute. They are completely different ingredients that serve completely different purposes. |
What is this freaky knife for?
It's long and skinny, like a bread knife. It doesn't show well in the photo, but there's a tiny fine serration on the edge of one of those pointy things…? I've asked the 2 chefs I know, and neither one of them even had a guess! | It's a serrated carving knife. In fact, that particular knife is a Kitchen + Home Carving Bread Knife – 8” Sharp Stainless Steel Serrated All Purpose Kitchen Knife available from WalMart for $13USD.
The forked point is for skewering and serving slices of meat after you've carved them (see photo on listing).
If the knife had been much smaller, it could have been a tomato knife. It still could be, if you have really big tomatoes. |
How far in advance can I stuff a joint of pork before cooking?
In Nigella’s book, “Nigella Christmas”, she makes a rolled stuffed loin of pork. The loin is flattened, stuffing is laid upon it, and it is then rolled, wrapped in bacon and tied with string to keep it together.
Nigella has lots of “Make Ahead Tips” in the sidebars of this book, which is great for Christmas, because there is a lot to do. For this, the tip is:
Stuff and roll the look up to 6 hours ahead. Keep covered in the
fridge. Allow 20 minutes at room temperature before putting in the
oven.
My question is why only 6 hours? Ideally I’d like to do this the day before, leave it overnight in the fridge, and cook it the next day. Is there a reason why I shouldn’t stuff the pork, say, 24 hours before cooking it?
Online version of the recipe is here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-6460141/Christmas-Nigella-Rolled-stuff-loin-pork-rubied-gravy.html | Your recipe mentions a marinade:
Put all the marinade ingredients into a large freezer bag, with the opened, flattened loin. Leave the bag overnight in the fridge (in a lasagne-type dish) or just while you are making the stuffing and waiting for it to cool.
I suppose the 6 hour limit you're asking has to do with the marination: it will continue to change the meat texture if you do it too far ahead of cooking, even after you remove the meat from the bag. Also it might impart some of that flavor on the stuffing, which you might not want. |
How can I tell if a broth carton with a twist cap is sealed?
Many companies offer broth in a box carton with a twist-off cap. In the US, these are usually 32 oz cartons but may be other sizes as well. Twisting the cap breaks a foil seal underneath, allowing one to pour the stock. There is no way to remove the cap without breaking the foil seal, meaning there is no way to know if the foil seal was intact before it was broken as part of opening the carton. There may be some external signs that the seal is not intact or the product is otherwise not fresh (leaking, bulging, etc), but how can I tell that the broth inside is safe to use?
Larger cartons sometimes have a flip-open top and one must pull up the foil seal separately. Smaller containers are usually in cans. Neither have this problem.
Example container from Swanson:
Image taken from Campbell's website | Give it a slight squeeze. If it’s letting air out, you’ll be able to continuously squeeze until liquid comes out. If it is sealed it will resist further squeezing after only a slight squeeze.
Additionally, the seal is under a sealed plastic twist top, which is not actually in the “closed position” at the time of purchase. Hence, you need to break the outer plastic seal (which is itself a tamperproof design) of the cap and twist it closed to break the inner seal to open it initially. If the inner seal was already broken or compromised, even with the cap plastic seal intact, it would simply pour out of the container when you lift it up.
Another precaution is if you see a carton that seems overly full (or inflated), that to me is a sign that the contents have likely spoiled. |
Can I add new yeast to a dough I made with dead yeast?
I prepared bread dough that didn't rise. I then tested the yeast I used and apperantly they are dead.
I bought new yeast and I still have the dough in the fridge. Can I mix in the new yeast to the dough, or do I need to make a new batch? | Yes, you can knead it in and it will still work. I've forgotten yeast when making bread and added it in at the end, it still rose and I got a good result.
How you do it depends on the type of yeast. 'Easy Bake' or 'Instant' yeast is the same strain of yeast, but finer grained, this can be kneaded in directly, I would scatter some on the top, knead it in, then scatter some more, repeating until it is all incorporated.
Regular yeast has much bigger grains, mixing it in dry may not work well, I suggest you dissolve it in a small amount of water first, then pour in on the counter and knead that in. It's messy but it will work, you will then need to knead in a bit more flour to get it back to the right balance. |
What is the food that James Woods eats in "Best Seller" (1987)?
This is a screenshot of the food. What is it?
It appears in the original movie in at 49:28. | Those are canapes: little bites of something tasty. Being served on a silver tray implies they are expensive and were made with care and time, letting us know that this setting (I know nothing about the movie and haven't followed your link) is rich and luxurious.
The black blobby stuff is probably supposed to be caviar, the white piped stuff probably some sort of creamy filling. The red could be fruit, or a red caviar / salmon roe kind of thing. (It would be odd to have sweet and not-sweet on a tray together.) Other visible garnishes include sprigs of parsley and "cheeks" of olives. The beige cylinders are probably puff pastry or bread and the green ones probably carved cucumber. A comment on the other answer points out you could use a fluted cookie cutter to cut both bread and cucumbers, and that seems really likely in a catering context. [In movie-set reality these things might be play dough or mashed potatoes or anything else a prop person feels like using.] Would you need more detail than that? Why? |
Kitchen utensil identification - small delicate chopper
Recently, we were cleaning out my grandparents house and found a couple of tools in the kitchen that were odd. One is this small tool that looks like a chopper, but it's very lightweight. The blade is only a couple inches long (toothpick shown in photo for scale) and quite thin, so it wouldn't cut anything hard or tough. Does anyone know if there's a specific task this might have been intended for? | I think it's a simple herb chopper.
Google brought up several sorts when searched for 'antique', some of which are similar in design. Of course, the ones making it to the antiques market are not going to be the simpler designs from the post-war austerity years, but I think there's sufficient similarity of form. |
Reducing sugar in pudding
I've been trying vanilla pudding recipes but they're all too sweet for our liking.
I want to change the amount of sugar from 3/4 cup to 1/2. Is that a culinary no-no, or should I use a substitute? | For this answer I am assuming the flan-type of pudding, where a liquid (e.g. milk) is cooked with starch until thickened.
Sugar is for the thickening process pretty irrelevant, which means you can even make a pudding completely without sugar or sugar substitute. So feel free to adjust the recipe to your and your family’s liking.
However, if you are making batter-based puddings, you can’t simply eliminate the sugar, because it’s not only for the sweetness, but a structural component for the cake (or pudding). You typically can leave out some of the sugar, but will soon reach a point where you need to make further adjustments. Follow the same rules as for pound cake and similar batters. |
Swollen meat packages (modified atmosphere packaging)
I noticed that many packages of chicken or ground turkey are swollen in the store and there is no huge fuss made over them. I know modified atmosphere packaging could cause this but this article and this one I read say that this can happen but then revert to the better safe than sorry line. I did half ask this before but the answer was implying that this was not safe. If it was not safe why aren't there huge recalls every time this happens? Seems that people just eat it anyway?
I chose a package of ground turkey (best before a week from now) that was not swollen but as soon as I got it home (60-90 minutes in cool weather) it was a tiny bit swollen so I punctured the side so it wouldn't swell any more.
What do people do when all the packages of meat being sold are swollen? I think it's fine but we instinctively avoid them because other swollen packages are of course dangerous. | Now you've punctured it you don't have a week. It was packaged in a protective atmosphere, & you've broken the seal… not to mention, of course, that if it was continuing to increase in pressure, a reasonably sure sign of spoilage, you've now discarded that tell-tale.
The reason there aren't huge recalls is, as you might guess, this is no issue at all. If there's a slight pressure inside & you allow the pack to warm up, it will expand more. Once you get it back in the fridge or better still meat drawer, it will reduce again.
If you have a whole shelf of similar product in the supermarket, you can usually tell which batch is which, because a single batch will tend to have a similar pressure, positive or negative. This isn't an absolute, but it is a tendency.
It is possible for meat to spoil inside these packs; if they weren't kept refrigerated properly. This would tend towards further pressure increase as you kept it, even in the fridge. In a supermarket, again this would tend to be by batch.
You have to use practise & judgement to make the call; but try not to be wasteful by assuming everything over-pressure must be 'off'. It usually isn't.
Eat your turkey in the next couple of days, though. Your best before date is now no longer relevant.
After googling for some examples, I'd be happy with this pack
but suspicious about this [in fact I wouldn't have bought it] |
Conversion Charts aren't the same & are confusing
I learned the hard way that not all measuring cups are reliable so I started using a scale. I started googling conversion charts and found a multitude but most having varying answers. For example,
All purpose Flour
King Author states 1 cup= 120g
Another states 1 cup= 140g (not Gold Medal)
My question is, what is the most RELIABLE and ACCURATE conversion chart to use???
Thanks in advance again | There is no 100% reliable conversion chart for dry ingredients, there are too many variations in the mix, like fineness of grain, varieties, etc. However, that's less of a problem than you may think. I converted to metric using weights a long while back and found the same as you regarding charts, so I just measured it myself using my own 'standard' ingredients. I use 145g for 1 cup of flour, which is different from any chart I've seen.
What I typically do with a new recipe that uses cups or imperial measurements is to measure it out using volume and write it on the recipe in pencil in grams or ml. I then tweak those measurements until they deliver the right result. If a measure is common with a previous recipe, say 1 cup of flour, then I'll use a previous measurement which I'm happy with. This takes a bit of time the first time you do a recipe, but it means a lot of time saved going forward as you won't be constantly referring to charts.
When converting to metric there are a few useful things to remember:
Butter in the US is measured in weight, 1 stick of butter is 1/4 pound, which is always 113g (okay, technically it's 113.4 but that .4 doesn't usually matter)
1 ml of water is 1 gram, so you can weigh water and milk, which is much more reliable and faster than looking at lines on a measuring cup. 1 US cup is 237g of water or milk. 1 cup of oil is 216g
US and UK volume measurements are different, 1 US pint is less than 1 UK pint, so you need to be aware of where the recipe comes from
Most smartphones have a calculator with conversions built in |
Getting puff-pastry dough to stand up in straight sided pans
I just made a pie (English-style) that involved lining a '* wide, 2" deep springform pan with puff pastry. I cut two 8" circles of pastry dough, and then several strips. The critical fail was that I couldn't get the strips of pastry I was using to line the sides to stay up; they just wanted to slump down into the bottom. My sweetie had to help with me trying to keep the pastry up while she filled it, and even so it looks like someone sat on it.
The two ways I know to avoid this aren't accessible. One is to just use extra pastry, enough that it hangs over the edge of the pan, and then trim later. Thing is, with the high price of all-butter puff pastry these days, I needed to use every scrap; there was no excess. The other is to cut all the pieces and then stick them in the freezer for 15-20 minutes to stiffen them up ... but our freezer is packed to the roof with leftovers.
So, is there some third way I could have worked around this that I don't know about? Maybe cutting the dough differently? | It seems to be a universal kitchen law that, no matter what size freezer you have, it fills up to capacity within a couple of months, and stays that way forever.
To get around the problem, it is useful to develop a few small tricks. And the one relevant to your case: you can make temporary space by moving stuff to the fridge.
You should pick a few items with sufficient volume and density (a big tub of frozen stew would work great, or whole birds) and place them in the coldest area of the fridge, which is usually against the back wall. Pack them close to each other. Choose items in tightly fitting packaging, to avoid condensation problems on the food surface. For extra security, you can put them in a plastic bag (to reduce warm airflow if you open the fridge) and stick in any trays of ice cubes you have, as well as gel icepacks. As long as you don't let your food thaw (watch out for partial thawing), you can move it back into the freezer without safety or quality issues.
I cannot give you an exact time period for how long you have, but usually an hour or two are easily doable. So, with a sensible choice of food to swap, the 15-20 minutes of chilling you need are well within tolerance. |
Naan not sticking to tandoor walls
I am having trouble getting my naan bread to stick to the tandoor walls. (Yes, I've tried adding water) I have made the same recipe twice with no issues and now the third time around it doesn't want to stick. I have not seasoned/cured the tandoor, could that be the issue? if so, what is a simple way of doing that? or was the tandoor just simply not hot enough...or maybe too hot? | A tandoor is generally at least 500°C, that's 930°F, so it's most likely your tandoor was not hot enough. An infrared thermometer is your friend here, it will take the guesswork out of it.
Also, your naan dough needs to be sticky, if it doesn't stick to your hand it's not going to stick to the tandoor wall. If it's not sticky enough spritz some water on it. You also need to really smack it up against the side. |
How to ensure that potatoes disintegrate in stews or casseroles
I am not a very good cook.
I have tried making stews or casseroles. I put meat, vegetables and potatoes in a casserole dish in the oven, a slow cooker, or on the hob in a low heat.
Sometimes the potatoes dissolve, and give me a delicious thick sauce. Very nice. Quite often, though, I'm left with tasteless white lumps in water. Not nice at all.
I can't work out what I did differently. Maybe the variety of potato, or the other ingredients.
Any suggestions? | The effect you are looking for is not congruent with typical preferences. Most cooks and eaters, on finding that the potatoes have disintegrated in their stew, would call them "overcooked". So you cannot rely on recipes to produce this result - most are geared towards having potatoes remain in distinct cubes.
There are a few factors you can tweak to get closer to your preferred kind of stew.
Acid. Make sure that your stew doesn't contain any acid, or the potatoes will stay firm. For this purpose, you should count not only acid seasoning such as vinegar, but also any form of tomato, and any milk, cream, cultured dairy and fresh cheese. Semi-hard and hard cheeses (cheddar, gouda or firmer) are OK. For taste, you can add sourness after the cooking time is over.
Potato variety. Potatoes come in three broad categories - "firm", "mealy" and "mixed" or "all-purpose". Use the mealy ones.
Cooking time You have to cook for a really long time until the potatoes fall apart. If your recipe suggests a cooking time, start checking at that time and after that every half hour until you see the result, for maybe up to 5-6 hours - if it hasn't happened by then, I don't think it will happen later.
The temperature shouldn't have any direct effect on the disintegration part, but for purely practical purposes, such long cooking is done with low temperatures, as low as you can get while still having your food gently simmering.
Size As Greybeard said, if you cut them up smaller, they will fall apart quicker.
Heat source Once heated, the oven is great for low and slow food - but it does take a long time until the food is heated enough to start cooking. I have stopped using raw potatoes in potato-based casseroles, since it frequently takes 3+ hours to get them to cook through (in the "distinct pieces" sense). The hob is a better place, but more difficult to manage over the long time. As you mentioned a slow cooker, it will be easiest to learn how to do it consistently there. If there are oven recipes you really like, give them even more extra time, or parboil the potatoes before assembling the casserole. I would peel, then boil - skin-on potatoes have always seemed to soak up less water to me, and you can make use of the "cut smaller" effect too.
On a side note, if you like this kind of sauce, you might consider ranging out into recipes that use more conventional thickeners for stew. It will be a different taste, but will allow you more flexibility, both with shorter cooking times, and with the ability to add sour ingredients. |
Does flour have yeast?
This feels like it should be an easy question to find an answer to, but all I'm finding are unreliable sources saying both yes and no.
I'm referring specifically to any kind of store-bought flour used for cooking or baking.
Thanks! | Flour “contains yeast” in the sense that it is not a sterilised product and contains impurities such as wild yeast cells. The yeast and bacteria contained in flour, in fact, are the genesis of “sourdough starters“.
Flour does not “contain yeast”, in the sense it has nowhere near enough yeast cells to use to make a risen dough. Yeast (or an established sourdough starter) must be added to make dough rise. |
Due to allergies, I'm limited to avocado mayo, it taste like drywall, what can I do to make it palatable?
My favorite is Hellman's mayo, but I can't have it as I get severe inflammation from the canola oil that is part of its ingredients. This avocado mayo was the alternative I found locally but doesn't taste anything like mayo, that I find palatable, what can I add to fix that? When I tried it it tasted like drywall. Imagine some drywall dust going up your nose and you accidentally swallowed some, yeah. It doesn't have to taste like Hellman's just mayo flavor would suffice.
What can I add or do to it to taste a bit more like mayo? | From your description it's hard to know what flavor is missing, or it has too much of, so I'll give you the general approach I'd take.
Mayo is an emulsion of oil, eggs and vinegar. The emulsion of oil and eggs is by itself pretty bland, so producers add sugar, salt, and/or spices in various quantities, I'm going to guess that the difference in flavor is down how much of those flavorings are added. The answer is probably on the labels.
Your brand of avocado mayo has zero sugar, whereas Hellmans has 1.3g of sugar per 100g. Chosen's serving size is an annoying 14g but multiplying the amounts by 7 gives us a 100g equivalent, doing that with the salt shows us that your avocado mayo has .35g of salt per 100g, whereas Hellmans has 1.2g per 100g. In other words, the avocado mayo is bland with a capital B! It's also likely to be lacking acidity and spices as there's no sugar to balance it out.
You can make up for these deficiencies by adding small amounts of sugar and salt, plus maybe some white vinegar or lemon juice until you get a result you like. Paprika is in Hellman's recipe as well, so a dash of that would be good too. I'd experiment on smaller quantities to see what works, then once you get a flavor you like replicate that using similar but scaled up proportions. |
Too much nutmeg?
Short version:
Is about 3 g nutmeg too much for a single meal?
Long version:
This evening, I prepared 2 big dishes of spinach lasagna. I like to eat rather spicy, but I overdid it a bit this time, putting about 50-60 g (bought ground).
I usually cook big quantities like today, and freeze it to eat it during the following weeks. Normally, I would do about 20-24 portions out of those 2 dishes
Taste wise, it's still good (a bit less nutmeg would probably have been optimal). However, I realized afterwards that the amount of nutmeg might start to be unhealthy (about 2.5-3 g per portion).
Is it still safe to eat my lasagna? If so, should I make sure not to eat it too often (for example: max once per day, or per X days)? Or should I in addition do smaller portions (and just plan to have a starter and desert to get enough for a full meal)? Or should I trash the whole thing?
For now, what I found was mainly information that it starts to get toxic around 5g or 10g. For now, the only "scientific" study I found is not giving much details on doses (focusing on symptoms), but report symptoms for 10 spoonfuls and for 25 g.
EDIT : I ended up making it 32 portions (I did them a bit smaller than usual, I will just eat them if not very hungry or if I have some desert in addition). So it should rather be 2-2.5g per portion. I froze them, so I can easelly let some time between portions (I was going to freeze most of it anyway, as I can't possibly eat 20+ portions alone before it spoils) | I think (pending a bit more digging through the literature) that for an acutely toxic dose you would need to be consuming something in the order of all of the nutmeg you put into your whole dish before you experienced the effects of consuming "too much" nutmeg. Death from nutmeg seems to be incredibly rare and usually accidental, though there are no shortage of people using it as a recreational drug.
Nutmeg contains the psychoactive compound(s) myristicin, amongst which is myristic acid. These can result in hypertension (high blood pressure) and tachycardia (fast heart rate), as well as psychosis and a range of minor symptoms. To reach these sorts of effects you (assuming you are an adult, with resultant body mass etc.), you would need to be consuming about 30-50 g in a single session, as suggested by this case report from the British Medical Journal, which states:
Some 50 g of commercially available grated nutmeg were blended into a milkshake, the patient drinking three quarters of the amount. |
Why use a poolish and dry yeast?
I'm in the process of trying a new pizza dough recipe that calls for a poolish (equal weights flour and water, with a small amount of dry yeast, left at room temperature overnight), as well as dry yeast added during mixing.
I've seen this before in many bread recipes, and I always wonder: what is the purpose of the poolish here? Based on my simplistic understanding of the science, after such a short time, I assume the yeast in the poolish is predominantly the same variety as the dry yeast that I put into it, so I don't expect it to be developing sourdough-ish strains. And the proportion of the poolish is small (about 10% of the mass of the dough) so I wouldn't expect it to affect the texture by much.
Is there an advantage to adding the poolish? Can someone explain the science? | The answer is: Flavour.
The purpose of yeast in bread isn't just to make it rise, it also provides a flavour to the bread. While a poolish does indeed give you lots of great yeasts for rising, the flavours developed by the yeast metabolizing compounds in the poolish contribute to the the final flavour of the bread.
These flavours can only be achieved by long incubation of the yeast with their food substrates (in this case flour and water). Short incubations, such as are commonly found in breads where you add the yeast with the flour and immediately start the bread-making process will not develop these same flavour profiles. |
When baking frozen pizza in oven
When baking frozen pizza, why do the edges burn but cheese in center is not fully melted. | If this is a bought frozen pizza then it is important to follow the instructions on the packet. Don't try to improve it or cut corners.
Also your oven may not have the temperature you want it to. Get hold of a thermometer and check it. |
Fat and gluten development - Salt Fat Acid Heat
I am reading Salt Fat Acid Heat. I am still in the beginning but it has changed my approach to cooking, it is much more fun now.
Nevertheless, there is something I am not getting when it comes to fat and gluten.
This is an excerpt from the book:
Cold-handed or not, consider temperature when you seek flakiness to create
layers of developed gluten interspersed by pockets of fat. The warmer, and hence
softer, your butter, the more readily it will combine with the flour. Because fat
inhibits gluten development, the more intimately the two ingredients combine,
the more tender—not flaky—a dough will be.
To prevent gluten from developing, keep butter cold. This will protect the
delicate bonds of its emulsion while you mix and roll dough. Butter contains
about 15 to 20 percent water by weight. If butter softens and melts as it’s worked
into the dough, its emulsion will break, releasing that water. Water droplets will
bind with the flour, developing into long gluten strands that will cause the
dough’s delicate layers to stick together. If they’re stuck together, they can’t
steam apart and flake as they bake. The pastry will emerge from the oven chewy
and elastic.
these paragraphs are just after the "powers of pie" image, I cannot provide the page numbers because I have a translated version.
What I don't get is:
From this section The warmer, and hence softer, your butter, the more readily it will combine with the flour. Because fat inhibits gluten development, the more intimately the two ingredients combine, the more tender I understand that if the butter if warmer, it will combine faster and will inhibit gluten development and because of that, the dough will be tender.
But then she states: If butter softens and melts as it’s worked into the dough, its emulsion will break, releasing that water. Water droplets will bind with the flour, developing into long gluten [...] The pastry will emerge from the oven chewy and elastic, which seems to contradict by saying that melted butter will increase gluten development due to the water it contains and this will make the pastry to be chewy and elastic.
It is confusing to me because in the first excerpt it seems to imply that warmer butter prevents gluten development, while the second seems to imply that warm butter will enable gluten development.
What am I missing? | You haven't missed anything, I agree it could be worded better. Both are true, just not at the same time. As butter warms it combines more readily with your flour, but as long as you keep it from getting too warm the emulsion won't break down. At this point if the butter warms too much your pastry become less flaky. If the butter warms further the emulsion breaks down and water is released, making your pastry tough. |
How big a garlic clove?
How big (grams) is a clove of garlic, as found in a recipe?
I have a lot of recipes that call for some number of cloves of garlic. The problem is that garlic is a plant, and the size of the clove varies greatly. My local supermarket sells heads of garlic with really large cloves -- I weighed some tonight while cooking and they clocked in around 30g. On the other hand, the local convenience store sells small, roughly uniformly-sized heads of garlic in a mesh sheath whose cloves are about 10g each. This is a huge variation in size and weight!
My recipes generally don't include weights, they just say things like "5 cloves garlic". Is there any "standard size" for a clove, or even a "rule of thumb" that I can use? (This is literally the difference between 150g and 50g of garlic in a dish ... or the difference between a 'garlic bomb' and possibly something that's under-flavored.) I'm just really tired of accidentally making dishes that taste overwhelmingly of garlic ... | At some point you have to accept that cooking isn't totally precise. This is one of those points. Even so some recipes do call for "a fat clove of garlic" to guide you (you could use 2 or even 3 little ones).
As well as varying in size, garlic varies in strength, which you can't measure. The flavour also mellows with cooking, which you can but not realistically to enough precision.
If you like garlic, you can bias towards more, if you think the merest hint is appropriate, bias towards less. Cooking a single portion, weighing garlic would need accuracy of the order of 1g anyway, which most scales can't really do even if they count in single grams; until recently less than 5g precision was rare, and that's not enough to discriminate small/medium/large.
Those garlic bulbs with massive cloves are sometimes labelled differently from everyday garlic. I can't often get them but prefer them as I never want one small clove. The other size is more typical, but variation within one bulb can be a factor of 4 (or even more when I grow my own) |
What proportion of the natural yeast in Sourdough comes from the flour?
Inspired by this question... when making a sourdough starter or similar, does the flour contribute a significant amount of yeast to the final product [either from the flour's origins in the fields, or from the factory where it is milled], as opposed to yeast that is in the environment (floating in the air or whatnot)? Would two different sourdoughs, both made in the same kitchen, but with different sourced flour, be significantly different due to the yeast (ignoring differences in the flours themselves)? Or would the natural environment dominate the yeast production?
I recognize that some flours might be different than others, so if that is significant (such as bleached flour versus unbleached, more highly processed, etc., please mention that. | It Depends, but ...
First, it depends on the flour. Bleached, sterilized, hot-rolled white flour has the least (possibly none) naturally-occurring wild yeast on it. Cold-rolled unbleached organic whole-grain rye flour has the most. Everything else is in between. Clearly, if you're using sterile flour, any yeast is going to need to come from elsewhere.
Second, it depends on your environment. If your starter is being incubated in a open bakery during the rainy season in San Francisco, it absolutely will pick up some yeast from the environment, more from surface contact than from "the air". In my personal experience as a San Francisco sourdough baker, the primary place that environmental yeast in California comes from is the fruit flies that drown in your starter (nobody wants to say this, but it's true, fruit flies are huge yeast carriers). But, if you're creating sourdough in the New Mexico desert or on the International Space Station, you're not going to have much environmental yeast available.
Within those parameters, for a reasonable starter using non-sterile flour in an average kitchen, where is most of the yeast coming from?
The flour.
Per the wild yeast blog:
Yeast grow on grain and arrive with the flour. One gram of flour contains about 13,000 yeast cells. I don’t deny that there are a few yeast in the environment that find their way into the starter, but by and large the yeast that will survive in the starter are the ones that like the menu there, i.e, the ones that have a taste for grain.
Given this, why even bother with the whole open-dish sourdough cultivation if you don't live somewhere with ample environmental yeast? Mostly for the bacteria. Sourdough is a culture of yeast and bacteria, and benefits from your environmental bacteria (as well as those on the flour) if you get the right ones. |
Can Seitan like substances be made from lentils/other high protein sources?
I was wondering if the ability to make a "coagulated protein mass" was unique to gluten in wheat.
For example, if one grinds up a bunch of lentils into a very fine powder and then adds water to make a lentil dough (And stirring consistently in one direction to bind proteins) is it possible to wash away the starch and leave behind a lentil-protein mass?
If not lentils then which sorts of seeds/nuts/vegetables are amenable to this "seitanification" process? | The important part isn’t (just) coagulation, but the viscoelasticity (pliant stretchiness) which allows it to form a loose structure incorporating starch and gas. Few proteins have that property. (Casein, a milk protein, comes to mind; the process of making mozzarella is not so very different from that of making seitan.)
If there was a legume-derived protein with largely the same properties as gluten, you definitely would have heard about it by now. |
How many cake mix boxes would I need for to make a 9 inch cake with 6 layers
I am baking a 6 layer 9inch birthday cake for my daughter. How many cake mix boxes would I need to do this please? X | According to another question we have about the size of boxed mixes, major mix brands in the USA use a roughly standard size, one box is intended to produce two layers of a 9x6 rectangular cake.
You say "9 inch layers", which sounds like you are planning round layers of a 9 inch diameter. The area of a 9 inch round layer is only 15% more than the area of the area of a 9x6 rectangular layer, which is immaterial for baking purposes. If you have a recipe which produces a good layer when poured into a 9x6 pan, it will produce just as good a layer in a 9 inch round pan.
So, there is a very convenient answer. Use three boxes, and bake them in six portion, each in a nine-inch pan. It will give you six suitable-sized layers.
On the logistic side, when preparing a child's birthday, you don't want to suddenly realize "it is 10 PM, I just burned two layers to crisps and now cannot deliver the exact promised cake for neither love nor money". So I would buy four or five boxes (plus any extra eggs, etc.) in the hope to only use three of them.
Also, don't be tempted to save time by mixing all batter at once and dividing into six. This idea sounds good on the surface, but is actually full of hidden traps that can make your cake fail to bake properly. Mix one box at a time, then bake, then the next, etc. |
How to properly season or marinate steamed potatoes?
When boiling potatoes, most guidance is to heavily salt the water which in turn internally seasons the potatoes.
When it comes to steamed potatoes, I’ve achieved fine results salting after they’ve steamed. I’m wondering if seasoning or marinating the potatoes in advance of steaming would be better.
What is the best way to achieve flavorful results when steaming potatoes?
Edit: for context, I am tossing russet potatoes into the steamer basket of a rice cooker while the rice cooker cooks white rice. I typically cut the potatoes in halves or quarters to ensure they fit. I keep the skin on. | I had a lot of steamed potatoes growing up, but it's almost always seasoned afterwards with sauces. I find it's a good alternative to boiling, as you still get the moist texture, but it's much harder to overcook. If you season the water, it might not work for some types of seasoning (e.g. salt), therefore marination will probably work better:
Increase the marination time to overnight.
Increase the surface area (e.g. cut them into thick slabs instead of large chunks, cut grooves, poke holes, etc.) |
Why do potatoes in soup/stew taste stale the next day?
I notice that when I prepare stews or soups with potatoes (e.g. beef stew, Japanese curry, etc.), they have a tendency to have a somewhat-off "stale" taste when reheated the next day, after taking it out of the refrigerator. The other vegetables in the same dish (e.g. carrots, onions, etc.) are usually still good.
Does anyone what the reason for this could be, or how to prevent this? | I suspect that the issue is that starches change when cooked and then chilled. (Called retrogradation)
This is why long grain rice is always a bit dry and hard when refrigerated (but makes for better fried rice as it’s less sticky, and it’s lower glycemic index as it’s now resistant starch)
Bread also undergoes retrogradation when chilled, which is what we refer to as ‘stale’ when it happens.
Most people don’t find chilled and reheated potatoes objectionable like you do, but they might notice the changes. For instance, you can’t easily mash a refrigerated potato, even after warming it back up.
I’m not aware of any way to prevent it. |
Bubbling after storing chili fried in oil and vinegar over night
To make spicy oil, I followed this procedure:
first I fine-minced dried chili
I put them in a pan with wine vinegar (7% acidity), some salt and oil and cooked it until it started to go brown (which I assumed is the point at which all water evaporated and temperatures went higher than 100°).
then I put everything in a small jar. The jar was not cleaned by boiled, but it was cleaned by washing machine some time ago.
I closed the jar and left it at room temperature overnight.
This morning I found bubbles:
Should I be worried?
I was suggested to fry it again, but I'm afraid it will burn it. | When a food preservation recipe develops unusual behavior, you have to consider the product unsafe, even if the recipe itself was safe. The bubbles are a clear sign of fermentation, and your chili is now unsafe.
I was suggested to fry it again
Once a food is unsafe, there are no ways to turn it back into being safe. Even if you fry again, it will still be unsafe. |
How can I easily separate onion layers in diced chunks?
I often want a small portion of onion in the form of short pieces, one layer thick. I start by cutting a slice from the onion that is about the total amount needed.
While it's a slice, the rings can be easily separated, but that makes it more difficult to cut it up. So I keep the slice intact, and cut it into horizontal and vertical strips, creating rectangular chunks. The chunks typically contain several layers, and those are difficult to separate.
Is there any trick to easily separate the layers in the diced pieces (or a better cutting method to reach the same result)?
I'm just working with a sharp knife. There are probably cutters or choppers designed to make this easy, but I'd rather not buy another kitchen tool.
Addendum: I appreciate all the suggestions, and tested them all. I'll add comments under the answers with the results so people can compare them. | When cutting the onion, after you’ve halved it and cut along one dimension, smoosh it down a bit with the palm of your hand. This will cause the layers to shear against each other, loosening them. Then finish chopping them.
If there are still big chunks, put the pieces in a closed, hard-sided food storage container and give it a few good shakes. (Don’t overdo this, as overly bruising onions will lead to that unpleasant stored-raw-onion smell.) |
Rice cooker vapor from cooking brown rice leaves a starchy film on surrounding surfaces
I have a really old, basic rice cooker. When it cooks brown rice, the steam/cooking vapor that escapes forms a grubby film on the lid, and usually leaves residue on surrounding surfaces in my kitchen too: cabinets, containers, cutlery, whatnot. This happens whether or not I wash the rice. It doesn't seem to happen with white rice (or at least, to a much less perceptible degree).
Do rice cookers dirty your kitchens too when cooking brown rice? Is it time for me to finally upgrade, or merely wash my rice much more vigorously?
Thanks in advance! | Many rice cookers leave reside in this way, upgrading doesn't necessarily help as some new ones do this as well. Rather than upgrade just fold a paper towel in half, then into quarters, then lay it over the hole with the second fold making a tent over the hole. The paper towel will catch the steam, the fold will keep it from covering the hole completely.
You can, as @FuzzyChef says, use a cloth towel instead of a paper towel, which is completely true. I found that the towel got very messy and hard to clean due to all the starch, so I switched to a paper one. |
Carbohydrates percentage in lacto fermented potatoes
I am wondering: how much carbs do lacto fermented potatoes contain? Or how would one determine that?
Context
I am into keto diet since it has been like a miracle when it comes to weight loss for me in the past and it's just about time for me to come back to it. I am trying to make it more interesting than fried meat with cheese and mayonnaise this time and I know that during lacto fermentation carbs are consumed by bacteria. I have tried lacto fermenting pickles and it was extremely easy with really great results - I just added 2.5% (of total weight) salt to pickles in water weighted them down so they don't rise above water and forgot it for a few weeks and it all turned out really well. So now I am thinking about how much I like fried potatoes and if I could just ferment them in exactly same manner to get rid of the carbs. I would use the same process with 2.5% salt with peeled and sliced (and well washed) raw potatoes. I am wondering how sure I can be that most of carbs would be gone after this process.
I would appreciate any extra advice on the whole process, but keeping in mind the style of Stack Exchange platform I am looking for an answer about carbohydrate amount based on facts or direct experience(I have no idea how testing or calculating these things work). | Lacto-fermenting potatoes, like lacto-fermenting other vegetables (like cucumbers), will only very slightly reduce the amount of carbohydrates they contain. After that, the lactic acid buildup will kill the bacteria. But while most vegetables have only a small percentage of digestible carbohydrates to begin with (they’re mostly water and dietary fiber), potatoes are made almost entirely of carbohydrates and water. So they’ll still, nutritionally, be potatoes once fermented. |
Why does making a pasta require more yolks than whites?
I have looked up numerous pasta recipes and all of them suggest adding a certain number of whole eggs and a certain number of additional egg yolks. I am just curious why we need only yolks? How would the pasta be different if I added a total number of whole eggs instead? Is it a matter of colour, or texture, or both? And more importantly how | It’s about what properties you’re looking for in the pasta. Serious Eats had a primer on fresh pasta a couple of years ago, and they discussed some of the differences:
https://www.seriouseats.com/best-easy-all-purpose-fresh-pasta-dough-recipe-instructions
Egg Whites, Egg Yolks, Water: Identifying the Best Source of Hydration
With my flour selected, it was time to test different sources of moisture. My first step was to make three doughs, keeping the hydration level as consistent as possible across the board. I used three equal measurements of all-purpose flour as my baseline; one batch got water, one batch got egg whites, and the third got egg yolks.** I added just as much as I needed to make the dough come together. This is what I wound up with; you can probably tell which is which.
** I stuck with large eggs for all my tests, and even weighed them to make sure that I was adding consistent amounts of water, protein, and fat to each dough.
(image)
The water-only pasta (right) was a total bust—the noodles were bland, mushy, and...well...watery. And the egg white pasta (center) wasn't much better: Whites are almost 90% water, so, while the noodles weren't quite as bad as the water-based version, which literally fell apart and stuck to each other in a big, gluey mass, they definitely weren't winners. The yolks, on the other hand, made a beautiful, golden dough (left). Yolks contain about 48% water, 17% protein, and around 33% fat. More yolks will deliver more color, more egg flavor, and silkier noodles.
Unfortunately, that high fat content complicates things a little bit. Though it's not exactly scientifically accurate, you can think of that fat as making the gluten proteins all slippery, preventing them from building a strong network—when I tested this using different amounts of olive oil, I found that, sure enough, more oil made for softer, mushier, less elastic noodles. And, to complicate matters even further, I had a really hard time getting the flour and yolks to come together. It was a dry, tough dough that was difficult to mix and knead—not exactly beginner-friendly.
Difficulty aside, an all-yolk pasta may make great noodles, but it's not sufficiently elastic to use for stuffed pastas, which require a dough that can be rolled more thinly and is, quite simply, bendier. I needed to strike a better balance.
At this point, I knew there was no point in adding water—if I wanted additional moisture, egg whites were definitely a better bet. It seemed clear that my dough was going to require a combination of whole eggs and additional yolks. I ultimately settled on three yolks for every egg white.
What's that? You like softer, mushier noodles? Good for you. Add a teaspoon of oil to my basic recipe. Want a richer, eggier flavor and a more golden hue? Throw in an extra yolk and add a little more flour. This is your dough. |
Does it make sense to salt water after it boils?
Does it make sense to salt water after it boils? On the one hand, salted water has a higher boiling point. On the other hand, it increases regardless of whether you salt at one point or another | As @Sneftel wrote, the amount of salt used in cooking will not change the boiling point of water by any appreciable amount. However, if you are adding salt to water for flavor or other purposes, there is a good reason to add salt only once the water is boiling (or at least hot), especially if you are using a stainless-steel pot.
Salt crystals left undissolved at the bottom of a pot of cold water can corrode the stainless steel of the pot and result in pitting and discoloration. If you add the salt only once the water is hot/boiling, it will dissolve right away and not sit at the bottom to cause corrosion. |
Dominique Ansel book - ambiguity in the recipe
I have this book https://www.amazon.com/Everyone-Can-Bake-Simple-Recipes/dp/1501194712 at home. And I wanted to try the "White Chocolate Glaze" from page 253.
But I am baffled about this step:
Make the syrup: Combine the glucose, sugar, and 60 grams (¼ cup) water in a medium saucepan and clip a digital thermometer to the side of the pan. Bring to a boil over high heat. Cook until the mixture reaches 113º to 122ºF (45º to 50ºC), about 10 minutes. Stir in the gelatin mixture with a spatula until incorporated. Remove from the heat.
These steps seem in contradiction to each other. How should they be interpreted so I may proceed? | I would assume a typo - change one(!) letter and the logic fits again:
Bring to a boil over high heat.
Cool until the mixture reaches 113º to 122ºF (45º to 50ºC), about 10 minutes. Stir in the gelatin mixture
Further explanation:
If something is unclear and temperature is involved, you need to always check for a °F/°C mixup, but given the “45° to 50°C”, which matches the numbers in °F, we can pretty much exclude that.
Gelatin should never be boiled, because then it loses its binding/thickening properties, dissolving in warm liquid is standard procedure.
So as we have confirmed that the target temperature is what the writer intended, the only way to get there from boiling is by letting the mixture cool down. |
Roasting Par boiled Vegetables
I parboiled zucchini broccoli cauliflower carrots and butternut squash now I want to roast them in the oven what temperature and how long should I roast them since they're partially cooked? | We don't know how cooked your items are after the par boil. It also depends on the size of the items. So, we can't be very precise here. I would use high heat (400F or higher) because you probably want some color before the items overcook. As soon as they have some color, test for done-ness. Zucchini cooks much faster than the other items, so you might add that when the other items are almost complete. |
Do other cultures' foods have anything like ramen eggs?
One of my favourite parts of making ramen is ajitsuke tamago – a soft-boiled egg marinated in soy sauce, mirin, and sake.
Marinating a boiled egg to impart flavour seems like a simple idea, but I'm not aware of any other dishes like it. Is this something that's been done in other culinary traditions? | Perhaps not having really the same sense of gastronomic style or delicacy…
In the UK, pickled eggs used to be a staple; eat them on their own, with a beer or with takeaway fish & chips.
Traditional ones in the UK were in brown or white vinegar with spices. Variants are many, with highly coloured extras added for variety.
From Simply Recipes |
Freezing raw pizza
I'm preparing two pizza, one for immediate consumption and the other one I want to freeze so it can be eaten next week.
Is it OK if I freeze raw pizza I.e. raw dough with all the ingredients? Or should I bake the base for a bit? Or even should I bake two pizzas and freezer one, fully baked or half baked? Pizza would be prepared from instant yeast - dry powder. | After some teething trouble I freeze my raw (sour-)dough in a flattened ball. I no longer dust it in flour before freezing, and use a rubber spatula to help get it out of the plastic box in which I freeze it. I'd like some smaller boxes so less air goes in, but I'll work with what I've got, and those boxes stack nicely with the other meals in my freezer.
After some experimenting, defrosting in a cold part of the fridge for about 20 hours works best. And not resting the dough for too long before freezing seems to make it less sticky and easier to work.
You need to be quite generous with the flour when rolling the previously-frozen dough. This is all for a moderately thin sourdough pizza, though I have used a similar approach with my bread machine recipe using yeast; that makes quite a fluffy base.
My freezer tends to be too full to freeze pizza bases parbaked, but fitting in a box of dough is much easier. |
Substitution for Green Cardamom Pods in a vegan Biriyani?
What options are there to replace Green Cardamom Pods when making a vegan Biriyani.
The reason for this substitution is that purely I don't have any, and won't be going to a store that stocks them soon as they are not a common product in this area. | Biriyani spicing is quite flexible, so unless what you're making is specifically "cardamom biriyani", you can swap spices as you need to. Here's some options:
Add ground cardamom: if you have ground cardamom, add 1 tsp for every 6-8 pods you don't have. Ideally, you want to add this later in the cooking process than you would have added the pods, like in the final assembly before sealing the pot. Alternately, if the recipe already includes garam masala, double the amount; garam masala is about 1/2 cardamom.
Just Skip It: If the recipe already has a whole bunch of whole spices, such as whole cloves, pieces of cinnamon bark, whole cumin, etc., you can just leave the cardamom pods out and make the rest of the recipe as normal.
Increase/add other whole spices: if the recipe does not have many other whole spices, add some. Good ones to add or increase would include cinnamon bark, whole cloves, whole allspice berries, mace blades, and large shavings from whole nutmegs.
Combination: add a little ground cardamom and a few other whole spices.
For future note, whole cardamom pods last for years in storage, so when you do get out to buy some, get a whole jar for long-term use. |
Do Recipes Typically Account for Starters/Preferments when Reporting Dough Hydration?
I know there have been a couple of questions here before about what "counts" toward computing dough hydration % (honey, milk, etc.) but I always thought it was a no-brainer that starters and preferments (poolish, etc.) would be taken into account in published recipes, yet I still see some not do this, especially with sourdough starters.
For example if I see a recipe that calls for 1kg flour, 700g water, and 200g of 100% hydration starter, the recipe will often label itself a "70% hydration dough". But the reality is the final composition of the dough will be 800g water and 1100g flour, or 72.7% hydration.
Now I understand for baker's math, everything is always listed by reference to the dry flour, but I thought this was just for purpose of measuring and scaling.
Is it the case that the 2.7% difference (in my example) is just not considered significant? In my experience a couple of %s can make a significant difference in dough feel and end product, and thus if I read X% hydration in a recipe I would expect they've accounted for all water and flour in the final dough. Is that not a sound assumption? Is there really no consensus on this as the comment below suggests? | Some recipes do, some don't.
If you read recipes that are written for "dough fiends" who are very scientific and experimental about what they cook, you'll find that the total hydration is carefully calculated. The Ooni pizza dough recipe is a good example (billed as 70% hydration, comes out to 69.5%); pizzaheads tend to be really fussy about hydration levels. Author Jim Lahey is similarly exacting.
Most bread recipe authors, however, are not that precise. They are assuming that you're going to adjust according to local conditions. And they're actually right, because you have to; flour in Florida has significantly more water already in it than flour in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The exact protein content of the flour also affects absorbtion. They're assuming that you are going to vary either the amount of flour or the amount of water you add. Some dough recipes even instruct you to add water a little at a time until it reaches a specific consistency rather than adding a specific amount of water.
Further compounding this, many sourdough recipes are non-sourdough recipes that were roughly adjusted for the addition of a starter, without really adjusting the hydration levels. And again, that's understandable because starter hydration levels vary. Even though the starter may be 100% hydration when you mix it, there's both evaporation and pouring off any excess water from the top before using. As a result, the actual starter by the time you add it to the dough is going to be between 70% and 90% hydration, not 100%.
This means that, realistically, all recipe hydration levels are approximate. Nothing is going to replace you using your own judgement in mixing a dough. |
Safer way to heat 1 oz of oil
I am looking for an alternative to a procedure that my wife uses. She has been doing this for a very long time, and is very resistant to change.
She takes a metal ladle, puts about 1 oz of vegetable oil in it, then holds it on the electric stove burner until the oil bubbles. Then she adds Geera (Cumin) to the oil. This is then added to the stew pot.
One possibility is a very small metal pot, but I haven't found anything suitable. Maybe there is name for something like this that would help me find it. | Two other potential vessels are:
Turkish coffee pots (cezve), though these might be unstable with so little weight in them
mugs designed to be used on camping stoves. These may be stainless steel, but I have one titanium and one enamelled steel. I use them to boil water when camping.
Honestly though, I'd just use my smallest (15cm/6") saucepan, probably the stainless one rather than the non-stick one. |
How to remove goop/slime from powdered tomato soup?
I bought "Professional Tomato Soup Mix" and it comes out slimy when prepared according to package instructions. Specifically, after 10 minutes cooling, a film forms on the surface. When stirred, the film does not dissolve, and instead separates into slimy clumps, a bit like snot.
I don't know what causes it but I think it's the modified starch.
Ingredients: Potato starch, sugar, tomato puree powder, salt, yeast extract, maltodextrin, palm fat, sunflower oil, glucose syrup, onion powder, citric acid, flavourings, modified starch, pepper, beetroot juice concentrate.
Directions:
Ensure the product is well mixed before weighing out.
Stir the required amount of soup mix into cold water.
Bring to the boil, while stirring.
Simmer for approximately 4 minutes, whisking occasionally.
For best results, whisk thoroughly before serving.
Is there some sciencey way to prevent this? | That's the kind of stuff I call "instant goop".
The only way to deal with it is not let it sit still long enough to skin over - keep whisking every minute, or make it closer to serving time.
Once it skins, you could see if a paper towel will pick it off in almost one piece. Otherwise you'll just have to punch a hole in it, ladle through the hole & try not to get any in the bowl. You're basically fighting a losing battle with it, as the skin will thicken over time.
[btw, in the UK, you wouldn't be allowed to sell that as 'tomato soup'. Even instant 'cup a goop' is more than 50% tomato.] |
Steak still tough despite using methods to tenderize it
First method: dry marinating the meat with sea salt for an hour.
Second method: cooking the meat with low heat using 80 degrees Celsius (electric oven) for 30-40 minutes.
The cut looks like the one on the right:
I used these two methods today (one followed by the other), and my steak was still tough and chewy.
What could be the reason?
Note: It's a sirloin steak. | You have a couple of things working against you for tenderness. First, grass-fed beef is often less tender that beef fed on grains. Second, the sirloin is not the most tender cut regardless of what the cow eats. Third, it appears that you are slicing with the grain. Advice for tenderizing grass-fed beef includes mechanical tenderization (a mallet to break down fibers) or acidic marinades. Slicing against the grain cuts long fibers into pieces that are easier to chew. So, if you are satisfied with your attempts at tenderization, you may want to try grain fed beef....but certainly try to slice against the grain. |
Is goat cheese ravioli freezable?
Can I freeze ravioli filled with goat cheese and caramelized onion, even when the package advises not to? | It's not going to make it dangerous if you're sensible. The texture might suffer a bit, but it will still be edible - better than wasting it. Defrost in the fridge before cooking, not at room temperature. I have frozen similar products in the past, and honestly don't think they deteriorated at all - certainly less than overcooking.
Mostly when manufacturers say products aren't suitable for freezing, they're worried about 2 things:
trying to cook something (probably raw) from frozen that will seem done when it's not, and risking food poisoning. Defrosting before cooking, under safe conditions, solves that.
the quality suffering, and customers complaining. A few foods suffer badly, like cream, but most don't |
Does using less sugar fundamentally impact how a cake or pie comes out other than sweetness?
One of my favorite pies is Impossible Pie, named such because you need only mix the ingredients and bake in a greased pan and it will form three layers (bottom crust, middle custard, top crunchy coconut) on its own. I found it in an old 50's cookbook:
4 eggs
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup shredded coconut
2 cups milk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
pinch nutmeg
zest from a full lemon
juice from a half lemon
Mix together thoroughly, pour in a greased pie pan (I reserve about 10% of the butter for this), bake at 350 for 1 hour on top of a baking sheet to catch possible spillover. Rest with a dish towel atop for 1 hour before refrigerating. Best served cold, I would wait at least 12 hours in the fridge.
I've made this before with 3/4 cup sugar instead of 1 cup, and it turns out more or less the same. I couldn't discern the two from looks or texture. But I tried earlier today with 2/3 cup sugar instead and the bottom crust didn't really form. It looks almost like it wasn't cooked enough but I followed the recipe the same otherwise.
I hope it's not too naive of a question, but what does less sugar (with nothing to replace it) do in a pie or cake? The only variable here I changed was the sugar, so I'm assuming that's why it didn't turn out properly. | The general answer is yes, in baked goods sugar does more than just add sweetness. Via the Maillard reaction it will contribute to browning and add a more complex flavor than just sweetness in the crust or exterior of a cake or pie. This is one reason why malted barley is added to bread flour and malt or molasses is added to bagle boiling water.
It also interacts with ingredients like eggs and cream and butter which could all influence the characteristics of the custard that you mention is supposed to constitute the middle layer.
That said I don't know enough about this cake to say for sure if 2/3 vs. 3/4 cup sugar could be the difference between success and failure but it seems unlikely. You're talking about 5.3 vs. 6 ounces by volume. That could be the difference between levelling your measuring cup or not.
On the other hand, crust formation is exactly an area where I would expect the sugar to assist, so it is also not impossible that the lower amount contributed to your disappointing result.
The only way to know for sure is to repeat the experiment in controlled conditions and compare side by side! |
Using up raw chicken with freezer burn - how to cook to make the best of it
I froze a spare chicken breast raw, to save for my daughter (I very rarely eat meat, she has a bit more, but they come in packs of 2). I noticed it's got visible freezer burn. I refuse to waste it, so I'm going to eat it myself; after all, it's perfectly safe.
Normally I'd stir-fry chicken breast with veg, and add a sauce. I know from past experience that it can end up rather tough in that case. Can I do better? | You can still save this breast if you:
Use a velveting technique to give it a silky texture and help retain moisture when you stir fry it
boil in broth and shred it (for a salad or a soup, for example) - I don't think the difference in texture will be noticeable
season it and cook it sous-vide to 63.3ºC (145.9F) for 1:30h, it's the method that will probably result in the most moist chicken of all methods. |
Measuring powder vs non powdered (e.g. sugar) with measure spoon and precision scale
I bought a scale to measure very small quantities in 0.01 increments.
The scale has a calibration weight of 50 grams and it measures so +/- an error as expected.
My intention for the scale is to measure powder/herbs.
To try it I have a measuring spoon that says 1.25 ml and I used cinnamon as a sample and scooped it, use a knife to flat out the top and when I weighed it the scale reported 0.5 grams while I was expecting 1.25 grams.
I tried with regular sugar (not powedered) and the weight reported is the same as the measuring spoon e.g. for 2.5 ml the scale reports 2.5 grams etc.
So now I am confused. Is there a difference when using powder and measuring spoons? What's the issue here? | I think you are mixing up volume and weight.
Your spoon is measuring a volume, giving you ml of the substance that you scooped. To convert this volume into a mass, you need to multiply it by the substance density in mg/ml.
Additionally, powders and coarse materials like ground herbs will not have a constant density, because of the empty spaces between their parts, which change with how you pour/scoop them.
Try shaking a container filled to the edge with herbs, and see how the level seems to diminish as the herb fragments pack better.
If you want to carefully measure weight for loose substances like powders or ground material, use a scale, not a spoon.
As a reference for how big this effect can be, I routinely store my muesli in a glass jar. By directly putting the muesli in the jar, about 10% remains in the bag. After gently shacking the jar, the whole content can fit in. |
Was our chicken the correct temperature?
I heated (in a 900W microwave) some pre-cooked, shop-bought barbecue sauce-covered chicken wings. Unfortunately, instead of doing so for the required two minutes and thirty seconds, I only heated them for 1 min 40 secs. When we started to eat them a few minutes later, they were noticeably lukewarm. We didn't eat much at all, but I am worried about food poisoning. Are we likely to fall ill? | It's perfectly safe. If it's pre-cooked then it is safe to eat cold, hot or lukewarm. It's true that room temperature is the happy range for the microbes that cause foodborne illness to grow, but that takes at least a couple of hours to develop. Just nuke it again until it's hot. |
How much mg/gr ginger in tea vs how grams in tea infuser
When creating ginger tea from grated/small parts of ginger it is not clear to me what is the relationship between how much mg/gr are in the tea vs the grams of grated ginger used.
E.g. if using a tea infuser add 1 full teaspoon and leave in the hot water; the tea itself how much grams (or mg) of ginger is it supposed to have?
Update
To give some context, I am asking because since I had read about nutmeg's toxicity I always check the dosages of spices and herbs. So for ginger I read that there is a threshold of ~4grams for no side effects so I wanted to understand if having it as a tea and using too much grated ginger steeped in water could cause to exceed that. Other than this I don't need any exact measurement for any reason | There usually is no such thing as "how much grams is the tea supposed to have". Tea recipes are not precise, and it doesn't really matter how much ginger you use.
If there is some reason for you to want a very exact measurement in weight, then it is totally impractial to try to calculate it from a volume measurement. You should instead measure your ginger by weight.
The above assumes that you want to know how many grams of raw ginger you used to make the tea. If you want to know the total amount of ginger extract that you are drinking (after straining out the ginger solids from the tea), that is not something you can find out in practice. I don't doubt that there are laboratories equipped to measure it (given that a professional food chemist first defines precisely what should count as "ginger extract") but it is not doable under home conditions. |
Alternatives to mustard oil?
Is there an accessible, legal product in the USA that will impart the sinus-tingling sensation of mustard when preparing spice blends for Indian cooking?
No sooner did I discover the sinus-heating magic of cold-pressed mustard oil than I learned that it is illegal for consumption in the United States. (The matter is controversial, but banned is banned.)
There is one FDA-approved mustard oil, made from a specially bred varietal: Yandilla. The cost of such an oil would add up quite quickly, and it is often out of stock in most of the few places that carry it.
The FDA also acknowledges another mustard-extracted product: steam-extracted mustard essential oil, also known as volatile oil of mustard. Since I mostly just want a bit of mustard "oomph" for my tadkas, this seemed like the right thing.
It's not clear that this is a real, viable product, however. While there are a few ancient articles about it, every bottle of "mustard essential oil" that I can find for sale in the United States says that it's cold-pressed, meaning it's actually virgin oil. Even outside the US, mustard essential oil seems incredibly obscure. After a good amount of searching, I eventually found one vendor in India, and they still market it as intended for external use.
Prepared mustard is a totally different animal. Mustard powder tastes totally different from the oil, and can easily be turned bitter (and not spicy) during cooking. Which leaves me with the (expensive, low-inventory) Yandilla. Or does it? Is there another way to obtain this flavor profile? | I would start by first identifying what exact flavor of the mustard oil I am trying to reproduce. It can broadly be divided in two:
the sharp bite of the mustard oil that is raw or just warmed up (for example, in Bengali smashed veggies called "Vorta")
The warm and slightly bitter background notes of a curry that started on Mustard oil, and cooked for a long time.
If you are after the first, may I suggest a good quality Wasabi oil? (basically refined oil plus horseradish) you should get a similar, but not exactly same, punch and sinus clearing. (horseradish is used in many Bengali packaged foods that want to mimic the mustard punch)
If you are after the second, I usually use a heavily fruity/bitter extra virgin olive oil. Gives a similar effect. |
Which are the primary oils/fats that are used in Latin America?
Are there predominant types of oils or fats that are used in Latin American cooking, in the way you would say that olive oil is typical for Southern Europe?
Maybe it does not even make sense to speak of Latin America as a whole but perhaps there are still some interesting patterns, based on cultural influence and availability. | Lard, mostly, maybe coconut oil or peanut oil.
https://www.theculinarypro.com/new-page-2 |
Restored Pasta Boards
My grandfather's pasta board was in the attic for years. No mold, it looks perfect, however, I need to clean it, to get rid of dust and smell. I was planning on sanding it. Once it's sanded, can I use Boos Mystery Oil to complete the process?
If not, what do you recommend?
Thank you. | I would not use board oil on a pasta board.
Sand it down (if necessary), give it a good scrub with salt/lemon and let it dry completely.
The board works because it gets used and is a little rough so that the dough does not slide around when kneading or when forming pasta. |
Do stainless steel sauce pots wear out and how can I tell if it needs replacement?
Perhaps a chef who has lots of experience with cookware might know when to or when not to replace a stainless pot.
I use the pot for cooking great northern beans and it has been used for maybe 60 years. It is a 4 quart Revere Ware stainless steel sauce pot with a copper bottom. I use a 3M scouring pad to clean. After cooking there is some dark discoloration and I can feel residue there but the 3M pad gets it shiny clean.
What prompts me to ask is that I have to clean it every time I cook the beans and that used not be the case so I thought I would ask before thinking about replacing it.
The same pot on Amazon used is over 100 dollars since they are no longer made and it could be worse than mine so it behooves me to at least ask. | I have a couple of those of the same vintage that are just fine.
Sometimes the copper coating on the bottom wears away but these are generally long lasting quality cookware.
Not sure about your cleaning assertion. I clean every pot and pan after using it, and as it is not a non-stick surface a little scrubbing with a scotch-brite, SOS or the like pad is not out of line at all, it will depend on what you cooked and what residue is left over.
And yes any pot or pan will wear out, it just depends on how well they are made and how they are treated. A well-treated, quality, pot/pan could easily last a lifetime or two, or more... |
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