Salvaging a cheesecake that's oozing butter I just made a White Chocolate Raspberry cheesecake, and it ended up being a failure appearance-wise.

For some reason, it cracked a lot, and the batter ended up super lumpy, so the cheesecake is all heterogenous looking:

The main problem though can be seen in the large crack at the bottom of the image. For some reason, when I took it out, there was liquid pooling in the cracks. I tried wicking it with some paper towel, and it came out yellow. I felt it, and it was greasy. The only thing I can think that it might be is butter.

I've never had this happen before. It must have been because to make a chocolate layer in the middle, I added some butter to the chocolate to thin it a bit (~1 tsp/oz of chocolate), and I must have overdone it. I was BS'ing this recipe as I went, so I don't really have a recipe book to blame here.

Now, I can't taste it because it was made for someone else. I have no idea what the "damage" is in the inside. My problem now is deciding if it's salvageable, and how to go about fixing it if it is.

I've been wicking the butter out with a paper towel, but that doesn't get much, and I don't want to risk widening the crack further.

Does anyone have experience with cheesecakes that have had too much fat added to them? Is there a way to get rid of the butter on the top? Is there a way to tell if it'll be edible?

Update:

So, after chilling it overnight, the butter on top seemed to have receded back into the cake. At that point, I was worried less about the appearance (because that was already out the window), and more about it being a butter-sponge when bitten into. I guess after the fact though, there's likely nothing that can be done about that.

And I've already given it to the ""customer"" (a coworker). I offered to refund it if it's inedible. She's convinced that it will be fine, but we'll see.

From this point, I'd like to know how, in the future, a situation like this can be dealt with should it happen again.

Here's the recipe that I had put together by the end:

Crust:
3 cups Ginger Cookie Crumbs
⅓ cup butter

Filling:
500g Cream Cheese
½ cup sugar
½ tsp vanilla
¼ Cup Raspberry Jam (+ a little to compensate for moisture loss from heating)
2 eggs

Chocolate Layer:
6-8 oz White Chocolate
6-8 tsp butter (~1 tsp/oz of chocolate)

Preheat to 325F

Crust:
Combine ingredients
Pack into 9-10” springform
Bake at 375F for 5-7 minutes
Set aside

Filling:
Mix cream cheese, sugar and vanilla
Heat jam just until warm and runny, and mix in to batter
Mix in eggs carefully, mixing just enough to combine

Layer:
Melt butter, and add chocolate on very low heat

Pour a thin layer of about half the melted chocolate over the crust
Spread half the batter over chocolate covered crust
Pour the rest of the chocolate over the first layer of batter
Pour in the rest of the batter

Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until centre is almost set.
Allow to cool, then chill overnight.

Edit: I asked the buyer how it was. She said it tasted fine, but that the chocolate layer had an odd consistency and crunchiness. Apparently the oozing butter was non-consequential.

I would suggest using a bit of simple syrup or maple syrup instead to melt the chocolate, if you want the taste of butter, add a little bit of flour to the butter first when melting it to make a little bit of a light roux.

The problem is the chocolate and butter for sure will separate at the temp that a cheesecake bakes at, there's nothing for the butter to cling to.


What does the term mirepoix mean? What is mirepoix and what purpose does it serve? Is it a type of cut such as julienne or Macedonia, or is it a type of cuisine?

Mirepoix means 1: diced onions, carrots, celery and leek. 2. the type of cut of the mirepoix (see 1).

The dices are roughly cut about 1cm and don't have to be completely regular.

When talking about the cut, it should be about 1cm and regular. So you can cut potatoes in mirepoix, meaning 1cm cubes.

So, a cook can say, 'cut me a mirepoix' to mean roughly diced onions, etc.

And a cook can also say, 'cut me a potatoe in mirepoix' to mean evenly diced potatoes.

So, the answer is both. A cut and a combination.


What is this fruit called? Very soft inside, small seeds, tastes bit sweet

It looks like either Pepino Melon (which I'm growing this year, and I tried to grow in 2015) or Tzimbalo, by the color, the dark striping and the leaves. Eggplant is related to both, but eggplant leaves leaves are broader and bigger than I see in the picture, usually (if not always). Pepino Melons are typically (not always) bigger and longer than Tzimbalo, but it's hard to tell from your picture which it is. I personally think it looks more like a Pepino Melon by the color, lack of sheen, and the way the leaves look.

It looks like the plant might have spider mites, by the speckling on the foliage. Mine had spider mites in 2015. If you do have spider mites, showering the plant with a shower nozzle on your hose every two or three days may help, at least if you're in a semi-arid to arid climate.

Pepino Melons are not melons, although some people think they taste like them. They're in the Solanum genus of the nightshade family.


What is yellow rock sugar, for pho? I love pho and will soon try making it myself using an authentic Vietnamese recipe. I'm clear on all of the other ingredients and techniques, but "yellow rock sugar" has me stumped. Is this what the recipe means? If so, does it really taste different from regular sugar?

What's in the picture looks about right. This brand is commonly found in Asian grocery stores around here:  (your mileage may vary). It is essentially crystallized cane sugar. If you really can't find it, you could probably substitute regular sugar. The flavour is a little different though, as well it isn't a refined white sugar.

According to "this guy" (random search), there is a difference and the yellow rock sugar often includes a few other sugars (unrefined brown sugar), and that you shouldn't ever use the clear/white rock sugar for pho.


How to make a Cake Jumper? This is a relatively famous scene from an Irish TV show - Father Ted where a woman bakes a jumper (sweater) into a cake. Video can be seen here for reference - https://vimeo.com/38355848
I’m wondering what the best way to go about creating something like this would be?
In the video, it seems that the jumper is actually cooked into the cake, rather than added afterwards.
Could I make a normal cake mix and add in a suitably sized jumper before putting it in the oven?
My other thought would be to make a normal cake then cut out a cavity in the bottom to insert the jumper into. I was hoping there would be a better more-Father Ted like version if anyone with more experience has an idea.

In general, yes, you can bake stuff hidden inside a cake, but you are constrained in some ways. And before I go on: I don't believe that they actually baked a jumper in a cake for the film, they probably used some kind of inedible prop.
The most important constraint is the ratio of cake to item. If you embed something in a cake, you are messing up with leavening. It won't hurt if it is a small thing, or multiple small things, e.g. having nuts spread in the dough. But in this scene, the jumper was quite large. It was basically almost all jumper, with a tiny crust of "cake", and the cake itself was huge. It would be very difficult to bake a cake of this size all in one go even without the added difficulty of having a jumper in it, when you see huge wedding cakes, they are baked as separate layers, and the layers assembled afterwards.
I could imagine trying to get this to work. I would first choose a jumper that has as little weight and volume as possible, probably a girls' lightweight sweater. Or consider whether a doll sweater will be good enough for people to get the joke. If it has to be adult-size, maybe you can get away with a long-sleeve-T-shirt or a hiking base layer, especially if the fabric looks knitlike enough. Then find a suitable pan, large enough, and use a cutout baking mat on the bottom (you will never get it out with normal means if you do what I am planning). Parbake a very thin first layer for the bottom, Prinzregententorte-like. Then place the sweater on top, pour enough batter around it to get another layer, and bake the whole thing, using more top heat than bottom heat. Once this layer is set (doens't have to be through), add one more layer and rebake. When you get thick enough, I would suggest also starting to use a waterbath that only comes up to the height of the already-baked layers. You are finished when you have enough cake on top of the sweater.
The process will probably need several runs to be optimized. If the air in the sweater messes with leavening, consider soaking it in vegetable oil first. I'll also bet on you having to level the top, because it is unlikely you will get an even surface with this barbaric way of baking it and a whole sweater inside. It means that you probably don't want to serve it naked, since it will not resemble a plain cake out of the pan. You will likely need some kind of all-over frosting to cover the cut-off top and the unevenly baked layers on the sides.
Sweaters are also absorbent, so you will have to play with the liquid ratio in the cake. If using a dry sweater, you will have to make the batter more liquid, if you soak it in oil, you might need more flour in the cake (also, flour your sweater well before placing it in the cake, regardless of whether dry or oily).
You will have an easier time out of it if you use a packaged sweater, especially if you can package it in something with firm boundaries and nonreactive, such as a cookie tin or canning jar. You'll have some trouble finding a canning jar that has the proper shape, but maybe Weck has something appropriate, or you could consider using a modern glass-with-bamboo-lid storage container, they are available as squat cylinders. But I realize this may be too far from the original to get the joke across.
Finally, consider the sweater material. You can't have any amount of synthetic fiber in there, it will melt. This includes any kind of viscose too, even when sold with the label "natural" (may be labelled rayon, modal, lyocell, bamboo, etc.) I am torn between recommending wool and cotton - cotton is way too absorbent and heavy and will mess with the cake engineering more, but wool is not only expensive, wet wool exposed to heat usually felts. It is unusual in that you are not moving it here, but still it will probably feel pretty strange after baking. Other animal fibers are probably too expensive anyway, and unlikely to fare better than wool - although you may try alpaka because it felts less. Getting a lightweight sweater in non-fluffy alpaka might be difficult though.  Silk will also be an interesting option, I'm pretty sure you will have to look a jumper made with cablé or tape yarn though, not spun silk. Since it is so hard to predict, you will probably have to bake swatches before deciding on an optimum material (a tray of mini-jumper-cupcakes as a rapid prototyping method!).
Bottom line, to get the promised movie effect - it can be done, although I can't guarantee how close to the original you can get in the end, you will certainly have more cake on the outside. You will also need to invest some serious engineering effort, and money.

If you decide to go the cutout route, it's not trivial for that size either. I recommend that you watch videos on constructing pi~nata cakes.


How do you make sure aubergine doesn't go bitter when cooking? Sometimes aubergine and courgette tastes fine when cooked as is, but other times they are so bitter that they're almost inedible. I've tried dry salting and leaving the slices in salt water beforehand for various lengths of time, but this is a mission and can often make them too salty. Also the outcome seems pretty random given that sometimes this isn't necessary. Is it to do with freshness?

Yes, it is to do with freshness - the fresher and younger the aubergine, the less bitter it will be. If you have an old aubergine, you could try peeling it, as the bitter compounds are concentrated just under the skin.


What would be the effect of doubling the egg in this bread? A lot of my bread recipes are for two loaves, I never want two loaves, I usually barely make it through one. I like this recipe a lot:

•  3/4 cups warm water (170g) (110 degrees)

•  1.875 cups (293g) bread flour

•  3/4 teaspoons salt

•  .375 cup (40 g)  milk powder

•  .165 cup (19g) granulated sugar

•  .5 tablespoon instant or rapid-rise yeast

•  1/2 large egg, beaten

•  4 tablespoons unsalted butter (56 g)

Usually I beat the egg, weigh it in two separate little cups, and heat and eat the other half. But what if I didn't? What effect would I see in my loaf if I used the whole egg?

While it might seem like a drastic step to double the amount of egg in your recipe, in fact, you are not adding that much more egg relative to the amounts of your other ingredients.

A whole large egg weighs about 50 grams and is roughly 75% water so that extra half egg will contribute just under 20 grams of additional liquid to your recipe - you will need to compensate for that additional liquid either by reducing your water contribution accordingly or by adding a little extra flour (like 30-ish grams).

That means you are only adding an additional 5 grams of protein and fat from the egg by including that extra half.  You will probably notice a slightly more tender or soft texture in your finished loaf from the slight increase in egg.

Since texture and flavor are so subjective and difficult to describe, the best way I can think of to communicate the possible change is to ask you to think about Challah bread.  Challah bread owes much of its characteristic texture, color, and flavor to the inclusion of a lot of egg in the dough.  While adding that extra half egg won't bring your recipe into Challah territory, it will advance your bread's texture, color, and flavor along the spectrum in the Challah direction.


Can gelatin change color of butterfly pea tea? I can't find the answer for this question anywhere on the internet. My friend and I made butterfly pea jelly with gelatin and we used the same recipe. Mine came out fine with blue color of butterfly pea flowers but my friend's changed its color to dark purple after adding gelatin.
My friend lives in Asia and me in Europe, so I think our source of ingredients (gelatin, water, flowers) is different. Plus, our method is slightly different. My friend heated the tea to melt gelatin while I stired gelatin over hot water to melt it and then mixed it up with the tea.
My friend is pretty sure it was because of gelatin because she didn't have this problem when trying with agar agar. Although I know butterfly pea tea is very sensitive to pH, I just can't find a good explanation for this. Is it really because of gelatin?

From the Gelatin Manufacturer's Institute of America "Gelatin Handbook": https://nitta-gelatin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/GMIA_Gelatin-Handbook.pdf

Gelatin in solution is amphoteric, capable of acting either as an acid or as a base. In acidic solutions gelatin is positively charged and migrates as a cation in an electric field.  In alkaline solutions gelatin is negatively charged and migrates as an anion.  The pH of the intermediate point, where the net charge is zero and no movement occurs, is known as the Isoelectric Point (IEP) (28).  Type A gelatin has a broad isoelectric range between pH 7 and 9. Type B has a narrower isoelectric range between pH 4.7 and 5.4 (29-32)

Emphasis mine.
So it does not seem impossible that your various brands of gelatin were produced by different processes and that one would be more acidic than the other. If you had a Type A gelatin and your friend a low-pH Type B, that would explain what you were seeing.
I do not think your method of heating had any effect.


Cleaning out coffee pots and thermoses Is there a commonly available cleaning solution I can use for coffee pots and infuser thermoses for coffee and tea?

I have a number of these that are starting to show coffee stains and particle buildup from coffee and tea. For coffee pots (back when I worked in restaurants in my youth), we had a white powder that worked well, but I have no idea what it actually is. I've bought "coffee pot cleaner powder" online, but it's just dishwasher detergent, and it leaves a slimy, soapy residue that takes a lot of blasting with scalding hot water to fully clean out the slime and taste. This is easy for coffee pots, but would ruin my thermoses and contigo mugs.

Is there an easy to use cleaner available to consumers for cleaning out glassware that isn't just rebranded dishwasher detergent?

Thank you.

We brew beer at home, so we have a product that does a really good job of this, called PBW (Powdered Brewery Wash). Our stainless steel coffee thermoses come out like new. The product description from a site that offers it reads:

  PBW (Powdered Brewery Wash) is a patented alkali cleaner originally developed for Coors, now widely used in commercial breweries across North America. Use 1 to 2 ounces per gallon for cleaning kettles, 3/4 ounce per gallon for fermenters, kegs, tanks, and other equipment. Soak equipment overnight in PBW solution; rinse the following morning - no scrubbing required! Will not damage rubber gaskets, soft metals, or your skin. PBW can effectively clean items that can't be reached with a brush or sponge, and is strong enough to remove thick, difficult, caked-on organic soils.

That said, we already have this product. I've been doing some research and it sounds like Oxiclean actually works about as well and you may already have some at home - and if not, you can likely find it more easily.


Advice on rendering schmaltz I'd like to try rendering schmaltz, and to that end have been stripping skin off the store rotisserie chickens my family buys (I've got two chickens-worth of skin atm). In doing some research I found a detailed article from The Splendid Table, but noticed that in their pictures the skin is raw to start. Is there no point to my trying to render from roasted skin? If so...any advice on what to do with all this roasted skin? I was thinking maybe a variation on bacon salt....

Also, whether I get to rendering schmaltz now or later, any general advice? I've had bad experiences with rendering fats in the past, but I'm pretty sure it was due to my lack of patience. As far as I can tell, it's very low heat and a lot of time that renders fat properly.

Thank you in advance!

Most of the fat has already been rendered out of roasted chicken skin. I wouldn't bother trying to render more. Crisp it in the oven, crumble it roughly, and sprinkle it over things, if you're looking for something to do with it.

As for rendering schmalz, it's not difficult. Go slow and start with a bit of other fat if you're not using a non-stick pan.


Is it safe to eat raw eggs? I have a friend that is training for a marathon and he drinks 6 raw eggs before running (Yes, like Rocky) - is this safe?

Food safety experts and government organizations target their recommendations to what's safest for everyone, and would recommend against this. However, "safe" is a subjective term. It's all about managing risk levels. The odds of a given egg containing salmonella or other food-borne illness are pretty low. A healthy adult with a normal immune system can probably fend off any nasties, or at least recover from illness.

The source of the eggs has an effect on the risk levels as well, I believe. Organic free-range eggs are probably less risky than supermarket brands.


How can I flavor my ganache? I am trying to make an orange flavored ganache for an orange hostess cupcake. I'm thinking of using white chocolate chips but I'm afraid the orange flavoring and coloring will make the ganache clomp up. Has anyone tried this or have ideas on how it will work out?

As long as you add enough liquid to the chocolate, it won't clomp up. This means you'll have to add your liquid flavoring to the cream and mix it well. Afterwards, make the ganache as any other white ganache, you shouldn't have any problems. Chips are even less likely to be a problem than real chocolate.


How can I bolster up a boxed cake mix? Is there anything I can add to/change about a store bought white or yellow cake mix to take it from ordinary to extraordinary?

There are a couple of cookbooks by Anne Byrn who has built a franchise on this subject.  Her best known book (and the one I have) is titled The Cake Mix Doctor. written specifically on this subject.

Go to her website http://www.cakemixdoctor.com as there are several recipes and articles as well a listing of her books.


If bacon tastes like fish, is it still good to eat? I've had some bacon in the freezer for a few weeks, got it out and fried it up today, and it tastes like fish.

Is it still good to eat?

No, there was no fish in the freezer
No, there was no fish cooked on the frying pan previouslyl

I raise my own pigs and don't feed them any fish. I feed all kinds of fruit, avos, eggs, acacia tree leaves, red apple succulent etc. All past pigs were excellent and not fishy. I never had the fish taste problem before this"girl" pig. It tastes like fish when cooked. It is like fresh fish, not fishy bad fish. It does not smell like fish or good or bad. I was wondering if it had to do with her having had a hip injury when she was young. She limped and did not run around much. Some other parts do not taste like fish. I keep it in the deep freezer well wrapped with no fish. I ate it and it seems fine.


Does an electric grill make it faster than a pan? My teflon pan heats up for several seconds (to roasting temperature). When I tried 1500W teflon electric grill (in a shop) it took much longer. But electric grill is two sided, so parallel roasting of two sides. So what is quicker and how much?

They are different tools.

The main problem with an electric grill (two sided) is that is has a lot more parts and pieces that can break and is harder to clean.

The other big problem of an electric grill, is that it is mostly a single use tool compared to a frying pan that you can use for a ton of different applications.

For example, you want to grill some chicken breasts, you can do it in a pan and in a two sided electric grill; but lets say you want to make a sauce/gravy, in the case of the frying pan, you already have the tool to do it, in the case of the grill, you will have to use another tool  (pot or pan) to do it.

As for the cost, here, in Canada, you can find cheap ones (foreman grill) at around 30$.


What kind of chili peppers are these? Having a long weekend, we have some new recipes we want to try. I found this recipe for  Fried Green Chili Stuffed With Pork Stuffing .

Unfortunately, the recipe doesn't say what type of chilies these are. They appear to be longer but more slender than a jalapeño, and just a little lighter in color. Per the recipe, each chili would hold roughly 62g of the stuffing.

I'm sure that I have seen these but can't remember what kind they are. I've been looking online, as well, but haven't found any that really look like they are these chilies.

We're going on the hunt. If anyone can tell me the name of this chili pepper it would be most appreciated.

Those are "standard" green chilies. They might be Anaheim, California, New Mexico or Hatch. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the varieties are interchangeable. Just know that the New Mexico or Hatch varieties are hotter.

It may be a Chinese recipe, but I'm guessing that the chili is New World.


What effect would boiling for 1 minute and resting have on a vinegar-based BBQ sauce? I'm making a Carolina-style BBQ sauce (specifically Piedmont-style), so it's supposed to be a thin and vinegary sauce. The recipe is basically: 2 cups vinegar, 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar, 1 tablespoon each of ketchup and hot sauce, plus some salt and pepper. The instructions call for it to be brought to a boil for a minute, and then it should be refrigerated overnight.

Since the sauce is supposed to be thin, and we're only boiling for a minute, the desired effect cannot be to reduce the liquids. Is there some other sort of chemical reaction that this is supposed to produce? Also, what effect would the overnight rest have on the sauce -- I don't see the flavors mellowing in the bottle, really. I'm wondering if these are just some urban lore bits being passed down that have little actual effect on the end result.

I would think that the boil is simply to dissolve the sugar and salt.  I am sure you could consume it right away, but  there is definitely something to flavors melding with time.


Are there food combinations that are dangerous? Is there a combination of ingredients that will chemically interact to create poison?  I am interested in whether this possible with any common preparation method (e.g. via cooking, blending, whisking, microwaving) but not by burning the food or leaving the food out to be contaminated by bacteria.  I am interested in any ingredients that on their own are approved by some country's government as safe.

Basically everything at all normal is safe.

There is a mushroom that gets toxic if combined with alcohol, but alcohol itself isn't 100% safe and if you're gathering wild mushrooms you need to be safety conscious, so it's not really something you could run into by accident or with storebought ingredients.

Relevant paragraph from Wikipedia

  Consuming Coprinopsis atramentaria within a few hours of alcohol results in a "disulfiram syndrome". This interaction has only been known since the early part of the twentieth century. Symptoms include facial reddening, nausea, vomiting, malaise, agitation, palpitations and tingling in limbs, and arise five to ten minutes after consumption of alcohol. If no more alcohol is consumed, they will generally subside over two or three hours. Symptom severity is proportional to the amount of alcohol consumed, becoming evident when blood alcohol concentration reaches 5 mg/dL, and prominent at concentrations of 50–100 mg/dL. Disulfiram has, however, been known to cause myocardial infarction (heart attack). The symptoms can occur if even a small amount of alcohol is consumed up to three days after eating the mushrooms, although they are milder as more time passes. Rarely, a cardiac arrhythmia, such as atrial fibrillation on top of supraventricular tachycardia, may develop.


Is pre-cooked beef that's not completely dehydrated safe to leave out? Recently, I pan-fried a beef tenderloin (grass fed) till it was medium rare. Then, after slicing it into chunks and marinating it for two hours, I dehydrated it for five hours. After dehydration, the insides of some chunks were still soft, slightly like a very well-done steak, not like dried out jerky—though the outsides of all chunks were thoroughly dry.

Is leaving the soft chunks out in a sealed bag likely safe, or are they a big risk of foodborne illness? They'll be consumed within a week or two.

Here's a picture for reference:

It's probably not safe because your beef isn't fully dehydrated. Chunks don't dehydrate very quickly, which is why they are still soft in the middle - there's still moisture in there. Next time slice it thinly.


Processed cheese in pesto I have a full grown Basil plant at my home. So I am planning to make a Basil recipe, though I have never made one. So I decided to make pesto pasta. However due to the pandemic, the nearby shops have very limited products hence I wont be able to  add Parmesan cheese. So can I use processed cheese in its place?

Processed cheese isn't a good replacement for parmesan, it's generally too soft from added oils, and it doesn't have the right flavor. Instead, add more pine nuts, and salt to taste, leaving the cheese out entirely. If you can't find pine nuts then cashews or almonds can be used instead.
If you decide to try it use a bit less olive oil to make up for the oils in the cheese.


Are mushrooms with interior holes ok? When I started to cut up these store bought mushrooms, I saw there were holes in them. There weren't any holes or spots visible on the exterior. Are they still safe to eat? They also started to turn a bit pink after cutting, maybe some oxidation but it seems unusual.

I buy these all the time and I've never seen these kind of holes in them.

Those holes are most likely caused by some kind of larva(pdf), such as mushroom maggots.

While disgusting, such larva are harmless to humans, and the holes they leave behind are equally harmless. Since you just seem to have the holes, I wouldn't worry about it.


How do I add a strawberry swirl to my cheesecake without cracks and craters? I have recently experimented with adding a strawberry swirl to my cheesecake. I am using homemade strawberry jam to swirl in the flavor. Everything has gone great with it other than I get a bunch of big red craters! What am I doing wrong? How do I make a strawberry swirl without having the cheesecake full of the cracks and craters?

Here is a second picture after it cools a bit. Some of the crack come back together and others are still wide open.

Edit:

I was using this recipe and then added my own swirl: https://sugarspunrun.com/best-cheesecake-recipe/

I'd mix a small amount of your cheesecake batter with your strawberry component to help with it's bake stability. Try that and swirl that in. Hope that helps.


Burned water out of pot...popping sound a month later? A month ago I foolishly left a pot of water on to boil WAY too long.  It was a small pot and all the water was gone (though it had been covered) and it continued to sit on the stove burner with the flame on until I remembered much later on.
When I realized, I let it cool down and heard crackling as it did (which I'm told was the sediment deposition on the bottom).  The pot (All-Clad, stainless steel) was discolored (though looked kind of cool) and with some advice from here and other sites, I cleaned it as best I could (white vinegar, barkeeper's, dishwasher).  The pot still looks discolored but has worked fine, though the water appeared to boil strangely at times (with unusual bubble patterns that hadn't been there before), but no big deal.
I only use the small pot for boiling water.  But today, about a month after this happened, I put about half a cup of hot water from the faucet in it and i heard a loud pop.  Thinking this unusual, I thought maybe I misheard and I heated up the water as normal.  Then I heard a few more (but softer) pops.  Finally, the water was boiled, I took the pot off the flame, and left it to cool on a cold burner.  POP another strong one!
My thinking/hope was that the pot was ok because it's stainless steel and based on what I've read, permanent damage was unlikely after my initial over-heating incident.  But I have no explanation (nor can find one) about this new popping, long after this happened.  And I'm worried that the pot might split or shatter, or that it might be dangerous in another way.
Any information or advice?
Thanks!

If you heated the metal to the point where you get rainbow colors on the surface after cooling, you'll likely have tempered and nontempered  areas on the pan bottom. These areas 1) have different coefficients of thermal expansion and 2) can move around with subsequent heating. The pops are likely the bottom of your pan buckling as it adjusts to different parts of itself expanding/contracting at different rates. I wouldn't worry about it.


Can I make potato dauphinoise/potato gratin/gratin dauphinoise without cream and just milk? Tonight I'm going to make potato dauphinoise but I don't have any cream - at all - and all the recipes call for it!  I should also note I have no creme fraiche or fromage frais or plain yoghurt e.t.c just milk and cheese (cheddar, unfortunately no gruyere or ementhal). Can I make it without cream or should I make a bechamel instead?

At first I thought there wouldn't be enough moisture in a potato/bechamel combination to cook the potatoes, but a little searching on Google reveals a few recipes with non-parboiled potatoes and bechamel sauce - so go for it.

Example:
Bechamel Potatoes


What happens to the heat/capsaicin content of a pepper when you roast it? We received some extremely hot peppers of some sort in our CSA bin. They're a light green color and look like under-ripe habaneros, and we can't for the life of us figure out what kind of pepper they are. My dad used to tell me that eating spicy things would "put hair on my chest," but I think these peppers would burn the hair right off of my body, given the chance.

Since I'm not the biggest fan of deathly spicy peppers, we're considering roasting them to reduce their heat to something similar to the peppers we normally use. I'm curious what happens to the capsaicin content of the pepper as a result of roasting it. Does anyone know how that works?

I don't believe roasting will reduce the 'heat' of the peppers, only make them tastier and more easily digested.

Only removing the seeds and the white membrane inside will reduce the heat, as far as I know.


What is this green cake with plastic-y texture, found at an Asian store? While shopping at the local Asian store, I found a funny, green cake that looked interesting, so I bought a piece. It looks like this:

I discovered that it has a very strange texture (as seen in this video). Can anyone help identifying it? The store advertised itself as "Thai", though I'm not convinced that that actually means anything, since I'm living in Germany.

Looks like Vietnamese Honeycomb Cake made with pandan and tapioca:

http://danangcuisine.com/recipes/recipe-28-banh-bo-nuong-vietnamese-honeycomb-cake/


Sourdough starter began acting strange after storing in fridge I recently began developing a sourdough starter and it seemed much easier than it sounded - within a few days it was growing well and smelled good (like yeasty bread dough). On about day 5 or 6, I had to go away for the weekend, and so I stored the starter in my fridge, and now it's acting sort of strange.

Before I went away, I fed the starter and put it in the fridge right away. When I came back 2 days later it had still grown in the fridge. Not as much as usual; before my trip the starter was maybe growing from 1 cup to almost 3 cups, now it was closer to two. This, I think is expected - being in the fridge would retard the yeast's activities.

In any case, I took out the starter and let it sit for an hour or two to get it back to a more normal room temperature, and fed it again. (I think it missed 1, maybe 2 feedings because I was out of town.)

Anyway, now that I am back to regular feedings the starter is still growing well and then falling (which I believe is what it should do when it eats up all the food). But it's doing it really fast. I.e. in less than 12 hours. And then the starter begins to smell weird, like alcohol. It's pretty intense.

What happened to the yeasty smell? That was much nicer than this new, alcoholic development. I read online that the alcohol smell comes when the yeast run out of food and switch from aerobic to anaerobic mode. Should I really be feeding it more than once a day?

Sourdough starters are rarely completely ruined, unless you're growing significant amounts of mold or something.

It is possible that your refrigerated "break" early in establishing your starter ended up hurting the yeast population and accidentally selected for something else (perhaps undesirable bacteria) that is now growing and creating odd odors.

It's also possible that your starter is perfectly healthy and well-established.  A strong starter should often rise and begin to fall in 12 hours or less.  Mature starters tend to go through a cycle where they smell yeasty as they are expanding, have alcohol notes around the time of collapse, and then acidic (vinegar/acetic acid and lactic acid) notes as they age further, due to bacteria converting the yeast waste products into acids.

Have you tried to bake with your starter yet?  I'd see how well it works and whether it can successfully leaven bread dough.  If so, it's probably fine.  Starters do often go through periods of odd smells and weird behavior in the first couple weeks, but they'll stabilize after more regular feedings as a more consistent set of microorganisms becomes permanently established.

You don't mention any liquid floating on top ("hooch") or any discoloration.  If those were appearing, I might be a little more concerned.  If not, try baking a small loaf with it, and see what happens.  My guess is that it won't be very sour, but with a feeding regime like you have, it probably shouldn't be.

Lastly, you asked about whether more frequent feeding is required.  I don't think so, given how much you dilute your starter during feeding.  Twice per day feedings are recommended at room temperature for those who do something like a 1:1:1 (i.e., 1 part starter:1 part flour:1 part water by weight) or 1:2:2 feeding.  You're doing something closer to 1:8:8, which means it will take longer for the yeast to process all the new flour and then for the bacteria to deal with those waste products.  The only danger with such high dilution in young starters is that microorganisms actually present in the flour may still be able to overwhelm the things you want to grow and/or the starter may not be developing enough acidity by the end of your growth cycle to kill off those bad things.

Does your starter smell (or taste) acidic right before you feed it?  (It doesn't have to be strongly acidic, but at least mildly so.)  If so, I think your starter is likely very healthy and having youthful growth spurts.

In any case, I'd test it in a batch of dough before trying to diagnose further.  In a worst case scenario, as long as you're getting some acidity before feeding (and not seeing mold, hooch, discoloration, or other weird things besides the odor), you should just keep feeding regularly, and it will likely sort itself out in a week or so.


How much brown sugar should I substitute for white sugar? I'm making a cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries and want to substitute brown sugar for the 1 cup of white sugar without making the sauce sweeter.  What quantity of brown sugar do you suggest?

Dupe, but a good question. See Satanicpuppies answer here: Brown sugar instead of white sugar

I know you asked re: cranberry sauce specifically, but this is a great article regarding the differences in sugars, generically, which might help in the future:

"Sugar can be a single molecule made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen—like glucose and fructose. Other sugars, like sucrose, or white table sugar, are made up of multiple molecules (in this case, one glucose and one fructose), tied together with chemical bonds. Now, when sucrose is heated with an acid, it breaks back down into the two smaller sugars, glucose and fructose, resulting in something we call invert sugar. This small chemical change makes a big difference: While sucrose is hygroscopic, invert sugar is even more water-loving.

And this can make a tremendous difference when, say, you want to bake a chewy, rather than crunchy, cookie."

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/cooking-science/2012/10/we-prove-it-sugar-changes-texture-and-sweetness/


What is the difference between custard pie and custard tart? What's the difference between a custard pie and a custard tart? I looked at "Pie" vs "Tart"?, but it doesn't really answer my question as a custard pie does not really have a lid.

I would think that the pie is baked and the tart not but then again Portuguese custard tarts are indeed baked.

Pies originally were specifically to denote enclosed items (the crust sealed the item that was to be eaten).  In many cases, the crust wasn't actually eaten -- it was a nasty charred thing that was discarded.

In time, pie crusts improved to the point at which you'd eat the whole thing ... but the star was the filling, not the crust.

Tarts, on the other hand, are closer to a shortbread cookie with some sort of a topping.  The crust is typically a critical part of the item, rather than just being a container for something else.  (which in part is why people mention tarts being more shallow; there's a higher proportion of crust to filling).

So, my best attempt at determining if I should call something a pie or a tart.  Note that these are in order.  (as I'm trying to make sure that 'pizza' is a pie, not a tat)

fully enclosed by crust : pie
full bottom crust, with a crumb or lattice top : pie
no crust at all : not a tart, but not a pie, either.
has no sugar or fat in the crust : pie
chewy, flaky or crumb crust : pie
not structurally sound enough to be picked up and eaten one-handed : pie
was cooked in a tart pan : tart
baked without a pan : galette
over 2" / 5cm tall (not counting whipped cream or berries) : pie
less than 6" / 15cm across : tart
shortbread crust : tart

... I have no idea what I'd categorize thing that didn't match something already.


Does cutting sweet potatoes with non stainless steel knives cause oxidation poisoning? I have found when cutting up sweet potatoes prior to cooking that the cut edges go grey or black when soaked in warm water. I read on another site that using a carbon or non stainless steel knife causes oxidization. So my question is, if this be true, is it a health hazard?

Oxidation is not a health hazard, no matter how you spell it. Your sweet potatoes are as healthy kind of brown as they ever were.


Can you assemble lasagna one day, and then bake it about 24 hrs later? I've always made it on the spot and cooked it then and there, but would like to make at home and take it to a large party the next day and cook it then - will it work?

Yes, and I find it taste better.  When I make lasagna I will not fully cook the pasta.  Instead, I keep a pot of boiling water and I dip the pasta into it to soften while I'm assembling the dish; the pasta is in the water for less than one minute.  The pasta seems to absorb more of the sauce, keeping the flavor but making a dish that does not fall apart as easily.


Parcooking carrots and green beans for an already well-seasoned casserole I will be heating an otherwise perfectly-seasoned casserole dish for an hour.  (Time constraint non-negotiable! But temperature flexible.)  I want to add fresh carrots and green beans but am wondering how long to parcook them (respectively) so they will be just right after an hour in a very moist dish of meat and veloute.  Any suggestions?

In my experience, carrots at about 1.5-2cm thickness will be cooked through after an hour at a bare simmer. You might consider slightly browning, rather than boiling them before adding them to the mixture, for flavor, and to get them up to temperature. As for green beans, (depending on how you like them ) add them 10 -15 minutes before the end of your cooking time?

But if you really don't want to shift the flavor, why not cook them exactly to your liking and add them right at the end, just before service? More like a garnish than an ingredient. Plenty of traditional French stews do this with bacon, caramelized onions, mushrooms .. etc.


Pressure cooker missing a part. How do I fix it? I inherited an old pressure cooker from a friend, but it seems to be missing a part. I locked it down and boiled some water in it.

So it looks like they had some tape or something over the red arrow valve. The green arrow valve never popped up, and I was unable to get any psi on the gauge. Once the water came to a boil, a vent of steam (and a bit of water) came out of the red arrow valve.

Can anyone tell me the name of the part that is needed at the red arrow?

Thanks.

I don't have the reputation to comment on your answer. Thanks for the help. The only indication of model or type is "LISTED 409A" on the bottom of the vessel. I'll be sure to get the proper pressure regulator.

Second edit. Actually found the model number. 0178107. 26091G3

It's good that the "green arrow valve" never popped up; that's the safety fuse, and only "pops" (destructively, and probably spraying food onto the ceiling) when the cooker pressure goes way too high.

The missing part is the pressure regulator, gauge or counterweight. The pressure cooker won't work without it. It blocks steam coming out of the vent until the steam pressure gets high enough to push the regulator up off the vent, thus limiting the internal pressure.

These are usually pretty easy to replace, as they are easy to lose.

It's important to get the right one, to use the wrong one could be very dangerous!

Your cooker is made by Presto. Presto calls that part a pressure regulator, as well as I can tell: http://www.pressurecooker-outlet.com/Presto-Pressure-Cooker-Parts.htm


What should I look for in an electric steamer for use to make tamales I don't know a whole lot about what makes an electric steamer a good steamer. I'm looking for recommendations for one where I'm hoping to make tamales with. The plan is to make large batches so capacity is definitely a concern. Would the multi-level steamers work?

Any specific recommendations would be great. Any suggestions on what features to look for would also be appreciated.

I have never cooked tamales before, but when looking for something that needs to get hot (griddle, waffle iron, steamer)

Get something made out of metal. Plastic will not get as hot and will warp over time.
Avoid Low/Med/High dials, get something that will tell you the actual temperature.
Even heat distribution is key. Make sure the element/steam is not lopsided.

Some things that I would go for would be a glass top, a digital dial, and a safety power cord that detaches from the unit if yanked.


How do I interpret this date on tortillas? This is printed on the package of corn tortillas DA JUN 17 19 L3 15:18.  What does this mean?

You could guess it's Best Before June 17th 2019, but the only way to confirm it would be check a new pack at the supermarket & see if it's a couple of months ahead of that, with a similar pattern, e.g. Oct 05 19 etc would confirm it.

Either that or it's the manufacture date.

Depending on when you bought them would hint as to which it might be.


Bread won't rise during proof after overnight fermentation Whenever I try overnight fermentation for better flavor,  I find that bread won't rise so much after it has been shaped. The dough rises beautifully during the first fermentation on the first day so yeasts were definitely active the night before. Is it possible that yeast has died off overnight? I follow the rather conventional procedure of kneading-first fermentation at warm temperature-deflating a bit and putting in fridge overnight-shaping-proofing-baking. I allow adequate spacing during proofing process and of course overnight fermentation is done in the fridge.

Overnight proofing in the fridge is a great way to improve flavor, as you suggest (creating more alcohol and allowing a better gluten structure). There are a couple of things you should keep in mind. First is the temperature and length of your bulk fermentation. Too long and/or at too high a temp it could be using up most of the sugars, and the yeast could be simply running out of food. Are you doing this fermentation above 75°F? Second, too much salt in the dough will negatively affect your proof.


How to make fried chicken tender and juicy? I prepare fried chicken (imitating broasted chicken) at home. Normally to make it tender and juicy I will add baking soda (gives unpleasant flavor) or glutamate, but it doesn't make it that tender. How do I make it as tender and juicy as broasted chicken in restaurants?

The correct answer to any question following the template of "how do I get (some meat) to come out tender when I (some cooking method) it?" is: don't overcook it.

It's seriously not rocket science. Cooking meat dries it out as moisture evaporates.

The second, and perhaps dominant factor is that in overcooked meat—anything above about 165 F / 74 C, all of the proteins in the meat are fully coagulated.  They have squeezed into tight little balls, squeezing out liquid, and taking on a rubbery texture.  This effect cannot be reversed.

Overcooked meat is too dry, which gives it a tough and sinewy texture.

For other tips on making fried chicken more like what you've had in restaurants (very few of which are "broasting" it), see:

How to imitate commercial fried chicken?


Baking bread for fishing bait I would like to experiment a little with new fish bait. So I want to make special bread for fishing with specific aromas and tastes like this bread.

Bread needs to be elastic and rubbery-spongy, so it will stay on the hook, but should not be crumbly. It will be perfect if it can be dehydrated for later use, but after hydration should retain the same characteristics as a fresh one.

According to my small knowledge in baking bread, I think adding more semolina in the bread flour will increase the percentage of gluten. Is there any easy accessible product I can use to make bread with these characteristics?

What about seitan (wheat gluten) (also available in dried form as e.g. chips)

or fried (and dried, not shown in the picture) tofu bits

or tofu skin?

Pro: All these kinds of food are dryable and rubbery.
Con: I suspect that you can't make this at home - it would be very time-consuming. (Hm, except the tofu. Buy fresh tofu, slice them into little cubes and fry them. Anthoer con: this might by much more expensive than baking bread :-)


What do you have for breakfast during camping What are some camping breakfast options if I do not wish to carry eggs? (They break)

Oatmeal. Before you leave, mix the oats with whatever you like: brown sugar, spices, a little salt, nuts, dried fruit, even powdered milk. Boil water and mix it in your bowl so that's all you have to wash; you can boil extra water and get tea or coffee at the same time. (Other fast-cooking hot cereals would work too - I know of instant grits and instant cream of wheat, though I can't vouch for quality.)

I'm not sure if you're trying to avoid ice chests too, but there's always yogurt, or milk and cereal (something more solid like granola). And of course, fresh fruit is also always good with any meal.

For hot meals, I think baka's suggestion of premade pancake mix is probably the next best. If you're a more do-it-yourself type, you can make the mix yourself (using powdered eggs and powdered milk), but storebought will probably serve you quite well - and again, you can premix with extra ingredients like nuts, or spices for gingerbread pancakes, if you want something more exciting.


Is eating rice well after its use-by date a bad idea? I got a "Paella kit" for my birthday recently. It consists of a pan, some rice, some spices, and some instructions.

Unfortunately, upon inspecting the rice packet I see that its "best before" date is June 2015 (ie. about 8 months ago).

Rice isn't particularly expensive, so should I just replace it? (Rather than possibly dying a horrible death?).

The rice is "Spanish Rice special for Paella".

If it is not OK to eat, what sort of rice should I substitute for "Paella rice"?

Rice is one of those dry staples that last a looooong time if stored properly, which in this case means cool and dry and safe from insects.

The more critical part is the seasoning. Ground spices tend to loose aroma quickly. This does not mean they will necessarily turn bad, but possibly a bit bland. Mold is only a problem when humidity comes into the equation, like with the rice.

Even more critical is fats. Some spice mixes contain fats, they can go rancid after a while. I suggest you check the label.

So:

check the rice for "critters" and their traces
sniff at your seaoning mix in case something smells off

And if everything seems ok, enjoy your paella.

Edit as your question focuses on the rice:

White rice stays safe "indefinetively", brown rice has a limited shelf life of a few months as its fats can turn rancid. See Still Tasty for more.

In the unlikely case that your rice is off (or for future paella dishes), use the so-called bomba or Calasparra rice. A Spanish short grain rice with a lower starch content than the Arborio used for a ceamy risotto.

For substitutes, sources are at odds:

some say use arborio for the most similar grains, but you'll get more sticky results
others favour long grain rices because the rice is less sticky.


How to keep dumplings from quickly drying out Last night, I assembled a few (around 2 dozen) dumplings from simple wrappers made from just flour and boiling water. I kept the wrappers under a wet towel because the edges started to dry out really quickly, but by the time I was done assembling them all, the filled dumplings were getting dry.

Is there a way, other than keeping everything under a damp towel, to keep them from drying out so quickly?

I should also add that I left the dough to rise in the fridge for a day in a kinda damp towel in a plastic container, maybe that has to do with it? But the dough wasn't dry went a rolled it out.

Dumpling wrappers are by nature prone to drying out. A wet towel will only work to a degree. If the filled dumplings dry out slightly, it’s not too critical (note that I wrote slightly), so temporarily covering them with a humid towel or putting them in a sealed container should suffice, but the wrappers alone will become brittle and unusable.

If you don’t have a bunch of friends or family so that you can work in an assembly-line, rolling just a few wrappers at time is the best way. How many will depend on your how nimble your fingers are and what kind of pleat you are doing. Maybe start with around five to ten and adjust accordingly.

Then either cook all dumplings after you are done wrapping, or cook batches while rolling, filling and pleating the next. This will need some more time management and multitasking and it’s your choice which one fits your needs and general preferences.


Can a food contain 'extra' sodium? I have always heard how food companies deliberately add 'extra' sodium to make foodstuffs like fried snacks and instant noodles addictive. But my question is, if I were to make the same food at home, won't I add an equivalent amount of sodium to get that taste? Or is some of the sodium content somehow 'hidden' in the food industries' products?
I get that flavour enhancers like supersalt and MSG have sodium in it. But doesn't the addition of those in packaged foodstuffs compensate for some of the salt that would otherwise be added?
Update: I am talking about extra sodium being added without an effect on taste, or it being added in a way that we get a greater 'kick' from the food, rather than the sodium being hidden in some way.

I think you've misunderstood people talking about sodium; I would expect they are generally just talking about table salt, NaCl.
Addressing your question about quantity, it's very common that when cooking, people judge ingredients by eye and by their expectation of what a normal quantity would be, so use much less salt than a restaurant or commercial preparation. (Something similar is true of butter.) Commercial ice cream, for example, will contain salt, but home ice cream makers are unlikely to include much if any.
If you want to think of that as 'hiding' sodium in products, I suppose that's reasonable, but it's not being done through mystery sodium compounds you're not aware of.


Does anyone know why when we add vinegar to rice its texture changes? I would like to understand "chemically" what happens I'm trying to improve my brown rice recipe, and although I put some vinegar in it, I still don't understand how it works. Does it make the rice stickier or looser?

Acids lower the pH, making amylase less effective in breaking down starch into sugar. I believe with rice it helps remove the starch from the rice as well, so adding vinegar to rice will make it less sticky. Rinsing the rice well before cooking will also make it less sticky (because you're rinsing off the starch).


Vegemite beyond expiry date? We've got a small jar of Vegemite that the kids are slowly nibbling away at, and I just realized it has a best-before date of three months ago.  At the current rate of consumption, there's another six months to go before it's gone.  We're keeping it in the fridge, and it shows no visible signs of going bad so far.

How long is it safe to keep, and how do we know it's gone bad?  Bear in mind this is pretty funky-smelling stuff in the first place.

Also, just how bad an idea is it to reuse a knife that's previously been used to spread butter to scoop out Vegemite?

Update: On further inspection, the date on the bottom of the jar is just a date, it's not labeled as "best before" or "use by" anywhere on the jar.  Definitely not the date of manufacture though, and the official Vegemite FAQ implies it's a best-before date.

Also, this somewhat amusing Metafilter thread about whether somebody should eat seven-year-old Vegemite, the general consensus being "it's probably OK".

Best-before dates aren't the same as use-by dates. Whilst you shouldn't consume a product after it's use-by date, best-before dates are more about quality than safety. Basically, after the best-before date, the product may start to deteriorate in terms of flavour, but that doesn't mean you can't still eat it.

I'd expect that the salt content of Vegemite would keep it sound for a long time. I've certainly had half-eaten jars of Marmite (sorry, I'm a Marmite guy, not Vegemite) kicking around in the pantry for way longer than they ought, and they've been just fine.

Butter and breadcrumbs from the knife may well develop mould if they're left in the jar for a while, but that would normally just be on the surface and easily removed. Much better to remove crumbs before they get to that stage - or, easier, just use a clean knife.


How do I fry potatoes for curry? I have been failing, for six years, to make the amazing fried potato curry I grew up eating at home in India. I honestly don't know what I'm doing wrong. I have tried literally every single variety of potatoes I can get my hands on at my Trader Joe's: Russett, Golden, Red, White, you name it.

I cut up the potatoes into small, uniform cubes so that there is a larger surface area to work with; I first add oil (I've worked with olive and canola oil) to my pot and let it sit until I can feel it get hot. I then add my spices (cumin seeds, mustard seeds, curry leaves and green chilies) and let it all splutter nicely. Then I add my potatoes.

Every single time, the potatoes end up not getting fried, rather, they end up sticking to the bottom. I then up adding more water or more oil with increasing frustration to try and get the potatoes off the bottom; they only get more and more mashed. As a result, I've never been able to eat my favourite curry, and end up with a subpar dish that's neither your American mashed potatoes nor your Indian potato curry.

What am I doing wrong?

There are two easy ways to prepare dry potato fry/curry. First one which I always use is first boil the potatoes till tender (not mushy though), peel and cube them. It is important that they are firm and hold their shape . Then proceed with frying.  Add oil, temper spices, add the potatoes, do the seasoning, let the outside gets crusty(fryed) and there you have it . This method works fine and you won't find potatoes sticking to the bottom. The second method is direct cooking of potatoes in the pan(which you mentioned) and yes, they tend to stick to the bottom. I suggest you cut the potatoes into smaller pieces and use a non stick pan for frying. (To ensure it doesn't stick also to ensure it absorbs less oil). If you do not have non stick pan, then try frying with a little more oil than usual, give it some time, and then turn gently. It's ok if they stick little bit. They come off as u keep frying. Fry in low flame to begin with. And don't add spices like chilly powder or salt at the very beginning. They may stick to the bottom making the already existing problem multiply, and will get burnt. Once the potatoes are almost cooked and do no more stick to the pan, add the seasoning. I use both these methods for cooking potatoes and they work exceptionally well. Of course both have their own taste. Hope it's clear now. All the best!


Please identify this nut covered cheese During breakfast at my hotel in Germany, I saw this kind of cheese. Can anyone help to name it?

As I can remember, it tastes a bit sweet on the nuts.

This is most likely the “Castello” rum-and-nut covered cream cheese ring by Arla. The shape, the chopped nuts and slight sweetness are pretty unique.

Arla sells its products in supermarkets, but is also a big supplier for larger catering customers. You should be able to find it in most larger supermarkets.


If I want my garlic to taste in a very specific way (with bite or without bite) what should I do? I don't always want my garlic to taste the same way. Sometimes I want only the deep umami flavor without the bite (so I let it cook more) and sometimes I look for a strong garlic bite presence in the dish.

I know it depends on how you slice and cook it, but I would like to know the science behind it. My questions:

If you want to have a strong garlic bite, how should you dice the garlic, at what temperature to fry it and for how long?
Same as above, only without the bite.
What "signs" (the smell, the look etc) can cue you in on what "stage" the garlic is right now (strong bite, mellow bite etc)?
Are there general guidelines that you should always follow (like always saute garlic on low heat)?

Garlic strength is mainly down to how much you cook the garlic, and how finely you chop it (different varieties of garlic notwithstanding). Simply put, the less you cook it and the finer you chop it, the more bite it will have.

So you can alter those variables to achieve the effect you want. If you want super punchy garlic, chop it finely and use it raw. If you want mellow, rich garlic, cook it slowly, whole, and it will turn sweet and sticky. If you want something in between, slice and saute until light golden brown.

Garlic burns very quickly, so a very high heat is generally a bad idea, unless you are very careful to keep the garlic moving. There is a fine line between nicely toasted garlic and blackened, bitter garlic.


Should I sear sous-vide chicken breasts? I'm planning on cooking some boneless skinless chicken breasts tonight sous-vide.  Should I finish them with a quick pan sear like I do with my steaks or should I just season and slice?

I would sear. It is not necessary, really, but I prefer the texture and flavor that comes with a good sear. To me, while it would be moist and tender, it would also be rather uninteresting. Bear in mind much of this is driven by personal preference.


Selecting nuts for successful home oven-roasting I have gotten into the habit of buying raw or blanched or otherwise unroasted nuts from the local co-op in bulk and then oven-roasting or skillet-toasting on the fly for recipes. For most types of nuts it is either cost-saving or provides a tastier ingredient.

In the course of doing this I have picked up a nasty habit of digging into my baking stash and oven-roasting nuts for ~ten minutes at about 400'F (typically in a dash of extra oil, salt, red pepper, paprika, garlic, etc) for a quick snack. So far walnuts and pecans have yielded tremendous results.

Today I tried some raw almonds (whole, roasted) and was less than impressed. Typically, and especially with walnuts, they produce more oil and develop a lighter texture and the flavor becomes more pronounced. The almond meats remained pretty much the same in texture and flavor profile, and only picked up the oil that I had tossed them in.

I assume the lower change was due in no small part to the fact that they were previously roasted, however other nuts that had been previously roasted still had a flavor and texture change.

Yet I am left wondering  if there is perhaps a lower rate of return in making the effort to roast certain types of nuts. Is this the case?

For instance, will oilier nuts (i.e. brazils) produce better results when (re-)roasted?

Also, is it possible that I may have selected poorly in terms of the nuts chosen.

For instance, would slivered have worked out better?

Is it possible that pan-toasting versus oven-roasting would yield better results in certain scenarios?
Is there a better temperature to be roasting at? I have tried 375'F-425'F and, with a watchful eye, had good results regardless of the spot in that range.

For raw, harder, and bulkier nuts like Almonds try a slightly lower temperature, say 180°C (350°F), and for a longer time

For re-roasting previously roasted nuts use a microwave oven (I know...). Same recipe, but just a few minutes on high. Watch them the first few times until you find the magic time limit before they start to burn

Commercially more and more people are using continuous microwave roasting machines, so using the microwave at home is so bad...

Personally, I like nuts aged in their shells before roasting


Easy way to trim raw chicken thighs Since I love so much chicken bone broth, I avoid buying always plain chicken breast. Instead I buy the whole thigh because I want to collect the bones.

My only problem is finding a good way to separate meat and bone. Normally my only option is just boiling a big batch. That makes cleaning the bones by hand way easier. However I wonder if there is an alternative method. I found trimming with a knife quite hard, but maybe there is a right knife or technique for it?, maybe just partially boiling them? Buying half leg instead of a whole one?

I would like to find an easy way to prepare a big batch of raw chicken and bones (freeze most of it later) since I believe that without boiling, I could get a better match while cooking a full dish.

Assuming you are asking how to debone a raw chicken thigh, the process is not very difficult, and becomes easier with practice.

This video from AllRecipes shows it clearly (I watched, but with sound off, so I don't know about the narration).  Its much easier to understand by watching than by reading.

The best knife to use a thin, slightly flexible knife, often called a boning knife.  While less ideal, a paring knife, utility knife, or even a chef's knife will still do the job.

If you have a leg-thigh quarter, bend the leg at the joint to reveal where the joint is, and slice to through to separate the drumstick from the thigh.
Lay your thigh skin-side down on the board.
Slice along each side of the bone, closely, with your knife, being careful not to cut through the skin.  The flexible tip of the knife will help you hug closely to the bone, minimizing any loss of meat.
Slice under the bone, kind of reaching under it, with the point of your knife to separate the bone from the the thigh.


What is the ideal temperature for water added to chickpea flour for falafel? Recipes for falafel using bean flour usually recommend warm, but not hot water to mix with the dry ingredients. What is the ideal temperature range for the water?

I have always used room temperature water, & have never had any problem. Generally I take the water from the Brtia filter sitting on my countertop.


What is this pan called, and what is it used for? This pan was given to me recently, apparently it was with the other baking items we got from my Grandmother. It is very shallow and appears to have a no-stick coating. As you can see there's a ring around the outside as well as a depression in the center, with slanted sides.

What is this pan called, and what is it used for?

That is a Holzit pie pan, used for making berry pies, where the filling may expand and run over the side of the pie during baking.


Can I use this dutch oven on a grill or camp fire? I have a six quart cast iron, enameled dutch oven from Lodge and a power outage likely to last a few days. The dutch oven looks like this and has one of the oven safe knobs on top:

The black out looks like this:

Can I use an enameled cast iron dutch oven on either a charcoal grill, or better, a camp fire without worrying that the grates on the grill or the wood of the fire will scratch, crack, or otherwise damage the enamel?

If you get an enameled cast iron pot too hot, you can soften the enamel enough to damage it.  My brother ruined one when we were younger on an electric stove, set on high (was making ramen, forgot about it, turned off the stove after the water had boiled off, when it cooled it fused to the burner)

The thing about camp fires is that they burn at different temperatures depending on the fuel and how much air's getting into it.

As you're using a dutch oven, I assume that you're doing something that requires low and slow cooking ... so you should be okay. If I were doing this, I'd try to pay attention to the fire (put the palm of your hand near the coals -- if you can't keep it there for a few seconds, it's too hot; move it somewhere else).   And make sure that you have enough liquid in there that it won't risk going dry.  If necessary, you can make a flour & water dough to use to seal the lip of the pan shut, so steam can't escape.

I'd also soap the bottom of the pot -- take a liquid dish soap, and rub the bottom and lower edges of the outside, so that when soot starts to deposit, it's depositing on the layer of soap, and not the pot itself.  (it makes cleaning so much easier).

I'd also beware of grills for another reason -- many manufacturers are making lighter weight grill parts to save materials (so it costs them less to make).  Many are so thin that I doubt they'd take the weight of a heavy cast iron pot.  (I've broken one using a cast iron griddle)

It's also worth mentioning that what you have isn't quite ideal for campfire cooking, as it doesn't have the little legs to stand if off the ground a little bit, or the lip on top so that you can put coals on top, but be able to lift the lid without the ashes falling in your food.  You can get around problem #1 with the grate, and might able to do something about #2 with some creative use of aluminum foil.


How to get rid of goitrogens from goitrogenic foods without cooking? Cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, broccolini, cauliflower, mustard greens, kale, turnips, and collard greens contain goitrogens. Is there a way to get rid of these without cooking. I eat those vegetables daily in salad.

Gamma Radiation... not practical, but it would inactivate the enzyme that leads to goitrogenic activity in most Brassicae.  The majority of these vegetables are really only very slightly goitrogenic because the possible thyroid inhibiting substance, goitrin, is bound up in progoitrin, an inactive compound.


What considerations are there when using powdered or pasteurized eggs in baking cake? If I am baking cake (from box mix or from scratch) and I don't have any fresh eggs, what must I take into account if I want to use powdered eggs or pasteurized liquid eggs instead? Will this work, and under what conditions?

Pasteurized liquid eggs should work 1:1 as a substitute for whole eggs.  Obviously, at this point, you cannot separate the yolks and whites, so you cannot use them for recipes which require separation.  You would use approximately 1/4 cup of pasteurized egg per large egg in the original recipe.

Similarly, you can use reconstituted powdered egg, although the flavor may not be the same.   I wouldn't do this in a yellow cake whose flavor is dependent on eggs, but in a chocolate cookie, it might be perfectly acceptable.  Again, reconstitute the powder first according to its directions, so it is liquid, and then use about 1/4 cup per large egg from the original recipe.


Is bacon fat supposed to congeal at room temperature? My grandma told me its a good idea to save the bacon drippings in a sealable container to cook with later.  I remember when I used to watch her cook with it, it was always solid.  I have started saving the fat from my bacon, only the bottom of the can is the only part that ever congeals.  The top always seems sort of semi-liquid.  Is that ok?  When cooking with it, what part should I use and what is the difference between solid and merely viscous bacon fat?

To answer what I think is the question (you put all of the grease into a container and there's a residue at the top), bacon drippings are not 100% fat.  There are also solid pieces of bacon in there and other "impurities" from the curing process.

When rendering bacon fat, you should line the container with a paper towel first (or cheesecloth if you have it).  Pour the bacon drippings onto the paper towel and the fat will drain out the bottom; the solids will be left behind and you can dispose of them.  You'll be left with (mostly) pure fat.

The rendered fat will most definitely congeal; the vessel, once cooled, should contain only a solid, off-white substance.


Can I freeze muffin mixture? I am making these muffins but would like to freeze half the mixture - will this be ok or will it affect how they cook/rise/taste when I cook my second batch (from the frozen mixture)?

(Recipe contains - self raising flour, bicarb soda, golden caster sugar, chocolate, dried cranberries, butter, eggs, yoghurt)

Muffins are a quick bread, same as waffles, so the answer to Can you freeze waffle batter? applies equally well here.

You can freeze it, and it will keep the batter from spoiling, but it will not maintain the quality.  It won't rise very well when you thaw it and try to bake it.

I would suggest that instead, you freeze the wet and dry ingredients separately; measure them out into the portion sizes that you intend to use, and when you want to make more muffins, combine them after thawing them.

(Or, as Joe suggests - just freeze the finished muffins themselves.)


How can I make curly rāmen noodles from scratch? I want to make the rāmen noodles from scratch including the pasta itself and not just the sauce. I have found some recipes online that look promising. However, how can I give it the characteristic "curly" appearance?

Inspired by Claire and the Bon Apettit team I did a bit of research and found the following.

Silicon flaps attached to the noodle cutter is one way to get the curly or wavy ramen noodle.

You can create your own version like Alex the French Cooking Guy did.

Which result in a nice curly noodle.

Full write up with the links to the videos and timecodes etc here.


Are there any special techniques for tempering dark chocolates with different cacao percentages? I want to use up some chocolate I have on hand, and don't have enough of either one for the recipe I plan to use for truffles, so I thought I'd try combining the 3 chocolates.  One is 54%, one is 63%, and one is 86%.  Any suggestions or warnings would be appreciated!  Thanks!

You're first melting it all and mixing it together, right? You can just compute the cacao contents of the resulting mixture. For that you'll need to weigh the three batches. Say the 54% batch is 200g, the 63% batch is 150g and the 86% batch is 100g. Then you have a total of 54% * 200g + 63% * 150g + 86% * 100g = 108g + 94.5g + 86g = 288.5g of cacao out of a total mass of 200g + 150g + 100g = 450g. So the resulting cacao percentage is 288.5 / 450 = 64%. Now just treat the mixture as you would 64% cacao chocolate (since that's what it is).


How to remove unwanted aftertaste from food So I've just finished making about a liter of hot chocolate (lets ignore why for a minute here), and I've stored it in my refrigerator, inside a plastic bottle that was once used to store orange juice. Although I cleaned and rinsed the bottle as well as I could before using it, the hot chocolate has taken on an orange-y aftertaste. It's by no means inedible, but unwelcome nonetheless.

Is there any way to remove/mask the flavor? I'd hate to have to throw all this out.

There is probably no universal means.  Don't store strongly flavored liquids in plastic bottles you would like to reuse.

In the specific case of hot chocolate, it is ammenable to a number of strong flavors which may mask the odd orangey aftertaste.  I would recommend re-heating it with a pinch of cayenne pepper (really; hot pepper and chocolate go nicely), and perhaps a couple of cardamom pods if you enjoy their unique flavor.


Why does steamed potatoes sometimes have a smooth, banana-like texture? Sometimes when I steam potatoes, they have a lovely dry, fluffy, crystaline texture. Other times, they're the complete opposite, looking dull with a texture like that of banana.

Could it be you are not using the same type of potatoes all the time? Different varieties of potatoes do have very different textures. The ones with the brown, rough, dusty skins ("russet" I think they are called?) usually cook up with the fluffy, dry, almost "sparkly" flesh. The smoother skinned ones tend to have denser, waxier texture inside. The pink, smooth ones ("rose" or "early rose") seem to fit the description of "looking dull" inside when cooked.


Cookies rise nicely in the oven, but then collapse Just as every year, I have been baking spicy Christmas cookies with my Granny. And like always, they have expanded nicely in the oven, but collapsed afterwards. But this year I know to go to Seasoned Advice and ask how to prevent that for years to come!

The recipe calls for 625 g sugar, 250 g butter and 50 g various dry spices (cinnamon, coriander, succade, cloves) to be kneaded together, and then to be mixed with 875 g flour and 250 ml milk with 15 g baker's ammonia (Ammonium carbonate). The dough is laid to rest for a long time (4 days or so), rolled about 3mm thin, cut, and baked at 160⁰C for 10–12 minutes.

The cookies expand in the oven, growing a bit thicker in the middle than on the outside, but then collapse again during the remainder of the baking time.
The resulting cookies are quite soft when coming out of the oven, but grow very hard during cooling.

What would we need to change so that the cookies keep their expanded shape?

First of all: What does cause the collapse?

The ammonium carbonate creates carbon dioxide under heat, which creates the gas bubbles that expand the dough. The gas bubbles are kept in place by a network of glutenin molecules, which make the dough elastic.

When your dough collapses after some time, it basically means that your glutenin network broke, much like a rubber band that was stretched too far. The carbon dioxide escapes and you have the not quite satisfying end result.

As you reach a level of carbon dioxide you are content with during baking, the best solution seems to be to just use less ammonium carbonate.


How to find a competent knife sharpener I have a santoku that I will be wanting to get professionally sharpened in the next few months. This is the first knife I've owned that was reasonably expensive so I want to make sure I take care of it. Are most professional knife sharpening places familiar with the differences in Japanese knife edges vs a more traditional (for the U.S.) German knife? For example, the angle is different and one side is flat on my santoku compared to, say, a French chef's knife.

Aside from just asking them if they know what they are doing, are there any specifics I should look for or questions to ask in finding someone who can do this properly? Also, is there any kind of reasonable price range I should expect or does that vary too much to say?

Allow me to help you fast forward through my years of pain trying to get my knives sharpened.  I looked all over to find a local sharpening service.  I called fancy restaurants, chain restaurants, and restaurant supply stores.  I found one who said they performed the service and promptly had three knives really scratched up.

I tried doing the sharpening myself.  This isn't a bad idea, but most home sharpening systems won't let you put a true new edge on your knife.  The best luck I had was with a Spyderco Sharpmaker.  This will do a good job, but I found it to be a pain, and it never really got me the results I was looking for.

Then I discovered sharpening by mail.  Its awesome.  Ship your knives off, get them back in a state where you should keep bandaids handy.  Here is an article from the Wall Street Journal comparing several services.  I used the Knife Guy and couldn't have been happier.  Unfortunately, it looks like he's no longer accepting new customers since the article came out, but the other services they compared seem to have done well.

One other Note.  I read in an interview with Alton Brown that he only sends his knives off to be professionally sharpened once a year or so.  If you use a honing steel properly that's all you should need.  I've certainly found that to be the case with me.


Keeping scrambled eggs with tomatoes from being too watery When cooking scrambled eggs with tomatoes, I find that the longer the tomatoes cook with the eggs, the a. more they decompose, b. the more water the put into the pan.

My ideal would be scrambled eggs / omlette that have well formed tomato dice, and are not watery. What's the best way to achieve this?

Some initial hypotheses involve that the tomatoes I'm using are riper, thus juicer, and as such are prone to disintegration and exhaust more water.

So potentual solutions to that could be a. less ripe tomatoes, b. draining cut tomatoes with paper towels or something ahead of time.

Haven't tried those solutions, but was hoping for some tips here. Thanks.

Another effective method (not mentioned in the link SAJ14SAJ provided) is salting. Dice the tomatoes, generously salt them and leave them in a sieve for 20 minutes or so. You probably want to squeeze off some of the juicy bits first. Flip the tomatoes half-way through the resting time. That will draw off a lot of water without pre-cooking the tomatoes (which will also work, but will change (not necessarily negatively) the taste of the tomatoes. If you use kosher or other coarse salt, you'll be able to shake or wipe off quite a bit of the salt before proceeding with your application.


Can you mix white and multigrain flours? I want to make a bread that's a mix of multigrain and white flour so that it's not overwhelmingly multigrain. Is mixing flours like this done? Does the ratio matter or is it just up to how I want it to taste?

Yes.  In fact, most bread recipes that use these flours have a base of white flour to which they are added.


Baking with unhulled sesame seeds versus hulled I'm baking a sesame seed bread recipe from the Tartine Bread book and it calls for toasting the hulled seeds. Penzey only had hulled so, not having written it down, I figured that was what I was supposed to get.

Rather than worrying too much about it, should I just put the seeds into the dough raw, rather than toasting, or should I still toast them? What is any significant taste difference will there be? Why did he use unhulled instead?

You should dry roast the seeds before putting them in bread dough. It will have a really strong flavour. He used the unhulled seeds for the mild flavour. You can either use hulled or unhealed. I believe that you have washed the sesame seeds, dried them, dry roasted them and then ........ WHOOP in the dough. That will of course taste great....


White Potatoes for Hash Browns? Are white potatoes the right type for hash browns? I guess not as I couldn't get them to adhere, without using eggs or flour etc.

I'm assuming you're talking about shredded style hash browns.  I'm not sure how much potato variety affects the outcome, as I tend to buy yellow potatoes (as they can typically be used either for roasting or mashing, so I don't have to think about how I'm going to use them in advance).  I'm also more likely to make 'home fries' style hash browns, but I did a bit of research & testing for my pancake demonstration

Most recipes for this style call for soaking the shreds in water to remove the starch, then wring them out in a dish towel or similar.  You can get sometimes get better adhesion if you don't soak them, but still wring out as much water out as you can.

If you're making latkes, you'll want a bit of depth to the oil, but generally 1 to 3 tablespoons of oil or butter is enough for hash browns, depending on how large of a surface you're working with.

Make sure the crust is nice and brown before flipping. Also, make sure that you're flipping it over in chunks suitable for your spatula size (either divide it up into quadrants or similar if coating the entire pan; or make individual piles only slightly larger than your spatula).  If the potatoes drank up all of the oil when cooking the first side, it's generally a sign that the heat is too low and you might need to add some more (before you flip, so it has a chance to heat up)

The exact temperature to cook at depends on how much you're trying to cook at once, how fast your pans recover after putting the food in, and how thick of a layer you're cooking.  (you want to make sure that the middle is cooked before you've burned the outside; if you're having problems with this, you can also par cook the potatoes in a microwave first).

If your pan/burner combination has a particularly slow temperature recovery, you might want to get the oil up to shimmering before you put in the shreds, but you typically aim for a little lower than that.


Can I make salt cod from frozen cod? Where I live, I can't buy high-quality salt cod, so I'm looking at making my own.  The recipes I've seen, though, all start with fresh cod.

Since salting dehydrates the cod anyway, it seems like I ought to be able to make it from frozen cod, which is about half the cost, and available year-round here.  Does this work?  Does the frozen cod have notably inferior taste or texture to salted fresh cod?

You should have no problem using good quality frozen cod for salt cod. Freezing breaks up some of the tissues and changes the texture, notably making it drier as freezing drives out some of its moisture, so you might not need as much salt to dry it to the same level.

In some places the "fresh" fish you see in the store has actually been frozen for the trip before being thawed and sold for more than the same fish still frozen, so whether you'd be getting fresh cod is debatable depending on your location.


How long does cheese last out of the refrigerator We went on vacation and while we were gone, the refrigerator in which I stored a GREAT DEAL of cheese (both hard and soft, although unopened) quit working and when we returned home, I found the cheese defrosted (I had put it in the freezer).  Is it safe to transfer to my other refrigerator?  The packages are unopened and there is no indication of spoilage.

At what temperature was the freezer when you discovered the problem?  If it was below 40 F / 4 C, the cheese remained at refrigerator temperatures....  if it was warmer, you have no way of knowing for how long, and should discard the cheese.


Cakes that can be cooked whilst camping? I love camping, and would like to expand my camping cooking repertoire.  This got me wondering if I could cook cakes (other than pancakes) whilst camping where I won't have an oven, and will only have a dual burner camping stove.  So are there ways of cooking cakes without an oven?  Or are there cake like alternatives?

I'd look towards a dutch oven and cake-like items:

upside-down cakes
cobblers / crisps / grunts / bettys / slumps / etc.

In all of these, the fruit on the bottom helps to protect from the bottom of the cake-like-item cooking too quickly.  You can either cook directly in the dutch oven, or drop another pan inside the dutch oven to speed on cleaning if you're going to be cooking a few of 'em.

You'll also want to look for dutch ovens that are made for baking -- they have a lip on the lid, so you can put coals on top and pull the lid without the ash falling into what you're cooking.


How can I make my homemade potato wedges crispy? How do I make my wedges go nice and crispy in the oven?

I usually season them with a cajun mix, add a tiny bit of oil, and cook them in the oven on fan-bake at about 200 degrees (celcius). They come out okay, but not amazing.

What can I do to make them come out a lot crispier, while still using a normal household oven? Would more oil improve their texture, or do I need to crumb them maybe?

You could put them in a pan of boiling water for 3 or 4 minutes (not so to they're cooked through) before putting them in the oven. The potato on the outside of the wedges will soften and cook a little bit which will help the outsides crisp up a little. Make sure you allow them to drain completely before you put them in the oven.


How can I light charcoal faster? I'm terribly impatient but I love cooking on a charcoal grill.  How can I get the charcoal ready faster?  Currently I have a chimney starter, I use lump charcoal and light some kind of paper under the chimney.  It takes about 25 minutes to get ready.

This bugged me for a long time, and I assumed that there were better ways.  And there are!  Mostly notably you want to introduce the coals to more of your friend, Mr. Oxygen!
Plight of firefighters everywhere and friend of blacksmiths, increased oxygen will start the coals much much faster.  Three easy ways to accomplish this:

Hairdryer!  Just hook up your hairdryer and blow it on the coals. Beware the ash and cinders that get blown about!  You'll still need the paper to light though.

Vacumm cleaner in reverse! My shopvac, for example, can be a blower and will put the hairdryer to shame in terms of volume.  Beware the ash and cinders that get blown about!  You'll still need the paper to light though.
Specialized bbq tools like this one.  They have that advantage of being heat proof and also starting the coals with super hot air, but the long term reliability and price have always kept me from purchasing.

Personally, the hairdryer is the easiest and shaves the time down to just a few minutes.


Do milk and butter not work in place of cream for whipping, and why? I’ve seen claims that, while you can replace heavy cream with the proper proportions of milk and butter in recipes that don’t require whipping, the mixture will not form stiff peaks when whipped, even if it contains the same milkfat percentage as heavy whipping cream (>35%). However, offhand I don’t know why this would be so, and I can’t find an explanation of the claim.

I’ve used milk and butter to stand in perfectly well for cream in things like sauces or drinks, but I’ve never tried whipping it. If it’s not possible, why? Does it have something to do with the proportion of protein, fat, and water? Does the process of churning butter break down protein/fat structures that are required for holding peaks? Or is it not impossible, but simply difficult or time-consuming to get the butter to emulsify properly back into the milk and cool to the point that it can hold aeration?

Heavy whipping cream is homogenized as @myklbykl mentions. That means the fat molecules are pretty evenly dispersed throughout the liquid parts, giving you a smooth mixture instead of one that separates.

When you whip cream, you don't just incorporate air. You also agitate those fat molecules and they start sticking together. As long as you keep whipping vigorously, the fat molecules Wil Form a matrix within which the tiny bubbles of air and liquid get trapped, making a foam. If you keep beating, all the fat globs together, and that's where you get butter and traditionally buttermilk.

So if you add butter to the milk, even if you melt it- it's already done. The fat was already beaten and globbed together completely. You won't be able to get that matrix to form again since it's already been completely whipped.

And unfortunately you can't homogenize the fat and liquid back together. It requires special machinery. I actually tried once because I was young and the internet lied to me. End result was me crying over a big bowl of milk with lots of tiny butter chunks in it.


Under burnt layer prevention for briyani When I cook briyani on a electric stove top, how do I prevent the bottom layer of the dish in the pot from burning?

While I start mine on the stovetop, it mainly cooks in the oven.  That might help.


Bubbles Are ONly on Top of My Sourdough Starter My starter, (new) is bubbly on top and rising but does not have may bubbles in its body.Can it still be use to make a Levin or dough?

I believe this is just because the bubbles all rise to the top which is where they will sit due to the surface tension. I don't believe it is anything to be concerned about.


How many calories does a home-made marinade add? I'm planning on marinating my chicken legs with Tabasco sauce.
I have read that a marinade should be one part lemon juice and 3 parts olive oil.

I'm going to be using two skinned chicken legs, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil and Tabasco sauce

The reason I want to marinate the chicken legs is because I will be eating them on the go and wont have time to add the Tabasco sauce to them yet I still want them spicy.

So basically I'm wondering how many extra calories could I be talking for each chicken leg.

Thank you.

Oil which ends up being eaten, no matter if it comes from deep frying, marinating or just adding it, clocks in at 7-9 calories per gram of oil. If you add any sugar or thick syrup, calculate around 4 calories per gram. Tabasco sauce, being mostly vegetables and vinegar, is truly trivial in calories.

If you weigh the oil (and sugar if using) going into your marinade, and also weigh all your finished marinade, you can roughly calculate the calories per g of finished marinade: (("grams oil"*8)+("grams sugar"*4))/"total weight".

Now divide the total weight of marinade (minus the weight of marinade wasted -weigh it!) by the number of portions, and multiply with the calories per gram factor you calculated above.

Chances are that oil will penetrate less than other marinade ingredients, which could end up with there being a bit less calories in the finished food than calculated.


Indian Cuisine - Atta Chicken There was an article early march on npr called Oberoi's Kitchen: The Art Of Indian Haute Cuisine. It featured several recipes and talk of a traditional workman's lunch called atta chicken. It is a featured dish in this chefs restaurant but he did not give the specifics of the dish. I have searched everywhere for a recipe.

Can anyone describe this dish and/or give a general idea of how it's made?

For those interested the article can be found here http://www.npr.org/2011/03/18/134594286/oberois-kitchen-the-art-of-indian-haute-cuisine

Apparently a lot has changed since this question was first posted exactly five years ago today.

Today a simple Google search yields many recipes, a lot of lore, and lots of pictures.

Here's one picture I like from DamnFineLife:

But, I suspect that one has been very much prettied up for the camera.

This one is from the blog Fit Foodie Megha, which does restaurant reviews. The chicken was prepared by a well known and apparently very highly regarded restaurant called Punjab Grill in Phoenix Market City, Pune, Maharashtra, India.

Here is an example from the blog Chandigarh Chaat showing perhaps the original variation from Kotkapura, near the Indian border with Pakistan.

Finally, here is one from the entertainment blog alvinology:

That one was prepared one year ago by the world class chef Hemant Oberoi, who the blogger credits with making Atta Chicken famous beyond Kotkapura. Not coincidentally, it is Chef Oberoi who the OP learned about on NPR and inspired the question here.

For more images, click here

For recipes, click here

I watched the videos and read the recipes. The original Kotkapura recipe is still a closely guarded secret, but a number of foodies have published their take on it.

To paraphrase: Take a clean chicken and score it (or not) on the breast and thigh. Other recipes say prick the chicken with a fork. Marinate it in a heavily spiced (usually yogurt based) marinade for hours. Some recipes do that in two steps, one in a dairy based marinade, the other in an oil based one.

Stuff the chicken cavity with some combination of almonds and/or pistachios and whole garlic cloves.

Wrap the chicken tightly in muslin, cheesecloth, or in at least one recipe, banana leaves. Although in the banana leaf recipe, the cooking method is quite a departure from the others.

Make a simple dough with just whole wheat (atta) flour and water, perhaps salt.

Completely encase the chicken with at least a 2 centimeter layer of the dough, carefully sealing (that's critical).

Now cook it in a tandoor (which is the Kotkapura method) for at least two hours or until the dough is completely charred. You can also do it in a barbecue or a very hot oven for approximately three hours, again until the dough is completely charred. Three hours seems like a long time at such high heat, but if you watch the videos or read the blogs, they all seem to agree that long and hot is the way to go.

When it is done, don't break it until you are ready to eat it. Supposedly it can be kept at room temperature for three days if it hasn't been broken into. I am more than a bit skeptical about that, but I'm just repeating what I've read. Refrigerated and unbroken, the chicken is supposed to be good for up to two weeks. Just rewarm it, then break into it. Discard the cooked dough.

The chicken supposedly divine, and very, very juicy.

If you found this information interesting, you might also enjoy watching this video, which is very coy about the super-secret Kotkapura recipe, but shows a lot of the fun stuff including breaking into the chicken.


small cakes/muffins not rising correctly My small cakes for example muffins are not rising correctly.  They rise lopsidedly and spill over the paper cases.  Nothing wrong with oven.  I've tried various things, eg wetter mixture, drier mixture, smaller quantity in case, larger quantity in case, it's as if the fan  is blowing the cake mixture off to once side.  Doesn't happen with all my cakes mainly the small ones.  Any ideas ?

I'm willing to bet you're using egg foam for leavening which is notoriously finicky. Despite protestations that it can't be overmixed, it also can't be undermixed! So make sure it's well incorporated into the batter before loading up. Batter color should be even.

For other considerations, similar rules apply if you're using chemical leavening: your tins/cups/pans need to be spotlessly clean. This is my method: Insides are then lubed up to the top with butter or shortening. The insides should then be tossed with a thin coating of something, either sugar or chocolate powder (basically some dry substance). Load your batter in to 2/3 the height of the pan (tends to be roughly the same regardless of the size of the pan for me). Do so very neatly so as not to spill batter and muck up the pan. Also give it a slight few taps to work unsuspended air bubbles up to the surface.


Conversion of liquid rennet to powdered rennet? How much powdered rennet should you use if a recipe states 1 tsp liquid rennet (for cheese)?

1 ml of liquid rennet is more or less equivalent to 0.12 grams.

So 1 tsp is 5 ml; which should equivalent to 0.6 g powdered rennet, or 1 rennet tablet.