Why cooking times for rice are different in different locations When I learned to cook rice in the New Orleans area, I used the following recipe:

In a big sauce pan measure 1 cup long grain rice to two cups room temperature water, salt to taste.

Bring to a boil, turn heat down to simmer, cover with lid for 30 minutes and rice is done. Never use a spoon in rice, only a fork. This is the way I was taught and it worked perfectly every time.

I moved to Indiana and tried the same method, same rice brand, same water, approximately the same type of stove. Now I have to use more water and less cook time, about 20 minutes total, instead of 30.

I know that Indiana is more than 700 feet above sea level, and parts of New Orleans are actually below sea level. But from what I have read, you ought  to add to cook time when at a higher altitude, not subtract.

What causes this difference? Is it really due to altitude? Perhaps relative humidity? New Orleans has a very humid climate, Indiana is usually much drier. Today for example, I checked and Indianapolis has 39% relative humidity, and New Orleans – 90%.

Has anyone else heard of such a difference in cooking times? I would like to see if there is any kind of table giving cooking times based on local climatic differences. Please confine answers/comments to either experience or research.

Humidity and altitude both can have very large effects on cooking times and methods, especially with methods that are moisture-sensitive, like baking, braising, etc.

In your case, since the altitude difference is negligible, the rice is probably being affected by the ambient humidity; in Indiana, the rice is in a less humid climate and will thus be drier; it will require more water than rice which is stored in a naturally wetter climate like Louisiana. The difference in cook time could be either due to a difference in your stove's efficiency in heating the water, or possibly due to drier rice being more efficient at absorbing water, I'm not sure (and can't find any real references either way).

I live in a place which is high in altitude (around 4800 feet/1460 m) and very dry (it's classified as a desert), so I have to heavily adjust any recipe involving rice, baking, etc to use more moisture and often cook longer (boiling rice I usually add about 25% more water and it takes about 25% longer, sometimes more, than the instructions specify).

Generally, if you move from one climate or elevation to a very different one, you have to experiment a little to figure out how to adjust for your specific circumstances.


Trick to getting a sauce to stick to chicken? One of the recipes I often make has a sauce that is a combination of salt, sugar, and a thick red sauce.  After about 10 1-2 inch chicken pieces have been cooked the last step calls for mixing the chicken with the sauce over medium heat.  You can think of the sauce as a glaze.  Sometimes when I make the recipe the sauce really clings to the chicken, and other times it is a little runny.  Is there some trick that will get this sauce to cling?

Thanks.

There are essentially two methods to get what you want, and you can use them separately or together:

Saturated Fat

Butter and other saturated fats (i.e. bacon fat or even chicken fat) will do wonders to "bind" sauces to chicken.  Among other reasons, it's partly because saturated fat is solid at room temperature and still fairly viscous at moderately higher temperatures.

In fact, traditional "wing sauce" is invariably some combination of hot sauce and butter.  The butter helps cut the spiciness and also helps keep the sauce attached to the meat.

Dry Heat

I use this technique for ribs far more often than chicken, but the idea here is to make the sauce into a glaze by reducing it.

Set your oven to broil and apply a thin coat of sauce to the meat; make sure you cover it completely but don't glob it on.  Now put the meat on a rack beneath the broiler and wait until you see the sauce starting to bubble (should be no more than 1-2 minutes if you've applied enough sauce and your oven is hot enough).  Then take it out of the oven.  Repeat several times until you've got a thick, sticky coat of sauce (usually around 5 times for me).

Note that if the sauce is very thick (i.e. a store-bought BBQ sauce) then you'll actually want to water it down a bit first.

For chicken I honestly prefer to just throw in some butter, but you can use either technique as long as the meat isn't too lean.


Dried herbs instead of bouquet garni? I've only recently heard about bouquet garni via a recipe I want to try, but I don't always have access to fresh herbs. This particular garni calls for two bay leaves, one large sprig of sage, and one large or two small sprigs of rosemary. I know the bay leaf isn't meant to be eaten, and I know the taste will be different, but can I use dried herbs and just leave them in the pot?
(This is the recipe I want to make: https://rainbowplantlife.com/creamy-white-bean-soup-with-kale-and-gremolata/#comment-5951)
Thanks!

There's nothing really special about a bouquet garni.  Don't let the French name make this seem more intimidating than it is.  It is just a bunch of herbs.  It has no special function other than making the herbs easier to remove than if they weren't bundled together.
So then the meat of this question is really: can you substitute dried rosemary and dried sage for fresh rosemary and fresh sage in a bean soup?
The answer is: probably
Dried herbs can vary more in quality than fresh herbs, since it's possible that the dried herbs have been sitting around for a very long time. Very old dried herbs will have lost much of their flavor and should generally be avoided.
But if your dried herbs are relatively new, they'll probably be fine.  Here's what Cook's Illustrated had to say about dried rosemary and sage:

In all but one application, tasters preferred fresh herbs to dry. Chili was the exception; in this dish, dried oregano was the favorite. A common criticism of dried herbs was that they had lost many of the subtleties and nuances of fresh herbs, tasting “dusty” and “stale.” Meanwhile, fresh herbs tasted “clean” and “bright.” Still, there were a few instances in which some dried herbs, though not preferred, were a passable substitute. In addition to oregano, dried rosemary, sage, and thyme fared reasonably well in recipes involving fairly long cooking times (more than 20 minutes) and a good amount of liquid.

https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/9261-science-substituting-dried-herbs-for-fresh
The recipe linked in the question calls for 18-20 minutes of cooking, which is slightly less than Cook's Illustrated recommends there.  I'd be surprised if a couple of minutes made much of a difference, but if you're concerned, you could cook this soup for longer.


How much should yeast rise? At some point in the past, I had purhased a large amount (maybe a pound) of instant yeast at a restaurant supply store.  I transfered it to a glass container, and have been keeping it in the fridge.  I don't remember when I bought it -- I suspect it was 2 years ago.  (I know it was more than a year old).

When I make bread, it's still rising, and if I try proofing it, it works ... but the time to get bread to double in volume is taking longer (sometimes up to twice as long) as many recipes give as estimates.

Is there some good test that I can use to estimate what the decreased activity is, so I can adjust the amount of yeast that I'm using?  Or is there some other technique that I can use to compensate (eg, start proofing the yeast with sugar before using?)

Sadly, there isn't really a better answer than "enough". You can of course proof the yeast in warm water with a bit of flour to make sure that it's still active (by looking for foam after a few minutes). As far as home testing goes, it doesn't get much more specific.

Even yeast manufacturers doing far more advanced testing of their yeast admit that testing gas produced in a laboratory is a poor predictor of proof times. There are so many other factors going on in yeast doughs that yeast activity alone is a drop in the bucket of protein levels, enzyme activity, amylase levels, falling numbers, farinograph and a host of other test scores that can effect dough.

As far as a technique for compensating, the best method is just to rely on proofing to the size required and allow more time as needed. If you know that your batch of yeast tends to perform slowly you can either work with it warmer or add a bit more yeast to start. If you start proofing with sugar, you're just allowing the yeast some time to reproduce so the effect is pretty much the same as just adding a bit more yeast than called for to your dough.

And, of course, it's also important to make sure that you're handling the yeast appropriately for it's type. Instant yeast doesn't require hydration prior to use, but active dry yeast needs to be added to the liquids in your recipe before the dry ingredients are combined.


Why did my French bread neither rise nor bake properly? Failed miserably at the first bread bake.

I have this oven: Bajaj 28 Litres 2800TMC Oven Toaster Grill
I tried this recipe: Baking the Perfect Loaf of French Bread

Instead of using 4 cups bread flour, I used 3 cups whole wheat flour. Replaced 2 teaspoon active quick rising dry yeast and 2 teaspoon salt with 1.5 teaspoon active dry yeast and 1.5 teaspoon salt.
Used 1 1/4 cups warm water

Do not have a machine so kneaded the dough by hand all the time, followed the resting times as mentioned in the recipe.

  Place this dough in a large lightly oiled bowl (I use Pam spray). Turn dough over so that all sides have a thin coating of oil. Cover with plastic wrap and set in warm place for 1 1/2 hours to let rest and rise. Dough should almost double in size. While the dough is rising, about 1 hour into the rising stage, preheat your oven to 450F

My oven has only 250 Celsius maximum setting, so I preheated for 15 minutes on that temperature without a stone.
My dough did NOT rise during the resting period of 1.5 hours. At least I didn't notice any visible changes in the dough size. Room temperature was 32 Celsius.

  If you are using a long cast-iron pot or covered baker: -> Before closing the lid on your pot/baker, put 1/4 cup of water directly in the pot. Cover immediately.

I did that and didn't notice any visible steam. Then I put the dough inside on the baking sheet.

  Check temperature of the bread – internal should be 190-210F. Remove and let cool before cutting into it. Repeat with other loaf.

I had set the temperature to be 200 Celsius since it hadn't mentioned the temperature of the oven while baking. It is here talking about the temperature of the bread. Should I have read it as temperature of the oven? :redface:
Moreover, it didin't rise a bit in the oven even. Was it supposed to?

  (For convection ovens- bake 8 min covered, 10-12 min uncovered. Check temperature of bread) To re-crisp the crust, put in 375F oven for 5 minutes.

What should I have covered here with what? I baked for 20 minutes at first. The dough surface was hard and the internal of the bread was NOT cooked. I baked for another 10 minutes and the bread crust got hardest. Internals weren't baked yet.

I suspect that my fault was either improper measurement of yeast (don't have a teaspoon), or wrong temperature, or both.

Please guide in detail.

There are some previous questions with good answers like this one, or this that go into much more detail than I'm about to.

You said your bread didn't rise with the first rise, if you don't have a first rise you can't go onto the next step. If your yeast was old, or the temperature was cold in your kitchen or you used cold water in the dough, or the yeast came in contact with salt then its action could have been slowed down drastically and it would take much longer to get a rise. I've had a first rise take up to 4 hours in the past because of these factors. The times given in recipes are just guidelines, you have to be result-driven. Active dry yeast also takes longer than quick yeast to activate. When using active dry instead of quick yeast you would get better results by mixing it with the water before mixing in. I'd recommend using quick yeast as it's milled into smaller grains and you can mix it directly into the flour.

Of course your yeast may have simply been dead, or killed by salt or heat. Get some good fresh yeast and store it in the fridge to keep it fresh long-term.

Also, using all whole wheat flour isn't going to produce anything like a baguette. Whole wheat flour is very heavy compared to white flour and will take longer to rise. A half and half mix would work better. I'd recommend sticking to the recipe first, then gradually modifying it over time until you get your desired result.


Is there an alternative wrap for spring rolls other than rice paper? I've been making spring rolls (the deep-fried variety) for some time now, and they are really good, but I've noticed some Asian restaurants use something else for wrapping them than the generic, translucent 'rice paper' I get at the store. Theirs are often smoother, yellowish and opaque, like in this photo from Wikipedia. A new book on Thai cuisine I got just recently also has them looking like that in the pohotos and it mentions some mysterious "spring roll wads" which I've yet to come across in any store in my country. Anyways, what is it exactly, can I make some of my own and if so, how?

EDIT: Also, does the preparation of the rolls differ any when using an alternative wrapper, or can I just deep-fry them just the same?

The non-rice paper rolls are probably made with wheat flour instead of rice flour, so they should be just as sturdy and stand up to deep frying as well or better than rice paper, which has always been fairly delicate and hard to work with in my limited experience.

Here is an image of flour egg roll wrappers in their uncooked state:


Cumin in Taco Seasoning? I've noticed that I never taste cumin in the tacos I get at restaurants, yet cumin is often the most noticeable flavor in pre-made taco seasonings. When and why did cumin get associated with tacos? Why is it not used in most restaurant preparations?

I'm going to supplement Cindy's answer,  by addressing this part of the question:

  When and why did cumin get associated with tacos?

According to Wikipedia, Serious Eats, and History.com, the cumin was brought by workers the Spanish imported to Texas from the Canary Islands in the 1500s, who themselves were the descendants of North Africans and hence had a love for cumin.  These workers introduced cumin into Tex-Mex cuisine, particularly Chile Con Carne, and when Willie Gebhardt created the first bottled "chili seasoning", it included cumin.  Many Americans encountered Gebhardt's seasoning a generation before they experienced any other kind of Mexican food, forever associating it with the cuisine.  And, for that matter, used Gebhardt's for taco meat, as my Oklahoma branch of the family did back into the 1930's.

The reason you don't encounter it in some Mexican restaurants it that the culinary staff are from Mexico, and not Texas or near Texas.  As such, they never "picked up" cumin.

(and yes, this does mean that Thrillist is wrong about the origin.  India was not involved)


Casein content after curdling I am making curdled cheese for a cheesecake.
I am using reduced-fat milk (2%) and would like to know the content (e.g fat, sugar, protein) of the curdled cheese after it has been separated from the whey.

How can this be calculated?

It depends on how the cheese is made.

Whey will include a lot of the water soluble molecules of the milk. That means a lot of the sugar (and acid if it was fermented) will wash out. Any of the albumin from the milk will also wash out. Almost none of the fat will.

This means that it will be very difficult to calculate exactly how much sugar and protein are left in the cheese but you can get an idea from the type of cheese.

If made with yogurt, for example, the milk should have been heated before making the yogurt to allow the albumin to be bound up and not wash out in the whey. In this case the whey has almost none of the protein.

In many other cheeses, the whey does have a fair bit of protein in it. You can bring the whey to a boil and make ricotta. Weigh the ricotta to determine how much protein is not in your cheese.

As for sugar- If fermented, a lot of sugar is converted to lactic acid. The whey is full of extra sugar and lactic acid but a lot is left in the cheese as well- this is why aged cheeses like cheddar will get more tart over time. The bacteria keep munching on the leftover sugar. I don't know how to estimate the distribution of sugar in these cheeses.

A notable exception is a washed curd cheese like gouda. When these cheeses are made, instead of just draining the whey, the curd is washed in warm water several times. This washes out much of the excess sugar and makes a cheese that doesn't get tart as it ages.

I think the only way to know exact amounts of sugar would involve chemistry skills that I don't have.


Chorizo sausage as a ground chorizo substitute? I have a recipe that calls for ground chorizo, but I don't own a meat grinder and my local grocery store only sells chorizo sausages. Now, I guess I could mince the sausages and maybe achieve the same effect, but my question is, if I remove the casing from the sausage, will the insides essentially be ground chorizo?

edit: here's the recipe, http://www.johnsonville.com/recipe/chorizo-mac-skillet.html, it specifically calls for Johnsonville brand ground chorizo, so I'm unsure if it's Mexican or Spanish chorizo. That brand unfortunately isn't sold at my grocery store.

I think your best bet if you can't find any Mexican style (raw) chorizo (either loose or encased) is to just use some ground pork and add spices - the spice list on that product is:

  chili pepper and less than 2% of the following: pork broth with natural flavorings, salt, dextrose, garlic powder, flavorings, spice, oleoresin of paprika, BHA, propyl gallate, citric acid.

So there's not much to add or find a recipe so you don't have to guess. There are a couple of them. Or just add a packet of "Mexican seasoning" to the sausage. I think this will actually take quite a bit less time than trying to prep Spanish style chorizo.

You're literally just mixing in some spices.

If you don't want to buy the spices, just switch to any "spicy" raw sausage. For example Jimmy Dean Hot. Again, this will be an easier option for you than using Mexican (hard) chorizo.


Why does my soufflé collapse in the oven? I have now tried to make Bobby Flay's blackberry souffle twice, and both times, after initially rising beautifully, it collapsed completely while still in the oven. The results were inedible.

Does anyone have any idea how to prevent this disaster should I be brave enough to try this recipe a third time?

you need to make sure your souffle has an even cooking temperature.

1) dont open the door to the oven

2) make sure your oven tempature doesnt fluctuate widley

3) put the souffle inside a small pool of water. This helps to regulate the temperature better.


How do you correctly use a meat thermometer? I have two meat thermometers. I bought a second one because I thought the first one was resulting in overcooked meat, however the new one is doing the same! They are both standard metal prong 'analog style' with a needle.

An example - cooking chicken breast. The thermometer says the temperature must reach 77 degrees Celsius. I cooked it for a short time in a griddle pan first and then put the pan in the oven. The temperature hung around 71 degrees and when it didn't seem to be getting any higher and I felt it was overcooking I pulled it out. Sure enough, overcooked!

How can I use a meat thermometer to cook meat correctly?

With thin cuts of meat (like chicken breast or a steak), you want to make sure you put the thermometer in to the thin side of the meat so that the whole thermometer goes in to the meat, rather than putting it in through the "top" so that only a little of the thermometer is in the meat. If you're putting it in the top, you can get wildly inaccurate temperatures. Also make sure that the thermometer isn't touching a pan, exposed to air, or touching a bone. Any of those can have a negative effect.

Also, you only need to cook chicken to 74C / 165F. That may be part of the problem in your case.

You may also want to check that your thermometer is accurate. You can stick it in boiling water to check that it reads 100C / 212F (assuming of course it goes up that high).


How much salt does pasta absorb compared to rice? Apparently if you cook both pasta or rice in salty water both will absorb salt.  It seems to me the salt changes the taste of the pasta more than it changes the taste of rice though I could be wrong, so I would imagine pasta absorbs more salt.

Which of the two would absorb more salt and how much more salt would be absorbed?  I'm looking to make more saltier pasta or rice by way of absorpton rather than sprinkling salt at the end.

If we assume that neither has any significant salt to start with and you cook them in equally salty water then to a good approximation they will absorb salt in proportion to the water they absorb.

White rice apparently absorbs twice its weight in water, while for pasta the figure is more like 1.1-1.4 times. That would suggest that rice absorbs more salt than pasta does. The effect on the flavour may not be quite the same as the effect on the concentration.

If you're trying to get add much salt in as possible, you need to start with as much as possible dissolved in your water.


Making licorice root syrup or extract I wanted to make licorice ice cream, but I don't want to use existing licorice candy (which probably contains preservatives, starch, gum etc which I want to add myself if needed). I realized I should probably go for cooking licorice root into some sort of extract or syrup and add black food coloring to the ice cream.

What would be the optimal way (traditional?) to extract flavor from a licorice root? Cut into thin strips and cook with a little water and sugar? Macerate in alcohol for a few weeks?

Or is the root not good for candy at all? Should I use anise seeds instead, for example?

Licorice root can be simply simmered in water to make a basic licorice extract, but it's quite weak, and not very "zesty"

Modern commercial licorice root extraction uses ethanol under pressure and heat, and a form of ultrasonic "distillation". None of this is very likely in the home kitchen :-(

You could try using a water and ethanol solution (say basic vodka), in a closed pot, and simmer below the boiling point of ethanol 78°C (172°F). Do this outside and wear protective face wear in case of a flash fire

Here is an old patent which may provide more clues http://www.google.com/patents/US3131175


What is the purpose of using potato peels for seasoning a cast iron pan? My first ever cast iron pan just arrived. The package contains following seasoning directions.

  Wash with clothes detergent (not soap or dish detergent) to remove the
  rust protection coating.
  Wash thoroughly with warm water to remove detergent. Dry pan.
  Fill the pan with fresh potato peels. Pour sunflower oil or rape oil
  on them, until it is almost full with
  oil.
  Leave the pan with the potato peels and oil for an hour on the
  next-to-highest setting on the stove
  top.
  Throw away the potato peels and oil, dry the pan with kitchen paper
  Coat the pan with a thin layer of sunflower or rape oil.

Not only don't I want to spend the afternoon peeling potatoes and then throw away most of them (I cannot eat the amount of potatoes needed for these peels), but even the positive amazon reviews for the pan all warn before the stench the charring peels produce during the seasoning: It lingered for about three days although I changed the fume hood filters, but it is a small price to pay for such a great pan. For me, it is a big price, because I have no fume hood, and there is no door between the kitchenette and the living room/bedroom. I looked up advise on seasoning pans, hoping for some trick, and found this question where the accepted answer doesn't include potato peels (in fact, no answer mentions them).

Now I am unsure whether to use them. On the one hand, I don't want to deal with the side effects. On the other hand, a producer is supposed to know what is best for his products. I don't want to get poisoned by an anti-rust coating residue that would have been rendered harmless in a chemical reaction with potato peels. Besides, I can't use the seasoning process outlined in the question I linked, because my pan doesn't fit in my oven.

I guess it would be easier to decide if I knew of their purpose. Does any of you know of using potato peels for seasoning pans, and can you tell me why they are needed? Or is it just an urban legend the ignorant manufacturer printed in the manual (the pan is not a well-known brand, maybe some hardware manufacturer decided it will be easy to add pans to their product line and made them without gathering enough know-how).

I personally had never heard of it, but after doing some research online, I found another set of instructions that called for boiling potatoes in the pan before seasoning:

  After boiling potato peelings for 15
  minutes, the skillet had a nasty
  slurry of grey looking sand in the
  bottom  Once the skillet was heated,
  the pores were opened, and the
  starchy/water mixture was able to draw
  out oils and dirt that I was not
  capable of getting to through normal
  washing. I fully do not understand the
  science behind why the starch/water
  mixture did this, but the experience
  was enough to convince me of the need
  to do this. So much in fact, that I
  did this process twice on each
  skillet.

I read a few too many web pages while researching this, and didn't save all of the links, but I did notice a few things:

Some of the posts kept switching between saying cast iron and carbon steel; both are typically seasoned, but they're different materials, so I don't know if it's recommended for both, or if people were mixing things up.  (I only have one carbon steel item, a wok, which I got second hand, so had already had its first seasoning).
Some of the posts mentioned boiling potatoes for 15 minutes, other mentioned frying potatoes as the first thing to be cooked in the pan (in oil), some mentioned cooking them 'til they burn.  The boiling potatoes ones also mentioned it works for cleaning stainless steel pans.
Some mentioned peels specifically, others say that you can use any part of the potato ... if it's the starch that's of interest, I'd think the middle would actually be better, but I'm guessing that the peels were considered waste, and so considered a less valuable item; I'd be inclined to just use one potato, dispatched with a peeler, if you were trying to avoid wasting potatoes you weren't going to eat.


Can I cook meat on low for half the preset time? I have a Crockpot that has preset settings to cook on high for 4 or 6 hours or cook on low for 8 or 10 hours. The Crockpot model is "Crock-Pot® SCCPVL605-B Cook and Carry Smart Pot Slow Cooker" and the control panel looks like this:

However, I've noticed many recipes call for cooking for shorter durations on low such as this recipe that calls for cooking for 2-3 hours on high or 4-5 hours on low.

First of all, this seems odd as the official crockpot website conversion table says the equivalent of 3 hours on high is 7 hours on low (not 4-5). I'm partial to the low setting as I feel it will probably taste better. So should I just set it to 8 hours on low since it's close enough to the conversion chart's recommended 7?

Or should I follow the recipe as close as possible and use the 8 hour low preset and remove the food after 4 hours? A potential problem with this approach is that I've read that with the presets a certain amount of time is needed to reach the "simmer point" and if you remove it too early your food may not reach the desired internal temperature and therefore be unsafe to eat.

Ultimately, my question boils down to which preset should I use and for how long when the presets don't match the recipe?

Also, please note that my question is different than this question on overcooking as I'm wondering if I may be undercooking.

I would put it in on the right temperature and take it out after the time stated in the recipe. If you're worried about whether the food is done or safe to eat, use an instant-read thermometer to take the temperature. You can check the FDA's website for safe cooking temperatures:
https://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/charts/mintemp.html

As to your concern that the simmer point is different with different settings. If it were different enough to affect the situation you're describing above, your crockpot would not be safe to use. There's a minimum time that your food has to get to a safe cooking temperature no matter how long you are cooking your food (I don't know the exact time, but I would guess around 30 mins). Many slow cookers initially cook food at a higher temperature to get it to a safe cooking temp (above 140 degrees Fahrenheit) and then lower the temp to the designated cooking temp.


How can I tell whether beetroot is still edible? I have some raw beetroot I bought about a week ago, having stored them at room temperature since. It's the first time I bought it raw, and I'm unsure whether it's still edible.

It is already soft, and when I cut it, it smells... Well, different than I expected. It's not a rotten smell as such, but it's nothing like the sweet beet-rooty smell I know from the pre-packaged, pre-boiled supermarket variety.

How can I tell whether it's still safe to eat?

Generally, raw beetroot shouldn't become soft. The thing is that there are differing definitions of soft. If it is soft like a tomato is, then it has probably spoiled. If, on the other hand, it is still firm but has little "give" to it, then it's probably alright to eat.

It is the cooking that softens it up, though it can be eaten raw. I grate some raw beetroot into salads and stuff occasionaly, just for fun.

I'm not sure what to say about the smell thing. I think that raw beetroot generally smells a little earthy, especially if you haven't peeled it yet. The very distinct beetroot smell is usually released by cooking.

Obviously this is all a bit vague, as we can't send smells over the net yet.


Can I use apple cider vinegar instead of white wine vinegar for cooking? Can I substitute apple cider vinegar for white wine vinegar in a pasta and chicken dish?

It may slightly alter the flavor (maybe in a positive way!). It shouldn't cause any negative chemical problems in the recipe. I sub different vinegars regularly and I haven't had any troubles.


Should I have more than one dishwashing soap? In Brazil, there is a soap paste ("sabao pastoso") commonly used to clean aluminum pots
with steel wool.  I'm guessing the benefit here, compared to normal liquid dishwasing soap,
comes only from a higher soap concentration and the pastier consistency (to keep the soap
from running downward during scrubbing).  But, the paste is black and appears more
complicated.  Is there more physics here?

And, would there be any drawback (besides cost, since you tend to use more soap when it's
more concentrated) in using this paste to clean ceramic plates with a normal sponge?

I'm not familiar with this pasty soap in the USA.  We usually use the same liquid
dishwashing soap for every surface...is this is a bad practice?

Aluminum cleaners typically contain mild/organic acids and sometimes also contain abrasives, to help remove oxidation. The black color may very well be aluminum oxide which is a cleaning abrasive (a sensible choice for an aluminum pan cleaner). A paste is also sensible for aluminum pots because these pots require a rigorous scrubbing, compared with ceramic, teflon, and steel dishware.

However, most other cleaners are neutral or basic; and other common cleaning abrasives like silicon dioxide are white. Some cleaners contain oxidizers (like peroxides) and others contain reducing agents.

Dish detergent in the USA is generally made for removing/dissolving grease. We tend to use aluminum more for disposable aluminum-foil pans, and opt for stainless steel and/or other cookware materials, because other materials are simply better quality and require less scrubbing, and/or simply diswasher-safe (unlike aluminum which tends to become blackened by the oxidizing cleaners found in dishwasher soap).


Garlic: minced, crushed, chopped, sliced. When to use each one, and what is the difference? I’ve seen, in many recipes, that the usage of garlic varies a lot.

For example: Meaty sauces normally require that the garlic is chopped and fried before the meat is added.

Neapolitan Pizzas usually add sliced, raw garlic in very thin slices to be cooked with the pizza

Some other sauces require crushed garlic to be crushed and fried (generally with onion) before adding other ingredients.

I’ve seen as well some recipes calling for a garlic paste, made with some salt and knife skills.

Lately, I’ve been using very thin slices of garlic added in the beginning/middle of the cooking process of the sauce.

My question: What is the difference between dicing, slicing, crushing, or making a paste? What is the difference between frying the garlic before or adding it to the cooking sauce? Which one adds more flavor?

Thanks in advance.

Dice or slice when the garlic will be consumed along with the other ingredients.

Crush in order to release more flavor. If you add it whole it can be removed afterwards.

Make paste when you don't want it to be visible and all its flavor to be strong and evenly distributed in the dish (e.g. hummus as it is a paste itself, you wouldn't want it to have little lumps in it).

Use whole garlic cloves in slow cooker, and it will release its scent and flavor with time. You can remove it afterwards, the flavor will be there regardless.

Processing it before adding other ingredients, makes it release its scent and get mild-flavored.

All methods except processing will add strong flavor to your dish. The paste will be the strongest, as you consume all of the garlic.


Uneven brownie baking? I used to make the best brownies, all the time. They came out perfectly without any effort. Duncan Hines, Hershey's, Betty Crocker-- all out of the box, all simple, all delicious.

But lately (without me making any perceptible change to my strategy) things have taken a turn for the worse.

I bake them for 40+ minutes, they're not done. 8x8 glass tray as always, but the middle is still doughy and moist. Not in the good way, more in the play-doh way. I bake them for 90+ minutes, they're still not done. But the outer edges bake normally, so they end up too crispy to be good, although somehow miraculously not burned. Just the middle is completely underbaked.

Can anyone take a guess at what might cause this?

Your oven temp may be off - check your oven temp.  Get an oven thermometer and check your temp.


What is more difficult to make: beer or wine? I would like to know, in your opinion, what is harder to produce: wine or beer. I mean, including all the steps: planting grapes or barley, taking care of them, collecting, making, etc... the whole process :)

I haven't done it myself, but I guess making beer is more difficult for one good reason: safety!

Grapes will ferment by themselves and will produce either wine or vinegar. The fermentation process is violent, so there's no risk. Added meat will be fermented as well!

Beer needs to be sterilized before a yeast is added and there's a risk for butulism.

Now, making a good wine is something else. I guess that making a good wine is far more complicated then making a decent beer, once you overcome the safety issues, as there are a great number of steps involved in making good wine. For instance: aging in oak.

Commercial wines start by sterilizing the grapes and afterwards adding a certain yeast strain, but hey...


What can I use as a manual hard cheese slicer? I used to have an electric deli slicer (with the motorized rotary cutter) like they have in the supermarkets, though not so fancy for home use. But not any more, and now I do not have the counter space or budget to justify getting another one. Also cleaning given infrequent use does not make a lot of sense.

Where I usually have a problem is thin slicing hard cheeses (like a block of cheddar cheese) with a knife. Because of the force required to slice the cheese, the slice usually ends up too thick or only a partial slice.

I have tried using generic band type cheese slicers that are fine for soft cheese but would seem to break for hard cheeses.

So I would like to know what kind of utensil I could use. Ideally I would like to keep it in the realm of a manual-operation utensil that is easy to clean and store.

--EDIT--

After doing some more searching, I came across these two that seem like possibilities:

Norpro 330 Heavy Duty Adjustable Cheese Slicer

Norpro 349 Marble Cheese Slicer-MARBLE CHEESE SLICER

The 330 has replaceable wire which seems like a good feature. I would appreciate any comment regarding whether these might be suitable.

A Scandinavian cheese slicer, like this one should do the trick. It's small, cheap, machine washable, and they last basically forever.


Did I make butter, or something else? Tonight I tried to make some butter from some raw cows milk.  I followed the instructions here, and let the cream I skimmed off a gallon of milk sit for about 24 hours to "culture."  It didn't really smell "slightly sour" yet, but as I had already gone twice the prescribed time, I decided to move on anyway.  I divided the cream between two quart jars, and shook them for about 20 minutes each, as described, and although solid clumps formed in each jar, there was no yellow tint.

So I transferred the contents of each jar into a mixing bowl, and used an electric mixer, per the instructions here, but it made no real difference, except to move the stuff around, so I finished off the batch by straining the butter milk from the solids, rinsing the butter under cool water, and adding a little salt.

The final result looks like this:

In the silver bowl is the finished "butter", in the bowl to the right, the strained off buttermilk, and I'm holding a stick of store-bought butter (Ingredients: Cream, Natural Colors) for color comparison.

This "butter" tastes okay, but doesn't have much of a buttery flavor.  It is is also the whitest "butter" I have ever seen.  But is it really butter, or did I make something else?  To get "normal" yellow butter that tastes butterier, what should I do differently?

It's not hard: First milk cow :-), then let the milk settle in the fridge for a day or two. Skim the cream off the top

Use a food processor, or hand shake in a cocktail mixer or similar sized jar (only about a 100 ml at a time)

First you get whipped cream (2 to 5 minutes), then another minute of shaking and suddenly butter appears

It should separate very cleanly, with watery whey (save for soft cheese making), and lots of rough yellowish fat globules. If it still looks smooth it needs more shaking

If you want to keep the butter for any length of time you will need to wash it a few times with clean water, and squeeze the water out of it after each wash

The colour you get depends on what your cows have been eating. It can be quite white

There is no need for heating, or any other additives


Dents in pizza dough The other day I went to PapaJohns and noticed that they had a roller that had spikes on it and they rolled it on their dough to make some impressions in the dough.

Last weekend I decided to take a fork and try it and I made dents all over my dough.

I don't normally make dents, what are the dents supposed to do?

One of my family members theorized that it might let the heat travel up faster and help with the cooking.

I'm under the impression that the dough was softer once cooked, but I don't know if that's psychosomatic or not.

What does making small dent impressions on pizza dough actually do?

Bread dough experiences "oven spring". That is, the water in the dough turns to steam and gives some fast, extra lift when the dough is first placed in a hot oven.

For most breads oven spring is a very good thing. For thick, flat breads like focaccia and pizza it is not good thing. The spring, or any other rising, will make the dough no longer a flat bread.

Putting the dents in flat breads is simply to help keep them flat when they bake. Unlike in pastry dough, where the docking pierces the dough and lets steam escape, the docking in bread dough shouldn't cut through layers but simply leave indentations.

Pizza doesn't always need to be docked because the weight of the toppings is sufficient to keep it flat. I don't dock my pizza dough.

The indentations are also nice because they increase surface area for toasting and hold on to toppings, such as the olive oil on focaccia, but I don't believe that is their primary purpose.


What is the white film on my wet carrots? I was juicing carrots tonight and was getting rid of (juicing) some older baby carrots that nobody wanted to eat.  They felt a bit "slimier" than usual, but smelled fine, and I haven't had any problems with juicing slimy carrots in the past.  However after juicing a few of them I looked a bit more closely and noticed that some of them - not all, but maybe 10% or so appear to have a faint white film over part or all of them.

The carrots smell perfectly good, but I am concerned as to what this film might be.  Mold maybe?  I started scrubbing each carrot off before juicing it but this was taking quite a bit of time, and now I am thinking there might have been some that got through before I started scrubbing.

I have looked in a lot of places trying to find out what this white stuff is, but all I see is a lot of people saying things like "take it back" without giving any reasons to do so and without even attempting to answer the question - is it mold?  Some places say the white part is due to the carrot drying out - that can't be the case here, because the carrots are quite wet.  Others suggest it is due to the treatment/processing of the carrots. Is it something that will make me sick if I drink juice made from carrots that have this film?  Even if it is something that shouldn't be drunk, now I also need to know, what do I need to do to my juicer?  Can I just run water through it to clean it out?  Do I need to take it apart and scrub down and disinfect all the internal components?

Even though the surface may be wet, that white stuff is dehydration. It's the cells that are drying on the inside, not the surface of the carrot. It's referred to as "blushing", and it is harmless. Baby carrots are adult carrots that have been cut and polished. That polishing removes the very outer surface, making the baby carrots more susceptible to blushing than full sized carrots.

See related article here.

EDIT: I should have mentioned, soak the carrots in ice water for an hour right before you use them. That will temporarily get rid of most of the discoloration.

This is what the carrots look like when they are dehydrated:


Freezing prepared dry salted fish How does prepared dried-&-salted fish hold in the freezer?
The fish has been (properly) desalted, and, other than that, the recipe contains tomato (boiled down to a paste), tomato puree, onion, garlic and madame jeanette. There's tons of minor twists, but mostly it boils (haha) down to that.
I'm not worried if it's safe, I'm mostly wondering how it will keep texture wise.
The whole thing can (in general) be prepared in about two hours (including desalting), but I'm wondering if it's worth making it in bigger batches and freezing it. Desalting the fish produces quite a powerful smell, but refrying small batches of the prepared doesn't (as much). And while I don't mind the smell at all, my better half does ;)
Edit:
The salted fish is cod, and the fish has been desalted before cooking it with rest. The idea was to freeze the whole thing, but it's actually just as interesting to know if just the desalted cod will freeze nicely.

For freezing the desalted cod, see one of the answers to this question.  Apparently frozen, desalted cod is a common supermarket ingredient in Portugal, which suggests that it's as good, or almost as good, as "fresh".  This is not a surprise, since salted cod has already been dehydrated once, so a trip through the freezer is unlikely to hurt it any.
For freezing the whole recipe: yes, I'd expect that it would freeze well.  The cod will freeze fine, and tomato sauces also freeze well, so I'd expect portions of the finished dish to be a good keeper.


Can salt be inserted in unshelled peanuts? Do natural peanuts taste salty? The label of the blue coloured bag in this link  says:

  Peanuts unsalted In-shell

What is the need of mentioning unsalted In-shell?
Is it possible to insert salt in unshelled peanuts? Do natural peanuts taste salty?

The bag of unshelled roasted peanuts I bought was not branded and there is nothing relevant written over it. But, those peanuts do taste a bit salty!

Unshelled peanuts are salted simply by soaking in brine. Some of the salt (and water) gets through the shell, which is a bit porous. They're then re-dried and roasted. I suppose the roasting is optional, but if you're adding salt you clearly want flavor, and that's what roasting's for too. There's a Serious Eats post with a bit more detail if you're curious.

You can do something similar at home - boiled peanuts. They won't be the hard crunchy roasted nuts you're used to: they end up soft, kind of like firm beans. You can season the water and impart plenty of flavor. The traditional thing in the American South is just salt, but you can use spices and get some pretty fun results. For example, a bit of soy sauce and five spice (or some of the components of five spice), or something Cajun-style (even just using premade Cajun spice blends).

(And no, unsalted peanuts shouldn't taste salty. You can confirm this by searching for unsalted peanuts nutrition facts, and seeing the 0mg of sodium!)


Chocolate for topping didn't melt Recipe for S'mores Bars called for melting milk chocolate chips on top of previously baked marshmallows (on top of graham cracker crust). Oven at 350F.
My chocolate didn't melt, and the bars don't hold together.
I used homemade marshmallows, which are quite a bit lighter and more delicate than commercial. I substituted some bittersweet chocolate that I had on hand, which was a bit old.
I haven't tried anything yet to fix it. Tastes great but it's not a bar, more of a crumbly topping at this point. Is there any way to fix it? Melt some milk choc chips separately and pour/spread on top of the bittersweet?
It's not a typical situation of 'seizing' since I wasn't heating and stirring it separately.

Assuming the chocolate really hasn't melted at all, I would just remove it and melt it seperately before pouring it back on top so it can actually combine with the marshmallows.
If it sort of fused with the marshmallows, I would consider getting more to just put on top, depending on how well the not-melted chocolate covers the marshmallows. If the newly melted chocolate can't reach the marshmallow, it'll still just fall apart after the 2nd batch of chocolate cools.


Bread and butter pudding - but with juice? Bread and butter pudding is bread with milk (indeed, usually milk-egg) baked.
In fact, could you make bread and butter pudding with juice rather than milk-eggs?
So, essentially, imagine a baking tray, layer in some bread, add some juice, and bake it.
(I could imagine adding some layers of say pineapple on top, and drizzle w/ chocolate afterwards.)
Is this a thing, or would it just be stupid?  ("Here's your hot soggy bread.")
If it is a thing, is it another name?

Yes, you can use fruit juice instead of some or all of the milk in bread pudding. As Juhasz points out, whether or not the result will "really" be bread pudding is open to debate.
Since bread pudding is basically bread + custard, I looked up recipes for custard made with fruit juice and no milk. There are some custards made with fruit juice substituted for some of the milk. For example, Soft Orange Custard is butter, sugar, eggs, flour, salt, orange juice, lemon juice, orange zest and milk.
I found one juice-only custard in Joy of Cooking by Rombauer, Becker & Becker, 2006 edition. The recipe is Lemon-Orange Custard Filling; ingredients are lemon & orange zest, lemon & orange juice, water, sugar, flour, salt, and egg yolks or eggs. Most other custard-like fillings or sauces made with only fruit juice are thickened with cornstarch, like a pudding. Curd (lemon, lime or orange curd) is a custard-like filling or spread, made with citrus juice and no milk.
The custard in bread pudding is usually thickened with eggs, but there are some recipes that use cornstarch. Fruit juice might substitute well into one of those recipes. There are even recipes that don't use any kind of thickener. The basic idea of bread pudding is quite simple, and fairly flexible.
I substituted apple cider for the milk in my regular bread pudding recipe. I also reduced the sugar to compensate for the sweetness of the cider, and omitted vanilla extract and nutmeg. It was delicious. The flavor of the cider worked well with the flavors of cinnamon and raisin. But, the texture was not quite right. My guess is that the missing elements are some protein and fat from the milk, and that could be made up by adding more eggs and butter. I will definitely make this again, with some modifications. Here's the recipe I made, with suggested modifications at the end; the original is from Joy of Cooking.
Apple Cider Bread Pudding
------------------------

16 oz sliced bread, stale but not hard (I used fresh bread, lightly toasted)
3/4 cup raisins
4 eggs
3 cups apple cider (the original recipe calls for whole milk)
1/4 cup sugar (the original recipe calls for 3/4 cup sugar)
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
butter

Butter a 2-quart baking dish. Cut the bread into 1/2-inch cubes.
Spread the bread and raisins in the baking dish.
Whisk together the other ingredients and pour over the bread.
Let sit until liquid is mostly absorbed, 10-20 minutes.
Place the baking dish in a hot water bath, and bake at 350 F for about an hour.

Suggested modifications: Add a couple of extra eggs and some melted butter to
compensate for the missing fat and creaminess that the milk would have provided.
Increase the cinnamon to 1 tsp, or even 1-1/2 tsp.
Possibly add back the 1 tsp vanilla and/or the 1/4 tsp grated nutmeg from the original recipe.


Is food immediately taken out of the microwave safe to eat? Do we have to wait a few seconds to let the microwaves go away, or can we eat it immediately?

Of course, I assume that the food is not too hot to be eaten.

Yes it is completely safe. Microwaves do not linger in food. The microwaves stop as soon as your microwave stops.

A microwave is just an electromagnetic wave similar to a radio wave, but at a higher frequency. It works by exciting molecules, particularly water, in the food and giving those molecules some of its energy as heat.

Microwaves do not alter the structure or composition of molecules or atoms directly, which is what happens with ionizing radiation (gamma rays, x-rays, and UV-rays). You could cook your food with gamma rays, but you would ionize many of the particles making them radioactive.


Is Mulan-themed Szechuan McNugget Sauce really just a blend of BBQ and S&S? Regarding the limited-time Mulan-themed Szechuan McNugget sauce from McDonald's in 1998, I do remember it being tasty, but I don't recall the exact flavor to properly judge recreating it.  Some internet rumors have inferred that is it really just a simple blend of the pre-existing McNugget Barbecue and McNugget Sweet & Sour sauces in varying proportions.

Is this true, or is there more to it than that?

See related question on Skeptics, which is basically a continuation of the original of this answer: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/38472/was-a-package-of-mcdonalds-dipping-sauce-just-sold-for-almost-15k
EDIT:
Was the 1998 Mulan sauce a mixture of McDonald’s sweet-and-sour sauce and barbecue sauce? The world may never know. But since Rick and Morty has endorsed this cooking video from Binging with Babish (the endorsement is here in the description), and I suspect the makers of Rick and Morty are pretty cozy with McDonalds, maybe Babish knows something the rest of us don’t.
In the video, Babish mixes two parts McDonald’s sweet and sour sauce with one part McDonald’s Tangy BarBeQue sauce. He declares it not bad, but not as good as the following:
He really likes the sauce he made from a recipe from a Reddit user, who created the recipe with his father in an attempt years ago to duplicate the Mulan sauce. The video doesn’t give measurements, but luckily I was able to track down the original Reddit post  and the recipe.

•  Mince 6 cloves of Garlic and sweat (heat them up in a skillet)
•  add 4 tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar
•  add soy sauce to taste (DO NOT USE LOW SODIUM SAUCE)
•  add 2 tablespoon Plum Sake (Drink additional 3 oz Plum Sake)
•  Reduce sauce slightly (Drink additional 1.5 oz Plum Sake)
•  3 1/2 tablespoons cock sauce (Sriracha)
•  add 2 tablespoon brown sugar
•  Red pepper flakes to taste
•  Minced Ginger to taste
•  Consume remaining Plum Sake
Simmer that shit for a solid 5 minutes, stirring pretty much constantly. The brown sugar helps it keep the proper consistency, so it's important to use. Play around with the recipe to your taste. Might want more or less balsamic vinegar. Might want more or more Plum Sake. I'd definitely recommend you make it several times to figure out your own flavor.

The rest of this answer is as it was before I knew for sure that the Mulan sauce package in the news recently was a hoax See https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/38472/was-a-package-of-mcdonalds-dipping-sauce-just-sold-for-almost-15k
TL;DR
According to the labels on the sauces, the answer to your question is no, McDonald's Mulan SzeChuan Teriyaki Dipping Sauce is not a mixture of McDonald's Sweet and Sour Dipping Sauce and McDonald's Tangy BarBeQue Dipping Sauce. I say that because because the sweet and sour sauce lists "apricot purée concentrate and/or peach purée concentrate" as its third ingredient. The Mulan sauce does not list that as an ingredient at all, so the Mulan sauce doesn't contain the sweet and sour sauce.

That should be it, right? This is where it gets weird.
The first thing I looked for was a list of ingredients for the sauces. I couldn't find that as text anywhere, so I looked at images of the actual sauce containers. I quickly saw that I wasn't going to have any problem reading the ingredients from pictures of the packages. I choose the first two images randomly. Notice that they're from completely different sources.

From: TheEater.com
And

From: Mouthful of Sunshine
There are two very weird things here. These are supposed to be pictures of the Mulan sauce package and the BBQ sauce package, respectively.
The ingredients on both packages are identical:

High fructose corn syrup, water, tomato paste, grape vinegar, distilled vinegar, salt, soy sauce (water, wheat, soybeans, salt), food starch- modified, spices, dextrose, soybean oil, natural smoke flavor (plant source), xanthan gum, caramel color, garlic powder, cellulose gum, dried chili peppers, malic acid, natural flavors (fruit and vegetable source), onion powder, sodium benzoate (preservative), succinic acid

But that's not even the weirdest thing. Got your tin-foil hat?
Look closely at the two images:

They are the same photo of the same package, with different sauce names Photoshopped in and the color manipulated.
Now that my mind had been totally blown, I looked for other images of the packaging of the sauces that didn't seem to be manipulated. I figured one of the packages above listed the wrong ingredients. Well...

From Popsugar.com
and

From An Immovable Feast
Full-sized, you can read the ingredients on both. They are identical to the other two.
So, either (a) McDonald's had a massive labeling error that would have cost them millions if caught at the time, or (b) the Mulan sauce is actually made from the same ingredients as the BBQ sauce, in the same order of quantity (so, very likely identical sauces), or (c) something is afoot.
I am going to get to the bottom of this with McDonald's, I am starting an email campaign now.
For the sake of completeness, the sweet and sour sauce contains:

High fructose corn syrup, water, apricot purée concentrate and/or peach purée concentrate, distilled vinegar, soy sauce (water, wheat, soybeans, salt), salt, food starch - modified, dextrose, soybean oil, xanthan gum, spices, sodium benzoate (preservative), natural flavors (fruit, vegetable and plant source), garlic powder, cellulose gum, dried chili peppers, malic acid, onion powder, extractives of paprika, succinic acid

From Craveonline.com
This video gets into the lore of the new-found interest in McDonald's Mulan sauce. The video repeatedly refers to the Mulan sauce as only available for a limited time. Hmm. Scratch the surface of the "Mulan" name, the BBQ name might be underneath.
I suspect that the reason the photoshopped image exists is that it was used in a pitch, showing how easy it would be to fool people into thinking that McDonald's created a sauce, available for a limited time only, to tie into the Mulan movie.
EDIT
I just noticed this!:

Now I'm really at a loss.  Even Time missed that date. A new Mulan movie is scheduled for 2018. Is this whole thing a marketing gimmick? The Mulan sauce had been discontinued for a very long time by 2011.
I tried to read the copyright date on the picture of the container in the hand, but couldn't. The printing looks suspiciously like the photoshopped C2011 package, but it's either not the same package or it has been further Photoshopped since the lower left hand corner is clearly different.
I find this whole thing very mysterious, so I will continue the investigation. I think I'll ask the folks at Skeptics for some help with this.


How long does eggwash keep? I don't use eggwash often- roughly once a week I make a speedy en-croute or pie with some shop-bought puff. Whatever I make, as it tends to be just for two, I rarely use more than half an egg's worth, and it feels a bit wasteful throwing so much away (for this reason I tend to use milk).

If I use a fresh egg (with at least a week to its expiry date), can I keep a cup of eggwash under cling-film for a week? If the expiry is further away, will that make a difference?

To make a long answer short, if you are using it once a week, then don't bother storing the egg mixture. The egg wash is definitely not safe after a week even if you store it in an air type container in the refrigerator.

If however you are using just egg whites, you can lightly beat half of it and use that and freeze the other unbeaten half in the freezer.

But to be honest... There are worse things to waste than half an egg a week. I think this is a case of not being worth the effort.


Why is cooking rice so complicated? I'm slowly teaching myself to cook and I made some rice today. While the result was perfectly acceptable, the process didn't go smoothly and I had to add some water in the end and cook it some more to get there.

I did follow the process on the package of rice, though I also read a bit about rice cooking in general before that. So I added the rice with a defined amount of water in a pot, brought it to boil and then simmered it with a half-closed lid for around 10 minutes.

What I'm wondering now is why rice is cooked in this way, with a defined amount of water added and then until the water is absorbed or evaporated? The process seems to me to be rather fragile as the result depends a lot on getting the rice/water ratio right.

Compared to cooking pasta for example, the process seems to be more finicky and depending on rather exact measurements. So why exactly isn't rice just cooked like pasta, where you bring excess water to a boil and put the rice in for a defined amount of time, with the option of tasting when it is done?

Once you get the hang of it, rice is as easy as pasta. One thing you say in the question that may be central to the difficulty you are having is that your lid is "half-closed". For the majority of rice cooking methods, not only should you keep the lid tightly closed, but you shouldn't even open it to check the rice until it has cooked close to long enough that it might be done. Look at the accepted answer here: Rice gets burnt and watery. That answer explains it more thoroughly.


Is it safe to boil sweetened condensed milk in the can to make duche de leche? Is it? I am talking about metal poisoning not the explosion risk, will the can leak dangerous metals into the dulche de leche product when boiled or is it safe to eat? (I am hoping it is because it is very convenient but if its not what to do safety first)

Yes, it is perfectly safe. Nearly all if not all canned foods sold commercially  have been processed in retorts (industrial pressure cookers) to kill microrganisms
The metal from the can is not going to leach into the food contained in it


How much does a cup of hazelnuts weigh? I need to purchase 1.5 cups of hazelnuts for a recipe I want to make but they’re sold by weight not volume. Approximately how much does a cup of them weigh? I would prefer to purchase as close to what I need as possible since I don’t really have a use for the left overs.

Update

The nuts are sold whole, but my recipe calls for them chopped.

Well 1.5 cups is volumetric so the weight will depend on how tightly packed that cup is, if they are chopped, etc.  On average though, 1.5 cups of chopped hazelnuts is about 6.08 oz (172 g) according to the USDA's averages.  You can check the USDA's National Nutrient Database page for hazelnuts if you want to see estimated weights for 1.5 cups of whole, chopped, or ground hazelnuts.


How do I keep my zoodles from being too watery? Everytime I make zoodles, I spiralize the zucchini and sauté them in a pan but they're always too watery. I've tried removing the moisture with napkins, but they still release a lot of water. I would like them to have the consistency of pasta. Is there any way to achieve this?

Here are a couple of options I've found online:

Dry them in the oven

  Dry the  noodles out in your oven at 200 degrees, for about 10 minutes or until they are finished “sweating.”  You’ll want them dry to the touch, but still very flexible and moist on the inside. Stir them after about 5 minutes and see how they are doing…the time they need to dry  will vary depending on how moist your squash is. Once they’re fairly dry, transfer them to boiling water for just a few minutes. I stood over the pot and watched as they turned darker green, it took about 4 minutes for my noodles to reach a texture that was similar to al-dente.

Encourage them to "sweat" out the water by using salt:

  Sweating the zucchini noodles with salt is essential in this Paleo recipe so they don’t become watery and limp during cooking.
  Place the julienned zucchini in a colander or wire strainer and toss generously with salt until the strands are lightly coated. Allow the zucchini to sit for 20 to 30 minutes. Rinse with running water, drain well, and squeeze dry in a clean dish towel.


Combating adverse effects of garlic and onions I'm a huge fan of garlic and onions and seldom do I cook for myself without adding one of the two.

Recently, I've managed to come across a local garlic grower. The intensity of the taste is like nothing I've had before, but the problem of eating it in quantities that I do has become self-evident in my bedroom, which was probably one of the rare occasions that I've felt happy of waking up alone.

I've had difficulties with my body odor previously and I would usually stop eating garlic and onions two days before exposing myself to potential embarrassment, occasionally even substituting my garlic of choice with the bland Chinese garlic sooner than that, but the garlic I'm eating now seems to take close to a full week to clear out.

Is there anything I can do to prepare the garlic to help manage the allicin contained within? So far I'm having some luck adding it to soups, as the prolonged exposure to heat seems to raise the internal temperature of the crushed cloves enough, but mixing into sour cream and letting it sit for a while doesn't seem to be doing enough.

Roasting garlic mellows the taste and bite quite a bit; have you tried using the supergarlic roasted?

You don't need special equipment; just cut the top off of a bulb, dip or rub some cooking oil (I use grapeseed; others use EVOO) on the cut surface, wrap it in foil and and place it in your oven at 350 to 375 F (176 to 190 C) for about 40-45 minutes.

The garlic will squish easily out of the individual cloves. Roasting breaks down those harsh chemicals so they don't mix like they would when you crush a raw clove, so hopefully they wouldn't affect your body odor as pronouncedly.


Help! I poured the syrup over my Baklava before I baked it. Is it ruined? I accidentally poured the syrup over my Baklava before I baked it.  Did I ruin it?  Is there anything I can do to salvage it?

You have ruined it as baklava, pouring the syrup on before baking means it won't crisp up, you can't pour the syrup out and get the same result. However, you may as well just bake it and see what comes out, it won't be baklava but it may taste good. Feel free to post an answer if you do and tell us what it was like.


What is the difference between kosher dill pickles and Polish dill pickles? What is the difference in taste between kosher dill pickles and polish dill pickles? Do they have any visual distinctions that would make it possible to differentiate between them on sight?

Those are two different processes. Unfortunately English language don't have two words for the outcome and they are both called "pickles".

Usually Polish pickles "kiszony" should be made with:
cucumbers, dill, fresh horseradish, garlic and salt. No vinegar.
Kosher pickles, called in polish "korniszony", are made with brine that contain vinegar.

I assume that those two recipes have been mixed outside Poland and both things are "korniszony" with the difference that "polish ones" call for ingredients used in "kiszony". The difference in taste is that polish one is much more spicy while kosher one is sweet.


Cure #1 in Brine for Brisket I'm trying for the first time to cure a second cut brisket (1.8 lbs.) to make pastrami (after curing the meat I will smoke it and then steam it). I followed a recipe from the Stanley Marianski book for a wet brine which calls for 453g (1 lb) of salt and 136g (4.8 oz) of cure #1 per gallon of water. Since I have a relatively small piece of meat, I reduced the amounts to 500 ml water, 60g of salt and 18g of cure #1. However, after I brined the meat, I started looking on line for other recipes and they all call for an amount of cure#1 much smaller than the amount recommended in the book. I understand that the amount of cure in wet brines is not the same as in dry cures as only part of the nitrates make to the meat, but I'm very concerned about safety. I have not cooked the meat yet. Can you please let me know if the recipe that I followed is safe? I didn't pump the meat but just submerged it in brine (today is day 4). Thank you!

Your question is ...did I use too much cure1...which is sodium nitrate? I dont think there is a safe and not safe limit for this..the more, the less healthy, but there is no poisoning within large margins...

Wikipedia:

Health concerns

Studies have shown a link between increased levels of nitrates and increased deaths from certain diseases including Alzheimer's, diabetes mellitus and Parkinson's, possibly through the damaging effect of nitrosamines on DNA, however, little is done to control for other possible causes in the epidemiological results.[10] Nitrosamines, formed in cured meats containing sodium nitrate and nitrite, have been linked to gastric cancer and oesophageal cancer.[11] Sodium nitrate and nitrite are associated with a higher risk of colorectal cancer.[12] World Cancer Research Fund UK,[13] states that one of the reasons that processed meat increases the risk of colon cancer is its content of nitrate. A small amount of the nitrate added to meat as a preservative breaks down into nitrite, in addition to any nitrite that may also be added. The nitrite then reacts with protein-rich foods (such as meat) to produce NOCs (nitroso compounds). NOCs can be formed either when meat is cured or in the body as meat is digested. For most people, the highest dietary source of nitrates is from fruits and vegetables and no studies have conclusively linked nitrates and nitrites to cancer or any other form of diseases. On the contrary, some research has hinted to beneficial properties of nitrites such as lowering blood pressure by slightly expanding arteries. [14] The only reason nitrates and nitrites came under such legal scrutiny is when the US Food and Drug Administration presented a brief report which stated that some adverse effect was observed on mice (“depression of growth”) when their intake of nitrites was up to 90% of daily diet.[15]


What is the best/easiest way to juice a watermelon? Last year, I had a lot of leftover watermelon from a full-size melon and I pressed it in a strainer to get out the seeds and pulp, but it took forever.

(I then froze the juice in ice trays and stored them in ziploc bags in the freezer - it makes a great margarita in the blender.)

Now that we are getting great local watermelon again, I thought it would be a good use (I've got a huge half a melon taking up space in the fridge)

Are powered juicers any good for this?  Would they work with watermelon (obviously cut up with the rind removed)  Would I have to remove the seeds manually first?

(I found this ridiculous video of Rener Gracie, BTW: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClIepBc7z6s)

Apparently, they claim that the $20 Gracie Juice Bag (http://www.gracieacademy.com/storeitem.asp?r=74903) is more efficient to use on watermelon than the juicer they sell on the site.

The way that i found to juice mine is leave the rind on, mash the melon to bits inside of it, cut a spout in the rind for easy pouring, line my stock pot with chese cloth (although i'm sure a lot of other things would form a great strainer), then just pour the whole thing into the stock pot. I then wrap the cheese cloth up and tie it off with a rubber band. Then you place a plate on top of the cloth and weight it down with a book. Check back every one or two hours to tighten the cheese cloth up and you end up with a lot of juice and none of the nasty bits.  I also tend let the contraption sit in the fridge while it does it's work but it will work just fine on a counter top.  The set up takes me about ten minutes.


What is the difference between quick bread and cake? Quick breads, like banana or zucchini breads, seem to be assembled in an identical method and with similar ingredients as cake. Many recipes have comparable quantities of fat and sugar.

So what is the difference and how can you tell whether a baked good should be called a quick bread or a cake?

This question has become blown out of proportion. I was just curious- then I started getting answers that quickbreads and cake are the same thing- which they "obviously" aren't. So I started doing my own research.

Wikipedia says that the term quickbread was probably invented in the US after the discovery of chemical leavening. The Wikipedia references and some dictionaries corroborate this definition. Basically anything leavened with soda is quickbread.

This doesn't work. There are a great many things leavened with soda that can't be called quickbread. A good example is plain old white cake. Obviously this is a semantic issue but one that needed solving.

Two American cookbooks that I consider canonical recipe resources, The Joy of Cooking, and the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, both have a separate quickbread section. In it are a variety of fruit breads as well as some biscuits and scones.

On Food and Cooking muddied the water a bit by differentiating between quick breads such as biscuits and batter breads such as banana bread. These were grouped together, however, and contrasted against cakes. This book says that cakes are higher in fat and sugar and have a more delicate texture.

Ratio, as linked in this answer, confused the terms a bit more also including a term "quick cake" but it differentiated between the different products with distinct ratios for the flour, fat, and sugar.

With several competing definitions I decided to take an unscientific poll. I called 6 friends in Washington, Utah, Georgia, and Texas. I tried to find a variety of American cultures. Obviously it is biased by the fact that I know all of them.
When asked "What is quickbread to you?" without exception all of them replied "banana bread"
When I followed up with: "What is the difference between that and cake" I received the following answers:

"It is eaten at breakfast"
"It has less sugar"
"It is loaf shaped"
"It is more dense"
"It has a more open texture"

My conclusion is that the historical definition of "anything with soda" is no longer useful. In cookbooks it seems to now be applied to chemically risen baked goods that:

have as a rule of thumb a particular ratio of flour, fat, and sugar
have less sugar than cake
refers in particular to fruit breads, biscuits, and scones
generally has an irregular vs uniform texture

The popular definition (among my extremely limited, unrandom sampling) adds:

tends to be loaf shaped

And now I can sleep easily again.


How to stop sea bass fillets from sticking to foil I've cooked sea bass before on 220 degrees centigrade for 15 minutes baked in the oven. I get some foil and place it on a baking tray and cover it in a thin layer of olive oil. I then place the fillets on top and drizzle over some more olive oil. I fold the tin foil into loose little packets and put it in the oven. 15 minutes later the fillets are stuck to the foil and have to be forced off, ruining the shape of the fish and reducing it to mush.

How can I prevent this? More oil? Which side should I place the fillet down?

Skin side down will work best, as for how to prevent sticking more oil is the way to go. In my experience wax paper (baking paper or baking parchment to some) works better and sticks less. If you really need the foil (say you are cooking over a fire) then using wax paper inside the foil will give you the result you need.


separating almond flour from almond meal I've been experimenting with almond flour for baking bread because I have a hard time digesting starches.  I've progressed to the point where my bread made from 50:50 (almond:wheat flours) is almost indistinguishable from 100% wheat flour.  That's a big win for me.

Almond Meal is not Almond Flour

The problem is that I have yet to find anyone actually selling actual almond flour.  Most vendors only sell almond meal even though they like to call it "almond flour".  Some vendors sell "fine ground almond flour" which is still just fine ground almond meal (I'm lookin' at you Bob's Red Mill).  Semantics aside, I have found that the fat content of almond products I can buy is too high and the texture too gritty to make good bread dough.

Making Almond Flour from Almond Meal

I've had great success separating the oily and gritty parts of almond meal from the almond flour.  With the right pitch of sieve you end up with surprisingly smooth and dry flour and a yield of between 65% and 80%.

I'm fine with the yield.  The sifting process, however, is terribly slow.  Making 50 grams of flour with a plain-old dome-shaped sieve takes about 5 minutes of labour.  That's just too time consuming to become a regular part of my meals.

Is there a better way?

Is there a method or device that will separate more flour from almond meal with less manual labour?
Is there some source of actual almond flour hidden away by food distributors somewhere?

Note: I am perfectly tolerant of gluten.  I am also tolerant to minimal amounts of starches over time.  Please keep that in mind if you are inclined to suggest alternative strategies.

Any good hardware store will sell screen in a variety of mesh sizes.
Pick one out that matches your dome-sieve, and buy a couple square feet.
Make a wooden frame with say six inch sides, and tack the screen solidly to the bottom.
Sieve into a clean dishpan. Your sifting rate will increase substantially over what you're getting now.

For really fine flour, head to the fabric store, or buy a pair of nylons, and frame as I've already described.


Kimchi in Mason Jars -- Too Sealed? I recently mixed 8 quarts of kimchi. I stuffed my cabbage into 8, 1-quart Mason Jars. I left the typical buffer space (about 1-inch) below the lid. I told someone else that I had jarred the kimchi in glass and they seemed concerned that the jars would explode. I read that you can relieve pressure intermittently for the first few days and then the fermentation will lessen in intensity -- no worry for explosion.

My question is this -- because my kimchi is in mason jars, it gets no air and I was wondering if I should use cheesecloth covering next time. Do the lids stifle fermentation because of their seal? Is it just a bad idea to stuff kimchi and krauts into mason jars?

If your jars aren't in the refrigerator already, I highly recommend unscrewing the lids as soon as possible...unless you want to be able to share stories about how you found glass shards and the smell of kimchi everywhere in your kitchen one day.

Depending on when you mean to eat them, I'd recommend a mix of room temperature ripening and fridge storage. Keep the lid completely unscrewed while at room temp until ripened to a stage you prefer, and keep it loosely on in the fridge and eat it up in the next few weeks (where it will continue to ferment some more but slow down drastically). It's not a terrible idea to put something like a sheet pan under the jars just in case one overflows.

Cheesecloth is overkill, but you could choose to use that or anything that'll cover the top of a jar without making it airtight while at room temp. Glass jars are used often in commercial kimchi production and sale, so other than making sure the lid isn't fully screwed on they're fine to use. The explosion concern is mostly when you leave it too long (more than several hours?) at room temp or in the fridge for more than a couple weeks - while the jar is completely sealed.

This all depends on the kind of kimchi you are storing, of course. I'm assuming it's the freshly made napa cabbage type you're talking about. Some kimchis don't ferment as much or at all.


are syrup more flavorful than powder or similar? I'm going to make a recipe which includes
45 Grams of vanilla powder
2 Syrup pumps of Fruit syrup (20 Grams)

but i'm changing some in the recipe so i will use vanilla extract instead of powder and after doing the math 1 syrup pump = 10-10.25 grams,
so my question is , are extracts more flavorful than powder or similar ?
so should i add 4.5 pumps of vanilla extract to the recipe or should i go lower.

45 gm of vanilla powder (pointing to the box the keep the powder in) 2 pumps of mango (Pointing to a big jar of a mango syrup) and spoon of cinnamon
all belnded in a 16 ounce cup of ice

That sounds like it's vanilla-flavoured powder of some sort, perhaps milk-based, (or plant-milk-based), perhaps including maltodextrin, to give texture as well,  It could even be flavoured protein powder in some places (though they'd normally say so); that's about the right quantity compared to when I've made chocolate-vanilla milkshake with vanilla protein powder.
Certainly anything purer than that wouldn't be used in such large quantities.
As far as mimicking it goes, I'd start by using a teaspoonful of extract, and 45g of your best guess as to the rest of the powder.


What’s a good alternative to rice wine vinegar? I find it difficult to source rice wine vinegar for recipes. I can usually find “rice vinegar“, “rice wine”, and “white wine vinegar”, but not specifically “rice wine vinegar”.

Can I use any of the above ingredients, or anything else, as an alternative?

Rice wine vinegar and rice vinegar are the same thing, so that's easy.

For additional pantry-stocking:

Seasoned rice vinegar is just rice vinegar with a little salt & sugar added.  It's intended to be the right mixture for a number of recipes, not the least of which is sushi rice, although in my experience you're better off seasoning plain rice vinegar to the correct balance.

Rice wine is, of course, sake.  Generally if you're cooking with rice wine you want a moderately priced, clear filtered sake like Gekkeikan.  The same advice about cooking with regular wine applies here; don't try to cook with anything undrinkable.

Mirin is a specific kind of light, sweet rice wine used in braised dishes, dipping sauces, steamed fish, etc. If you can't find it, buy a drinkable sake and add around two teaspoons of sugar per 1/4 cup of sake.


Effect of rice cooking techniques I rarely ate rice growing up, and only recently started cooking it. I started with basmati, and seemed to do alright with that, but my wife (who used to live in Korea) said she preferred rice to clump together, as opposed to the perfect individual grains of a nicely cooked basmati.

Well, as embarrassed as I am to say so, I've been struggling with this two-ingredient dish. I've tried using short-grain rice, which helped somewhat, but using my basmati technique on it is not yielding the desired result.

After doing some research, I've found a slew of conflicting advice, on nearly every point, including:

Wash / don't wash
Soak / don't soak
Use less / more water
Boil hard / steam on lowest setting

What I would love to know is, what do each of these factors really do?

Rice is mostly made of starch. Starch is, in itself, a molecule made up of glucose components attached to each other. There are two types of starch: Amylose - it is a long straight chain of glucose - and amylopectin, which has a branchy and fuzzy structure. When you cook a rice which is rich in amylose, the grains stay separate. When you cook rice which is high in amylopectin, its starch molecules catch on each other and cause clumping. So the main factor is indeed the type of rice. While the amylopectin rich varieties in general are short grained and amylose rich ones are long grained, it can be that you accidentally picked a non-sticky short-grained rice.

Washing will cause less sticking. Normally, the starch in rice has to be released from the cells before it can stick. In a bag of rice, there are many cells which are broken mechanically during handling/transport, and their starch is free, clinging to the surface. If you wash it away first, you have less sticky grain so less clumping.

Now for soaking. Starches are packed very close in a grain. For gelation (that's when they cook and swell) you need both enough water and the right temp (70 degr. C). As heating is quicker than water penetration, presoaking makes things quicker. I guess soaking will help stickiness a bit, because there will be more molcules ready to swell in a short time. Plus, some of these will come undone from the grains and start swimming free around. This turns the water itself into a weak glue (so don' discard).

Using less water will help with stickiness. This will result in a bigger concentration of free starches in the water.

A slow simmering should also promote clumping slightly, as the starches will have more time to swell, move around, and hook to new starches.

All arguments above are the theoretical explanation for the direction in which the factors you mention are likely to influence clumping, given that the rice is always the same. In practice, their effect should be much smaller than choosing the correct type of rice. In fact, amylopectin rich rice types aren't soaked as often, because they don't need it - amylose is packed tighter. I don't know about washing habits, but it is cooked with less water, because it needs less. And any rice should be cooked slowly, a hot boil overcooks the outside and leaves the inside hard.

In the end, if your wife wants the rice she is familiar with, you must buy short-grain japonica rice. Else ask for a "sticky" indica, that's better than just eyeballing grain length.


What would cause the peel of a lime to turn yellow? About a week ago, I purchased two limes, a lemon, a couple of kiwi fruits, and some oranges. When I got home, I placed them in a bowl. One of the limes ended up at the bottom of the bowl but there were still enough gaps between the fruit that it wasn't completely hidden, and there weren't enough fruits above it that the lime was in danger of being squashed.
I've since used up all the fruit but the limes. This afternoon, when I picked up the lemon to use, I noticed that the lime that was partly underneath had changed color from green to yellow. Here is a photograph of the two limes:

Why has the lime on the right turned yellow? It was purchased at the same time as the one on the left and stored in the same bowl.

Ethylene, most likely.
You've said that that lime was at the bottom of the bowl, mostly covered with other fruit. I'll bet it was very close to some kiwis.
Fruit -- particularly fruit like kiwi which ripens after being picked -- produces and releases ethylene. Ethylene serves a key role in fruit ripening. This is why you're advised to keep bananas in a closed paper bag to ripen them: the ethylene gas produced by the bananas builds up and ripens them faster. In open air, ethylene concentrations (in the fruit, not just around it) remain lower, and ripening is retarded.
In fact, citrus producers commonly use ethylene gas to artificially ripen ("de-green") the rind of citrus fruit. This would normally be done for lemons and oranges, which are commonly picked when still slightly green.
While you didn't have a fully closed container, it sounds like the lime was deep enough in the bowl for some concentration of ethylene, produced largely by the kiwis, to build up around it, ripening at least the rind of the lime. (Yes, some limes are yellow when fully ripe -- limes at the store are picked unripe because consumers like the look of green ones.)
Congratulations on your accidental biochemistry experiment.


Burners too big on cooktop I have a gas cooktop with 4.25" burners and it is propane and so it burns hot. The problem is that it is difficult to cook things in small saucepans, like the typical 5" saucepan because the flames do not heat the bottom of the saucepan, they go up the sides of the pot and scorch the sauce residue that is on the sidewall of the saucepan.

Is there any solution to this (other than getting a whole new cooktop)?

I found a potential solution to this problem. There is a type of gas heat diffuser called a "reducer ring" that is useful for protecting small pots from big burners. It looks like this:

It is also possible to use a full size diffuser, that operates like a hot plate on top of the burner.


Is Pad See Lew the same as Pad See Ew? I have been looking across the Internet to see if these two Thai dishes (Pad See Lew and Pad See Ew) are the same. I believe that they are and that they are just spelled different in different regions (possibly). But I’m not sure so I thought I’d ask for some seasoned advice.
Pad See Ew is sometimes spelled Pad Siew, Pad Siu or Phat Si-Io.

There is no Pad See Lew. Pad See Ew means to fry with soy sauce. In Thailand this menu is typically cook with flat rice noodle, fry with kale, egg and soy sauce.
I agree that Pad See Lew is a typo error. When I type into google in redirects me to Pad See Ew.

Credit : wikipedia


Is “ghee” clarified butter or beurre noisette? Reading the Wikipedia pages on “Ghee,” “Clarified butter” and “Beurre noisette” has left me somewhat confused as to what ghee is. Some statements on the pages seem to suggest that it's always clarified butter, some that it's always beurre noisette, others that it can be either of the two depending on regional variations, and then it also might just be something in-between. Can someone clear up my confusion? Does it make (much) of a difference for cooking Indian recipes (I presume not, as ghee plays a less prominent role in a curry than beurre noisette does when it's used as a sauce).

Judging from those Wikipedia articles:

Clarified butter is rendered butter, which means that the solids are removed.
Beurre noisette is browned butter, which contains the solids.

Ghee is slightly-browned (it should have a golden color) butter that is rendered. So you melt the butter till it's golden. Then you remove the solids by pouring the top layer into a container. So you have a combination (if you like) of clarified and browned butter.


What makes this hot sauce last half a year in the fridge? What makes this hot sauce last half a year in the fridge? (as stated by author @7:40)

This recipe uses very little salt, no sugar, no vinegar, no oil, the PH wasn't modified, and it wasn't fermented or cultured to introduce live bacteria as a preservative

What is it then that makes it last so long?

In this recipe, they also state it would last up to a year, but they also add oil; doesn't the oil make this sauce even more susceptible to both spoilage and botulism due to the garlic in it?

Nothing

Your instinct is right, there is nothing that would prevent botulism or other bacteria from growing at room temperature. This is a classic “but we’ve always done it that way, so it must be ok” case. Looking at the protagonists in the videos, I would assume that those are simply family recipes.

The problem is that there is a fundamental difference between safe food and not spoiled food. We can clearly define what makes food or a preparation method safe, but once something is not longer safe it doesn’t automatically become spoiled.

In (traditional) cooking, unsafe methods are used often enough, for many reasons and sometimes on purpose, just think of steak tartare. And in many (I am tempted to say “most”) cases, with no ill effect. It’s often statistics that work in favor of the users. Consider botulism: The absolute risk of the bacteria being present and finding favorable conditions to grow is low, but the consequences of ingesting the toxin (not the bacteria) are dire. Refrigerator temperatures will slow down the growth, still I would assume 6-12 months too risky (considering that the official recommendation for garlic in oil is less than a week in the fridge).

As always when getting recipes from random sources, use common sense.


Is it safe to cook or braise with beer in cast iron? Is it safe to cook with beer in cast iron, for longer cooking such as braising or stews (eg, cook over 30 minutes, probably for 2 hours or more)? I saw on this question, Is it safe to cook wine or vinegar in cast iron?, where they pointed out wine or vinegar should not go into cast iron for long cooking periods, because the acidity would alter the flavor, or worse could leech an unsafe amount of iron into the food.

On further searching, the above question noted wine was around 3.4 pH, and I found on other sites the pH of beer is around 3 -4 pH. So, would beer thus be included in liquids to avoid in cast iron?

This is for regular cast iron, not enameled, and with amateur seasoning (by which I mean, I used some lard once at 500 deg for one hour, and later some coconut oil, and deep frying, so probably not a great protective seasoning.)

It really depends on the level of seasoning of your cast iron. If you see a really nice sheen all throughout your pan, I'd say you are good to go. The acidity of tomatoes, beer, wine, etc is problematic when the acid reacts directly with the iron. However, the seasoning on a well seasoned cast iron pan will act as a layer between the iron and the acid.

Another factor is the length of time the acidic food is being cooked in the cast iron. With a well seasoned pan, a 2 hour braise with an acidic liquid such as beer shouldn't be a problem. 4-8 hour cooks I would probably avoid.

One thing to consider is as your braise goes on, the pH of the liquid will rise (become less acidic) as the pH neutral water expelled from the meat mixes with the beer. This is to your advantage and will allow for longer cooks.

If your seasoning is not very good, you will end up with metallic tasting food which is obviously undesirable.

In summary, with a good seasoning you should be fine. It sounds to me like your pan might be seasoned well enough. If there is a sheen, I'd say your good to go.

Sources:

http://www.thekitchn.com/5-myths-of-cast-iron-cookware-206831
http://lifehacker.com/its-okay-to-cook-acidic-dishes-in-cast-iron-and-other-1772555109


Cookies are soft in the middle, even though the edges are browned So I followed the recipe posted here to get some pretty standard chocolate chip cookies:

http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/ultimate-chocolate-chip-cookies/77c14e03-d8b0-4844-846d-f19304f61c57

But when I pulled it out of the oven, the edges were browned but the centers doughy and soft, almost undercooked even.

My first thought that my oven was too hot, but I'm not entirely sure, and I'm not sure what I should be looking at. My choice in baking pan might be suspect, or maybe its because this is a convection oven (it's got a fan that keeps blowing the air around). Any thoughts?

If the edges burn and the center is undone, it means the heat didn't have enough time to reach the relatively cool center before the edge was too hot. The temperature gradient depends on the amount of heat from your oven and the size of your cookie - and to some degree on the thermal properties of your cookie sheet.

You have mentioned the two "usual suspects" in your question:

Oven temperature and convection.

Ovens thermostats are notorious for being quite a bit "off". A good oven thermometer placed on the middle rack can give you a precise measurement and even helps you to recognize whether it's a "fluctuating" issue or whether your oven is generally running high or low.
Convection can change the way the oven heat is distributed to your cookies. Most recipes I'm familiar with suggest lowering the temperature by 25C / 50F if using the convection feature. This is not necessarily always the ideal solution, some types of cakes simply turn out better without the convection feature. (But that's a gigantic can of worms that I won't be opening here: Many bakers have their own view on this.)

If those two don't help, look into the type of cookie sheet and the temperature of your dough when it's put in the oven - chilled dough will behave differently from room temperature dough, for example.


Buttermilk pancake mix is green? I like making buttermilk pancakes but usually the batter is too much for one day, after I put the mix in the refrigerator, the mix was a greenish color the next day. Does anyone know if this means it went bad or is this just a characteristic of buttermilk?

Mold doesn't grow that fast in a refrigerator overnight. I'd bet some ingredient reacted with your baking powder or baking soda. I've seen something similar before in three separate circumstances:

instant oatmeal that turned blue when mixed with iodine-treated water (day after day on a camping trip);
garlic mixed with yogurt turns blue when heated;
blueberry pancake batter turned green overnight.


What is the optimal height and depth for a hood fan? In a perfect ventilation world I would have a 27" deep and high powered hood fan that sits as close as possible to the stove (18"?). Unfortunately, this would be tricky as the hood fan would be so deep and low that I'd have trouble seeing the whole stove and I could hit my head on it.
This leaves me with two options:

A low (18" above the counter) and shallow (e.g., 18" deep) hood fan, or;
A high (e.g., 32"-36" above the counter) and deep (e.g., 27") hood fan.

Which of these two options would be most effective at eliminating unwanted odors and gases? Let's assume in both cases that the hood fan extends beyond the edges of the stove on both sides (e.g., a 46" hood fan over a 36" stove).

This is going to be dominated by ergonomics.
The perfect fan for exhaust isn't so perfect if you're always banging your head on it, or can't see in the pan. Some unusual devices are rather tall and wouldn't even fit in your 18" (I can't strain jelly on the worktop because of the cupboards so do that on the cold stove).
In catering, where kitchen air quality is a concern, the fan hoods are normally high, well over head height for the tallest users, but powerful.
The stuff you want to get rid of, whether steam, oil aerosol, or smells, tends to be carried upwards by convection, which gives a push to complement the fan's pull. You also have to consider the source of replacement air - if the house was sealed completely tight there wouldn't be one and the fan would be largely useless.  Airflow from the rest of the house into the kitchen to replaced the exhausted air can be effective in controlling the flow of smells, despite not increasing or even decreasing (for the same total inlet size) the amount of airflow.


Meat defrosting too fast I had purchased a 14 pound packer brisket a couple weeks ago to smoke for Easter. I put it in the freezer after I got home. I pulled it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge (set at 37 degrees F) this past Sunday, thinking it would take about as long as a turkey.

The thinnest part of the flat are already thawed and I am concerned it may start to spoil before Saturday night when I planned to start smoking it.

Is there anything I can do to slow the defrosting? I was considering putting it into a tub of ice water, almost like a brine, but just plain water.

Refreeze it. You know how long it will take to thaw now, so put it back in the freezer if you are concerned. There's all sorts of myths saying re-freezing is bad but there's no risk. It may impact the texture a bit, but it's better than it spoiling.