Difference between instant cocoa and drinking chocolate There's a question with answers detailing the difference between pure cocoa powder and chocolate; it boils down to the 'raw' cocoa powder being a very ungrateful, bitter substance difficult to use without making the results taste terrible. It takes quite a bit of processing to be turned into chocolate; the difference is obvious.

Still, there are nice friendly and tasty 'instant' cocoa granulates that make quite delicious drinks very easily, "Just add hot milk".

And then there's instant drinking chocolate, "Just add hot milk".

What's the difference between the two? Is it just naming/branding technicality or are they two different drinks?

They are technically different... but it seems that the producers do not always follow the correct terminology in an attempt to sound fancy.

Instant Cocoa is made with cocoa powder, as you stated in your question. It's made from leftovers from the chocolate making process and contains little cocoa butter. Hot beverages made with it are called "Hot Cocoa".

Drinking Chocolate is actually made with actual chocolate, either in disks, pellets or shavings. This means it contains lots of the rich, buttery cocoa butter. Adding it to hot milk causes the chocolate to melt and turn into the delicious beverage "Hot Chocolate".

The terms above are as found on several sites, including the one below... That being said, the "Drinking Chocolate" pictured above, Divine Drinking Chocolate, is not actually drinking chocolate.  It is a sweetened cocoa powder mixture. Divine Site

So, when you're looking for a true drinking chocolate be sure to read the ingredients label.

More in-depth info on the source link.

Source: The Nibble


Why don't filled doughnuts have compressed dough around the filling? How are doughnuts filled? I thought they were just injected in but that would compress the dough.

The custard jam etc does not appear to be cooked so I assume it is filled after the cooking process.

But the filling does not share space with the dough. (It is in place of rather than being mixed together).

The dough does not seem to be compressed around where the filling is added.

There are no joining marks where the dough could have been removed and replaced with the filling.

Donut dough is extremely fluffy, it's mostly air. The filling takes up a very small volume in the donut. The dough does get squished a bit, but that doesn't look all that different from non-squished dough.

If you don't believe me, take an unfilled donut, or a roll of fluffier bread, tear out a piece so you can see the inside, then squish the whole roll/donut between your fingers until it's 1-2 cm less tall than without the pressure. That's what compressed yeast dough looks like.

The baked donuts are simply injected with the already prepared filling from a nozzle, there are no secrets to it.


Why cook onion with chicken? Is it just for taste? In some of the chicken chili recipes I use, the recipe says to cook (or sauté rather) chopped onion with the chicken. Is that only because onion adds a certain taste? Or does this process do something more?

Onion tastes good, especially when caramelized, and since both it and the chicken go on to to be cooked for an extended time in the chili, there's really no food safety concern with cooking them together.

Both contribute to the finished flavor of the dish, and cooking them together saves time. There's no magical interaction between chicken and onion - if there were you'd see the same step in many different types of recipes.


Mystery kitchen device with three finger loops, one attached to a sliding rod that passes through a ring This is an oddball question but I am hoping someone can help me identify this device, which appears intended for use in a kitchen based on its location in a drawer full of other kitchen tools. As you can see it is about 4 inches long.

This is a cherry pitter. The metal ring holds the cherry while the piston forces the pit out right through the cherry.


Bugs in loose leaf tea I had my first loose leaf tea today. Black tea, with pieces of dried fruit in it. As I was throwing the used leaves away, I noticed what seemed to be a dead worm. Is this at all common and safe, or should I get rid of the tea?

It appears from another post that is indeed unusual to find foreign matter in loose leaf tea.  Is it normal to find something in tea?

That said, bugs in food are a fact of life.  Every food inspection agency has rules for how many bugs are allowed in different commodities. As a former grain inspector, I followed specific guidelines for how many bugs were allowed per lot. It isn't zero.

I wouldn't consider the tea unsafe because of the worm unless you found live worms or many worms.

Tea isn't listed, but you might find the USFDA list below informative.  It shows what rises to a level of concern for a number of foods.

https://www.fda.gov/food/ingredients-additives-gras-packaging-guidance-documents-regulatory-information/food-defect-levels-handbook#commodities


Meat thermometer doesn't "stop" measuring. How to know actual measurement? I recently bought a meat thermometer so that I could measure my chicken. This is the one I bought: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IHHLB3W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've tried using it multiple times but whenever I insert the tip of the probe into the chicken the thermometer just continuously increases in temperature. It doesn't stop. I tried inserting more of the probe into the chicken to see if that makes a difference, but the only difference is that the temperature climb is slower.

How far in should I stick the probe and is it normal for the thermometer to continuously climb in temp? When should I pull it out

To answer the "how far" part of the question: you want the tip of the probe dead center, where the meat is thickest, that's where it'll take the longest to heat up.

Otherwise, as the comments mentionned, heat transfer from the meat to the probe is not immediate. Give it a good 20/30 seconds.


What's the best way to peel an onion? I'm a pro at dicing an onion. My issue is always peeling it. The papery skin is so tough to get off, and I'm never sure just how many layers to peel off.

Does anyone have any sure-fire tips on how to peel an onion in 2.5 seconds every time?

Cut the sprout end off.
Place the cut end on the board, slice the onion in half vertically (i.e. place your knife on the root and cut down)
If the outer skin layer is nice and thick, pull it off from one corner. Repeat on other half.
If the outer skin is papery, pull it and one layer of onion flesh off from one corner. Repeat on other half.

If the first layer of onion flesh is slightly dimpled or has a kind of matte finish, it's probably turning 'skinny'. Strip that off too.


How to fry in a wok without burning oil? So I have a wok that I really love using for stir frys / curries because of its high walls.

I'm having a lot of trouble though keeping the oil from smoking. It seems like whenever I have the gas high enough to brown things in a reasonable amount of time I get smoke, particularly from the high walls. I typically use grape seed or canola oil, and I feel like I don't have this problem with traditional flat frying pans.

Is there some trick I don't know, or am I just impatient?

I think you will find smoking inherent in the wok construction. Every bit of oil that spatters up the sides from deep-frying will smoke.

You may reduce smoking-sides somewhat by using the smallest burner possible but not entirely eliminate it. Many Chinese restaurant kitchens (many Indian too) have small 6 - 8" openings above furnace like flames that the woks nestle into. The sides are sealed against excessive heat.

Also, the heavier the wok the less the sides seem to start smoking ahead of the base which is counter-intuitive given the better distribution of heat by heavy or copper-bottomed woks. I am less certain about this point, merely personal observation.


Can wine be made from citrus fruits? Can wine be made from citrus fruits? They have sugar to feed the yeast. Or does the citric acid interfere with the fermentation process?

I'm familiar with limoncello, but that is made by soaking lemons in alcohol.

It is possible. The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations classes wine as grape wine, citrus wine, or fruit wine; as examples of labelling of citrus wine containing only one fruit it mentions orange wine and grapefruit wine.

However, the Wikipedia page on fruit wine notes that it's difficult to make, and it's normal for some of the citric acid to be neutralised.


How do I cook chips (french fries) in the oven? A while back, I came across a method of cooking chips in the oven (rather than deep frying them).  Basically, what I do it cut the raw potatoes into chips, coat then in oil and bake them in the oven for about 30 mins on top heat.  This works... kind of.  However, if I cook the chips thinly, they just break up in the dish when moving them around, and if I cut them thickly (which I would prefer) they just never cook (I've left them in for a lot longer than 30 mins in the past).

Are there any tricks to this?  Is there a certain type of potato that I should be using, or a certain type of oil?

(I'm in the UK, so I imagine that available ingredients differ from the US - as does the meaning of chip - by which I believe I'm referring to french fries)

There are a couple tricks I've learned from Cook's Illustrated about making oven fries:

Soak your cut potatoes in warm water to rinse off excess surface starch. Drain them and dry them very well (I use a salad spinner and paper towels).
Use a heavy duty sheet pan on the bottom rack of a hot oven to focus the heat on crisping the bottoms of the potatoes.
Oil your sheet pan well, and sprinkle salt on it. This will act kind of like ball bearings under the potatoes to prevent them from sticking too hard.
For the first 5-10 minutes, tightly wrap the sheet pan (with the potatoes) with aluminum foil. This will essentially steam the potatoes and help get a really nice creamy interior. After that, remove the foil and flip the potatoes halfway through. Make sure you use a thin metal spatula when you flip them.

These techniques work well for potatoes in general, and really do turn out some fantastic spuds.


How to preserve the "sugar syrup" without using a cold storage? I prepared the Gulab jamuns few days back. Now there is a lot of sugar syrup remaining, what's the way of preserving it without using the fridge?

One way is to boil it daily, but that'll consume a lot of gas. So, any other way out?

Sugar is a natural preservative and provided you store it in a dark, dry, cool place it should keep for a long time. You should store it in a sterilised glass jar or bottle.

To sterilise, place the empty, open jar in a pan of cold water and bring to the boil, boiling for ten minutes. Remove, pour in the syrup, then place the lid on and return to the boiling water for another ten minutes. Dry with a clean towel and store.


Coconut rice; should it taste like coconut? I made coconut rice yesterday with a simple recipe (coconut milk, water, tsp sugar, pinch of salt, rice, all in the rice cooker).

I was a little bit underwhelmed by the output; the rice was cooked perfectly, but lacking in the the flavour and aroma area.

My coconut milk can was a bit old (passed expiration date), but smelled OK and tasted OK; do it loose flavour over time?

Is the rice supposed have a subtle flavour or should it be more "in your face" ?

Thanks.

Max.

When I visited Malaysia and Singapore, the nasi lemak I tried had very little taste of coconut - many of the people I traveled with even got surprised when they heard the rice was cooked in coconut. The name literally means 'fatty rice', which indicates that the coconut milk is added only to make the rice fatty, i.e. more sticky. When I made it myself, the taste actually resembled a less sweet Nordic rice porridge, which you might have had a variant of.

If you want a more interesting aroma, you could add pandan leaf, if you know where to buy it (probably East Asian groceries). I've heard that bay leaves might give a similar taste, but a single leaf didn't give much of a change when I tried it. Substituting your rice with basmati rice is also an option.


Trouble cooking steak to the standard internal temperature I just cooked a steak following Gordon ramsey's "perfect steak" method found on youtube, I flipped the steak every minute about 4-5 times on medium-medium high heat, but I couldn't get the internal temperature to go higher than 120 degrees F and I've always had this problem regardless of how I cook the meat.

I'm including a picture of a cut from about the thicker part of the steak, it seems like it's medium-rare to me but again it only went to 120 degrees according to my thermometer which is a metal rod type thermometer.

I should note, I let the steak sit out for about an hour before cooking so it could reach room temperature, after that I put it in a zip-lock bag and let it sit under hot water for a minute or two hoping to further increase the temperature so it would cook quicker, also room temperature in my house is about 70 degrees or so.

I don't know what else to do, I don't want to eat completely brown steak, I did eat this steak despite the thermometer saying the internal temp only hit 120 and it was great, but nobody in my house but me would eat it like that. So any suggestions would be great.

Thanks.

There's a few things that could be going on here:

cut: not all steak cooks at the same rate. Really tender cuts cook faster than some of the tougher, more flavorful cuts, increasing cooking time by up to 50%. Cuts like tenderloin, filet, and loin (US) - Sirloin (UK) are more tender and cook faster. Denser cuts like sirloin, top sirloin, and bottom sirloin (US) and rump (UK) cook slower. If you are cooking a denser cut then you simply need to cook it longer.
Pan heat: Most chefs have really good stoves that produce load of heat, most mere mortals have average stoves which aren't as powerful. Medium heat on a professional, or very high quality stove is hotter than the medium heat on an average stove, so try cranking it up to full blast. Also, make sure your pan is fully up to temp. I cook my steaks on a cast iron skillet, and I let it heat up for 10 minutes before I start frying steak
Heat contact: even though steak is full of fat it takes some time for this to start working, so coating your steak with a bit of vegetable oil (not olive oil, it burns at high temperatures) will make sure it gets good heat contact

So my advice would be to get the pan hotter and cook it longer. Try adding one more minute per side.

EDIT:
@kenny says that he is cooking loin, so assuming it's 3/4", or 2cm thick and looking for medium done-ness I would cook the first side for 5 minutes and then the second side 3 minutes. The uneven times are to make sure it cooks evenly. So you need a total of 8 minutes cooking time. I don't do the flip every minute method because the uneven times work for me, and it lets me do other prep.


How to clean an induction stove from overheat? After all water in teapot was boiled, an empty teapot was left on the surface and stove was turned on. You can see the spot on the photo. Is there some ways to fix or clean this?

Induction hob model BOSCH PIB673F17E.

It depends what the 'stain' is. If it's just surface deposits from the bottom of the 'teapot' (kettle?) transferred to the stove top, use a recommended proprietary cleaner (depends what country you are from what is available, ask at a hardware store for ceramic hob cleaner or induction hob cleaner). If it's in the bulk of the stove top caused by heat damage to the thickness of the material, you have two choices... live with it or replace the top. You won't be able to polish out the stain as it goes through the thickness.

Side note, that's probably why many induction hobs are black or very dark... harder to spot if there is any discolouration caused by getting a pan way too hot.


Do gums have any nutritional value? Do gums (e.g., xanthan, guar, cellulose, glucomannan) have any nutritional value, or do they pass undigested like chewing gum does?

Are there known allergies to any gums?

Gums are considered fibre because they are ignored by our microbiome.

Besides, industry (at the contents of any product that we buy) also consideres fibre anything that is not processed by our digestion.


How to store parsley? Recently, I've bought a bunch of chinese parsley which I've used for garnishing and etc... However after storing it in the fridge for about 3-4 days most of the parsley had turned yellow and I have to throw them out. I was wondering does wrapping it with paper towels actually extends its life? Or rather, what is the best way to store chinese parsley?

The way my parents always did it is to cut it up and then freeze it. Whenever you need some just take the box out, crumble a bit of the frozen parsley into whatever you need it for, then put the box back in the freezer.

Obviously it won't be fresh, so I suggest you only cut the amount that you don't think you'll be able to use before it goes bad, and keep the rest in the fridge, maybe with ice water as per Tetsujin's suggestion. But it does keep basically forever while frozen.


Fresh turkey cooking for 2 hours but no juices appearing in pan why I have been cooking a fresh 25lb turkey at 350 degrees for 2 hours so far and there are no juices in pan. What’s the reason and is that a problem?

There is no stuffing in turkey and it is not in a cooking bag.

Juices start to build up in the roasting pan fairly late in the roasting process. Turkeys are big, and so it takes a while for the inner parts to heat up to the point where they release moisture.

If you are cooking the turkey in an open roasting pan (with no roasting bag or tented foil), it will take longer for juices to start building up, because they will evaporate off the surface of the turkey immediately. Even with tented foil, the high temperature of the roasting pan will delay the appearance of collected juices. A turkey in a roasting bag will show built up juices earliest, but even with a bag it won't happen until the turkey is pretty far into the cooking process.

If the turkey is stuffed, juices will take longer to appear, because the turkey will take longer to cook and some of the juices will be absorbed by the stuffing.

If you're worried about having stuff to baste with: Whether basting is necessary at all is a matter of opinion, but even if you are determined to baste, melted butter will work just fine.

If you're worried about having enough juices to make a good gravy, and you're starting to panic: If you've got the neck and giblets, simmer them in 2 cups of water for as long as you can, ideally with some onions and other vegetables, and the resultant broth will make a fine gravy. For that matter, feel free to break off part of the wings and stick them in the broth too. You can also use chicken stock, either by itself or as a substitute for the water in your broth. I won't tell if you don't.


Which materials used for plates absorb microwaves? I was thinking about getting plate that can be safely heated by microwave. What material should I look for? My point is to (partialy) turn microwave into induction heater. Plate like this is already sold by Samsung as "crusty plate", but those are hard to come by - I have seen them only along with new microwave.

In my experience, vitreous ceramic (Luminarc) heats up a lot in a microwave, usually ending up hotter than the food. But I cannot tell you if it has some advantage over heating the food in any other material.

Also, if you really want to eat crispy roasted food, the microwave is probably the least suited heating method for that. I have never used the suggested "crusty plate" but I wouldn't expect much of it.


What temperature to freeze meat at to preserve quality? My new refrigerator has a configurable-temperature compartment.  Samsung claims that the "soft freeze" mode will keep meat and fish fresh longer.

  When you select Soft Freeze mode 23 °F (-5 °C) regardless of the
  overall temperature setting of the refrigerator. This feature helps
  keep meat and fish fresh for longer.

However, every reputable reference I've found claims that you should freeze meats below 0 °F.  What would the effect be of storing meat at 23 °F rather than at 0 °F other than presumably shorter storage time?

Summary:  think of the so-called 'soft freeze' as an extension of your refrigerator, not of your freezer.

The major things that happen to frozen foods that degrade their quality are:

Expansion of ice crystals during warming and cooling cycles of the freezer, degrading the texture of the food item (making meats, for example, exude more juice or even appear weepy)
Enzymatic or chemical changes over time.   These are slowed more and more the colder the freeze.
Fats become rancid due to interaction with oxygen, again slowed the colder the freeze
Freezer burn, as water sublimates from the food, again exacerbated by warming and cooling cycles and the freezer, and proceeding more quickly at warmer temperatures

You will note that almost everything that degrades the quality of the food items proceeds faster at warmer temperatures (even when those relatively warmer temperatures are below freezing).

So, in general, the colder you can keep your freezer (within reasonable limits), the longer the quality life of the food products stored within it.

As reported by the University of Illinois Extension, food is safely stored at 0 F, -10 C. All (relevant, before someone points out cryophiles) bacteria are dormant at these temperatures.  The University of Nevada Las Vegas indicates

  Most foods will maintain good quality longer if the freezer
  temperature is -10 to -20°F. At temperatures between 0 and 32°F, food
  deteriorates more rapidly. Fluctuating temperatures, such as those in
  self-defrosting freezers, also may damage food quality. Do not plan to
  store frozen foods for the maximum suggested time if your freezing
  unit cannot maintain zero degree temperatures.

The soft freeze temperature of 23 F / -5 C simply does not meet these standards, and is not useful for long term freezing.

So given all of this, what is the point of the soft-freeze feature of your new refrigerator?  It is to allow you to keep food ready to use fairly quickly, as meats will not generally freeze completely solid at these borderline freezing temperatures, and are quicker to warm for preparation.   It allows you to hold them for longer than you could at normal refrigerator temperatures, but not to store for the long term as in freezing to the recommended temperatures.

This is in line with the information given by Samsung:

  The Soft-Freeze temperature helps keep meats or fish fresh longer.


What is the best way to go about developing and formulating a product? I hope this is within posting guidelines. I have an exciting vision for a product but I have no formal culinary experience (mixing, baking, etc) I do have extensive knowledge in the field of nutrition from hundreds of hours of research (personal not formal again) and I have a pretty good idea of the ingredients I want to incorporate into my product but what is the best way to go about testing the final product, Is it better to hire someone that has experience in this field or should I try to do it myself and see what happens?. I am looking to do a private label manufacturing but no one seems be able to help with what I'm trying to do (doughnuts)

Any advice would be appreciated.

I've had two food products made to my specifications via contract manufacturing and evaluated contract manufacturing of several other products.

Fundamentally the process requires you to have enough of an understanding of the product you want to be able to work with the contract manufacturer to make it. In one case, I didn't have any meaningful experience with production of the products (a flavor variation of chocolate dipped fortune cookies, and some custom flavor chocolates) but I did have a relationship with a company that already did such products and I knew of one or two others I could reach out to if needed. In another case, I had plenty of experience making variations of the products (a series of salad dressings, drinks, & sauces basically) but no experience in arranging for the production of shelf-stable versions of it.

It turns out my limitations were relatively easily surmountable; the only reason I didn't end up doing the salad dressings were financial constraints and difficulty in procuring a key ingredient.

In both cases, I spent time researching and experimenting with the right ratios of ingredients for the product.

With the salad dressing example, I developed a basic recipe, then reached out to a company that happens to do a fair amount of that kind of work, and penciled out details regarding the approximate production cost range, and discussed questions about shelf-stability. Had I progressed any further, food scientists at the contract manufacturer were available to help analyze the recipe to determine any adjustments required for shelf-stability and other food safety considerations. There were probably some fees attached to their work, but those weren't as big of a concern, in my case, as getting one of the ingredients in "large but small" quantities from outside of the US. (Too small for full container load international shipping, yet quantities too large for small suppliers, etc.) Your problems will be different than mine.

With the chocolate products, I had a bit of base knowledge of the ingredients I was working with and had already done some other desserts using the signature ingredient. So with the help of the manufacturer, we tried a small batch run based on the ratio I felt would work. It was pleasant enough to sample to customers, though I wanted to make some further adjustments, so subsequent batches tweaked ratios a bit. Ultimately I settled on a formula that balanced my taste preference with the cost (and some technical considerations).

Most food product development requires you to have some foundational knowledge, either about the ingredients or the techniques involved, unless you're comfortable just throwing tons of money at reducing the problem space. Fundamentally you're trying to reduce the problem scope into small, solvable challenges instead of navigating a vast landscape of possibility. If you don't have the expertise required to get there, start by talking with people who do something similar enough that you can leverage their knowledge.


Types of tofu that can be used in a crock pot I am currently trying to get rid of some firm and soft tofu that's been in my fridge for a while, and I wanted to try out a few slow cooker recipes for braised tofu. However, all of these recipes call for extra-firm tofu.

Would less firm tofu be able to hold up to 6+ hours of crock pot cooking? Or is it really critical that I use extra-firm tofu for this?

There's a lot of variance in tofu, but there's usually a significant difference between firm and extra firm. The soft tofu will not hold up, it will probably dissolve after 6 hours. The firm tofu may possibly hold up, it really depends on how firm the brand makes their firm tofu, I suggest you try it and see.


What is arepa flour? I found a recipe for arepas that I want to try and it calls for "Arepa flour (precooked cornmeal)". What is Arepa flour? Side question: Would I be able to substitute masa harina?

From  Cook's Info :

Arepa Flour is a refined, pre-cooked corn flour ("harina de maiz refinada, precocida".) It is not the same as the masa harina that is used in Mexico; for Arepa Flour, large-kerneled corn is used that has large, starchy endosperms, making for a starchier flour than that which is used for tortillas.
There are white and yellow varieties of the flour, because the corn used may be yellow or white.

Also:

For commercial makes the corn is hulled dry. The hull is first removed from the seed, as well as the germ. Then the kernels are cooked, ground, dried and packaged.
Arepa Flour is sometimes referred to as a "pregelatinized" flour because the grain has been cooked first.

I'm thinking that masa harina would not be a suitable substitute for making Arepas. Another thing I've found is that corn flour is usually finer than corn meal, even if the corn meal is ground 'fine'.


How do I cook shrimp in butter? I want to cook shrimp in butter. My problem in the past has been that the butter burns if it gets too hot but the shrimp remains fishy if the butter does not get hot enough. Any advice?

Use clarified butter.  It will handle considerably higher temperatures without burning/smoking.


Beans soaking times, flavor vs flatulence It is known that beans contain certain oligosaccharides that cause bloating and intestinal discomfort in some people, myself included. Some of these oligosaccharides are water soluble and will be leached out by soaking and discarding the soaking water before cooking.

I feel, however, that some of the flavor and color of the beans is also lost when soaking for a long time (eg overnight). Is there some table showing oligosaccharide leaching rates, so that I could try to figure out a sweet spot between flavor and proper soaking?

Note that I'm not wondering whether I should soak. I'm interested in oligosaccharide leaching rates.

For the actual numbers you asked for, I found rather a large variety, even from a small number of papers. All I really feel like I can say is that something like 12 hours probably gets you a substantial reduction (25-50%), and it depends on the bean.

Based on this paper which soaked for 3 and 12 hours, it looks like for many beans, including lentils and chickpeas, 3 hours did about as much as 12 hours, but for soybeans, it took the 12 hour soak to remove most (56%) of the oligosaccharides. (See figure 3, on page 430, and some actual numbers under "total oligosaccharide content" on the same page. The point of that study was to look at other industrial techniques, so it looks like the complete tables are only for those.)

But then this paper reports 25-42% reduction in various oligosaccharides from soaking the common bean for 16 hours, this paper reports 20-35% reduction in soybeans and groundbeans from soaking for 12-14 hours (or 17-24% for cowpeas), and from 1% for red beans to 28% for common white beans in this paper (don't have access beyond the abstract to get soaking times). A clear outlier, this paper reports insignificant reduction from soaking below 50C.

Note that the actual numbers were never far above 50%, which suggests that if soaking sufficiently long does indeed work for you, you're probably okay with a decent amount remaining after soaking. Presumably that's because the cooking will get rid of more, and some low level is tolerable.

On that note, I'm not sure this is a tradeoff you actually have to make. Many people actually think soaking specifically in salt water results in better beans with a softer, creamier texture (see for example this answer). If that works for you, there's no reason not to soak thoroughly, perhaps 8-24 hours.

If you disagree, and are okay with the texture when unsoaked, then good news: long, slow cooking also reduces flatulence, so soak as little as you like, then cook long and slow, and you should be okay. Note that "slow" really just means a simmer, as opposed to a vigorous boil that'll tend to tear the beans up a bit. As mentioned in the comments, some beans (including kidney beans, notably) do need an initial boil, but you don't need a full boil for the whole cooking time.

If somehow you're in the middle - you want some soaking for texture, but don't like the flavor after long soaks, and you don't want long, slow cooking - then yeah, I guess you would have that tradeoff. Based on the above numbers, you'd probably need 12 hours to get a solid reduction in larger beans.

Of course, basing things on those numbers is a little fuzzy anyway. What reduction do you actually need to be okay? And when it's borderline, what's your personal tradeoff between flavor and gas? And it depends on the type of beans too. So, it's your personal preferences that'll set the balance, and you'll have to take a stab at it to find out.

If you were really interested a more substantial table and want a qualitative idea how to fill in the gaps...

As a very rough approximation, you can assume that the rate of diffusion out of the beans will be roughly proportional to the concentration remaining in the beans. This is probably a really bad approximation for short times, because things in dry, contracted beans will not diffuse as easily as in wet, expanded beans - in reality, the first hour or maybe two might not be removing much, then this approximation would be better afterwards. There may also be some amount that's bound up in the beans and can't really be extracted like this, so when we say 50% has diffused out, we mean 50% of what was available.

So then you'd have (where x is concentration, t is time, k is a constant), x'(t) = -k * x(t), for which the solution is x(t) = x_0 * e^(-k*t).

(It's actually proportional to the difference in concentrations between beans and water, but since that concentration is just the removed concentration scaled by the ratio of volumes, all that ends up doing is adding a constant; you still get the same e^-kt behavior, trending toward equilibrium. And you always soak in plenty of water, so to first order, you can just ignore that.)

That is, each additional unit of time gives the same proportional reduction in concentration: if hypothetically two hours gets you down to 0.8 of the initial concentration, then four hours will get you down to 0.8 * 0.8 = 0.64 of the initial concentration, and so on. At that rate, it'd take 10 hours to get to 0.1 of the initial concentration. But the actual rate, the value of that constant, depends on the bean, and as you can see from the numbers, it probably varies wildly.

This rough relation would also apply to anything diffusing out - undesirable or not. So in the end it might not do much for you, beyond suggesting that if for example things are awful with a 2 hour soak and nearly okay with a 4 hour soak, then you should definitely be okay with another couple hours.


Why isn't my espresso coffee nice and strong? I have just purchased an expensive espresso coffee machine (American) but the taste isn't nice and strong as I expected. Does it depend on the coffee beans? What characteristics should I look for (in the coffee or in the preparation)?

You do not tell us too much about your equipment, so I guess that you are in the same situation me.

I was in the same situation when I bought my machine. I purchased a Rancillio Silvia, without a grinder. I blamed it on the coffee at first, but it turned out that all the pre ground espresso coffee I was buying in shops was simply not made for such a machine. I was so lucky that I got to grind the my beans at a local coffee shop, using the same find grind as they did in their machines. Only then I got the crema and punch that I wanted from my espresso.

Symptoms to look for:

Do your espresso come out too thin?
Extraction time less than approx. 25 seconds for a double espresso?

It didn't take me a long time to understand that I needed a own grinder to get exactly the espresso I wanted.

If your grind is just a little too coarse it is possible to counter this by increasing the tamper pressure. But from what you explain you need more than this.


Does a Steam Microwave with true Convection cooking use microwaves in the convection oven baking process? Does the convection oven baking feature still utilize microwaves to do the baking/broiling etc?

Such things can be make and model dependent. What can give you a hint is what the documentation says about metal cookware being or not being permissible when using the convection mode. If in doubt, ask the manufacturer.


Using over-rested pizza dough as old dough I made pizza dough (flour, olive oil, 1 tsp salt, 7g instant yeast and cold water) last night but never got around to using it. It is still sitting covered in the bowl resting on the counter (temp ~ 20 C)(18 hours). I'd like to use it as PF (old dough method) but I am not sure the ratios are, PF to the dough I will be making. I am also  not sure how long will the old dough keep. It weighs around 440g , and looks like this:

Since this is my first experiment, I'd like to know how the whole process of adding old dough to the next day dough works. I read a few articles online but they were either not very informative or too expert for my level!
This question seems to be asking the same thing but the dough was left in the fridge for four days. I am not sure if that makes any difference.

Primarily what is happening when you add an old dough/pre-ferment/pâté-fermentee to a fresh lot of flour etc is that you are inoculating it with yeast (see definition 1b). This is the equivalent of adding a pre-activated yeast (e.g. sponge) to your flour with some differences. It is also a more direct equivalent of using a biga or poolish. The reason why bakers in former days used to keep some dough over from the day before and use that to start the next day's batch is that they hadn't developed the technology to grow and store the yeast as we do now. The technique is still as legitimate today as it was then.
The major difference is that the yeast in the old dough has used up some of the sugars and other nutrients in the old dough and will have slowed replication as they run out of nutrients (for those interested this follows a classic S shaped/logistic growth curve), whereas in a sponge or other pre-activation there is still a surfeit of nutrients, so the yeast are actively and rapidly dividing. I doubt that the nutrients will be entirely depleted from the old dough, and this would depend on a huge range of factors as to how depleted they actually were, and without specialist chemical analysis you won't be able to tell. As a positive, this depletion of the nutrients means that the yeast have been metabolizing these compounds and releasing the subsequent metabolites as interesting flavour compounds, adding extra taste to your new dough.
The nutrients may be somewhat lacking in your fresh dough if you mix in a substantial amount of the old dough with your fresh ingredients, but in general this won't affect the dough formation as the yeast from the old dough start to grow on the fresh nutrients. You can mix in up to 1:1 ratio of old:new(see page 97; this is the English translation of Clavel's "Le Gout du Pain") and still make good dough. It is worth noting that most recipes that are old dough based also add some fresh yeast. The addition of fresh is not entirely needed, but will make the rise quicker as the inoculation will be larger and the growth lag shorter as a consequence.
How you store the old dough may affect how useful it is as a starter - If you could freeze, it would store almost indefinitely. In the fridge for several days, maybe a week or two. On the bench, a day or two at best. The colder you can make it, the better it will store, as the yeast will slow metabolism and growth (halted entirely if frozen), and so prevent them from dying.


How do I reconnect cake pieces that stuck to pan? I baked a commercial funfetti cake. When I removed it from the pan, a piece of the bottom of the cake stuck to the pan. I was able to remove those pieces with a spatula and place them on the cake.

How do I secure them to cake body? Can I just put a little frosting between the pieces or is there another way that works well?

In my experience using frosting to join broken cake will just draw attention to the fact something went wrong. If the loose part is on the bottom you can rely on gravity to keep it together, and when you slice it up if it comes apart you just put it on the plate and say nothing.

If gravity is not going to do the job then frosting will work fine, but be a bit obvious. Less obtrusive is food glue, which is simply watered down white fondant icing/sugar paste.


Haggis - taste difference between traditional and artificial casing Haggis, though considered purely Scottish could possibly have originated in the North of England.  It appears that the earliest known recipe/method is from the 15th century.  Just after a hunt, the offal was mixed with herbs, placed in the stomach lining of the (now dis-embowled) animal and cooked (a way of using parts of the animal that would otherwise have gone bad before being transported back to the manor house).

However it is now prepared all over the world and consumed on all days of the year, not just Burns Night.  Does using an artificial casing instead of an animals stomach change the flavor in any way?  Is it necessary to obtain the stomach lining to match the taste of a traditional/authentic haggis?

I'm positive the artificial casing changes the flavor because it tastes differently from natural casing. Besides, the stomach is bigger than most artificial casings.

So, it affects the flavor (not something I would worry about too much) and the size and therefore the cooking time.


Turkey frying oil temperature issues Thanksgiving and Christmas of last year I tried my hand at frying a turkey.

Everything was fine but I could never seem to get the peanut oil up to 350℉ (175℃).

I followed Alton Brown's Recipe but just couldn't reach 350℉. The best i did was 275℉ to 300℉ (135℃ to 150℃) which meant I left the turkey in a little longer and burned it a little too much.

Any advice?

If you are saying you cannot get the oil hot enough during pre-heating:

You may need a bigger burner than the one you are using. Most resources I've seen suggest over 100k BTU
There may be something physically wrong with your setup (i.e., the vessel should be closer to the flame)
The ambient temperature at the time of cooking was simply too cold for the burner to keep up (see problem 1).

If you are using a purpose-built commercial turkey fryer, I suggest consulting the book or contacting the company. If you built the rig yourself, I suggest more fire! (and lots of safety precautions)

Now... if you are talking about a temperature drop after you dunk the bird, realize that is totally normal.

Alton Brown suggests a preheat temperature of 250 degrees. He suggests raising the temp to 350 after the bird is in the bath but adds the following advice:

  "Closely monitor the oil temperature: it's will start to climb above 350 as moisture cooks out of the turkey; reduce the gas flow accordingly..." (Ref ep. 163 transcript in his book Good Eats 2, page 413)

You may need to use a smaller turkey to achieve the internal temperature you want without burning the outside. I'd look for something in the ballpark of 10 pounds. If you are cooking for a crowd, it's best to go with multiple birds instead of going bigger.

Be mindful of carry-over cooking:

  Even after it’s been removed from a heat source, food continues to cook. Its internal temperature can rise anywhere from 5 to 20 degrees. The larger the food, the more carryover or residual cooking you’ll have.
  http://www.cookingclarified.com/2011/01/carryover-cooking/


New green leaf vegetable in the family. What is it called? Every week I get a box with regional vegetables, and this time this one came. I tried looking for cabbage, but I could not find anything similar. Do you know what is it? How is it cooked?

This looks a lot like a sweetheart cabbage... it does not look very new though.


Can I subsitute grapefruit for either lemon or orange in baking I want to bake a cake but i don`t have either an orange or a lemon. I have grapefruit. Can I use it?

I'm sure you could but I don't think you'd be happy with the results.

A quick breakdown of the amount of sugar and citric acid (gives the acid tang to citrus fruits) to grapefruit, orange and lemon juices per 100 grams (roughly 100 ml).

Grapefruit has 7-8 g. sugar and 2.5 g citric acid.
Orange has 8-9 g. sugar and 0.9-1.7 g citric acid.
Lemon has 2.5 g sugar and 4.5-5 g    citric acid.

Please don't ask me to provide references as I soon discovered that no one site (or even 3 or 4) has the needed information together in one place. I had to search through multiple sites and calculate the differences on amounts given with different units used (ml vs oz).

Comparing these differences, you might think grapefruit could be substituted for oranges if you added more sugar. What makes grapefruit unsuitable though is its bitterness. Grapefruit contains Naringin, the compound which gives it the bitter taste. In fact, naringin is the reason why people who take certain medications, especially some cardiac meds, need to avoid grapefruit or its juice as it can interfere with the liver's metabolism of these drugs.

But getting back to the suitability of using grapefruit, if you're prepared to adjust sugar and you don't mind grapefruit's bitterness,  it's worth trying. Best check, too, with anyone else who plans on eating the dessert.

What works for me is to buy lemons on sale if they're good - heavy and juicy - grate all the rind, then juice the lemons and freeze them. Grated rind freezes very well and doesn't lose any flavour either. It makes it so much more convenient for me when I want to cook with lemons. I do the same with oranges, especially the rind. I also keep citric acid in my pantry as I use it often when I cook. It can be used with oranges to make a delightful orange meringue pie as regular oranges lack enough tang.


How to make large clear ice cubes I want to make some ice cubes that are large (1" on a side or more), crystal clear, and perfectly cubical. I want them large to make my drinks dilute less slowly, and clear and cubical because I think it looks nice. When I make ice in the freezer, it's always cloudy. Any ideas?

Wired Magazine had a recent guide on how to make crystal clear ice. I'm copying it here since the article says it's under Creative Commons license:

Go Big
Ditch the ice tray and use a large vessel like a thick plastic bowl or, better yet, an insulated cooler. Fill it with water and stow it in the freezer.

Wait
The H2O can take a day or so to solidify. Remove the mini berg when it’s solid on the outside but still has a liquid core.

Drain
With an ice pick, bread knife, or screwdriver, make a hole to release the trapped water.

Segment
Score a grid onto the slab of ice, then pry it apart into cubes - the ice should break cleanly along the seams. Bigger cubes are ideal because they melt more slowly.

Contributed by Camper English


Salmon nigiri sushi feels like melting in the mouth. How to achieve that? I am trying to make sushi at home and I'm buying fresh salmon from Whole Foods. The sushi tastes good, but it's missing something. The salmon feels too "fishy" and solid. If one eats at a good sushi restaurant, the salmon nigiri feels like it melts in one's mouth and I can't manage to do it like this.

So far, I have tried:
1. To cut the salmon in thin pieces - the same result.
2. To cut it parallel to the skin and perpendicular to it - same result
3. To change from farmed to wild salmon - same result

I don't understand how to prepare the salmon to make it feel like it's melting when you eat it. Anyone has any experience with this and would like to share with me? Ia there a special way to prepare it or it is the salmon type?

P.S. The next step is to let it warm to room temperature because so far it was taken out from the fridge.

A technique, sushi chefs use is called dry curing. It means covering the fish in sugar and salt (3:1 ratio), I’ve seen recipes calling for 20 minutes to 1.5 hours. This will draw moistrure out, concentrating the taste, and will definitely have an effecf on the texture.

Another one is, freezing for bacterial reduction, try looking for fish that has been frozen at really low temperatures. When frozen, water in the muscle tissue will freeze and expand, damaging the muscle fibers, which will also contribute to the texture you’re looking for. You can try replicating this at home, except for the food-safety part, by freezing the fish for a long time, some recipes call 3-4 days.


Hollandaise or Bernaise? It's my understanding that once you add any herbs to Hollandaise that it is no longer Hollandaise but Bearnaise?

Is this a correct assumption?

Bearnaise is based on hollandaise (hollandaise being one of the 5 French mother sauces).  Yes, it is an egg yolk-butter emulsion with the addition of herbs.  Personally, I would say that it is a version of a hollandaise.


What constitutes a 'waxy potato' Potato salad, dauphinoise, sauteed, with potato cooked but firm and keeping its form with a wonderful waxy texture. Common all over France but a rarity in the UK.

What varieties should we be looking for and where to find them?

As a rule, potatoes that are colored (red, gold, blue) tend to be waxier than white potatoes (red being the waxiest), and fingerling potatoes are the waxier than other sizes. A more complete list can be found here.


Pot for cooking long grained white rice on gas range I do not want to buy a dedicated rice cooker and I have been told by some people that a rounded bottom thick Dutch pot is best for rice cooking on a gas stove I have also heard that a tall aluminium pot is best, what do you think?

It depends on how much rice you're trying to cook. I rarely cook more than a few cups at a time, and I don't use a special pot for it (clad steel, though). Once the water comes to a boil, turn down to low, leave it for about 15 minutes (covered!), turn it off, wait another 15 minutes or so (still covered), and you're done.

If you're cooking a lot of rice at a time, a thick/heavy pot (enameled cast iron, or just a heavy clad steel pot) will help hold a low temperature without scorching the bottom of the rice.


Frozen beef barley soup , adding more ingredients and re-freezing Frozen beef barley soup. Can I add more ingredients to thawed soup and safely re-freeze

If you thaw your food in the fridge it is safe to add additional ingredients and re-freeze, but the quality will probably suffer. Don't thaw outside the fridge. You're better off freezing the new ingredients and combining them when you're ready to heat and serve them. Do your best to freeze as quickly as possible and with as little air in the containers as possible.


Exact proportions of sugar to water in sorbet I am planning to make a sorbet from a cordial which I'm going to make (essentially a flavoured syrup). What proportion of sugar to water to I need to create a smooth, small-crystalled sorbet? Please take in mind I do not own or intend in buying a 'Baum meter' or many other kitchen gadgets although I do own a thermometer. The cordial does contain acid if that should change things.

I don't have a recipe for a sorbet without any fruit contributing sugar, but I do have something very close: the lemon sorbet from The Perfect Scoop. It uses a cup of lemon juice, which contains only 6 g of sugar, along with 2.5 cups of water and 1 cup of sugar.

So 3.5 cups (828 mL) of water with 1 cup (200 g) of sugar should be good, or a ratio of 4:1 by weight.


Which brewing method extracts more flavors from the coffee bean? Which method extracts more flavors from the bean: espresso, french press/cafetiere, or another method?

And, if I want to try different beans from different countries etc, is a french press/cafetiere the best coffee maker for this?, since a bean of any place or any roast can be brewed in it?

More is not always better. To extract the most flavour, just let it simmer for a long time... it just won't be a nice cup of coffee, because that way some unwanted flavours are also extracted.

To make a good cup of coffee, the water, the coffee, the temperature (also of the cup itself), the time, the grind and the blend all are important. Just as important as the method.

Favourite methods are the French press and the espresso machine, but a radical different method is Turkish' coffee, where they take the coffee to a boil three times and serve it without filtering... and it's delicious.


What's wrong with my oven? I have a Kenmore stove, model number 911-735-9180. My burners are working fine (they click to turn on) but my oven does not work. I push the bake setting and it does not heat up although my broiler works fine.

In the world of home appliances, a cooktop with an oven in a common cabinet is called a "Range".
This is a Kenmore Gas Range model # 911.7359180
Sears model #'s usually don't have - dashes/hyphens in them.
There are only 3 or 4 parts that can fail.

Basic Gas Oven Troubleshooting:

Check the power, needs to be plugged in, standard 110vac outlet.
Check the Igniter, it's the most common oven part that fails. Does it glow?

NO = replace igniter $25
YES = can you smell/detect gas from oven pilot or burner? = replace igniter.
YES = but no gas smelled/detected. = bad gas valve.

May have 1 valve, combination safety & control OR
2 valves, separate safety & control.
Gas Valves start around $100.

CAUTION! If you are unsure of what you are doing, Hire a Professional!
You and yours could die if repaired improperly.
www.appliancerepair.net  has a good general online guide covering all types of appliances. Ovens are at:  http://www.appliancerepair.net/oven-repair-6.html


Flavor in avocadoes gone forever? I got some made-in-store supermarket guacamole yesterday and it was a new low in bland, watery, flavorless avocado meat.

I have read that the reason modern avocadoes taste bland is because they use a variety called a "Hass" avocado that growers prefer because it is resistant to some kinds of blight and it does not spoil as readily as other varieties.

Nevertheless, as someone who remembers as a boy getting avocadoes that tasted like, well, avocadoes and actually having good guacamole, it is really discouraging the world takeover of this tasteless drone avocado called the Hass. Also, it seems the Hass itself seems to be getting more bland and more watery year by year.

Is there any way to get good avocado varieties of the old type that actually taste good, or have they gone the way of the Dodo?

(I should mention that I grew up in San Diego, but now live in Massachusetts so this might be part of the problem; good avocadoes might only be available locally in Southern California.)

Update

By some further research I have found that apparently large numbers of avocadoes are being exported by Peru, and even though they are Hass avocadoes they are reputedly MUCH more bland than California avocadoes, but also much cheaper. So, this might be the problem, I am getting Peruvian avocadoes.

You're exactly right in figuring out that part of the problem is having grown up with some of the world's best avocadoes, and then moving up North where decent avocadoes are scarce!  :)  Tasty avocadoes aren't all going the way of the dodo just yet, but you might have to move to Texas or Florida, or check some Mexican markets in your area, to get better avocadoes.

My husband lived in S Calif. as a child. He is an avocado connoisseur like you, as a result. Some of the best S Cali avocadoes are 'Fuerte' variety, which is more flavorful and creamier than Hass. We live in Texas and we get some very good, tasty Mexican avocadoes here- which by the way, are Hass.

But every single avocado I've brought home to hubby, whether from Mexico, Chile, Florida, Arizona, the Caribbean, Hawaii, Guatemala or Peru, ends up being compared unfavorably to those great S Calif. avocados he remembers. We visited a relative in the S Calif. area about 4.5 years ago and hubby had a delicious, fresh S Cali 'Fuerte' variety avocado during that trip--an avocado which he still recalls most fondly.

Personally I tried that same S Cali 'Fuerte' avocado too on that trip and while it was a bit tastier than the Hass avocadoes we currently get in Texas, I didn't find the flavor all THAT much better!  But hubby did prefer it a lot; he likes what he was raised on. Also his palate is more sensitive to bitterness than mine and 'Fuerte' is less bitter than Hass.
In recent years, Calif. drought has made the delicious Cali avocadoes, especially the 'Fuerte', nearly impossible to get.

By the way- I lived in Illinois for a while. That state has the same avocado problem as Massachusetts: too far away from where good avocadoes and other tropical fruits are grown, to get avocadoes with decent quality. Whatever does survive the shipping journey that far North is usually picked much too green. Around the holidays such as Christmas and 16 de Septiembre and 5 de Mayo etc., there was ONE Mexican food store in Chicago that got some fresh, air-flown ripe Mexican avocadoes for sale just for these special days..at $5 each!

Mom who was raised in Texas was desperate for a good avocado because they are almost nonexistent in Chicago, so she bought 2 of those $5 avocados for Christmas dinner and said it was worth it. I had a small taste in my salad, it was great but geez $5 a piece LOL! I'm real glad we left Chicago and moved to Texas soon after that!

I wouldn't count on S. California's avocado crop doing well anytime in the near future, as that area is likely to only have worse and worse water shortages and drought problems as time goes forward.

So perhaps, sadly, the 'Fuerte' avocadoes and the other delicious S Cali avocadoes you were raised on are going the way of the dodo. I hope not because they are very good avocadoes and it's always nice to be able to get USA grown tropical fruits. But unless some amazing advances in water and climate management are made to save the Cali avocado farms from extinction, your delicious S Cali grown avocadoes may become nothing more than a fond memory.


Amount of Chocolate-chips in a Chocolate-chip cookie? I've been making chocalote chip cookies for a while and I just can't decide how many chocolate chips to put in each cookie. So maybe once and for all I can get a good answer to the question:

What is the best percentage of chocolate-chips for a chocolate cookies? And what are the pros and cons for putting more or less chocolate chips?

Exactly 42 chocolate chips per 3/4 cup of batter.


Getting some rum into a commerical fruitcake I have purchased an inexpensive (Costco) 1.6kg (3.5lb) fruitcake. Some folks have recommended adding rum to the fruitcake to moisten it up a bit and give it more flavor. Some process involving cheesecloth and inverting the cake was mentioned. I have a bottle of Cuban rum that was gifted to me and I think it might fill the bill.

What is the best process for doing this? At room temperature or in the fridge?

When I feed a Christmas cake (home made, but it shouldn't make much difference) I simply prick holes all over it with a thin skewer and drizzle the alcohol over the top. A few days later I invert and do the same on the bottom.  You can repeat a couple of times, 2-3 tablespoons at a time, maximum.

For this I wrap in clingfilm, and store at room temperature in an airtight tin or plastic container.  This works well for the dark, heavy fruit cakes we have as Christmas cakes in the UK (also traditionally used as the bottom tier of wedding cakes).  These cakes keep indefinitely at room temperature so long as they don't dry out.  A lighter fruit cake may end up more soggy than moist.

If it's extra flavour you're after, you could steep some appropriate spices in your rum first: a cinnamon stick, a bit of root ginger and a couple of cloves.  Big pieces rather than ground, so you can pour the rum off them easily, and do this with a small amount so you can taste it and dilute if necessary.


(How) can I keep cheddar in a car in summer for 2 weeks Is there a way I could prepare and store some cheddar cheese such that it would stay edible while being stored in a car in summer for about 12 days.

I am going on a road trip, and I am trying to figure out what sort of food I could bring with me.

I have read that aged cheeses can stay at room temperature*, but I am not sure what sort of preparatory steps I should take, especially since it will be staying at above room temperature slightly...

Can this be achieved?

*A good portion of the time will have AC on, or be at night, so I imagine in the end it would be somewhere near room temperature. Also I am trying to minimise effort. Last year I took a big plug in cooler, and I just want to see if I can down size and simplify by packing strategic food.

Maybe a small, six-pack sized cooler, refresh with ice every morning and periodically rotate in cold beverages as you use and replenish those during the day?

Or, possibly, get a lunch thermos, put the cheddar in a baggie, in the middle, and add ice around.  Thermoses insulate, so they keep your food hot, but will also keep cold food cold.

Amazon.com: Thermos 12.oz. food jar

Or, maybe, buy small quantities of cheddar on the road and eat them instead of trying to preserve a two-week supply?  I'm assuming you're talking a fairly standard cheddar, and not something that can't be picked up on the road.....

Hook's to release 20-year cheddar for $209/lb

(I've had their 15-year cheddar, at about $55/lb at the time.  Fantastic!)


How do you properly clean a cutting board and knife to prevent cross contamination? I have one very nice cutting board that I like to use with my chef's knife.  Because I only use this single cutting board and chef's knife, if I have a recipe that calls for cutting raw meat as well as vegetables, I have to take turns with the same board and knife.  However, I'm always concerned that I haven't done enough to clean them after working with the meat before moving on the vegetables.

What do I need to do to properly clean the cutting board and knife to make sure that I avoid cross contaminating my tools?

Your primary defenses against cross-contamination include proper planning in the order of what you're cutting and proper cleaning between uses.  In the case of your stew, simply cut the vegetables first and then cut your meat.  Doing so in this order you won't need to wash the board between the vegetables and meat.  If you want to expedite the cooking process, then either use a separate board for the meat first so that you can start browning it while cutting the vegetables, or simply wash and re-use the board.  A good scrubbing with hot soapy water is fine for your knife and board (including wood boards).

As mentioned previously, if you're still concerned about bacteria you can rub the board with lemon juice or vinegar which will kill any residual bacteria.

Using separate boards that are relegated to specific meat vs. vegetable duty isn't necessary as long as you're properly cleaning your boards.  A board only used for meat items is just as liable to transfer bacteria to the next item being cut on it if it isn't properly washed between uses.  That being said, if you're properly cleaning them then it's fine to cut vegetables on a board that's also been used previously for meat.

As for cutting boards, your best bet for the care and maintenance for your knives are either wood or composite materials (usually a laminated product of paper and resin - "Epicurean" being a prominent brand.

Never use a tempered glass cutting board or other hard surface (granite, marble, Corian, etc.) as these are heavily damaging to the edge of your blade and unsafe for you as there is nothing for the knife to bite and grip into and it's much more likely to slip and cut you.

Plastic cutting boards and mats aren't very good on your knives and the boards in particular are either too hard and dull your blade prematurely or are soft and end up with lots of cuts and grooves which then trap food.  People often have a false sense of security with plastic boards believing them to be "non-porous".  As the board is used, food material ends up crammed into the cuts and grooves and while the boards can go into the dishwasher, that only removes the surface grime, not that which is impacted and over time you increase the potential for bacterial growth to occur.

Wood boards (including bamboo) are much better on your knives but to maintain them in good condition you need to properly maintain them.  Periodically, when they look dry (kind of like chapped skin) you need to oil them with mineral oil.  The mineral oil you buy at your local drugstore or grocery store pharmacy is fine, no need to buy fancy "block oil" in gourmet shops.  Don't use vegetable based oils as they will go rancid and transfer the flavor to your food.  I like to give the cutting board a heavy coating at night, let it soak in overnight, and then buff off anything that didn't soak in.  This will keep your wood fibers soft and supple so that the board won't split and crack, the fibers will swell back together making it more "self-healing" as you cut on it, and the oil in the wood will repel liquids that would otherwise try to soak in.  When a wooden board gets marred and nicked up you just need to take it to the garage and give it a good sanding before dusting off, rinsing and re-oiling.

Don't use bleach on boards (plastic or otherwise) as it will typically leave a distinct smell in the board.


Why baking powder in rotis? I just ate a store bought roti (a flat Indian bread, like a tortilla) and baking powder is a listed ingredient.  Why does a flat bread need baking powder?  There are no bubbles to grow, are there?

Rotis made at home don't have baking powder. I am sure the store bought ones use it to make the rotis extra soft and fluffy it is heats up.


How long does pancake batter last in the fridge? I'm making a packet mix of pancake batter that doesn't lend itself to partial mixes - it's hard to split "1 egg" as an ingredient.  How long would pancake batter last in the fridge?  Even if it's a worst case of a day or two, I'd still like to know.

Bisquick-originated pancake and waffle batter lasts a day, two at the most.

Data: in college, I made pancakes or waffles every day for a year and a half, making the batter on day 1 and then cooking it on days 1, 2, and 3. Once in that time I got sick on Day 3. Based on that experience, more than 24 hours is getting sketchy, though 48 seems to work most of the time.


Is garlic peel safe to eat? I ask NOT about the white outer layers that must be peeled and I do peel. But I lack the time to peel the red peel off cloves. Is it safe to eat?

picture source

Garlic peel isn't dangerous to eat. Most people wouldn't want to eat it, since it's pretty papery and can sometimes be a bit tough and fibrous, but I guess if you don't mind, go for it.

There's not really any difference between the outer and inner layers of the peel. The color is just an attribute of certain varieties of garlic; some garlic has that red/purple peel, while other garlic just has white (or off-white/pale brown) peel the whole way through.

If it's only about spending effort to peel, see How do you peel garlic easily? - it's never going to be instant, but it shouldn't be terribly time-consuming either. If it seems like it's adding a significant amount to your cooking prep time, there's probably room for improvement.


How can I make Shepherd's Pie without tomatoes? Shepherd's pie recipes usually involve cooking the lamb mince with tomato paste or chopped tomatoes from a can, for example in this BBC recipe, or this Good Food recipe.

How can I best approximate the usual taste and texture without any tomato ingredients?

The tomato in shepards pie provides acid and is the main coloring agent of the meat portion of the dish. Any other acid will work in place of it, although which you use will entirely depend on how much you want the flavor profile to stay the same.  Adding lemon juice will give your pie a Mediterranean taste, adding others will result in other flavors coming to mind.  You could just leave the tomatoes out and use a roux instead of the flour, that should give you about the same mouth feel just tasting onions and lamb.


Can one preserve cooked fish with salt? I am attempting to replicate a Thai delicacy called 'Pla Tuu'.
It is a small fish that is salted, cooked in water, and then reheated periodically to preserve it.

My question is: Should the initial salting be done before the fish is cooked for the first time, or afterwards?

My worry is that the salt will be washed off or leached out during cooking, and the preservative effects will be lost. On the other hand, I have never heard of preserving a fish or meat after it has been cooked.

Disclaimer - I'm not familiar with the recipe, and I also couldn't find much on it when I looked, so I just had some thoughts to possibly offer in the absence of anything more offical.

If the salting is done before cooking, it wouldn't depend on the presence of salt "not being washed away" while cooking, but on the changes in the fish that happened while in the salt - it might be used for a short time to quickly draw water out of the fish, so it is drier and firmer when cooking, or it might be left in the salt longer, actually stored in salt for a while, to cure (like salt beef or pork).  The difference might be identified by how dry (and salty) the finished product is, since something cured in salt will tend to be very dry, maybe tough, and jerky-like in consistency, since salt is very efficient in extracting water, and may need to be washed and rehydrated before subsequent cooking, while something softer in consistency was likely salted for a short period of time and will depend on the cooking to stay unspoiled.  Salt-cured meat usually needs to be prepared further before eating (it is an ingredient, not a ready-made food).

If the salting was done after cooking, you would get different tastes and textures - probably mellower, less raw, and not needing further preparation (though it can be, it is a food moreso than an ingredient), something like that.  It isn't unheard of to preserve meats after cooking - you might look at confits or potted meats, to get ideas for how it would work.  Confits are also often briefly cured in salt and aromatics before cooking and storage, so this might be a related technique (or at least give some ideas).  Of course, confits and potted meats are also cooked or stored in fats (specifically for the air- and water-tight qualities, which keep bacteria from finding the food), which may be quite different from your Pla Tuu - and possibly the reason it needs periodic reheating to keep it safe while it is being, transformed?, during the storage or curing process or whatever.


Why the pizza is able to "recover" so quickly? Assuming that you ever saw someone making a pizza out of a dough, you probably noticed that usually they push with quite some energy the dough down and use the other part of their energy to enlarge the disc .
Even after all this stress applied to the dough, most pizza are really soft, airy and fluffy inside: why is that and what makes this happen ?

I would like to replicate this with my own recipe because this behaviour is really useful, especially if I can just let the dough rise, make the disc just before putting it in the oven and get a nice soft result .

The only thing I can't replicate for sure is an oven capable of expressing 1,100° F and more, mine is about 400° F tops; based on my experiments something like a teaspoon of honey or fructose in general helps to get some more fluff, but not too much elasticity or structure .

Yeast action is only one factor in getting a rise when baking. Yeast metabolizes sugars and produces CO2 bubbles which puff up your dough, and also help with gluten development to make your dough stretchy. However, when you bake your dough much of the lift you get is from the expansion of water turning into steam - this is what makes pizza dough puff up a bit when baked and gives you that texture.

Water is also important in gluten development when your dough is proofing, without enough water you won't get an elastic dough with good crumb. My thinking is that your dough is too dry, so add more water to your dough. Stick to the amounts of flour and water in a trusted recipe and knead with oil instead of flour. After kneading your dough should be fairly loose and just a bit sticky, and you should be able to stretch it quite a bit without breaking.

Regarding oven temperatures you don't need the fires of hades to make a good pizza - the most important things for a good pizza is a good base, sauce, and quality ingredients. Crank your oven up as high as it will go and use a pizza stone (make sure to heat it up for at least 30 minutes) and you'll get a good result.


Does flaxseed oil need to be refrigerated? I bought a bottle of organic flaxseed oil to season some cast iron, and the store keeps it in the refrigerator. Does flaxseed oil need to be refrigerated, or is this just a silly thing that the overpriced organic grocery stores do?

Flaxseed oil goes rancid quickly, and refrigeration slows down this process. So, yes, you should do as the label says (usually a good idea anyway) and keep it in the fridge.


Some beans are not cooked I am cooking beans Vigna mungo  , after soaking beans in water overnight.

I realized that when i cooked them in morning for 20 minutes in pressure cook, there are very few beans are still as hard as uncooked soaked beans, why these few exceptional beans are not softened ?

Older beans, or beans not stored properly may remain hard. Also, even among fresher beans they won't always soften evenly. Some beans may take 15 hours or longer.


1 baking pan, dough for 2 loaves. What do? I am making bread from this recipe for 2 loaves. The recipe calls for placing the dough in the baking pan and leaving it for 1 hour until the dough doubles in size (and contours itself to the pan).

I have only 1 baking pan. And I am preparing dough for 2 loaves to make bread in bulk.

If I do it sequentially i.e. put the first half of the dough in the pan, let it rise, bake it, and then attend to the second half - I have a problem. The second half will have also risen outside of the pan. This means I'll have to force that dough into the pan and may destroy the structure of the dough.

One thing I can do is the refrigerate the second half while preparing the first. However the yeast-sugar reaction in the dough will continue (albeit slowly). I fear the second half won't rise the same as the first.

The other (obvious) approach is the prepare the dough separately. But that defeats the purpose of my endeavour. I am making 2 loaves together to benefit from the economies of scale.

How should I go about making 2 loaves of bread using a single baking pan from dough prepared together?

Is there a very special reason you want to bake it in a bread pan?

The recipe is solid enough to be baked free-standing, in any bread shape you like - batard, boule, and all the fancy ones. It actually will be way too dry if you tried to incorporate the whole flour (but notice it does not direct you to do so). So you can shape, proof and bake completely without a pan, simply place it on a baking sheet or pizza stone, or onto the bottom of a cake pan.

Alternatively, you can bake it in any other pan you have. For example, round pans such as cast iron paella pans make great round-low breads, although I must say these are better for a large family dining together, since they are not that convenient to cut into slices. But lasagna pans, casserole pans, cake pans, etc. will all work. Or try for once a dutch oven bread and see if you like it.

So, unless the exact cross section is very important to you, just follow the recipe properly by keeping the given times and baking together, no matter what pan you are using (or not using).


Why are stone ware and dutch oven items exempt from bacteria? As I am doing the dishes, I come upon my wife's stoneware "pans".  These pans, I am told, do not need soap.  "Just like a dutch oven".  In fact, soap will ruin them.

Now I did this with dutch ovens when I would go camping as a kid.  I loved it because cleanup was just that much easier (no soaping).

But it has always confused me how this works.  How does the seasoning on stone ware pans and a dutch oven combat bacteria?

Or is soap just overrated?  Can I really just give all my pots an pans a good scraping and then rinse under hot water?  (Bacteria bactsheria, like it will hurt me.)

Or, is my wife wrong?  When we cook off those pans next time, am I enjoying a smorgasbord of bacterial offerings?  (Mmmm, love eating that aged bacteria!)  NOTE: I have never gotten sick from my wife's cooking.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "stoneware pan" in this case...but some pottery used for cooking shouldn't be washed with soap.

If it's glazed, then you should certainly clean it with soap, there's no reason not to.

If it's unglazed, and it's really stoneware, it should be safe to wash it with soap; since stoneware is watertight, the soap will stay on the surface, and you'll be able to rinse it off, so using soap is fine.

For water-permeable baking stones, like a pizza baking stone, or some domes used for baking bread with a french-style crisp steamed crust, then using soap is a bad idea, because you typically can't rinse the soap out afterwards. I've never tried washing one with soap, but the instructions that came with my pizza baking stone say that a soapy pizza baking stone is ruined and unusable for food.

For unglazed earthenware used for pizza, bread, or similar, you clean it with water and/or heat: if it gets dirty with something you can't wash off without soap, the remaining option is to burn it off by heating it to a high temperature in the oven, and then brushing or rinsing off the ash. This removes the "food" from derobert's list of things needed for bacteria to grow, by turing it into less nutritious ash.


What is this technique where they add a thick sauce and spread it out with the back of a spoon I'm sorry my question is so vague but I'm trying to research a technique but have no idea how to describe it.

If you review the picture below, you can see the orange/yellow splodge! :) I see this technique being used quite a lot but have no idea what it is called.

Does this have a name or technique associated with it? If not, can some one give an example of how to get this type of consistency. I want to recreate this so the meal looks flash but have no idea!

I've seen it referred to as a tadpole or a comet but I'm not sure if either of those names are widely used. Either way, there's an excellent video on Youtube about how to do them. You want your sauce or puree to have the consistency of mayonnaise for this particular presentation. Just use a dessert spoon to place a circular blob on the plate, clean the back of the spoon and then drag the spoon back through the puree. The video is here.


Shortening instead of butter I have no butter for my chocolate chip cookies. What can I use instead? And how much? My cookies calls for one cup of butter.

Butter and shortening can generally be substituted for each other in cookie recipes if you keep a few things in mind: Since butter does contain water and less fat than shortening, you'll need to use more of it as a substitution. Also keep in the mind that the textures and shapes of the cookies will be different due to moisture content and melting points.


What is the measurable difference between dry basil and fresh? What is the measurable difference between dry basil and fresh?

Is cooking with fresh herbs different than cooking with dry herbs?

In addition to the great answer by M.K: Most industrially dried and fresh herbs are not even of the same exact kind.

Taking basil as an example: Most basil species don't preserve their aroma well during the drying process. So while you can use any kind of basil for fresh use, you can maybe only use certain kinds for drying, because they preserve the aroma a little bit better. This will of course lead to a different flavor profile, because they are different kinds of basil.

You can basically divide herbs kind of into "hard" and "soft". "Hard" herbs would be something like rosemary and thyme, which are quite dry and hard, even when fresh. They preserve very well during the drying process and can be used almost identical fresh and dried. "Soft" herbs, on the other hand, wilt easily and many of them become almost tasteless during the drying process. This includes basil, chives, certain kinds of oregano, and to a certain extend parsley. For these herbs freezing is a better preserving method!

Fun fact: there are plants that only get fragrant when dried. Woodruff is a common example of that (although, no one would call that a herb as far as i know). It starts giving of its distinct flavor only when wilting.


Why would cooked spinach contain more iron than raw? I've been researching the nutrient content of various foods and I've found that cooked spinach appears to have more iron than raw spinach (3.57 mg / 100g vs 2.71 mg /100g).  Intuitively, I would have expected the opposite.

Is the data I'm looking at wrong?

Maybe, it is just that it is easier to aborb the iron from cooked spinach rather than raw.

Can anyone explain the difference?

Iron is simply an element, so it cannot be destroyed by cooking (or generally temperature changes), as vitamins and other organic structures potentially can.

Cooked spinach inevitably has a much lower water content, thus the relative density of all other components must increase. So gram for gram, it makes sense that cooked spinach should have a higher concentration of iron (and possibly some other things) than raw. However, the actual process of cooking does nothing to change the amount of iron.


Whenever I put breadcrumbs on chicken breast, they turn out soggy and moist Whenever I make chicken strips with bread crumbs it comes out rather moist and soggy and not crisp and crunchy. I cut the boneless skinless chicken breast into strips, mix them with some egg and oil, add some salt and pepper, then roll them around in the bread crumbs. I then use my George Foreman Grill and even on maximum temperature they're too moist. Why does this happen and how do I fix it?

This doesn't happen when I'm cooking chicken without the breadcrumbs so I think it has something to do with them. I am using Panko bread crumbs.

The classic method of breading ("Wiener Schnitzel") is a three-step process:

flour
Only a thin layer: you can add salt or spices to the flour instead of or in addition to seasoning the meat.
egg
Lightly beaten (not foamy); let excess drip off well.
breadcrumbs
Either fresh or dried, the egg helps the crumbs to adhere. Lightly pressing the crumbs to the meat is optional.

But there is a fourth component that will ensure your success: fat
Yes, we are all trying to "eat healthy" and monitor our fat intake, but unfortunately fat plays an crucial role in good breaded food. Whether it's deep- or shallow-fried, the hot fat ensures a good heat transmission and quick setting of the breaded crust, thus locking moisture inside.
Your GF grill is an excellent kitchen tool, but defeats the purpose: Your crust can't bake quick enough in the dry heat and touching the hot surface only partially. Combined with the heat from the grill and a significantly longer cooking time, the moisture that steams out of the meat will literally be drawn into the crust - leaving you with sub par results.

Save your GF for other uses and use a pan with some oil to fry your chicken.

Side note:
Some recipes for fried chicken recommend baking the floured chicken pieces in an oven to save fat. Note that a fried chicken is typically a two-step coating with an outer layer of flour, so slightly other rules apply.

Nevertheless, this method might be an option for you and worth a try, but don't expect the golden crust you get from traditional frying. I have used an oven with breaded meat, but typically with partially fried food, so that the breading already contained fat / oil from the first round of frying.


What Tea leaves are used in Kashmiri Pink tea I want to make Kashmiri pink tea but have not found an exact name in English for those tea leaves used in Kashmiri pink tea. As I am right now in china, here they have varieaty of tea. I would like to know the name in English so that i can translate it and find it here

Kashmiri tea leaves OR pure green tea leaves

克什米爾茶葉或純綠茶葉

克什米尔茶叶或纯绿茶叶


How to solidify melted chocolate? I have a fair amount of 75% cocoa chocolate. I would like to melt this chocolate and mix it up with some spices, fruit, nuts, coffee of mine. I would then spread this chocolate into a thin board and let it solidify again. This last step sounds a little hard to me. I do not care too much if the board of chocolate is not perfectly rectangular of if the upper side is not perfectly flat.

I am scared that it could be hard to warm up the chocolate at a high enough temperature without burning it so that it is easy to spread smoothly.
I am scared that the chocolate will stick to the counter top (in plastic) or the sheet pan.
I am scared that it won't fully solidify. I am wondering whether the counter top should be cooled down (which is impossible in my kitchen).

Can you give me your advice on how to solidify a chocolate mix into a nice thin board in a amateur kitchen?

I have never worked with chocolate before. My kitchen is typically around 21°C but I could eventually bring it down to 18°C.

I am scared that the chocolate will stick to the counter top (in plastic) or the sheet pan.

Don't do it on the counter top. The best surface would be a silicone mat from a baking store - a smooth one, not the ones that seal an woven steel wool inside and so have a relief pattern. If you don't (yet) have that, plastic foil will do, you'll be able to peel it from the chocolate when cooled.

  I am scared that it won't fully solidify. I am wondering whether the counter top should be cooled down (which is impossible in my kitchen).

20 C is a good temperature for cooling chocolate. Never cool the counter top. If anything, it would be best to warm it slightly so the bottom of the chocolate bark is cooled slower than its top, this gives the best shine. You can skip that though, it's a perfectionist's thing. If you are interested in a deeper explanation, see How to prevent "sweating" chocolate covered strawberries?.

  I am scared that it could be hard to warm up the chocolate at a high enough temperature without burning it so that it is easy to spread smoothly.

Here comes the most important part. The problem is not even burning, the problem is distempering. The chocolate will melt at around 30 Celsius, but will distemper at around 33 Celsius. Distempered chocolate solidifies in a grainy mass. You should not let it go warmer than 33 C, better yet 32, and that's a very narrow temperature range to hit.

To avoid this, you have to work in small batches1, use a double boiler for warming up, and use a candy thermometer. Don't use the microwave, that's uncontrollable and only useful if you are going to make some kind of chocolate mixture, not if you want to resolidify it as bars or similar. Also see What is the best way to melt chocolate? and What is the purpose of tempering chocolate?.

1 At the beginning, "small" means "so little you can stomach tossing it" because you will probably get it wrong a few times, it is a skill you have to build. But not so little that it smears onto the bowl and cannot be handled, I'd say the minimum is somewhere between 25 and 50 g if you are using a small enough bowl. Later, when you are confident in your process, "small" means "as much that you don't get a heat gradient in the melted chocolate in the double boiler", it depends somewhat on geometry and bowl material, and you have to experiment with that a bit to find out what amount works well.


my cookie dough was in the fridge overnight and now its rock hard can I microwave it? Can I microwave the hard rock hard cookie dough that was in the fridge overnight?

I'm going with a tentative "yes, but" here.

First let's have a look at what happens in your dough and why most recipes recommend refrigerating the dough before baking.

A "basic" cookie dough consists of fat, flour and sugar (plus a few extras, obviously) that form a delicious, crumbly substance after baking. The secret to the way the cookie crumbles (pun intended) lies in the way the fat separates the flour and any kind of liquid involved to inhibit gluten formation - which would translate to a tough and rubbery cookie. But the fat must remain in small, yet coherent pieces (even if we don't see them in the cookie dough), which will melt during baking and create tiny "shards" or the delicious buttery crumbs of our cookie. A very extreme example of the mechanism is puff pastry: layers of dough separated by thin layers of fat.

A dough with lots of fat will be soft at room temperature (perhaps even too soft to work with) and firm when cold. So when a dough is too firm, letting it warm up a bit is the obvious and correct choice.

But if you use your microwave, you could easily warm it up too much - making the dough hard to handle and you might have to cool it again. There is another issue if you warm your dough just a bit more: Did you ever heat butter in the microwave? It melts quickly and it does so unevenly. Some parts are still soft, others runny. This can easily happen to the fat in your dough as well. But if you get liquid fat, it can't fulfil the "form pockets and later crumbs" requirement stated above, affecting the cookie texture negatively.

So my conclusion:

The safest method is to take the too-firm dough out of the refrigerator and simply wait until it's soft enough. If you want to speed the process up a bit, choose a warm spot. Shaping the dough into a disk instead of into a ball before refrigerating will help the dough warm up more consistently, but not all doughs are firm enough to be shaped (but I suspect it's possible in your case).
If you absolutely must use the microwave, do so very carefully, on the lowest setting and in short intervals to prevent the fat from melting.


Tasting food while cooking I cook quite regularly at home, but I have trouble tasting food while cooking. All I want to know is if I should adjust salt, pepper or sourness. On the rare occasions that I taste, I invariable mess up the ingredient that I tasted. For example, I might place a little quantity (enough to lick) on my palm, wait/ blow for it to cool down, taste and adjust for salt. Later when eating the meal, I discover that I have added too much salt.

Any tips?

If it matters - this is South Indian style vegetarian cooking - lentils, vegetables.

Tasting while in progress is trial and error and a learned skill.  If a sauce needs to cook for an hour or more to meld favors together, it will not taste the same early in the process as the finished product.  Some ingredients mellow during the process, others concentrate.  Garlic as an example may taste strong to begin with, or be undetectable in other areas until it has melded with the other ingredients.  Salt will often become stronger as the product cooks towards completion.  The art is learning that at the half way mark knowing what the salt or other ingredient should taste like and how forward it should be to have it where you want in the finished product.  If you cannot taste it at all at the half way point, there almost certainly is not enough, but if it tastes like what you want at the end, then you may have too much and need to make other adjustments.

For me, this comes only with experience and you will get that only by consistently tasting and learning what it tasted like in progress when it turns out the way you want in the end.  You will definitely make mistakes, the key is remember and learn from those.  In the long term, you final results will tend to be better if you go by taste in many products than trying to go by one pinch in this dish, two dashes in this, and so on.  Meat is especially notorious for one piece taking more spice than another, but many vegetables are the same way, especially things like onions that can vary in strength, tomatoes that vary in acid, etc.

In learning on some dishes, like sauces, you can even consider dividing into two sauce pans.  One you spice a bit heavier than he other, taste side by side, and proceed.   Then compare the end product and see which was closer to what you wanted.  If both  are OK, but one better, you now have a better idea of what the mid point target was, combine them for serving so no loss and remember the lesson.


How do I roast beets to easily remove the skins? Ideally, when roasting beets, the skins should just come right off once they're done and cool. I don't seem to be good at this, though: sometimes they're great, and sometimes the skins are pretty clingy. What should I do to guarantee easy peeling?

The trick that works for me consistently is to put the beets in a sealed container while still hot and let them cool down that way, they continue to cook a bit and the steam from them keeps the skins loose. Also, peel them while they are still warm, if they cool too much the skins may adhere again.


Cooking with papaya seeds - what does heating them do? I've got a bunch of papaya seeds left over from a ripe fresh papaya and I'm trying to work out what I can do with them.

Pic from Livestrong

Researching this comes up with precisely two types of page:

Hundreds of dubious articles claiming miraculous health benefits (I'm skeptical, but good to know they're edible)
Hundreds of recipes for salad dressing, based on putting them cold in vinegar. I'm not especially interested in salad dressing, but if the vinegar does anything interesting to the seeds that could be used in other ways, that would be good to know about

What effect if any does cooking them have? Are they edible cooked? Are there any particular ways of heating them or ingredients to cook them with that bring out or modify their flavour in any notable way?

Cold, they're kinda tangy, sharp, bitter, not unlike peppercorns but more bitter and maybe slightly citrus-y. They seem to get more bitter the longer they're off the fruit - after two days in the fridge my stash became obscenely bitter, just one seed and I could still taste the bitterness 5 minutes later.

Or any other methods of preparation? Does steeping in vinegar do anything interesting? Or any other liquids? Crushing, freezing? Anything?

Clear answer: Nothing interesting food wise. I have lived in Asia between papaya trees for 10 years, and I have never seen them used. I tried drying them, brining, in vinegar, nope. They are inedible. Just like the papaya leaves. The only use is producing more papayas,


Why should I bake baking soda for making ramen noodles? I see this recipe for ramen noodles ("alkaline noodles") that says to use bicarb / baking soda that is baked in a very slow oven for an hour (250F / 120C) before incorporating into the noodle dough. Is it necessary to bake the bicarb? What does baking do?

The New York Times has an article about baked baking soda, which says that baking transforms the sodium bicarbonate into sodium carbonate (NaHCO3 into Na2CO3?) but this seems strange; does this really work or is it safe? Am I creating hydrogen gas or presumably harmless water vapor and carbon dioxide?

If it is worth doing for some reason, then there are the ancillary questions. How do I know when it's "done" baking? Both seem to be nondescript white powders. Will a different compound result, after dissolving both in water? Are there any safety concerns with sodium carbonate?

Baking turns bicarbonate of soda into a weak form of lye - sodium carbonate, as you said. It basically makes it a stronger alkali. The actual baking process is safe, but the resulting lye is an irritant and you should avoid getting in on your skin, and definitely avoid it getting it in your eyes.

The difference in texture and colour is noticeable after baking. The texture will be finer, and it will be whiter.


Is there any way to use oversized okra? I accidentally let some of my okra grow much too large.  It's about six inches long, and I've heard that it's inedible at this size--per this video it should be 2 1/2" to 3".

Is there any way to cook these or are they really best sent to the compost bin?

In my experience (I'm Texan, I've seen my share of okra), 2.5-3" is pretty small, and 6" is on the big side but I wouldn't expect it to be inedible. It's certainly going to be much more tender at 2.5-3"; there's no possible way it'll be too tough to eat. Larger does mean tougher, but at that size they might still be okay (for example this source says 4-6" is good). It looks like different varieties can have pretty different sizes - for example, this cow's horn okra is supposed to be best at 6-7" but still be good at 14"!

In any case, test the okra you have; no reason to choose just based on the length. Just try cutting it with a sharp knife, and if it's really hard and fibrous, you'll know. If it's borderline, any sort of long stewing method will be your best bet. You'd also want to cut it fairly thinly, so that you don't have very long fibrous strands to try to chew.

If it's really too hard to soften even like that, you might still be able to get some use out of it as a thickener but I don't think you'll ever be eating it on its own. If you want to try thickening with it, I'd cut it into bigger chunks, so that you can easily fish them out once they've done their work.


Can agar-agar be used in fondant icing in place of gelatin? Can china grass (agar-agar) be used as a substitute to gelatin in fondant cake icing?

Yes, there are several vegetarian fondant recipes using agar. Most tend to substitute it for gelatin in equal amounts.

Keep in mind two things:

Agar has a much higher melting point and sets firmer than gelatin, so the resulting icing will be less "melty".
The hydration process is completely different from gelatin. It doesn't bloom; it needs to be dispersed in cold/warm water and then heated all the way up to 90° C with constant agitation.

I'd recommend that you include the glycerin in any agar-based fondant recipes - they'll make it a lot easier to work with. Some gelatin recipes leave it out but IME you need it more for agar.