Is it safe to eat a chicken that leaked a ton of red fluid after roasting? I just roasted a small chicken, and after taking it out of the oven after about 1 1/2 hours, a large amount of watery, red fluid leaked from the bird.

Did I somehow mess up cooking the chicken? Is it edible?

The chicken was cooked, alone, in the oven at a temperature of 180 Celsius (356 Fahrenheit). There was nothing else done to the chicken (no brining or anything).

Based on the given information, it does not sound like the chicken was actually cooked as planned; maybe the oven's thermometer is off, or there is another problem.
It sounds like raw meat juices (water and myoglobin, not blood, and I cannot remember the technical name for this fluid just now). If the oven was truly at 180 C (about 355 F), this would have evaporated or the heat would have destroyed the red color.

Since the chicken was held at unknown temperatures for an extended period of time, I wouldn't risk eating it.

I would recommend discarding this chicken immediately, and buy an oven thermometer immediately, to check its calibration, and if it is off, get it serviced.


Freeze meat before or after cooking? If I am not going to immediately eat meat, should I freeze it before or after cooking it? How is taste and freshness affected by your choice of when to freeze it? I've done both options, but I've never compared the final preparation side by side.

For whole cuts of meat such as a steak or a chicken breast, I find it's better to freeze without cooking. These cuts aren't as moist after thawing them and re-heating.

For ground meat, it doesn't seem to matter. If I have the time I will cook and then freeze to save myself the effort durring the week.


What's the best way to clean a salad spinner? We had taco salads last night for dinner.  Cleaning the little bits of shredded lettuce out of the salad spinner seemed to take forever.  Despite scrubbing and lots of rinsing, little bits of lettuce were still clinging to the inner bowl (in between the slits in the bowl).  I finally resorted to picking out the lettuce bits by hand in order to be sure I got them all.  Is there an easy way to clean this thing?

We could try washing the lettuce first, then shredding, but what about the pre-packaged lettuce that's already shredded?  I'd heard you're still supposed to wash that too.

I've never done this, but what about filling the bowl with water, lowering the spinning basket into it so the lettuce shreds lift off, then dumping it out?


Binders for skillet rice patties I made rice cakes for my toddler: rice, quinoa, shredded potato, eggs, bread crumbs, cheese  onions, corn and cilantro.

If I wanted them to hold together better would it be advisable to add water or egg? To avoid an eggy flavor do I use the yolk or whites?

Thanks

You want to use egg whites for binding.

Science notes:

About 1/20,000* eggs has salmonella. For infants & toddlers I would suggest cooking thoroughly or pasteurizing the eggs with sous vide if they won't be fully cooked.

Egg whites comprise water (88%) and protein (11%, mostly albumin). Egg yolks are water (48%), protein (17%), and fat (33%). (There are some other things that make up the full 100% of each.) The yolk makes up about 33% of the egg.

The chalazae (the "gross" stringy parts of the egg white that holds the yolk away from the shell) is made from the same protein as the rest of the white. It may look weird but it tastes exactly the same.

*this is the number estimated by the CDC.


How to get rid of the smell from the fridge? Storing various meals and products in fridge (or freezer) can result in mixing different flavours, which isn't that great. What are your best practises to avoid the smell?

Baking soda seems to work well for me, but the best thing is to get rid of old food that is causing the smell, and seal strong-smelling foods in airtight containers.


Is there some trick to vacuum sealing broccoli? In Sous Vide for the Home Cook Douglas Baldwin gives a recipe for broccoli. In brief, blanch the broccoli, cool in an ice bath, then vacuum seal as a single layer in a bag with salt, pepper, and butter.

Except this does not work with an external (non-chamber) vacuum machine. Even after draining the broccoli for ten minutes, the vacuum machine sucks so much water out of the bag that it fills the entire water reservoir in the machine, and starts being sucked into the pump. Then you curse, cancel it, dump out the water, and try again, about ten times. And still, the bag refuses to seal, because it won't leave the heater on long enough to evaporate the water that's preventing the seal.

Eventually, I figured out that hitting the vacuum button again, followed immediately by the seal button, would trick the machine into turning the heater back on, even though it hadn't cooled down yet, and finally got the bag sealed. (And, amazingly, it appears it may still work, despite having sucked water through the pump)

I suspect this isn't a problem at all with a chamber vac, but it doesn't seem like a book for the Home Cook should require a $1200 vacuum machine.

So, is there some trick to seal broccoli using a $40 external vacuum machine?

I'm sorry that you're having problems with my book. I think the problem is that you're adding water to the pouch. In the recipe, step 4 asks you to:

  Vacuum-seal the broccoli, butter, and a pinch of salt and pepper in a
  large pouch so that the florets are in a single layer.

This will crush the tops a bit, but it will be much easier to seal. Sorry again.


How to store bagels? I've seen conflicting advice on how to store bagels.

I make 6 at a time, for use over the course of a week (or less).

Should I store the ones I'm planning on eating tomorrow and the day after differently than the rest?

I know that bagels are best eaten within a day, but I'm not going to make fresh ones daily. I'm looking for what storage method will help the bagel maintain the best quality.

I would keep the one that you are eating the next day out.  I would then freeze the rest of them.

If you like them warm, you could freeze them wrapped in foil.  Before eating pop them in a toaster oven until gently warmed through.

If not I'd freeze individually until solid then put in a bag to prevent your frozen bagels from sticking together, then thaw overnight (if eating in the morning) or in the morning (if eating for a mid-day meal) to eat.


Should enriched doughs pass the windowpane test? I'm trying to make the nan-e qandi recipe from Hot Bread Kitchen; recipe re-printed here. It contains sugar (honey) and a fair amount of fat, with full-fat milk for hydration and over a stick of butter in ~850g dough. It is rather low hydration, and also contains sugar and baking powder.

The recipe says to knead for 5min, and that it should pass the windowpane test. I make a lot of bread, but mostly from lean doughs. I don't think I have ever attempted the windowpane test in an enriched loaf, and I would not expect it to "work" due to all the fat. Generalizing, Should heavily enriched doughs like this be expected pass the windowpane test? E.g., brioche, challah, ...?

As I expected, my first attempt at this dough did not pass the windowpane test after reasonable effort. I also attempted to let it rest for a time e.g., as suggested here, then knead again, but it still pulled apart readily. If this dough should pass the windowpane test, I'll attempt more precision next batch...

Yes it should - sort of.

Your observation is right on point, a very rich dough will tear more easily. (I did the same experiment once myself.) But it will still show some characteristics of the windowpane test: it will stretch smoothly and the "pane" should be very even, not show streaks of thicker and thinner areas. Note that the temperature of your dough and thus the consistency of your fat may have an influence as well. While warm doughs with soft fat will be very stretchy, cool doughs (made with cold ingredients and little yeast for an overnight cold raise) can be less cooperative.

If you are familiar with how a "ready" non-enriched dough looks that passes the windowpane test, you will probably recognise the same smoothness in an enriched dough anyway, without performing the test.

For this specific recipe, I guess it's the very low hydration that makes the windowpane test difficult and the dough prone to tearing, not the fat.


How does the shape of an espresso cup affect the flavor? Similar to the question:
Why do drinks drunk from a glass instead of a bottle taste differently?
Where the top answer notes the logic behind each glass for a particular drink:

Wine glasses, for example, are optimal for giving the nose an opportunity to experience the wine. They enclose a volume that allows you to swish the wine in the glass (without spilling it) to impart the aroma to air in the glass. The usually tapered opening keeps the aroma from dissipating before your nose can sense the wine.
Champagne flutes, keep the effervescent champagne or prosecco bubbly and cold long enough to enjoy the drink without it going flat.
Different beer glasses are optimal for showcasing the "head" and are tall for the same reason as champagne flutes (to keep the effervescence going as long as possible).

How does the shape of the typical (see below) espresso cup affect its flavor?

CC image used with permission: Credit to Flickr user davharuk.

As I see it, the typical espresso cup shape and material (Thanks JAIL!) does three things for espresso:

the thick ceramic insulates the coffee, helping it retain heat as
well as protecting your fingers from being burnt;
the shape is compact rather than wide or tall, minimizing the ratio of surface area to volume, to further retain heat;
the tapered cup and round bottom allow you to easily mix sugar and/or chocolate into your espresso, getting an even distribution in the liquid.

The round bottom of the typical espresso cup also makes it easy to clean.  I have some very decorative square-bottomed espresso cups, and the inner corners are pretty much permanently stained.


What do sushi bars do with left overs at the end of the day? Just walked past a sushi bar in Bangkok, 20 minutes before closing, no customers but still lots of plates going around on the conveyor belt... so that got me wondering - what do they do with those leftovers?

Considering most of them contain raw fish I'd assume (and hope!) that they don't reuse them... but it's a lot of wasted food.

At the sushi belt restaurant I worked at the cut rolls are taken off the conveyor at closing time and the remaining staff takes home whatever is wanted, in the morning the leftovers are disposed of.


Can I mix all-purpose flour with high-gluten flour to make bread flour? Basically of the opposite of this question.

I'm writing during the 2020 pandemic, and bread flour is sold out everywhere because everyone (including me) is entertaining themselves at home by making bread. I did manage to find "high-gluten flour", which according to Epicurious seems to be more or less the same as bread flour but with a higher protein content:

  Unbleached all-purpose has the lowest amount of protein, usually around 10.5%. Bread flour contains about 12 to 12.7%. High-gluten and whole-wheat flours have about 14% protein.

My recipe calls for white bread flour. (I'm making sourdough at 80% hydration, in case it matters.) Can I get there by mixing this high-gluten flour with AP flour? What proportions should I use? Any pitfalls I should be aware of?

Yes, you can mix them at basically a 1:1 ratio to achieve a flour with roughly 12% protein content (mimicking bread flour).

Bread flour is milled from hard spring wheat, which has a higher protein content than the hard winter wheat used in all-purpose flour. Protein adds strength to dough and enables loaves of bread to rise high.

Mixing them together to achieve a roughly 12% protein content will ensure you don't end up with a bread that's way too dense/soft or rises far too much/little, basically.

There's no issues mixing flours, and in fact this can be a great way to create the mixture you need when it's sold out (such as during this pandemic).


How to prevent sliced vegetables/roots from sticking to the blade This is especially problematic with garlic, but onions, roots and other vegetables are sometimes just as bad.

When making thin slices, with the problem worsening as the portions are cut smaller, the garlic clings to the blade and I have to wipe it off after each go. Are there any tips or tricks used to prevent this?

I've never seen a chef on a cooking show do anything special to their blades beforehand, and they never seem to have the problem. My knives are high quality and very sharp.

I just ignore slices that stick to the blade. Each typically gets pushed off by the next one, so you only have one or perhaps a couple of slices on the blade at a time. When I've sliced the whole thing, I can wipe them off. This doesn't work when you're rough-chopping, in that delightfully casual way the TV chefs say "just run your knife through it all a few times" since half the stuff is on the blade, but it does work when you're slicing a carrot or garlic or whatever.

Just now, I sliced potatoes thinly for gratin and noticed that I semi-automatically gave each slice a little shove, using one of the fingers from the hand that was holding the potato, just as the slice finished. Obviously this only works for slices large enough to stand up past the top of the blade, but it's a technique you can use for some roots and veggies, even if not for garlic. I'm pretty sure I don't do that for things I intend to chop again in another direction, but only for things I am slicing.


Difference between scones and biscuit? What are the basic differences between scones, biscuits, tea-biscuits, muffins ? I know that cookie is the american word for the british biscuit..

Or is there any other difference?

Scones (UK usage) are a quick bread, usually moderately sweet.  They are baked on a sheet pan, sometimes sliced into wedges,sometimes cut into rounds or other shapes.  They are similar to, but sweeter than American style biscuits.

Biscuits (UK usage) or cookies (US usage) are very small, flat cake-like confections, usually rich in butter and sugar.  They are also baked on sheet pans, in individual portions typically only a couple of inches across (although sizes vary widely).  They come in a myriad varieties and flavors.

Typical flavorings are vanilla, chocolate, nuts, citrus.  Some of the simpler varieties allow the butter flavor to come through.
Biscuit (US usage) or tea biscuit (UK usage, one variant) are a type of quick bread charactarized by flat, flaky layers.  They are typically cut in rounds a couple of inches across, and tend to be about an inch tall.  They are usually only very lightly sweetened if sweetened at all.

Tea biscuit (UK usage, another variant) or teacake are biscuits or cookies traditionally served with tea.  They tend to be fairly neutral in flavor.

Muffins (UK usage) or English muffins (US usage) are small yeast-raised breads which are griddled in rings, rather than baked in an oven.  They tend to be a couple of inches across, and about half an inch tall.   They are often split and served toasted.

Muffins (US usage) or American Muffins (UK usage) are a quick bread, usually moderately sweet, baked in single serving portions in muffin tins (the same pans used for cupcakes).


What is distilled or freeze-concentrated mead called? I brewed a 10 gallon batch of mead for my wedding/honeymoon last year. It's a sack mead, so it tends to be more on the sweet side, like a cordial. I've decided to freeze concentrate (as opposed to destill; one is legal, the other isn't) it to both fortify and up the flavor and alcohol levels.

However, for life of me I can't seem to find out what this type of beverage would be called. Freeze concentrated apfelwein/cider is called applejack. Destilled or freeze concentrated grape wine is brandy. Distilled or freeze concentrated beer makes whiskey or an eisbock depending on your technique. But I can't find what the proper term is for a mead. Any thoughts?

It's called honeyjack when freeze distilled. I haven't seen any specific name for steam distilled mead, so it's likely fine to use the same name for both products.

  Mead can also be distilled to a brandy or liqueur strength. A version called "honey jack" can be made by partly freezing a quantity of mead and straining the ice out of the liquid (a process known as freeze distillation), in the same way that applejack is made from cider. Wikipedia: Mead: Varieties

Unfortunately there are a number of "honey brandies" and "honey liqueurs" that are simply other liquor bases with honey added for flavor and sweetness.

Also, see the discussion on Homebrewing Stack Exchange


What is the source of smoky flavor for barbecued foods? What exactly gives charcoal barbecued food the smoky flavor? Does smoky flavor happen if you burn wood to make coals and then use the coals to cook?

Or does it only happen when you use store bought charcoal lumps/briquettes?

Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking" has an interesting explanation on the chemistry of smoke (pg 448 on my edition). This is a summary of what it says:

The three main component of wood are:

Cellulose

Hemicellulose

Lignin

(Source: Wikimedia)

Cellulose and hemicellulose make up the "scaffold" of plant cells and ligning binds cells together.

These three compounds release specific compounds when they burn. Cellulose and hemicellulose release sweet/fruity compounds such as furans, lactones, acetaldehyde, acetic acid and diacetyl. These are similar to what you get during caramelization: indeed those hexagonal rings you see in the first two structures are common to many sugars.

Lignin, on the other hand, releases other smoky/spicy flavours, due to the presence of aromatic rings (those hexagons with a circle inside in its formula): guaiacol, vanillin, isoeugenol, phenol, syringol.

The specific amount of each compound that is released depends on the specific type of wood and the burning temperature; it obviously affects taste.

  Maximum flavor production takes place at relatively low, smoldering temperatures, between 570 and 750°F/ 300-400 °C; at higher temperatures, the flavor molecules are themselves broken down into simpler harsh or flavorless molecules.


How long to cook asparagus on a BBQ? I'm going to be grilling some asparagus which I have never done before.  How long should I be having them on the grill so that they're not all mushy and soft?  Is there something I should be doing to them beforehand to help them retain their crunchyness?

I sometimes steam asparagus before sautéing on a high heat with some lemon juice to get some caramelization on the outside of the asparagus. You could adapt this idea to the grill by sealing the asparagus in tin foil with a little water and steaming for four minutes (for finger thick spears). Then give them a bit of colour by placing them directly over the grill for a minute.


Home made Rice Milk that's not slimy or chalky? I'm wondering if it's possible to make rice milk at home that's similar in texture/taste to Rice Dream rice milk.  Most recipes online are really similar to each other, essentially being, blend some rice with some water, and (either after straining or not, and sweetening or not) enjoy.  The two major differences seem to be with the rice being cooked before blending, or raw and soaked overnight before blending.

Having tried both now, here's what I feel:
- Cooked rice seems to leave the Rice Milk with a viscous/slimy texture
- Soaked raw rice seems to leave the Rice Milk with a chalky/powdery texture

Both of these, even after straining multiple times through a nut milk bag.  The second option seems slightly better to me, just because the slimy texture makes me want to gag, but using cooked rice seems like the more popular option online, so maybe I'm missing something.  I noticed none of the recipes call for salt or oil, both of which are listed ingredients in Rice Dream.  I'm not sure if that would make a difference for the texture.

Does anyone out there have any experience making Rice Milk and know how to make a decent tasting (or at least, decent-textured) batch at home?

Since I'm not sure how to re-post as my guest account, I just want to say that I tried a little variation after reading logophobe's answer stating that he thought an added oil would counteract the chalkiness.

I toasted the rice grains (as the linked article stated) before soaking them, and then after blending, I strained the resulting milk once, and then threw the strained liquid back in the blender and added some canola oil, and the result was a MUCH better texture overall.

I didn't have Xanthan or Guar gum on hand to try, so I'm still yet to see how the mixture will hold up in the fridge, and if stirring will be enough to keep it this texture.

It definitely needed some sort of sweetener still though (in my opinion, but that's probably up to preference), but I feel like the oil, and possibly the toasting, really affected the texture in a positive way, to where it's a much more palatable base.


Boiling rice - drain or boil off water? Because different rice varieties have different cooking times, I find it hard sometimes not to over/under cook them. I do it in two ways:

Boil off all the excess water, and fluff it with a fork.
Boil with excess water, and drain it afterwards.

What are the major differences between these two. I have noticed that method 1 produces more thick consistency, while method 2 is more soggy. Also, draining takes time, and I think the rice is losing some essential stuff (starch, maybe?). The problem with method 1 is that if I don't keep an eye on it, the rice might burn and stick to the bottom of the pan. Is there a right way to do it? Are there any methods other than these two to cook rice?

If you are burning your rice on method 1 you either have too little water in it, cooked it too long, or have it on too high a heat. Assuming you are using white rice the general rule of thumb is to use double the volume of water as you do rice, so 2 cups of water for 1 cup rice. You then cover and bring it to a boil and then turn it down as low as you can and cook it until the water is absorbed, this could be 10-18 minutes depending on the variety of rice you are using. I sometimes bring it to a boil on a big burner and move it to a small burner to finish. I use method 1 for all white and brown rice as once you get the technique down it's pretty much foolproof, and less muss and fuss than method 2.

If your rice is soggy with method 2 you have cooked it too long, plain and simple. All you need to do is cut down your cooking time. I use method 2 for wild rice as every variety needs different amounts of water and the packaging is usually completely wrong. Using more water than can be absorbed takes the guesswork out of it and makes cooking it more reliable.

As for the starch part of the question rinsing your rice to get more separated grains does remove some of the starch from the surface of the rice. As starch = carbs = energy this does mean you are reducing the amount of absorbable energy from the end product. However, this is vanishingly small and nothing to worry about, it's all personal choice of how you like your rice.


Making a sausage and letting it dry out in the fridge I got a kg of ground beef and put two tablespoons of salt with it. I also put a lot of spices, stuff like paprika, black pepper, allspice, tumeric, lots of garlic, and two tbsp vinegar. This is basically an Armenian sausage.

I mixed this all up well, stuff it into a clean stocking tied at both ends (I flatten it out for maximum air exposure) then store it in the fridge for approximately 4-5 days before freezing it. I keep it in the fridge to give it a chance to sort of dry out, after that it's ready to eat. There is definitely a great improvement doing this rather than using it on the spot the first day.

My question is, given the decent salt content and it being really heavy on the spices, that would prevent it from going bad right? When I cook it, I make sure it's very well cooked just in case so anything bad in it would die out.

Just want to know if this is a terrible idea in general. I've done it before with great success, but from what I read, I don't know if it's technically safe.

Yes, from a food safety perspective, this is a terrible idea and not safe.

Shelf life of ground meat
Typical recommendations for ground meat is 1, max. 2 days in the refrigerator. Ground meat has a very large surface area and the grinding step can mix bacteria that previously were only on the surface of a whole piece (and unable to penetrate) throughout the meat.
Salt as preservative
Salt (NaCl) is a preservative, but you need up to 20% of the meat weight, which is far more than your two tablespoons. The preserving effect is acchieved by osmosis, drawing the liquid out of the meat cells. As that amount mixed in would make the food unpalatable, it is used on the surface of of large pieces - think ham. Curing salts work differently, they contain sodium nitrite and similar salts.
Spices as preservative
Spices do have some effect, but not to a degree to make ground meat stable. Note that excessive use of spices may aid in digestion, but even more was traditionally used to mask "off" (read: slightly spoiled) tastes and smells.
Vinegar as preservative
A very dangerous bacterium is Clostridium botulinum, causing botulism. It can be inhibited in low-ph environements. Yet two tablespoons of vinegar won't get you in a safe ph range.
Cooking to make food safe
While heat will kill most bacteria and molds, it will not necessarily kill the toxins produced by them before. (It does work for botulinum toxin, though.)

Our posts on food safety and shelf life:
How long can I store a food in the pantry, refrigerator, or freezer?
Why is it dangerous to eat meat which has been left out and then cooked?

On traditional recipes:

"Not safe" does not automatically mean "will make you sick". Those recommendations are based on statistics and include a safety margin. But if you or someone with a possibly weaker immune system does get sick, the consequences can be lethal.


Yellow sticky film on coconut meat - is it bad? I drank water out of this coconut and then left it unopen in a fridge for few days, and this happened - see the yellow film. It is sticky and the taste is neutral. Doesn't look like mold. Is it bad, or is it good natural process?

From the question and the comments, this looks a lot like bacterial film growing on the inside of the coconut near where the water was housed, that is the area with the most moisture availability for the biofilm to form.

Coconuts are meant to be quickly eaten and / or processed after opened, if you want to save the meat for later, open the coconut, take the meat, dry it out and preferably freeze it or if you are in a dry sunny place, you can sun dry it.

Leaving it opened in the fridge without any further processing is more or less playing russian roulette with nature, it is only about luck and only a matter of time until it gets bad.


What's this green vegetable with no leaves used in Cantonese cuisine? I read pp 13-14 of Tang Court's menu but they don't stipulate this vegetable's name.

That appears to be gai lan, or a closely related Chinese brassica like yu choy, with the leaves removed.  So just the stems.

I haven't seen (or found) a recipe for just the stems in broth, but it makes a certain amount of sense; the leaves cook much faster than the thick stems, so sometimes just the leaves are used for stir-fry.  Then you can do this with the stems.


Is it difficult to make a béchamel sauce for 15 persons? Is it difficult to make a béchamel sauce for 15 persons? Is the process different than preparing 2 or 3 servings, and how can I have it come out the same?

I've worked in more than a few commercial kitchens, and we've always made 'mother' sauces in large batches during prep for dinner. Béchamel is one of them; it's the base to quite a few other sauces.

For 15 people, I'd suggest using a small stock pot with a thick bottom on medium-low heat to cook out the roux, and then use the residual heat to hold the sauce if that's how you plan to serve it. Cook the sauce just prior to serving it.

Just remember, the more of it you have, the heavier it gets, and greater pressure is exerted on the flour at the bottom of the pot. Once you think it's nearly done, use a ladle to pour some into a shallow bowl, do the spatula test as Joe suggests and get it off the heat as soon as your happy with it. And, whisk from the bottom up (a figure-8 as you turn the pot works well, and turning the pot helps prevent burning). Otherwise the last few servings are going to taste a bit off.

You can also use a wide but more shallow pan, which also reduces the risk of burning some of the sauce. I've just not yet developed the amount of control over my enthusiastic whisking problem to do that in a setting where I'm also responsible for the mess :)


What went wrong with my sourdough? I tried making sourdough bread for the first time this week and it didn't work. I don't think it was a complete disaster but I didn't end up with anything that was eatable.

I followed Paul Hollywood's recipe for a starter over the course of the week, dividing and feeding it every couple of evenings. I'm pretty sure that it worked as I had plenty of bubbles in the first 24 hours after the last feed.

I made his basic recipe for a loaf and started straight after I got home from work. I left it to rise for a good 5 hours before knocking it back. At this stage the dough was silky smooth and felt like a good dough when I was working with it. I then shaped it into two balls and left it overnight in glass bowls covered with cling film (not a proving basket). By the morning the dough had clearly grown but it had also become loose and had lost its ball shape.

I decided to go ahead with the bake but I ended up with two flying saucers. When I cut into then bread it was very dense and hadn't risen at all in the oven. I tasted it and it definitely had the sourdough taste but it isn't bread...

Can anyone give me any suggestions for my next attempt? I've still got the starter but I haven't fed it again yet.

Thanks,
Alan

I have to contradict @saj14saj here. I have frequently had bread made with underdeveloped gluten (my grandma uses AP flour and tends to knead very short, 2-3 minutes per hand, and use very short proofing times). The bread is soft and cakelike, but it has no trouble rising, and it is neither flat nor dense.

On the other hand, I have had bread with exactly the same symptoms as yours - first feeling great, then left out for a long time to proof. After that, it looks good, but one touch makes it collapse into itself. The reason was very clear: overproofing. There is no doubt that underdeveloped gluten cannot have been a factor in my case. First, I am experienced enough to know when my gluten is developed - the bread was kneaded well beyond windowpane test. Second, it was a large batch of dough. I baked the first loaf at the optimal time and it rose just fine and had a nice texture with traceable gluten sheets through the crumb. It was the second loaf, which I baked a few hours later (and the proofing loaf spent them in a 30 degrees celsius kitchen in summer) which made the trouble. The dough had exactly the "loose" feel you describe, unlike the normal, springy feel before the proofing. It collapsed on touch and would not rise at all. It also had a very strong yeast fermentation taste, unlike the other loaf.

From your description and my experience, my conclusion is that overproofing until your starter died in its own waste products is the most likely culprit. The simple answer would be to not let it sit out overnight. The right amount of time to let it sit would depend on the room temperature, on the amount of starter you used, but also its leavening strength, and that is a bit hard to judge for a newly created starter. My best suggestion is to use trial and error and maybe bake 4 hours after knocking instead of 8 next time, and the time after that adjusting with a smaller increment in the right direction depending on whether the bread turns out overproofed or underrisen.


Would blow-torching tomatoes have the desired "oven roasted" effect? I want to have oven roasted tomatoes that have some black on them for salsa. I have over 100 tomatoes and don't want to use the oven for a full day doing this. I think a blowtorch might blacken the tomatoes in a good way. Would this have the desired effect (i.e., having blackened charred tomatoes)? How would it be different from baking them in an oven?

I know the tomatoes won't lose as much liquid as if they were baked, but that is not an issue since I'll be reducing them in a salsa anyway.

Does your oven have a fan-grill?

30-ish tomatoes on a tray, 3 trays, set to fan grill & rotate the trays every few mins.

Alternatively, use the regular oven & when the tomatoes are nearly done, switch to the grill. Rotate as above.


Taste-wise, is there a difference between tomato from a blender vs. chopped tomato? A chicken curry recipe and a mixed vegetables recipe require chopping tomatoes and frying them immediately after the onions and ginger-garlic paste are fried. But since this causes the tomato skin to be left behind as thin spindles, I considered making the tomatoes into a paste in a blender.

Although it formed a nice gravy, I noticed that the tomato taste was more prominent, and the taste of the green chillies, pepper and few other spices were not very noticeable.

I'm not sure if it was the blending of the tomatoes that caused this or whether I added too many tomatoes (I added just enough of them that the recipe required). So I wanted to know if blending tomatoes can actually make such a difference in taste that it can overpower the flavour of other spices? If anyone knows about this, I'd just like to know the technical difference between using blended tomatoes vs. chopped tomatoes. Being Indian, I enjoy the "hotness" of chillies and spices, and don't want the tomato to hide those flavours and tastes.

It may depend on how much blending they got.

I find that if you blend them for too long or too fast, you strip the 'jelly' part from the seeds, then the seeds themselves start to break up.  That tends to make it bitter, & I suspect that could be what you're tasting.

My standard trick to homemade sieved tomatoes is first I rough chop them - you really don't need much more than cutting them in half [If you do them whole, they tend to go pop]. Then I microwave them just long enough to heat them through & start to soften - depending on quantity you might need to give them a bit of a stir a couple of times. This doesn't need to be very thorough & they don't need to be completely evenly heated.

That should soften them up just enough that you can blend them for just a few seconds & not risk starting to grind the seeds.

Push through a sieve with a ladle & you're good to go.

I would really only tend to go to this kind of effort if my recipe needed a kilo of tomatoes, rather than 3 or 4. For just a few, I'd simply chop them finer & no-one will ever spot the rolled up skin segments.


New to jam making - do I need to can? I am a noob-to-be jam maker and a noob seasoned advice member. I want to make this pectin-free jam recipe; but here is the issue: In English speaking sources, any jam recipe goes with instructions on canning.

In Turkey (where I am from and I currently live), the hot water bath canning process does not exist and a few people online pointed out to the fact that this process does not exist outside North America (although I am not sure how true this is). I would like to know the reason surely but here is my question.

I want to make the aforementioned jam in 1, put them in freshly cleaned jars (in the dishwasher), put mine in the fridge and give away some to my friends and family.

Will I be posing any risk to people who eat the jam? If not, how long will the jam last in/out of the fridge?

Thanks for the help.

If your jam has at least 1:1 ratio (1 kg of sugar per kg of fruit) or more, you do not have to can it. Then it is so overwhelmingly sweet that bacteria cannot live in it.

If the jam has less sugar (1:2 are popular, 1:3 are found sometimes), then you have to either can it, or keep it in the fridge and consume it within a few days, similar to any other cooked food. Else, you are colonizing bacteria in your jam, and at some point, some of them will happen to be pathogenic and cause some unpleasant disease in whoever eats the jam.

Canning is a process in which the jam is closed against any new bacteria (that's why you have to close the jar hermetically) and then heated enough that most old bacteria are killed. After canning, you can keep the closed jars at room temperature without any new bacteria developing.


Why did my grandfather-in-law salt his beer? My grandfather-in-law was born in England in the 1920s and fought in World War II. Somewhere along the line he acquired the habit of salting his beer before drinking it, which persisted for the rest of his life. I'm as curious about the cultural genesis of the practice as the food science of it – was there perhaps something about wartime beer that made it unpalatable without salt? I know there were other wartime food customs like bread and scrape so it doesn't seem implausible, but the "why" of this one isn't so obvious.

I can think of several reasons why you might salt beer:

Salt is a natural flavor enhancer, so you'd be able to taste the hops and malt more
Salt reduces perceived bitterness, so overly hopped beer would taste less bitter
The salt crystals may nucleate bubble formation, giving the beer more head (briefly)

I've heard of it being done before, but never with good beer, only low quality swill.  But then, since there were more quality problems with cheap brews at the time, this was probably a lot more common.


Is leaving a Teflon rice cooker on overnight dangerous? I own a cheap Rival brand rice cooker. Here is a link to the product page. Note that there is an inner removable bowl where the rice is cooked. This bowl is coated in Teflon.

After cooking rice last night, I forgot to turn the cooker off, although it automatically switches to a 'warm' setting after the rice is done. (The two settings can be seen in the product page linked above.) I forgot to unplug the cooker, and it remained on overnight (8-9 hours) in a small, poorly ventilated apartment. Should I be worried at all about possible Teflon fumes? The bowl was only mildly warm when I found it in the morning, and there was no evidence of burning. I was under the impression that Teflon is only dangerous at very high temperatures, but I wanted to be sure.

More generally, suppose I want to start making rice at lunchtime so that I have warm rice ready for me when I come home. Is it safe to leave the cooker on for this period of time?

There is no risk to the Teflon itself, or from it; PTFE breaks down at about 500 F, which rice cookers will not achieve, especially on warming setting.  Other than that, PTFE is one of the most inert substances known to man, as the atoms are already bound in energetically very favorable bonds:  little is as able to displace them without significant input energy (thus the high breakdown temperature).

On the other hand, you should not hold rice for a long time without either refrigerating it, or having it above 140 F (60 C) as there is some risk of Bacillus cereus growing and causing food borne illness.


Can meat flavored tomato sauce be used without heating? I saw similar questions but I can't comment as I'm new.
Is there any tomato sauce with meat chunks? Can those be used without cooking?

Yes, you can buy tomato sauce with meat chunks around here
Yes they're safe to eat cold


Rice with worm and possibly their eggs I bought a bag of brown rice from a store. After having opened and used for a while, I found there were moths flying in the house. At the same time, I found worms in the rice. I suspect that the moths are from the worms(rice-size, white body, dark head). I guess but am not sure if they are called rice moths. There were also many little sand-like things in the rice bag, are they the eggs of the rice moths?

Will eating this infested rice pose a health risk?

I haven't had that happen since the 1980's.  Sound like the Flour Moth.
Freezing Rice or Flour for 3-4 days will kill the eggs.
I usually freeze local flour/rice for a few days so that I don't have to deal with any potential problem.
If you have pantry moths, or other moths that have hatched, you may need to take extra measures to get rid of them.  Once they start flying, they can get into any opened grain-food.


Would freezing a whole pineapple change it visually? If I freeze a whole pineapple with skin and stalk left attached, is the color likely to be affected?
The fruit will be used for a fruit tray display only, so taste is not a concern.

Thanks!

Assuming you are displaying the whole pineapple, then you don't need to freeze it. Pineapples will maintain their appearance for quite a long time which is why they were able to be shipped around the world during the age of sail.

To help it keep a bit longer, each day stand the pineapple up on end and drizzle water into the leaf crown. This is how this plant gets most of it water and nutrients and it will help keep the fruit hydrated for a little longer than ordinary.


Is microwaving bad for your food? I am an electrical engineer, who have studied ins and outs of microwaves - so I would find ludicrous, scientifically and physically wrong conjectures like microwaving destroys the "structure" of food or makes it radioactive.

Why do restaurants and ascribed "good-chefs" avoid the reputation of using the microwave oven? At least, I get that vibe from Hell's kitchen.

To me, when used expertly, the microwave oven in combination with convection or grilling produces excellent and tasty food. And it saves electricity. For example, I microwave my chicken first for a few minutes in an enclosure, before roasting or grilling it.

Why would a restaurant or renowned chef not boast of "expertise in microwave" but in fact, hides it, as much as he/she would boast of their expertise on the wok or on the flame?

Is microwaving bad for your food? Or reputation? Why?

Microwaves steam food from within, because they excite water molecules to the point of heat production. This has varied side effects such as:

Glutens tighten (that's why breads come out rubbery, and pasta sometimes falls apart)
Meats cook unevenly (though, as you mentioned, this can be a way to give marrow bone-in meats a head start so they cook completely in less time on dry heat)
Vegetables steam very quickly and are easily overcooked (though spuds in a microwave can be a handy shortcut)
While those 'crisper' liners can help, you can't really sear anything that's steaming. It's meant to reheat things mostly, and it's good at cooking some things entirely.

I would no sooner put waffles in a pressure cooker than I would tenderloin or fresh squash in a microwave - it's just the wrong tool for the job. But I will use one to melt butter, thaw demi glace, soften potatoes, quickly heat water to replenish a pasta pot that has been going a while, and lots of other things.

My objection to the use of them in commercial kitchens is mostly centered around cooks preparing and freezing stuff and then just microwaving it on demand. I can buy frozen food much cheaper in the grocery store. If you can easily reheat something that needs bulk prep and cold storage without degrading the taste or texture, who cares how you do it? I don't mind if you microwave my mash as long as it was made recently and tastes like you made it today :)

My objection to home use is assembling an entirely cold dinner plate and whacking it in there for a few minutes - my short ribs get all dry and my string beans start staring at me like Whoopi Goldberg would if I accidentally walked in on her in the restroom. Microwaves don't replace conventional ovens, but they're often marketed as if they do.

But I don't hate microwaves, in fact I'm considering an upgrade to one of the smarter ones in hopes of getting more use out of something that occupies some prime counter real estate.

Much like hammers, I think they just get used as inappropriately as they do appropriately, and you're hearing lots of people complaining about throbbing thumbs :)

I think some also resent the implied suggestion that microwave manufacturers make, which is "go on, cook more of stuff that shouldn't be reheated, in fact you don't even need to worry about that anymore - we've got this!" At least I did when I saw my mother-in-law grab 750 grams of cooked tiger prawns and throw them in the microwave on high for three minutes and I knew it would be rude not to eat them.


Why do brinjal change their color when they being cut? How to keep them not to change color? Why do brinjals (eggplant, aubergine) change their color(mostly black or brown) when they being cut? How to keep them not to change their color after cutting them?

Aubergine change colour because they are oxidizing, potatoes are in the plant family(night shades)   and turn brown too.  The best way to prevent browing is to immerse in water as soon as they are cut. Rubbing them with oil will help too, but not as much as  soaking them in water.


Should you ever add aromatic veggies to a dish without sauteing them first? Many recipes and cooking blog posts emphasize the importance of sauteing aromatic veggies to release their flavor and reduce the bite. This gave me the impression that when aromatic veggies are involved, the order of saute>raw is always preferred. I mean - why would you ever NOT want to release the aroma in a veg?

Yet for example I see many cooks that add the onions to a dish without sauteing first. Is there an advantage to not sauteing aromatic veggies, or is it always preferred to saute them? If so, how can you tell according to the dish?

If the recipes were truly interesting in 'releasing the flavors', they'd be sweating the onions, not sauteing them.  Sauté is a higher-heat method that will cook the vegetables to create other chemical compounds, thus changing their flavor.

In the case of garlic and onions, this cooking makes them dramatically sweeter.  But sometimes you don't want that -- you may want the sharp bite of the garlic, and to do that, you need to add it near the end of cooking, without it having been cooked.

Also of note is that if you are cooking in an acid (such as tomatoes), the acid will slow or possibly stop the vegetables from softening ... so if you want your onions to dissolve into the sauce, they need to be cooked first.  If you them to add some chunkiness and the possible burst of onion when someone bites in, you want to add it later.

As others have noted -- in many cases, you'll add a given ingredient twice -- maybe some garlic to mellow out at the beginning of cooking, and then a crushed clove or two towards the end of the cooking.


Amounts of Potassium Sorbate, Calcium Propinate or Ascorbic Acid as preservative in dough I bake homemade wheat bread, but after a few days it becomes moldy (dark), even the dough in the refrigerator. I understand that calcium propionate and potassium sorbate are safe preservatives, but I don't have any idea what amounts to use.

Normally I use to work with a whole bag (25 Pounds) of wheat flour in a Hobart commercial mixer. This SA question answers how much calcium propionate to use.

But: Can I use potassium sorbate as well? Can I change any of those two products by ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) or should I use all of 3? What amounts should I use then?

No to the potassium sorbate, because it will inhibit yeast growth.  (Use potassium sorbate as a preservative in chemically-leavened goods such as cakes, cookies... even non-leavened things such as pie crusts.  Just don't use it with yeast.)

As for the calcium propionate, check my answer for details on the page to which you provided a link.

Yes, you can use ascorbic acid along with calcium propionate -- but be sure you want the effects it will have on your dough -- such as finer, softer crumb structure and shorter rise/proof times.  If you're after a sturdier, more open crumb, ascorbic acid might not be for you.  If you want to try it anyway, start with the bare minimum amount.  I have read suggested amounts of anywhere from 15 to 80 ppm (0.0015 to 0.0080%) of the flour weight.  I've had good luck with about 70 ppm (0.007 baker's percent) -- or roughly 1/16 of a teaspoon of the particular ascorbic acid per pound of flour that I have on hand.  That would work out to just a shade over 1½ teaspoons per 25-pound bag of flour!  I recommend weighing (especially when working with large batches that can become expensive mistakes -- and be careful; a little goes a very long way!


What does "natural" actually mean? More and more I see "natural" or "all natural" labels on the slightly-cheaper alternatives next to "organic" products, and I find it somewhat confusing. I know that (for example) tofu does not occur in nature, so obviously "natural" does not refer to the whole product, but to the ingredients. But many common ingredients do not occur naturally in the processed forms that we use either.

Today I saw an ad declaring the "first all-natural burger in fast food". This seems like a pretty specific claim for something so nebulous, so it led me to wonder: What exactly does "natural" mean in the context of food? Are there specific rules, or can anyone slap a "natural" label on anything?

Short answer? Not a damn thing. The term is pretty much meaningless in the US; at best it only means that the product doesn't have added colors, artificial flavors or synthetic "stuff". From the FDA:

What is the meaning of 'natural' on the label of food?
From a food science perspective, it is difficult to define a food product that is 'natural' because the food has probably been processed and is no longer the product of the earth. That said, FDA has not developed a definition for use of the term natural or its derivatives. However, the agency has not objected to the use of the term if the food does not contain added color, artificial flavors, or synthetic substances.


Why does salt prevent soy milk from curdling in hot coffee? As many people have experienced, soy milk will often curdle in hot coffee. I've experienced this myself with both instant and fresh coffee, and with my homemade soy milk (not my favorite soy milk brand from the store, which has a few extra things).

There are many people out there with the same problem, which is typically blamed on the acidity of the coffee, acid being well-known as a coagulant:

http://www.thekitchn.com/why-does-soymilk-curdle-in-hot-148329
How to prevent curdling in a local vegan coffee creamer- aka- Post Apocalypse hippy coffee creamer?

One day, I tried adding salt to my coffee, knowing that it is said to reduce bitterness (ref). That day, my soy milk didn't curdle. On each day thereafter, if I added a pinch of salt to my coffee before adding the soy milk, it wouldn't curdle. My heating procedure has remained the same: mix instant coffee with boiling water to dissolve, add cold soy milk, stir, then microwave until hot again.

What chemical interaction could plausibly result in salt preventing the curdling of soy milk?

I can't find any definitive answers to this question online. All the discussion I could find are speculation.

Factors that cause soy protein to coagulate are heat, acidity, and the presence of magnesium or calcium salts. Additionally the proteins are more likely to curdle if they are heated very quickly.

I will assume that you heated your coffee and milk identically with and without the salt. If you had changed the order of adding boiling water, for example, it could have prevented your curdling.

If you have hard water then there will be a good amount of calcium salts in your water. Coffee itself also has a good bit of magnesium. These salts will coagulate soy proteins more readily than acidity.

Sodium chloride does not cause soy proteins to coagulate. Sodium chloride ions will replace calcium ions- this is used in water softeners and soaking beans.

My suspicion (which to prove would require more experimenting than I have time for right now) is that the sodium ions are preventing the calcium and magnesium ions from coagulating your soy proteins.


Is there an easy, at-home method to separate the protein from sweet whey powder? Sweet whey powder (henceforth "SWP") is a byproduct of making cheese and is a commodity.

The protein content of SWP is 13.1% protein by weight.  The rest of it is largely sugar (74.5%). See its nutrition fact sheet here.

One can buy SWP at $50 for 55 pounds from a bulk foods co-op, like Azure Standard, and thus the price per pound of protein would be:

 $50           1 unit SWP            $6.94
------ * --------------------  = -------------
55 lbs    0.131 units protein    1 lbs protein

Conversely, for whey concentrate:

$96.48     30.4g WC         $12.22
------ * ------------ = -------------
10 lbs   24 g protein   1 lbs protein

I did the analysis for simple whole milk, but I've forgotten the price per gallon.  The number my wife gave me last night yielded a higher price per pound of protein than using the SWP:

   $???           gallon      453.5g      $????
----------- * ------------  * ------- = -------------
Gallon Milk   128 g protein    1 lbs     1 lbs protein

All that said, the price per pound of protein of SWP is about half that of whey concentrate.

Previously I have fermented out the lactose with kefir grains, but it was disgusting.  If I must have a lactic acid in the output, I'd like the concentration to be yogurt-level or less.

Is there an easy, at-home method to separate the protein from sweet whey powder?

While it is not possible to conclusively say something cannot be done—and perhaps someone will come along who can offer additional insight—I don't think it is practical to separate the protein from sweet whey powder at home.

It is highly likely that the reason the concentrated protein is considerably more expensive per unit weight is because it is difficult and energy intensive to separate from the whey, and doing so requires expensive capital equipment that must be paid for.

In researching how this is done, I found the following sources:

See this transcript from NPR, which explains the industrial process required to separate the protein from the sugars in whey.  It involves industrial type filters, and considerable equipment.  Admittedly, some of that is due to the scale of the plant which would not apply at home, but the process is only feasible due to the scale of the plant.

According to NIH, a centrifuge is nearly always required, which is not typical home equipment:

  The first step in a typical protein-purification scheme is
  centrifugation. The principle behind centrifugation is that two
  particles in suspension (cells, organelles, or molecules), having
  different masses or densities will settle to the bottom of a tube at
  different rates. Remember, mass is the weight of a sample (measured in
  grams), whereas density is the ratio of its weight to volume
  (grams/liter). Proteins vary greatly in mass but not in density. The
  average density of a protein is 1.37 g/cm3. Unless a protein has an
  attached lipid or carbohydrate, its density will not vary by more than
  15 percent from this value.


How to make sugar coated fennel seeds at home? Fennel seeds have a great flavor and are good for digestion. I tried sugar coating them at home. But drying them up once the seeds got added to hot sugar syrup became a problem. At the same time seeds became gooey and it got all the more tough to take them out on a plate. I want to know what is the proper technique to sugar coat fennel seeds. Plz someone help!

The product in your link has been sugar panned, a process which uses a rotating drum to add a thin candy shell, such as on nuts or seeds. To achieve that effect, you would need either a machine or a panning attachment for a mixer such as Kitchenaid, as illustrated on Pastry Chef Central.


Saffron and coloration - is there a way to know why it gave the wrong color? What would make saffron (or something) color pink, instead of the more usual yellows and oranges that saffron is known for?

I had, a while ago, picked up a container of saffron from an ethnic store.  On reflection, it didn't look like it was too high quality (the color was a bit pale and I could see a few yellow ends), and it smelled like saffron does when I checked, maybe a bit mild or weak.  I didn't mind too much because it was also relatively inexpensive, and I figured it would still be worth it to use up the container in some experimental recipes.

A couple days ago, I was making some rice, and randomly decided to season it with saffron - when I dropped the strands in the heating water, they looked like the color coming off them was a bit dark, reddish - but I wasn't sure, maybe it was the lighting.  By the time the rice was done, I was certain - the saffron had colored the rice pink, not yellow as I expected.  I have seen saffron color orange, in high concentrations, and of course it looks red still as threads - but I have never seen it color pink.  I didn't notice this when using the saffron previously, but then again I only used it once or twice, in complex dishes with many colors - the pink might not have showed up clearly, especially if I wasn't looking for it, while white rice doesn't have a lot of distractions.

So, my question is, is there any reasonable guess as to why the threads gave off a pink color? I'm thinking either they were dyed (or treated somehow) so that the color looked darker than it was, or else it wasn't saffron at all.  I am aware of safflower and its frequent confusion with saffron - this was not a mere labeling error - but even safflower gives a yellow color, from my understanding (if it can be substituted for color purposes at all, as I have read).

I  especially want to know what might have caused the color change because I want to know what I can do with what I've got left in the box - if it is the result of potentially toxic dyes, I would want to treat it rather differently than if it was some merely fraudulent but nontoxic treatment or substitution.

The first pic is the saffron that's been colored.  Second pic is some good saffron I had on hand, for comparison.

So, my question is, is there any reasonable guess as to why the threads gave off a pink color?

Yes. It's fake. I've had family bring over the exact same thing from Turkey a few years ago: entire bags of "saffron threads" that turned everything they touched pink. It's a known fake product in the Middle East region. The fact that you bought it in an ethnic store is worrying though: I'd expect to find unlabelled safflower there but not dyed threads.

  I want to know what I can do with what I've got left in the box

Throw it out. Even ignoring the possibility you raise that the dye used to create it isn't food-safe, fake saffron isn't useful for anything. In your case, I'd take it back to the shop and demand a refund.

Fake versus Real

Here are some general tips to follow when you're buying saffron:

only the threads matter: the yellow stamens are useless and only add bulk, which is a sign that something's wrong
the scent can't be faked and is unmistakable provided you've smelled real saffron before, however most people are fooled by vendors mixing in threads of the real stuff (adulteration)
it has a characteristic taste (that's highly individual), but will never be sweet
it's a deep yellow to orange hue: saffron should never create a pink colour, though the threads themselves are such a deep orange colour that they can appear red
said colour will appear in liquids but will not fade from the threads, putting a strand on a wet paper towel is an effective colour test
the threads will not dissolve but can (and should) be crushed into powder, they also have a distinct texture and feel
it's hideously expensive: even if you personally know a producer/trader or buy in bulk (i.e. tens of thousands of strands), the wholesale price is still incredibly high (more on this below)

Note that the checks mentioned can all be invalidated in different ways and most simply by the seller pulling a bait-and-switch. As a rule, don't buy saffron as a tourist unless you've done your homework on the seller and product.

A quick note on price. Saffron is famous for being more expensive than gold per weight (in retail quantities) and the reason for that is its incredibly costly production process. More than a hundred crocus flowers go into producing a measly gram and the threads need to be harvested by hand. This coupled with the consistent and high demand means that there is simply no incentive for anyone to sell below market value and that's especially true for retail quantities. The retail markup is significant though, especially given the high base price, and avoiding some of it by buying online or at specialty stores can indeed save you a lot, but your average cook or chef is never going to be buying this for 50% off.

Saffron versus Safflower

Safflower is often sold as "Turkish saffron" and some claim it's a substitute but that's just not the case. While safflower does add colour, turmeric does a better job of colouring food yellow without requiring you to filter out chewy threads later. Safflower adds no noticeable taste to food. Saffron simply cannot be substituted, largely because of the complexity of its aroma (which includes over a hundred compounds). There is no artificial or synthetic saffron for the same reason.


How do I prepare ground flaxseed for consumption? (If needed at all) I haven't prepared or eaten flaxseed before. I just purchased a bag from Sprouts Farmers Market in their bulk section. The flaxseed appears to already be ground up. Do I need to wash or cook/heat these before consumption?

Also, is it true they contain cyanide? I can't find anything in wikipedia about this.

If the flaxseed appears to be small brown pieces (like 'hundreds and thousands') then it has to be ground before it can be used. I use an ordinary food processor to do this - the same attachment for grinding coffee beans or creating sugar powder. The result is a light brown powder.

This should be stored in an air-tight container to prevent oxidation. The ground seeds shouldn't be kept for more than a week or so as they lose their effectiveness the longer they are kept.

There is no need to wash or cook the seeds. I add the powder to my morning yoghurt - it's supposed to help lower cholesterol levels amongst other properties.

I have heard that the stone of an apricot contains cyanide - but not flaxseed (otherwise I wouldn't be here to be writing this!).


Does this recipe want me to start with a dry-aged roast beef? Here's the recipe I'd like to make for Christmas:

http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/dry-aged-roast-beef-with-fresh-hot-sauce

The first step of this recipe says:

  PREPARE THE ROAST BEEF Set the roast on a baking sheet and rub it all
  over with the salt and pepper. Refrigerate, uncovered, for 1 day.

The ingredients call for dry-aged roast beef, but isn't the first step how you dry-age roast beef? Are they assuming that I'm starting with non-dry-aged beef, or does this mean perform step one in addition to the initial dry-aging? Why would I need to both dry-age the roast beef and then leave it in the fridge for an extra day?

The recipe means to start out with it already dry-aged; presumably you'd just buy it like that because most people don't want to do that themselves at home. Dry-aging beef is a lot of work: you have to do it in large quantities, and it takes a long time.

The salting and leaving in the fridge is a separate thing. It's nowhere near dry-aging, and it works well for for meat in general, not just dry-aged beef. It's really just about properly salting it, with enough time for the salt to be absorbed into the meat, and for the moisture drawn out by the salt to either evaporate or be reabsorbed, leaving the surface of the meat nice and dry.


Reasons to sweeten ground beef macaroni casserole A friend gave me a beef and macaroni casserole. It had an odd sweet taste, so I asked about the ingredients and seasoning.

Turns out it included a half-cup of dark corn syrup[1]. I am wondering where the idea for this came from (she doesn't know where her mother got the recipe originally) and if there is too much sweetener for the casserole, or there shouldn't have been any in there in the first place. Was it perhaps somebody's substitution for molasses?

I'm not planning on making it myself so I don't necessarily want to fix the recipe, I'm just baffled by the flavor profile and trying to understand the intent :)

[1] For an idea of the proportions, other ingredients included 1 pound of ground beef, a large can of tomatoes, a half-teaspoon each chili powder and salt, 3 cups cooked macaroni, and 1/2 cup cheese on top.

The only reason to sweeten a dish like this is personal taste, you could add less or leave it out, it's not essential for a beef casserole. It could be a substitute for molasses, although why you'd add 1/2 cup of molasses to a beef casserole it beyond me.

As for why it's in there who knows? It may be when the recipe was first made that some of the ingredients added bitterness or sourness and the sweetener was added to offset it. Some brands of canned tomatoes can be pretty tart, although 1/2 a cup of corn syrup seems a bit....excessive to counteract that. Or maybe her mom added sugar to get her kids to eat it. Or maybe someone in the family owned stock in Karo. Perhaps she served it to people she didn't like in hopes they'd go into a diabetic coma. You'll probably never know.


How do I determine the cut of a pork steak prior to purchasing it? Pork steaks can be (quoting Wikipedia):

  cut from the Loin, Leg or shoulder of the pig.

When looking at a pork steak, is there some way that I can visually determine where the cut came from, perhaps by the bones in the steak? Specifically, I'd like to be able to identify shoulder cuts - but being able to quickly identify all three cuts would be extremely useful.

There are times when one of the meat cutters is at my supermarket and available for asking, otherwise not. The labels always say 'Pork Steak'.

The bone structure is an excellent clue -- each of these three cuts have completely different bones -- and you should be able to learn to distinguish the muscle structures easily as well. (There's almost certainly a price difference, too -- I'd expect a shoulder steak to be the cheapest, followed by leg, then loin and rib.) I've made some quick structural drawings, and I'll try to describe them in detail.
Rib and Loin
 fullsize
The loin is a long piece of muscle running alongside the backbone and atop the ribs. It will be cut vertically, giving a oval/oblong cross-section somewhere around 4" diameter. That oval is solid muscle, although there may be some streaks of fat. There will usually be another strip of muscle above it, and a strip of fat along the top and one side (this was the pig's insulating back fat). Opposite the fat will be a rib bone, if it hasn't been removed.
The bone will not be split, but it will be cut short at some point. It is convex towards the fat, and usually has some of the fat running down along its length. If the rib is there, the steak (or "chop") will have a smaller oval of muscle below the loin, separated by fat, which would otherwise be served as part of the rib meat. As the cuts of the loin move backwards towards the leg, the tenderloin may begin to be incorporated, and the rib will disappear. The tenderloin is perhaps half the loin's size, and appears on the opposite side from the loin of a slice of the backbone, which has a rib-like sideways protrusion. This cut is the "porterhouse", also known as the "T-bone" if the steak were beef. It may also be called a "loin chop", as opposed to the "rib chop" from futher forward.
Rib/loin chop summary description: oval/oblong of solid meat with a strip of fat at one side, possibly an intact bone on the opposite side, curving towards the fat. Possibly two ovals of meat, one half the size and on the opposite side of a protrusion of split bone from the larger.
Ham or Leg
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The part of the leg you're getting for steaks is the upper part, i.e. the thigh, sliced horizontally. This has a single cylindrical bone -- the femur -- running through it, which will be around 1 1/2" diameter and off-center. The thigh is basically oval in cross-section, and made up of several large muscles, with fascia (silver skin) and a small amout of fat between them, so you will see four to half a dozen large pieces of muscle in the steak. There may be a strip of fat along one side, and perhaps even some skin attached to that. A leg steak is the same cut as a "ham steak", although "ham" is often used to mean that the meat has been cured, and possibly even cooked.
Leg summary description: Oval-shaped steak with a circular slice of bone off-center. The steak is composed of half a dozen sections of meat, possibly separated by thin strips of fat, and may have a strip of fat on one outer side.
Shoulder or Blade
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The shoulder is a beautiful cut of meat on a pig, made up of dozens of pockets of marbled muscle, connected and wrapped by intermuscular fat, as well as an extension of the loin. Like leg, a shoulder also has just one bone, the blade (which connects via a socket to the arm-bone near the bottom of the shoulder). The shoulder blade (scapula) is somewhere in the center of the shoulder, and is, as you would expect, a thin, arrow-head-shaped formation, with a flat ridge running down its center; from the top, it looks a bit like U+22A6: ⊦. (This protrusion or spur points to the outside of the pig.) Therefore, a slice across this shoulder muscle will be made up of several pieces of white-streaked muscle, held in a web of fat, and it will either have a fully-enclosed thin segment of bone in it, or a split where the bone was removed. With the bone left in, I believe the cuts are usually made horizontally, and the muscle segments may appear larger (they are mostly longer than they are tall). With it removed, the slice could be made vertically, in which case you will see more, and smaller, pieces. There may also be a strip of fat along one side of a shoulder steak; this is the same under-skin fat that you saw in both other cuts.
Shoulder summary description: Vaguely rectangular piece of meat, with a thin slice of bone in the center. The bone may have a perpendicular ridge. The meat is in many small pieces and is webbed with fat.
For less diagrammatic images, this Texas 4-H site seems to have some good photos of the various cuts, grouped by the section of the pig. (Other meats such as beef and lamb cuts are included on this page too!)


I have a water-logged meat thermometer (non-digital) How do I dry it out? I recently and very stupidly ran an analog (non-digital) meat thermometer through the dish washer. It came out full of water, like a fish tank or a pimp's aquarium heels, and it has not dried a milliliter since then (over a week).

The brand name is Thermo Geneve, if it matters, and the dial reads from 140 to 190 Farenheit, with each 10-step temperature segment (except the 190) featuring one, two or three cuts of meat optimal at that temp. For example, 140 F has ham, rare-cooked beef to 180 F that just lists fresh turkey.

Here's the image: Photo of Thermo Geneve Meat Thermometer

Imagine it foggy and water logged to the physical 160 or 170 F level, and maybe a tiny goldfish swimming around.

Any ideas on getting it dry?

Many thanks for reading fellow home cooks!

If water got in you can get it out. Your thermometer is the circular analog type and it has more than one piece. There's one piece with the probe and dial, and then there's a circular cover with the glass on it. The water got into the thermometer through the seam where the 2 pieces meet, and this is where you'll get the water out, you just have to figure out how.

What I would do first is to get a safety pin and see if I can pry the gap between the 2 pieces apart a bit to let the water run out. Be careful not to poke yourself if you try that though, it's easy to do. If you do get it dripping out then you'll need to find a way to hold it in place at about a 45 degree angle from vertical in the direction of the pin to allow the water to run out. Sticking it in a piece of styrofoam or a potato should do the trick.

Another option would be to put it in a warm (call it 150-160F, 70C) oven at about a 45 degree angle from vertical. Sticking it through a medium size potato will keep it stable, don't use styrofoam as the fumes will be toxic.

You could also combine these 2 methods.

Another option I would consider is to put the thermometer on its side in a sealed container full of uncooked rice. The rice absorbs water and makes the air very dry, it's a method which works to dry out watches and even mobile phones.


Secrets to making crystal clear gelatin? As I've mentioned in another question, I'm attempting to make a large block of gelatin.  Unfortunately, my first few attempts come out a bit amber in hue, using just water, sugar, gelatin and clear flavoring.

After some research, I found a video on making clear gelatin in which they:

used a different brand of gelatin
bloomed the gelatin in less liquid than I had
added citric acid
heated it for quite some time

I suspect that they also used a lower gelatin to water ratio.  (I need this quite stiff, as it'll be an unsupported cube about 10 inches (25cm) on each side.)

In looking at their images, I think that there's still a little hue to their solution, but I'm not sure which of the differences are most significant to the process.  Does anyone know?

You might also want to use a higher quality gelatin, like the one used for gelatin art.
See this one:
https://gelatinartmarket.com/products/gelatin-powder-280?variant=1455952961


How to make roux-based sauce thicker Sometimes when I make a roux-based sauce, it turns out too thin. Are there any ways to make it thicker after the sauce is done? Adding salt helps a bit, but I don't want to add too much for obvious reasons. Ideas how to prevent the sauce from getting too thin in the first place are also welcome.

If your sauce is too thin, the problem is that your initial roux was either too thin (not enough flour) or you added too much liquid for the amount of roux that you made.  Standard ratios are 1 Tbsp butter - 1 Tbsp flour - 1 cup liquid for a thin sauce, 2-2-1 for something in the middle and 3-3-1 for a thick sauce.

Once you've made the sauce and it's too thin, the best fix is to add a beurre manié, which is essentially butter and flour that you mash together in a small bowl and then whisk into your sauce.  It's kind of like adding more roux after the fact.  However, because it's not pre-cooked like the roux, you need to make sure you give it enough cooking time after adding to get rid of the floury taste.


Is boiling or pouring better for emulsifying chocolate ganache I am making a recipe that calls for emulsifying solid chocolate with a heated milk/butter mixture. Most articles online say to pour the hot milk on to the chocolate.

Wouldn't it, however, be easier to just throw the chocolate into the pot of milk on the stove and mix it there? Is there any difference between the 2 methods?

There is.  Pouring hot milk or cream over chocolate pieces is a much gentler way of melting it.  If you boil the chocolate, however, chances are good that you will overheat it.

Chocolate has a low melting temperature, and a low burning temperature.  Boiling your chocolate for too long (more than a few seconds) will burn it, changing the taste and texture from sweet and smooth to bitter and grainy.

Simply pouring hot dairy over the chocolate allows it to melt much more slowly, preserving its taste and texture.  It is the superior method, which is why most recipes advise doing it that way.  If you're concerned about having more washing up to do (I am!) then you can simply add the chocolate to the hot milk off the heat and swirl briefly to disperse, instead of pouring the liquid over the chocolate into a second bowl; it gives the same effect.


Browning Beef Stew (safety question) I'm making beef stew in a cast iron dutch oven for the first time. I have some stewing meat, and have oiled the bottom of the dutch oven.

The problem is my cast iron dutch oven is a small size, so that the meat was a bit crowded. Still I made sure that all the sides looked brown.

My question is when people "brown" beef stew or cubed beef for stews. Is this actually really cooking it, or is it more for a searing flavor?

Taste aside, will my beef be safe to eat if I leave it on low simmering for 2 hours (is "simmer" even enough to cook it?). I'm using 2 hours because that's what the stew seasoning told me to do.

Yes, a simmer will be on the order of 180 to 200 F (82 - 93 C) which is a safe temperature for cooking and holding stew.

Browning beef does cook it, but usually not all the way through as that is not the point; instead it is to develop the flavors.  The full cooking is done during the braising or stewing stage while you simmer it.  This also allows the collagen to hydrate into gelatin, creating the tender texture of well cooked stew meat.


Cold Chinese BBQ Pork? One of my favorite dishes in Seattle area Chinese restaurants is a dish they call BBQ Pork on their appetizer menu. In all the places in San Francisco I have been this same item is on the menu but it's served warm with just more BBQ sauce instead of cold with Chinese Mustard, Sesame Seeds and Ketchup.

Can someone please explain the difference between these two dishes or do I just need to ask for it cold?

Here in the Philippines, there are two different variations of BBQ Pork, one that is intentionally served as an appetizer (part of the cold cuts menu), and the other which is different and is served hot on top of rice as rice toppings. So to answer your question, I think you can request for it to be served the way you want but the intended flavor might not be the same.


Need a gas cooker but have no gas supply I am not sure about the terminology, i.e if it's called an electric cooker, burner, stove or something else.  So I'll just refer to it as a electric or gas cooker to simplify things.

We don't have a gas supply to our house in the UK as we have moved to a more remote location.  We did have a gas supply in our old house and are finding the electric cooker in the new house extremely slow.  So I started looking into bottled/cylinder gas, but I am not sure which direction to go in as I have so many options.

For example, do I get butane, or something else?  Which kind of pipe will I need, what kind of regulator will I need? What kind of cooker will I need?

So far I have seen the following, but am not sure if these are safe for internal use and also I am not sure if these are the most economical options.  1 of my requirements is that I need a nice strong hot flame to I can get cooking done quicker.

Gas cooker

Regulator

Pipe with clips

Gas

Those little single ring gas stoves are really intended for camping use, or emergency use at home (during a power cut). The cylinders for them are very small and don't last long.

Any standard gas hob can be "re-jetted" to take bottled gas rather than mains gas; they often come supplied with a conversion kit for this purpose.

The normal thing to do is have an outside wire enclosure containing two large gas bottles and an auto-switching regulator (so when one bottle runs out, it switches over to the other bottle). The two bottles system means you can use the second while the first is being refilled / replaced.

You'd normally use propane for this rather than butane; butane becomes unuseable around 0C so can't be stored outside.


What should I be aware of while eating raw oysters? I've never eaten a raw oyster, mainly because I am afraid of the dangers involved. I'd like to try it however, and I'm trying to find what is the best way.

I was thinking about trying first at a restaurant and then at home. So, both when eating out and buying for home, what precautions should be taken to avoid the risks from raw oysters?

Usually for a business it's up to the oyster shucker to worry about the quality and you're to just enjoy.

You can tell if the oyster is bad if it has an off smell. Much like fish, fresh oysters won't give that off rotten fishy smell and tend to smell mild.

Many people suck them whole but you should chew oysters before swallowing to taste if there's anything wrong. If there something not tasting properly don't chance it, spit it out!

If you are buying oysters to shuck yourself try to get some without noticeable openings or cracks in the shell because this could mean that the animal is dead and possibly rotten. Wash the outer shell of any debris clinging on and inspect the shell thoroughly before shucking.

The oyster just shucked should be attached to the shell still before the oyster knife cuts it off for eating. If it's detached from the shell without cutting it, the odds of it being bad go up.

The meat should look shiny and mildly semitransparent the oyster juice should smell of the water it grew in and should be clear. Bad meat will look dried and unhealthy and the juice will be cloudy.

PS. When you shuck the oyster don't wash the meat off after shucking it; you'll lose the oyster juice and that gives it tremendous flavour!


How to prevent cheese and certain other products from stinking up my fridge? Certain food products have a very strong odor,
that may not seem annoying at all when I buy them,
but become very much apparent after I keep them in the fridge for a few hours.

For example these kind products:

roquefort cheese
liver pâté
pretty much any kind of meat pâté

My fridge is quite new, kept clean, and normally doesn't smell, only when I buy these products. I don't keep these products for a long time, I always eat them within 2-3 days,
but I cannot prevent the bad smell from lasting about a week,
after which it naturally dissipates.

I tried wrapping the products in double-bags and inside sealed plastic boxes but it didn't make a big difference. I also keep a few trays of baking soda in the fridge, but that doesn't seem to help much either. What else can I do?

Hello @janos and welcome to Seasoned Advice! The first thing that comes to mind would be to first wrap your food items tightly in plastic wrap and then vacuum seal them. However, if you open and close them frequently that could be a pain. But, if you on are only keeping the items 2 - 3 days, it could work.

That said, plastic can absorb odors and allow them to be detected outside of the packaging. I think the best solution would be glass. As always, for freshness, wrap the food in plastic wrap first and then store in glass. Glass should not let any odors escape.

An idea of what I'm talking about is pictured below. You can find a full description  here .


Correlation between perceived sweetness and sugar content A couple of months ago I started to take note that the perceived sweetness of foods isn't always correlated with its sugar content. One stark example was yogurt, where yogurts that tasted mostly plain or even tart would sometimes have higher sugar content than yogurts that were appreciably sweet.

Unfortunately, I don't have any great examples to show at the moment.

I was munching on one of these: Kirkland Protein Bars which got me thinking about this topic again. The bars are fairly sweet, but the product claims to only have 1 gram of sugar and it doesn't have any artificial sweeteners.

I understand that serving size is a confounding factor, especially given that I don't have any good examples to show on hand, but from what I recall, the serving sizes for the yogurts were comparable.

TL;DR: is there a strong correlation between how our tongues perceive sweetness and the stated sugar content? Are there other ingredients that can contribute to sweetness without contributing to the net sugar content?

Different sugars have different relative sweetness (in %) (Elmhurst College):

Sucrose: 100
Fructose: 140
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS): 120-160
Glucose: 70-80
Lactose: 20

Relative sweetness of some non-sugar sweeteners (NutrientsReview):

Aspartame: 180
Acesulfam potassium: 200 (in some diet colas)
Stevia: 300
Saccharin: 400
Sucralose: 600

Plain yogurt (100 g) contains 4.7 g sugars, but mostly lactose, which is not sweet. (NutritionData, milk composition)

Kirkland Protein Bars contains stevia (300% sweetness) (link - read at the bottom of the Nutrition Facts), which explains its sweetness. Stevia is a natural non-sugar sweetener.

Perceived sweetness can increase with the food temperature (ScienceDirect) and salt content (a study in mice). Liquid and solid foods with the same sugar content can have different perceived sweetness (ScienceDirect). And there are sweet taste enhancers...(ChemistryWorld)


Best practices for baking experiment 'design'? Is there a generally accepted best way to experiment with recipes?

When starting with a recipe that is not 'quite right', if you wanted to tweak the quantities of various ingredients (and taste the results), what would be the most efficient or 'correct' way to go about this? I am asking in the context of baking where it is hard to know how something will turn out until it is finished.

Is it best to do one batch at a time, taking notes of how the result turned out and then tweaking next time around, but having to go through many batches before figuring out the best recipe? Or, is it generally better to make several mini-batches at once, and taste them side by side?

Is there an accepted standard for how to implement this experimentation process?

Thanks.

It is no different from other prototyping processes or exploratory research. You are not confirming a scientific hypothesis here, you are actively searching. So the most important thing is: fail fast.

So, for the question of mini batches vs. large batches, you certainly need mini batches. And in cooking it is more important than in other fields, as humans have a very poor ability to remember or record sensory qualities. In tasting two muffins side by side, you will notice differences which would not be obvious from notes from previous batches.

Another thing which people find hard to remember: beat the Not Invented Here syndrome! There is a lot of information out there about which ingredient does what, which ratios are good for a given type of baked good, etc. It is boring to research them if you could be baking instead - but in the end, experimenting alone in your kitchen without theoretical background will never give you results as good as those created by teams of specialists who have been doing this their whole life, and using other information sources beyond primary experimentation.

So, as with any good research, formulate your question first, and be specific. Then search for answers to this question. Only after you have found the theory, experiment how it applies to your recipe. Randomly changing things and hoping that you will hit gold is what many people do, but it is the opposite of a best practice.


Keeping boiled potato warm I’m cooking boiled potatoes for 60 people for a party, how can I keep them warm and ready to serve until needed? Would sticking them in an oven at a low temperature work?

There are three things to consider. The first two are food safety.

Temperature: You say warm oven, but in order for food to be held for extended periods of time safely they need to be held at over 140° F. (source)
Time: Once you are no longer maintaining a safe temperature you have a short period of time before it is considered unsafe. Approximately 4 hours. This includes time it is sitting out for service.
Dried Boiled Potatoes: If you keep the potatoes in the oven they may dry out. although this is fairly preventable by covering and adding a touch extra moisture. This is also the least important of the three concerns as it doesn't constitute a danger.

I would recommend doing the boiling shortly before service. The actual cooking is not the hardest part of making boiled potatoes. The peeling and cutting is. Simply prep your potatoes in advance (even the day before) and store them in cold water to prevent them spoiling. Then rinse and boil just before. You shouldn't need more than 30 minutes to an hour for that quantity.

There is also another option (pointed out by GdD in comments), of preparing them in full and refrigerating them. Then it is a simple matter of reheating them just before serving. This may be your most ideal option because almost all of the work can be done before hand.


Is it safe to eat white rice that turned blue/purple in the fridge? I left the rice overnight in the fridge and it smells fine, and a sample tasted fine but the color looks unappetizing. Is it safe to eat?

In response to the comments, it was warm and white when I put it in the fridge. Here is a photo that appears less colored than it was. At the bottom underneath it was all purple and blue:

From a bit of research, there is a bacteria called Chromobacterium suttsuga that is put on some types of rice to provide pest-control:

  The bacterium’s toxins can be combined with chemical compounds and then applied to soil, plants or seeds. To control soil-dwelling pests, rice grains can be treated with the toxins and applied to the soil, where pests will feed on the treated grains.

This source seems to be referenced in a lot of other scientific papers for agriculture for talking about Chromobacterium suttsuga and pest-control.  Some people claim seeing the discoloration on rice after a few days of being left in the fridge in a dark humid environment (like the bottom of a storage container where the discoloration appeared).  There are a few forums about this you can find by Googling "white rice turns purple".

For the question on whether or not it is safe to eat, since we don't have the tools to do any biological analysis to be certain it is Chromobacterium suttsuga in the rice I would recommend against eating it.  Even though the papers claim this strain of bacteria is safe to consume.

Source: https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/extension/newsletters/vpmnews/mar04/mar04newdefense.html


How much should a poolish increase in size? I am making a bread recipe(White Flour with Poolish), according to Ken Forkish's  Flour Water Salt Yeast. In the recipe, he indicates that the poolish should "triple in volume." When I tried making it the poolish increased in volume but not three-fold,; it is bubbly. Is there something wrong? What could possibly be causing this? I am using white wheat flour that has a 10% protein content, should I go for one higher?

The poolish recipe I am using is: 250g white flour, 250g water(27C), and 0.2g instant yeast. It has a 12 hour fermentation period.

A few things that could be going on:

0.2 grams of instant yeast is a pretty small amount.  Even a little variation in measurement could make a difference in how fast it rises.  Also, whether this small amount was well-distributed throughout the flour at the outset could affect the timing of the rise.
Is the yeast fresh/good?  Older yeast can be sluggish.
How are you measuring whether it "tripled" in volume?  Many people put dough in bowls that get wider toward the top, so it can be difficult to measure exactly when something "triples" in volume.  Unless you're using a straight-sided beaker or something, or have measurement marks on your bowl, it's possible that something "tripled" in volume while not rising to three times the height.
Have you monitored the poolish?  Did it simply stop rising at some point, or was it still rising at 12 hours?  With high-rising preferments, it is also possible that a poolish might rise higher and then fall after some point, collapsing under its own weight.  If you weren't monitoring this, you might see evidence like streaks higher on the side of the bowl if this happened.
If it simply stopped rising at some point, the question of protein content in the flour may be useful to think about.  If the flour doesn't have enough protein, it won't hold up a very high structure in a wet preferment.  Eventually the bubbles will get large enough that they will simply rise to the top and burst, rather than staying within the dough structure.  It's also important to note that higher protein flours can sometimes absorb water better, so if the recipe was designed for "bread flour" or flour with a higher protein content, the moisture level in your poolish could be high enough that it is producing large bursting bubbles rather than holding the air in the dough.

In any case, if the preferment at least doubled in size and/or is very bubbly, I doubt there's anything truly "wrong" and you should go ahead and bake the bread, which will likely turn out fine.


How many grams of Saffron for Rice? A common way of buying saffron in Sweden is to buy it pre-ground in bags of 0.5 grams.

Most saffron rice recipes use "threads" or "strands" which is pretty much useless for me.

What's a good saffron/rice ratio, in grams/deciliter?

A quick search does not really give a good answer to your question

For example, one recipe calls for 2 pinch of saffron for 2 cups of (dry) rice; another 3/4 tea spoon of crumble saffron for 3 cups of rice.

Have a looksie at this wikihow page.

In any case, I would highly suggest you try to find either Spanish or Iranian saffron, and if possible not pre-grounded.

And skip whatever cheap substitute you will find.


Can deep frying oil be too hot? Some days ago I made some "eggplant meatballs" (no meat inside - not sure how you would call them in English).

The recipe was quite simple: bake the eggplants for 45 mins to soften the pulp, put it in a bowl with a spoon, add some seasoning, grated cheese and egg, make same small "meatballs" as balls about 3cm in diameter, soak in whisked egg, roll in grated bread, deep fry.

We used a proper frying oil, heated it in a small saucepan and fried about four balls at a time.

We were using an induction stovetop and I am no expert of it at all, so this might have contributed.

The point is that the oil was probably too hot. I did not have a thermometer but of course it did not reach the smoke point, I just waited a bit and tried it with a breadcrumb. When I put the balls in the oil it immediatly started to boil, so it definitely was not too cold. Problem is that in something like 20s the outside of the balls turned golden brown but unfortunately the inside was just warm.

We ate them and they were delicious and not raw at all, but I started to wonder if too hot oil when deep frying is a thing or not since I've never heard of it. I was surprised also because the balls were very small, anything human made can't be that smaller and of course bigger chunks of food would soffer much more the "too hot oil syndrome".

The question then is: can oil be too hot when used for deep frying?

Yes, certainly. Deep frying only works well in a very narrow temperature range. The optimal temperature is different for every food, but it's in the 180 to 210 Celsius range.

The needed temperature is determined by the starch type and the amount of wetness on the outside, and is chosen such that it crisps immediately (not allowing the inside to get soggy with oil) without burning immediately. The inside doneness is not controlled by changing the temperature. If you get underdone or overdone insides at the correct frying temperature, you need to change some other variable, such as the thickness of the food, the degree of parcooking, or the food temperature at the moment it hits the pan.

Because a good result is so dependent on temperature, I can strongly suggest both the use of an oil thermometer (a barbeque probe does it too, if it's rated for the temperature) and controlling the initial temeprature of the food (room temp, out of the fridge, or frozen). A good recipe will tell you the proper parameters for both.


Would sous vide-ing tomatoes result in a deeply caramelised tomato sauce? I am looking to take the effort out of slow-cooking tomatoes for several hours over the stove and wondered if sous-vide may be a possible method of doing this. I understand that the end result may be slightly watery but this sauce can then be reduced in a pan at the end, could it not? Is it possible that the end product could have the same depth of flavour a tomato sauce slow-cooked in the traditional way would? If so, what kind of temperature and timeframe would I be looking at?

It would not caramelize for sure, as caramelization occurs between 110 and 180 degrees celsius depending on the particular sugar - well over the boiling point of water, which is your maximum sous-vide temperature.

However, it would serve a few purposes that might well work.  For one, it would allow the slow breakdown of starches into sugars, just as other slow-cook methods do.  It would also enable your other flavors (spices, other vegetables, etc.) to fully dissolve into the sauce.  This could be useful, and would be one of the major benefits of slow-cooked tomato sauces.  This recipe on Andrew Zimmern's blog is a great example of how to do it, and why;  it includes some good tips for technique, including the very important step of sauteing the root veggies before adding them to the sous-vide bag.

You'd still want to do a high-heat cook at the very end (just like you do with almost anything from a sous-vide) to get that caramelization if that's your goal, but as you note you'd probably need to do that anyway to reduce the sauce if you're going for a thicker sauce (as I often do).  If you're using good sauce tomatoes (romas, for example) you probably won't need to reduce it much if at all, but if you're using more watery tomatoes you may need to anyway.

If you really want to get good caramelization for your tomatoes, I would recommend roasting them in the oven, or even better over a wood fire, first. That's going to get very good caramelization and also get some other good flavors in the tomatoes - a bit of smokiness fits very nicely into many sauce profiles.