Rules for refreezing food What are the general rules regarding when can you refreeze food that was frozen and then thawed in the fridge? and what are the reasons behind them? (Hygiene? Food quality?). Let's assume for the sake of the argument that the items were in a non-frozen state only a few hours.

To be more specific, I'm interested in the application of these rules for
- Ginger garlic paste
- Dough
- Indian Curries
- Green Chilly paste
- Frozen green peas

There are two different issues, which have separate drivers.  There are no specific rules, just consequences of the thaw and freezing cycles on each food--but it is always better to minimize the number of cycles to maintain quality.
Safety
From a safety point of view, the rule is any perishable food (one that is not fairly stable at room temperature such as cold cereal or pretzels) should have its time in the so-called danger zone (40-140 F, 4-60 C) limited to no more than two total hours over its lifetime.  This prevents pathogens, which grow exponentially, from having sufficient time in hospitable conditions to grow and create enough toxins to be harmful.
So if you have something at room temperature for one hour and then freeze it, it would have one hour left on the clock when you thaw it out.
(Note that as people will no doubt otherwise insist on pointing out:  these recommendations are extremely conservative, and are meant to protect the general public health.  You must determine your own willingness to accept risk.)
Quality
In terms of quality, there are two main issues that occur in freezing:  ice crystal formation, and freezer burn.  Additionally, condensation can be a minor issue upon thawing.
Ice Damage
As you freeze food, the water in it freezes (this is obvious).  What may not be obvious is that this frozen water is in crystals, which are hard and sharp, and can penetrate cell walls of meat and vegetables.   This will cause meats to loose moisture on being thawed, and vegetables to weep and become more limp and flaccid.  The more slowly the food is frozen (due to a warmer freezer compartment), the worse the damage is.
Some foods, like fresh vegetables are very sensitive to this type of damage (this is why most freezing directions for vegetables include blanching).  Meats are also somewhat sensitive, but it is not as severe, especially if you take steps to freeze them quickly (freeze in a single layer, set your freezer to its coldest temperature).
Many home freezers are also auto-defrost, which means they periodically warm up to get rid of accumulated frost, and then cool down again.  This can cause ice crystal growth over time.  Chest freezers without auto-defrost do not suffer this problem, but at the cost of requiring manual defrosting periodically.
Food frozen commercially is often done in blast chillers which have forced air circulation and colder temperatures than are achievable with home freezers and so freeze food much more rapidly than is possible at home, resulting in a higher quality product as long as the frozen state is maintained well.
Other foods such as purees or soups suffer little from ice crystal damage, and so are not as much of an issue.
Freezer Burn
Freezer burn happens when water sublimates (evaporates directly from the frozen state to vapor).  This dries out the food, giving it a leathery, burned appearance.  It is the same mechanism used intentionally in creating freeze dried foods (although that is usually done more rapidly and under a partial vacuum, to improve quality).
You can mitigate or prevent freezer burn by wrapping food quite tightly, so there is not room for air circulation at its surface.   This may involve multiple layers such as film wrap, followed by aluminum foil.
Condensation
Some foods, like cheesecakes, will react poorly to getting wet.  If thawed unwrapped, water may condense directly on the food, beading on its surface and reducing the quality.
If you do freeze a food like this, you want to wrap it very well (which also helps with freezer burn), and fully thaw it before unwrapping to keep the condensation off the surface of the food.
Specific Examples
Of the specific examples you have enumerated:

Ginger garlic paste, green chili paste -- as a paste, it is already soft and somewhat liquid, so ice damage is not really an issue.
Dough -- Most doughs freeze well, and don't have a cell structure to disrupt.  If the dough is an active yeast dough, multiple cycles are going to slowly reduce the effectiveness of the yeast by killing off some each cycle.
Curries -- Cooked food in sauces, especially braises which many curries are, usually freeze extremely well.  They are not subject to much ice damage, as they are already softened during the cooking process.
Frozen green peas -- If commercially frozen, they will have minimal damage, and are already blanched.  If you have blanched them, the cell walls will already be weakened.  Still, many people are very sensitive to the quality of their peas, so this is one of the foods that is more likely to give you poor outcomes.

Better Practice
A far better practice than thawing and refreezing is to freeze in smaller containers (such as four 1 quart zipper type bags of stock, instead of one large gallon container).
This will allow you to take out only what you need, minimizing handling (for safety) and thaw/freeze cycles for food quality.
It is also far more convenient than having to thaw the food, since you have less to thaw (which is faster).  Some foods can even me used directly from the frozen state if you don't have to thaw them in order to get the amount you require.


When to add vanilla beans to a sauce? I would like to make a simple vanilla sauce for my cake.
So far, my idea is to cook a sweet cream pudding (using a pudding mix from a bag), and then enrich it with ground vanilla beans.
At what stage should I add the vanilla so that it releases the most flavour?

When the milk is hot, but before adding the pudding powder mix?
Once the pudding is prepared, but still hot?
Once the pudding cools down?

In general, under which conditions do vanilla beans release most of their taste? When cooked, when put in a hot liquid, or when put in a cold environment?

Slice bean in half.  Use knife blade to scrape seeds out of bean.  Scrape seeds from blade into milk as you are heating.  Added bonus: toss scraped vanilla pods into a bowl of sugar to create vanilla sugar.  Best flavor release of vanilla into a fat-based mixture is achieved during heating.


How much salt should I add to a dish? I find it hard to figure out how much salt to add to dishes. I'm always afraid I'll make it too salty. Recipes always call for salt to taste, but what does that mean?  Is there a good rule of thumb?

I've noticed that salty food has somewhat of an addictive quality; people who eat a lot of it (i.e. fast food or other processed food) tend to bury their meals under a mountain of salt, whereas people such as myself who do a lot of home cooking hardly use (or want) any.

"Season to taste" means pretty much what it sounds like; add however much salt (and other spices) that you, personally, like the taste of.  If you have a habit of eating a lot of salty foods, then you might want to add a little less than that, for the benefit of people like me who gag at heavily-salted foods.

If you use a lot of other spices, you won't need much salt - a few shakes of the shaker is enough.  If the food is basically bland aside from the salt (and maybe pepper), then you'll need to use more.  The best thing to do is add a little, then taste, and repeat as many times as it takes to get the flavour you want.  If the food you're seasoning is still raw (and can't be eaten raw), then just put in a small amount the first time you make it and keep track of how much table salt you needed to add.

Just remember, you can always add salt later, but a dish that's too salty is permanently ruined.


How to figure the calories in a boxed cake mix if applesauce is used instead of egg and oil? How can I calculate calories in a cake if I use applesauce instead of egg and oil? Because on the box it is counted using the egg and oil.

The nice thing about calories is that they are very constant, mixing or combining things does not change the sum of calories.

So in short, calculate the calories you add (the applesauce) and the calories you leave out (eggs, oil). Add and subtract these from what the box says and you're done.

If the box gives calories per unit or serving, you'd first have to calculate the calories for the whole box, then do the adding / substracting step, then, if wanted, divide the results into servings again. (The Rule of Three comes handy in these cases.)


Canned food, botulism and ph Recently i started to do some home-made canning. The procedure I use is

Use a pressure cooker to build the jars (cristal ones) for about 10 minutes at 120C.
Cook my vegetables (normally tomatoes, garlic, capsicum, eggplant, zuchini) the whole mix surely has a ph over 4.6 which is where the Clostridium botulinum lives.
Put the cooked vegatables in the cristal jars (which will still be hot), close them, and put them back into the pressure cooker.
Cook the closed jars for 20-25 minutes at 120C

My understanding is that botulism is a very serious disease, the most concerning part is that it does not alter the taste, color or texture of the food.

Currently I consume my canned food within 1 week.

The question is, given that I use 120C degrees when cooking, can I be reasonably safe? Is there a significant risk?

Follow up question: I would like to not only store my cooked vegetables, but also cook them with tofu or chicken and then preserve them using the same procedure, however I have not done so as I know tofu has quite a high PH. Would it be safe to use vegetables + tofu/chicken in the preserves?

I recommrnd you pressure cook for 30 minutes at 120C, not your current 20 to 25 minutes.
Regardess of pH, low or high, you have already killed the spores and the high temperature is needed to destroy the residual toxins.
Your food should be safe to consume for at least least two years after you canned it.


Is it bad to leave the crock pot on "warm" (not low) all day? I just bought all the ingredients to make a soup in the crock pot. I was planning on having it cook all day, but I just realized the recipe only calls for it to cook on low for 3-4 hours. If I cook it on low for 3-4 hours, and then put it on warm before I leave for work, will it be a bacteria minefield or will it be warm enough to keep the food safe from bacteria?

I suspect "warm" is meant to maintain temperature, rather than raise it. My crock pots are too ancient to have anything other than "high" and "low", so I can't assert any real authority. However, if you reach 145F within the first hour at the highest setting, then keep it at "warm", and test the temperature after about 30 minutes with an instant-read thermometer and it stays around 140-160F, you'll probably be fine. Personally, I'd test the temperature first by cooking water.

If the temperature stays above 140F at low, the worst risk you'll have is overcooking. Beans  and vegetables like carrots and celery can overcook fairly easily in a crock pot, but higher collagen meats meant for stews tend to be fine when cooked for extended periods. Most crock pot recipes for stews and soups usually hold fine when at low for a full workday, although that's presuming a somewhat 70s-era soup aesthetic, which is probable for a crockpot recipe.

However, I would be inclined to attempt the recipe using the low setting rather than reducing it to warm, if you're not going to test the temperature first. If it turns out to be overcooked, you can always puree the ingredients with a blender...

I also doubt that switching to "warm" would be dramatically less likely to overcook the food than "low", unless it holds at a pretty stable 140F, and low ends up somewhere around 160F.


Is eggnog just a milkshake? Last year I tried eggnog for the first time, following a homemade recipe involving egg, cream and sugar. The result tasted like a thin vanilla ice-cream milkshake (with spices and alcohol).
Recipes for homemade ice-cream use similar ingredients (without spices and alcohol).

Is this just superficial, or do the definitions of ice-cream milkshake and eggnog overlap so that it is reasonable to conceive of eggnog as a flavoured milkshake?

(I am looking for a technical answer that rules out my milkshake theory, or suggests it's an acceptable substitute.)

Not really.

For a start there's no milk in it (there's cream, but milk is the defining factor in a milkshake). Second, egg isn't a normal ingredient in a milkshake, and neither is alcohol. Of course they can be added, but they take you away from what's normally meant by the term. When that happens it's normally reflected in the name.

In general, trying to precisely categorise foods is an exercise in futility - defining a category that includes everything you'd expect it to invariably includes things that don't belong, or you end up with categories so broad as to be useless.
Is a hot dog a sandwich?

Even calling eggnog a cocktail (An alcoholic drink consisting of a spirit or spirits mixed with other ingredients, such as fruit juice or cream.) is slightly problematic, as "cocktail" usually implies it's mixed just before serving, rather than bottled in between (as is common with eggnog).


Is it best to freeze meat pies before or after baking? I'm making Tourtiere meat pies which will be frozen.  should I bake first and then freeze or freeze before baking

After checking with two Bloggers I trust, you can freeze first or freeze after cooking. It depends on your needs, if you want it to be ready super fast when you want it, cook first and then freeze, reheating will be quicker than cooking from frozen. If it doesn't matter, then go with whatever seems like a better option to you.

Here were my sources:

http://www.simplebites.net/how-to-makeclassic-tourtiere-qubec-pork-pie/
http://hilahcooking.com/tourtiere/


Is there a significant difference in flavor between black and white truffles? I've tried both black and white truffles on separate occasions, but never side by side.  Is there a meaningful difference between the two as far as flavor is concerned?

Yes, yes there is.

Black truffles are dark, earthy, sexy in flavour. Renaissance writings compare them to 'unwashed slatterns' and 'bedchambers, rooms of sexual congress, unaired and reeking of the recent activities contained therein.'

White truffles are lighter in aroma and flavour, with distinct garlicky notes. Each has their place--black works better on its own, white works better as an adjunt or finishing note to a dish. I am personally partial to white truffle oil drizzled on cured duck breast, or a black truffle risotto with charred endive.


Using older frozen vegetables I've got a lot of frozen vegetables that I need to use (you name it I probably have it).  Can these be used in soup stock?

Absolutely. That is probably exactly the best use for them if they are still perfectly edible (as they would be if kept frozen), but past their prime. The trick is to choose what vegetables to put together. For instance, if I had a bunch of asparagus I would make a stock specifically for cream of asparagus soup. If I had frozen onions I'd add those to that stock, but I wouldn't throw in carrots, peas or bell peppers. I could freeze that stock for as long as it takes for beautiful, fresh, in-season and inexpensive asparagus to come my way. Then I'd have the key ingredients to make fabulous soup.

Some veggies would add great flavor to chicken stock, others would be best in other applications. Can you be more specific about what vegetables you have?


How did rust appear on my cast iron in a matter of minutes? So this has been an on-going saga the last few days, and I've already posted several related questions here, and I am feeling quite defeated.

I have/had a beautiful 16" cast iron dutch oven from Cabelas. I took it out for a test spin the other night (I had completed all seasoning steps that the Google Gods recommended). Then:

I tried (and failed spectacularly) to cook a pork roast in it, but cooked it at way too hot a temperature and burned/charred/fused the animal fats/juices into the oven, whereby it basically baked into the cast iron (related question here)
I tried cleaning/scrubbing it with coarse-grained salt -> did nothing
Then I tried cleaning it with dishwashing liquid + salt -> did nothing
Then I let the whole thing soak in a vat of a 50/50 mixture of water + white vinegar -> took all the tarry slude off, stripped some seasoning off (revealing bare iron), but in 80% of the burned/charred areas, still did nothing
Then I went to town on it with a steel wool and salt and dishwashing liquid and was left with some smooth, properly seasoned surfaces, and some more areas stripped down to bare metal
I decided to just re-season it. So I scrubbed it one last time (about 1 hour ago) with a steel wool and some water, got all the rust and remaining crud off (finally), and built a fire.
I placed it on the hot coals of the fire and let it sit there for 15 mins. My intention (whether misled or not) was to burn off all the remaining water from when I had previously washed/scrubbed it, then let it cool off, then season it with oil, and then bake it for a few hours.

So I just took the oven off the fire and opened the lid...and the entire inside is covered in rust. An hour ago there was none. When I put the oven into the fire 15 mins prior, there had been none (yes, I checked) This just came out of nowhere.

I'm ready to give up, unless anyone can offer some concrete set of steps for me that will salvage this $100 rust bucket. How can I get rid of the rust and then re-season this before more rust sets in? Meh...

The problem with your last step was the lid, I think.

If you had placed it on the hot coals, open, the heat should have driven the water off as you intended, drying the pot before it rusted.  With the lid on, the moisture was trapped inside, and had opportunity to cover every inch of the metal - and, as Joe mentioned, heat speeds up the reaction.  Sitting on the heat with a coating of water, and you have a layer of rust.  Not functionally different that if you'd tried boiling a pot of water before seasoning it.  The seasoning is, after all, supposed to protect the bare metal from water so it doesn't react like this when being cooked in.

How to fix it - go back two steps.  Scrub off the rust, or as much as will come off easily.  I agree with paparazzi, here, if it won't come off while scrubbing it will probably not come off while cooking - especially under the seasoning.  Once it's well scrubbed, dry it off.  You might use a towel or something first, but if you're going to put it on the fire, leave the lid off so the moisture can escape the pot.

You might have the lid drying to the side, leaning against the outside of the pot, or partially on (generously offset) if you want to dry the lid as well.  You probably don't need to heat it for long, either, just until it looks dry - and it will be evaporating water all the way until it cools down, too.  When I'm re-seasoning my frying pan, I heat it only 10min or so, and by the time it cools it is usually dry (disclaimer, I use the stove rather than coals, so your timing may vary).

After that, you can smear it with a layer of oil and re-season.  wipe it down with oil, and heat to re-create the layer of seasoning that got scrubbed away in the first place.

Beyond that, it will probably help to calm down a bit.  In the future, just remember to keep the lid off when drying, and that you don't need to panic quite as much.  Cast iron is pretty sturdy, and scrubbing down to the metal and re-seasoning is always an option until the pot is worn away to holes.


What is the history of the standard sheet (bun) pan? What is the history of the standard sheet (bun) pan? Who came out with the sizing? Why that size? When did it occur?

There are full size(26x18 Inch), half(18x13) and quarter(13x9).
 image from

I don't have a definitive answer.  But I can at least narrow down the time period a bit and likely manufacturing source with the help of Google Books.  Unfortunately, there's only so much one can do here online, given copyright restrictions mean that almost everything from the 1920s-1950s or so is only available in "snippet view."

But here are a few observations:

This source from 1941 references a "standard bun pan (18 x 26 in.)" and elsewhere has another reference to "Use 18x26 in. sheet pans..."  I see other books references around the same era to a "standard bun pan" or similar phrases; these may suggest that the size was considered at least one possible "standard" by that point.
There are multiple references to "Wear-Ever Seamless Bun Pans" as early as 1932 with the 18"x26" dimensions.  (And possibly fractional sizes, though I can't seem to tell through Google Books.)
Earlier references (e.g., from the 1920s) don't seem to indicate a standardization of pan sizes yet.  For example, this book (which is before the magical copyright date and has full-text available) has references in various recipes to pans with sizes 18x25x1, 18x24x1, 17.5x11.5x1.5, 18x25x1.25, 18x11, 15.5x26, etc.  There does seem to be a preference already for sheet/bun pan sizes in a particular range, though, which (if I had to speculate) might be related to some standard oven sizes of the time.
By the 1950s, there are multiple references to cabinet racks and other large food racks on wheels which were built specifically to accommodate the sizes of "Wear-Ever bun pans."
The brand history of Wear-Ever includes the following information about its popularity: "By [1941], four out of five homemakers preferred WearEver cookware and it accounted for more than 40 percent of the aluminum cookware business in the United States."
I don't see references to 9x13 pans showing up commonly in recipes until the 1950s, when they seem to become standard.  There are a few mentions of a "9x13 inch pan" in the late 1930s and 1940s, but very few in Google Books, so I don't know if this was a standard size by that point or if these are just random pans.
I would note that cake mixes were first marketed in the mid-1930s, and they became very popular following World War II.  So it's not surprising to me that standardized mixes (with a specific batter volume) and standardized pan sizes might happen to become popular together.  Mixes could have been related to widespread adoption of already existing size standards, particularly in the adoption of some commercial standard full-size pan and its equal divisions into home cooking.  (I'm not saying I have proof of a connection here, only that the historical periods of popularization roughly correspond.)
To respond to speculation in comments, if this page is to be believed, the first ovens with rotary racks were invented in 1964, which is probably a couple decades after standard full-size sheet pans became 18x26.

In sum, it seems that Wear-Ever standard full-size pans started to become common in the 1930s, and since they were one of the most dominant manufacturers of aluminum cookware, their sizes apparently became adopted as standard in the 1940s and 1950s.

As to the question of why the precise 18x26 size was first chosen by Wear-Ever, I haven't yet been able to sort that out.  I haven't found evidence of standardized commercial deck oven sizes in the 1920s and 1930s, though their widths do seem to fall in the right range that would make a 26" width a good large size to accommodate.

Since Wear-Ever was tied closely to ALCOA and early aluminum production in the U.S., I could also imagine there might be a connection to standard aluminum sheet manufacturing sizes, which could then be stamped out into these pans, though skimming through some aluminum processing manuals from the early 1900s so far hasn't given me any clues.  I would also note the ratio of length and width is close to "ideal" rectangular ratios that were common in paper manufacturing, etc.


Are there any research-backed sources on cast iron seasoning? I've always seasoned my cast iron pans with vegetable oil because that was what I was taught. I'd done some research before, and even came across this StackExchange post on asking the best oil for the job.
To my dismay however, when I tried doing some research myself, all sources pointed to blog posts, particularly the Sheryl Canter one. There is not a single source on her post and she doesn't seem to be very near a materials scientist. The closest paper I could find to the topic was this one. Other than that, it was all anecdotal evidence, many people claiming many different things. This will bug me till the end of time until I figure it out, so I need to know - does anybody have any real sources on cast iron seasoning?
Much appreciated.

it's applied chemistry so likely not going to find too many papers about it as not research per se.
but if you look at a site like serious eats you'll find a lot of discussion.
the reason to use a low heat oil like flax seed instead of olive oil is that the goal is to create a chemical change that will polymerise the oil to create a no stick surface to be able to sustain a very high heat itself when cooking.
YOu can get this with other oils to be sure - as has been the case for decades of folks using bacon drippings etc - but with its low smoke point it's pretty fast to do - and you can build up really thin layers quickly. The goal, again is to get that effect of a coating - it's not teflon but at least it's not plastic either.
if you look at the surface chemistry section in wikipedia on seasoning cookware you'll see more detail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasoning_%28cookware%29
and also this serious eats overview about cast iron is pretty good too
https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/the-truth-about-cast-iron.html
and
https://traditionalcookingschool.com/food-preparation/how-to-season-cast-iron/
and one more that claims to debunk flax seed oil as the best oil https://www.chowhound.com/post/testing-debunking-flaxseed-method-seasoning-cast-iron-807107


Butter substitute for 1 cup of butter for baking What can I substitute for 1 cup of butter in baking recipes (e.g. cookies, muffins, cakes, etc.)?

I'm looking for something that has less saturated fat (and  also doesn't have trans fat).

Update: Since baking is less forgiving than cooking (i.e. if you don't use the exact amount of each ingredient the recipe might fail), could you please also include the amount you would need to use to replace 1 cup of butter?

In muffins and quick breads, I have found that you can actually substitute apple sauce for oil or melted butter. This has worked very well for me!

Use the same amount of apple sauce that you would oil/butter, if not a bit extra.


How to achieve freeze dried strawberry flakes? I was following this really cool recipe to make a kind of snack made mostly of granola, coconut flour and freeze dried strawberries. When done right, it seems to be really photogenic, here is a picture from the blogger:

However, when I got to the part where I'm told to:

  Blend your strawberries until fine. Keep extra for rolling bites in batter.

I couldn't get my blender to break up the freeze dried strawberries at all. They just flopped around inside making a ruckus. I checked the blade, and it was in fact sharp.  I had to resort to slicing and dicing as finely as I could with a knife to create an effect similar to the freeze dried straw berries  in the picture. The result was rather unsightly, probably due to the fact I had more like freeze dried strawberries that were the size of small raisins. In fact, the texture/suppleness of the freeze dried strawberries seemed exactly like that of a raisin too.

Question

How can I achieve a "fine" freeze dried strawberry-flaky result? As I have never worked with freeze-dried strawberries before nor made a similar snack, I'm not sure how to troubleshoot at this juncture. I do have two hunches though:

while marketed as 'freeze-dried', my strawberries are perhaps not the right kind?
I have the wrong tool for the job, my blender is a simple one with a spinning two blade apparatus (think cheap Chinese blender). I will say though, it has never let me down in the past.

First off, if they're the texture of raisins, they aren't the sort of freeze-dried strawberries the recipe wants - what it wants is something totally dry, almost the texture of styrofoam. They should crunch if you bite into them, and slowly rehydrate in your mouth if you eat one without crunching. They'll look like full-sized slices of strawberry, only dry. Like this:

The right tool for pulverizing something like this without liquid is a spice grinder or small food processor. If you don't have one of those, put the berries in a plastic bag and crush them with a mallet or a rolling pin.


How powerful is my cooktop? I should have asked this years ago. When a recipe calls for "medium heat", I'll burn the dish. I've had this problem on an electric range and a gas top; probably more so on the gas top.

I've tried reducing the heat but something can't be quite right cause the recipe may say to cook for five minutes and it then takes me 10 or longer.

So we can point to the pan or pot I'm using but I've had this issue with non-stick, stainless and copper. It's been on the mark on some occasions but I always feel like "medium-low" on my gas top is "medium" for everyone else.

I do not believe it's cause my gas range is anything too powerful but I don't know. It's not a high end range but middle-of-the-road.

I guess one thing I could check is the number of BTUs generated but I'm out of town and won't be back till Sunday night, in case someone asks, so I'm looking for ideas on what my problem is, if it's a problem at all.

Beginning cooks often ask for the "temperature" they have to use to cook their food. What matters in reality is not the temperature, but the speed of heat transfer. And that is dependent on a lot of variables: type of food, amount of food, how much is it piled, pan size, pan material, and of course how much energy your stove is pumping out, which is correlated (but not 1:1) to how much energy your stove is consuming from the power socket or gas pipe. Aside from a narrow choice of pans, the only thing you can control during cooking is the amount of energy your stove consumes.

So, you could look up the BTU, but it won't tell you much. You can try turning the knob to the middle, but that rarely produces a medium heat, because all the other variables would have to be right. In the end, there is no "medium heat" stove setting. What people mean when they say "medium heat" is the setting in which the food happens to cook in a certain way, between searing and stewing in its own leaking juices which don't manage to evaporate in time. If you are talking liquid instead of dry pieces, it is the heat which can sustain a strong simmer or slow boil. It takes a bit of experience to recognize when it is happening.

The "food gets done in 10 instead of 5 minutes" is irrelevant. First, the time can vary with variables you have no control with. Second, recipes give bad timings for a plethora of reasons. Some have a wrong feeling of how long it takes and jot it down, others may have timed it for a smaller portion, third can have literally been told by the marketing department to round down aggressively, fourth may do it because a myth has been established and they believe it more than their own experience (see the infamous Slate complaint on caramelized onions). Whatever the reason, the times given in a recipe don't matter much. You recognize that your food is cooking at the correct speed if its state is changing the way it should (which requires some experience) and that it is ready by noticing that it has reached its desired state (which requires either experience or a thermometer).

So, the conclusion: your cooktop has the proper power for home cooking - basically all cooktops sold to home cooks do. You simply need to turn the knob until the food is cooking the way it should, regardless of any considerations about how much it should be turned or how long your food should be taking.


How many people does one rabbit feed? Approximately how many servings of meat can be gotten from one rabbit?  For argument's sake, let's say the rabbit is about 12 weeks old and raised as a foodsource (not hunted wild).  I understand that the answer can vary wildly based on preparation and serving technique- I hope to serve it as a main dish, probably roasted or fried.

I'd say 3 to 5 people, depending on the heaviness of the sauce, the meatiness of the rabbit etc.


How to make my pizza dough Soft? I am kneeding my dough and it became very hard. It is even very hard to kneed more. I am trying to add more liquid (warm milk or water). It is still not soft. Also, the dough is not accurate means dough is a little bit like crumbly dough. Its not coming together. I added bread improver, egg, oil, milk powder, white flour and yeast, salt and sugar.  Can anyone help me out how to fix my dough at this stage?

Flour 1.5 KG ,
Yeast 1.5-2TBSP,
Bread Improver 1TBSp,
Oil 4-5TBSP,
Sugar 2TBSP,
SALT 1TBSP,
Milk 250ML,
1EGG,
2.5TBSP Milk Powder.

While mixing and kneeding the dough became so hard.

I didnt let the dough to rise yet as it is not ready yet. Because last time I made dough it was very soft. But this time it is so hard.

If you've added 250ml of milk for 1.5KG of flour then your dough is way too dry, there isn't nearly enough moisture for any kind of bread dough. A typical traditional pizza base recipe uses a ratio of about 5:3 flour to liquid by weight, meaning you'd need about 900ml of liquid for the dough. You've also added milk powder, which also needs to be hydrated, so add about 30ml or so for that as well. If you are using all purpose (plain) flour you should add a bit less water, say 10%, as there's less gluten in it.

When you add the liquid to the flour it's going to be sticky, very sticky in fact, but that's bread making and you can't avoid it. You can oil your hands but that doesn't last, you're better off removing your rings and just cleaning your hands later. As the water incorporates and is absorbed the dough will get less sticky, but pizza dough is going to stay a bit sticky even after it's been kneaded enough, it will then be much less sticky after the first rise.

The recipe you have isn't any kind of pizza base recipe I've ever heard of, milk, milk powder, eggs and sugar are all enriching agents and the dough you'll get isn't going to have the kind of structure you're looking for in a pizza base unless you're looking for some sort of non-traditional brioche style. It's also going to take much longer to rise as these ingredients slow the process. Traditionally a pizza base is flour, water, yeast and salt with olive oil being optional (I put it in).


Is it safe to cook in a clean Teflon pot if the inside bottom has blistered and peeled from exposure to high heat? Is it safe to cook in a Teflon pot that has blistered and peeled and produced fumes from previously being heated too high? This is what the bottom of the pot looks like

You can just treat it as a regular metal pan now, and season it with oil and high heat

Though, first you have to remove all the flaked coating with a hard metal scourer. This may prove difficult!

Have done this to a few pans, and they work well as plain metal pans. Somewhat easier to use that plain steel, as they are aluminium and therefore lighter on the hand


Food container "not suitable for foods with a high fat or sugar content" I'm considering getting some food containers, but I noticed most of them have this in the description:

  Not suitable for foods with a high fat or sugar content

Why is that ? What could happen if I stored some, say, chicken fat - or plain sugar - in one of those ? They're microwave and freezer safe, so how come they can't handle fat or sugar ?

In addition, are there any rules of thumb for determining which foods have a high fat or sugar content ? It's not always obvious. For example, a dish having 1/3 mince meat - would it be high on fat - and therefore unsuited for the container ?

The best reason I can come up with is that microwaving items with oil and/or fat can lead to temperatures much higher than the 90C maximum that is recommended.

From the link:

Microwave, dishwasher and freezer safe
Suitable for temperatures up to 90c
Not suitable for foods with a high fat or sugar content


Substitutes for Italian sausage I have a recipe for an Italian sausage, sweet potato and kale soup and I don't have the sausage.  Can I use chicken and turkey meat or are there seasonings I can to replace the flavor? How much of the seasonings do I need to replace a pound of Italian Sausages?

(Note:  This answer assumes your recipe is calling for the product generally called "Italian sausage" in the US, i.e., this stuff.)
The soup should be fine using ground chicken or turkey instead of Italian sausage.  The only thing to keep in mind would be that both chicken and turkey are leaner than pork (the traditional filling for Italian sausage), so you'll end up with a slightly less rich soup.
The dominant flavoring in Italian sausage is fennel seed.  To substitute for a pound of sausage, I'd probably add about 2 teaspoons of fennel seed, crushed up in a mortar and pestle with some salt (no need to grind it all the way to powder, but crunching it up will distribute the flavor better than whole seeds).
Some Italian sausage also includes garlic and/or hot pepper flakes (the latter being the difference between "hot" and "mild/sweet" Italian sausage).  Adding a clove of garlic or a little bit of chili sounds good to me, but the soup will probably turn out fine without as well.


Tips To Make Pizza Dough Workable I've used several recipes for making pizza dough, most recently one from Delfina Pizza.  My issue is that regardless of the recipe I use it is very difficult to work the dough into the pizza crust.  It is usually very sticky and it tears too easily.  I'm working on how to make the dough easier to work with, any ideas?

That's just a bad pizza base recipe.

My family recipe is totally different. Not sure if I can post recipes here, but anyway here's a link to something similar http://www.recipepizza.com/doughs/pizza_dough.htm

You can use sugar or honey, it's just food for the yeast. You can use 2 or 3 times more olive oil to make a smother dough

Some extra tips:

In my recipe each cup of flour makes one thin 30cm pizza base. Most people make the base to thick and it wont cook properly
Try not to roll the dough, pull or push it out by hand, if it wont do this you made the dough wrong or you have the wrong flour
Let the oiled dough rise in a warm place with just a cloth over it
After making the base on the tray, let it rise another ten minutes before putting toppings on it. Be quick from when you start adding toppings and getting it to the oven, otherwise it will go soggy
Use the hottest oven you can dial up, or a hard wood fired oven. A thin crust pizza should take no longer than eight minutes to cook
Sing bad Italian Opera while kneading. You will either get good at singing, or get fast at kneading


Cooking alcohol: how many calories are lost? Google fails me.

I'm curious how many calories are burned away when you cook various kinds of alcohol...wines, liquors, beers (including lite beer).

It depends on how much alcohol there is relative to other things--sugars primarily, as they are about the only calorific part of most alcoholic beverages once the alcohol is gone (alcohol is the most calorific part for sure). You can use the alcohol proportion by volume (ABV) to approximate a little.

Assuming equal amounts of each:

Spirits don't leave much calorific stuff behind at all after the alcohol is gone because they're mostly alcohol. Alcohol by volume is between 40 and 60 percent in most cases.

Wine leaves a bit more, as there is more unfermented sugar remaining in the beverage you buy, but there's still not a heck of a lot. It depends on how dry the wine is. Alcohol by volume is between 10 and 20 percent mostly.

Beer can leave quite a bit, as many have significant amounts of unfermented/unfermentable sugar. This can be where ABV lets you down for estimating--high alcohol beers are also often high in unfermentable sugar too, so when the alcohol goes you're still left with quite a few calories. ABV can be anything from 4 to 20 percent, with the majority clustering around 5 percent. Lite beers are usually pretty low in alcohol and also pretty dry, meaning low residual sugars too.

A gray area is liqueurs and the like. Many are fairly high in alcohol by volume, but also heavy on sugars.

I should also point out that in many cooking applications, the calories added by the alcoholic beverage are fairly negligible, given the small amounts used relative to the number of servings. Even a Boeuf Bourguignon or Coq au Vin with a whole bottle of wine in it doesn't have all THAT much wine per serving--that whole bottle gets broken down into 6 or more servings, so each person gets less than a glass worth of alcohol-free wine calories. That probably averages something like 40 extra calories per serving.


My bread always burns I'm using a recipe from a video (see below), at the right temperature (350°F). I don't know what the problem is, but the edges are always burnt. Should I try putting the pan over a container with water?

Carrot bread recipe:

2 cups of flour
2 cups of sugar
2 tsp of cinnamon
2 tsp of baking soda
1/2 tsp of salt
1 1/2 cups of oil
4 eggs
3 carrots
1/2 cup of nuts

Method:

Preheat @ 180°C or 356°F
Bake 1 hour

More:
my pan is 26x29

I have this problem when making brownies (following the box recipe).

Bake 1 hour

It seems that you are baking by the clock. This doesn't usually produce good results, you should bake until it is done. The time suggested in the recipe is a rough guideline, not the time when you should take it out of the oven.

Start testing for doneness when it starts looking good, and take it out when it tests ready. It doesn't matter how long it was in the oven.

You only have to start changing things if the edges burn while the inside is still raw, but this doesn't seem to be the case here.


Great sauce but tiny hint of bitterness Made a hot sauce recently that has common ingredients found in many hot sauces. Habaneros, onions, garlic, carrots, lime juice, sugar, vinegar, tomato, salt and fruit. I used a mix of habeneros and Fresno peppers, noticed the fresno pepper had a lot of seeds. The sauce tastes great but has a very mild bitterness at the end. Is it possible that the seed ratio to sauce is giving it that mild bitterness? The balance between vinegars, lime juice and acids from the tomatoes are well balanced by the amount of sugar. Can't think of anything else, don't ever have this problem with peppers with a lower seeds ratio.
Thank you

Both tomato and pepper seeds can be a source of off flavors, including bitterness ... but they have to be cracked open, either by crushing, grinding, pulverizing, blending, etc.

If the sauce isn't something that you can easily strain the seeds out of, such as with a food mill, and you can't just leave the seeds in whole, you can take the seeds out before processing.

Some peppers, especially dried ones can be seeded by cutting around the stem, then gently pulling the bundle of seeds out.  You will then want to bang the peppers against the counter a few times, then shake them with the opening down to get rid of (most of) the seeds.  This will leave most of the white membrane intact, which is where the heat is.

If you're willing to lose a bit of the membrane, you can hold the stem in your non-knife hand, hold it with the stem up, and slice down the sides of the pepper.  You'll end up with slabs of pepper that can be sliced or diced without losing much of the flesh.  (and it's fast .. although if you learn to start each cut with a slight curve out then back in, you'll reduce the chance of knocking off too many seeds from around the stem)  Also, depending on the pepper, you might end up with the bottom on its own (or still attached by membrane to the stem)


How to make a more apple-y apple cider yeast bread I would like to figure out how to make a strongly apple-flavored yeast bread

I found a recipe for a yeast bread that I was quite happy with, which starts with the yeast in 2 cups of milk, then uses 1/3 of a cup of honey as the source of sugar.  More recently, I came across this BA video on cider donuts which starts out with essentially making mulled apple cider and reducing it to a syrupy/jelly consistency.

This inspired me to try to make an apple cider yeast bread.  I found this recipe for an apple cider yeast bread, but it says that it produces a bread with "a hint of apple and a faint sweetness".  "A hint of apple" is not enough for me, I really want to make a yeast-based bread that truly tastes of apple.

What I tried:

I substituted 4 cups of apple cider (with cinnamon, cloves, and an allspice berry), reduced to about 1/2 cup, for the honey in the original recipe (I checked, 4 cups of cider has about the same amount of sugar as 1/3 cup of honey).

Unfortunately, my bread came out tasting like a wonderful yeast bread, without the slightest trace of apple (it doesn't taste like the original recipe, I think it's actually better, but no trace of the apple cider).  I would like to make my cider bread truly contain a strong apple flavor.

Can I:

Substitute cider for the milk from the original recipe
Make a second batch of the cider reduction and fold it into the dough somehow
Some other option that will produce a stronger apple flavor

I suggest that (in addition to using a reduction of the juice*/cider) you add some solid apple.

Personally I would get dried apple, of a tasty variety if at all possible, and put it through a food processor until fairly fine.  I dehydrate my own home-grown apples, selected for flavour, but would buy Cox or Granny Smith for this. Then add as you would other dried fruit.  If you get the really dry dried apple chips, you could partially rehydrate the pieces in spiced apple juice/cider to soften it a little, adding to the flavour.

* Where I'm from "cider" is always alcoholic, the unfermented juice is just "juice" even if cloudy, so I'll use  both terms, hopefully correctly.


Replacing dry white wine with bubbly I have an onion soup recipe that calls for dry white wine.

Can I replace the dry white wine with simple white cava/lambrusco?

NOTE: I'm aware that there are a number questions regarding substitution of wine, but they seem to refer to non-alcoholic substitutes so none of them mention alcholic alternatives.

I would not mind using a Cava in the Brut range.  To me that would be like substituting hints of pears with hints of green apples. French onion soup can be made with different stocks, so I am assuming you are using a chicken stock recipe, which typically calls for a dry white wine.  If you are using a beef or veal stock, a low sugar Lambrusco may work, but I can't imagine the flavor.

I use the wine while frying the onions (and not just in the recipe :-).  The alcohol helps creates new flavors and it also dissolves some extra ingredients. I find the resulting flavor is richer.  As the onions are just as important as the broth, I like the technique Kenji López-Alt's developed after frying 20 lbs of onions.  Dashes of wine add sugar and water as he suggests (one can skip the baking soda part for the soup).

With the French onion soup I like Pinot Gris, which reminds me of pears, green tea, and lemons and is not too sweet, with under 12 grams of sugar per liter.  I find that the wine flavor does not blend if it is too sweet.  The flavors of a Cava are more green apples and spices and their sweetness levels can vary dramatically.  They go Brut Nature, Extra Brut, Brut, and Extra Dry, with the extra dry being the sweetest with 12 to 17 grams of sugar per liter.


How should I dehydrate sage? I have access to a dehydrator, but have never dehydrated sage. How should I dehydrate it?

Sage dries well, I dry mine by cutting off whole branches and hanging them up in a dry, warm place for a week. Once dried I strip off the leaves by hand. However, if I had a dehydrator I'd strip the leaves off the branches and then stick them in the dehydrator until they're crispy. It's no more complex than that.


Why do my pancakes fizz? TL;DR: Usual pancake (French-style crepe) mixture causes separation of mixture in the blender and fizzes when fried resulting in very poor quality pancakes which burn easily.

The last couple of weeks I made flat (not fluffy) pancakes with this recipe:

500ml semi-skimmed milk (green top for those in the UK)
approx 200ml gluten-free flour (it was tipped in without measuring, but that's how I always do it) - by volume this would be about 1/3 of the milk measure
2 fresh medium eggs (bought the day before, stored in fridge)
1/2 tbl spoon of vanilla essence, aka a 'splash'

The method?.. Stick it all in a blender, run for 10 seconds, scrape/scoop any unmixed flour from the sides, run for another 5 seconds, fry (no oil.)

Last week I got a really nice, thin, medium-golden set of pancakes. Literally every single one cooked beautifully in seconds, curled at the edges just so I could flip and were thin, tasty and perfect.

This week the mixture fizzed (yes, 'fizzed') as it hit the pan. The holes appearing as it fried were huge and at the edges it seemed to stick straight to the pan and just burn straight away. It did not curl and I had to get the spatula (thin, metal) forced under the edges to be able to peel them and flip. The underside burnt and until the mixture cook firm the liquid mixture continued to make the disturbing fizzing. Just before flipping I could see a sort of mottling on the top, completely unlike any pattern a regular pancake would have. After flipping the second side would not brown at all - just go from white to burnt. They tasted OK, but not like last weeks'.

This is how I always make pancakes, but every-so-often they come out with this irritating 'fizz' sort of sound and it's at that moment I know they are going to be a pain to fry.

The one other indicator I get is that when I finish blending the mixture together, the top is bubbly and clearly separate from the regular part of the mixture. I just can't figure out why it would separate like this - what is the cause of the low quality mixture? The ingredients are always bought within a couple of days of making and I've had great success with relatively older ingredients. I have had limited success by removing the frothy mixture from the top of the blender, but even the better mixture at the bottom does not produce great pancakes.

PS: Yes, I wish I'd taken a photo or two but I was so stressed by it happening again I just didn't. Sorry.

I don't have much experience of cooking with gluten free flour so can't comment on any degree to which that might be a factor. I would generally let a pancake batter sit for at least 15 minutes before use to let the flour fully absorb the liquid, that may be less necessary with gluten free flour.

However there are three main things that leap out at me from the description as being possible sources of the problem:

The recipe: pancake batter is quite thin normally, if you push the balance too far towards liquids, the batter can't form a cohesive pancake because the flour mix is too dilute, the bonds can't be formed. It will eventually form a solid, but not until heat has driven off the excess liquid. Your recipe already has a higher proportion of liquid than most UK recipes I've seen, and also less egg for the amount of batter than many. Obviously it works for you some of the time, which leads us to the next point...
Not measuring flour: Your recipe is for a pretty thin batter, that reduces the tolerance within which under-measuring still lets the batter function. I suspect that the times you see what you describe as 'separation' is when there just isn't enough flour to thicken the liquid.
Pan temperature. What you describe as 'fizzing' may be what others would just call sizzling, the mixture hit the hot pan surface and the liquid in it quickly turns to steam, causing the bubbles. This is going to be more pronounce the higher the proportion of liquid in your batter.

A minor thing is that in my experience some thing
s work better if you just whisk them together rather than using the chopping motion of the blades in a blender. I'd put pancake batter in that category, but that may be just personal preference.

I recommend that

you start measuring the flour to ensure that you achieve a consistent
batter
Use a small amount of batter to test the temperature of the pan before you start making the pancakes proper.
Try whisking rather than blending and resting the batter, though I think these are less likely to make a difference.

My personal preference would always be to cook pancakes in a buttered pan too. One of the benefits of that, apart from the flavour, is that because butter burns if the pan is too hot, you have to keep the pan temperature lower and that is generally a good thing for pancakes.


Am I missing out on something by not using parchment paper? I enjoy occasionally baking over the weekends and on special occasions - biscuits, macaroons, cakes, pies, etc. I don't use parchment. My baked goods have always come out just fine - dare I say "tasty"? - and the only mild inconvenience I face by not using parchment paper is I have to scrape out bits of the baked good from the bottom of my baking tray. Other than avoiding this mess, is there any reason to use parchment paper? Does it affect the quality of the baked product?

What you're missing out on is time to do other things.

Besides the time trying to get the cake to release without tearing itself apart, or cleaning a sheet pan, you can do things like speeding up your cookie baking if you have less than 6 sheet pans:

Cut some pieces of parchment to fit your sheet pans, and measure out your cookies on them.  Hold the pan at the edge of your counter, and slide the parchment w/ cookies onto it.  When they're baked, grab the edge of the parchment, and slide them all off at once.

6 assumes that you're working two pans in the oven at once (if you do, you need to make sure they're rotated so they have time on both the top and underneath the other pan).  You then either do two in the oven, two being prepped to go in, and two cooling.  Parchment lets you remove the two that are being prepped, as well as the two that are cooling -- because they go straight back into the hot oven, you don't have the problem of the cookies spreading as you're dropping on the cookies, so the first cookies dropped cook differently from the last cookies.

So it really comes down to a question of cost vs. time.  You know what your time is worth to you, so you have to decide if the parchment cost is worth it.  (I personally rarely use it ... in part because I have the silicone baking mats, but for large batch cookie baking, parchment is much better as it doesn't insulate the bottom of the cookies.  And then there are the other times when I kick myself for being too cheap/lazy and not using it as I sit there and scrub my sheet pans)


What makes a souffle rise? A successful souffle is usually one that rises high above its own vessel. What active ingredients / parts of a souffle (regardless of the type of souffle) typically makes it lift or rise?

Short answer:  Steam.

Long answer:  Proteins in egg whites are almost uniquely suited to making foams of tiny bubbles, then stretching like a web of bungee cords as the water inside these bubbles turns to steam in the oven.  Therefore, the critical element in making your souffle rise is the skill with which you whip the whites into a foam to the correct degree (just to stiff peaks, not over-whipped), followed by integrating (folding) that foam into the dense, flavor-filled base.  There are a few tricks for augmenting the rise -- e.g., using a pinch of tartaric acid in the whites, using a copper bowl -- but if your technique is poor, these things won't make enough of a difference.

Alton Brown ("Good Eats" TV show) has an excellent program explaining the whole thing, including some basic chemistry, available free on YouTube:
Part 1
Part 2

By the way, you said that a successful souffle must rise above the vessel.  While rising high is a major goal, I would not limit success to that event.  Last night, I made chocolate souffle that only crested the vessel a little ways (not the ideal "double the volume"), but each bite was still ethereal and decadent at the same time.  Everyone's plate was clean.  THAT, to me, is a successful souffle.


I'm not looking to learn a new skill; how do I make my knives better at cutting? I am a reasonably proficient casual kitchen user and I have a set of kitchen knives I bought from a (British) supermarket a few years ago. Recently I've noticed they've become less good at cutting things than they were before.
(I am purposely avoiding words like 'sharp', 'dull', 'sharpen' and 'hone' in this question because I don't want to accidentally misuse them.)
There are plenty of questions on this site from people who are interested in acquiring the equipment and developing the skills to maintain their knives – good for them! But this is a skill set I'm not particularly fussed about developing, and my knives are not high-quality enough to warrant paying someone to do something to them.
Instead, I would like to know the simplest thing I can do to make my knives better at cutting, preferably with equipment that's not too expensive and is easy to get hold of.
For example, I could get this 'knife sharpener', or this 'sharpening steel' at my local large supermarkets. But having seen the number of people on this website who seem to regularly damage/ruin their knives by doing the wrong thing, I'd like a little guidance that I'm on the right track before I start.

Yes, you can keep an everyday  useful kitchen knife serviceable with the Anysharp you linked.  For the majority of non-serrated knives sold in a supermarket it will be fine. I've got one, and use it on my Ikea, Sainsburys and Victorinox knives.  I can get a better edge with stones, but only once I've got my hand back in, so I don't bother.  I've got some better knives that it doesn't work on because the angle is different - so I end up not using those as much.  It's a bit aggressive really, so probably wouldn't be ideal on a quality knife even of the right angle, except for restoring a chipped blade.  It's not quite foolproof, but nearly.  The suction cup needs a good surface on something heavy to stick to, end you need to be careful to hold the blade square to the grinders.
That steel is OK for finishing the job if you can be bothered, but it's optional (I've got almost the same one, and only really use it before carving meat, which I do about once a year).
This will seems almost heretical to some people here, but if you just want to cook and eat, and not play with knives, that's fine.  But in that case don't waste your money on posh knives either.


Should I add salt to my sauerkraut recipe if I add vegetables? I am following a sauerkraut recipe which calls for a specific amount of salt. They say I can add other vegetables, like carrots. Do I need more salt if I add more vegetables?

If you are fermenting sauerkraut, then you should keep the salt content the same if you add other vegetables. The salt helps keeping undesirable bacteria in check, so you probably don't want to "dilute" it. Increase the amount of salt so the ratio between cabbage/vegetables and salt stays the same.

TL;DR: Treat any additional vegetables like cabbage when calculating the amount of salt.


Why do choc chip cookies change with different temperature butter? My name is Chris and my daughters name is Maggie (9yr)
She’s doing s science fair project and we have a question we need help with.

Her science project is baking choc chip cookies 3 different ways to see how they change.
1. with melted butter
2. with room temp butter
3. with cold butter

We are having the hardest time trying to figure out why they are changing because of the different butters.

Do you have any idea why?
If you have time to field this questions she would really be very grateful.

Thank you so much for your time,
Maggie and Chris

It all comes down to "creaming".

When you mix granulated sugar with solid (cold or cool) butter (creaming), the volume increases thanks to little-itty-bitty bubbles in the fat. That creates a kind of leavening. The bubbles get bigger as the item bakes.

Melted butter doesn't do that at all, and very softened butter does it very little.

So, different temperatures of butter in the batter make for different cookies, even if everything else is the same.

For an added factor in your daughter's experiment, try butter flavored shortening. It has a higher melting temperature and added emulsifiers. Shortening makes for more, but smaller, bubbles.

Here's a pretty good blog on the subject of The Creaming Method. The article covers temperature at length.

See also: What is the purpose of creaming butter with sugar in cookie recipes?


Is using a frying pan to boil water for pasta a good or a bad idea? I just found out how my girlfriend makes pasta: She uses a (non-stick) frying pan to boil the water. I told her she should use a cooking pan. When she asked why I did not have a response. After some internet searching I still have no plausible arguments, it just seems absurd.

If you're making a small enough quantity of pasta for it to totally fit in the pan like that, it's fine. The idea that you need several quarts of water, several times the volume of the pasta, is a bit of a myth.

All you really need is enough water so that once the pasta is cooked and fully expanded, it's still covered. So depending on your appetite and the size of the pan, this might work for one or two servings, but not a full meal for many people.

The main concerns I'd have with cooking in a frying pan are:

since it's a broader surface, you'll lose water to evaporation more quickly, and risk ending up with too little water even if you started with enough - you might need to watch it more carefully than a big pot
the sides aren't tall enough to contain it for long if it starts to foam and boil over - again, you might need to watch carefully
it won't be able to hold enough to cook a very large quantity of pasta

If you avoid all those, I don't really see the problem!


Badly burned hand on pan sitting on unlit burner Can a pilot light on a commercial stove cause a thin aluminium pan to get so hot it causes a palm burn bad enough to blister? The pan was moved for cleaning and was on the unlit burner for about 15-20 minutes.

Updated/Edited 10-14-18
Yes, the whole palm got burned because they were not expecting the pan to be hot. The person (not me, really!) had ice on it for two hours before I saw them. Bad move. This required cold (not ice cold) water running over it for 10 minutes. We dabbed the palm with Witch Hazel and then applied Neosporin and covered the hand with a light covering. The following day the pain was almost gone but the skin was red and "tight", so we dabbed some organic apple cider vinegar on it, which very quickly gave the hand's mobility back and all pain gone. There was one 1/2 dollar sized blister on the palm, just below the thumb. We think the apple cider vinegar kept it from breaking. It did finally break, but a couple of days later. We kept dabbing with apple cider vinegar daily and the hand is perfectly fine. It was ok to use by the 2nd day, but carefully due to blister.

Thank you for all your comments.

Natural Gas/Methane burns at ~1950 C in air. Propane burns at 1980 C in the same conditions.

This is hot enough to burn you if exposed directly, so any pilot light will be hot enough to burn you if you were to touch the flame.

The question of "will a pan get hot enough to burn me from the pilot light" has the every popular answer of 'it depends'. if the pan is very heavy, has a high specific heat, or is too far away from the pilot light to be heated effectively, then it might not get hot enough to burn you.

You said that the pan was thin, and aluminum. Aluminum has a specific heat of only 0.9. This means that relative to other materials, it heats up very easily, and cools off very easily. It also means that it does not hold much heat.

A thin aluminum pan that is directly above and physically close to a natural gas pilot light will quickly heat up a few hundred degrees centigrade. Human skin burns at as low as 44 C over a long time period, and will very quickly burn at only 80 C. Source (Warning: Moderately graphic images of burns... nothing that will sear itself into your mind but still not fun to look at.)

So... it depends, but it's certainly possible - as long as the pan isn't cooling off hotter than the pilot light can warm it, it can reach burn temperatures.


Why does my dumpling /dimsum/momos turn dark brown while steaming? We make dumplings by bun making machine. (bought from China.)

We add all purpose flour, xanthan gum and water to make the dough for dumpling.
We make 10 varieties of dumpling and filling varies as per the variety. After making the dumplings, we half steam and sell it to the market. When we half steam at our kitchen, everything if fine.

But some of our dumplings turns pale yellow when our client resteams at their sale point. If steamed more, it turns into dark brown colour.

What could be the problem?

Also, our dumplings breaks too much. What can be done?

Based on the color, it looks like your dumplings might be exposed to too high a heat on a surface that could actually sear them (that metal pan for example). It also looks like those dumplings might be overcrowded and being handled too much so that they'd break.
If it's possible, I'd see what your clients are doing to prepare the dumplings you send them and make sure it's not an issue with their technique.


Use flour vs oil in rising dough My mother would dust her rising dough with flour and cover it with a dish cloth, today everyone uses oil. Which works better? What's the difference?

In both cases, the goal is to keep the dough flexible so it can expand as it proofs.

With flour dusting, the proofing dough is usually stored under a damp towel, so that the moisture keeps it from crusting over.  The flour is really to keep it from sticking to one's hands or the counter, and therefore easy to handle.  Proofing periods also tended to be shorter--a few hours at most--so even a dry towel would often be good enough.

Oiling the poofing dough makes a moisture proof barrier, so it cannot dry out and therefore crust over.   With the rise in popularity of high hydration breads (lots of liquid in the dough), the soft dough is hard to coat with flour as it tends to get absorbed; oil is easier to apply.  It also is suitable for longer proofs like overnight fermentation that are more and more popular.  If course, it does introduce a very small amount of oil into the loaves, as well.

I would hesitate to say one method is strictly better than the other, but rather that each are effective in their context.  If I was forced to choose, I think the oil method is more flexible to more types of loaves, but may be somewhat messier.


Cooking eggs on cast iron When making scrambled eggs in my cast iron skillet, I find the eggs look "grimey" after they are cooked like the seasoning is coming off.  Am I not cleaning the pan correctly?  Does it need to be reseasoned (possibly better seasoned)?  Or are eggs in cast iron a bad idea?

You hit the nail on the head.  The seasoning is coming off.  It's just chunks of fat/oil with bits of black rust, or black oxide.

The solution is to either stop using the pan to cook scrambled eggs, or strip the pan down to the cast iron and re-season it.  Seasoning is a two part process. The first part is developing the layer of black rust, and the second part involves coating the pan with oil and then using heat to turn the oil into a polymer that provides a non-stick surface.  If seasoned properly, you really shouldn't see any issues.

There is an interesting series here on the subject of seasoning cast iron:

http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/02/black-rust-and-cast-iron-seasoning/
http://sherylcanter.com/wordpress/2010/01/a-science-based-technique-for-seasoning-cast-iron/


How do I label already-frozen bags? We have a question about how to label things for the freezer in general, but that's for if you've managed to plan ahead. What if you have a bag in the freezer, already thoroughly frozen, so tape doesn't stick well and markers don't write well? What's a good way to label it at that point?

If you can’t get the marker to work, just add another bag around the old one.


Hot water vs warm water for hot chocolate First off, I don't normally do hot drinks. I don't like coffee or tea, and I only drink hot chocolate/cocoa or hot cider on occasion, so I really don't know what could make a difference in the flavor of using really hot or boiling water to make hot chocolate versus using hot tap water. Also, I don't like really hot drinks. I always let them cool down to what coffee drinkers think of as warm, luke-warm, or tepid. In fact hot tap water is usually hot enough for me and, unless it's unusually hot tap water, it's comfortable for me to drink right away.

So my question: is there something that really hot water does to a hot chocolate powder mix that makes it taste better than warm water? I've used the same powder mixes in hot water as well as warm water, and the hot water cooled down almost always tastes better than warm water, regardless of brand or style of mix. I find the warm water often tastes a bit bitter, if that's even the right description of the flavor difference. I know it just tastes a bit "off". I think I notice it more if there's a "marshmallow" flavoring involved, if that makes any difference.

Does the really hot water melt the chocolate and the warm water not? Is there a chemical reaction the warm water is not activating? Is it the length of time being hot a factor? Is it that my taste buds need to "re-calibrate" for hot liquids?

FYI, I'm aware of How to make Instant Hot Chocolate Taste Less Watery and Does Boiling Water, Instead of Warm Water, Hurt the Flavor of Tea/Hot Chocolate. The first one might be the be my real answer, in that I'm not adding enough mix to get the flavor I'm looking for, but I'm not 100% convinced on this. I put enough mix in that it settles over a short time, so I think I'm adding enough. The 2nd question has answers that just barely touch on hot chocolate, but to no real definitive solution, since they are geared almost 100% towards tea and coffee.

Edit (for a little more clarity):
The reason for this question was that I had just used a K-cup in hot tap water, since I didn't realize my job didn't have a Keurig when I bought the cups. (I thought they did, but was wrong.) I've used other brands of K-cups as well as pouches with the same results. Using a Keurig, I end up adding tap water or even ice to be able to drink it within 5 min of brewing.

I believe I've only purchased or used instant mixes, rather than mixes that require simmering/steeping or need milk rather than water.

There are two good reasons to use boiling water in hot chocoolate.

The first reason is that boiling water helps drive off chlorine which is added to the water supply. This won't work with some chlorine treatment, and of course isn't necessary with bottled or other unchlorinated water, but for standard free-chlorine treatment it can make a big difference. As a rule of thumb, if your boiling water has a distinct (possibly pool-like) smell, it's from the chlorine. (The smell is the chlorine leaving the water. It's still there in unboiled water, but more evident through taste than through smell.)

The second is that cocoa powder may need to be "bloomed" to fully release its flavor. Cocoa powder is a very fine powder, but it's still tiny bits of dried plant matter. Boiling water hydrates these particles much better than hot water, allowing flavor components to disperse into the mixture. The importance of this method varies with the type of cocoa powder you use, and from my anecdotal experience is not as important with European cocoa as it is with North American cocoa.) Failing to do this won't directly lead to bitterness, but the underextracted flavor may make bitterness in the drink more directly evident.

As an experiment, I suggest that you try making "cold chocolate" both ways. Use boiling water as normal, and refrigerate the result to refrigerator temperature. In a separate mug, try making it with cold water. (Add the cold water a bit at a time while stirring, and make sure to scrape the sides thoroughly as you add it; it will not be as easy to mix everything up as it is with hot water. If you end up with a bunch of bubbly, granular mud floating on water, toss it out and try again.) The difference between the two will be evident, and should help you pin down the difference between warm and boiling water.


What kind of oven do they use on the GBBS? When they tell the oven temperature, they follow the number with the word "fan". Is this a convection oven? What kind of oven do they use on the Great British Baking Show? When they tell the oven temperature they follow the number with the word "fan". Is this a convection oven?

The Great British Baking Show is actually the Great British Bake-Off, they seem to change the name when it goes onto PBS for some reason. The ovens they use are Neff "slide and hide" models with multiple settings. The fan mode is convection mode. If you don't have a convection mode the recommendation is to increase your temperature by 15 degrees C, or about 30 degrees F. Conversely if you have a convection oven and you want to use a non-convection recipe you'd drop the temperature by the same amount.


Preserving leftover double cream I've got about 200ml of Double Cream (48% butterfat apparently) that I don't think i'll use before it goes off.

What simple (~5 minute) things can you make with cream so that it can be frozen?

At the moment I'm thinking along the lines of chocolate or toffee sauces.

Actually, above 40% fat, you can just freeze the cream itself. It wont whip as high, if you defrost it and whip it later, but it'll still taste good. Below 40% the results aren't as good.


Making Medium-hot Mexican Sauces Thanks to the book Truly Mexican, I've recently gotten into making cooked Mexican sauces like Adobos, Moles and Pipians.  However, my sweetie is unable to tolerate anything above a mild zing in hot pepper flavor.

I've found it very difficult to calibrate the recipes to make them have a little bit of hotness, but not so much that she can't eat them.  The other night I made a green pipian, and removed the seeds from the jalopenos to make them less hot ... but succeeded in removing all hot pepper flavor from the recipe entirely.  Then I made an adobo which seemed OK until it sat for an hour, but then became too spicy for her to eat.

Tasting the peppers or the paste while it's still raw isn't very effective because peppers often get milder or hotter during cooking.

Does anyone have tips, ratios, or tricks they use to make cooked Mexican sauces which have zing but are not too spicy?

Tasting the peppers is absolutely the only way, short of a chromatography machine. This is especially true for jalapeños from grocery. This because, as stated on this site here and in other answers by myself and others, pepper spiciness can vary greatly even on the same plant. Accordingly, chiles mixed possibly from plants, even from different harvests or suppliers, cannot be expected to have any reliable consistency of spiciness.

My approach is to pre-dice and freeze in batches. I use baggies, but another approach mentioned on this site here.

NOTE: The applicable advantage to this approach is that if you cook using the chiles often enough to warrant this approach, the heat level will be more consistent batch-to-batch.

My preservation process goes something like this:

Purchase many fresh chiles at once depending on what you will use in 3-6 months. (I use 25 to 50)
Sample the heat of each pepper during the preservation process
Dice the peppers (de-seed beforehand if desired)
Segregate into three groups:

Mild / non-spicy
Killer-blazing hot
Normal (everything in-between)

Freeze into single-use sized baggies (~1¢ each, non-zip)

Place the smaller baggies into a larger gallon-sized zip-type freezer bag (~15¢ each) labeled with the spice level of pepper type, date processed, and heat level the contents.

Though I always keep seeds because I want the spice, this approach can be used with or without a de-seeding stage in the process. Another perhaps applicable note is that IME, without seeds, jalapeños spiciness falls within a narrowed range.

To reiterate in summary, one advantage here beyond preservation and availability is that as you have the three piles of diced chiles, the spice heat level of each batch segment tends to be nicely consistent.


Why should I add salt to my curries? I've been advised by a friend of mine that I have to add salt to my curries if I want the spices to come out and not leave me with a bland curry.
Now after being a doubter, as I never add salt to my food (for flavour reasons), I tried once or twice with various curries and after getting the amount right, it worked! I can kind of imagine the salt ions binding with some chemicals in the spice to aid it's solubility, but I'm not sure.
Why is adding salt so important for curries? I've read this but it doesn't seem to say anything about spices.
To clarify:

When I have added salt to my food as I cook that didn't have spices in (but did say have garlic, herbs, meat juices etc.), I haven't tasted a difference.
When I have made spiced meals (Curries, Tagines etc) with pre prepared spices and I've added salt I have noticed a marked difference.

Your experience with the curry is normal. Salt helps bring out and enhance existing flavors. This is true for everyone, as far as I know. Different people have different sensitivities, and want different amounts, but the effect is the same. Given that you thought the curry tasted better with it, I wouldn't be surprised if you should also be adding salt to other things - maybe just not as much as recipes typically call for.


Can I boil a yogurt marinade if I add cornstarch? I'm making tikka masala tonight, and the chicken is marinating in a yogurt mixture. I've already made a sauce to eat it with, but I was wondering if there was a way to bring the marinade to a boil so that I could safely consume it too.

I heard that adding cornstarch to yogurt helps keep it from splitting, but would that be enough if it has to come to a rolling boil anyway?

Good news! There is no reason to bring the marinade to a rolling boil as a simmer will siffice. Chicken and other items that have been in contact with raw chicken are considered safe at 165 degrees (See http://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/charts/mintemp.html). A simmer is generally about 180. If the sauce breaks however, you are correct that a cornstarch slurry should pull the marinade back together no problem. Happy cooking!


How long should it take to bbq half a chicken? I know how to tell if a chicken is cooked, but has anyone got any idea of approximately how long it would take to bbq half a chicken in an uncovered barbecue?

To clarify:
I'm thinking of cleaving a 1.5kg (maybe slightly smaller) chicken in two, and putting each half on the bbq. The chicken will be between fridge and ambient temperature.

The chicken will possibly be the first thing on the bbq after it's ready to cook on (I use charcoal).

I'm just looking for a ballpark figure.

In addition if anyone has any reasons for why this isn't a good idea then let me know :).

Way too many variables. If you knew how warm the chicken was before cooking, how hot the cooking area is (and whether that will change during the cooking time), how thick the chicken is, whether you're cooking white or dark meat, and more, you might be able to make a good guess.

I would not recommend cooking just thawed, thick pieces of chicken on an uncovered grill. Too easy to make it hard on the outside and dry on the inside.

I wouldn't estimate lower than 20 minutes, but it will almost certainly be longer.

Edit: Here's a "Good Eats" video about doing chicken on a grill. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAvy4YksJgM&feature=related It's better to go ahead and cut the chicken up the rest of the way for grilling so that each type and size of meat can be on it's own cooking schedule.


Which fruits and vegetables should be kept in a fridge, and which outside? I'm a bit unsure about which fruits and veggies should be kept outside the fridge and which inside. It seems that apples, oranges, and bananas, are normally kept outside, and melons, watermelons, etc are kept inside. How do I know which ones should be kept inside and which should be kept outside?

Also, apart from making sure that fruits are stored on a different rack of the fridge than veggies, are there any other guidelines about storing them? I.e certain fruits that shouldn't be stored together, or anything?

Apples, pears, and many other fruits are kept in cold storage after harvest, and keeping them in the fridge after buying them will help them keep longer.  Pears, peaches, and other fruits that are sold on the green side, should be removed from cold storage a day or two before using, to allow them to ripen a bit more.  Berries should be unwashed and refrigerated, and only washed right before using them.

Only a few fruits and vegetables are hurt by being refrigerated.  Bananas will turn brown, and tomatoes lose flavor.

Some veggies, such as winter squashes, have a long shelf life outside of the fridge, and refrigeration does not really add to that.


Can I reprocess vinegar hot pepper jelly? I made a batch of jelly last night that just isn't sweet enough.  Can I now unseal the jars, reheat, add sugar and re sterilize and seal them?

Yes, though to be clear, you unseal, empty the jars into a pot, heat & add sugar, (while re-cleaning/sterilizing the jars) then fill the hot jars and process. You don't just add sugar to the jars.

To suit the food safety fanatics, use new lids.

I, personally, figure that if I use old lids and they seal, it's fine, because it sealed, and I know that because the lid is designed to indicate that. Sealed is Sealed.

If I use old lids and they don't seal, I know they didn't seal, and treat appropriately, just as I would new lids that didn't seal. But the official recommendation is to toss the lids and use new ones every time, even if they were new until last night and have only been on the jars for a day (unless you are using "specifically made to be reusable lids.") I note that the official doom and gloom warns of failure to seal (which is obvious) not some dire subtle thing, so I choose to ignore them on this one point so long as a lid is in good physical shape. But it's not the official recommendation.


Has anyone successfully spatchcocked their Thanksgiving Turkey? My T-Day turkey is looking like it's going to be in excess of 20 lbs this year, and I'm nervous about how long the darn thing is actually going to be in my oven when I have pies, bread, sides, etc. to prepare.

Martha Stewart has a brief article on spatchcocking a turkey (removing the backbone and breaking the breasts so the bird is 'flat') and I was curious as to if anyone has ever done it before with a big bird, and to what degree of success. Did you baste the turkey while it was cooking? Heaven forbid I feed my picky family a dry turkey, I would never hear the end of it.

I would practice with a large bird, but there's no way we'll be able to eat 40 lbs of turkey in a month!

I've spatchcocked our turkey the past two years and will never go back to the usual way. It just cooks so much faster. The spatchcocking itself isn't to hard, although you do have to be willing to inflict a little violence on the turkey.

I basically follow Mark Bittman's recipe. The video is located here. I do, however cook a larger bird. The time I did it with an 18 pound bird it too a bit more than 90 minutes.


When to wash fruits and vegetables? I was always told to wash fruit and vegetables right before eating or cooking them, and not earlier. This is supposedly intended to "keep them fresh" or "keep them safe from bacteria" (depends on the source).

I tried to find some sourced information on Internet  but while there is no shortage of information about how to wash them (especially today with the COVID-19 pandemic), I did not find anything about when they are best washed (right after buying them, or right before consumption).

I would be interested in a generic information - that is not targeted on today's critical handling of fruit or vegetables (or anything else - again, COVID-19), but one for "normal times".

Wash them right before you use them. You could wash them when you get home, it's not going to hurt most things if you're gentle, but that won't mean they're still clean once you're ready to use them. I'm guessing you aren't storing them somewhere sterile, so they will get dirty again during storage, and you'll just have to wash them again.

The other issue with washing a considerable amount of time before using is that washing doesn't remove 100% of bacteria on a surface. It should get rid of enough so it doesn't make you sick, but if you let it sit long enough after washing, the bacteria could reproduce into a dangerous quantity again. Obviously that's not true of everything you wash off produce (it's not going to magically gain more pesticides and some pathogens can't reproduce on the surface of produce), but it could be of some things.

In short, washing produce when you get it home isn't sufficient to make it safe to consume later, and you probably don't want to wash it twice if you don't have to, so just wash it before you use it.  An exception might be in the current pandemic situation, where you want to get rid of any viruses on your produce before putting it away. In that case, feel free to wash produce when you get it home along with other washable items, but you should still wash it again before using it.

With that said, nothing makes eating raw produce perfectly safe, so it's really a matter of your risk appetite. If it's much more convenient for you to prep your produce in advance and you keep them in something that's thoroughly washed between uses, then it's not terribly likely to hurt you. It's a bit safer to wash them closer to when you use them, and some things may keep longer if they aren't washed, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to wash them sooner in some cases.


How to make tea essential oil? I tried to make my own tea essentials oil by putting small pieces of tea leaves (dehydrated) into my local alcohol (29% vol).

After 1 week, the leaves turned brown, so I removed them out of the bottle. Now the remaining looks dark, strong smell of tea and alcohol.

I wonder if it can be called tea tree essential oil and can be used in beauty products like body wash or even in food?

This is my first time I've tried to make essential oil, so not sure what to do properly as there's no direct instruction on google that show how to make tea oil.

You have basically made tea-flavoured vodka.

The tea tree (for essential oil) is unrelated to the tea plant for the beverage.

Commercially, tea tree oil is produced by steam distillation of the leaves of the tea tree, specifically Melaleuca alternifolia. Though possible to obtain leaves and perform the distillation, it's probably not practical on a small scale outside of the tea tree production regions. For completeness, tea tree oil is toxic; you don't want to eat it.

What you used was conventional tea leaves. The tea beverage is made by steeping (soaking in hot water) leaves of the tea plant, which have been dried or otherwise prepared (e.g., fermented, roasted, etc.).


Should a Pound Cake be stored in the fridge or the freezer? After cooking a pound cake, should I place it in the freezer or in the refrigerator?

This is going to depend on how long you want to keep it for. If you're serving it soon (say, same day, maybe next), then don't refrigerate it at all, though some people seem to think it gives better flavor to refrigerate overnight.

If you've used e.g., buttercream frosting, you'll need to refrigerate or freeze it, unless you're serving immediately after frosting. Some fillings may also require refrigeration.

If you're storing short term, up to maybe a week, refrigerate it.

If you're going to be storing it long-term (more than a few days, up to three months), you'll need to tightly wrap it once its cooled, and freeze it. After more than 3–4 months, flavor will be lost, but it'll still be safe to eat, as long as its stayed at 0°F/-17°C or below.


Can cashews go bad? If so, how do you tell? We have a tub of cashews that seems "off:" they smell a little different and taste a little different than we're used to.

They don't smell or taste rancid (to us, I don't think I've ever tried cashews that were old enough to possibly be rancid) but I'm wondering if there can be any other type of degredation in them.  e.g. I've read that peanuts can get a sort of mold growing on them that's not good for you.

It is possible for mold to form on cashews - or any other nuts - but only if there has been moisture penetration into the container. If the moisture is at a safe (low) level, then mold won't grow.

See for example, Mycology and spoilage of retail cashew nuts, which refers to the maximum acceptable moisture content of 5.8% for retail storage/shipping, although if you look at their data table, it appears that you may still end up with non-trivial amounts of mold in the low 5% range (which is why you are supposed to store nuts sealed and in a cool, dry place).

Honestly, cashews are hard enough such that you would almost certainly see mold on the surface if it were present in harmful quantities. Most likely what you're smelling/tasting is simply oxidation of the fats (the process which causes rancidity) without actual full-blown rancidity. Mold requires moisture but all oxidation requires is light and maybe a little air exposure.

If you really want to be on the safe side - e.g. if your home is particularly hot or humid - then store your nuts in the refrigerator or freezer (sealed, to prevent contamination or off-odours). Although most (all?) nuts are considered shelf-stable, they do keep longer in the fridge or freezer.


Can I use dried dates instead of fresh ones for baking a cake? The dates should build the base of the cake I have a cake recipe, which is based on a mixture of 250 g dates and 200 g almonds, which is mixed in the end. Can I use dried dates instead of fresh ones?

The full recipe is, for 10-12 pieces:

6 eggs, separated
200 g almonds
250 g dates (without seeds)
200 ml water
40 g cocoa

Heat the oven at 175 °C
Beat the egg yolk and  egg white separately. Crush the almonds to powder; give dates, water egg yolk and cocoa into and mix it. Gently fold the egg white in.
Bake it for about 20 minutes.

The recipe is named "Klitschkuchen" in Germany, which roughly means "very wet cake", but unfortunately I don't know a real English translation.

Based on similar recipes for this cake, it looks like "dates" actually means "dried dates".

Here's an example with a video.

I don't speak German so I don't know what's being said but those are certainly dried dates.

So... not only can you use dried dates for this recipe, you should use dried dates!


Any books that teach the science of Indian cooking? Can someone please suggest good books to understadn the science of Indian cooking ?

You might be interested in the new release The Flavor Equation: The Science of Great Cooking Explained by Nik Sharma, a molecular biologist from India. I haven't read it, but the table of contents, reviews, and the author's previous work suggest that it has a heavy emphasis on Indian cooking.


What equation should I use for microwaving food? Prepackaged microwave food typically says to microwave on high for n seconds. It usually says that the instructions are meant for an 1100 watt microwave (give or take).
My microwave is only 950 watts.
What is the equation for me to get the new time? Is it time x (1100 / 950)?

In general, microwave meals are designed to be cooked to a safe temperature throughout, even when a microwave barely puts out the rated power, and that unevenly. This means the meals are designed to handle overcooking. Anyway power ratings are fairly inaccurate as they depend on how well the microwave radiation couples into the food - ratings are based around a defined portion though, so a ready meal isn't as likely to be poorly heated as something smaller.
So one simple approach is to follow the instructions for the highest power stated. This will work well for some things.
You can't assume you can just reduce the time in the same ratio the power is increased, because heat conduction is needed to cook the middle. This is particularly true if starting from frozen, or if it's something you can't stir.
What works for mine (1100W I think) is to use the 900 or 950W instructions, but reduce the time by a little - 30s on a typical single portion that cooks for 5-7 minutes , 1min on bigger things or from frozen, 10s on a dessert that heats up in 40-60s.
Crucially though, this is what I've concluded after trying it - stopping when stuff is bubbling, and checking it's hot through.
If the instructions are for a higher power than you have available, start by following them, then check. It may actually be hot enough but if not, give it a little longer, in the same increments as above (which are only a suggestion). You may find that you consistently need to add the same extra time for the meals you eat, once you've tested


How can I make my own Super Noodles/instant noodle seasoning? I like BBQ Beef Super Noodles, but they don't taste the same as they used to. The flavour sachet is not as strong as it used to be (maybe they use more filler nowadays).

I can buy plain egg noodles, but how can I make the seasoning?

The ingredients are listed as:

  Noodles (Water, Wheat Flour, Palm Oil, Antioxidants (Butylated Hydroxyanisole, Citric Acid, Propyl Gallate)), Sugar, Acidity Regulator (Sodium Diacetate), Salt, Skimmed Milk Powder, Flavour Enhancers (Monosodium Glutamate, Disodium 5’-ribonucleotides), Yeast Extract, Sour Cream Powder (Milk), Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Tomato Powder, Citric Acid, Tartaric Acid, Flavouring, Colour (Paprika Extract), Spices, Anti-caking Agents (Silicon Dioxide, Tricalcium Phosphate), Rapeseed Oil, Celery, Wheat Flour.

I suspect I won't be needing any of those chemicals!

Find a good Asian food market. They should sell small jars, tins, or liquid in sachets of soup flavours.

I find the jars most convenient. About a teaspoon per serving is plenty, store in the fridge after opening.

Some of the liquid in sachets can be the most authentic for the Asian style, but for just a beefy broth, one of the jars will do fine.

If you like a more tomato flavour, buy bulk cans of tomato paste, freeze in ice cube trays, then bag in zip style freezer bags. One or two cubes per serving works fine, and they just melt into the hot noodle soup base.

Use low salt noodles, as most of the soup flavours are very salty for preservation reasons.

Here are some examples I use. Click on pictures for full size view.


Can I make a Cheesecake without using cream cheese? Is it possible to replicate the texture of cheesecake without using cream cheese?
I really love the texture of cheesecake and I really love its aesthetic.
But I just really dont like the sour taste of cream cheese which destroys the entire experience of eating cheesecake for me.
So I'm trying to look for an alternative.
I'm thinking about, replacing all the cream cheese with just heavy cream, maybe add some cooked cornstarch to thicken it to try to replicate the consistency of cream cheese. My hypothesis is that it should hold perfectly like regular cream cheese/ be runnier but should have a lighter taste which should make it 100x more suited to my tastebuds.
But I also want to hear your opinions/alternatives you might have. I want to have the best chances of success

Cheesecake is essentially a baked custard with that substitutes cream cheese (and often some sour cream) for the dairy ingredient.
After all, a basic custard recipe is just milk, sugar, and eggs with some kind of flavoring added.
The cheese is the thing that gives cheesecake it's distinctive texture. Substituting cream and corn starch is going to end up with a much more pudding-like consistency.
All that being said, there are a number of recipes that substitute the much milder Mascarpone cheese in place of about half of the cream cheese. This may be sufficient to get you a milder sour flavor without drastically altering the texture. You could also give it a try with all Mascarpone, but you might be pushing into that pudding texture again.
Also, be prepared for the added cost with Mascarpone, which tends to cost 2-3 times as much as cream cheese.


Pumpkin pie filling way too thick I am making pumpkin pie from scratch, the filling is way thicker than in the video recipe I followed. Will it still cook properly?

I used 2 cups of fresh pumpkin, 2 eggs plus one yolk and one cup of buttermilk.

Are you using canned pumpkin or are you using a fresh pumpkin after roasting it.  I believe you may need to add a half cup more buttermilk or regular milk to your recipe.


How important are ingredient ratios in pasta-making (as compared to baking)? It's well-known that the ratios of ingredients matter a lot in baking -- tiny changes in ingredient ratios can create big changes in the quality of results.
However, there are other situations where ingredient ratios don't matter as much (for instance, it doesn't matter much whether you use x grams or x+1 grams of tomatoes in a salad).
Question: In pasta-making, how sensitive is the quality of pasta to changes in ingredient ratios, and how does this sensitivity compare with that of baking?

Proper hydration of flours is important in pasta making, so ingredient ratios are critical.  How critical depends on the type of pasta (egg based fresh pasta is probably more forgiving than water based pasta that is intended to be extruded and dried).  So, it sort of depends on why you are asking the question.  For a restaurant or pasta company looking for the best quality and consistency, it is essential to have the proper ratio.