Keto replacement for flour I would like to know what to use and how much, in place of flour to thicken the sauce in the following recipe and make it keto.
This is the full recipe:

2 Tbsp butter
1 small yellow onion, diced
4 large garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp salt
8 oz sliced mushrooms (optional)
1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless breasts sliced into 1/2 inch filets
1 cup half and half
2 Tbsp flour
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
3 oz coarsely chopped spinach
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Turn your Instant Pot to the saute setting (more). When the display reads HOT add in the butter. Once the butter is melted add in the onions and saute for about 3-4 minutes. Add in the garlic and saute for 30 seconds. Add in the chicken broth, garlic powder, pepper and salt. Stir. Add in the mushrooms (if using) and chicken.
Cover the pot and secure the lid. Make sure valve is set to sealing. Set the manual/pressure cook button to 6 minutes (this is the cooking time for the 1/2 inch pieces of chicken breast, if they are thicker than that you may need more time). Let the pressure release naturally for 10 minutes and then move the valve to “venting.”
Remove the lid.  Use tongs to place the chicken on a platter. Loosely cover with foil. Turn the Instant Pot to the saute setting. Warm the half and half up in a pyrex measuring cup for 45 seconds in the microwave. Whisk the flour into the half and half until it’s smooth. Whisk the mixture into the Instant Pot. This will thicken up the sauce in a few minutes. Add in the parmesan cheese. Add in the spinach. Salt and pepper to taste. If using pasta, drain any water off of the pasta and stir into the pot.

One option is foregoing thickener entirely. I regularly make sauces with those proportions and no thickener and find them perfectly fine, texture wise.
Another option is substituting the half and half with full cream or even switch 1/3-1/2 of it for cream cheese. Or, similarly, add more parmesan or another cheese to thicken the sauce. All of those substitutes will make for a thicker sauce without any further additions.
Otherwise, xantham gum is keto friendly. You want to add about 0.2% xantham gum by weight to slightly thicken a sauce, so about 1.5 grams for your recipe (I recommend weighing your sauce on a kitchen scale and calculating the amount precisely). I would mix it well with a small amount of cream like for a cornstarch slurry, before mixing that into the rest of the liquid. Like Stephie pointed out in the comments, mixing any powder into a hot liquid is very difficult.


How can I dice vegetables on a small cutting board? I have a fairly small cutting board - about 8.5" x 12.5" (22cm x 32cm), and I am finding it difficult to dice vegetables, especially the onions, without stuff going all over the place.

Is it my technique that's sloppy or should I just get a bigger cutting board?

If you can't get a bigger cutting board, here are a couple pointers to getting the most done  CLEANLY in a small space (mostly tricks from my kitchen manager):

Use a sharp knife.  It's easier to control, and when you chop, pieces don't move as much.  Hone it at least daily to keep the edge aligned.
Organize your work on the board.  If you're right-handed, keep raw ingredients on the left side, and finished, cut product on the other.
Keep the spot you're using to cut clear.  It may only be 4-6 square inches, but it shouldn't have anything to get in the way.  I like to use the bottom middle of the board for cutting and the corners & top to organize stuff in various stages of cutting.
Remove trash (trimmings, ends, unusable vegetable scraps) from the board.  Either keep a trashcan next to the counter, or use a bowl to collect garbage.  This frees up space on your cutting board.
You can use additional bowls to store uncut material, and finished results.  This frees up more cutting board area.

All of these tips help, but I'll tell you what my chef told me:  the bigger your cutting board, the more room you have to work, and the faster you can go.  As your knife skills improve, you will be able to work in a smaller space without problems.  But first, start off with plenty of room.  As you you gain experience, your cuts become more precise, you organize your space, and work faster and cleaner.

With this advice in mind, you should move to a larger cutting board.  The extra space to work make it much easier to develop proper knife skills, because you're not trying to cramp yourself in.  I suggest the largest board that you can comfortably fit in your sink for cleanup.  With  professional knife skills, I can handle prepping multiple items on an 8.5" x 9.5" cutting board; however, I find that my 11" x 14" board provides a lot more room to organize my work, and is more comfortable to use.  At work, I use the biggest board I can fit on my station.


Interpreting a recipe from Mrs Beeton: "carbonate of soda" Prompted by a discussion at English.se I may be going to make Mrs Beeton's soda biscuits recipe:

SODA BISCUITS.

INGREDIENTS.—1 lb. of flour, 1/2 lb. of pounded loaf sugar, 1/4 lb. of fresh butter, 2 eggs, 1 small teaspoonful of carbonate of soda.

Mode.—Put the flour (which should be perfectly dry) into a basin; rub
in the butter, add the sugar, and mix these ingredients well together.
Whisk the eggs, stir them into the mixture, and beat it well, until
everything is well incorporated. Quickly stir in the soda, roll the
paste out until it is about 1/2 inch thick, cut it into small round
cakes with a tin cutter, and bake them from 12 to 18 minutes in rather
a brisk oven. After the soda is added, great expedition is necessary
in rolling and cutting out the paste, and in putting the biscuits
immediately into the oven, or they will be heavy.
Time.—12 to 18 minutes. Average cost, 1s.
Sufficient to make about 3 dozen cakes. Seasonable at any time.

[italics mine]
Does she really use sodium carbonate and not sodium bicarbonate?  I know I can bake the latter to make the former but the carbonate is reputed to leave a soapy flavour.  Can we tell from  the need for haste after adding it (a quicker reaction?)  Does the era give us a clue (mid-C19th)?

There are many mentions of carbonate of soda in the Book of Household Management, and also two mentions of bicarbonate of soda (to preserve milk, and in a recipe for light buns). It has a specific section on the carbonate:

  CARBONATE OF SODA — Soda was called the mineral alkali, because it was originally dug up out of the ground in Africa and other countries: this state of carbonate of soda is called natron. But carbonate of soda is likewise procured from the combustion of marine plants, or such as grow on the sea-shore. Pure carbonate of soda is employed for making effervescing draughts, with lemon-juice, citric acid, or tartaric acid. The chief constituent of soda, the alkali, has been used in France from time immemorial in the manufacture of soap and glass, two chemical productions which employ and keep in circulation an immense amount of capital. A small pinch of carbonate of soda will give an extraordinary lightness to puff pastes; and, introduced into the teapot, will extract the full strength of the tea. But its qualities have a powerful effect upon delicate constitutions, and it is not to be used incautiously in any preparation.

It therefore seems likely that the recipe is intended to use carbonate rather than bicarbonate.


Can an old rosette “iron” that's starting to stick be reconditioned? My Mom's chruściki (rozetki) iron is about 50 years old.  The batter is sticking to it and doesn't release easily now.  How can I recondition it?

I picked up a new one (aluminum!) but it’s not the same. I’d like to get the old one working again.  It weighs 39 grams, compared to the new one’s 24. Since the new one is thinner, 50% makes sense for the difference in mass, with them being the same density.

I think the old one needs to be cleaned, since it’s discolored on the sides. The new one worked out of the box.  So what can remove the staining?

I had assumed that it was cast iron, but comparing the weight against the new one, I'm not sure. I suspect it’s aluminum too.

I am going to assume that your chrusciki is cast iron.  I have been collecting and using vintage cast iron for 30 plus years and use the following method for reconditioning pieces which have lost their seasoned finish. Your irons must be able to separate from their handles, unless the entire piece is cast iron.

Separate all non-cast iron pieces from the cast iron pieces.
If there are crusty bits stuck to the cast iron remove these.  I use a variety of methods including fire, scraping, and soaking in a hot water bath for 15 minutes or so.  Soapy water is only okay before skillet is seasoned, never after.    Keep the cast iron off porous surfaces during the soak as rust may form and be difficult to remove from them
Dry cast iron pieces and apply heavy coat of fresh cooking oil to entire piece.
Bake  on a foil covered cookie sheet in a hot oven (350-375) for up to 1 hour.
Let cool, pieces may be sticky and this is normal.
Store on wax paper until first use.
Use as recipe suggests.  Clean up irons using hot water only and a cloth of          some type.
To keep seasoned, dry after cleaning, wipe with a paper towel dipped into fresh cooking oil,  store away from moisture. Pieces don't need to be dripping with oil, just lightly covered completely.  Can repeat steps 3-6 once yearly.


Some stainless steel more stainless than others I'm rather disappointed in the latest stainless steel bowl I bought. Left it in the sink unwashed from a salad for a week while I had to be away, came back and it had rust underneath and inside. Same has happened to few other bowls, pots and utensils over the years, all marketed as stainless steel.

At this point, the only 3 stainless steel items I have that are truly stainless and have lasted me over 10 years are a water kettle, a spoon and a pot that my mother gave me when I first moved out.

Everything else has either rusted or developed these black pits which I have no idea what they are. My dough hook for example gathered more and more of them until it finally snapped at one of the pits locations.

So how can I identify things that are really made of stainless steel? I want more things like my pot, its got scratches and discoloration from lots of abuse but is still shiny.

Yes, there are different blends to make 'stainless' steel and some are more resistant to rust (higher chromium and nickel content), or to pitting (higher molybdenum content) or hold an edge better (eg, 'surgical steel'), but to my knowledge, all of them are prone to pitting if they've exposed to salt water for a long enough period of time.

The exception to this is if the water is boiled before the salt is added, as it's a chemical reaction between the steel, salt, and dissolved oxygen.  This is why many recipes for cooking pasta tell you to wait until the water is boiling before you add salt.

Salt can also speed up the rusting of stainless steel, so it's a good idea to rinse things off if you're not going to clean them right away.  Salad dressings typically contain a fair bit of salt, but it's also quite possible that the bowl is a lower chromium steel.

update: Although there's now another system for grading stainless for the building trades, you'll often see stainless steel sold mentioning '18/10', which is a more rust resistant blend.


Something wrong with pizza dough - 3rd time in a row I was pretty sure I had my recipe and method nailed, done tens of pizzas with it but it failed me now for the third time in a row. It's driving me nuts, I had to throw away dough worth 15 pizzas.

The problem is it won't rise as it should.

First the recipe, which I took from popular Italian website and translated. I let it proof for 2 hours.

1/2 kg unbleached all purpose flour
4g dry yeast, half sachet, or 12g normal.
1tsp sugar
11g sea salt, 1tbsp
300 ml Warm water
3tbsp Olive oil

So, why it wouldn't rise is beyond me. What might be the factor?

1) Is it the brand of the yeast? Now I use Red Star, but I used some European before.Both fry yeast in sachets.

2) Too cold or too hot water to let the yeast soak (proof)?

3) Kneading for too long or not long enough?

4) Room temperature for proofing too low? It is winter now, and all the previous attempts were in summer. Although I did place it near the heat source.

Last thing I'm going to do now is I'm going to increase the amount of yeast by 2x, to see what happens. But originally I had to reduce by half from all the US recipes when I found an Italian and it worked much better. I still have to know what has changed in the overall conditions for such a huge difference.

UPDATE

Left it overnight and the dough seems perfect. It just needed more time it looks like.

There is not enough information here to give you a solid answer.

There are two things to consider:

Have you proofed your yeast?  Active dry yeast needs to be proofed, and while instant yeast does not, it cannot hurt.   Dissolve the yeast and sugar in warm water (about 105 - 110 F, 40 - 43 C).  After 10 to 15 minutes, it should be quite foamy.

This demonstrates that your yeast is alive and well, and will be ready to raise your bread or dough.
In the winter, rising will be slower, possibly by a lot, depending on how much cooler your kitchen is.  You may wish to create a friendly proofing box for the rise, with a warm hand humid environment.

My favorite way to do so is to boil a microwave safe container of water (a couple of cups or a liter) in the microwave, and then push it to the back of the cavity.  Then use the microwave as a place to let your dough rise. The microwave has to be turned off while proofing, if you turn it on, the dough will fail.


Is there a technique to freeze gnocchi so they maintain their consistency? I've made gnocchi, let them dry for 2 hours over the counter, place them in a plastic container with extra flour inside the freezer.

Two days later I take them out of the freezer. After an hour the gnocchi were defrosted but sticky and a little bit darker.

Should I use semolina instead of flour after the gnocchi are shaped so they don't become sticky?

Should I use more flour for the dough I want to freeze?

Should I cook them before freezing them?

I used potato+flour+salt to make the gnocchi. No egg.

I typically use potato, flour and egg.

Make. Freeze.  Then, go directly from freezer to boiling water.  Do not defrost first.


Sausage left to thaw more than 2 hours - is this safe to eat? I have a package of sausage that I intended to use yesterday. It was taken out of the freezer to thaw at about 4 o' clock. At 9 o' clock it felt fully thawed but we ended up putting it back in the refrigerator where it sits as we speak. When used the sausage is going to be baked in the oven for half an hour. Are we safe to eat this?

The rule of thumb is over 40 F for more than 4 hours.  At best small portion of the sausage was over 40 F for 4+ hours. If bad stuff happened then baking will not fix it. I would eat it.


Does storing meat in plastic alter how long it takes to go off? I was recently told quite emphatically that "Storing meat in plastic makes it spoil faster"

I suspect that this is an old wives tale, but haven't been able to find anything that either proves or disproves the statement.

I was told that it's true whether it's plastic from packaging(say, plastic bags for sliced ham, a chicken in cling-film...anything.) or if the meat is being stored in Tupperware.

Assume that the meat is stored in a fridge.

It wasn't suggested that it was caused by anything leaching from the plastic, like BPA.

If this is either true or false, I would really like to know why?

Many thanks!

Bonus Question:
If it's not true, are there some reasons why someone might think that it is?
Built up smell? Different moisture level?

The question is 'plastic vs. what else?'

I admit I've never done side-by side tests to prove it, but from my observations, when the deli I went to switched from butcher paper to zip-top plastic bags, sliced lunchmeats wouldn't last in the fridge as long.  They'd start getting slimy around two weeks.**

I've noticed the same thing (although longer time frames) with firm and hard cheeses, and my solution for those has been to wrap the cheese in a paper towel, then put it back in the plastic bag.

I suspect that the issue is moisture buildup (you open the packet, let in cold air, it condenses in the freezer, etc.), and if this is the case, then other non-porous materials (glass, metal), would be equally bad for storage, especially as you can't then squeeze them to remove the air.  The butcher paper always stays at roughtly the size of the item being wrapped.

... but still, even if we did experiments, to say it's always bad, we'd have to also test raw meats, ground and whole (and for moisture, many stores put those little diaper pads in the containers), tightly vs. loosely wrapped, and a few other variables.

** Some health person is going to complain 'but you're not supposed to keep meat in the fridge for 2 weeks ... this was well preserved items like sweet bologna)


How can I turn my muffin batter into the natural blue color from blueberries? I'm trying to make blueberry muffins, and I will be folding the blueberries into the batter as well. How can I turn the batter slightly blue without adding excess blueberries? The recipe i'm using calls for 1 1/2 cup of blueberries.

The story is more complicated than SAJ tells it. Blueberries, like many other purple foods, are colored by a pigment called anthocyanin. It changes its color from red at very low pH to real blue at very high pH. At the blueberry's natural pH, the color is a purple with more red than blue in it.

What you can do is to juice some blueberries separately, then add lots of baking soda to the juice. It will turn a dark blue. You can then mix it into the batter.

The problem is that you will be changing the taste of the muffins, and some of their rising behavior. If you use little enough blue-turned juice to not make a major change, you will get dirty greenish muffins, as the batter itself is yellow-beige, and that will mix with the blue. If you use enough to color them, you will have pretty display muffins (provided they don't stay flat because you turned the batter too alkaline for the baking powder to work) which will taste like soap.

Personally, I will stick to food coloring. "Natural" coloring is an unachievable utopic for most foods, as natural pigments are finicky and almost never concentrated enough to color a food flavor with them. The only time they work is when a food is made predominantly from the coloring food, e.g. blueberry sorbet is indeed red-purple from the blueberries contained in it.

This is an example of naturally colored shortbread cookie dough. The lavender dough was colored using elderberry fruit juice with lots of baking soda. It was very noticeable in the taste, I wouldn't do it again. Ironically, the slightly soapy taste fit a bit with the lavender aroma, it was just weird eating the stuff.


How to evenly bake a daquoise disk? I plan do make a Daquoise. I've seen people making them round, consisting of 2-3 disks, piped like so:

Once I tried to bake a Macaron this big and failed because while the outer area where done, the center was still pretty undercooked, I wasn't even able to lift the Macaron from the sheet.

In my oven, I used top & bottom heat.

As Macaron and Daquoise batter is pretty similar, I am afraid to fail again. Is there anything I can do to bake such a disk (about 18cm diameter) evenly? Or would you recommend to make it square shaped?

A dacquoise isn't so much baked as it is dried. Usually this is done for an hour or more at a temperature below 300F. If you have problems with the top drying too quickly and leaving the bottom unset, you can get a simple spray bottle and mist the top with water toward the beginning of the baking time to slow it down. Also, I notice that the picture is using a silpat, I don't know if that was just for illustration, but while silpats are wonderful, they do tend to slow the cooking on the underside of whatever is on them.


How do I iron-fortify homemade baby cereal? I have been making baby cereal powder by grinding rolled oats, flax seed, and hemp seed into a powder. I prepare this cereal by adding water and heat.

Many commercial powdered baby cereals (and general breakfast cereals) are iron-fortified.

What can I add to my homemade dry powder to fortify it with iron?

Note: Please hold off posting any opinions. I'm looking for factual answers with links to reference data.

Whole grain contains more iron than the more processed grain. So that might help. Seeds and nuts also contain a lot of iron. While nuts in themselves are a choking hazard for babies, ground nuts mixed with the rest of the stuff you grind should be no problem.


How to dry fruit peels without growing mold? I'm trying to dry citrus peels in a jar (I don't want to leave them indefinitely on the counter) without much luck. Any suggestions?

You can't close them up and expect them to stay mold-free, they will produce too much humidity.

You will have to spread the peels on a flat surface, without overlapping. Do it on a slightly absorptive surface, and breathable is good too. The optimal setting would be a wire rack with a sheet of paper on it, but if you don't have a rack to commit to the task, skip the breathable part and use a large plate.

While you can't have them conveniently stuffed in a jar, they are not so hard to get dried. Just don't use prime real estate such as the kitchen counter. Find a convenient, undisturbed wide place - the top of a cabinet works, if you put something above them to keep the dust out. Or maybe you have some surface which is flat, but too low to be used for anything else. As long as there is free air flow, there is no problem of having something close above them.

Or, as tM-- suggested, use a quick drying method. Both an oven and a dehydrator should work. You will get a slightly better taste with slow air-drying, but the difference may be too small to notice.

Once the drying is completed, the peels can easily be stored in a jar without catching mold.


Recommendations for leak proof containers? I regularly take lunch to work which requires a leak-proof container. The food doesn't necessarily need to be kept hot or particularly cold. An example meal would be a bean salad.

I am struggling to find a container that is leak proof.  The container will be upended and shaken (not too much!) when in transit from home to work. The container will ideally have a wide mouth to allow me to eat directly from it.

Have you got any suggestions for a suitable container of capacity approximately 500 mL (17oz)?

I hate storing food in plastic, so the best option I found and use myself is http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?sku=112870 which does have a plastic top and silicone gasket but is otherwise glass. Been using for 3-4 years and love them. No leaking problems.


How can I maximize the storage life of fresh beef in the refrigerator? I bought a 7 pound beef tenderloin at Fresh Market that the butcher just cut and packaged for me.

What is best way to store it in the refrigerator? Will it keep for 5 days or longer?

If you can get a good tight wrap of plastic wrap around it and store in the bottom of your fridge, where the temp should be approaching 32F it should last out the 5 days just fine. If you have a rub in mind for it you might apply that first then wrap and store.

Remember that beef is usually hung anywhere from 5 to 30 days at 33F in quarters before being butchered. If you don't have a thermometer for your fridge, get one (or two even, one high and one low) so you have a good idea of what your temp range is. If the coldest region of your fridge is over 35F you should turn it down some. See @HoboDave's answer for a better commentary on fridge temps.


Identifying Strands of Dough I'm trying to write up a how-to guide for braiding six strands of dough.

I figured that for comprehension I would instruct the cook to move the pieces of dough based on a color-coding scheme. E.g. I would say place the black strand between the blue and green strands.

However, in order to identify which strand is which, I need food-safe colored items that can be stuck into the ends of each strand of dough [to be removed after braiding is complete]. What are some items that can fit this purpose?

wooden toothpicks with colored ends, like the kind at cocktail parties? (like these? http://tinyurl.com/3pjf4kx)


Is "medium white sauce" a usefully distinct term? I am familiar with a basic white sauce, or béchamel, and know how to make it. I recently came across a recipe (circa 1950's) that calls for 1 cup medium white sauce.

Is this the same as a béchamel? (What other white sauces [light/heavy? thin/thick? color?] was medium distinguishing from?) If not, do I need to adjust the "standard" white sauce recipe in some way to make it thinner or thicker?

After spending more time on search engines and thanks to the comment from belisarius...

Medium refers to the thickness level of the final sauce, and is controlled by the ratio of roux (butter/flour) to milk. For 1 cup of milk:

thin = 1 tablespoon each flour/butter
medium = 2 tablespoons each flour/butter (a "standard" bechamel)
thick = 3 tablespoons each flour/butter

Sources: 1, 2


Which regions of the world prefer mustard in their mayonnaise? I recently moved from Poland to Canada and was shocked to find that I found every mayonnaise I tried in Canada tasteless.

So I compared the ingredients labels of the ones I tried here to the ones I knew from Poland, and the biggest difference I found consistently between mayonnaise in Canada and Poland is mustard, which is not present in any major brand's mayo in Canada, and it's there in every single one that I know from Poland - so I assume this must be the crucial difference.

Then I found out that Hellmann's (one of the most popular brands in Canada, less popular in Poland but still a big brand) version in Poland ("Hellmann's Babuni") also contains mustard - this led me to believe that it is definitely not a coincidence.

So, what I'd like to find out, is which regions prefer mustard in mayonnaise and which ones don't.

For example, is it a difference between entire Europe and North America, or just some regions? What about other parts of the world? I know mustard is not the only difference, but let's limit the question to this aspect.

The difference in Mayonnaise is varied. For example, in the USA Hellman's and Best Foods Mayonnaise (Same company by the way and same product) add sugar to reduce the acidity. Regional tastes are also taken into account by the manufacturers.

Hellman's mayo in Europe has different ingredient percentages than the same mayo uses for the American market. Many in North America find Duke's mayo to be superior in taste and use than Hellman's due to the ingredient mix. Hellman's mayonnaise in the USA does NOT contain mustard, but there is nothing stopping you from adding a dollop of Dijon in the mix if that's your desired taste.

As a side note, in Japanese cooking where mayonnaise is called for, the most common brand is Kewpie (available in Asian stores and Amazon). The primary difference is that Kewpie mayo only uses egg yolks and also rice vinegar instead of distilled vinegar. It can be used for any recipe that calls for mayo and has a really delightfully more bright taste that's a little different than other mayo's.

Kraft now also offers Avocado Oil Mayonnaise. Looks healthy until you read the whole list of ingredients. Ugh!

Whatever you choose, you can certainly modify to taste. Bon Appetit!


Substituting sweetened condensed milk for evaporated milk I am making caramel. The recipe calls for 2 - 12oz. cans of evaporated milk. I want to use sweetened condensed milk. Do I use the same amount?

The main difference between the two products is that sweetened condensed milk has added sugar.  This could be a problem for your recipe.  Evaporated milk, since it is concentrated (about 60% of the water is removed) is already a bit sweeter. When sweetened condensed milk is made, more sugar is added to evaporated milk, leaving the final product in the 40 - 45% sugar range.  So, the answer to your question will, in large part, depend on your recipe.  There are caramel recipes online that make use of sweetened condensed milk.  You might just start off with one of those.


How can I safely re-heat a chicken pie without burning the crust? Last night I made a chicken pie with ham, cheese and other awesomeness inside. However, I'm worried about re-heating it safely for consumption. I estimate there are two servings (so today's and tomorrow's worth) left.

Last time I tried to re-heat a pie in the oven, even with foil over it, the crust burned and the insides of the pie were still only lukewarm after 10 minutes plus.

My questions:

Is it safe to re-heat the pie considering it contains already cooked and cooled chicken? The pie was placed into the fridge about 10-15 minutes after cooking.
Can I do this twice for tonight and tomorrow?
How do I avoid burning the crust whilst ensuring the middle of the pie is properly heated?

Foil is the way to go, combined with not too fierce a heat. You want to cook at about 160°C (320°F) until the centre of the pie is piping hot. To lower the chances of burning, portion the pie prior to reheating. That way the centre will get hot more quickly.

Reheating more than once is generally not a good idea for safety reasons. You can however portion one night's pie and keep the other in the fridge.


How do I sweat onions? A recipe calls for me to sweat finely chopped onions.  What do I do, and why?

First, finely chop the onions.  This makes them smaller, faster-cooking, and less of a textural presence in the dish.  Do it by cutting straight through the poles of the onion, resulting in two halves.  Then chop off the knobs and peel off the outer layer.  Run the knife 8 or 9 times along the vertical (from pole to pole), but don't sever one end completely.  Cut finely across these verticals to make a fine dice.  Run the knife over the pile a few times if your cut isn't small enough.

Second, cook the onions. The purpose of sweating is to draw moisture out, concentrating the flavor and enhancing conversion from starch to sugar. Heating the onions releases their aroma and reduces the chemical bitterness they exhibit when raw.  Heat up some oil in a pan to medium-low heat.  Add the onions.  Add salt.  I wouldn't cover the pan, since the lid will prevent steam from escaping.  Stir/shake to prevent sticking or burning.  The onions will get soft and then translucent. (Eventually, if you kept going they would get limp and browned; this is referred to as caramelized and considered a different thing than sweated, so although it's just further along the same spectrum, you shouldn't go that far for this recipe).

That's how I'd do it and why.  I don't know if it's a textbook answer.


What are "goes well with" recommendations based on? I heard a lot about what food goes well with some sauce or drink. Why does someone say that? Based on what? Do they only try those foods together or is there any sort of property on the food that indicates what it goes well with?

This question is very broad, but yes there are some general principles.

Foods that grow together (geography) or ripen at the same time are often considered to go especially well together. Tomatoes, for example, are more often paired with basil or oregano than they are with other herbs. Pork and apples, for example, are not ready until the fall and grow in the same parts of Europe.
Some meats are richer and fattier than others and are often served with an astringent red wine or an acidic (lemon, wine, vinegar, ...) sauce for contrast. This doesn't just make the food taste better, it's often more important the effect on how the wine tastes after eating different foods.
Some proteins (such as fish) are softer and less chewy or crunchy than others, so they're often served with a crunchy starch - French fries instead of mashed potatoes, for example - or vegetable (coleslaw made with raw cabbage) for texture contrast. Others are chewy so they're served with mashed potatoes, again for a texture contrast.
Some fish is light and delicate while other fish is stronger and oilier. You would use a different sauce with each and drink a different wine with each.
Some combinations are traditional and people enjoy them whether there is science behind them or not - we put butter on mashed potatoes and sour cream on perogies, but there's probably no good reason we couldn't switch those pairings, for example.
Some foods have more flavor than others and can stand up to a strongly flavoured sauce or drink. This is probably why people make pepper-crusted steak, but not pepper-crusted chicken. Some need to be enhanced by adding more herbs, spices and other flavourings.

Generally the recommendations come from either experiencing that exact combination (until you've tried ground black pepper on strawberries, you just will not imagine that it could be good, but it is) or from experiencing half of it - this sauce was great on that cut of beef, I think it would be even better on a particular cut of bison (because I know the similarities and differences in the meat and can imagine that combination.) The more different kinds of food you eat, and the more you think about what you're eating and why it's yummy or not, the better you will be at knowing the likelihood a particular combination will be good.


How do you tell whether a lobster is cooked? "When boiling lobster, how do you tell when it's done? Is there a rough estimate of cooking time (eg: time/ounce, etc...)?

roughly 9-11 minutes for pound should be ok


What is the best flour to use for pizza dough? I've been making pizza dough and the recipe says to use "good quality flour" but I'm not sure what it means? Are there differences in quality between different types of flour and how can I tell?

What do we look in a pizza dough?

There are many styles of pizza: Italian Vera Pizza Napoletana, Chicago style, ... All of them have something in common in their dough: it should be stretched without tearing, and shouldn't stretch back.

Also, some recipes call for long fermentation times: 6, 9 or more hours at room temperature. With this you get a more relaxed dough (it won't stretch back), and more flavour.

Which flour characteristics give us that dough?

Millers use a tool called Alveograph to check their flour's characteristics. One of the values given by Alveographs is the p/l value. l value is an index for extensibility: how much can the dough be stretched before breaking. p value shows how hard is to give the dough a shape. p/l gives an idea on how the dough holds the shape it's been given. Flours with p/l≈1 are said to give "equilibrate" doughs for bread, as they are easy enough to give a loaf shape, and they will keep that shape once given.

Pizza flours should have a p/l≈0.5, as it means the dough can be stretched to a big disc shape, it won't tear, and won't stretch back to a smaller disc.

For long fermentation time, a high W value is desireable: W=280, 300 or 320 are common values. W is not always related to p/l values, and it can be undesrtood (informally) as "how much gluten the flour has". As gluten in a dough gets degraded with time, a lot of it is desired initially in the dough to assure there will be enough at the end of fermentation, several hours (or days, if refrigerated) later.

Forget about those 00 in Italian flours. It really only means the finesse of grounding. For pizza making I try to use strong flours with a p/l value close to 0.5, albeit I've also used strong bread flour with good results.

How can I get flours with those characteristics?

There are some specific pizza flours. Some Italian makers (with no specific order) are:

Caputo
Spadoni

You can see how W value is related to their recomended fermentation time.
5 stagioni

If you check the p/l value you'll see it's 0.6: right for pizza stretching.

If you can't get specific pizza flour, you can also try with flour specific for croissants, as they will also be strong and stretchy.

I've never eaten nor seen Chicago style pizza, so I can't help with flours specific for them, but I guess the guidelines given above should help.


How do chefs know when to start cooking each dish in a restaurant? At a restaurant, you frequently order starters and main courses simultaneously.

In almost all restaurants I have visited, main courses come comfortably after you have finished your starter and had your table cleared.

How is this timing arranged? I appreciate it may vary slightly from establishment to establishment. My ideas so far are:

Servers use the pos system to mark when a starter is finished
– this would make sense, except if they are cooking a dish from scratch its impressive its ready so quickly.
They time it a set number of minutes after the starter – this would give them time to prepare everything, however a slower table would receive a cold main course.

Different restaurants use different methods. In some cases, they may rely on the server to pace your meal. In this case, the server enters the order all at once, but then returns to the POS system to hit a button to "fire" the next course after the appropriate delay, which sends it to the kitchen to be prepared. Presumably, some POS systems (particularly for major chains with extensive processes) would now be smart enough to handle that delay automatically--but I'm not specifically aware.

In other cases, the ticket comes into the kitchen all at once, and the kitchen is responsible for timing courses. The expeditor or "expo" is in charge of getting food out at the right time, and coordinating to make sure food coming from different cooks/stations in the kitchen all gets delivered to the same table, together (if necessary) or in the right order. In this model, Expo receives the ticket, reviews the items and calls out to fire items at the right time. In this case, Expo can introduce the appropriate delay between courses. Expo also doesn't have to do this alone. They generally work the window where food passes from kitchen to dining room staff to be run to the table. This allows Expo to coordinate with a tables server to adjust timing if a table is eating particularly fast/slow.

One note on this detail of your question:

  if they are cooking a dish from scratch its impressive its ready so quickly.

Commercial kitchens that cook from scratch don't do end-to-end cooking at the time you order food. Prep is integral in commercial cooking, and ensures food is cooked quickly. Earlier in the day, things are washed, chopped, sliced, etc. Individual components are created, and sometimes even pre-portioned. Things may even be par-cooked if they tolerate par-cooking and being held in the refrigerator (ex, certain noodles). When you order, it's often more of an assembly, often with just the primary protein being cooked at moment.

Consistent prep also helps make cooking time consistent. This allows for the whole restaurant to know exactly how long items take to get to your table--which gets to your original question of how they manage to pace courses from the kitchen so you get your entree at just the right time after your appetizer.


Is time a factor in Caramelization? A lot of cooking involves caramelization, and I want to get a better understanding it. Does caramelization happen instantly when each sugar molecule reaches the correct temperature, or does the sugar need to maintain that temperature for a specific amount of time?

If it needs to maintain temperature, is there any way to estimate the amount of time needed before cooking?

Caramelization occurs at the melting point of sugar. When a sugar molecule hits the appropriate temperature, it melts. This is similar to ice turning to water above 32 F (0 C). It will take some time for all of a given amount of sugar to melt, but this is relatively insignificant compared to ice melting due primarily to the vast amount of heat involved to melt sugar. Once melted there is no need to maintain it at a specific temperature.

However, time is a factor in achieving the desired temperature for your melted sugar.

For sucrose:

At 356 F (180 C) you have light caramel - it's a pale amber to golden brown in hue
From 356 F to 370 F (180 C to 188 C) you have medium caramel - this is a golden brown to chestnut brown hue.
From 370 F to 400 F (188 C to 204 C) you have dark caramel - this is very dark, bitter, and smells a little burned - this is used for coloring only
At 410 F (210 C) you have monkey's blood - it tastes like burning and the sugar breaks down to carbon

Another thing to be aware of is that caramelization is often mistakenly attributed to the browning of meats, nuts, or bread crust. This is actually an entirely different process called the maillard reaction which requires specific enzymes to be present, and occurs at different temperatures than caramelization.


Can I sous-vide meat (at a temperature between 40ºF and 140ºF) for more than four hours? According to the USDA cooking chicken at 145ºF (63ºC) for 13 minutes (i.e. maintaining an internal temperature of 145ºF for that long) will bring about a "7 log10 relative reduction of salmonella".

A recent question made me wonder whether this can be considered safe for sous-vide applications where it takes 4+ hours to reach 140ºF since the FDA recommendation (which only applies to commercial kitchens) is that once food enters the 41-135ºF zone (5-57ºC), it should be "cooked and served" within 4 hours. The USDA rules for home cooks are much stricter recommending that food should not remain in the 40-140ºF (4-60ºC) zone for more than two hours.

I always imagined that food left in this, so called, danger-zone for too long has given bacteria time to multiply and produce enough toxins in the food for it to become dangerous.

Another idea occurred to me, that after four hours the bacteria count has risen enough that a significant number of bacteria will be present even after a 7 log10 reduction.

Frankly my first guess still seems most likely to me, but really I just don't know. If my second idea is correct, then it would presumably still be safe to eat meat left in the danger zone for 4+ hours, as long as it holds an internal temperature of 140ºF+ for some time longer than the USDA time-temperature tables otherwise suggest.

Can anyone say which, if any, of my guesses is correct? I think this is equivalent to asking whether there exists a type of bacteria that can produce a dangerous amount of toxins in food within four hours at temperatures between 40ºF and 140ºF.

Update: In earlier revisions of this question, I attributed the 4 hour rule to the USDA which caused an amount of confusion. As the text now states, the 4 hour rule is set by the FDA in their Retail Model Food Code and pertains only to cooking in commercial establishments. While I did find that the USDA guidance for school food authorities also has a 4 hour recommendation, this is no doubt because school kitchens can be placed on an equal footing with commercial kitchens.

There has also been some discussion regarding whether the USDA's 2 hour rule encompasses cooking time, or pertains only to time spent in the danger-zone during storage or preparation prior to cooking. For anyone interested in the details, please read the comments on this question and those on @Athanasius' answer.

This article may be a good starting place for some advice.  They consider a lot of the common microbes, not just Salmonella.  Assuming you get somewhere close to the 140F range for an extended period of time, you'll kill off most things.  Other things might only survive in spore form, so you might be okay eating the food while it's hot.

But care should be taken if you wanted to cool the food and heat at a later time, since a lot of spores means that they could become active again and multiply significantly if left in the so-called "danger zone" for very long.  Also, note that during the initial cooking, lots of bacteria will be competing, and the really bad stuff may not have a chance to grow much.  But after most are killed at higher temperatures, any cooling phase of the food will allow remaining spores to reactivate in an environment where they don't have to compete as much and thus often grow faster.  In many cases, it can sometimes be more dangerous to let cooked food sit at room temperature than to take a long initial time to cook.

Anyhow, the spores are not your concern for a long initial cooking time if you're planning to eat the food right away.  In that case, you need to worry about things that will generate persistent toxins.  The linked article mentions a couple: C. perfringens and S. aureus.

As the article points out, Clostridium perfringens will be killed in slow cooking by the time you reach 140F.  However, they don't seem to explicitly mention the enterotoxin produced by C. perfringens.  That toxin can be inactivated by further heating up to 165F, but that may not be desirable for all foods.  (That may be the reason why they don't mention the toxin -- they are assuming the turkey and stuffing will be at a minimum of 165F by the end of the roast.)  In any case, the article implies that you'd need to cook for roughly 10 hours to produce enough to be dangerous for "normal" C. perfringens.  (For the special quick-growing type mentioned in their source, it would grow twice as fast.)

Staphylococcus aureus, on the other hand, clearly would take a long time to grow.  They estimate even in ideal conditions, it would take about 15 hours to produce enough toxin to worry about.  Also, in raw food, they state that S. aureus typically does not grow much, since it doesn't do well competing against other spoilage microbes (e.g., Salmonella) that grow better but won't produce the same levels of persistent toxins.

For some reason, Bacillus cereus doesn't get a mention in this article (it's more common on grains but small amounts are usually found in meats too), and I think it's a potential concern with some foods.  My guess is that again B. cereus usually doesn't compete well against things like Salmonella and Campylobacter.  Looking up typical growth rates, it may not be an issue unless you had a high concentration to begin with.

As with other microbes (e.g., C. perfringens, C. botulinum) the more typical cause of food poisoning with B. cereus is the spores that survive after cooking.  When food is held for a long time in the "danger zone" (e.g., in buffets below 140F, at room temperature before refrigeration), these bacteria have a chance to revive from their spore form and produce persistent toxins.  The particular problem with B. cereus is that normal heating below boiling will not destroy that toxin, making even normal reheated foods a potential danger.

I only mention the spore issue because a higher population of these bacteria (grown during longer cooking) will produce more spores, which can potentially make cooling food down and reheating more dangerous.  These bacteria typically don't grow fast when in the presence of things like Salmonella, but in the more sterile growth medium post-cooking, they can really get going.  If you slow-cook for a long time, be really sure to handle leftovers properly.

But getting back to the main issue: what if you just plan to eat the food right after slow-cooking?  In that case, I think the original article I linked above implies that you're almost certainly safe even if you take up to 10 hours or so with the food between 50F and 130F.  Since most of the bacteria that produce persistent toxins don't grow well when competing against things like Salmonella, you're probably safe for even longer.  As they point out at the end of the article, food kept even as high as 55-60F will generally "spoil safe," partly due to competition among spoiling agents.  However, as you get into the range around 100F in cooking, you hit ideal growth temperatures for some of the more nasty stuff.

Personally, after I researched this stuff a while back, I'm willing to extend the limit to about 10 hours between 50F and 130F for my own cooking, as long as the food is ultimately held above 130F for a significant amount of time.  So, slow-roasting a chicken or turkey at 250F should be fine, and even 200F may be okay.  With such a slow heating process, though, I'd generally want the final temperature of the food to get to about 165F at a minimum -- to further reduce bacteria count and destroy some toxins.  If I intended a lower final temperature (e.g., 140F), I would tend to use a cooking method that gets the food up above 130F more quickly.  (Sous vide should do the trick in most cases.)

But I'd really start to get concerned when you go much beyond 10 hours in the "danger zone."  Chances are that you might even be okay taking 12-24 hours to get up to temperature in many foods, but it could be very risky for some foods/ingredients.  And then, the food must hit a higher temperature standard (at least 165F), which will destroy some potential toxins.  Go much more than a day in your cooking in the "danger zone," and you could even be growing significant amounts of botulism toxin, so your safe temp would have to go even higher to destroy that toxin.  Also, by that point, you may be growing all sorts of nasty stuff.

Whatever you do, don't follow the advice of self-proclaimed experts like the authors of Modernist Cuisine, who want to throw out all of the USDA regulations and rebuild a theory of food safety from scratch, apparently based on the authors' reading of only a couple papers on Salmonella death curves.  Salmonella death curves may be a good guideline for normal cooking methods and sous vide, but with extended slow cooking that allows a long time below 130F, you can grow all sorts of stuff that leaves behind persistent toxins.

In sum, I think the 4 hour "danger zone" thing is a rough guideline with a built-in safety margin (for people who leave the meat in the car for 45 minutes, etc.).  With proper food handling otherwise, in most cases, you should be able to push it to 8 or 10 hours with little chance of harm.  But the longer you go, the more potential hazards.  Do it at your own risk.

(Please note that although I have a lot of scientific training, I'm not a microbiologist, so there may be things I'm overlooking here.)


Xanthan Gum Use in Tamarind Chutney How much xanthan gum should be used to thicken a large 24 quart pot of hot tamrind chutney to get a smooth pourable tamrind chutney when we cool?  Currently use 2 lbs of corn starch but it spoils the taste of the chutney.

24 quarts would be about 23 kilos. Xantham gum is generally used for thickening in an amount of .15% to .5% by weight. So the expected range would be 34 to 115 grams. Start small, thickening with xantham gum can get snotty. Work up slowly, mixing thoroughly, until you reach the thickening you want. You may find that a combination of cornstarch and xanthan gum is ideal.


Onion salad goes wet and bitter I've been going to this indian restaurant that makes this fantastic onion salad, which is essentially small cuts of white and red onion, cucumber, tomato, garnished with mint leaves, coriander leaves and a pinch of garam masala. I tried to make it at home and the results are astoundingly different. They get wet, soft and slightly bitter; whereas the restaurant tastes sweeter, has a bit of a bite and it is dry-ish. Any idea how restaurants make the salad so tasty?

Cucumber << water, water, water +++
Tomatoes << water, water
Onion << water

Do you see how much water each of those main ingredients contain?

Let's take one at a time.

Onions:-

Fresh onions are not only have a high volume of water, also natrual chemicals that make strong pungent flavour. These chemicals (e.g. Sulphur) work quite well with oxygen in the air, resulting the bitterness.

In order to tone down the flavour and bitterness, soack the onions in ice water.
Another method is to add fresh lime juice immediately after slicing/dicing the onions.

Cucumber:-

Cut and remove the entire section of seeds. Now dice the cucumber.
Remember the little science projects about drawing out excess water from vegetables?
Soak Cucumber in ice water with little salt. (Perhaps you could refrain from adding salt to the final salad bowl, if the quantity used at this point suffice)

Same theory goes for making potato chips. Slice potatoes are soaked in water to draw out that extra moisture. No ricket science here though ;)

Tomatoes:-
Remove entire section of seeds. Dice them and add into your salad.

Garam masala has Fennel and Cineman, that has the sweetness. It's also possible restaurant adds in a bit of sugar. However, certain onion species are sweeter naturally.

To be frank, we don't use garam masala, mint or corriander. Insated you could have the following simple ingridients to make a heaven of a salad, if you may.

fresh :{cucumber, tomatoes, onion, spicy green chilli, black pepper, salt, lime}

Bon appetit!


Is eating cookie dough without egg safe? I enjoy eating raw cookie dough. As long as the dough doesn't have egg in it, is it safe to eat?

According the the current advice from the FDA, you should not eat raw dough, even if does not contain eggs. Apparently raw flour may contain E. coli.

  People often understand the dangers of eating raw dough due to the
  presence of raw eggs and the associated risk with Salmonella. However,
  consumers should be aware that there are additional risks associated
  with the consumption of raw dough, such as particularly harmful
  strains of E. coli in a product like flour.

  “Flour is derived from a grain that comes directly from the field and
  typically is not treated to kill bacteria,” says Leslie Smoot, Ph.D.,
  a senior advisor in FDA’s Office of Food Safety and a specialist in
  the microbiological safety of processed foods. So if an animal heeds
  the call of nature in the field, bacteria from the animal waste could
  contaminate the grain, which is then harvested and milled into flour.

  Common “kill steps” applied during food preparation and/or processing
  (so-called because they kill bacteria that cause infections) include
  boiling, baking, roasting, microwaving, and frying. But with raw
  dough, no kill step has been used.

https://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm508450.htm


Any methods to make prawns more "crunchy" (bite/tear off easily) I notice that my prawns does not really get bite/tear off easily based on the way I prepare and cook my prawns - I tear off the shell, put them on a bowl. When ready to cook, I just thrown them together with some lean meat (cow / pig) and cook. After cooking, I put them into noodles/spaghetti and cook once more.

I suspect that there are 2 shells for prawns but I can't seems to get the prawns more "crunchy" such a way that they can be bitten / tear off easily without using oil and flour.

Appreciate any suggestions offer.

Chewy or rubbery prawns are a good sign that you've overcooked them. As with other seafood, they don't take kindly to being overcooked. You should probably cook them separately, just enough, and then mix them into whatever you're eating them with.

You can use whatever cooking method you like; common ones include boiling, steaming, and stir-frying. Whatever you do, just make sure you don't do too much of it. Any cooking beyond done makes them worse.

Since you seem to prefer boiling: as soon as they're done, you should dump them into a colander and run cold water over them immediately afterward to stop them from cooking further. Cooking times vary depending on size; small shrimp take only a few minutes, while very large ones might take 5-10. They'll probably be pink and some will be starting to float; to tell for sure whether they're cooked you can cut one in half and make sure it's opaque all the way through.


Am I at risk for botulism? I am a little.paranoid because just today my son had some fried rice he was going to bring to school in a thermos like container. The food wasn't really that hot and I explained to him by the time he ate it it would be at room temp for almost 6 hours and he could get sick of he ate it. So not thinking I left the container at my house on the counter to throw away. I got distracted and didn't end up throwing it away until late the evening. So in total the food was in an air tight thermos at room temp for about 16 hours. I am worried that the amount of time in which  botulism could have grown? Of course I did not eat it but it it could have grown botulism and then in turn could be at risk of botulism spores forming that quickly? Because I did smell the food when I threw it away for some reason and now I am scared to have been exposed to spores. Also after rinsing out the container now I would have trace food on other dishes in the sink and normal washing would not kill the botulism? Just trying to see if me and my family are at any risk? Thank you!!

It doesn't sound like you have anything to worry about. It's very possible that botulism or some other organism grew in that time in those conditions, so you were right to throw the food away.

You can't get botulism or other foodborne illnesses from smelling food, you'd have to actually eat the food to get sick, which you wisely didn't do. Thoroughly cleaning the container will get rid of any contamination on it and make it safe to use again. I wouldn't worry about the sink personally, just give it a rinse afterwards.


Wood pellets in a smoke box: Can I use wood pellets in a small stainless steel smoker box on my Weber gas bbq? And if I can any tips on how to proceed.

As long as they are designed for cooking/smoking (not treated wood pellets that you made yourself), no problem.  If it were me, I would ignite a small portion and allow to burn for 5 to 10 minutes, blow out the flame, then add fresh pellets to the already burning portion (without smothering).


Fresh Chickens- resting after freezing We have about 13 whole chickens that we raised and butchered (first time). Unfortunately after hearing advice from countless friends and reading about how to, etc., no one mentioned the rest period.

As a result, all of our chickens went right into the freezer that evening. I only read about this after it was all said and done.

I have just taken out a chicken to rest it in the fridge.

My question is, will resting the chicken for 2-3 days in the fridge post-freeze suffice and relax the meat? Or, should I pressure cook the chicken? Are they salvageable at all?

I am really not looking forward to tough chicken.

Hoping to hear from someone who made this same mistake and was able to make it right!

So I wanted to offer an update for anyone who has run into this issue. I let the chicken thaw/rest in the fridge for 3 days (the first day was thawing). I then dry roasted it in the slow cooker for the night (Same effect as rotisserie cooking). It came out perfectly!

So for anyone who has NOT rested their meat before freezing there is hope and your meat is not ruined. I will try some other cooking methods to see if it was the resting post-freeze or the super slow cooking that tenderized it.


Ways/techniques to make things "fluffy/foamy" like whipped cream? In general, if you want to make something fluffy like whipped cream, what ingredients/techniques should you use?  Basically, I want, when you put it in your mouth, to almost be like eating flavored air.  Like eating the foam on a hot chocolate or beer.
I would like to make dipping sauces with this fluffy like texture.
Thanks!

There is no single, universal technique for making random food "fluffy". And you may have to live with significant changes in the recipe and in the final results if you try it.
Classically, you have three types of foams. One is fat-based, the other is protein-based, the third depends on sudden gas production/dissolving.
The fat-based foam is only possible in liquids which are an emulsion of fat in water, and only functions within a certain range of fat/water, a favorable temperature range, and a proper size of the fat globules. This is what whipped cream is. Besides cream, you can whip that way a few other things such as ganache or mayonnaise (although mayonnaise is a bit more complicated, since it also has protein). It is almost impossible to make at home an emulsion which will behave that way, you may succeed with lecithine and very good equipment (a lab-style homogenizer will be preferable over blenders and other kitchen staples), and you will be very limited in the ingredients you use.
The protein-based foam happens when proteins link. This is also possible with only a few ingredients in the kitchen, most notably egg whites, aquafaba, and, under the right conditions, milk (that's what cappuchino wands do). It is even more finicky than fat-based foam.
The third one is the (more-or-less sudden) release of gas. This is e.g. how beer foam happens. They are always very short-lived for liquids, although in principle a sponge cake and similar baked goods are a batter that has been set into this bubbled-up state by baking.
None of the three types above are applicable to a random liquid or sauce. They all require that you start with a known ingredient that creates foams, and whip it under the proper conditions, with the least amount of additions.
A fourth, more modern way, is to try forcing a gas into the liquid from outside. This is how soda stream works, or whipped cream siphons. This can in principle work with a wide variety of liquids, but you have to do quite some food engineering before the resulting texture is acceptable. Most liquids won't hold the foam as-is, if they whip at all, so you have to add a binding agent.
So, if you want to really make a random sauce into a foam, the way to do it will be to purchase a siphon (don't forget to invest into enough charging cartridges, you will need a lot for your experimentation) and a variety of gums and other binding agents. Then you will have to experiment to determine the proper binding agent (and the proper amount of it) for your sauce. Since you probably don't want to run many hundreds of experiments per sauce, it is advisable that you also get the proper literature on the functioning of binders, and gain some hands-on experience by first following existing, optimized recipes for foams. After that, you can start designing your own recipes, and will probably get away with a dozen or two of experimental runs per sauce, depending on your level of experience and how exact your expectations of the outcome are.


How do you store away freshly peeled and sliced potatoes? After peeling potatoes and slicing them to your desired size, how do I store them away?

The main problem with storing pre-cut potatoes is oxidation, where they start to turn brown from contact with the air.   To prevent this, store them submerged in water.  You can get about 24 hours, refrigerated, in this manner.

This is is how restaurants that do natural cut fries store the pre-cut fries.


How does grill/broil mode in a convection oven work? I'm looking to buy a new oven.

However, it does not have grill mode (broil, in US English) listed as one of the functions while other ovens may have grill mode advertised.

That being said, if I want to grill something in the oven I've linked, can it still be done?

You can do something approaching it, but it's less efficient.

Basically, you want to place the food close to the top element, and crank the heat all the way up.  An extra pan on one of the lower racks of the oven will help to deflect some of the heat coming in from the lower element.

For non-countertop models, you'll also want to leave the door propped open -- if you don't, the oven will heat up and cycle the elements off.

That being said ... the model of oven you linked to mentions "Independent upper and lower element temperature setting" ... so it might be possible to set the upper element on high while the lower one is off or at least on low.


Why do sprouted lentils take longer to cook than soaked lentils? I like sprouts, and I thought it would be a nice experiment to sprout my lentils before turning them into a tender soup, as I often do. I usually soak lentils for half a day, and then boil them with various spices for 30 minutes to an hour, until tender and soupy. So I expected that, since germination kind of pre-digests the organic compounds in the seed, the cooking times would be even shorter.

I had to cook them for 90 minutes to get them to be al dente, and I guess it would have taken them at least two hours to get soft. Has anyone had a similar experience with sprout, or does anyone know why this happens? My sprouting time was two days and a half, after the initial soak.

The biochemistry of the sprouting process is a little beyond me, but essentially the lentil converts stored energy (carbs) and protein into different proteins and fibre.

The new proteins are quite useful to our own biochemistry, which is why sprouted lentils are considered "better" for you.

It is the fibre, however, which causes the cooking time to be longer.
Generally, whenever something takes a long time to cook, it's because it has a lot of fibre in it. Conversely, fast food chains take as much fibre as possible out of the food, to shorten cook times.


Did I turn my frosting into mayonnaise? A few weeks ago I made a European-ish buttercream with roughly these ingredients:

4 large whole eggs plus two yolks;
~1.5 cups of white sugar;
~1T vanilla bean paste (I scraped out the rest of my jar);
5 sticks of salted butter (I like salted butter. Haters gonna hate.)

I beat it over a double-boiler until it was foamy, cooking it to at least 140F. Then I transferred it over to the stand-mixer, beat it until it was cool to the touch, added the butter bit by bit, and continued to beat it until soft and fluffy. It was perfect for my affogato cupcakes.

Half an hour ago, I made a lemon-polenta loaf, but I don't like powdered sugar glazes, so I thought I'd beat a bunch of lemon juice and lemon juice powder into some of the left-over vanilla buttercream living in my fridge. I did that, and the texture is weirdly reminiscent of mayonnaise. Not bad, just noticeable.

And when I thought about it, I realised it has all the necessary components. Eggs, oil (in this case just butter), and acid (about a tablespoon each of King Arthur lemon juice powder and fresh lemon juice). The eggs and oil were already emulsified, which seems to be the hardest part of mayonnaise-making, and I just beat the acid into my preexisting emulsion. Except for the vanilla and lots of sugar, it fits the definition (I think).

So my question is, could I, in fact have turned my fancy buttercream into mayonnaise? Or is this just a trick of texture? Is there any way I can tell for sure with a little I save out? If it's not mayonnaise, then why not?

Corollary-type question: If this is mayonnaise, would there be anyway to make a tart European-ish buttercream without it turning into mayonnaise...?

It might have the consistency of mayonnaise but so do many sauces, sweet or savory. If it tastes good to you, it's fine so use it.

What I do when I want a tart citrus taste (for many things, not just icing) is add citric acid crystals. I consider citric acid to be essential in a well-stocked kitchen. If you'd like it to taste like lemon or orange, add some finely grated peel of which ever you prefer. I find a slightly tangy orange flavored icing goes wonderful with chocolate cake.

I can't say how much citric acid to add as I rarely use a recipe. When you're adding butter and whipping the icing, I think that's the best time to add a little citric acid (and peel, if you wish). Start off with just 1/8 teaspoon and after incorporating it well, take a taste. Start adding it well before you've whipped in all the butter. Keep adding 1/8 teaspoonful at each time (or less when you think it's almost right). Keep track of how much you've added so you can write it down for next time. Use a little less if you include orange zest as oranges aren't meant to be as tangy as lemons. Personally, I like tangy taste to many foods.

I use salted butter in all my baking too and simply don't add any extra salt. I like salt. I've asked friends if they found it a little salty and no one said they did.


Black Rice Vinegar for Sushi Can I use black rice vinegar for sushi rice? (Chinkiang Vinegar)

What is the difference to white rice vinegar when making sushi?

Should I still add sugar and salt?

In fact, there is some precedent for this. 黒酢, romanized kurozu, is used in sushi at a a Tokyo restaurant called Kyo-zan, which claims to be the originator of the black vinegar sushi style.

It would likely be considered a novelty in Japan, but black vinegar was super-trendy about 6-8 years ago in Japan and all sorts of new uses, including sweetened, flavored versions meant to be diluted with water as a beverage, emerged.

There is even a product called sushi kurozu, which appears to be a diluted, sweetened form of black vinegar. Since rice vinegar is slightly diluted and sweetened for the purpose of making sushi, this seems like a reasonably un-shocking, although novel, possibility.

A recipe in Japanese suggests what appears to me to be a 3:1:1 ratio of black vinegar, mirin and sugar (estimated), plus some additional salt and dried kelp. Simmering all ingredients briefly then aging for a few days in the refrigerator would be best.

There is a history of certain vinegar substitutions in sushi, sometimes for visual effect. For example, ume-zu, which is not technically a fermented vinegar but is used as a somewhat salty, pinkish alternative to vinegar made from the remnants of pickled ume apricots, can be used partially for flavor and partially for its color. I've seen a number of apple vinegar sushi recipes online (in my experience, Japan-made apple vinegar tasted slightly milder than what we call apple cider vinegar in the US). I would not say it's a completely bizarre departure from tradition to experiment with different types of vinegar. For a Japanese palate, a novel vinegar choice would probably be less surprising than, say, the presence of cream cheese.


How to bake frozen breaded cod without breading sticking to alumnium foil? Context: I'm a poor and lazy college student. I have breaded frozen pieces of cod from costco. I like to bake them in my toaster-oven on aluminum foil to avoid having to clean the baking dish/tray. This brand (janes) is the only kind they have at costco and the problem is the center of the breading sort of sticks to the alumnium foil.

How can I avoid this? I've thought about applying a small quantity oil , but rather put the effort and money immediately into trying that, I'd like to consult the experts.

One possible work around is to put a couple of chopsticks between the foil and the fish so that there is no direct contact with the foil, a cheap rack. Or you can roll up some extra foil into little rods to achieve the same.

Protein-laden water seeps out of the fish and makes a glue between the fish and the foil. By raising the fish, you get some air currents and the glue is kept away from the fish. Cooking from frozen exacerbates this because initially all the heat goes into the frozen water to melt it without raising the temperature of the fish above freezing point. There is little evaporation going on at such low temperature.


What is the name for a chef's hat? I would like to know what the long hat that chef's wear is called.

Toque is what Google/Wikipedia proffer but is it really that?

Yes, it is called a toque.  I don't have a copy of CIA Pro Chef handy at the moment, but it was in the first chapter IIRC. Wikipedia and a casual googling will confirm this.


How can I make a carob coating? I want to make Italian Three color Christmas Cookies (like these: http://www.food.com/recipe/italian-tri-color-cookies-rainbow-cookies-147882 ). This kind of cookie is traditionally are covered in melted chocolate, but my husband and son are both allergic to chocolate. The last time I tried to melt carob chips, I discovered that carob doesn't melt (it was awful...). So... how can I make a carob coating for these cookies?

Melting carob is a bit different from chocolate.  The sugar crystal formation is not the same for tempering chocolate.  One suggestion is to add paramount crystals (which is a combination of palm kernel oil and soy lecithin) to help start/control the process.  I would also recommend not keeping the double boiler actually on the double boiler for the entire time.

Heat it up until some of the carob melts.  Remove from heat and stir.  Add it back to the heat and continue removing to stir as each bit melts a little more.  It takes longer but it allows you to control the heating and crystallization process.

End the end, you should have a smoother and more even end result.


What is the difference between cooking at low temperature and sous vide in a plastic bag? Why do you sous vide in a vacuumed bag, which is more complicated than just cooking your meat or vegetable at a low temperature while being in contact with the water? Does it loose taste?

While sous vide does mean "under vacuum," much of the cooking is done in plastic zip lock bags with no vacuum, but with the air squeezed out. The critical element is precise temperature control that you achieve with an immersion circulator. You could certainly cook this way by dumping your vegetables or meat right into the water itself. The problem is that most of the immersion circulators on the market today, would not handle the contamination of the water.  They would get greasy or accumulate food particles and their performance would degrade or they would stop working. There is also the issue of losing flavor to the cooking water, which you point out. You can also achieve this level of precise temperature control with many combi-ovens, thus eliminating the need for water and bags, but most are cost prohibitive for the home cook. Another pricey, but excellent option is a temperature controlled induction burner, such as the Breville Control Freak.  This would allow the same temperature accuracy without the plastic bags, and also provide the ability to use any liquid for cooking.


How to evenly portion chapati dough? A major part of our diet is wheat chapatis/Indian bread.

After we knead the dough for our chapatis, what apparatus or mechanism can we use to ensure that the pieces we use for making individual chapattis are of exactly same size/shape/weight?

Even portions means same weight: a scale is the tool of choice here.

Bakers that want equal sized products just weigh the individual portions, then proceed from there.

The shaping / rolling of chapatis was already discussed in this Seasoned Advice post. Or you could use a press1 to shape them.

If you are thinking of a larger scale of production, there are hydraulic chapati presses1 or even (semi-)automatic machines1 on the market, that shape chapatis of the same thickness out of equal sized (= weighed!) portions.

1 No affiliation or recommendation, just random samples from the Internet!


Can an American substitute for garam masala be made? I love Indian food and have been experimenting with curry recipes, and many of them ask for 'garam masala'.  I know it's a spice mix but I can't find it for sale anywhere around me.  I've also read that the mix varies from region to region so I'm not even sure what I would order if I wanted to get it online.

I prefer yellow/sweet curries and Indian food (like korma), can anyone recommend a spice blend that is similar, or should I break down and order it on the internet?

Garam masala is a catch-all term for an Indian spice blend. It has no fixed recipe but is likely to contain a combination of cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, bay, black pepper, star anise, dried chillies, coriander, cumin and maybe more or less. Blends vary according to family tradition and region. Spices are then dried out and possibly roasted, before being ground to dust.

The downside is that if you find garam masala hard to find you may well find the components equally tricky to source. In the UK we are spoiled by a wealth of Indian grocers who stock these ingredients in reasonably-priced quantities. These spices are also readily available in any supermarket due to our historic connection to India.

For a starting point that aims towards the curries that you have specified, I would combine 20g cloves, 50g cardamom seeds, 100g cinnamon sticks, 5 bay leaves, 75g black peppercorns, 100g coriander seeds and 100g cumin seeds. Some toast the seeds in a dry pan but to avoid scorching and to squeeze out all the moisture I use the Heston Blumenthal technique: dry-roast the spices in a very low oven (100C / 212F) for an hour and leave to cool. Blitz to powder in a coffee or spice grinder. I would recommend storing for up to 6 months in an airtight jar to preserve its punch.

Remember this is only a starting point and can be completely customised according to how you like your curries.


Better ways to drain tofu in a hurry? So far the best way I've found to make tofu taste good is to exchange as much of the water in it for liquid carrying flavor. In order to do that of course you need to get the water OUT. The age old wrap it in tea towels and let it set with some weight on it just doesn't seem compatible with our kitchen (very small, with little counter space) or our family (has a active toddler that gets into everything).

The best way I've found to date is:

freeze the tofu (in it's container) until it's rock hard. (at least 2 nights)
Let the tofu thaw in the fridge until it's completely thawed through. (at least 2 days)
slit the package open along one long side, poke a hole on the opposite side for air to get in and and allow the block to drain into the sink.
compress the package (over the sink) with your hands (if it's the soft plastic vacuum packed kind)
take the block of tofu out of the package and slice it on my cutting board into slices 1/2" thick (or whatever size I need for the dish in question if they're smaller)
place the slices on an upside down plate, place another plate upside down atop it (bottom to bottom - our plates have a flat, sealed bottom so they're food safe.)
hold the plate and tofu sandwich above the sink and lightly squeeze with a hand on both sides until liquid stops coming out.

The problems with this are:

have to plan ahead, if I didn't take the block of tofu out of the freeze two days ago, we're not eating it for dinner tonight.
there's a seriously noticeable texture change, which in and of itself isn't bad, it's just not something you want with every dish.

So what other methods are folks using for draining blocks of tofu in a hurry?

EDIT: the main thing I'm looking for here is speed... this is for those "oh crud, we forgot to plan ahead for diner tonight!" moments.

My time pressed tofu draining method is the microwave.

You slice it into the size pieces you wan then there are two different ways I have used:

1) Microwave it for about two minutes. Water leaks out onto the plate, which you drain then microwave it for a couple more minutes. Keep doing this until it stops leaking out water.

2) Microwave once for three minutes then place over a colander to rain.

The multiple time method works slightly better (more through draining) but once plus draining is easier.


How to layer a Lasagne I have a made a number of meat lasagne's that taste great (IMHO) but I have always had a problem getting them to preserve that "layered" effect. When it is cooked and even partially cooled the first slice out of the pan and it practically turns to goulash.

I would love some advise on this.

I've always done a layer of bechamel, pasta, meat, pasta, meat, pasta, meat, pasta, bechamel, cheeses (mozzarella and parmesan, from bottom to top). If you put the cheese in the middle the liquid in it (especially in the mozzarella) won't evaporate and you will have sloppy lasagne.

The other factor is the liquidity of your sauce - a thicker, meatier sauce is better for lasagne so it keeps its shape.


Why didn't guava ripen after being stored in the fridge? I'm fairly new to guava, and was thinking it was strange that the color of the guava didn't change after leaving them out for a week so I could eat the other pack. The guava turned brown on the outside, but didn't yellow at all.
Why did this happen?
How should I keep guava if one pack is being eaten, while the other pack is being kept to eat after?

From epicurious (I love their YouTube channel):

You can buy hard, green guavas and allow them to ripen at room temperature. Placing them in a paper bag with a banana or apple will allow them to ripen faster. Guavas may be treated with edible wax to delay the ripening process, so you may want to rinse them off to speed ripening.


My Yakisoba came out bitter! How can I reduce the bitterness? We made this Yakisoba recipe last week, but the noodles came out tasting more bitter than we'd like.  I added soy sauce to mine, but that mostly just drowned out the bitterness.

What can we do with this recipe to make it less bitter?  I like Yakisoba, so I want to try to make it work rather than having something different.  But I'm afraid that if I add something (like sugar) it would change the recipe's flavor too much.

I'm at a bit of a loss providing advice on this issue because I've never heard of it (short of burning the ingredients in the dish). There's a very, very slight bitterness in proper ramen-style noodles because of the alkali content of kansui (potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate or bicarbonate in water solution), but in typical noodles of reasonable quality I would expect the bitterness to be lower than, say, the outer skin of a pretzel.

To me it sounds like you've stumbled on poor quality noodles, or you're hypersensitive to the very mild alkali content. You might consider looking for Chinese egg noodles instead, which have a similar color but may have less or no kansui, or you might try a completely different noodle, such as udon, and make yaki-udon instead. Alternatively, consider trying a different brand of noodles, or a different form (dry instead of refrigerated, frozen instead of dry, etc.) One local brand of refrigerated noodles meant for yakisoba available where I live (Seattle) has been so inconsistent in quality for me that I skip it and go straight to the (probably imported) frozen ones in our market. (Dry ones will require brief boiling), but in my case our complaint was about texture, not bitterness. Switching out for a different supplier may resolve your issue.

ETA: It occurs to me that if you were starting from dry noodles, you may encounter rancidity with unusually old ones. That's a bit more aggressive than just bitterness, but I've seen it on occasion with long-forgotten packaged noodles; it was obvious before cooking, though, so I've just tossed them.


How do I control the shape of my spheres? I've been experimenting with reverse sphereification this week.  The results... well, the results remind me that even the professionals have to practice.

How do I control the tension of the alginate shell, so that it can maintain a round shape when bearing its own weight?  In other words, how do I get marbles instead of egg yolks?

What you need to do is experiment with the height from which you drop them. Too low and there isn't enough time to form a sphere. Too high and you get too big a splat.


Why do American supermarkets only carry lamb and not mutton? When I go to the supermarket I do not see much, if any, mutton, just a lot of lamb.

So, I have postulated some possible explanations:

mutton (the meat of a sheep) is being sold as "lamb",
mutton tastes weird to Americans so all of it is exported,
mutton tastes weird to Americans so it is turned into dog food,
all adult sheep are only used for wool and are then retired and put out to pasture where they live out their retirement years playing pinochle and shuffleboard.

What's the explanation, why is there is so little mutton and so much lamb meat?

It's not just American supermarkets that rarely carry mutton, this situation is similar across the Anglosphere, and I suspect most Western countries too (or at least those without a strong mutton culture). The reason is largely economic. Mutton is expensive and not as tasty as lamb.

First, the immediate reason is that nobody really eats mutton anymore. Yes, there are certain locales, cultures and movements still eating mutton or are trying to bring it back, but today, on aggregate, the demand for mutton is near zero. According to the USDA:

  The U.S. market for lamb and mutton has weakened throughout the decades. Since the 1960s, per capita consumption has dropped from nearly 5 pounds to just about 1 pound. This drop is due in part to declining acceptance of lamb from a growing segment of the population, as well as competition from other meats, such as poultry, pork, and beef. Most meat is sold as lamb and comes from animals under 14 months old.

Here's a per-capita consumption graph:

If nobody buys mutton, supermarkets don't sell them. The supply chain for meats is pretty complex; it's not something that a store manager can just decide one day to order a batch and shelve to see if it sells. Meat needs to be slaughtered and deboned in an abattoir, butchered either in store butcheries or at centres (unless you fancy buying an entire, 50kg cut), and displayed in refrigerated sections. If there's enough local demand for mutton then maybe individual supermarkets can carry them, just as meats like rabbit, duck or kangaroo is sometimes sold at a few supermarkets.
But why don't people eat mutton? People just don't like it. It is an inferior good.

  Mutton comes from older animals and is often less expensive but less desirable to consumers. (USDA)

.

  As can be seen, the average income elasticities across the studies are 0.77 for
  beef, 0.24 for lamb, -0.65 for mutton, 0.47 for chicken and 0.48 for pork.

(Negative income inelasticity = inferior good) That is, as incomes grow, as they have over this timeframe, people want to buy less of it.
Lamb is a superior substitute for mutton. Anecdotally, compared to lamb, mutton is gamier, tougher, and harder to cook. Economically, lamb and mutton have high cross-price elasticity - if one's price grows, demand shifts to the other, indicating that they are substitutes. And the real killer is...
Mutton prices have grown faster than lamb.

Mutton is still cheaper than lamb, but in relative terms it has become more economic to raise and sell lamb. There are multiple market forces at play: the cost of raising the sheep past lamb age, the efficiency of raising lambs (i.e. increased lamb weight), the growth of dairy leading to higher beef supply, the relative decline in wool reducing mutton supply and so on. You'll have to ask a farmer.

Source: Changing Pattern of Meat Consumption in Australia by Lucille Wong, E A Selvanathan and Saroja Selvanathan

Update: didn't notice that the graph was price indices and not actual prices


Beef Barley Soup with too much wine I put too much red wine in and it tastes like tomato and wine. I need more of the rich beef flavor back but it is a little salty, will low salt beef stock fix it?

Simmer it a while first. Red wine mellows a lot with cooking. A beef base like Better Than Bouillon can add more beef flavor without diluting the stew.

You might find that the stew is better the next day. So I would simmer it for an hour or so today, refrigerate it overnight, and then consider beef broth or base tomorrow.

Since you are going to simmer the soup, consider adding diced potatoes to deal with the "saltiness".

As long as you keep it at a simmer, you won't kill the barley or beef. Don't let it hard boil.


How to add lemon flavor to tea? I am trying to add lemon flavor to tea so that it has ginger and lemon flavor to a noticeable extent. If we boil tea water with ginger, the ginger flavor can be brought almost to the way it is okay.
But I am having trouble adding the lemon flavor to tea. If I use lemon juice just before drinking tea, it makes tea sour, which is not acceptable.
Another way I tried is that I used the lemon peel, a chunk of it, but the tea became bitter. Note that the tea already contains ginger and it has no sugar.
Is there any other way to add lemon flavor to tea without changing the flavor of this non-sweet, ginger tea?

The white rind of the lemon is what causes the bitter flavour. To get simply the lemon flavour you just want the zest. Use a zester, microplane, or fine grater to scrape off only the yellow bit of the peel and nothing white and you'll get a lovely lemon flavour without the bitterness or sourness.


85% hydration tangzhong sourdough bread - what went wrong? I tried Foodgeek's 85% hydration tangzhong sourdough bread recipe (video here, text here). I only made 2 changes to the recipe:

I used 100% bread flour (no whole wheat).
I don't have a banneton, so I put the shaped loaf in a small rectangular storage container to proof overnight. When I pulled it out of my fridge in the morning it looked like a puddle of dough with no structure. It also didn't seem to grow much if at all.

As you can see, I wound up with a flat, dense hockey puck that is practically raw inside. I don't think the picture even quite conveys how inedible this is. Any idea what went wrong?

It's hard to say exactly what went wrong, I've worked with plenty of high hydration doughs and sourdoughs so I have a few ideas though. I can see from your picture that you did get yeast action in your dough, with lots of holes and good structure, so you did something right, probably most of it.

Shape

Firstly, whole wheat flour absorbs more water than white flour, so by substituting white for the whole wheat you increased your hydration. 85% is already very high, this would have added a couple of percentage points to that, which changes your consistency. Next time I'd reduce the water a small amount to compensate.

High hydration doughs are tricky to work with, you need the right equipment at the right stages. Very high hydration doughs do not hold their shape, and tend to pool out if they aren't supported by something, just as you saw. That's normal, and a sign that perhaps you are a bit over-hydrated. Even if you had a proofing basket it's very possible this would have lots its shape right away.

These doughs are also are extremely sticky, and easy to knock the air out of. When you put it in a container to proof overnight it would have adhered to the sides, if you were rough with it getting it out you may have bashed some air out of it. Be gentle, use oiled hands and an oiled scraper to free it up.

Density

I think you had a good amount of air left though from your picture, I suspect a big reason for your dense loaf is that your oven was dry. Sourdough crusts form quickly in a dry oven and are very thick, I think what happened is that your crust dried out and prevented the loaf from being able to spring. Sourdough and high hydration doughs need to spring a lot, if they can't spring they get a consistency that is very dense and you get a raw dough consistency as you describe.

To resolve this you need a moist oven to start. Get your oven up to temperature and put a pan with plenty of hot water in it a good 15 minutes before you put your bread in to bake. Open the door, get it in quick, close the door most of the way and then squirt some water in with a spray bottle before closing all the way. Let it bake in your moist oven until it the spring stops and it stabilizes in size and shape for awhile, this is usually about 60% of your baking time, then remove the pan of water and finish baking in a dry oven.

Safety Note: When you open the door of a moist oven keep back as the steam will billow out. It's probably not enough to burn you, but it certainly isn't comfortable!

In Summary, reduce your water a bit to help improve the shaping, and bake in a moist oven to start to allow it to spring and fix your density problem.


Roasting rack? I'm stumped as to what this is....Help! :) A friend gave me a bunch of her old inherited cooking accoutrement and I'm not entirely sure what the function of this is.  Anyone know?

The rack on the right looks just like a rack to hold tacos. See the below image:


What are some good reasons for why people make homemade pasta? What are some good reasons for people to make their own pasta? Does it make it cheaper? Does it taste any better?

Pros

Any colour you like (even black). With some machines you can make rainbow stripes just like toothpaste tubes do
Any consistency you like, and more or less eggs, or just egg yolks. Add baking soda or Kansui to make stronger, more shape-able pasta (not more than 0.5% or it tastes soapy in a sauce)
Any flavour you like (herbs, spices, extracts, extra egg'y ...)
Any flour you like (wholemeal and buckwheat is my favourite)
Any shape you like, make lasagne sheets to fit your favourite lasagne pan, or make your own extruder dies (not trivial, but possible)
Easier and quicker to cook
Extruder machines give your arms a great work out
Fun to do with children, and educational
You control what ingredients go into it (more and more commercial pasta are including 'weird' ingredients for no reason I know of?)

The extruder you want :-)

Cons

Expensive to make if you account for your time (you should)
Flour is flour. The base tastes more or less the same
Large amount of time to make decent pasta, especially in tricky shapes
Pasta machines can be hard to clean
Special hardware (roller, drying racks, extruder etc.) required for anything but the basic flat noodles


Normal lifetime of non-stick teflon pans Questions such as Are Non-Stick Bread Pans Destined to Fail? conclude that non-stick pans do not last forever, especially cheaper ones. I am trying to find some information that allows me to quantify this to some extent.

I normally use teflon non-stick pans some 3 times a week. I only use wooden and plastic tools on them, never metal ones. For some dishes, however, it is necessary to exert some rather punctual pressure (through the food) on the pan's surface, as well as dishes that require quite some oil (sometimes added in between, i.e. while the pan is heated) even in non-stick pans in order to not stick.

In my experience, my teflon pans live for some 3 to 4 years before they start showing some minor, but visible blank spots of one or a few mm² where the teflon has disappeared. Which is when I start considering looking for a new pan.

At my usage rate, is this within the expected lifetime range of teflon pans? or, asked more generally, What is the approximate expected lifetime for teflon-coated non-stick pans?

America's Test Kitchen says that good quality nonstick pans last them about six months.

They're presumably cooking with them several times a day, so if you use it once every couple days, and are as good as they are about not doing things that'll damage the coating, you might get a few years. So your experience sounds roughly normal.

As another data point, they also quote the Cookware Manufacturers Association: "'If you get a year to a year and a half of life out of [a new nonstick pan], we think you got a pretty good deal.'" That's coming from people interested in selling pans, possibly not talking about the best quality, and with experience based on typical less-careful usage, so I'm not surprised they gave a lower number.


What is the white substance floating in my fresh mozzarella brine? I purchased fresh mozzarella bocconcini from Whole Foods six days ago. The mozzarella is sold in a brine solution. I opened the package when I bought it and have kept it refrigerated since, using the original packaging and brine solution. Today, I opened the package again to see some white substance floating in the brine as shown below. The mozzarella smells fine, and based on eating one bite, also tastes normal.

What is this substance, and is my mozzarella still safe to eat?

Those are just milk solids.

Quality mozzarella is sold floating in whey, the leftover liquid from making cheese.  While most of the milk solids are gone from the whey -- that's what the cheese is made from -- not all of them are.  As such, some will coagulate in the fridge, floating on top of the whey.

Now, if the floaters were any color other than white, or if they were fuzzy, that would mean mold.  But those are really just cheese bits.


Are ripe meyer lemons supposed to be soft? At the grocery store they were selling meyer lemons in mesh bags, they all seemed to be much softer than an ordinary lemon. Are meyer lemons supposed to be a very soft fruit? just touching them lightly was like I was squeezing a rubber ball, I can't even think of another fruit that would have that much give.

They should be quite a bit softer than a standard Eureka lemon, because the skin is much thinner. That said, it shouldn't be like a gentle squeeze causes your finger to sink in 1/2 an inch. If that happens, I think you've found a batch that are too old and have started to get mushy or lose moisture. Keep looking for good ones - Meyer lemons are terrifically fragrant, floral and mild.


How long should I let my tea cool before adding unpasteurized honey to it? I like having my tea with honey.

I always buy unpasteurized honey rather than pasteurized honey, to benefit from the healthful enzymes it contains that are destroyed by the pasteurization process.

I have heard that unpasteurized honey should not be heated to a very high temperature, because that will (just like pasteurization) destroy the enzymes.

So, my questions are:

What is the temperature to which it is safe to  heat unpasteurized honey without destroying the enzymes in it?
Is there a rule of thumb for how long I should let my tea cool to reach this temperature? I do not add anything else (like milk) to the tea that would accelerate the cooling.

Well, after a cursory look online, it looks like the honey shouldn't be heated above 95 degrees Fahrenheit, or what a "natural temperature" of a bee hive would be. Assuming you're drinking black tea, you are boiling the water, so it starts off at around 212 degrees Fahrenheit (near sea level). How long it will take for the tea to cool will depend on what the tea is in and how cool the room you are in is. So, in other words, there really isn't a rule of thumb for the cooling part since the environment the tea is in will dramatically affect how long it takes to cool.

I'd just use a thermometer and check it the first couple of times you make the tea.