Can I swap sabji Masala for Tandoori Masala in this recipe? thought I'd ask more experienced cooks on their advice for this recipe. Found it a while back on a Suhana sabji masala box. I made it and turned out fantastic. I want to make it again but I have all but the sabji masala and instead have tandoori masala.  Is it possible to switch? I understand it would taste different but I'm wondering how different.

1 potato diced
2 medium Onions-chopped
1/2 cup of cauliflower florets
1 medium bell pepper
1 tbsp sabji masala < *
1/2 tbsp chili powder
1/4 tumeric powder
1/2 cup of water
3 tbsp of oil

Spice mixes tend to vary quite a lot from recipe to recipe. If you go to an Indian shop and compare a few brands of tandoori masala (or search online for different recipes) you'll probably notice that there are quite large differences in both the quantity and types of spices used. I've tried a few packaged tandoori masala and have tried a few recipes and they can definitely vary quite a bit in flavour. I'm sure the same is true of the sabji masala.

In all likelihood, most of the spices would be present in both mixes. Without knowing the specific spices used in your mixes, however, it's hard to say exactly what would be different. Some spices are quite distinctive - i.e. the sabji masala might have fenugreek leaves (kasoori methi) which have a pronounced flavour, but then again, some tandoori masalas also include it.

Whatever spices used, I think the tandoori masala will work fine in the recipe.


Egg Whites Won't Stiffen I was making Waffles the other day, and was whipping egg whites in a plastic Tupperware, but after an extremely long time, they hadn't stiffened. I looked in the special help section of my cookbook to find out why and I noticed that it says that egg whites can be beaten in glass or metal, but not plastic.

Does anyone know why this happens?

It is virtually impossible to get every last trace of grease/oil out of plastic containers.

Egg whites will not whip with even the slightest trace of oil/grease anywhere in the bowl, on the beaters, etc.

Ergo, plastic and whipped egg whites do not go together.


Difference between parsley and coriander(cilantro)? A lot of falafel recipe calls for both chopped coriander/cilantro and parsley. Online images look the same to me. Is there a difference between the two? Would omission of one drastically change the flavor?

Coriander leaf/cilantro looks VERY similar to flat leaf parsley. When I have both at the house I sometimes resort to smelling them to know which is which.

Cilantro is very strong smelling, and you'd definitely change the flavor of the dish if you left it out.

Flat leaf parsley is significantly more subtle and has a much milder flavor and scent. It is not flavorless, and in a recipe that calls for a lot of it, you'd really be missing something by leaving it out.

When you've got a recipe that calls for both parsley and cilantro, you're definitely going to be more able to taste/smell the cilantro more than parsley, but they'll both contribute different notes. If you have to leave one out, leave out the parsley, but don't try to make up the volume with more cilantro, as you may wind up overpowering your dish. Just leave the parsley out and proceed as normal.

Do not use curly leave parsley in anything--it is tough and virtually flavorless. It is ONLY a garnish and not worth wasting your time on.


Worried about my Buddha hand rind ferment I am testing out the Buddha hand fruit ferment.
I washed everything well, cut the rind and poured honey water in the jar and sealed it tight. I opened it one day and it bubbled for a few minutes very strongly. I put the top back on and now there is a white film on top of the liquid and I am not sure what or if something went wrong.

First and foremost, you shouldn't seal anything fermenting because it could accumulate too much pressure and fail in a potentially explosive manner (as with this unfortunate accident https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/glass-carboy-explosion.517237/).

Also, white films forming on top of fermenting beverages usually means that an infection got hold (and the fermentation vessel, if not made of glass, usually will harbor these bugs from now on and infect the next batches). A good ressource here : https://www.homebrewsupply.com/learn/is-my-batch-infected.html

It's not uncommon in fruit based fermentation if everything isn't frozen then pasterized. Regarding if it's drinkable, it would need a proper identification of the bugs you got in there, but folks over at https://alcohol.stackexchange.com/ might be a better fit to answer this kind of question. Stay safe!


How do I make a Turkish Delight Syrup I made turkish delight ice cream but the bits of commercial sugar coated turkish delight I folded through were rock hard when frozen and a possible problem for unsuspecting guests.  So, I was wanting a solution and thought maybe making a thick sauce or a much softer turkish delight may be the answer and folding that through after churning.  Any advice on how to fix this please.

I would make a stock syrup including some liquid glucose to discourage crystallisation, then flavour it with rose water and give it some colour with red/pink gel food colouring. You should then be able to fold it through to make a Turkish Delight Ripple ice cream.


Difference between baking a cake in cooking range and microwave oven I don't know much about the difference between cooking range and oven. But I just want to know what difference must be made to bake a cake using a cooking range.
I used to bake cakes in a microwave oven in micro+convection mode at 200 degree celsius. For that I preheat the oven at 200 degree for 15 minutes and then place the cake batter in the oven for another 15 minutes. And that cake used to come out really good.
But now I am using an electric cooking range that uses a gas cylinder. It has a knob to adjust the temperature and an option to grill. And inside it has holders at three different heights to place the tray. I don't know the exact word to describe my cooking system. Anyway all I want to know is what should be done to make the exact cake recipe which I tried in micro+convection mode at 200 degree?For what duration should I bake and at which height should I place the tray?

A range (also knows as cooker in some places) is a free-standing kitchen appliance with a cooktop (hob) on the top and an oven below. The oven sounds like a conventional gas oven and not a fan assisted (convection) oven. An oven will give you much better cakes than a microwave, you just need to get used to how your oven cooks.

Most recipes are written to be used in an oven and not a microwave convection oven, so for cooking times and temperatures you should simply go back to the recipe temperature and time for a guide. If the recipe is not available then you will need to do some trial and error. 200C seems a bit high to me, you could end up burning the outside and having the inside overdone. Many cakes are baked between 160 to 180C depending on the type and thickness, so for a conventional (non-fan) oven I would split that down the middle and go for 170C, (155 for a fan oven) and up the cooking time to 20-30 minutes. Try the middle rack your first time cooking in the oven.

One thing I would recommend is getting an oven thermometer. Many ovens, especially older ones, do not cook at the temperature you set, and can be much hotter or colder than you want leading to bad results. An oven thermometer will tell you how hot your oven actually is inside so you can set it properly.


Is butternut squash with veins OK to eat? I had two butternut squash sitting on counter for 2 months. One is the usual bright orange inside but the other had white veins. I think it is the low humidity in Arizona allowing the starch to seep out of the flesh. This happens to a lot of my longer kept produce like cantaloupe. Any other ideas? Thanks!

I know this is old but figured if you come across this again.
Squash generally last about one month after they are harvested. If the inner flesh contains any dark or mushy spots, discard it immediately.
I have had some white veins in my squash but they were just harvested and it tasted just fine.  Being that they are at 2 months old I would not risk it.


Buttermilk substitute? I've got a recipe that calls for some buttermilk, but none on-hand. Is there some way I could use some common ingredient(s) as a substitute?

There are a few possibilities:

1 cup milk plus 1 Tbsp lemon juice or white vinegar, let stand for 10 minutes
1 cup milk plus 2 tsp cream of tartar, let stand for 10 minutes
2 parts plain yogurt to 1 part milk
Plain, low-fat yogurt
Sour cream
Molasses (if batter requires baking soda)

I have used the first two with success.

Source: Cook's Thesaurus


I love palm sugar, when can I bake with it I am a huge fan of Palm sugar and have taken to substituting a bit of it into some of my baking recipes. However I have been hesitant to involve it too much in certain steps of the baking process like when yeast is proofing, or when making dough, or in frostings.

Is palm sugar a viable substitute for granulated sugar or brown sugar? What kinds of baking steps can I experiment substituting it in without changing texture and quality too much?

Yes, absolutely you can.  However, you may need to make adjustments.

First, there's water content.  Palm sugar has a relatively high water content out of the cake, almost 4%.  That's compared to less than 2% for brown sugar, and about 0.4% for white granulated sugar.   So you'll need to adjust the water content of your recipes accordingly.

Also, palm sugar won't brown the same way other sugars do.  Particularly, white granulated sugar is good for crispy baked goods because it melts well without giving off water, and you won't expect that effect from palm sugar. Further, since you generally need to grate palm sugar yourself, it won't have the large crystals like granulated sugar does.

Overall, I'd suggest that you'd get the best results substituting palm sugar into recipes that call for brown sugar, and otherwise into recipes for cakes, rolls, muffins, and similar things that don't rely on the sugar's texture.


How can I get more lime flavor into my key lime cake recipe? I found a great recipe for key lime cake, but it seems to lack the key lime flavor I am looking for. It has lime zest and juice in it, still a great cake, but it seems not enough lime kick to it.

My daughter who loves lemon cake thought of a great idea a couple years ago to knock the lemon flavor out of the park. I'm sure it would work for lime too: make a lime syrup and pour it into the bottom of the cake after poking it all over with a thin skewer. The more lime you like, the more syrup you use. As a bonus, it also adds some moisture to the cake.  Note that you may need to refrigerate the cake after this step (if it lasts more than a few hours).


How do you know that the cast iron seasoning does not leach into your food? It is well established in the scientific literature that those cooking on stainless steel cookware get a portion of their daily iron intake from the iron in the pan that makes it into the food:

Geerligs, Brabin, and Omari, Food prepared in iron cooking pots as an intervention for reducing iron deficiency anaemia in developing countries: a systematic review, J Hum Nutr Diet. Aug 2003, Vol. 16, Num. 4, pp. 275-81.
Kollipara and Brittin, Increased iron content of some Indian foods due to cookware, American Dietetic Association. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Vol. 96, Num. 5 (May 1996)
Kuligowski and Halperin,
Stainless steel cookware as a significant source of nickel, chromium, and iron, Arch. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. (1992) Vol. 23, Num. 211.

For most people that's not a bad additional nutrient, and those who saw family use a stainless steel pan surviving a lifetime know that the lost steel will not wear a pan out, not even after decades of use.

I'm now giving up on finding a tri-ply skillet whose bottom will remain perfectly flat. Since I cook on ceramic, a cast iron skillet is a good option. I'm hoping this would lead to steaks cooked perfectly evenly.

Suppose I'll use the cast iron skillet for literally just steaks, I'm concerned about the burned fat from the skillet's seasoning that will leach out to the steaks—in analogy with what happens when cooking in stainless steel cookware.

When you cook with cast iron, how do you know that some of the fat from the food you're cooking makes it to the skillet, but never the other way around. How do you know that the burnt pan "seasoning" does not make it into your food? Without some kind of confirmation that the burnt pan seasoning is safe, it would be nice to confirm that this does not occur in even trace amounts?

I'm guessing that deglazing the pan after cooking steaks would only increase the chance of this leaching in the undesirable direction. Hints for safe deglazing are also welcome.

update: A possible litmus test to determine potential leaching is to wipe with a paper towel.

Have you ever had the experience, when cooking in stainless steel, of the oils browning onto the edges of the pan?  You know, the brown gunk that is really tough to clean off...it usually takes a scrub pad, some elbow grease and some abrasive cleaner.  That is polymerized oil.  The idea behind seasoning a cast iron pan is to create a surface of polymerized oil. It's not burnt oils. It is really a pretty tough surface when done correctly.  On top of that you would typically add some fat (for example when searing), though that might not be necessary depending on your cooking method.  The idea that the seasoning would somehow contaminate your food is hard to imagine.  A well seasoned cast iron pan will generally hold up to deglazing...and even a light washing with soap and water.  This is how I think about it as an informed cook.  I would welcome a more informed response from any one with expertise in the actual science.


Making clarified butter by removing water but not the milk solids? People say that clarified butter doesn't taste as good as normal butter, but what if you were to make it in a way that retains the milk solids but still removes the water? So it would be something like 97 percent butterfat and around 3 percent milk solids?  And also because there's no water,  would this basically make it a more flavourful version of shortening? Thank you to anyone that replies.

Clarified butter has plenty of butter flavor. The general reason for making it in the first place is so you can heat it to high temperatures without burning. If you re-introduce or keep the milk solids, you have defeated the whole point of clarified butter. You might as well just use regular butter.


How to store cut fruits & vegetables for days? Is it possible to store fruits and vegetables (like apples, beetroot, pomegranate, etc.) for days, after they're cut?

Here are some things I've read, but I don't know which works best and if at all they do:

Soaking them in a solution of 1 tablespoon lemon and 1 cup water.
freezing them in air-tight containers.

I've read that air-flow is important for storing fruits and vegetables for long periods. I don't know if this applies to cut fruits and veggies too.
Considering that freezing cut fruits and vegetables is the right thing to do, how do I serve frozen fruits and vegetables? I mean, they need to be brought closer to room temperature before they can be eaten, and it'd easily take 2 hours, and the nutrient value could already be deteriorating.

Both methods work. If I had to pick one, I'd pick frozen vegetables. If you can afford to go to the store every day and only eat things that are in season, buying fresh will get you more nutrients. But things frozen when they are perfectly ripe retain most of their nutrients so you're really not losing much for the convenience. Time is the enemy of nutrients, so if you can buy local also means it's not sitting in a truck for 5 days, so the closer you can get stuff to your home, the better. Freezing is like really slowing down time.

Lemon is mostly used to stop fruits/veg from turning brown, so especially for apples, bananas, and avacado. It will extend the life of food by up to a few days. The downside is the lemon can overpower the actual food, but you can store it in your fridge and the fruit/veg will keep most of the same texture/flavor, which is important for some dishes. This will only slightly extend the shelf life of your food and as far as I've read this is more about making the food look good. You can also do this trick with vinegar. It's the acidity that does the trick.

Freezing is great, and you can keep things for ages(sometimes a year or two) without losing nutrients.  The downside being that the texture/flavor of the food can change. But this will be fine for most dishes. You can have smoothies, fruit sauces, soups, lasagnas, casseroles, stir fry, and a bunch of other things without really noticing the difference. Some things are even fine by themselves. Sliced frozen bananas and strawberries are a great treat and healthy ice cream replacement.

Airtight is important, as you said--ziploc bags are fine though you can also get airtight glass containers. It's a bit of an investment, but you save money in the long run by not throwing away food.


How would I jar a sauce for keeping at room temperature without adding loads of vinegar or sugar? I'd like to make and sell jars of my mum's satay sauce at our local food markets.

I'm trying to figure out the jarring process so it can be stored at room temperature and not make anyone sick or worse.

My experience in jarring/canning is minimal but I've done some research and would love to get some of your thoughts on my process.

I'm aware of botulism, so the ingredients of concern are fresh chillies, garlic, onions and belacan (salted shrimp paste).

These are fried with peanut oil.

There is sugar and vinegar in the mix.

There is a good amount of sugar however it's definitely not 50% like jam or anything.

The amount of vinegar is not a huge amount (should I ph test this? how and what ph would I look for?)

The rest is peanuts and dried spices.

These are the steps I'm taking at the moment:

Sterilize jars and lids in preheated oven @ 140c for 20 mins.
Fry fresh ingredients at high temp.
Slow cook remaining in large pot at low temp.
Fill jars while sauce is hot.
Put filled jars in preheated oven @ 140 for 30 mins with lid loosely on.
Remove and tighten lid.

When cooled, the lids pops down and is sealed.

The jars are from a local supplier and have confirmed with them that they can be cooked.
(I've tested this process about 3 times with higher heat and the jars withstand it).

How safe is my process?

What have I done wrong, or what can I change/improve?

Should I add some kind of preservative?

I'm open to all suggestions. My goal is to have it kept safe at room temp for at least a month (more is better :) )

Currently, when I hand out test samples I ask people to keep it in the fridge and eat within a week.

Sorry about the long question but I just want to share her amazing sauce and not make people ill.

You cannot use an oven for canning - while the oven itself can reach temperatures higher than 100 degrees C, it is difficult to get the internal temperature of the contents of the jars up to the same temperature. You'd be better off pressure canning, and  @Chris_H has already shown where you can read up on the technique in the comments to the question.

It might be useful to provide a quick explanation why using an oven is not reliable. Please note that I am in no way suggesting that OP's 140C is either the correct temperature or the only condition needed for safe canning.

Assuming that your contents are capable of being heated to 140C at atmospheric pressure for now, in text-book ideal conditions (assuming perfectly conductive glass), it would take 54 minutes to heat a jar of it of 10cm diameter and 10cm tall form 100C to 140C. 30 minutes is just too short.

At atmospheric pressure inside your 140C oven, your sauce will not reach too much above 100C since it is mostly made up of water. Vapourising water keeps temperature fairly constant at that, at least initially. As more and more water is evaporated, eventually, you might reach 140C, but your sauce would also be dehydrated with a very significant reduction in volume. For practical purposes, you will not see 140C for a few hours and not before your sauce is ruined. The only way to overcome that is by raising the pressure and thus the boiling point of water. This is why sterilisation needs an autoclave or at least a good pressure cooker with as high a pressure rating as possible. In any case, I have not come across a consumer type pressure cooker that would offer 3.6 bar or 52 psi to attain 140C boiling point.

edit

@rumtscho's comment below made a good point that the 140C mentioned here seemed to suggest that it was the right temperature for canning. Just to clarify, I was using OP's temperature just to illustrate the point that it would be impossible to attain that in a common oven without pressurisation. As for the need for pH control and other important conditions for safe canning, I have not attempted to address them here.


How to keep fried fish warm and crispy during transport to venue? I frequently cook for my choir and I wanted to serve fried fish.  The problem is I have to cook the food at home and transport it to the church. How do I keep it warm and crispy for about an hour after its cooked and during transport? Additionally, what can I put it in to keep it warm once I arrive. I'm sure putting it on a steam table would make it soggy.

Fried foods neither hold nor transport well.  They are best served directly from the frier.  If they do need to be held, a slow oven which will keep them dry (by allowing steam from the food to leave) is the best way.

There simply is no good way to hold, transport, and serve fried foods that will maintain the crispy quality.  Think of every delivery meal you have ever ordered of mozeralla sticks, chicken fingers, or even just plain french fries.   They simply are not the same as at the restaurant.

If you absolutely insist on serving fried fish, the best way to transport it would be in a single layer, in an insulated container, lined underneath with paper towels to absorb some moisture, and with vent holes so that at least some of the steam can escape instead of condensing back on to fish and making the breading even soggier.

You could improvise such a container with plastic or foil takeout containers, punching (fairly large) holes in the top, and using blankets or towels underneath and around the sides as insulation.  Make sure you leave the ventilation holes uncovered, so that the steam can escape.

Still, you will have tension between keeping the food hot, which requires no holes and lots of insulation, and keeping it (somewhat) crispy, which requires allowing free air circulation, but would cool the food faster.

In the end, this is a situation where choosing another item, one that is friendier for holding and transporting, will serve you better.

Poaching the fish would be ideal, as would creamy or saucy dishes with the fish as an ingredient instead of the featured player.


I've seasoned and floured more chicken than I need to fry. What's the best way to store it for cooking at a later date? I have marinated chicken overnight, floured it for frying and didn't cook. What is the best way to store it for frying at a later time?

There is no good way to keep it in the "ready to fry" state. I'd suggest to simply store it in the fridge as you would do with unfloured meat. When you take it out, just flour it again. The thicker flour crust will make it somewhat closer to a schnitzel, but it won't taste bad.

If you already had a very thick flour/egg/flour layering on it, it's probably better to wash it off and dry with a paper towel before storing, then redo the panading procedure for the next fry.


Making Eggs for 50 people My first time, making scrambled eggs for buffet, my company brought in box of liquid eggs, to be cooked in deep stove top pan. Any suggestions of what needs to be done, how much butter, milk, how to cook without burning them, etc... All help is appreciated...

I highly recommend using a steamer if you have access to one, but if you don't have it, you don't have it. The good news is that the process for making scrambled eggs on the stove is about the same no matter how many eggs you're making - add as much beaten eggs as you're comfortable stirring in the pan, cook over low heat stirring occasionally.

The major tips/gotchas that I can think of:

Open all your egg cartons at once before you start cooking. The last thing you want to be doing is fighting with packaging material when you need eggs quickly
Low heat, be patient, stir frequently but not constantly. Once every couple minutes should be fine depending on the size of your pot - it shouldn't be hard to figure out if you need to be stirring more or less frequently. However, don't forget to stir. This is probably the biggest way for things to come out less than perfectly. If you get distracted and forget to stir the eggs for too long, the ones at the bottom of the pot can start to develop the same green off-color as overcooked hard boiled egg yolks. It's perfectly safe to eat but who wants to eat green eggs?
You mention butter but unless you're adding it for flavor it's honestly not necessary. When you're done there's going to be eggs stuck to the pan no matter what you do. Don't stress yourself out about it.
One tip - if your eggs are cooked more than you want them to be but not at the turning green stage, you have some wiggle room in whisking in uncooked beaten eggs into the overcooked eggs. The heat from the cooked eggs and further hot holding will cook the raw eggs and it will distract somewhat from the overcooked bits. It's not perfect but it's "good enough" and it can help you save a chafing dish of eggs that you'd otherwise have to throw out.

That's really all there is too it. If you have more eggs than you can comfortable fit in the pot, you'll have to do it in batches but all that means is "cook eggs, dump into chafing dish/hotel pan, start cooking more eggs."


Bakers percentage for cookies I am aware of the bakers percentage used in bread, and I have used it successfully.

I am baking cookies at home as a hobby. I have collected few recipes from blogs, and they work great.

As I am now aware of the ingredients used for cookies, is there any bakers percentage which we need to keep in mind?

Not in the same sense as in bread, no.

First, in bread, there is one main ratio: liquid to flour. You can conveniently express any "additions" such as fat etc. as a percentage of the flour too, but they are additions, as in principle, you can make bread with water+flour only. The effects of these ingredients exhibit much less interaction than cookie ingredients, so you can look at each percentage separately and immediately gain some information about the bread.

In cookies, there are several problems. First, "cookie" is a much broader category. A shortbread cookie, a snickerdoodle, a lace cookie and a macaroon have basically nothing in common, structurewise. They need totally different ingredients to achieve totally different textures, and any ratio of ingredients makes sense within this type of cookie, but not across all cookies. In bread, you have a few exceptions (think knäckebröd), but mostly it is all variation of the same stuff.

Second, in cookies, ingredients interaction is more important. They are not made up of flour and water with a few ingredients to tweak the texture, they are made up of eggs, flour, sugar, fat, nuts, and a mixture of whipped egg whites, sugar and nut flour, glued with e.g. whipped ganache (for macarons) behaves in a totally different way from a mixture of stirred eggs, sugar and flour, baked and sprinkled with nut pieces over a chocolate glaze (spritzgebäck). You cannot turn one into the other by slightly tweaking the amount of an ingredient. You cannot say that there is an interval of "between x and y percent of ingredient i" in which a cookie turns out well.

If you concentrate on one specific cookie, it becomes much more manageable. There are ratio intervals there, and within that interval the cookie will work and outside of it probably not. But they are not all ratios of one ingredient to flour, because of the interactions. You need to express the ratio of all ingredients at once. It is still doable, and useful, if you can find a good resource describing it. But here comes the next problem: I don't know of a resource which does this. Macarons may be the exception, as they have so tight tolerances, so you can probably look at 2-3 recipes and will already know the limit of the acceptable ratios. But in cookies with more leeway, I suspect it is only literature aimed at industrial food technologists or even private knowledge in industrial manufacturers who have studied and written down that kind of information.


How to substitute oranges in a mango mousse recipe? I'm looking for a recipe for orange mousse without eggs, but hopefully with gelatine. I've tried to search for some recipes on google but didn't really find anything too good. I have a very delicious recipe for mango mousse that I found on google that I've tried a lot of times. It would be great if someone could guide me with substituting it with orange rind/juice. I know that Orange recipes can become a bit bitter if not handled properly.

Here's the Mango mousse recipe, which is a part of a mango mousse cake.

450 gr. mango
75 gr. sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 1/2 teaspoons gelatin
500 ml. heavy cream.

Puree the mango flesh with the sugar and lemon juice. Strain to remove fiber from mango.
Put one third of the mango puree into the pot and stir in the gelatin. Let the gelatin soften, and warm over low heat, stirring until dissolves. Remove and add remaining mango puree, and allow to cool. While cooling, whip the cream. Stir in mango into the whipped cream, transfer into containers and chill.

You might take a strategy from a orange olive oil cake that I make.  Cut about 1/2 inch off the ends of oranges.  Then quarter the oranges.  Place them in a pot of water, then bring to the boil.  Drain and repeat 3 to 4 times.  This reduces the bitterness of the pith.  Now, add 4 cups of water and 1 cup of sugar to the pot.  Add the oranges and bring to a simmer.  Cook until they are tender, 30 to 40 minutes, then drain (you can reserve the light syrup for another use).  Blend the cooked oranges in a food processor or blender.  Use 450 grams in your recipe (strained), eliminate the lemon.  Let us know (with a comment, or an answer to your own question if you choose a different approach) if it worked.


Can food spoil at cold temperatures? So someone here at home tweaked the thermostat on the fridge and raised to its maximum (coldest) level, and now a few of my housemates are really upset because the resulting decrease in temperature allegedly caused their vegetables to spoil.

This doesn't make sense to me, as I understand that food will spoil if the fridge (or any environment for that matter) is too -warm-, not cold.

Nevertheless, these guys will adjust the thermostat whenever its 'too high' to them and this naturally causes other food, like my leftovers, cheeses, and fresh milk, to spoil.

Is there any truth to their claims? Can food spoil in a fridge (I do mean fridge, and not freezer) that's too cold?

It depends on what you mean by "spoil".

The purpose of the fridge is to prevent food from growing pathogenic organisms. There is a clear dependence there: The colder the environment, the slower food gets "spoiled", or unsafe to eat.

But we also want our food to be tasty. And cold temperature does change the texture and taste of some foods, especially fruit and vegetables. If it stays above freezing, some of them still get unpleasant, especially tomatoes and tropical fruit. The worse problem is if the temperature gets below freezing. Then everything turns mushy and unpleasant. And because fridges do not have a very precise temperature control (due to imprecise sensors but also to the fact that the temperature and humidity varies throughout the space of the fridge), a thermostat set too high can lead to temperatures below freezing at least in some parts of the fridge, rendering some vegetables, specifically green salads, practically inedible.

On this one, I side with your roommates. I have never seen a fridge which had it necessary to turn the thermostat all the way up. Milk and cooked food does great at temperatures just below 4 degrees C, which for most fridges I've seen corresponds to a middle setting. Expiry dates are based on this temperature. Cheese actually prefers higher temperatures, like 15 degrees, people just keep it in the fridge because they lack a better space in a typical kitchen. Setting the thermostat on the highest setting gets the fridge around, sometimes even below, the freezing point, and yes, it makes it impossible to keep vegetables in the fridge (I've seen them turn bad in the closed vegetable drawer too), and wastes lots of energy besides.


What is the equivelant of 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract in Organic Vanilla Bean Paste, is it teaspoon for teaspoon? I would like to start using Vanilla bean paste in some of my recipes. I usually use Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla extract and wondered if the measurement was the same i.e. 1 teaspoon vanilla extract = 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste. I thought I heard somewhere that the paste is a lot stronger. Would appreciate any feedback.

1 tbsp pure vanilla bean paste = 1 vanilla bean
1 tbsp pure vanilla bean paste = 1 tbsp vanilla bean extract

From experience I'd say the extract and the paste are equivalent in flavour.
The vanilla bean paste has the added texture of the seeds, which I prefer.

Of course neither of them leave you with a bean case to use as a garnish when your done creating!
We use both the paste and beans a lot!


What are the most common uses of piri piri sauce (other than with chicken)? I have experimenting in the kitchen. I decided to use some extra hot piri piri sauce with some bacon on a Stottie cake. It tasted magical and I am tempted to repeat the process sometime soon. What else goes with piri piri, other than chicken? What are the most common uses of piri piri sauce?

I had a friend that made Mussels using the piri piri sauce.  I also think that it might be tasty if you use that sauce on a nice burger!


Can swamp eels be used for unagi like American or Japanese eels? So, at my local fishmarket, there is both live and frozen yellow swamp eel. I was not able to find very much on texture, flavor, or otherwise, so I was wondering if any of you have had much experience cooking with it, and is it suitable to make unagi with? Here are some photos of it if you don't know what I am talking about (live and frozen in that order):

Despite the name, swamp eels are not true eels, and hence they are unrelated to the Japanese eel (unagi).  As far as I can tell they are also unknown in Japan and not used for food there.

That said, the Japanese kabayaki style of cooking most commonly associated with eels is also applied to any number of long, skinny, fishy creatures.  So I'd say give it a shot, and tell us how it went!


How much oil do i use in place of butter in a cake? I have a cake recipe which use butter in cake.But, i want to use oil in place of butter.So, how much quantity of oil is used in replacement of butter.According to recipe 10 tablespoon butter is used in it.

Butter is around 80% fat so for your 10tbsp, 8tbsp of oil and 2 of water (or milk) would be closest. The texture and flavour will never be exactly the same using oil as butter, so on the rare occasions I want to use oil in a cake, I look for a recipe for that type of cake that uses oil.

Measuring butter in tablespoons, unless it's already melted, isn't very accurate, so perfect substitution probably isn't required for the texture in this case.


Frosting kept melting when trying to frost cake I made a chocolate malt cake for the first time the other day.  I let the cake sit overnight to cool.  I made the frosting while the cake was baking and put it in the fridge for the next day.  The cake recipe had me cook the cake at 325 for 45-50 minutes.  That turned out to be 10-15 minutes too long (when I checked it at 40 minutes it was very overdone).  That's easy to correct for next time.  The frosting is what's stumping me.  The recipe is:

3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3/4 cup malted milk powder
1/2 cup whole milk, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

When I added the first three ingredients it was a good consistency, if slightly thick.  I added the rest and it became too thin.  I added another 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar and it was a lot better.  I put it in the refrigerator to use the next day.  Of course it became very firm.  When I was spreading it onto the cake it kept getting so melty that I couldn't spread it consistently.  I've never seen this happen before.  It was so bad that I actually had to make a ganache to cover the bad frosting job.  Next time I will definitely cut down the butter to two sticks and reduce the milk to maybe 1/4 cup.  What else could have happened to cause this?

There are two things I would consider with the frosting. The first is that either the cake or the kitchen was too warm when you tried to frost the cake. It's happened to me a few times that I set the indoors temperature too warm in the winter and frosting keeps melting for me. Freezing the cake for about 20 minutes before attempting to frost it will usually make it easier to do a nice job too.

Otherwise, when you make a frosting recipe like that one, you want to mix all the ingredients except the liquid (in this case milk) together first, and the add the liquid, a little at a time until the frosting is the right consistency. Never add all the liquid at once. I don't think the butter was the problem, if anything you didn't have enough of it compared to the amount of milk.


Will artificial sweeteners work in a coffee syrup recipe? Here’s the recipe for coffee syrup

Ingredients for 1 cup of coffee syrup
2 cups sugar
1 cup strong coffee
Directions
Mix sugar with the coffee
Boil mixture down to the consistency of thick syrup
To use put 1-2 teaspoons in a cup of hot water and stir it around a few minutes.

Would sugar substitute work with this recipe as written?

So, according to a website called A Bar Above, you can make a simple syrup (or "rich simple" apparently) using artificial sweetener, but you won't get the same end result. They tested 3 sweeteners they found, and would recommend sweet'n'low over splenda or equal sweeteners. The taste and aftertaste will be different, and it will depend on the sweetener.

That said, I would NOT expect an artificial sweetener based syrup to thicken like sugar would. You would just need to boil it for a set time and make sure it doesn't boil off or burn. Speaking of burning-- If it's an option, I would recommend getting a jar of instant coffee and mixing that in with the finished syrup instead of making it with actual brewed coffee. Boiling brewed coffee may well give you a bitter, scorched flavor.

My other big concern would just be shelf-life. Sugar actually acts as a preservative in high enough concentrations. (Have you ever accidentally eater years-old hard candy with no ill effect? Thank sugar, lol.) Looking around I don't see any information on how long a simple syrup made with artificial sweetener would last. Although if you use it everyday, you'd go through it pretty quickly...


Flour and water... at which temperature? What is the difference between adding hot, lukewarm or cold water to flour?

EDIT:

I'm curious about the following dishes, they all call for flour and some water and I'm not sure how warm the water should be:

Pizza dough
Flour tortillas
Quiche crust

Pizza Dough is usually a yeast bread so you want your water to be warm (100-110F) to activate the yeast without killing it.

Quiche crust, like pie crust, develops the best texture when the flour is mixed with the butter (or shortening) in a solid state, so you want to add other liquids at a cool temperature to prevent melting the butter to a liquid and creating a less flaky crust.

I am not really sure about tortillas, but with the first two examples you can see that temperature is important and differs from application to application.


What's the best way to keep sushi fresh for the following day? I like to prepare makizushi in the night so that I can take it in to Uni the following day and have it for lunch. They're made using nori, sushi rice and some vegetables.

What's the best way to keep this fresh for the following day - I normally box them up the night before ready for the day?

I think the issue is that your nori will get soggy if you make the rolls in advance and store them overnight.  Nigirizushi may be a better bet for making ahead.

Chirashizushi is an older style of sushi which is essentially a bowl of the sushi rice, with the garnishes either mixed in or on top. It should be well amenable to advance preparation.


Unbreakable microwave safe plates? I'd like to have plates with the following characteristics:

Don't break when you drop them on the floor
Do not get hot in the microwave (like normal china)
Durable and washable (not paper plates)

Do such plates exist? If so, where might I obtain some?

(edit) Ideally they would also look more or less like standard dinner plates.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned -- Corelle.

It's not completely unbreakable (and much like Pyrex, when it goes, it goes like what nico mentioned -- little tiny shards everywhere).

Supposedly, it loses its resilience to breaking over time, so newer plates are less likely to break when dropped as older ones, so this is one case where buying at a yard sale might not be best.

I don't know how the durability compares to Pyrex plates, but it looks more 'dinnerware-like' to start.


Can I refrigerate lower hydration dough for storage like I would no-knead dough? I've been baking with the Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day recipe for nearly a decade, off an on, and like a lot of people I decided to try to step up my game over the last year. I feel like I've reached the point where I have a good mastery of techniques with that recipe, and wanted to try out a more "standard", knead-needing, lower hydration recipe.
So I whipped up a batch of the basic dough in the river cottage bread handbook (60% hydration, all bread flour), and damn son. Compared to what I was getting with my no knead dough, that crust.
So now I want to figure out how to combine the best aspects of these recipes, which to me would mean be able to make larger batches at a time and refrigerate to use over a few days. I don't mind kneading at all, and taking the time to punch down etc.
I'm not sure what makes the no knead recipe work well with the fridge. My guess is that, since I'm not building up and long gluten chains by hand, I don't have to worry about it over fermenting and breaking down the gluten structure after several days of fridge time, maybe?
So how would I apply this to a more "normal", kneaded dough? Maybe just toss it in before final proof but it's only good for 2-3 days? Maybe do one less punch down and rise before putting it in? Maybe dont bulk ferment at room temp at all, just knead and straight into the fridge? And in that last case, maybe give it time for an extra rise at room temp before the final proof if I take it out on the first day or two?
I know I should probably just try to figure this out in my own but that would take a lot of flour =)

For dough storage at fridge temp it is best to refrigerate immediately after kneading, but you can also do so at more or less any time during rising.
Storing immediately after kneading will allow you to keep the dough for 2-3 days before you need to use it. It will slowly start to rise over this time, and the rising process is the limitation on the storage length. The slow rise also tends to give better flavour. However, if it has started to rise before you refrigerate, it will not keep for quite as long, as you have the limit on rising.


What makes Kewpie (Japanese) mayonnaise so different from Hellmann's? According to Amazon, Kewpie mayonnaise contains vegetable oil, egg yolk, vinegar, salt, MSG and spices (no sugar). Hellmann's (which I specify only because it seems like it's the 'canonical' American mayonnaise) contains soybean oil, water, whole eggs & egg yolks, vinegar, salt, sugar, lemon juice, natural flavors and calcium disodium edta.

To me, the Kewpie mayonnaise seems sweeter, even though it doesn't contain sugar, and the Hellmann's does contain sugar. But that's not even the big difference to me. Somehow, the Kewpie is just "right" in sushi rolls and for just about every other application from that part of the word that benefits from mayonnaise. Yet, I find Kewpie just awful on a bologna sandwich. How are they so different?

If I make mayonnaise, the list of ingredients will look more like the Kewpie, but taste more like Hellmann's.

What gives?

OK, I did it. The rice vinegar was definitely the biggest difference.  A pinch of MSG (Accent) sealed the deal. I found a recipe on Serious Eats. I tasted after every addition, saving the MSG for last. It wouldn't be as close having skipped anything that I used.

I didn't have real hon-dashi or Japanese mustard, but I had some instant miso soup powder and some Colman's mustard. It was close enough. I also used just rice vinegar, I didn't have any malt vinegar.

I don't have any real Kewpie to do a side by side comparison, but I can tell this is pretty close. It's definitely much closer to Kewpie than Hellmann's.

Everything that has been said here was right.


How can I tell if my acorn squash is ripe before cutting it open? Is there any way to tell if an acorn squash is ripe before cutting it open to cook it? I keep getting unripe squash from the grocery store, and I don't know they're unripe until I've cut them open, sadly turning them into compost instead of dinner.

First, as a gardener who's grown these, I can tell you that acorn squash — like all winter squash —  need to be left on the vine to ripen. After picking, they will get a little sweeter as they sit for a couple weeks, but if picked too early, they won't actually continue to ripen.

That said, there's no great trick to picking a good one. If you see some some orange color in the skin, it's almost certainly ripe, though they can still be mature when all green, too.

Ideally, you should be able to trust that the farmer harvested these properly, but if you're getting unripened winter squash, someone probably screwed up out in the field. If you think the store gives a damn, it's probably worth mentioning that you're getting some bad ones.


Fissler frying pans. Are they worth the price? I just saw a good deal on frying pans from Fissler. The two pans included in the deal are the "crispy" and "protect" models. However, it is still a lot of money (169 €). Before I place an order I am looking for feedback from people who have used Fissler frying pans for a while. Are they worth the price?

That price is absolutely ridiculous, and there is no way the frying pans are worth it.  To Americans: that's $250 for 2 frying pans!  Even All-Clad retails for $100 for a frying pan, and it is among the most expensive cookware.  Now, in this case, many people can justify that price for All-Clad, because they heat fast and evenly and will last for several lifetimes with proper care.

While the Fissler pans may be well-made, I would have a very hard time justifying that kind of money.  In particular, the Protect model is nonstick, and nonstick surfaces wear out.  There is no way around this.  The better ones will last longer, but still you get a couple years of good use before the surface degrades.  You're far better off buying a series of cheap restaurant-supply nonstick pans, and replacing them regularly.  I can find decent ones for about $20-25, which means you can get one for probably €20.  See my answer to What is a good brand for teflon pans? for where to get the best value... and why you shouldn't be spending big money on teflon-coated stuff.

I do not feel the "crispy" model is a safe buy, because it emphasizes a gimmicky crisping surface over versatile everyday use. It also does not describe what, if any, sort of copper/aluminum core it uses to ensure fast, even heating.  For a pan at this price range, I would expect a multi-ply construction, with aluminum or copper core. To my mind, this does not bespeak money well spent.  At a lower price, it might be an entertaining gimmick, but for that much money you will want a solid, versatile all-around pan.

In fact, with good deals, you could fully equip a kitchen with cookware for that price. I have a 7-piece multi-ply set that I'm quite happy with, and it only cost about $160. Throw in a cheap nonstick pan and a cast-iron skillet, and you're set.


How do I add guar gum when making ice cream? My ice cream is great tasting but it gets very hard over time and has a lot of ice crystals. I realize that I have to freeze it faster to reduce the size of the ice crystals but it was suggested to me to use guar gum to help.  I tried adding it but it clumped up (like gum not surprisingly, lol) so do I have to put in a little boiling milk to dissolve it or how should I add it next time? The ice cream was a little stringy or syrupy after adding it to the ice cream. Did I add too much?  I used a tsp of guar gum for a home size Hamilton Beach ice cream maker.  I am allergic to corn so I can't use xanthum gum unless I can find a corn free source.  I'm hoping that I can get the guar gum to work.

Where are people getting the idea that Xanthan gum comes from corn?It does not.  It is harvested from bacteria (Xanthomonas campestris).

If you are using a cook-up custard to start with, your custard will thicken but will also get ropy or the term is snotty when you pour a spoonful out as you stir.  That is definitely a good way to tell if you are using too much Xanthan gum so you need to cut your amount down.    You sometimes see that effect in cheap, fat free salad dressings.

It takes less gum than a starch because a gum holds much, much more water than a starch. Where you might use a tablespoonful of cornstarch, you would only use maybe 1/8 teaspoon of gum and that might be a little too much. Gums go into liquid if they are mixed with other dry ingredients or they have heat treated to dissolve instantly.  Those are usually only sold commercially so you would not be able to buy them on the internet.

My husband makes a "to die for" cooked vanilla and chocolate custard and freezes it.  But it is as hard as a rock after freezing.  I am still working on him to let me modify the formula to give us softer (not soft-serve) ice cream.  I have a masters in food science but I am going to have to make a separate batch to prove it to him.  To most people, anything other than flour or corn starch to thicken must be a chemical.  Hope that helps.


What are the advantages of a two-day braise? I'm going to braise short ribs for a dinner party this weekend. The recipe suggests braising the ribs for four hours, then refrigerating overnight. The next day, the directions say to skim off the fat that forms on top of the liquid, reheat, and serve.

What are the advantages of this method over serving immediately? Does it greatly affect the taste? And to refrigerate, should I keep the meat in the liquid and chill the whole pot? What's the best way to reheat?

Always let a braise cool in its liquid to prevent drying out. As the meat cools, the fibers relax, allowing the juices to be pulled back into the meat. Imagine squeezing out a sponge (heating the meat), and then releasing the sponge in water (cooling the meat). (People on this forum have disagreed with this statement before, but I stand by it.)

Although allowing the meat to cool for 30 minutes or so will yield fantastic results, if you are an overachiever, putting your meat in the refrigerator overnight will increase the effect. After the meat is cold, it will become more solid, making it easier to remove bones, slice the meat, and skim the fat.

However, I never do this because I am impatient, I kind of like the mouth feel of a little bit of fat, and the results are very good without it. I suggest leaving the refrigerator for the leftovers, which will be wonderful.

BTW, pay less attention to the time, and more attention to the state of the meat. 4 hours may be too much, or two little. The best judge of whether the meat is ready or not, is to taste it. This points to one more advantage of the overnight refrigeration, controlling exactly when you want your food to be ready the next day.


How do I adjust cooking time/temperature for peanut brittle? When I used a recipe for peanut brittle that worked in a higher altitude in a microwave it burned.  Should I use less time or power?  How do I know it is the temp. for a nice brittle?

Microwaving is not an ideal method for making caramel or brittle, as the heat generation from the waves is localized.  It is too easy to get hot spots and burning while other parts of the mixture are under done.

Instead, you should use a more traditional stove top (hob) method.


Help translating an older Recipe I have an old recipe handed down from my great great grandmother in law, for what she called brown bread. Unfortunately it has a few ingredients that I don't recognise. I did some searching on google and I thing I have figured out what different things are but I want to make sure.

The Recipe calls for:

Sour Milk : Is this butter milk?
Sweet Milk : Is this whole milk?
Graham Flour : This seems to be hard to find, but is still Graham flour.

Then baking is to be done in 4 metal vegetable cans. Can this be done in a loaf pan?

As Requested

1 Cup Sour Milk
1 Cup Sweet Milk
3 Cups Graham Flour
1/4 Cup sugar
1/4 Cup Molasses
1/2 Cup butter
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp soda (I am assuming Baking soda)
1 tsp BP (I am assuming baking powder)

Bake at 325 in 4 metal vegetable cans for one hour

I would assume it mixes like a cake, and to add the wet and dry ingredients  seperatly, finally combining them. But this is all the recipe I have to go on. So I expect to have to experiment a bit.

"Sweet milk" is indeed standard fresh milk. It is just how people used to talk about it, to distinguish it from "sour milk".

"Sour milk" is also "buttermilk". It seems that over the years, people stopped selling actual buttermilk (which is the whey left after removing the fat from the sour milk) and started using the name "buttermilk" for what used to be known as "sour milk".

If you can't find graham flour, whole flour of mid-coarse grind will be a good approximation.

Baking soda and baking powder are good guesses. You could go with the original amounts, but if the first batch comes out overleavened, try reducing it. In the decades since the recipe, producers have found out how to make baking powder which does not go stale too quickly, does not lose much of its action on touching the liquid, and so on. So maybe the amounts are better suited to weaker leavening. No way to know without trying.

The cans are not a good idea. I don't know about cans then, but the new ones could be lined with plastic (which will melt), or be rusty. The recipe is very obviously a cheap recipe from times of limitations, maybe Depression or WWII. Just use a baking pan. If you are afraid of bad leavening, using a wide one or two small ones is better than a single deep one.

Also, don't trust the "one hour" suggestion, not only because you're changing pans and because the ingredients might have changed in subtle ways over the years, but also because baking by time is always unreliable. Test them for doneness with a thermometer, or in the worst case with a toothpick.


Are my cannellini beans safe? I've never cooked with these before, si maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I was kinda surprised when I opened my (store bought) can of beans and found that the liquid they were packed in was kinda cloudy. I've heard that this can be a sign of botulism. The can is not dented or bulging, and they don't smell bad. It seems like the beans just dissolved a bit into the liquid, and this is why the liquid is kinda starchy and slimy, but it seemed worth asking... Anyone have experience opening canned cannellini beans? Is it normal for the liquid to be clouded?

It is normal for store bought canned beans to have a cloudy liquid. This applies to previously dried, starchy beans such as cannellini, kidney, etc.

The water will get cloudy also when you cook dried beans.

For others like green string beans or wax beans you would expect to see a clear liquid.


Practical home stone grinding Possible Duplicate:
  How can I grind coffee without a coffee grinder?

I like my coffee super-fine.

I've had some luck with using regular coffee grinders and running it for a long time, but I'd like to explore (possibly manual) alternatives.  There are 2 reasons I want to try the manual alternative:

1)  Electric coffee grinders are extremely noisy.  This makes it kind of impractical to grind coffee at odd hours (which I love to do)

2)  My electric coffee grinder seems to be wearing pretty fast.

I tried the Kyocera "Hario Skerton" grinder which was eah.  It's a bit fragile, and when trying to get a fine grind you get a lot of crunching of the ceremic plates, which again will pretty much destroy it really fast.

Your best bet is probably mortar and pestle:

I've never used one for coffee until just now and it didn't take long to grind up a scoop of beens into a very fine powder.  When searching for a picture, I found lots of references to mortar and pestle being used for Turkish coffee, so super-fine seems to be no problem.


The best way to roast silverside of beef in th oven? I have a fairly large piece of beef (2.4kg) with very little fat on it. I was wondering what the best way to roast without drying it out would be please?

I know the temptation is to say that it needs to be slow cooked but I like my meat rare with a crispy crust and I really don't have time.

For the US crowd, silverside is the part of the round closest to sirloin, so it's a working cut and fairly lean.

In order to keep this juicy you'll need to bard it, in other words add fat. I'd do this by wrapping the whole thing up in streaky (US style) bacon and then sear it at high temperature to give it that crust before turning it down and continue the roasting at a lower temperature. So turn your oven up full-whack and let it get good and hot, then rub your roast with some salt, then into the oven for 20 minutes, then turn it down to 160 and roast it until it reaches 120F/50c. Remove and cover with foil, then let it rest for at least 30 minutes. If you don't let it rest it won't get tender at all.

In all honesty silverside isn't a cut I would roast, and I've tried. It just too lean and has too much connective tissue to be tender. It does make a good braise though, which is what I'd do with it.


How much salt should I use for dry brining a steak? I tried cooking a steak a few days ago. Having watched quite a few videos on YouTube, many of them suggested to salt the steak and leave it uncovered in the fridge for 24 hours or so, on a cooling rack.
Any video I've seen says to salt liberally, and that if you think that you've put enough, you didn't. I salted my steak liberally, and I don't think it was too much, it certainly seemed to be a lot less than what those videos showed. The idea is that with a very long period with the salt, it will draw out moisture, and some of the moisture will be reabsorbed, but with higher salt content, thus seasoning the deeper part of the steak as well.
At the end I managed to get a beautiful crust and an incredibly salty steak. It wasn't disgusting, but it was on the upper limit of what I'm willing to eat.
I am guessing that the main failure is the difference in weight. Most of the videos are cooking one of them huge steaks, 500g slabs of meat, or even more (I'm not counting the weight of the bone in tomahawks, clearly). My steak was about 250g or so.
Is there a formula, or some suggestions, as to what would be a good amount of salt based on the size of the steak, so that the next time it won't be terrible? And how would that formula change based on the length of the dry brining process? I understand that an hour on the counter is very different from 24h in the fridge.

I've seen reference to 1/2 tsp kosher salt per pound.  For a steak, I'll do a few hours at most, but more often salt right before cooking.  For a roast chicken, I salt and leave uncovered in fridge for up to two days.  For the steak, salting far in advance leads to a more "cured" texture that I don't enjoy.  For the bird, salting in advance gives me a more enjoyable texture, flavor, and crisp skin.
Perhaps semantics for some...but it is not brining, which, in my book implies a liquid environment...it is simply salting.  I do realize that good folks will differ on my interpretation, but all you have to do is look up the definition of "brine."


how to tell if a whipping cream dispenser is overpressurized or underpressurized? The question is simple - how to tell if a whipping cream dispenser is overpressurized or underpressurized without the risk of removing the head?

Note: Initially I submitted two questions in another single post (where you can read the background for my question), but only one got a great answer.

There is no pressure gauge on these devices, nor is one available even on the professional line according to iSi's website. I don't think it is possible to determine the pressure inside


Whats the difference between white and yellow corn meal. and all cornmeal or half flour half cornmeal I usually make cornbread with white corn meal and no sugar. I like the no sugar part, but I want to experiment with the batter a bit. What are the following changes supposed to achieve:

Yellow corn meal as opposed to white
Half flour in the mix.

My normal corn meal recipe is this

The problem here is that you're comparing two very different recipes: Northern cornbread (yellow meal, equal parts flour, a tablespoon or so of sugar) and Southern cornbread (white meal, no or little flour, no sugar).  There's no real point in trying to mix and match or interpolate between the recipes, any more than than it would make sense to make something halfway between cioppino and bouillabaisse, since they are both just fish stew.


How should I store a cut bell pepper? Recently I'm finding that I'm ending up using only part of a bell pepper for a meal, and so wish to store the rest for later.

So how should I best store half-used bell peppers so that they stay as fresh as possible?

Put in a ziplock bag with a piece of paper towel to absorb moisture, and stick in the fridge. Also applies to lettuce.


How can I make fresh burger buns like Hardees? I am pretty new to baking and having recently just come back from Saudi Arabia I was privileged to visit the Hardees food chain (non in the UK where I live) and fallen in love with their fresh baked buns.

Does anyone know how to copy or come close to there burger bread buns? Can I can other buns and add butter or something close?

Hardees also wrap it in a foil packaging and since I suspect they use butter for that extra soft velvet feel it makes it more better as the bun melts with the cheese and burger inside the packaging.

Here is a clip too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nvth7WJucQ

Thanks

As a starter, Hardees lists the ingredients for their Soft Baked Buns on their website.

From there, we can gain that the main ingredients are:

All Purpose White Flour
Water
Sugar
Soybean Oil
Yeast

Additionally, it contains less than 2% of:

Wheat Gluten
Salt
Maltodextrin
Food Starch-Modified
DATEM
Xanthan Gum
Whey
Dextrin
Mixed Triglycerides
Enzymes
Ascorbic Acid
Acesulfame Potassium
Maltitol
Neotame
Turmeric
Annato

And their Egg mixture for Basting:

Whole Eggs
Citric Acid diluted with water

I would probably knock out the following:

Wheat Gluten
Maltodextrin
Food Starch-Modified
DATEM
Dextrin
Mixed Triglycerides
Enzymes
Acesulfame Potassium
Maltitol
Neotame

Which leaves as the "less than 2% of" list:

Salt
Xanthan Gum
Turmeric
Annato
Ascorbic Acid
Whey


Safe to use rice cooker after mold grew on rice? So I left brown rice in my rice cooker for 10+ days and unsurprisingly, some dark mold grew on the rice while I was gone. Will hot water and detergent be enough to remove all mold spores from the rice cooker, or should I just toss out the whole thing lest I die from mold spore toxicity?

Hot water and detergent might be enough, but after serious mold growth, I'd use a disinfectant. The easiest way to do this would be to disinfect your cooker with bleach, which is very effective at killing mold on non-porous surfaces. After thoroughly washing and rinsing your cooker, make a solution of 10 parts water to 1 part bleach and allow it to soak in your cooker for a few minutes, then dump it out and allow the cooker to air dry.

Using Bleach on Mold (note that the caveat here is that bleach isn't effective for porous surfaces. Anything that you're cooking on should be an acceptable surface for using bleach on.)


Homemade/DIY Frozen Vegetables: Can steaming be used instead of blanching? I want to try making my own frozen veg since they go bad fairly quickly in my fridge. I've got carrots, beans and some greens.

I've never blanched anything before, so I'm willing to try, and I understand that each veggie has their own respective cooking time.

However, I'd rather steam them.

Is this possible?  Or does the blanching process do magical things to preserving the veg that steaming won't?

The part about blanching that is important is that the vegetables are briefly cooked and then immediately doused in cold water to stop the cooking process. Processors use boiling water as it is easier to manage and you can put flavorings and other additives (preservatives, color enhancers, etc) to the water to get the effect desired. There's no reason you can't steam them instead as long as you dip them in ice water to arrest the cooking process. There's some things that steam blanching wouldn't be good for, like removing the skins from tomatoes, for that boiling water is the way to go, but for preparing vegetables for the freezer it will work fine.

Some considerations:

Industrialization of the process: it's easy to set up a line with a pot of boiling water and a bowl of ice water while using a basket to immerse. Steaming won't be as straightforward, and will be more time consuming. If you have a lot of vegetables you may want to consider boiling instead
Safety: You will need to be able to move the vegetables from your steamer to the ice water quickly without getting scalded, so think about your setup and tools


How to proof croissants in the hot weather? I tried to cook croissants following a recipe. The whole process went smoothly, there was no butter melted and the yeast was still active. But when I proof the laminated dough, they wouldn't rise. I prove them in the fridge overnight because of the hot weather (The average room temperature reached 30°C.), but I found that the butter became solid and I think that's why the dough didn't rise. I've made some research and I found that a lot of people proof their laminated in the fridge successfully. What should I do now?

30C is a good temp for proofing. Proofing overnight in fridge allows for greater flavour development in breads (or any yeasted dough), but they still need to be proofed further at room temp before bake. Croissants I have never seen proofed in the fridge - not saying it can't be done, but I've never seen it. The only time you should be truly concerned about a hot kitchen (in my opinion) is when you're working with chocolate. Because breads and yeasted things rise best between 27C and 38C with the optimum temperature being 35C. Check out this link for more info http://www.theartisan.net/dough_fermentation_and_temperature.htm

Good Luck! Croissants are a labour, but a delicious one!


Help identify a strange root vegetable The other day I ventured into a grocery store that sold a lot of root vegetables that I have never seen before.

One of the vegetables was a large round thing, and when I poked it, grey 'smoke' came out of it, like one of those mushrooms you stepped on as a kid. None of the vegetables were labeled, so I don't know its name.

Does anyone know if such a thing exists, and what does one do with it?

Are you sure it was not in fact a puffball fungus?  There are some varieties that are edible and can be found in grocery stores.  Depending on how fresh, and when they were picked, they could easily be mistaken for a root vegetable.  Look for pear shaped puffball here for an example. http://www.wildernesscollege.com/edible-wild-mushrooms.html


Why is Himalayan Salt Pink? I have heard it is from an ancient ocean floor's deposits that have since been uplifted by the Himalayan orogeny, but what in that ocean water made the salt pink. I've been to the Bonneville Salt Flats and the salt there is a normal white color.

Other questions, for example Pink salt vs regular salt just concern the taste in dishes. I am concerned with the actual difference in chemical composition.

As stated in the Wikipedia article about the salt, the pink color that sometimes occurs is due to iron oxide:

  Himalayan salt is predominantly sodium chloride (95-98%), contaminated with 2–3% polyhalite and small amounts of ten other minerals. The pink color is due to the presence of iron oxide.

As a source, the article references this page on HowStuffWorks.com. It gives a slightly broader list of chemicals that cause the color differences:

  Some pink salts, such as the salt harvested in the Himalayas, get their color from calcium, magnesium, potassium, copper and iron, Others contain carotene from salt-tolerant algae and are more peach-colored.


Make a chocolate Cake I want to alter this recipe to make a chocolate cake.

3/4 cup butter
1 cup granulated sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp of vanilla extract
1/4 tsp of almond extract
1 1/2 cups of almond flour
1/2 cup of coconut flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp sea salt

If I add 1/3 cup cocoa to this Almond cake recipe, what else do I have to change, if anything? Will that amount of cocoa change the batter in a way I have to compensate for?

Yes, that amount of cocoa will change the batter. It will make the cake drier.

The more cocoa powder you add the more sugar and moisture you will need to prevent the cake from getting dry.

I would take out a 1/4 cup of the almond flour and add a 1/4 cup of cocoa powder. If you feel you would like a little more go buy a tablespoon at a time after that.


Amount of Brioche dough in a Brioche mould? I have a 22 cm classic fluted Brioche mold (22 cm being the widest measurement on top).  It's volume is extremely close to 1500ml. I'm wondering how much dough in total to put in it to make a "Brioche à tête".

More generalized question that would help anyone, since the tins are so varied in size:
What is the dough to mold volume ratio for making a "Brioche à tête" (e.g. grams of dough per ml of mold).

From this web discussion (very last post, at the time I read it), a poster named gcook17 shares:

  Sherry Yard's book, "The Secrets of Baking" has a table on page 233
  with how many brioche molds of different sizes you need for 2, 2.5,
  and 3 lbs. of dough.  She gives the mold size in inches which I take
  to be the diameter of the top.  That assumption has worked out for me
  so far.

  Here are the number of molds for 2 lbs. of lean brioche dough that she
  gives for several sizes:

  3" - 21, 3.5 - 16, 4" - 11, 5.5" - 8, 6.5" - 4, 7" - 3, 8" - 2

  When I use these they work fine, but I find I could probably put more
  dough in each mold (i.e. use fewer molds) than she recommends.

It sounds like you have essentially an 8" brioche mold (and they are not exact measurements anyway), so 2 lbs or approximately 0.9 kg of dough is indicated to fill two such molds, so about 1 lb or 0.45 kg of dough for a single mold.


Making yogurt without heating milk? Most recipes for yogurt indicate that you should heat/boil the milk, then cool it.

Is it possible to skip this step, and use milk straight from the fridge?  Would the result be terribly different?

The biggest reason to heat milk to almost boiling before fermenting is that it improves the texture of the yogurt.

During fermentation the bacteria consume lactose and produce lactic acid which causes the milk proteins to denature and coagulate trapping most of the fat. The proteins involved are primarily the casein proteins.

When this happens, there is still quite a bit of protein left that isn't bound up in the new casein mesh. All of the albumin proteins are water soluble and will not add to the structure of the yogurt.

These albumin proteins denature when they are heated. For this reason recipes universally call for the milk to be heated to 190 and then cooled. The albumin is denatured and is able to tangle up with the casein during fermentation and add to the yogurt structure.

Skipping this step will make a very profound difference to the structure of your yogurt. Without it your yogurt will be thinner and much more fragile. When you scoop it there will be more whey and all that albumin will wash out in it.

According to Harold McGee (On Food and Cooking pp 48)

"These treatments improve the consistency of the yogurt by denaturing the whey protein lactoglobulin, whose otherwise unreactive molecules then participate by clustering on the surfaces of the casein particles. With the helpful interference of the lactoglobulins, the casein particles can only bond to each other at a few spots, and so gather not in clusters but in a fine matrix of chains that is much better at retaining liquid in its small interstices."


Sous vide eggs - how to get a perfect soft-boiled egg? I cooked an egg for 75 min at 65C, the yolk was PERFECT - holds the shape, but still not hard-boiled. In fact the yolks were perfect after about 60 min.

But the whites are still runny. Is there a technique to just firm up the whites once the yolks are done?

see Perfect Eggs section here for reference: http://amath.colorado.edu/~baldwind/sous-vide.html

Use fresher Grade AA eggs, this minimizes the amount of thin albumen. If this doesn't work you could perhaps try boiling it briefly when it's done cooking via sous-vide. I'd start with 60 seconds in boiling water, and going up from there to find the proper timing. I've never done this, but the boiling water should serve to quickly cook the runny whites.


Can basil flowers be substituted for basil leaves to make tea? Can you use the basil flowers just like the leaves to make tea?

Yes, you can use them the same way you would use the leaves- note that flowers are often used in herbal tea blends (I see hibiscus used particularly often). Depending on the cultivar, however, the flavor may be noticeably different than what you would get with the leaves, probably a bit more bitter- that's what I noticed when using mint flowers for tea, and mint is very closely related to basil.


What makes overcooked fish smell? The best I have found is the following:

"The house-permeating “fishy” aroma of cooked fish appears to involve a group of volatile molecules formed by fatty-acid fragments reacting with TMAO (trimethylamine oxide).  "

However the answer is not clear to me, maybe because I forgot chemistry.  TMAO exist in fish regardless of overcooking as do fatty acids.

Is it simply that heat/prolonged heat causes the fatty acids and TMAO to react creating the new compounds, thus decreasing heat/cooking time will causes less formation of these molecules?

The excerpt talks as though this smell is unavoidable, is this the case?

Trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) is actually odorless, freshly caught fish doesn't smell fishy at all, however it breaks down to trimethylamine (TMA) which is responsible for that infamous rotting smell.

As the the tissues containing TMAO is exposed to air, the usual suspects, the bacteria start breaking down the TMAO into TMA; thus causing the fishy smell...

I'm not aware of a mechanism of TMAO breaking down to TMA with heat, however TMA is a gas at room temperature and above. If the particular fish you're cooking is not so fresh, or loaded with  TMAO (thus TMA eventually)... With heat, the TMA trapped in the tissues of the fish might dissipate and result in "The house-permeating 'fishy'" smell.


How to avoid onion sweetening when sautéing? As you know if you sauté onions they'll start to get sweeter the more they stay in the frying pan.
So is there a trick to avoids this sweetening, maybe keep more of the onion taste?

From The Times of India:

Add a hint of tanginess:
Adding lime juice can to your dish can balance out the sweetness. In case, you don't want too much of tanginess in the dish you can also add vinegar white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar.


Which protein sources have the lower carbon footprint I'm concerned about the climate change and I've noticed that the meat industry has a huge role in it.

I'm wandering which protein sources have lower CO2 footprints.
I know wheat gluten has lot's of protein and it has little effect on the climate change compared with beef.

I'd also like to know this footprints it in matter off "leftovers" protein sources. I.e. I suppose surimi is still a low footprint in CO2 because it is raw material is fish leftovers, which is abundant (at the moment). That wold mean (just guessing) that a rise on it's demand wouldn't imply the emission of more CO2.

The lowest - actually, negative carbon footprint will be plant proteins - like legumes: beans, soy, lentil. (organically grown plants, produced without artificial fertilizer or heavy farming machinery break down more of CO2 than processing them afterwards creates.) To reduce it further you might pick up gardening and grow your own, organically - even the organic farming market has a bit of carbon footprint (cars bringing the foods, maintenance of the market, all the industry behind bureaucracy required, etc) but if you use simple hand tools, and grow a small plot by your house, the carbon footprint will be firmly in the negatives.

You may want to look at the source of your soy though. The fields are often replacing large swaths of the amazon forest. That would be heavily counter-productive. Other legumes don't require that sort of climate, so they have a lower impact on the environment.

The "leftovers" protein sources as you put it are actually a good choice too. They have a pretty large carbon footprint, but the problem is that this carbon footprint will exist whether you buy (provide demand, so incentive for production) or not - they will "happen" as byproduct of the main production regardless of demand, and the CO2 will be produced regardless of whether they are going to be sold, or just discarded (or redirected to animal feeder.)


Best way to bottle peri peri sauce? I am looking to bottle my father-in-law's peri peri sauce and sell it at markets. The ingredients consist of fresh and dried herbs, garlic, salt, lemons and oil (sunflower, canola and olive).  This is the method I used with him in the past and make to make sure it's food safe to do so. The batch is brought to a boil and simmered for 5 mins. It's left to cool and then bottled.  The bottles are sterilized in hot boiling water for 5 minutes, left to dry (5-10 minutes) before adding the sauce. The caps (plastic) are also sterilized in hot water. Nothing else is done prior to storing them in the fridge, as they are perishable.

Is this a safe practice?

Sorry to rain on your parade, but unless you use an acid which you forgot to mention, this is a happy breeding ground for botulism bacteria (Clostridium botulinum).

You are creating anaerobic conditions with the oil, which means this specific bacteria are happy to multiply there.

Unfortunately, a simple boil, even for 20 minutes, won't make it safe. It will kill the live bacteria and even destroy the toxins they produced, but it will not kill the spores.

To kill the spores, you need commercial pressure canning with temperatures of 121 C / 250 F.

So you can keep the sauce for a limited time in a refrigerator (3 C or lower), but you must make sure your buyers realize that need, too.

To give you an idea of how poisonous the toxin is: 1kg is said to kill the entire human population, the lethal dose for an adult is about as much as a quarter grain of sand. And contaminated food can not be recognised by sight, smell or taste.


What would you call this way of cooking an egg? I recently discovered this video of Jaques Pepin frying a couple of eggs.  I never really liked fried eggs before and I think this is because I'd been doing it wrong — with the heat too high. I've since been enjoying fried eggs quite a bit but I like the yolk slightly less runny.  Usually where it's just a tad bit congealed but not hard.
I found a few places that outline the different names for fried eggs, which go something like this (from https://www.eggs.ca/eggs101/view/7/how-to-fry-the-perfect-egg):

Sunny side up: The egg is fried with the yolk up and is not flipped.
Over easy: The egg is flipped and the yolk is still runny.
Over medium: The egg is flipped and the yolk is only slightly runny.
Over well: The egg is flipped and the yolk is cooked hard.

The closest thing seems to be over medium but I'm not flipping the egg. So what would you call sunny side up with only slightly running yolk?

This would generally be known as a variant of "basted eggs".
The idea of basted eggs is to apply heat from the bottom (from the pan) without flipping, but additionally cook the tops with liquid. The two ways of doing this are (1) to spoon hot fat over the eggs, or (2) to add water and cover the pan to allow steam to cook the tops.
My normal method of frying eggs is similar to this one, but at lower heat and cooking for longer uncovered. If you get it right, the white ends up fully opaque while the yolk is still deep yellow.


Why use lard in tortilla dough? What is the effect of lard in tortilla dough? Can a vegetable oil of preference be substituted for it?

Rendered pork fat—manteca de cerdo—is our preferred cooking fat
  throughout this book. Lard has a relatively high smoke point so it is
  ideal for frying, and it provides a richness, dimension, and
  distinctly Mexican flavor that you just can't replicate with using
  other fats...Vegetable oil is a fine substitute

However specific recipes may really need lard:

  Note that the flaky texture and slight richness that make flour tortillas so compelling are derived from lard. I've found that vegetable shortening is a poor substitute here...

Source: Alex Stupak and Jordana Rothman. "Tacos: Recipes and Provocations".


How can I peel pearl onions quickly? I love pearl onions, but I'm always put off by the idea of peeling every single one. Are there any shortcuts to peeling pearl onions?

Dump pearl onions (with skin) into boiling water (on high heat)
Bring water back to boil
After 1-2 mins, take the onions out, and dump them in cold water (or ice bath)
After 1-2 mins, take the onions out of cold water
Take an onion, hold it between your index finger and thumb, and squeeze. The onion will pop right out of the skin. Repeat this step for each onion.

Hope you find this useful...


Should I throw away a jar of olives that fizzed and bubbled upon opening? Like the title says, I opened a jar of locally produced olives and it started to bubble like seltzer. Is it unsafe to eat?

Short answer:
Yes, throw it away.

Long answer:
Bubbling, fizzing, pressure etc. indicates some kind of microbiological activity that is unwanted for properly canned food - canning should eliminate these organisms. Any behaviour like the one you described indicates that something went wrong, so you can not assume the contents of the jar or can to be safe.


Why did the skin of my tomatoes fracture after a few days in a refrigerator? I purchased a bunch of red tomatoes on a twig a few days ago, and put them in a plastic bag in my refrigerator.

When I opened the plastic bag five–six days later, all the bottoms of the tomatoes (bottom tertiles) had wide fractures in their skin. They had basically started to split.

They were a bit soft, but not that soft – my first rection was that maybe my fridge is a bit too cool.

The temperature in the fridge is around 5-6° C, and I kept the tomatoes close to the bottom shelf where vegetables go.

Is my refrigerator too cold, or was five-six days in a fridge too long to store tomatoes?

Note: I'm partially aware of the fact that tomatoes shouldn't really be stored in a fridge – but in room temperature – if I'm not mistaken!

Tomato Gardening Tips
This site's gardening tip says that tomatoes splitting on the vine is due to a lack of water - the plant gets dried out and the skin doesn't retain the elasticity to contain new growth.

The refrigerator is typically a dehydrating environment. Could be that's your culprit.

But for pity's sake, store them on the counter where they stay their most delicious and you can see them and remember to eat them!


Time&Temperature vs energy needed for molecules structure's changes Recently I've read an interesting post about time vs temperature (Time vs. Temperature - What changes what?)

I've been thinking about this problem for a long time.
and I'd like to share an idea..
"A single piece of meal, need certain amount of energy to modify its molecules structure."

Sous vide technique for cooking pork cheeks says (made by a well known Chef):

48h at 65ºC or 24h at 80ºC

This long time is needed to denature the myosin and other internal transformations...and so
For those transformations, we need to give energy to the meat.

So, if we asume, that both temperature/time alternatives, give us the perfect result.

Is it possible to know how much energy is used in each situation? could it be a similar amount of energy?

If this hypothesis is valid, then, we could use that value, to answer two questions:
1.-how many hours will be needed if we cook it at 70ºC?
2.-if we'll cook it for 36h, what should be the temperature than we need to keep?

anyone could help us with the formulas?
thanks a lot!

The hypothesis is somewhat valid. The version which is true is: there is a correlation between the total amount of energy which went into the meat and the degree of doneness. And because the total energy is the rate of energy input multiplied by the time you are adding energy to the system, time and heat are interchangeable to some extent.

However, there is no constant "total amount of energy" which needs to go into the meat. Protein denaturing is a complicated stochastic process. If we were to assume that we have a uniform thin layer of meat and a perfectly uniform heat source parallel to it, we still wouldn't have a constant total amount of energy. It is a bit less noticeable with meat, where preparation methods are limited (*), but in eggs it is easy to observe that the speed at which yolks are heated will have a noticeable difference on the final texture of a custard.

Even if you could get away with a usable range for the "total amount of energy", you could still not predict the time needed by a given piece of meat at a given temperature. We are talking about a complex nonlinear system here. That part is a duplicate of another question, so I will simply post a link to my older answer.

So in the end, there is a very good reason why you should check for doneness instead of try to predict doneness. Or, in the special case of sous vide, use the empirically determined charts somebody else went to all the trouble compiling. Calculating it for yourself is completely impractical.


Why tie a non-stuffed beef pot roast? Recipes for beef pot roasts often include the step of tying the roast with twine prior to cooking, even for roasts without stuffing.  Why?  What difference in outcome can I expect between a tied roast and an untied roast, all other things equal?

@aaronut is right that trussing will maintain the more cylindrical shape you want. However, I feel like he's a little misleading about surface area.

A cylindrical roast actually has LESS surface area relative to the mass of the roast than a flat one. A plate will have more surface area than a ceramic cylinder of the same mass. As a consequence, the cylindrical roast means that less of the meat's mass is exposed directly to heat than for a flat one.

A flat roast will cook faster in the same heat because the middle of the roast (where you're trying to hit a target temp) is closer to the outside (where the heat is). At what would be considered standard roasting temps, this means that your middle will be up to temperature before much nice crusty stuff is formed. The whole roast will be more uniform in temperature.

With a cylindrical roast, on the other hand, the outside will be cooked much longer (and get crustier) before the relatively well-protected center is up to the heat you want.  The roast will also have greater thermal mass, which means it will hold heat longer after coming out of the oven.

So is this good? It depends. Most people really like the great flavor that's imparted when the meat gets a nice, browned crust. To get that, you either need a lot of heat, or long exposure to heat.

If you are working with high heat, you're better off with a flatter roast so the outside isn't burned before the middle is ready. This works well with leaner cuts that would get tough or dry if cooked a long time, or where you want relatively more crust than middle. Steaks are nice with a lot of crust, for example.

If you are working with lower heat (which is much more forgiving, as the slower cooking means you don't have to be quite so exact getting the meat out of the heat), you want the more cylindrical roast. The low heat is going to take a while to get a crust on the outside, and the cylindrical shape extends the overall roasting time, giving plenty of time for the crust to form. This method works nicely for meats that benefit from longer slower cooking, and where you want the proportion of crust to middle to be low. A roast, where the nice pink inner part is the real draw, is ideal in this situation.


Will texture of fish cooked sous vide change, when cooking times increase? I am experimenting with sous vide these days. I have successfully cooked salmon sous vide (60C to pasteurization according to Baldwin).

One thing with sous vide that people brag about is the possibility of letting food sit in the bath for longer than necessary ("I drop the steak in the bath and go to work, eat when I am back from work."-type situations).

Now I wonder, how well does fish respond to long time cooking? If I drop a piece of salmon in the bath and it stays there for, let's say, 10 hours. Will taste and texture change?

What about other types of fish, e.g. cod?

Yes!  Cooking low temp absolutely degrades texture of fish.  I can't imagine that you would want a piece of salmon cooked for 10 hrs.  It would be mush....cooked, safe...but mush. Most fish...probably 20 minutes or so.  Any fish should just be cooked until done.   No more.  Otherwise texture is compromised and off putting.


I love the combination of pesto and chicken. Is there a reason traditional Italian cuisine seems to shy away from it? They just seem to go together perfectly without the need to add much more to make a tasty dish. However, for some reason, it doesn't seem to appear in traditional cuisine at all. Is pesto considered exclusively a pasta sauce? Is there a reason why?

I'm assuming you mean basil pesto, although according to an Italian dictionary a pesto is a sauce made by crushing ingredients (pestare is Italian for crushing). Some specific types (like the Genovese one) are protected by law and you can't call something with that denomination unless they have some specific requirements.

As Italian, I've seen basil pesto also as a sandwich sauce together with cold cuts and/or cheese, pizza topping or as lasagna filling as alternative to the ragù (aka Bolognese sauce outside Italy:) I think this answers your first question.

Together with meat, I've never seen it; probably because it can be too strong to cover the meat's flavor. However, a similar preparation with parsley (salsa verde) but probably not as strong usually accompanies the bollito (boiled meat). I'd say the pattern is that we're speaking about not-so-flavorful meats, but here I'm afraid to cross the line and step into speaking about my personal taste.


What's the difference between a cupcake and a muffin? I was debating with someone today whether what we were eating was a cupcake or a muffin, but realized we didn't really know the difference. So what's the difference between a cupcake and a muffin in American English?

In case you're wondering, what we were eating had a sweet batter, but not overly; had blueberries in the batter; had no icing or frosting; was perhaps about three fluid ounces (1 dL) big; and had been baked with a paper wrapper.

There is considerable overlap between cupcakes and muffins.

Method

From a technical point of view, muffins are made by the muffin method, making them small quickbreads.  In the muffin method, the wet ingredients are combined in one bowl; and the dry ingredients are combined in another bowl.  Then the two are quickly incorporated together with minimal mixing to avoid gluten development.  This gives muffins a somewhat coarse crumb.

Cupcakes are small cakes, and are made by one of the traditional cake methods such as the creaming method, the reverse creaming method, the genoise method, the chiffon method, and so on.  They tend to have a finer crumb than muffins.

Contrast

While no single criterion distinguishes a muffin from a cupcake if you do not adopt the technical definition above, the following trends exist:

Cupcakes tend to be sweeter than muffins; there are savory muffins such as cornbread
Cupcakes are often iced or frosted, whereas muffins tend to have no topping, or a simple crumb topping
Cupcakes usually have a head or top no larger than the body of the cupcake; muffins are often encouraged to overflow their baking cup, so that their top is larger in diameter, giving them somewhat of a mushroom shape
Cupcakes are almost always, well, cupcake shaped; muffins can be made as just muffin tops
Cupcakes are almost never crispy or crunchy; muffins are often encouraged to brown and develop texture, especially on the tops


Dissolving cocoa powder in milk I wanted to make a Stevia-sweetened chocolate milk so I tried mixing some unsweetened cocoa powder with the milk and stevia, but I found that the cocoa powder doesn't mix with the milk at all. It tends to float on top, and even with a lot of stirring and mixing back and forth between two glasses it was a lumpy mess.

Any techniques or natural additives I can use to help the powder dissolve more like Nestle Quick and the like?

Aw, you youngsters, spoiled with your Nestle Quick... :)

To mix cocoa powder with a liquid (or really, to mix any powder with a liquid - salt and granulated sugar aren't powders), you need to make a slurry by mixing a small part of the liquid into all of the powder. Then you can dilute the slurry with the rest of the liquid.

Note that if you're using sugar for sweetening, it helps to add it to the cocoa powder before you add any liquid, because the sugar helps the dissolving. However, since stevia is so much sweeter than sugar, you use too little of it to make any difference to the dissolving process. Thus, you can go ahead and add it afterward, so you can adjust the sweetness better.


How can I grind coffee without a coffee grinder? I usually buy prepackaged ground coffee for my drip coffee maker, but recently I accidentally bought a bag of whole bean coffee and threw away the receipt.

Can I salvage this bag of coffee without purchasing a coffee grinder?

I have seen the suggestion of using a blender or perhaps a food processor, but I don't own those either.

Are there other ways to grind these coffee beans that will provide acceptable quality?

In my opinion, the best option is to have someone grind them for you. Ask your friends--someone may have a grinder you can borrow, or would be happy to grind them for you in exchange for some cookies or part of the bag of coffee.

If you have a local coffee shop, talk to the barista (over the latte' you just bought) and ask if he/she will grind your beans for you. I've heard even the mighty Starbucks will grind your beans for you if you ask nicely enough.

If you want to do it yourself, you need to find a way to get the beans down to grinds. Some ideas:

Mortar and pestle. Be careful not to make Turkish coffee powder instead of the more chunky grinds you want.

Rolling pin. Put the beans in a heavy Ziploc bag or similar, and have a go at them. Roll, whack, smash.

Have a nice, heavy frying pan? Ziploc bag again, hammer away.

And speaking of hammers...

No, not that Hammer.  This hammer.


What do I have to worry about when using a cast iron skillet as opposed to nonstick? This was originally part of this question about usage of stainless steel and cast iron skillets, but I was advised to split it into two different questions.

  I've been using nonstick pans exclusively all my life. Most recently, after doing a lot of research, I decided to buy a cast iron skillet (10.25'' Lodge).

I know that I need to season and reseason the cast iron skillet, and avoid soap when cleaning it. Do I have to handle it differently during cooking. Anything else I might not know yet, since I'm used to only using nonstick?

Arm fatigue.

They're heavy enough that you'll need to consider how you hold them as you're dumping food out of them.  You'll often see chefs on cooking shows grabbing the handle in a strange way, where the grip is from underneath, and then they hold it with the handle at the top and the pan almost dangling below.

Learn this technique, and you won't end up straining your wrist from trying to hold the pan out in front of you as you scrape the food into a serving dish.

... Also in a similar fashion -- if you're used to being able to flip your food without needing a utensil ... it might take a little bit of strength training before you're ready to do that with cast iron.


What is the puffy bread shown in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? My son is infatuated with the movie "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," and there's a delicious looking bread shown in a breakfast scene.  It looks like a giant popover about the size of Dick Van Dyke's head (see below.)  What is it?

It's probably a Cottage Loaf. It used to be common in England when there were independent bakeries. It's not seen so much now.