Why do some recipes claim to "never fail"? I have read it countless times, mostly in baking magazines: "This recipes always works!", "Always turns out great!" etc.

Of course I know that you can fail at all of them if you really want to, but what is the reason behind these recipes - are there really any recipes that always work (without being basic 'one pot' recipes) as long as you don't screw them up badly?
Or do they only print stuff like this to get novices to buy the magazine?

Baking is a complicated process and requires precision; you start out with complex molecules, and transform them into something has to have many qualities precisely right.

The common quality of all baked goods is the foam structure: each baked good is best when its foam is right. Example: for a cake, the "right" foam has lots of tiny, regular bubbles, and the bubble walls support the foam, but are soft, not elastic.  The ideal foam for a bread or pie crust is different.

There are other criteria for the cake layer to be good:

Evenly baked
Regular shape and surface, no cracks or doming
Neither overcooked nor undercooked, starch gelatinized but not retrograded
Moisture content correct, shouldn't be dry or melt in the mouth like a brownie
Color
Balanced flavor: not too sweet, eggy, salty, or bland

This list is just for the layer itself, frosting and combining layers makes it even more complicated!

With so many qualities to balance, you need a precise process to get reliable results; however home bakers don't want to monitor precisely.  Most lack probe thermometers, and Americans often use volume measures for dry ingredients, rather than the more accurate weights.  Finally, most home bakers don't understand the theory of baking.

Great bakers draw on both theory and practice when they bake, and their recipes rarely fail. Theory teaches them the significance of each step, and the hidden assumptions made by the recipe. Practice teaches to judge what is happening before his eyes, and how to recognize when something has gone wrong.  Theory and practice together let great bakers identify when something has gone wrong and rescue the project.

A novice will have neither practice nor theory aid them. He is even likely to misunderstand steps.  For example, he may stir vigorously when the recipe says "fold".  He may also omit key steps when pressed for time, without realizing their significance.  For example, using fridge-cold eggs when they should be room temperature.

Of course, everybody has to start somewhere, and not all baking recipes are created equal. Some have more room for error than others. For example, making a genoise for the first time is very hard.  The egg yolks start foaming at around 50°C, but can't build a good enough foam at below 65°C. They curdle irreversibly at 85°C. So a genoise has to be created in a water bath at a temperature around 70 to 75°C, and when the yolks are foamed, the flour (which has to be low-gluten) is added and mixed well enough to not fall to the bottom in lumps, but not well enough to remove the air from the foam. After that, the layer is baked, and it glues itself terribly to the pan, unless the baker had the foresight to use parchment combined with proper flouring technique, and then used proper technique to remove the layer when it is still warm enough to separate but not so hot that it gets irreversibly squished. There are so many things to get wrong with a genoise that a novice will run into them without ever realizing what happened.

Recipes that "never fail" are the opposite; they are robust, and don't rely on precision. Simple muffins are one example: The chemical leavening of the baking powder works well in many conditions, unlike the fickle yolk foam leavening in the genoise. Muffins even work if the cook just beats everything together in the bowl. You don't have to worry about overmixing, creaming, or specific temperatures. The fat content keeps muffins moist even when measurements aren't exact, and masks mistakes by enhancing flavor.  The cook actually seeks out doming, rather than avoiding it!  Finally, the crumb doesn't have to be soft, regular and airy the way cake crumb should be.  Muffins can tolerate a lot of mistakes!

To summarize: "never fail" recipes are recipes where:

There are few steps
Each step is simple to perform
Even if the baker makes an error, the end result is still likely to come out tasting good.

Of course, this ignores the catches!  Publishers can claim a recipe will "never fail" when they are unreliable for a novice.  Sometimes this happens accidentally, when a bad baker repeats a recipe enough that it becomes easy, but others have difficulty with it.  Finally, not everyone has the same criteria for success. I once found a recipe for a wedding cake on a popular site; it used box mix, smothered it in pudding from a sachet, and decorated with gummi bears.  Virtually all commenters insisted that it has turned out "great" and described how the wedding guests complimented them.  I can't imagine that it was really "great", but suspect that people who know what a great cake tastes like didn't bother to make the cake or leave comments.  There is no guarantee that a recipe labelled "always works" lives up to its name, or is actually good.  But, if you're a new baker, it's a good idea to start with such a recipe until you have gathered some experience.


What natural ingredients can be used to color food blue or green? I've been experimenting more and more with "natural" food colorings - meaning spices and other ingredients that naturally impart color as opposed to a commercial food dye made specifically for this purpose.

For example, I've let scallops (among other things) sit in a beet puree, and they get a brilliant pink color.  I plan on trying turmeric and saffron for more yellow/orange/red colors.

Are there other ingredients that I can try that might create a green or blue color in scallops? And would these work for other foods as well?

According to this blog, you can make blue dye from red cabbage, water, and baking soda. I don't know if it would specifically work on scallops, but I haven't been able to find any proof that alkaline dyes are detrimental to them. The article points out that they work for pastries, though.

Spinach or matcha (green tea powder) could work for green dye. Matcha is already used, primarily in Japan, to dye several kinds of foods and/or drinks and I've personally used spinach to dye Easter eggs.


what's a good technique for freezing blueberries? I'm taking a trip to the berry patch today. I'd like to get say 3 pounds of blueberries and freeze them. The problem is that when you defrost them, they're all busted up and mushy. So I wonder if I could put them in the oven at 150 for an hour or so and dry them out a bit before I freeze them.

Would that pull some of the water out and result in less exploded berries when the water in them freezes? What's the best way to freeze a blueberry?

Edit: years later, bought a food dehydrator. Gotta say, a dehydrated blueberry is much tastier than a previously frozen blueberry. Easier to store (use desiccant packs) and you can mix them in with trail mix too. Maybe not great for baking but heck maybe you can re-hydrate them overnight with some water.

Lay them out on a tray in a single layer and freeze them flat first. Once they're frozen, pour the frozen berries into a freezer bag and store them that way. This has worked well for me.


How do I know if my meat thermometer is ovenproof? Ever since a supposedly "ovenproof" thermometer shattered glass on my turkey Thanksgiving 2006 I have been afraid of these things. Is it generally safe to use them? Any maximum temperature I should be worried about?

I'd suggest a digital probe thermometer AND an instant read digital thermometer like the OXO (which is pretty cheap) or the Thermapen (which isn't). A leave-in probe lets you monitor the general progress of the food, giving you a good way to gauge how much cooking time remains without having to open the oven and slow down the process. The instant read variety is great for checking the internal temperature of all sorts of food that you might not normally measure -- steaks on the grill, mashed potatoes, stocks and soups (to make sure that they're cooling quickly enough), bread (to check for doneness)...

Both leave-in and instant read are extremely useful, and neither of them will expose your turkey to the risk of glass shards.


Are the white things on a bread normal? I have a piece of olive bread which was good by April 16. I have seen some white things on them since I got them on April 17, and have kept it in refrigerator. Are they normal and safe to eat?

Will it make it safer to eat by boiling the bread?

Thanks.

without plastic package:

within plastic package:

From what I can tell from the picture, most of the white stuff is flour; it was likely like that when you bought it, but only you & your memory know for sure. The non-bread & non-white occasional spots in the picture appear to be the olives.

Overall, unless you spot obvious mold, which is more often green than white, I think you are OK to consume it. But it's nearly a week past its date, so I'd consume it soon.


Starter with water, flour, grated apple I successfully obtained a working sourdough starter using rye and wheat flour, water, and grated apple. The dough made with it rose in a banetton and was inverted onto a hot baking stone. The bread had a good crumb, was thoroughly baked and moist. That to say that the starter worked.
I am puzzled by the starter's aroma. It is not the smell of a starter going bad, more like a slightly bitter undertone, like beer. The starter is fed regularly and is still bubbling away, but the undertone is persisting. It has not affected the quality or flavor of the bread. Any ideas?

How old is it? If it's newer than a few months, it could easily just be that you still have a huge variety of bacteria vying for dominance, and some slightly foul ones still remain, and haven't been kicked out yet. If it still tastes good and doesn't smell like acetone it should be fine.


Should patina be burned (wok seasoning) I just seasoned my wok for the first (three) times with vegetable oil. I noticed that the wok smokes a lot (as expected). What I find troubling is that the patina looks like it's blackened and burned.

To say that a different way, it seems like patina is essentially highly-heated, burned oil. Is that really what it's supposed to be? Am I supposed to "cook" it until it burns, or should I be stopping at some point prior to blackening?

(The wok is carbon steel, although I don't think that matters)

As long as the surface isn't rough (i.e. with burned-on bits of food) then yes, the patina should be a dark brown or black.

That's more-or-less what a patina is; it's essentially tarnish, the result of cumulative oxidation, which normally happens to some metals anyway but is accelerated by the rapid oxidation of oils via high heat.

If you end up with a slick, evenly-distributed black layer, then you've seasoned it perfectly. If it's streaky or splotchy then you need to start over by scouring it down.

(P.S. Carbon steel is different from, for example, cast iron, because the latter is porous and you'll never see that perfect black, just a noticeable darkening.)


How can I remove mold stains from a pan? A few weeks ago I made some homemade bread pudding. We had a few servings of it, the weather got hot and humid, and I soon learned that mold really likes bread pudding too. The pan is a stoneware pan.

I rolled up my sleeves, got some really hot water, and scoured it as best as I could but it still has dark spots and a moldy "funk" to it. I don't really want to use it like this. Is there a way that I can clean this pan or is it a lost cause?

I use bleach to remove mold and mildew stains from my bathroom and while the process would be gross, I would think that once thoroughly washed the bleach wouldn't cause any harmful effects to the pan or to future snacking humans.


What is the most cost effective way at home to dehydrate nuts? I have recently been looking to make some nut butters and one of the main things everyone talks about is soaking the nuts then dehydrating them.

After googling all I can find out about is using the oven at about 150 degrees for 12 hours (maybe longer), or using a dehydrator.

I was wondering if there was a way to just leave them out for a period but that apparently causes internal mould to build up which is not good, and another alternative was possibly putting them in tin foil and putting them in a slow cooker. I would like to try the slow cooker approach as it seems a lot less cost but I have only found one instance of someone doing that and didnt really list their results.

So what is the most cost effective way to achieve the dehydration at home?

(p.s I am not mass producing I just thing its a waste of money leaving the oven on for 12 hours for a pot or two of nut butter)

Most dehydrating is about using as little heat as possible to dry the air out without cooking the food.  On dry, sunny days, you can use the sun on a dark surface as a heat source.

Dark surfaces will absorb heat from the sun, heating the air which will lower the relative humidity and and warm the nuts which will 'mobilize' the water in the nuts so the air can carry it away.

If you have a dark enamel pan, put a single layer of nuts in the pan and leave it in the sun for a few hours.  Keep an eye out for hungry birds!
If you have a black outdoor grill that sits in the sun, place a single layer or nuts on a pan or sheet of foil, and close the lid.  Check every two hours.

Total time to dehydrate will vary on many factors including the season of the year (angle of the sun), outside temperature, relative humidity, type of nut, etc.

Because of the additional exposure to spores in the air, the nuts should be used before they can mold, usually within a day or two.  To discourage mold growth, don't store the dehydrated nuts in the dark.


Why don't I have to season my cast-iron teapot? This seems a bit silly really, but every single discussion of cast-iron cookware begins with "Seasoning your cookware", yet I've never heard of seasoning a cast-iron teapot. Is there a reason for this? Should I have been seasoning the things this whole time? Assume they're not enameled, and I use them to brew tea but not to heat water.

You can season the exterior of the kettle to help prevent rust, if you like.

The interior of a cast iron tea kettle is often rust-proofed through chemicals that accrue during normal use. One of these is lime scale. Repeatedly boiling water, especially hard water, will build a coating of lime scale that will keep rust at bay.

Another set of chemicals that help reduce the occurrence of rust are tannins. The tannic acid in tea leaves will react with red iron rust on the kettle to produce a more stable, blue-black compound called ferric tannate. To "season" a brand new tea kettle you can save used tea leaves and bags then place several in the pot and adding boiling water. Allow the "tea" to sit for 20 minutes then discard and rinse.

As other answers state, a traditional fat-polymer seasoning of the interior is unnecessary because you do not need to prevent food from sticking to the kettle.


Making tea out of grape leaves -when to pick the leaves? I have a question for you regarding make tea out of grape leaves. I want to make some, but don't know when the best time to pick the leaves it.

I know it's made in Greece and the USA, too, but not in Georgia, and unfortunately I haven't been able to find the answer here.

The descriptions of grape leaf tea I have seen don't mention a specific age to pick the leaves at - so leaves of most any age are likely to be fine, it probably isn't necessary to only pick those of a certain age, say, the newest leaves or anything.  Grape leaves are also edible (stuffed grape leaves, or pickled ones) so you may not need to worry about toxicity, either.  However, some sites do mention medicinal value, which means you should be careful about dosages until you're sure about the effects drinking the tea will have on you.

In general, I would expect the tea to be made from mature, medium-sized leaves, since that's the type picked for cooking with (and so most likely to be on hand when someone goes, "what if we made it into tea?").  Older leaves may have less flavor, since that (along with texture) is one of the reasons they're not preferred for cooking with.  New leaves might not have enough flavor to be apparent, or might take more effort to get enough of them to make a difference, or smaller size per leaf means an equivalent volume might have an adverse effect on the vines.

Grape leaves are usually harvested late spring to early summer, though if you look at sites dedicated to the harvesting of grape leaves for other culinary purposes, you may find more specific information including harvesting dates or locations for your particular area.  The type of grape vine (green, red, wild) may also make a difference to your tea and its effects, though all of them should be nontoxic.


What should I know about storing my homemade chili powder? I am planning on making some chili powder this weekend using ancho, pasilla, and guajillo peppers. I got a nice big bag of each recently and have some questions about chili powder. The second part of this question, about tweaking the preparation itself, is here.

The first concern I have is storage lifetime. I keep reading that it should stay potent for about 6 months, in an airtight container. I have also read that I can mill/blend the peppers and freeze the powder for 6 months and then use. How does storage work?

Do these 6 months stack on top of each other; or is it six months potency one way or the other?
Is there an alternative preparation of/method for using the milled chili (powder) that would allow me to get a better shelf life? (My main concern is not having spices that last forever; rather it is to have them remain potent for a reasonable period.)
Does the "6 month potency" begin once the chili powder is prepared, milled, or when the peppers are dried (or some other time)?

From experience I'd say those 6 months don't stack. You could have 6 months in the jar, or 6 months in the freezer - very soon after defrosting the flavour would die out. If you have to freeze I would recommend using it straight from the freezer, if you can avoid it clumping.

The overall potency is degrading from the moment it's picked! But realistically from the moment of grinding, as the oils in the ingredient are slowly seeping and evaporating out of the grain.

Why not make smaller batches more regularly? That's what I do for garam masala, mixing a new batch every 3 months or so.

I would always recommend oven drying spices / peppers very low for a long time - say 2 - 3 hours at 100C (212F). Wet ingredients could be dried in the same way, else added at the time you are going to cook with them.


Can excess salt in a cured gammon joint be removed after it has been roasted? It's my first time of cooking cured gammon joint and I wasn't aware of how salty it is until after roasting it in the oven.
I need to know if the excess salt can be still be removed even after it has been roasted in the oven.

If it can, what is the best way to remove it?
Will it still be ok to eat after excess salt being removed after it has been roasted?

The best way to remove salt is by soaking it in non-salted water for several hours before cooking it. Theoretically, you could do the same thing after cooking but I would advise against it. Soaking cooked meat in water will likely result in an unpleasant waterlogged texture. I would instead suggest serving it with sides and sauces that are deliberately undersalted (or even cooked completely without salt). That way, the meal as a whole will even out and not be too salty.


why do some pavlova recipes have cream of tarter to be added What is the function of cream of tarter when it is included in a pavlova recipe. Some receipes do not require it.

Pavlova is essentially a baked meringue, which is made from egg whites. The purpose of cream of tartar ( tartaric acid ) is to help denature the proteins in the egg whites, making a more stable foam once you whip it and bake it.


How to make part bake baguettes and rolls? I'm not sure if these are available everywhere but in the UK we buy these part baked bread rolls from the supermarket and after about 10mins in the oven, you essentially have fresh baked bread and they're really good.

I use a breadmaker often at home and have tried in the past to make my own part baked rolls by shaping the dough and freezing it but on cooking the dough remains very dense and the inside does not cook properly.

Are there any methods that people have tried to successfully make their own? Would cooking them for a certain portion of time help before freezing?

To make your own part-baked rolls, you have to actually part-bake them, not just freeze the shaped dough. You can freeze shaped dough, but you then need to fully thaw it and let it 'wake up' again before baking.

You need to part bake at a relatively low temperature so that the dough springs and sets, but a crust does not form. About 20 minutes at 150°C/300°F should do the trick. Then allow them to cool, put them in freezer bags, and freeze. They will keep for 3 or 4 months.

When you want to bake them, you need a much hotter oven - about 220-230°C/445°F. Bake straight from frozen until golden brown, about 20 minutes.


Can flour be used interchangeably with starch? I don't know if the question I'm asking is suitable for this site, but can the word flour be used interchangeably with starch?

No, flour and starch are very different things.

Starch is a molecule consisting of a chain of glucose rings. It is one of the main ways plants store energy. In practice, it is extracted from many different grains and tubers such as potato, wheat, tapioca and corn.

Flour is a food ingredient made from milling a grain very finely, and frequently also removing the outer hull of the grain. If nothing else is specified, saying just "flour" denotes non-whole-grain wheat flour.

It so happens that starch is a molecule present in large amount in many flours. Wheat flour is about 90% starch, and rice flour is close to 100%. But it is still incorrect to assume interchangeability, for the same reason that "pan" and "iron" are not interchangeable words even when you are holding a pan made from 100% iron.

In the cases where starch is less than 100%, it is even worse to use the terms interchangeably, because the parts which are present in a smaller amount often determine the properties of the flour, making it act much differently than pure starch in the kitchen. For example, white wheat flour contains around 10% gluten, which allows you to make risen bread with it.

Update

As for interchangeable usage: There are a few corner cases, as Jolenealaska's comment point out. For example, there are applications where you only need the properties of pure starch, but you can substitute a flour which is not 100% starch, and the remaining ingredients won't get into the way. Thickening is one such application, another one is preventing dough from sticking. But in general, you cannot assume that starch can be substituted for flour or the other way round. You'd have to know how it works in your recipe so you can judge if the substitution is possible.

As for the word use, some starches don't need to be extracted by a special process, because the plant part in question already consists of starch and nothing else. They are produced by milling this plant part, and they are both a flour and a starch at the same time. The prevalent use of the word "starch" or "flour" is then a matter of cultural accident, and, as David Richerby notes, it can happen that different languages or dialects pick a different term, but this happens rarely. The terms are usually distinct and not ambiguous, especially for plants where you use both, such as wheat flour and wheat starch.

Appendix: nitty gritty details on the special case of corn

The corn flour case is a very complicated one. There you have many words whose meaning can overlap:

corn starch is only the milled inner part of the kernel. It is a flour which is also a starch. It can be modified, and then it shouldn't be technically considered a flour any more.
cornflour is the UK term for the milled inner part of the corn kernel, as David Richerby points out. However, in many countries the word (or its literal translation) is used for whole grain corn flour, which is yellow, and chemically has other ingredients than pure starch.
the milled whole corn kernel is sometimes also called polenta.
polenta also can be a word for corn semolina, which is also a milled kernel, but the particle size is larger than a flour.
yet another meaning of polenta is a pap cooked from a milled whole kernel of either size (semolina or flour).
the pap cooked from pure corn starch is never a polenta, it is a pudding or blanchmange. These words are also used when the pap is cooked from pure starch extracted from another plant.


wishy-washy caffè frappè I'm trying to do the Greek drink "Caffè Frappè". I'm using 2 tea spoon of spray dried coffee and 2 tea spoons of sugar. I've added a little of iced water and blended with an hand mixer until it's whipped. After that I add water until the glass is full, but the water/coffee is too much diluted. Am I making any mistake? Suggestions?

I would also recommend that you find dried coffee by Nescafe - specifically the Greek brand if you can find it.  Depending on where you live it can be hard to find but is totally worth it and for some reason foams better than regular Nescafe.  If you search the internetz you will find that there is a Nescafe with a label written in Greek.  This is the one you want!

Once you have strong enough dried coffee to start with then it is only a matter of ratios with water and the coffee.  Experiment, but two teaspoons sounds like not enough - I'd start with a tablespoon to 3 tablespoons water.  Pour over ice.  Add water after you have mixed it but be careful not to ruin the foam you just created.  Remember the ice will start to melt immediately also making your frappe taste wishy washy so make it stronger from the start.


How to make Barley bread? I started experimenting with baking using mixture of wheat and barley. The loaf was very tasty when made this way.

Barley is one of the grains that has gluten. So is there a recipe for bread with only barley?
In my experiment, I added 2/3rd wheat and 1/3rd barley flour. What is the maximum amount I can substitute, if pure barley bread can't be made?

I want the bread to raise nicely and have normal texture.

Experiment more. I'm not a slavish recipe-follower, and while I have the occasional brick when I screw up badly, I have yet to make actually inedible bread in several decades of playing fast and loose with bread recipes. Loaves that were not what I wanted, which I avoided repeating, yes. So bad it went in the garbage rather than be eaten, no.

I would suggest staying a bit on the wet side to give the lower gluten the best odds.

Perhaps try 1/3 wheat, 2/3 barley and see how you like it. If that doesn't work for you, then 100% barley probably won't either. If it does, 100% might. Only costs a couple of loaves to make the experiments. If the 1/3 wheat does not work to your satisfaction, try half wheat next. Do report back.


Should chicken be seasoned before vacuum sealing? I am going to vacuum seal then freeze several pieces of chicken breast. Is there a benefit to putting anything on it before I vacuum seal? For example I normally put spices on, but not sure if doing so before storing would have a benefit. Also if I decide to marinade, it wouldn't really work with the vacuum sealer as it would suck all the juice out. Any ideas or suggestions?

There's no benefit to seasoning before you seal your food unless you plan to cook the food in the bag once it's thawed, as in sous vide. Salting or spicing isn't going to make it last longer in the fridge, and it's not going to impart much in the way of flavor either.

I suppose seasoning and rubbing your spices on before freezing would save you a bit of time later if you had a specific recipe in mind for the chicken, however if you decided to use the chicken for a different purpose you'd have to clean all that off and re-season/spice it if you did.


How to add creamy taste and consistency to pasta dish with cheese? I enjoy a plate of pasta every now and then, so yesterday, I made a large pot of pasta combining penne noodles, shrimp, scallops, garden-fresh zuccini squash, cheese, and seasoning.

Everything turned out great, but one thing seemed missing to me.  Whenever I have a dish of pasta with cheese in a restaurant, the cheese sauce usually has a very rich, creamy taste and consistency that I found missing in the dish that I prepared.

How can I add a rich, creamy taste and consistency to pasta dishes?

This is going to sound a little facetious, but a good way to add creaminess is... Add cream.

If you want something a little lighter, you can use a few egg yolks, tempered and whisked with hot pasta water and mixed through the pasta with the rest of the ingredients. This, along with plenty of parmesan, is the basic method for carbonara.


How to make eggplant less oily? I like to make this recipe with thin spaghetti, Eggplant, fresh tomatoes, and mozzarella. 1 pound of eggplant is sauteed in 1/4 inch deep vegetable oil.

When the meal is done it's too oily for my taste. How can I make the eggplant less greasy/oily tasting?

Another option is to simply lightly oil the eggplant with a pastry brush and bake or grill it, then add it to the rest of the dish as usual. It isn't the exact same dish, but it will still be good and substantially less oily. You could also bake the eggplant whole (poke a few holes and bake at say 375 until completely tender), then slice when done.


Is it possible to make your own DIY cookie mix? Is it possible to create DIY mixes for cookies? I make chocolate chip cookies often enough to want to streamline the process. My idea is to create my own combine the dry ingredients, storing them in a box/tupperware of some kind, and then combining it with the wet ingredients when its time to bake.

My hypothesis is that it -should- be possible with pretty much any cookie recipe, but I thought it best to ask.

Freezing the portioned dough is more effective as a timesaver if you make a lot of dough but only a few cookies at a time. And as Catija notes, if you need to cream the butter and sugar a complete dry mix would not be practical.


Is it ever more accurate to measure by volume rather than by weight? I've been thinking about the fact that although many recipes specify volume, measuring by weight is much more accurate.

Are there any cases where it would be objectively better (i.e. more accurate) to measure by volume - that is where a weight measurement would leave you scratching your head?

I'm really thinking theoretically here: if you're just trying to come up with a reliable, reproducible way to measure an ingredient, perhaps so you can write down a recipe for yourself, would you end up always using weight or are there cases where volume would be more precise? Cases where they are equally accurate (such as water) don't count.

This question is not regarding the practicality of different ways of measuring but rather the accuracy.

I've thought of a few borderline cases, but I was wondering if there was anything more straightforward:

When serving a whole "unit" as a portion, such as a baked apple, one would count the number of apples to prepare rather than getting a total weight - although it would probably be a good idea to weigh them afterward to figure out how much of the other ingredients to use.
A garnish might be measured by volume - it doesn't really matter how much the whipped cream on top of the brownie weighs as long as it covers it.
When greasing a pan, one needs the volume necessary to cover the pan, but no one ever measures this.

Reminder: This question is not about what's subjectively better, or what you think I "should" do, just what's accurate.

Update: I guess I started a bit of an interesting discussion here, but there are only a couple answers that gets even close to what I was looking for. I'll try again:
An person preparing food in a kitchen somewhere on dry land on earth, can measure most items by either weight or volume.  In some of those cases weight will be more reproducible than volume (such as flour or salt) and in some of those cases there will be no difference (such as water). Are there any cases where using weight will cause more difficulty than volume - that is the volume is more relevant than the weight.

Two more cases:

when filling something (say a pie shell) or making equal layers (thank you rackandboneman and rumtscho) if the mousse came out more or less dense than you intended, you need to use the same volume, and the weight is irrelevant.
when the ingredient is not so precise to begin with, such as "x mL jarred tomato sauce" will surely cover the pasta, but "y g jarred tomato sauce" may not

Again, no question about practicality or personal preference here.

Better is a subjective term, however you can see what is done in practice as a guide to what people think is generally efficient as a balance of preparation speed, accuracy and cleanup.

Many recipes use a combination of volume and weight. Volume for most liquid measurements like milk, water or stock is considered more efficient than weighing them because although weighing is more accurate in most recipes the differences are small enough not to make a difference.

Weight is generally considered more efficient than volume for larger quantities of dry ingredients or gels (butter, lard, shortening) as it's faster, more accurate, and less cleanup.

Small amounts of wet and dry ingredients like spices, herbs, powders, flavorings etc are usually measured using volume measurements like teaspoons and tablespoons. I've tried it both ways and I've found that using teaspoon fractions is much faster than trying to weigh out small amounts of ingredients, and that my scale isn't accurate enough to weigh the fractions of grams you'd need to get that level of accuracy.


how do you thicken cheese fillings so it doesnt melt when baking i am stuffing cream cheese inside chicken.  i would like to bake it off in the oven.  what can i add to the cheese to make it not melt out

The question doesn't really have a clear-cut answer. Cream cheese melts, and if there was a way to change it so much that it doesn't melt when hot (AFAIK there isn't), it would have an entirely different texture when cold too. So just magically keeping everything as it is, but without melting, is not an option.
What you can do is a filling which is made with cream cheese, but is not only cream cheese, and not just "thickened cream cheese".  Or alternatively, use something other than cream cheese (the other answer suggests ricotta). There, the possibilities are endless. You can search for recipes and choose something that is to your taste.


How to Judge the Appropriate Feeding Schedule for Immature Sourdough Starter I am a week into the development of sourdough starter.  I initiated the starter on spring water and a flour mixture that is 1/2 whole grain rye (Hodgson Mill) and 1/2 whole grain wheat (King Arthur).  I am maintaining the standard 100% hydration in a kitchen that stays around 70° F - I have been maintaining it by discarding half the starter each morning and replenishing that part with fresh rye/wheat flour and spring water.

After the initial craze of bacterial activity where the starter more than doubled overnight, it is now bubbling reasonably well and increasing in volume by about 20% in a 24 hour period.  With bubbles and a great smell, I assume things are going well.  I'm not in a hurry - I know these things take time.

After reading through numerous books by all the bread authorities, I still have a few questions that I wanted to parse out to the contributors on this site for advice.

(1)  For an immature starter like mine, is there an advantage to feeding twice a day as opposed to once a day?  My understanding is that a mature starter will rise and fall - the fall being precipitated by the exhaustion of food for the yeast.  If my starter hasn't developed sufficient yeast to consume the available food within 24 hours, is there a compelling reason to re-feed it after only 12 hours?  Basically, will the yeast multiply to form a mature starter more quickly by receiving fresh food more frequently (at the cost of discarding half of the starter).

(2)  From my reading, I gather that the "float test" for starter is the most reliable way to judge when it is mature enough to support yeasting a loaf.  When the starter gets to this point (again assuming a constant 100% hydration), will it also reliably double in size at some point between feedings?  Should I wait for doubling behavior before float testing or might I eventually pass the float test without getting anywhere close to doubling?

(3)  I am following the discard-and-replenish-half approach to starter development.  Some sources recommend a more aggressive discard policy.  Intuitively, I would think that replacing a larger percentage of starter would require a longer time for the yeast to multiply into the new medium - I assume that means the period of refreshment would be longer (and probably that it would ultimately serve to amplify the lactobacillus activity in the starter).  My question here:  are there any yeast-development-related arguments to support discarding and replenishing more aggressively in an immature or mature starter?

(4)  Overall, my plan has been to continue feeding my starter daily while monitoring appearance and smell.  I was only planning to move to a 12-hour feeding schedule if my starter rose AND fell within 12 hours (yes/no?).  I'd love to hear from people like me - people who don't work in a bakery or live next to a bakery - about how long it took them to develop a reliable mature starter - I'm figuring on a month but would love it if things worked out sooner than that.

This question involves a lot of sub-questions that don't have simple answers, so this response is a bit long.

From my experience producing dozens of starters from scratch over the years, I have to disagree with some of the details given in the other answer.  There are two goals in the early days of a starter:

Produce an environment hospitable to the growth of yeast and lactic acid bacteria, while discouraging growth of other nasty things that could take over your starter and cause it spoil.
Begin producing a "rhythm" of feeding that will encourage the natural cycle of yeast and bacteria growth.  Generally speaking, yeast will grow quickly after a feeding (the rising phase), but their waste products and other changes will allow bacteria to take over and start growing strongly afterward (the "sour" phase).  If the culture gets too sour before the yeast are well-established, and feeding schedules are infrequent, it can take weeks to establish a starter (if ever).  If a culture isn't sour enough, bad things may begin to grow and spoil your starter.  The trick is finding a middle way, and a feeding schedule is a major part of that.

(1) Feeding your starter more than once per day is, in my opinion, a useful tool for guaranteeing a high success rate in the first few days of a new starter.  At a minimum stirring at least a couple times per day will inhibit mold and other microorganisms from getting established on the surface before the culture becomes sour (i.e., acidic).  It is true that feeding too frequently may not allow appropriate levels of sourness to occur in the first few days, but this can be overcome by two methods.

One solution is to add artificial acidity.  After many, many trials, various forums online have discovered pineapple juice is a near-ideal addition to bring down pH and add acidity in the first 2-3 days of starter growth.  Use it instead of water.  (Note that this process can be done with feedings every 24 hours or more frequently.)

The other solution is to only add partial feedings for the first couple of days (for example, following a regimen like this one).  To explain this method in more detail, rather than doubling the starter with each feeding (and discarding half), you would add the same amount each time for the first few feedings without discarding anything.  Thus, the first feeding would double the quantity of starter, but the second would only add 50%, the third would add 33%, the fourth 25%.  Each addition will provide fresh food to encourage yeast growth, while simultaneously concentrating the acidity.

(2) The "float test" is good for mature starters, but I don't think it's good enough to assess when your starter may be ready for bread.  A very strong starter will take off and rise significantly within a few hours after feeding.  I would wait until this happens.

(3) First, there is no reason to be wasteful.  I have no idea why many starter recipes start with a cup of flour or whatever and waste pounds of flour in the first week.  I've often started with 10-20 grams of flour.  And then I follow a regimen like the second link above or something like suggested in the second page of discussion on the pineapple juice solution, where you only need a few tablespoons to get going and you don't need to discard anything for at least the first few days.  Working in small quantities won't delay the establishment of your starter, and if you're only using a tablespoon or two of flour for each feeding, it's not a lot to discard.

As for ratios for feeding, as I said, many prefer a solution that actually doesn't discard anything for the first few feedings to produce adequate acidity.  After you start seeing a yeast response with lots of rise (not just small bubbles which may be due to bacteria activity or the large surge in bubbles which usually happens in the first 48 hours, due to bad bacteria activity before the culture becomes sour), you can begin to discard and replenish.  Many people double the culture with each feeding at this point, but I've had better results doing a 1:1:1 feeding (1 part starter to 1 part flour to 1 part water by weight) at this stage, as long as the yeast are clearly showing some activity, even if they might be slower.

Once the starter is mature, you can be more aggressive with discarding and replenishing, or alternatively planning ahead and only saving small quantities of starter for the next batch, so you don't have to discard much at all.  I find the 1:1:1 feeding strikes a good balance (effectively equivalent to discarding 2/3 of the starter and replenishing the rest).  Saving smaller amounts of starter will tend to produce a more mild starter, while doing your method of discarding half can lead to a somewhat more sour product, which some people prefer.  Doing a 1:2:2 feeding or even using smaller quantities of starter at each feeding can also have benefits, but it requires a strong, mature starter.  (For some discussion of various opinions on feeding ratios, see here.  In general, the right ratio is what seems to work with your starter and to produce bread you think tastes good.)

(4) You can get away with a 24-hour period between feedings for the first few days, but as I said, I'd at least stir it every 12 hours or more frequently to avoid mold settling.  The pineapple juice links above recommend against feeding more frequently in the first couple days to avoid diluting the acid.  I agree with that advice if you were using water and discarding and doubling the starter with each feeding, since you wouldn't be allowing proper acid development.  But if you follow the juice method or the other method outlined in the links, the acidity will become concentrated with the initial feedings, rather than diluted, and more frequent feedings can allow the yeast to "catch on" quicker.

Once established (and the 12-hour rise-and-fall cycle is a good benchmark), I would definitely recommend a 12-hour feeding cycle when sourdough cultures are kept at room temperature, unless you prefer a more sour bread result (and potentially a weaker culture).  It really depends on your room temperature, your feeding proportions, and a number of other things -- sourdough can work with a lot of different conditions.  I tend to use my sourdough for a variety of breads, and I rarely actually use it to make very sour "sourdough" bread, so I like to keep it very mild-flavored for adaptability reasons.  Feeding every 12 hours at room temperature (or even every 8 hours in warm temperatures) will do that.  When I'm not baking for a while, I put the culture in the fridge and take it out to do at least one feeding before reviving.

Again, a little thought can avoid waste.  There is no reason to keep cups and cups of starter lying around, discarding half every time you feed it.  When I save culture in the fridge, I generally save about 1/9th of what I actually need for my average batch of bread (which may only be a couple tablespoons: I often keep my starter in a tiny jar left over from Dijon mustard or something).  Then I remove it the day before, do a 1:1:1 feeding, 12 hours later do a 1:1:1 feeding (not discarding anything, so it's now 9 times the original starter quantity), and I have a very mild and active starter ready to go.  If I haven't used it in a while, I'll do a 1:2:2 feeding or even higher ratio to dilute the excess acidity that tends to build up.

To answer the final question of how long it takes to develop a reliable starter: I'd say with a 12-hour feeding schedule following a regimen like the one in the second link above, I can have a somewhat reliable starter able to bake bread in about 3 days, assuming good quality rye flour.  Depending on conditions, it can sometimes take another day or two, but a couple more days of regular feeding regardless will ensure it's really strong.  I've done this method over a dozen times, and I've never had a failure.  Before that, using a 24-hour feeding cycle, I've had multiple failures (by which I mean mold or other things happened), and it would usually take at least a week to establish a culture.  I haven't actually used the pineapple juice method (only water), so perhaps it is more reliable using a 24-hour feeding cycle in the first few days.

(Note that the reason I say I've produced dozens of starters over the years is because I've found these methods so reliable and not wasteful that I often don't even bother reviving an old starter I've neglected for months -- it's almost as easy to make a new one.)

Rye flour, I've found, is really useful, even if you eventually plan to switch to wheat for normal feedings (which you can do once you get the rise and fall in a 12-hour window).  With whole-wheat flour, I've often had starters take much longer to get established.


What do you call a scrambled omelette? I sometimes fry vegetables and chicken, crack a couple of eggs into the pan and stir it all for a while. Serve as is, or with fried rice or noodles.

Does this dish have a common name?

I have heard something similar to what you're describing called a "scramble".   It's usually what I wind up with when I'm out of practice with making omelettes.


How do you cook more successfully in a different kitchen? We rarely host holidays at my house and therefore end up traveling to visit with family. Since I cook frequently (and enjoy doing so!) I am generally asked/expected to help in the kitchen with the main dish, sides, and/or desserts.
My question is how do you generally deal with cooking in a kitchen other than at home? At home:

I have my "favorite" knives, cutting boards, pots/pans, mixing bowls,
etc
I am used to my stove and oven, and have tuned my recipes to those
times/temperatures
I know where all the seasonings/spices and other ingredients are

and to complicate things there are generally multiple other people helping in the kitchen and/or socializing, which is a great time to hang out with family but obviously makes moving around the kitchen more cumbersome.
None of the above are showstoppers as I am still able to cook okay, I just find that nothing comes out quite as ideally as I know I could've executed if I were cooking at home.
What are some specific things I can do or bring to make cooking in other kitchens more successful?

Planning, planning, planning.  As you say, you are used to your kitchen and know where everything is.  Go over the recipe(s) in advance and locate everything you will use.  When you cook at home, you know where the measuring spoons are.  Find them.  Make sure there is one of the size you need.  You know you have all the spices, but put your finger on each one you need and open the jar to make sure there is enough.  You might even poll the other cooks to make sure you aren't all using turmeric and there isn't enough to go around.  Even better, premeasure the spices and hide them somewhere.  Decide what pan, cooking implements, serving dish, and serving implements you will use and make sure nobody else wants them.  When the gathering is large the house often doesn't have enough big ones.  Foil covered cookie sheets can be a lifesaver.  I find there are always enough burners on the stove to go around, but the oven can be a problem. If you do this the day before there is time to recover from problems.
Having done so, recognize that you are your own worst critic and are not looking for your Michelin star today.  There will be glitches.  Probably you can recover from them, perhaps with some loss of quality.  If it is small, nobody else will notice.  If it is large, they will share your pain.  It may become one of the family stories.  It isn't the end of the world.  I recently burned up an entire rack of ribs on an unfamiliar grill.  Fortunately there was some meat in the freezer for a replacement.
One challenge is the conflict in attention.  When you are cooking at home you get to think about what can be done before guests arrive and how you will share your energy between cooking and talking to guests once they arrive.  When you cook for a family gathering the guests are there already and competing for your attention long before the meal.  There are a range of ways to deal with this, but recognizing it in advance can make it easier.


Using Pyrex casserole dish as bread cloche? Can a casserole dish (Pyrex) be used upside down as a bread cloche?

I've done it several times with good results. It shapes a round loaf so that it rises up instead of spreading out, and you can see when it has risen enough to bake, but it would be easier to remove the finished bread if it were a real cloche with a knob on top instead of a bowl. I put a lot of oil on the bottom and sides of the bowl so that the bread does slide right out, but still it can be a little tricky getting it out.

The 1.75 qt bowl has the right depth to width for me, but I wish they had a bigger bowl with the same proportions.


Neapolitan Pizza in a regular gas oven I am trying to master the homemade Neapolitan pizza, from dough preparation to cooking it.

After following the recommendations at Seriouseats.com for the dough preparation, I came across some doubts regarding the oven use.

I understand that ideally I would make it in a 900F wood oven, but at home we don't have such equipment!

What is the best practice to make the Neapolitan Pizza in a regular gas oven that heats up to 530F? (i.e. temperature, time, tray positioning...) Are there changes in the way the dough has to be prepared?

I cook a lot of pizza.
The biggest issue is that you want browning and leopards spots, but a really short period (under 2 minutes) so that the inside is still moist and fluffy on the cornicione.

I've had luck with three things in my gas oven:

A long, long rise on the dough - a couple of days cold in the fridge.  Supposedly what this does is convert more of the natural sugars in the flour.  The crust definitely browns better.
A pinch of sugar...yes, I know that Neapolitan Pizza doesn't have sugar.  But its also typically baked in a 900F oven...so, you're going to have to compromise.  Sugar promotes better color on the pizza.
A big heat source in the oven.  A baking stone is good, but the best thing I've found is the baking steel.  Preheat the oven for a long time (like an hour) and then slide it on here.

Pizza with these tips, cook time of 90 seconds in a normal home oven:


Freezing an unbaked pie I combined sugar and flour and mixed with frozen blackberries and placed in unbaked pie crust, dotted with butter and froze.  Will this turn out all right when I bake it?

Yes, since the blueberries were already frozen, you are unlikely to have them making the crust soggy. It should work out well.

You will want to bake it from frozen, probably, rather than thawing.  You might want to slightly lower the oven temperature since it will need a little longer, and you don't want the crust to over brown.


Is pyrex safe to use on a gas burner? There seems to be conflicting views on whether a pyrex dish can be used on a gas burner. Can anybody here provide a definitive answer?

Where do you live? European Pyrex is made from borosilicate glass, the same as in laboratory's equipment; American Pyrex is made from common soda-lime glass.

If you are in America, don't bother trying it at all; soda-lime glass is sensitive to thermal shock. Even though it's tempered for kitchenware, it is nowhere near good enough for the burner.
In Europe, you could take your chances if you have a bowl you don't mind risking. However, there is still a significant chance that it will break on the burner some day. While I think that they use the same raw material for both kitchen dishes and laboratory test tubes (which are obviously OK on a gas burner), kitchen stuff is much thicker. This makes it much more likely to break under thermal expansion.

If you decide to make the experiment with a borosilicate Pyrex, take care to warm it gradually, starting with a small flame, and don't pour cold ingredients into it. Proceed at your own risk. And ask yourself if you really have no pots better suited for the task.


How to have poached eggs in "sphere form"? I have been trying to learn how to make poached eggs. The main issue I have is the shape of the egg whites.

In a "perfect" poached egg, the white builds a sphere around the yolk and covers it completely. However, with my eggs, the white just hang on the side, next to the yolk, and the end result somewhat resembles a fried egg.

I've been following the usual steps (sieve the runny white, move to cup, heat the water to almost a simmer, ..) so I'm at a loss as to why this is happening.

The number one thing is having fresh eggs. Older eggs have a looser inner white and there's not much you can do to keep the yolk from hanging on to the side. Contrary to the other answer, I have not found that swirling the water helps the egg stay together, compared to dropping it in very carefully (the water should go into the cup before the egg comes out; you shouldn't be pouring it in, as much as allowing it to slowly slide along the side of the cup further down into the water). The water should be well-salted, and a bit of vinegar can be a good idea although adding too much can cause the outer skin of the egg to become a bit leathery.

If you want a truly absurdly perfect poached egg, you can use a sous vide cooker (or just a pot of carefully tended warm water). Cook the eggs in their shells at 64 degrees celsius for 1 hour, remove the shell and separate the loose white, and cook in simmering water for just a minute or so. I actually find the result a bit off-putting in its perfection, but it's the closest to "sphere form" you will ever get.


At what temperature should I simmer bolognese to avoid burning? Bolognese requires a long period of low heat cooking or simmering, according to some recipes several hours.

At what temperature should I simmer, in order to avoid burning / overcooking, while still achieving caramelization, reduction and breaking down of the vegetables?

I am talking about the temperature of the sauce, while it simmers.

Depending on what other tasks you have for the day, consider sliding the sauce (and your Dutch Oven) into your oven for 6 hours or so.

  Slow Cooker Setting = Oven Temp Low = 185-200F High =
  280-300F

I cook my Brunswick Stew this way at 250F (covered 3 hours, uncovered 3 hours). The last 3 hours allows the sauce/broth to thicken through evaporation. The temp allows the stew to "simmer" without repeatedly stirring, worrying over it, and zero scorching! Plus, I'm free to tend to other things.

Related:
Technique: Slow Cooking with a Slow Cooker
Slow Cooker vs Dutch Oven: A Conversion Guide


Do you leave the oven thermometer inside the oven while you are baking? We have a very old gas oven at home. I just started baking but every time I use it for baking, I end up having burnt cookies, unevenly baked cakes, etc.
I plan on buying an oven thermometer. I'd like to know if I should leave the thermometer inside the oven in order to  monitor the temperature. Or should I take it out once the oven has been preheated enough?

In your case it's definitely worth leaving it in, because it will help you get to the bottom of whether things are burning because the temperature keeps rising during cooking.

Oven thermometers are generally designed so that they can be left in. I prefer the type that can hang from a rack


Will a sharpener for a wider edge ruin a knife with a narrow edge? I'm loving my new Victorionox chefs knife, and I'm aware the it has a 15 degree blade edge. When the time comes to sharpen it, will using a sharpener for a 20 degree blade ruin the knife edge?

If you sharpen it with a 20 degree edge, it will remove material until it matches the 20 degree bevel.

It is up to you whether you like this better or not; however, if you selected this particular knife because you like the way it feels and cuts, the 15 degree bevel may be a contributor to that.

Will it harm the knife?  No, but it will change its performance characteristics.

Sharpening Supplies provides a table of common bevel angles for various purposes, but indicates it is mostly up to personal preference.  They indicate 20 degrees is common for chef's knives, and go on to say:

  The lower the angle the sharper it becomes, but it also becomes less
  durable and more prone to chipping. If you seek a very durable edge, a
  larger angle is preferred because it can withstand more than the
  thinner edge of a low bevel angle.


Small emulsified breakfast sausages in Dutch countries Halo!

We are in the midst of our honeymoon, and are traveling from Amsterdam to Brugges to Paris. Upon our first breakfast in Amsterdam we were presented with small (about 1.5 to 2 inches in length, about .75 inches in diameter) sausages. They were a regular breakfast item in Amsterdam, and then again in Brugges.

They are very light in both color and flavor. If I had to guess, they contain a mixture of chicken meat and pork fat. The contents are definitely emulsified. They are in natural casings, or at least they certainly were in Amsterdam. As I said, they are served with breakfast. In Amsterdam the sausages were very dense so the casi g would brown and pop open, whereas in Brugges the casing was much less full, which provided a pillowy, soft texture.

Does anyone know what these sausages are called? I'd love to make them for myself when I get back to the US.

I am going to guess that you are likely getting british or irish breakfast sausage.  The national dutch sausage, Frikandel, is minced, skinless, and not usually eaten at breakfast.  There is a perception amongst the dutch that Americans eat nothing but meat and fat in huge portions.

I did a semester abroad in the Netherlands.  For the first few days, the host family fed me eggs and sausages for breakfast.  I usually have some toast or cereal for breakfast.  So, after a couple days I asked them if this is what they had for breakfast every day.  My host mother said, "No, this is what we were told Americans have for breakfast everyday!"

After a chat, they said they were buying British breakfast sausages and eggs for me.  Their typical breakfast was a slice of bread, some cheese, and a very strongly flavored liverwurst.  My tastes were not as developed back then.  After two days of that I asked if there was any other breakfast choices. My host mother bought me suikerbrood.  It is a loaf of bread with sugar baked in it.  It was delicious!  I told them that I enjoyed this new breakfast very much.  This caused a lot of chortling for my two host siblings.  It turns out that suikerbrood is a small children's breakfast.


what's the smoke point of a hybrid oil? I saw at the store there's a new cooking oil composed of 80% canola oil and 20% olive oil.
They offer it for frying and seasoning.
What would be the smoke point for such an oil?

It would be the smoking point of the lower of the two oils.

There is a persistent myth among cooks that mixing two fats somehow makes for a better smoke point (usually oil+butter). But the molecules which will burn at 150°C will always burn at 150°C, no matter what other molecules they are mixed with. So, if you mix two oils, and oil X has the lower smoke point wlog, it will smoke at the smoke point of oil X. It will smoke less than pure oil X, but only because you have diluted it and you have less low-temperature-burning molecules in the pan.

This doesn't mean that the smoke point of your mixed oil is too low for frying. The smoke point of cold extracted oils is always low. But it is possible to refine olive oil, even though nobody sells it pure (the advantages of olive oil are removed by refining). If both oils in your hybrid oil are refined, it will have a high smoke point, suitable for frying. But marketing doesn't always care about such details, so, if they don't say anything more specific on the label, you can't know what kind of olive oil (or canola, for that matter) they used. From a cynical point of view, this is a perfect way to get low-quality olive oil, refine it, and sell it for frying hoping that the customer will choose the frying oil advertising "olive oil" among its ingredients, but there is no proof that this is what the producer is doing.


How do I know if condiments in refrigarator are good? no not about cooking my refrige broke  getting a new one tomorrow at what point does all the condiments start to go bad its at 60 degrees and has been for several hours just wondering if I have to start from scratch and throw away everything

A really accurate answer would require analyzing each individual condiment, but there are some general principals you can apply.

Some condiments would be shelf stable outside of the refrigerator because they inhibit pathogen growth by being:

acidic, like ketchup or vinegar
salty, like soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce
sweet, like jam or jelly, or chocolate syrup
sufficiently dry, like peanut butter

These are not going to be bothered by a day or two outside of refrigeration.   We keep them in the fridge because it extends their shelf life to be much, much longer, on the order of months instead of weeks.

Of course, you should still discard them if you see any signs of mold, unusual wateriness, or strange smells.

Other condiments in the refrigerator such as mayonnaise and salad dressings should be considered subject to the normal rule for how long foods can be outside the refrigerator.   This would normally be a cumulative period of about 2 hours maximum, to be on the safe side.

While normally I would not mention any... more liberal... interpretation of the best recommended safety standards, I will point out that 60 F, while technically in the danger zone, is still moderately cool, and the danger increases exponentially with temperature.   You can assess your own risk, but you may decide a few more hours is still a risk you are willing to accept.

As always, check for off smells, colors, or appearance of mold or other spoilage, and apply common sense.

See also:  How do I know if food left at room temperature is still safe to eat?


Why refrigerate bagels after shaping dough? I've noticed that recipes for bagels call for a refrigeration period after shaping. Why does it matter if the refrigeration is done after shaping?

The shaped dough takes up more space in the fridge so it's not ideal.

At least with respect to pizza dough one source says that:

  Doughs that are shaped and proofed after a slow, cold fermentation
  demonstrate noticeably better flavor and better structure.

So why shouldn't we refrigerate the bulk dough and shape afterwards?

It doesn't matter as far as rise or flavor is concerned.  You can cold rise the dough, or the shaped bagels, or both.

However, the advantage of cold-rising the shaped bagels is that the cold dough is easier to peel off and dunk in the boiling water than room-temp dough is.  Bagel dough tends to be sticky and soft, and it's challenging to avoid stretching the bagels while dunking.


Which Korean dishes are typically hottest? For the typical palate of most people from English-speaking countries, just about all Korean food is spicy.

But for those of us who love hot spicy food, I want to know if there are certain specific meals in Korean cuisine which generally have the reputation of being the hottest.

For comparison I know I have Mexican friends that think certain Mexican dishes are too hot for them. Are there some Korean dishes that even some Koreans avoid for being "too spicy"?

I found ojingeo bokkeum (오징어볶음), which is squid stir-fried in a chilli sauce, to be pretty intense, especially as a jeongol (전골) or stew, where it's both hot (as in spicy) and hot (as in temperature). The sweetness of the stew does nothing to lessen the intensity of the dish.

Also ridiculously spicy is buldak (불닭), which is again a stir-fry of chicken in a chilli sauce, with tteok (떡) or rice cake.


Homemade pizza left out overnight We made homemade pizza last night. We made extra, uncooked, pies, and accidentally left them out overnight. As soon as I noticed, I put them into the freezer just in case they were still good.

What do you think? Will they kill us?

TIA!

EDIT: There are yogurt cheese, peppers, and onions as toppings.

I'd say it depends. If you are dead-set on observing all food safety rules, the pizzas are probably unsafe to eat. But in the real world, it is possible to bend some of those rules and get by unscathed. But you have to be smart about it--not all rules safely bend as far as others.

What was on the pizzas? Shrimp? Chicken? Raw sausage? Those things have a pretty short safety window. Cured meats like pepperoni are safer longer (that's why they're cured in the first place).

How hot was your kitchen?

How long did they sit out?

And then of course it comes down also to how long and how hot you're cooking things. You might well be able to kill off germs in things that aren't outright spoiled. Pizza isn't that long-cooking, so there's risk there.

Ultimately, you have to be the arbiter of safety. Check the USDA website about food safety and follow every rule if you want to feel certain.


Are beets related to turnips? We recently made fresh beets, which was a new experience for me, and I was surprised to discover that a freshly cooked fresh beet tastes quite like a similarly cooked turnip. Is there any connection between the two foods?

From a scientific standpoint they are not closely related.  They aren't even in the same order.  Beets are order Caryophyllales and Turnips are order Brassicales.


Is it safe to use a stainless steel pan after making salt and vinegar brine in it? I used my stainless steel pan to dissolve salt in a 30% vinegar/salt solution to kill weeds outside.  After the salt dissolved I let the solution cool.  This stripped the shiny surface of the pan.  The surface still feels smooth like the normal areas.  Is this pan still safe to use for foods?

Your pan is fine, the vinegar and salt just dulled it visually but it is safe to use.


alternative leavening agents other than baking powder, and their ratios of substitution Please provide a list of alternative ingredients to baking powder, and how much of the substitute to use in place of baking powder.

I must confess, I can't give you straight substitution amounts -- all of these leavening agents behave somewhat differently, so in most cases a straight substitution for baking soda isn't appropriate.

Ye Olde List of Leavening Agents:

Biological Cultures (Wikipedia, plus kefir whey I've seen recipes for)

Yeast - norm is 1 tsp/pound flour for 1-2 hour rise time
Sourdough - uses 1/2 to 1/4 of final flour mass, rise time varies
Kefir whey - similar to sourdough, unknown rise time or measurement
Buttermilk - no clue what substitution ratio, but wikipedia lists it.  Probably acts similar to kefir whey and sourdough.
Yogurt -- wikipedia lists this as a leavening agent too, but I'm skeptical.
Beer (unpasteurized, with live yeasts)
Ginger beer (same deal)

All of these share the common ability to ferment flour, when handled properly.

Chemical Leaveners (Pulled straight from On Food and Cooking)

Pearlash and potash (mostly potassium carbonate).  Purely historical leaveners, these were derived from wood ashes, and were the predecessors to baking soda.
Hartshorn AKA baker's ammonia (mix of ammonium carbamate and ammonium carbonate).  Not used much anymore.  It was once made from deer antlers, ergo the name.  When heated, this produces both ammonia and carbon dioxide. Because of the ammonia, this cannot be used as a straight substitute for baking powder, due to the changes in flavor and smell it causes.
Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), basic component of baking powder, reacts immediately with acid
Cream of tartar (tartaric acid) -- Acidic component, reacts with bases immediately
Monocalcium phosphate -- Acidic component, common in baking soda, reacts immediately
Sodium aluminum pyrophosphate -- Acidic component, reacts slowly with base after mixing
Sodium aluminum sulfate -- Acidic component, provides the "double" in most double-acting baking powders.  Reacts slowly under heat.
Sodium aluminum phosphate -- Acidic component of double-acting baking powder, acts during early cooking at 100-104F/38-40C
Dimagnesium phosphate -- Acidic component of double-acting baking powder, reacts early in baking @ 104-111F/40-44C
Dicalcium phosphate dihydrate -- Acidic component of double-acting baking powder, reacts late in baking @ 135-140F/57-60C

So, basically you need an acid + baking soda, or one of the heat-activated compounds (hartshorn, or one of the last four salts). In many cases a dough can provide its own lactic acid.


How should I store sunchokes for 4 months in a hard freeze? I've seen that sunchokes "just want to grow", so I was wondering how I should store them over a long cold winter.

This is mostly so I can have seed (community garden) in the spring, but I will also be eating some.

Keep them moist and sealed in a bag at around 32F. Treat them a bit like potatoes except that they are resilient to frost and freezing. In fact, they do survive buried in frozen ground over winter.


What is filter paper? A recipe that I'm trying to make says: "Place mixture into a loaf pan that has been sprayed with pan release and lined with filter paper."

I'm pretty sure that "pan release" is the generic version of PAM, but I don't know what filter paper is. Is it another word for wax paper?

A quick search turned up a bunch of coffee filters and lab equipment.

I would assume it's a synonym for parchment paper.  And yes, pan release is a generic term for any food release spray.


What's the best way to clean and dry blueberries? I buy organic blueberries which come in a little plastic container.  I like to wash them and put them in a tupperware container.  After I wash them I place them between some paper towels to let them dry, but they take forever to dry this way.

Is there a better way to this?

That's the same method I would use.

If you have a salad spinner you could try giving them a gentle spin in there first.  They are sturdy enough (unless they're over-ripe) that they should handle a gentle pass through it.


Why did my soy milk turn sour I got some soy milk on Saturday and it expires May 2017 (if unopened I presume). I went to open the fridge just now and I had a cup of tea with it no problems. I went to drink some now from the bottle and it has gone sour and tastes identical to normal cow milk when it goes sour. It smells like it too and has thickened. I have never had this happen before and I have bought soy milk for months. I am not sure how this happened. There is nothing I think that could've caused it. Some vinegar was put near the bottle?? Could that do something?
I always refrigerate it with no problems.

"Safe" does not mean 100% nothing will happen, it means that, even if all assumptions are met perfectly, there is a tiny chance that you will get bacterial growth. Even more likely is that not all assumptions were met. Maybe there was a small problem in the production process - storage procedures assume that food is produced under nearly sterile conditions, but maybe your milk was just over some threshold of contamination. Or possibly, your fridge is a bit over the recommended upper limit of 4 C.

However the spoilage organisms got into a growth phase, they soured the milk. Throw it out. If the fridge is under 4 C (measure in the place where you keep the milk - the door is frequently somewhat warmer), it is unlikely to happen again anyway.


Adding raw chia seeds to baked goods? I have seen Chia Seeds used after being soaked in baking and other recipes, but could you just use them raw? I was thinking about replacing the poppy seeds in a lemon poppyseed muffin recipe with them to give them  more fiber.

Chia seeds can be used without soaking, but they absorb a LOT of liquid and create a gel. If this isn't accounted for in your recipe, they could cause the finished product to have an odd texture. At the very least, I'd add extra liquid to your batter and let it sit for a few minutes to check it's consistency before you use it.


How do I clean a George Foreman grill? I find that the scouring side of a blue ("non-scratch") kitchen sponge, with water and dish detergent and lots of elbow grease, is effective, but it does require lots of elbow grease and I'm wondering if there's an easier way.

Deglazing is the easy way that I've found over the years:

Unplug the grill, but don't give it a chance to cool down.
Drip water along the top edge of the grill (squeeze from a sponge, or a soaked paper towel).
You should see the water turn murky brown as the stuff releases ... if it doesn't, add more water.
After 20-30 seconds or so, wipe it down.

It's a bit more difficult to clean the top ... you have to learn it back.  You can also wipe it down with a soaking wet paper towel.

You might have to scrub a little bit, but the water should get off the majority of the gunk.  Beware that you'll tear up paper towels on the little nubs at the bottom edge of the lower part ... I typically save that area for last, as anything to clean above it would drip back down there anyway.

Also, if the grill cools off too much, you might need to let it re-warm some.


Oyama rice cooker - uncooked rice under heating element I accidentally dumped uncooked rice into the Oyama rice cooker under the heating element. I got out what I could, but I can hear I didn't get out all the grains. Shaking / upending the rice cooker doesn't get out all the rice.

Can someone advise how I empty the remaining uncooked rice from under the heating element?

This question is on-topic enough I'll take a shot at it. First of all, don't try to cook with this without getting the rice out as it's a potential fire hazard. You probably know this but it's worth saying!

Now how I'd attack this is to grab a screwdriver and take the thing apart, which is probably easy to do. If you do decide to try it take lots of pictures as you go so you can put it back together.

If that's not a step you're willing to try then it's guaranteed to be physically possible to get the rice out without taking it apart because the rice got in to begin with, it's a matter of getting it tipped to the right angles at the right time. The best way to do this is to shake it - a lot, upside down or tipped the right direction for the rice to come out. Tip it around at all angles, work it loose and then tip it back to the angle it can fall out. Do it again and again until it the rice is gone. It may take awhile doing it this way, and I'd suggest running the machine outside the first time after using this method in case you miss anything.


I am making an apple crisp and need to know how much salt I need for 4 tsps baking powder I am making an apple crisp for my husband's restaurant. I'm using a recipe that I did not create. Recipe calls for 4 tsps baking powder, but there's no measurement for the salt! I know it needs salt to rise. Please help! This needs to be done asap.

Just a large pinch of salt will be fine for both the crust and the filling. In the crust it helps with flavor, makes a buttery crust taste less oily, and it also helps with browning. In the filling it helps give a lift to the flavor.


Can I dehydrate homemade sausage with a dehydrator? Is it safe to dry homemade sausages that have been cured with Cure #1 in a dehydrator instead of hanging them out to slowly dry? The dehydrator I have goes from 90F to 190F.

Safety concerns aside (although this is related), the issue with this approach is case hardening.  That is, the sausage, salumi, or whole muscle dries too quickly and unevenly.  The exterior becomes too dry, while the interior is not dry enough.  The hardening of the exterior, then further limits the drying of the interior. Hanging meat to dry, in the appropriate environmental conditions, leads to an evenly and appropriately dried final product. I would not recommend a dehydrator in this situation.  With a constant warm airflow, case hardening is inevitable.


Doubts about forming a crust on a souffle to make it rise further I've read on some cook books about souffle and found a trick that might make the souffle rise further: put the souffle for 1-2 min under the broiler before baking, so a crust will be formed and more of the steam that rises will be trapped before it escapes completely from the souffle.

I know that if a crust forms on top of a souffle or cake, it will lose its ability to rise (not flexible anymore). So why would the souffle, after the broiling, expand and rise even further during baking?

To be more precise: I don't understand how it's possible for the souffle to rise after creating a crust on top (via broiling). The crust created is supposed to prevent the rise of the souffle during baking, so how does it instead make it rise even more?

Could you also explain what causes the crust to form during baking?

I think rather than a crust what this process would ideally do is to seal the top a bit so it would trap more steam but still be flexible. The trick is to do it long enough to form that seal but not long enough that it forms an actual crust which would stick to the rim and inhibit rising. A seal forms on the top naturally in the first few minutes in the oven, I think the point of this technique would be to form that seal before baking to prevent steam from escaping before a crust would be formed, maximizing the rise. Whether it would work or not would I am not sure, I would suspect that the souffle ingredients, type of dishes used, and whether the rim is buttered or not would all be factors. The only way to know is to try it both ways and measure the results. If I had to put money on it I'd bet that this technique would get more rise, not by that much though.

If I was going to try this technique I'd generously butter the rim and side of the souffle dish and carefully monitor the top as it is in the broiler, pulling it out before it forms a real crust. I'd also have a knife or maybe a thin barbecue skewer ready to run around the edge to break off any that has stuck from the side of the rim.

Now if you want to be really slick, chefy, and slightly geeky you'll use a chef's torch instead to form the seal on the top, that way you can be sure it won't touch the sides and you can control the result completely.

If you do try this please post the result, I'd be very curious to know how it works for you.


Why are certain fruit & veg bought in UK supermarkets tasteless? I have been to Italy, Greece & Turkey. Fruit & Veg in these places tastes amazing! So much flavour, really awesome!

In the UK when I buy the same fruit or veg, it is absolutely tasteless, it is just crunchy water!

Why is this? I used to think it was because there was very little Sun here. However, many of the fruit & veg in question come from Spain! A place with a lot of sunshine! Something else must be in play!

I am talking about melons & watermelons, grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers, plums, peaches, oranges and much more!

Any clarification would be greatly appreciated.

PS. Places I shop at are Tesco, Aldi, Lidl, Asda, Sainsburys.

Non-native and out of season fruits and vegetables that are available in northern countries (e.g. UK, Canada) need to be shipped from far away and will be picked before they are naturally ripe (under the normal sun and heat and getting nutrients from the soil).

They will ripen in controlled environments (UV lights, maybe controlled atmosphere and temperature) to be able to be ripen on time during the long transit to be ready when they are put on shelves in your local stores.

In the UK, it is currently the high season for strawberries (I assume it is the same time as in Québec); compare locally-grown strawberries to imported strawberries and compare the flavour and aromas.

(anecdotal) A quick tip when buying imported fruits (and vegetables); keep them outside of the fridge as much as possible, and if planning to eat soon, place them in the sun for a little while and the flavours will get better.


Non-plastics storage suggestions I'm looking to get into making my own chilis, stews and spagehtti sauces, but I wonder if there is a better way to store my cooking. I currently use plastic containers that are probably the depth of a typical freezer, which makes it difficult to do just single servings. Mason jars were my first thought, but was told that it was easy to do it wrong, which opens you up to botulism, which doesn't sound too fun (not to mention the issues with glass and storing in cold areas.

So I"m wondering if anyone has any recommendations at all storage wise that would work for what I need, and would allow being able to continue to cook up some food in bulk and maybe save some money in the long run.

if you are planning on continuing to freeze, yet want to make single-serving portions, i would recommend a vacuum bag system, like this one, which is what i use: http://tinyurl.com/4ygotv9. it's a bit of an expense up front, but it will pay for itself in the long run easily. i now make batches of things, freeze them in portions, then seal them with this and they last AGES.

EDIT: i just realized that your question specified NON-plastic solutions, but i took it to mean you mean non-plastic storage containers. the bags used for these are quite food-safe, as far as i know. i apologize if it's not exactly what you are looking for. but it really works well, and avoids the dangers you read about with a canning solution.


Where can I buy corn kernel for making popcorn? I want to home make popcorn by myself. Watching some video on youtube, I saw they are using a kind of kernel of corn. Are they different to what we eat normal corn? It seems that they are much smaller.

Yes is different from normal corn.  Gets hot with oil and small water inside makes corn pop.

http://global.rakuten.com/en/store/caramelcafe/item/p_cot1002food005/

Cost is ¥2,056 for 8 pound/3.63 Kilogram.  Will last very long time.

再见

[Please do not edit for clarity]


why add a shot of vodka to a cream sauce? I don't understand what reason there would be to add vodka to a cream-based pasta sauce.

Vodka is allegedly tasteless, and the alcohol burns off. So why?

Is it to make the recipe 'nouveau' or something?

First, the alcohol doesn't burn off. We had a table about the percentage of alcohol left after a period of cooking, and especially in something cooked as short as a pasta sauce, there is a substantial amount left. For the longer discussion, see Cooking away alcohol.

Second, alcohol is a great solvent. It can leach aromatics from spices and herbs which wouldn't come out with water only. There is a good reason why extracts and essences are made with alcohol. While a really good extract needs a long time, even the short cooking time will be enough for alcohol to make a difference.

Third, it can stabilize your sauce. Cream is an emulsion of fat in water, and not terribly stable, especially if some acid is present. Alcohol dissolves both fat and water, so it will stop the cream from eventual separating.

Fourth, maybe you happened to find a not so great recipe. Vodka will help with the first three points, but it is seldom a good choice for cooking, because there is almost always another alcohol which will accomplish the same and introduce a good flavor which harmonizes with the remaining ingredients. For pasta sauces this tends to be a good brandy, but it depends on what else you have in the sauce. And because even vodka will leave a taste of alcohol in the end, it is hard to argue that it can be used where the taste should be kept unchanged.


What are the consequences of infusing a tea bag longer than recommended? I'm a regular consumer of tea (since about 2 years ago), usually from commercial tea bags.

They advise to infuse tea for 3 to 5 minutes, but there is some times that I have left it longer by accident.

So I have been wondering what are the consequences -if any-  of infusing tea bag longer than recommended by sellers (sometimes up to 10 minutes). My question is general, but I'm especially interested in black tea.

The tea will be stronger than you'd like if you steep it for too long. Over-steeping sometimes gives a bitter flavor as well. (I am guilty of frequently over-steeping as I have the attention span of a goldfish. Sometimes I remember to set a timer, sometimes not.)


At what temperature does simple syrup freeze? I would like to freeze mint flavored simple syrup into ice cubes, and store them for a while. I tried this with a 2 to 1 simple syrup and it did not freeze at all.  Would this work for 1 to 1 simple syrup?

It is pure water and pure sugar (glucose+fuctose) then it will freeze at or about 22F or -5.5C.  At 2:1 it will freeze at 12.5F or -11C.  Use a deep freeze as a normal freezer cannot get it that cold.   This is why slush is made from sugar water as at the freezing point of water the water will freeze while the sugar will not.


How to chop/mince meat? How can I chop or mince meat more easily?

Currently I just use a knife and chop it up.

Meat grinders are no good. I am not trying to make sausage. I want to chop the meat up, not turn it into goo. Most meat grinders don't even have a hole big enough for a chicken breast or steak.

Is there any kind of device that you can just put a cooked chicken breast in it and it chops it up into small pieces? Just to make it clear what I am trying to do:

------INPUT--------------------------------------------------------------------------------OUTPUT--------

You could try using a vegetable dicer. This professional one specifically says it works for chicken breast. If you have a lot of chicken to dice it maybe worth it, but it won't be real quick to clean.

If this is too much machine for what you want to accomplish, smaller home versions are made, something like this home vegetable dicer might work for you.


How to store no yeast dough I need to store a no yeast dough (water, flour, butter, salt) for verenyky for about 40 hours.

What would be the best place: fridge or freezer?

Dough grows moldy in the fridge after several days. While it might keep 40 hours, it's more secure in the freezer.

Depending on what you want to make with it, it might be better to work it from cold or from warm. If it is better from cold (e.g. pie crust, pierogi should behave similarly), freezer is perfect. If it is better from warm, you'll have to plan for sufficient time to unfreeze and let it warm up. In this case, the fridge might be better despite some mold risk.


Baking a Cake at the Wrong Temperature I mistakenly baked my Carrot Cake at 375 degrees for 35 minutes as opposed to the correct temperature of 325 degrees for the same amount of time.  What will happen?  Do I need to throw it away?

It is likely to be quite over-baked, probably quite dry and unpleasant on the outside.  It may also develop an unpleasant scorched flavor, especially on the outside.

It will not be unsafe, however.


Why does cooked fruit seem to retain more heat than the other foods in the recipe? Why does fruit retain heat when cooked?

The same phenomenon occurs with tomato sauce on pizza, or vegetables in a casserole: the moist filling feels much, much hotter than surrounding crust or noodles.
In short, this phenomenon is caused by differing thermal properties of the materials involved. The quoted excerpts below (from PhysLink.com) provide some explanation of the physics involved, and I've attempted to extend and simplify it a bit more.
Imagine an apple pie fresh out of the oven:

Despite the temperatures being equal, your tongue is still more likely
to get burned by the [pie] filling than the [pie] crust, though. There
are 2 principles behind this: thermal conductivity and specific
heat capacity.
Thermal conductivity is just the measure of how quickly heat energy
travels through a substance.

Pie crust has lower thermal conductivity, since it has less water in it and more pockets of air (even small ones) and the heat energy is not conducted through it as easily.
In contrast, the fruit filling (which is relatively full of water) has a higher thermal conductivity, and can more easily transfer its stored heat to your mouth.
Either hot pie crust or hot fruit filling can burn your tongue, but the hot fruit filling will burn you more quickly.

Specific heat capacity is something like energy density of a
substance, and measures how much energy must be contained in a
substance for it to have a certain temperature. For example, 100 grams
of aluminum at 100 degrees C has more heat [energy] in it than 100 grams of
copper at the same temperature. If you dropped both pieces of metal
into separate cups of water, the one with the aluminum chunk will get
warmer than the other- there's just more energy contained in it. Since
the filling is mostly made of water, and water has a very high
specific heat, the filling must give off a lot of heat for its
temperature to decrease
This has 2 effects: when the pie comes out of
the oven, the filling cools down much more slowly, and as a fragment
of filling gives up heat to your tongue, it only cools down a tiny
bit.

The specific heat capacity is a bit trickier to understand, but it essentially means that the filling (remember, full of water) absorbs more energy to reach the same temperature and therefore has to transfer more heat energy (either to the air or to your mouth) to cool down compared to the crust, with lower heat capacity.


Preparing dishes for photos Some times it can be difficult for me to get the right look of a dish in a photo.  I have used extra butter for a more glossy look, swapped corn starch for flour in sauces for the same reason, even once went so far as to use a fine water mister/spray. It seems that by the time I get around to taking the photo the freshness of the dish does not translate to the camera (though the meal is still great to eat). Is there a method for this, whilst still being able to eat the food afterwards, and not change the basic ethos of the recipe.  So, the question is:  How do I make dishes more glossy without changing the recipe too much?

Found some great ideas here from the BBC, but still do not want to 'brush' oil over meat which I then intend upon eating.

What camera and what lighting?

With plate only set up your shots so you are not messing around when the food is ready.

Light, camera, and backdrop make a world of difference.  Outdoor light unless you have a professional studio is the best.

This is just a hack picture and I did not care about the backdrop but this is just a $100 camera and a free editor that only crops and auto contrast.  There is natural light above the sink.  Shoot the picture as fast as possible.  Cut the most delicate stuff last. Have spare garnishes behind to dress up the plate. If it serves with gravy or dressing take some raw shots first.

Your knife skills are very important.  Have a sharp knife and have a plan.

Have a nice cutting board to get some shots before plating.  Plated is much harder. You cannot serve 8 and get a nice fresh photo plate. In the afternoon with natural light make a single serving.

Outside has more natural light. The fog is steam from the warm salad. You have to let food cool for good shots.


How far in advance can you make bacon? I have to cook bacon for 300, how far in advance can I make the bacon?  How will it hold up if say I start cooking it 2 days before the breakfast?

I actually have some experience with exactly this. I needed to do a breakfast party for a bunch of bikers, at 5am, by myself, in the middle of nowhere. The middle of nowhere in Alaska has a special meaning that would elude most readers of this. It's a special kind of middle-of-nowhere. So, I promise, I took it seriously, and this actually works:

You can cook the bacon two days in advance. Here's the thing, you've got to do it the oven, slowly enough that you can control curling. Bake it on a sheetpan at no more than 375F (190C), flip the bacon half-way through and turn the pan front to back. Figure 18 minutes total, but don't let it get crisp. Stop just shy of crisp. You can use foil or parchment paper to facilitate clean-up. Put the not-quite-crisp bacon in Ziplocs in the fridge.

The very final crisp can be done at most a couple of hours in advance, it will get chewy if you try to add the final crisp sooner than that. You can use any method that works for the final crisp, even the microwave. Of course a griddle is ideal.


freezing roquefort cheesecake cooked or uncooked I'm making a roquefort cheesecake appetizer with roquefort, cream cheese, and eggs.  I'd like to cook 1/2 recipe now and freeze the other half for another time.  Do I cook the second half before freezing or after?
Thanks for your expert advice.

I would cook it first and store it in the freezer. Commercial entities that ship cheesecakes do it this way.  I would defrost in the refrigerator. Sounds delicious!  I hope it turns out well.


Montreal Pizza sauce I may be partial having lived there most of my life, but now that I live far away, I miss Montreal Pizza.  I can't seem to find a restaurant near me that has a similar flavor or any combination of ingredients that matches the flavor.

Do you have a recipe for the pizza sauce they use in Montreal pizzerias?

Thanks in advance for any input.

Found this article from a Montreal Pizzeria owner, hope its what you were looking for! :-)

The ingredients for Pizzazz Pizza (Montreal, 1989) sauce are:

  3 tbsp Pure Olive Oil 45 ml
  3 medium garlic cloves
  1/2 medium onion diced
  1 tsp salt
  1 tsp sugar
  1 tsp oregano
  1 tsp chili or one fresh halapino [sic] pepper
  5 basil leaves
  3 28oz cans san marzano tomatoes (whole tomatoes)

Also included in the link is crust, construction and an alternative sauce. Be aware that this recipe is par for 4 16" pizzas, so either adjust as necessary or invite over some friends to share!


What is the correct way to make china grass ready for Falooda? People familiar with Indian desert Falooda will be in a better position to answer this question.

I tried to recreate at home a Falooda that I had outside, ingredients were milk, sabza (Basil seeds), rose syrup, ice-cream and china grass.

I purchased all the ingredients, but when I boiled the dried china grass noodles (not the china grass in powder form) in water, all the noodles got dissolved in the water!

See the photo that shows the form in which I purchased china grass from store:

What is the correct way to make china grass ready for Falooda?  Do I soak it in cold water or cold milk? Should the water/milk be warmed a bit? Without boiling, is it safe to consume it?

China Grass is intended to be used dissolved.  From (no endorsement intended)  Spices Of India :

China Grass is also known as Agar Agar, Faluda, Japanese Moss, Ceylon Moss and Bengal Isinglass.
It is obtained from various seaweeds, has no aroma and has a neutral taste. It is used to make jellies and, because of it's neutral taste, can be flavoured with any essence.
To use China Grass to make jelly, immerse broken strands of China Grass in boiling water to dissolve them. Add Flavouring/Essence and leave to cool and finally set in the refrigerator.
Alternatively, place Chine Grass in a pan of milk, bring to the boil (whilst stirring) and strain to remove any lumps. When cool, add flavourings of your choice (try Sugar, Cardamom Powder etc), pour into a dish and refrigerate until set. When ready to serve, cut into fancy shapes using a cooky cutter and decorate with Almonds or Pistachio Nuts.

So it seems that it is being used as a thickener for the dessert/drink you are making.  While looking at different recipes for Falooda/Faluda, I noticed that many recipes do use China Grass but many that had actual noodles in the dessert used vermicelli for the noodles.
So, you may want to try adding vermicelli or another type of noodles to your existing recipe or try another recipe that uses actual noodles.


Making Tuiles in a frying pan? My parents' oven is having issues (the bottom element has stopped working.)  One idea I had to keep cooking was to make Tuiles on the stove top.  It seems to me like it might work.

I'm assuming that I'll have to either cover the pan or flip the cooking tuile.

I can't find any recipes for a stove top variation.  Anyone have any experience or advice?

it’s very well doable on a stove-top. You can use a non-stick pan and it would work great.

My experience with pans is, due to surface curvature, it’s better to use a small pan and fry your tuile spread all over the pan.