How to know what temperature cling film is safe to heat to I've been looking up how to make donner kebab at home, and the instructions I found suggests to wrap the meat in cling film and boil it - I guess similar to a home made bain-marie.

I didn't realise you could boil/cook with cling film and so have researched more about it and found out that if the cling film is designed for food (and therefore not the shrink wrap they put over cardboard boxes) it is likely to be "safe".

The cling film I have states the following:

  ...is a professional grade film that is ideal for use on all foods, for wrapping or use in the microwave or freezer.

Naturally I'm concerned about putting cling film into hot water/an oven.

If it matters, the product I'm asking about is Kirkland Signature All Purpose Cling Film

My question is, is there any guidance on what is the maximum temperature the film can withstand? For them to claim it's microwave safe, is there a minimum temperature/length of time it must withstand to claim it's microwave safe? Or is it very much up to the manufacturer to provide this information and there is no guideline/specification.

The suggested duplciate only covers boiling water... cling film (I think) is likely to react differently to different types of heat (water, oven, microwave etc)

It depends on the country since what is classed as safe differs although there are lots of common points.
My own summary from the below English, Irish and American food standards are

Unless a cling film is specifically marked as not safe for microwave use, it must be suitable for use in the microwave under EU law.

In general, cling film should not be used in an oven as it can melt and could contaminate the food.

Check with the manufacturer

While the Food Standards Authority in the UK does not have specific recommendations about microwaving with cling film, the Irish and American equivalents do. The Food Safety Authority of Ireland and The United States Department of Agriculture both advise that cling film should not touch food during cooking.
When using cling film, you can also check the packaging for any specific instructions, but interestingly you don’t have to choose cling film that is labelled ‘microwave safe’. Unless a cling film is specifically marked as not safe for microwave use, it must be suitable for use in the microwave under EU law.

Source for above quote

Can cling film be used in an oven?
In general, cling film should not be used in an oven as it can melt and could contaminate the food. However, there may be cling film available which can be used in an oven, so it is advisable to check the manufacturer’s instructions on the cling film before use.
Can cling film be used in a microwave?
Check the manufacturer’s instructions to see if it is safe for use in a microwave. If using in a microwave the cling film should not touch the food

Source for above quote
And finally

What containers and wraps are safe to use in the microwave oven?
Only use cookware that is specially manufactured for use in the microwave oven. Glass, ceramic containers, and all plastics that are safe to use usually will be labeled for microwave oven use.
SAFE TO USE:
... (content removed to keep it brief)
Wax paper, parchment paper, heavy plastic wrap. Do not allow plastic wrap to touch food; vent it to allow a steam escape.
NOT SAFE TO USE:
... (content removed to keep it brief)
Food cooked in any container or packaging that has warped or melted during heating.

Source for above quote
Related: Which plastic wrap is okay for oven use?


Substituting milk with whipping cream I'm making a corn bake in the crock pot that calls for 1 1/2 cups of milk. How much whipping cream would I use?

As the previous answer says, there is an enormous difference between milk and cream.

However, it is possible to reach a rough substitute for milk by mixing your cream with an equal amount of water by volume - in your case, 3/4 cream and 3/4 cup water.

It won't be exactly the same (the fat content will still be substantially higher than it would be if you used milk, and if you do a taste test, comparing the flavor of whole milk to a 50/50 cream/water mix, you'll see that the flavor is also very different), but it should work.

However, there is a chance that the higher fat content will lead to the sauce breaking, so if you want to be 100% sure of success, go get some milk.  If you're willing to gamble a bit, try diluting the cream.


Preparing Brown Rice I have a rice cooker with brown rice setting. I struggle getting the brown rice cooked properly. I get it either too soft or too dry once it is done cooking. I usually put in 3-4 cups of water with the brown rice. My question is, what is the ideal way to prepare brown rice? Is it better to boil it in a pot?

It is good to see people going towards brown rice.
When buying brown rice you could choose out of two types based on its production method.

Par-boiled (not as same as boiled in a bag)
Raw

Former takes shorter time to cook while latter takes longer. If you are using Raw type, you need to wash and pre-soak it for an hour or so (depend on the amount). Once you soak it, the water required for cooking brown rice can be as same as white rice of same weight.

Lets take 1 kg of raw brown rice.
Assuming you have not soaked, you may add extra 2 cups of water than to what's indicated in your rice cooker for 1kg.

Certain brown rice from Europe, Thailand or Vietnam can be pretty corase and absorbed high volume of water. Where as Brown Rice from countries like Sri Lanka tends to be tender. Country to country the grain differs in shape, taste, nutrition since soil, water, weather climate, organic, non organic and the type of seed used for agriculturing. Thus leaving us with a bit of search to be done when cooking these rice. If you are experienced you will know immediately how to meddle with each type.

As for the boiled in a bag, I don't recommend that method. Mainly because it doesn't allow sufficient room for rice to settle and expand. (I hope you are not referring to a very specific rice item condumed in certain Asian countries as it indeed meant to be cooked in the compressed bag and eaten in compressed form.)

PS: My family has been harvesting paddies with different types of rice in tropicals for generations. Personally and most people seem to prefer par-boiled rice. It is much tastier but requires more sweat compared to producing raw.

In your case, you don't even need a rice cooker. We use a pot when it comes to any rice but specifically for brown. A deep enough saucepan/pot for the amount of rice + water) can be used. However in this method you have to be careful about "managing" fire and following:

Wash and soak the rice
Add the water
Get strong fire on the lid open pot to avoid overflowing
You will see bubbling rice in sometime
When water is starting to be a little above the rice (as almost as rice surface) lower the fire to a blue minimum and close the lid
I suggest you to be around the kitchen till you get a hold of the timing :-) you could prepare other dishes...
Switch off and stir using a fork (wooden if your pot is nonstick...)

Bon appetit!


Dehydrating fruit without a microwave I have a recipe that calls for dehydrating raspberries and lemon rind with the following technique:

Scatter raspberries and pieces of lemon rind over a sheet of baking paper on a plate.
Place in the microwave on the lowest possible setting for 40-45 minutes until dehydrated.

The dehydration is done so that the fruit can then be ground up into a powder for a dessert and you can see how the dehyration technique above would work.

However, I don't have currently own a microwave oven. Is there an alternative technique to achieve the dehydration?

There are any number of home dehydrators available commercially, such as the Nesco FD-75PR. I have one like this and it works well. However, as Alton Brown demonstrates in this excerpt from Good Eats, a dehydrator for fruit can be constructed quickly and easily as well.
[Edit]
In the video Alton demonstrates using a typical box fan, home AC filters and inexpensive plastic mesh, all bound with a couple of bungie cords to create a simple, but effective, dehydrator. If the video remains down you can also find it on You Tube by searching for "Alton Brown Fruit Dehydrator". (thanks for the update @Aaronut)


What's the best way to execute a pulled pork dish? Like most people, I am a huge fan of pulled pork anything.  But what I don't get is the actual pulling process of the cooked meat.  Any cook book or cooking show will tell you to cut across the grain of the meat, especially a tougher cut like a pork butt or shoulder, for maximum tenderness.   Even though I am able to cook this cut of meat until very tender,I have much better results chopping it up, instead of pulling it! Based on the grain of the meat, the title and the process seems to be an oxy moron.  Am I the only one who "chops" my  "pulled" pork?

You definitely want to pill the pork apart with a pair of forks or your fingers. The best way I find is to allow little "clumps" of pork to permeate the mix.
Note that while books talk about cutting against the grain of meat, that is for raw or cooked meat meant to be sliced and served. The reason you cut against the grain in that situation is to tenderize the meat by cutting the connective tissue.
In the case of pulled pork, the connective tissue is already broken down and dissolved, so you will have a tender product even when you are pulling with the grain.


Alternative to potatoes I made a pot roast yesterday with potatoes (red fingerlings) in it. I forgot, but potatoes give me incredible heartburn.

For stews, soups, and roasts (among other things), what are good alternatives to potatoes?

Simply Googling "alternatives to potatoes" brings up a bunch of nonsense about cutting carbs, thus why I'm asking here.

If you want a similar texture and flavor, I recommend trying other similar root vegetables.

I use turnips and parsnips in similar applications. They're both dense, white and have a slight sweetness to them and they should hold up relatively well to long cooking times.

You might also enjoy yucca which can have a cooked texture similar to a cross between potato and banana. I've not tried them in this sort of application specifically but I think they should work.


What happens to pound cakes if I forget the flour and then add it after baking a little? I was making pound cakes. I put the mixture in loaf pans, noticing the consistency looked off. I put them in the oven and about 5 minutes later I realized I forgot to put in the flour. I took the pans out, added everything to the flour and put them back in the oven. They are cooking at 300° for 1 hour 25 min. Will they turn out or not?

You will end up with a very sweet sunken souffle type item without the flour.


Can I blend high-protein (baking) flour and 00 flour to approximate plain (AP) flour? The high-protein flour has 11.5% protein — the 00 flour has unknown protein content. I understand that "00" is a statement of the flour's grain size and not its protein level, but I assume that there's a normal range or expectation for the protein content of 00 flour.

So, would it be suitable to blend the two in some proportion to obtain something substitutable for AP flour?

First, in both the US and Australia, 00 flour has about the same protein content as AP flour, so you can use it instead, keeping in mind that it's more finely milled. To answer your broader question, yes, you can definitely combine flours together to approximate AP flour (keeping in mind that protein content in AP flour will range from brand to brand). In the US:

cake flour has low protein content (7-9%)
AP flour has medium protein content (10-12%)
bread flour has high protein content (13-16%)

In Australia and other countries the flour percentages may differ from my chart above. I believe Australia has lower protein content in the US in general for AP flour, and 00 flour is also lower, but within the same range as AP flour there.


how to unstick dried pineapple chunks that are stuck together I have a jar of dried pineapple chunks which are stuck together.  How do I get them apart?

Thank you for your kind assistance!

If you want to separate while retaining shape of individual pieces, freeze then pry.

May cause small change in texture upon thawing


water temperature affecting bread rolls texture! I'm doing food tech coursework, and I'm really confused on how temperature of water affects the texture of the bread. If someone can answer scientifically that would be great : ) thank you!

The yeast (and other microorganisms) will effect bread dough over time, breaking down sugars and fermenting the dough. The speed and character of how the yeast will work is a function of time and temperature. At colder temperatures, like in the refrigerator, the yeast will work slower and take a longer time to ferment. At warmer temperatures, the yeast will work faster and reproduce more frequently. At hot temperatures (140 F) the yeast will start to die off and be useless.

Therefore, the temperature of the water added to the dough will help determine what temperature the yeast is starting at. Adding colder water is a good way to delay the fermentation process, and warmer water can help speed it up.

Since your question was about texture the question now becomes how does fermentation time effect the texture of my bread? All other things equal, slower fermentation times produces larger and more irregular holes and faster times produce smaller, regular-size holes in the crumb. A fast rising dough will have many small air pockets all of a similar size and shape.


How do I colour ready-to-roll icing I'm making a cake for my daughter's birthday. I'm a bit rubbish with icing and decorating, so I plan to buy some ready-to-roll icing to cover the cake. The problem is that the cake is shaped liked a cartoon character, and I want to colour parts of it appropriately. My question is what is my best approach to colouring this icing? Is it possible for me to knead food colouring into the icing, or should I try something else?

I've did previously try to shop-bought royal icing that I could microwave to a paste then colour, but the overall effect wasn't great (mainly due to my spreading technique!).

There are special kinds of food colouring for icings, such as those sold by Wilton.  As a rule, you should use these, not traditional food colouring.

You can use ordinary food colouring but it will be hard to get the colours you want, and your icing will end up being watery/runny.  The icing colours (AKA gel icings) preserve the texture of your icing and, in general, are much more effective at actually getting the right colours.

You should be able to find these at any baking supply store.  There's no special technique, you just mix them.  They are completely fine to use on ready-to-roll icings as well as homemade.


Peanut butter - store bought texture at home I know peanut butter and other nut butters can easily be made at home, but they all seem to have very small bits in them.  Creamy is never the true creamy smooth of big brand store bought.  Is it possible to replicate the ultra smooth creamy texture of store bought at home?  I don't like nuts in my food and even the tiniest bit of texture will put me off.

Well, you could shell out for a commercial nut butter mill, if you had an extra thousand bucks lying around. But otherwise the answer is probably not. I believe that commercial peanut butter makers grind the nuts between metal plates, which gives the very fine texture. At home, you're presumably using a food processor, which can't make thick-textured pastes very fine.

Some health food stores have nut butter mills, though, so if you're looking for freshness, you can grind just before you buy.


How dangerous is mold at the bottom of container with fat My friends from a farm gave me some clarified butter, about half a liter in a plastic container. I used it for some time, mostly for frying. A couple of days ago I saw mold spots at the bottom of the container. Obviously, this means that butter was not clarified properly and some non-fat components remained at the bottom.

What should I do with the butter? Is it unsafe? Or I am ok to use it if I don't touch a bottom level? Can I transfer untouched butter to another container?

I would toss it. The only thing where it's generally considered safe to eat around the mold is hard cheeses. In general there will be mold spores in lower concentrations throughout the container, but you only see the areas with high concentration with your bare eyes. The lower concentrations can still make you ill.


Making stovetop potroasts I just made a pot roast on the stove, vaguely following this recipe.

My altered ingredients list would look something like this:

some quick sprays of oil on the saucepan and meat while searing

Chunky bits:

big hunk of meat (a few pounds)
2 chopped onions
a bunch of little potatoes
2 smallish carrots

Liquid stuff added to the broth:

a few good shots of Bragg's All-Purpose Seasoning
between ½ and 1 Cup of white vinegar
maybe ¼ C of molasses
last dregs of the Worchestershire sauce (a couple of tsps)
a tablespoon or two of garlic powder
some "pumpkin pie spice" — cinnamon, cloves, etc.  about 2 tsp.
maybe ¼ C of olive oil
enough water to cover the roast in the pot.

Other than the ingredients list, my deviations from the recipe were I think limited to the fact that I put the carrots and potatoes in at the beginning.  I may have let it simmer a bit (<= 30 min) longer than the prescribed amount of time.

The roast was not tied during cooking.

It turned out to be not unpalatable, but decidedly more bland and dry than I'd hoped for.  The broth, on the other hand, is a bounding meadow of savoury deliciousness.

Other than the obvious — adding more spices — is there something I can do to future roasts to encourage more flavour to congregate in the meat?

My mother taught me to insert bits of garlic into slits made into the flesh of the roast before searing and then cooking it, something like what's described here.

Some people like cloves in there as well, though I more prefer that with bbq pork. For lamb, it's garlic and green olives. So, accordingly, you should be able to get creative and experiment with injecting some other things so the roast will take on flavors you prefer.


How to make chocolate milk I have tried making hot cocoa with melted chocolate. Here is how I did it:

Heat up some milk in a mug until it is hot(ceramic tends to do better in microwaves than glass does because it doesn't conduct heat as well as glass does.)

Put half milk chocolate and half dark chocolate(I was trying to go for that bittersweet and semisweet chocolate by using milk chocolate and dark chocolate) in a small thin glass container and melt it completely(not to the point of separation though)

Put a little bit of the hot milk in the chocolate to temper it(same way you temper eggs).

Stir the chocolate into the milk. Now this chocolate was hershey's brand and I used 4 pieces of the milk chocolate and 4 pieces of the dark chocolate.

Keep stirring until it is the same color as chocolate milk or darker.

Now doing it this way I thought "Milk has fat and water and chocolate has water soluble components and fat soluble components so it should be all good with no separation.

However it did separate and there was a little bit(about an 1/8 of an inch of cocoa butter at the top.

However you can't homogenize chocolate like you can homogenize milk.

Now my thought on why it didn't work is because I used 2% reduced fat milk(which means fat is reduced by 2 percent not to 2%) and so there was too little fat.

Even though it was only reduced by a little in terms of fat content, that little bit it was reduced by might be important to prevent separation. However I didn't want to go with organic milk because I know that organic milk separates into water and cream.

So if I want to make hot cocoa using chocolate or make chocolate milk should I go with whole milk and melt the chocolate over the milk in a double boiler or what?

Chocolate milk is frequently made with either chocolate syrup (which has no fat) or a powdered mix of cocoa powder and sugar (which has almost no fat) for precisely this reason. You can make it with chocolate by sprinkling very finely grated chocolate into hot milk, but you still run the risk of the fat separating.


Why use a kettle to heat water? Whenever I need to heat up water for a French press or hot chocolate, I do it in the microwave. Is there a good reason to use a kettle instead of the microwave to heat water?

I think the primary considerations are convenience (how much effort is it to set up and use the system?) and time spent (how long does the system take to heat the water?).

A standard electric stove can have 2500W elements, and most of this energy will go into a kettle sitting on the element and thus heat the water. Even a big built-in microwave won't be rated at much more than 1000W, and a fair percentage of that is wasted in heating the magnetron (I've found citations of 30% to 50% wasted power). So, all else being equal, a kettle on a stove will heat a body of water 2-4 times as fast as a microwave oven.

If you're instead talking about electric kettles, then in the US (120VAC) they're 1000W to 1750W with very high efficiency, so they'll still be faster than anything but a stove or a commercial microwave. In the lands with 220VAC power, electric kettles can be up to 3000W, which would be even faster than a stove-top kettle.

With a mug of water the convenience of a microwave may outweigh the lost time, but if you're heating a liter or more of water then you probably want to pull out that kettle.


How is canned corned beef made? I'm very curious what gives canned corned beef its flavor. While there are a lot of guides out in the Internet and YouTube that show how to brine and make American corned beef, there is very little information on the canning process of canned corned beef (the ones from Brazil).

what gives canned corned beef its flavor

Consider the flavor of canned corned beef as similar to freshly cooked brined corned beef, with these exceptions:

The canning process requires product in the can be heated under pressure to 250+ F, this high temperature will change flavor notes and texture.
Food labeling standards allow 10% of canned corned beef to be a flavored solution. This will have a large impact on flavor. This will generally be a proprietary trade secret.
Canned Corned Beef will most likely be made from lower quality cuts of meat (ie. the one not good enough to be sold as fresh corned beef brisket). This lower quality cut will have a different flavor. Probably fattier.

  there is very little information on the canning process of canned corned beef

I just Googled, you're right, very little info. I do not home can, so I can't provide a lengthy answer. I found a historical recipe here,
Ball Blue Book of Canning and Preserving Recipes:

Note: That recipe will not provide you with something similar to commercially canned corned beef. It will be a jarred liquid and chunks, it might be better than canned.

For information on commercial canning, Google the term: corned beef retort. A retort is what commercial canners use to sterilize canned products.


How do I separate egg white? What are ways of getting only the egg white from an egg? Can it be done after the yolk is broken?

The traditional method is as Rumtscho describes.

I got tired of this method for several reasons:

Egg shells are dirty.
Shells get in the egg (especially with home collected eggs which have MUCH thicker shells than store purchased eggs)
Egg shells are sharp and it's hard to keep yolks whole.
That method just takes too long if you need more than 2 eggs.

Now I just crack the egg into my hand (which has been thoroughly washed -- cleaner than an eggshell). I hold my fingers a little apart and let the white slip through, leaving the yolk in my hand.

Quick and simple.

Regardless of the method that you use you should use three bowls: one for the collected whites, one for the white you are working on, and one for the yolks.

Remember: only dump the current white into the collected whites after verifying that the yolk is whole. That way you don't spoil all your whites with one broken yolk.


Salsa morning after taste My salsa's taste ok when eating, but the following morning there is a dreadful after-taste in our mouths.  This doesn't occur after eating salsa at a restaurant.
Recipe:  red onion, 1 clove garlic, tomatoes, basil, chille (seeds removed), olive oil.
I've tried soaking the chopped onion in milk which slightly improves things but a long way from a cure.  I've tried different types of onion & adding lemon or lime which hasn't worked either.
Been experimenting for over 10 years and still a poor salsa maker!

It could be the allithiolanes in the onions (and to some extent, garlic) at work. You can't smell them, really, but they come out of chopped onions gradually and have a very acrid / bitter taste.
There's no way to eliminate it 100% except for cooking, as far as I know, but you can peel and halve your onion and soak them in clean cold water with a bit of acid added (lemon or lime juice) for about 20 minutes before you use them. This should lessen the extent that you notice the taste. Alternatively, or additionally, you could use shallots or other smaller, milder red onions which don't have as much of a problem with it.
It comes out in that sort of "milky" liquid that you see when you cut open most white onions.
Commercial salsa gets rid of it through the manufacturing process.


Are Devil’s Cigar mushrooms poisonous? My dad has
this mushroom
growing on his land, in large quantities.

He is curious if these are poisonous to humans, as he is interested in cooking them. He commented that he has seen some that look to have been partially eaten by animals.

I cannot find specific information about Urnula Geaster (devil's Cigar; Texas Star), however, almost all of the members of the Urnula family are inedible.  I would hazard a guess that this variety is as well.

A Field Guide to Mushrooms


How to cook a tender quail? I've had various successes (but mostly failures) with the little birds. I'd like your advise on making it tender as can be.

My technique is mostly to sear the outside and then cook for about 20' in a flavor full broth (onions, wine, other vegetables & spices).

Am I cooking it too long (or short)?

Three potential methods or changes you can try:

soak the quail in brine for 2-3 hours before searing. You can do this in a large zip-lock sack or in a covered bowl. Make sure to store the quail/brine combo in your refrigerator during the soaking.
Let quail reach room temperature before cooking.
Pan-searing the quail might dry out the smaller pieces, i.e. the bony wings or legs. Try your 20-minutes cooking in a very hot oven, making sure not to burn or sear the quail too much. Similar to cooking a turkey, cover the thinner pieces with foil so they dry out more slowly.

Ultimate method: use a "Sous Vide" method - you basically seal the quail and your flavorful broth in a vacuum seal bag, making sure to get as much air out as possible before sealing. Then you slow-cook the bag+contents in a Sous Vide hot-water bath. Instead of buying an expensive/French Sous Vide cooker, just follow these steps for very similar results: http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/cook-your-meat-in-a-beer-cooler-the-worlds-best-sous-vide-hack.html

Note: to get a good finish, after cooking the quail to tender in a Sous Vide bath, you can sear the quail a little bit with a cook's blow-torch (for good presentation) or just pan sear it quickly in a hot pan.


Why does some bacon contain whey powder? I wouldn't expect bacon to contain cows milk, but it does in some cases in the form of whey powder. What's the purpose of it?
(My daughter is allergic to cow's milk and I have to check her foods carefully, including bacon, which isn't a food I'd expect to contain dairy.)

Whey powder is often used in processed meats for bulking and binding.  In the case of whole muscles, they are often injected with a brine (an ingredient of which is whey protein) to "enhance moisture and tenderness", as the document states.  I could also imagine it as a binding agent in turkey "bacon", where ground turkey is formed and sliced.


Where are the missing speeds in my KitchenAid mixer I have an artisan KitchenAid mixer, model KSM150, everywhere on the internet, including in the KitchenAid site it says that there are 10 working speeds, but the speed selector on my mixer has only 6 working position (and another one for off), there are also corresponding markings on the mixer which are fitting the same number: 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10.
See in this picture from the internet:

Where are the 3, 5, 7 and 9 speeds?

This is mentioned in the user manual for your stand mixer (the larger more detailed booklet, not the quick start pamphlet).

Those speeds exist on your machine, they just aren't labeled. The odd speeds aren't commonly used, so by design the lever is predisposed to "notch" at the evens, and the lever naturally wants to find a place there. However if you need more granular control of your machine, you can adjust the lever to stop in between speeds.  For instance, if you want to set to speed five you would adjust the lever to speed four, and then carefully move the lever forward until it sits between four and six-- that is speed five, and the lever will stay without snapping either forward to speed six or backward to speed four.


Is it safe to use lye-based oven cleaner on a stainless steel pan? I'm currently in the middle of seasoning some new pans that I received from made in. I accidently messed up one of my pans by not wiping off the excess seasoning wax and now the pan has dots all over it.
In the past I have used the 24 hour soak in oven cleaner method for my wok. I'm curious since I'm using stainless would the oven cleaner (Easy Off, a brand whose active ingredient is lye) be safe to use to help remove the messed up patina? My pan is stainless clad and manufactured by made in.

Firstly, there should be no need to season a stainless clad pan. Stainless pans are generally kept pristine, with any oil residue scrubbed off after use. Seasoning is done on cast iron and carbon steel (which is black and looks like thin cast iron). I'm not aware of any guidance that suggests seasoning stainless steel in the same way cast iron is.
Oven cleaner is essentially just lye, mixed into a form factor to make it a spray on foamy cleaner. Lye is a strong base (the opposite of a strong acid), and can be similarly caustic and harsh on surfaces. This article outlines the damage that can be caused by it on certain stainless steel surfaces. It also contains guidance directly from the manufacturer of the Easy-Off brand that it's designed to be safe for stainless steel inside the oven (such as the oven racks), and not for other stainless steel surfaces.
Serious Eats has a recommendation to use oven cleaner as a last resort after using other cleaners and scrubbing for the bottom & exterior of a stainless pan. I would not use oven cleaner on the interior cooking surface of a stainless steel pan.


How can I make posole "pop" faster? I have run into this a few times.   I soak dry posole overnight, and then add it to my sweated/sauteed vegetables, add water, and stir it regularly, and it still takes over 4 hours for the kernels to pop.   Is there a part of the process I am missing or doing wrong, or could I just be dealing with old posole?

Posole is essentially Nixtamalized Corn, or hominy.

Use a pressure cooker.
Try for example this recipe:

http://ljcny.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/chicken-pozole/

where dried hominy is cooked in a pressure cooker.


Is there a bread you can mix in the evening, leave overnight, and bake in morning? I'm afraid I know little about breadmaking.

Is there a bread where you could:

-- mix it and I guess knead it in the evening (say around 9pm),

-- leaving it out overnight (perhaps to rise (?) etc.?)

-- then about 8? hours later (say around 7am?) you could put it in an oven

-- and indeed then bake the loaf (or perhaps rolls) at 7am (I assume that takes roughly 1/2 hour? but I know nothing).

Thanks for your expertise.

Thanks to all for the amazing answers here!

With thanks to JSM below. This link was hugely useful - merry Christmas!

http://www.simplysogood.com/2013/03/artisan-no-knead-bread.html

It seems the main thing you're trying to do is avoid any work in the morning before bake.  As suggested in comments, the easiest way to do that is to get a mechanical bread-maker.  Since you say you're inexperienced in bread-making, you can dump everything in the night before, program it with a time, and voila -- fresh bread in the morning.  (I don't tend to like the loaf quality that comes out of most home bread-makers, though; but if you find one that makes good bread, this is the best solution.)

That said, if you actually want to make the bread yourself, you can do what you want.  It's just going to require a lot of work the evening before.  Many recipes can be adapted to do this, though it tends to work best with sourdough loaves.  Basically, the technique works like this:

Mix dough
Knead
First fermentation (1-3 hours, depending on yeast quantity and bread type)
Shape tightly, preferably with a pre-shaping and bench rest (another 15 minutes)
Second fermentation, generally takes place entirely in fridge
Place in fridge overnight
Remove and bake immediately

Jeffrey Hamelman suggests this for a number of sourdough recipes in his book Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes.  He also notes that it's not necessary to let the dough come to room temperature before baking: assuming it has risen enough, you can remove it directly from the fridge and bake with little consequence.

(Also, just to reply to one notion in comments -- it is possible to bake bread starting from a cold oven.  Many people prefer to do it that way, though the results tend to be a little less consistent and oven spring is generally a little less.  If you do so, it might be easier to bake in a pot.  But it would be possible to get up in the morning, turn your oven on, throw the bread in immediately, and have it baked maybe 30-45 minutes later, depending on the size of the loaf.  For those who don't believe me, here's someone who did a comparison of cold oven start vs. preheated and found little difference.)

My experience trying shaping before overnight retarding long ago is that it can work well for sourdough (see method #2 here for more details), since the yeast tends to rise much more slowly in the fridge.  The danger with normal baker's yeast is that most recipes use too much yeast to make this method work -- what will happen is that your bread won't cool fast enough in the fridge, then the dough will overproof and collapse a bit in the oven, often with poor crust formation.

Normally, when professional bakers retard pre-shaped dough in the fridge, they do so for only a couple hours, which tends to add flavor.  For detailed instructions with illustrations and a recipe showing this, see here.

Basically, what you want to do is a similar thing to that recipe, but with less yeast, so you can refrigerate overnight.  Unfortunately, that will tend to make your bulk rise go slower, which means a longer wait in the evening between steps.

For more information and recipes online, I'd try instead searching for something like "retarding after shaping," which is the kind of recipe you're looking for.  You just need to find one that allows retarding for 8 hours or more, rather than just a couple hours.

The other option is obtain sourdough cultures and try those recipes.  Usually with them the pace of the yeast rise is appropriate for an overnight final proof in the fridge.  Still, the results will be a little more finicky (i.e., harder to get a "perfect" loaf every time) than using a more standard method.

Also, I just noticed you mentioned rolls in your question.  Those would be a lot easier than trying to do this with an entire loaf, and it's pretty standard to refrigerate overnight before baking.  If the recipe is one that depends on removing from the oven for a while before baking, then just delay putting the dough in the fridge for maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of that time (varies by recipe) the night before.  Then you should be able to bake straight from the fridge to the oven the next morning.  Again, it may take a bit of experimentation with a specific recipe to get this perfect.


If uncooked rice is soaked for 2 days, is it still safe to eat (after it's cooked)? I completely forgot I soaked the rice on Monday night. It was completely submerged in water. Left at room temperature. If I cook it now, would it be safe to eat?

No, certainly not.

Food is generally not safe to leave at room temperature for more than 2 hours. Foods which are shelf-stable (can be left out, it doesn't matter how long) are the ones which have had some of the necessary bacteria growth factors removed.

Rice is a food which doesn't grow bacteria because it doesn't have enough water to sustain a colony. Once you add the water back in, you remove the exact circumstance which protects it from spoiling. It is certainly not safe.

Besides, "after cooking" doesn't matter, as you can't turn unsafe food back to safe, not by cooking or by anything else.


Why do purple snap beans turn green when cooked? We often get snap beans from the CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) that are either entirely purple or mottled purple. When cooked (at least when steamed or blanched), however, the purple color disappears and they turn to a bright green color. As far as I can tell, this happens with any purple podded snap bean.

Why does this happen? Are there any methods of cooking purple beans that retains their original color? Are there other types of vegetables that have the same color changing reaction when cooked?

This is another case for anthocyanins, the same compound that causes garlic and ginger to turn blue. Anthocyanins are pH sensitive, only appearing blue or purple when in the presence of acidity. As you cook the beans, the cells begin to rupture and lose water, which causes the acid around the anthocyanins to be diluted. As this happens, they lose their color allowing the green chlorophyll (which was always present) to show through.

The Science Behind Purple Beans


How to bake extra turkey legs along with a whole turkey? I have bought 4 Turkey turkey legs that I would like to serve at the same time as the rest of the turkey.  I am baking the turkey.   At what point in time during the baking do I add the additional legs so they are done at the same time?

It's hard to say exactly, it depends on the size of the turkey and the size of the extra legs, and whether the turkey is stuffed or not. I always cut the legs off my turkey so they don't dry out, they take between 1 and 1.5 hours to cook. I usually let the turkey bake for an hour before adding the legs, then I start checking the legs' temperature an hour after that. This generally means the legs and turkey body are done about the same time. I'm usually roasting a 16lb (7kg) turkey though, if yours is smaller you'd probably want to reduce those times somewhat.


What is a German potato grater called? I know of this grater via German cooking, but it may NOT be specific to Germany.  Regardless, I am trying to determine the name of this kind of grater so I can purchase one.  The grater is actually raised up on the side you rub the potato on, exactly like I have nutmeg graters.

Here are some pictures.

Can anyone tell me the name of tis grater?  Bonus if you can point me to a website that sells them.

Thanks

Kartoffelreibe
Is the German name for it I just try to find one to  buy but they on ebay and the shipping is unexplainable high, for the Kartoffelreibe about 10 they charge 80 for shipping. Would settle for a used one.


What is the advantage to using a knife beveled on one side only? In European tradition, knives are beveled on both sides of the blade; coming to a point in the middle. In Japanese tradition, however, the bevel is only formed on one side (usually the right-hand side). What is the purpose and/or advantage of this?

For vegetable knives, the main advantage of the front-side single bevel is that it's easier to make super-thin cuts. For example, a test of knife skill involves paring daikon radish to remove the peel, then continuing to cut to make a long continuous paper-thin strip, longer than you would be able to make if you just sliced it. See, for example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLZUJGyuhQM

People who have mastered this skill can also make remarkably fast matchstick cuts after making the long piece, and the lack of back bevel may reduce the amount of food that sticks to the knife. Some of these single-bevel knives that features a slightly concave backside (urasuki), which may also reduce the amount of adherence of food to the knife.

For crab knives, the honing is on the opposite side to the hand (the back of the knife), which may reduce the amount of shell fragments that could embed themselves into the meat, and probably allows the meat to cut more cleanly.

In practice, though, most Japanese households use dual-beveled knives. Single-bevel is more common in professional kitchens, especially in the Kansai area where fancy cutting techniques are used in presentation to a greater extent than in Tokyo or north Japan.

Although I have a nice nakiri knife and a cheap santoku, both are dual-beveled.

Knives meant for cutting regular fish or meat are usually, but not always, dual-beveled, the exception again mostly being for professionals. (I think yanagiba and sushi knives are usually single-bevel, but are again mostly used in professional kitchens and almost never at home). I thought sobakiri and udonkiri were typically single-bevel to help push the cut noodles away, but more recently I am less sure that the single-bevel is as common as I had previously thought for soba or udon knives.

The Japanese wikipedia entry for usuba knives suggests that the single-bevel edge is more durable, so, if true, that would be an advantage in high volume restaurant use. In my experience a thin, well sharpened Japanese blade may chip more easily than a thicker blade, so that resonates with me, even though I'm not 100% sure the notion that a single bevel is more durable is more than received wisdom.

With practice, I think you can get slightly higher precision cuts with a single bevel than with dual-bevel knives, however, I don't think they are as easy to use for cooks with average knife skills.


If I put peanuts in a coffee grinder, will I get peanut butter or peanut powder? I know there a thousand different products you can make with peanuts. But, my local supermarket has one of these,

I'm wondering if the effect will be similar if I use my mini coffee-bean hand grinder.. You can find a picture of it here,

While the grinding of peanuts produces a paste we call peanut butter, a food processor may be slightly better equipped to handle them then a coffee grinder, especially if you want to blend coffee with it again.
Peppercorns are harder and they can be done in a coffee grinder, but peanuts would likely result in a mess that would not easily be cleaned, and somewhat chunky peanut butter.

edit:

As stated in the comments below you may get some good headway with a blender. I had a crappy blender at home, but peanuts may be easier to grind than thick smoothies. But again, cleaning may take some time afterwords. But blender would probably be more effective than a coffee grinder.

Peanut powder can be made by freezing the peanuts I believe, very cold. A part of the modern cuisine. I think you would need liquid nitrogen for it. Source from Tech stuff podcast, title of the podcast was Molecularly Gastronomical.


Technique for peeling boiled potatoes This recipe calls for boiling Yukon gold potatoes with their skins on, then peeling them. I don't really know why, I just decided to follow it.

I find that I am unable to peel boiled potatoes in any reasonable amount of time because they are soft, slippery, and very hot. I have tried:

Sticking a fork in one end to hold it down as I peel. Cumbersome and potatoes generally split on the fork while I'm working.
Holding the potato in my hand as normal. Result: 1st degree burns, 2nd if I'm really being stubborn.
Wearing a silicone oven mitt. Cumbersome and mitt gits in the way.
Let them cool. But this takes a long time and also, then they're cold...

So, two questions:

Anybody got any tricks for this?
Why boil then peel, won't I get the same results if I just peel them before I boil them like I usually do when I need cooked, skinless potatoes?

Remove a potato one at a time from the hot water with tongs, placing it in cold water for shock. Wearing dishwashing gloves, while under the cold water pull on the potato skin removing it. Place the skinned potato in a finished container and proceed to the next potato


How do I reverse engineer a recipe? I often see TV shows, for example on the Food network, which showcase a restaurant. They will have a particular recipe which they make, and specify some of the ingredients but of course not in the exact proportions. What are good techniques for reverse engineering recipes, whether from on TV or at a restaurant? I'm not interested in stealing recipes or competing, just in making fun things at home, and I think this sort of thing would be a fun challenge.

Look at similar recipes on the internet and tweak ingredients to match what you want.

A lot of it is intuition from experience cooking and tasting a variety of dishes.  Also, a willingness to experiment is important.  You're not going the nail the recipe perfectly the first time.

Knowing the cuisine of a restaurant and typical ingredients and techniques of that cuisine can help. If you don't know much about the cuisine, google example recipes for that cuisine.  Keep an eye out for common techniques and flavor combinations. If you're looking for a certain sauce, again look to similar recipes from the same cuisine as the restaurant and swap in herbs, different wine, etc as necessary.

For a specific, well-known dish, look at several recipes for the same dish. You can usually tell which ones have been simplified or had more commonly available ingredients swapped in, and which ones are the original.

For ratios, intuition helps. For stuff like pasta to topping ratios, you can kinda guess based on what you want your finished dish to look like. For spices and the like, look at other recipes from the same cuisine for a starting point and then tweak to taste as you iterate your recipe.

You should also learn how to adjust sauces by adding salt, acid (vinegar, lemon, lime), and possibly sugar.  In the Zuni cookbook, Judy Rogers suggests experimenting by tweaking a little bit of the sauce on a spoon to see if your change will work, before adding anything to the pan.

And finally, remember you don't really want to exactly reproduce the recipes in the restaurant.  You want to make something similar, but make it your own and make it better.  One of the great things about cooking at home is that you get to tweak things to exactly match your tastes and preferences.

Example:

I had a dessert with rosemary ice cream at a local restaurant. At the time, there were no rosemary ice cream recipes on the internet. But I found an infused ice cream (basil) in a cookbook and looked at the technique (infuse cream and strain, make custard base with it).  I replaced basil with a little rosemary, tasted it after infusing to see if I needed more (it was fine) and then proceeded with the rest of the recipe.  (The original was paired with tarte tatin, I paired mine with an apple cake.)


Kitchen clambake using kombu? There are special types of seaweed used in a clambake, apparently. I’ve never been to a real one on the shore, so I really don’t know what types are most commonly used.

My question is: can dried kombu be used as the seaweed in a kitchen clambake (basically a seafood boil, except not boiled, steamed)? If yes, does it need to be hydrated before using, or will the steam hydrate it adequately and quickly enough?

Hah, snuck in two questions! Hope that won’t put this question “on hold,” lol!

Yes, you can use kombu.  I would re-hydrate first, as these folks do.


Is a borosilicate glass pot safe to use on a gas burner stovetop? I've seen similar questions about Pyrex, but as I understand it Pyrex manufactured in the United States is now made from tempered soda-lime glass, so I am not asking about that.

UPDATE:
To address a similar question: the answer to the question on Pyrex was, first of all, a generic question on Pyrex (not just borosilicate Pyrex), and it left an open ended answer for personal testing on borosilicate, which doesn't answer my specific question, and it attracted boarder answers (many completely oblivious to the materials used). I'm really looking for a specific answer from personal experience with borosilicate.

The Question:

I specifically would like to know if anyone has used a (verified) borosilicate glass pot on a gas burner stove top, and if it is safe for regular use, and by "regular use" I would specifically mean:

Is it safe to take a chilled pot from the refrigerator to a full open flame?
Is it safe to take a pot that has been on a full open flame (for an hour or so) to the bottom of the sink (risking a little cool water splash)?

OR are there limiting factors, and if so, what are they?

I just want to make sure I can treat a borosilicate pot the same way I might a regular pot or pan. I've done a decent amount of research, and according to the stated temperature limits, it would seem that it might be okay, but I've not seen enough information on the effects of rapid temperature change. So I'm really interested in actual experiences.

I once spat on a hot incandescent light bulb, and I just want to make sure this pot won't explode the way that light bulb did.

I specifically would like to know if anyone has used a (verified)
  borosilicate glass pot on a gas burner stove top

I have used borosilicate glass vessels on a number of different heat sources, both in laboratory circumstances and on a standard home gas stove.

  and if it is safe for regular use, and by "regular use" I would
  specifically mean:

  Is it safe to take a chilled pot from the refrigerator to a full open flame?
  Is it safe to take a pot that has been on a full open flame (for an hour or so) to the bottom of the sink (risking a little cool water
  splash)?

Generally speaking, no.  I mean, it depends on what you mean by "safe" -- borosilicate glass is less likely to shatter in explosive ways compared to some other types of glass.  Glass vessels designed specifically for cooking are probably even less likely to fail in a way that is dangerous.

But will the vessel survive doing such things repeatedly over an extended period?  Probably not.  It may eventually crack.  Depending on how extreme the temperature difference exposed to, it may even break more violently.  But most likely, cooking vessels like this will simply fail by developing a crack (which will then leak contents).

  OR are there limiting factors, and if so, what are they?

I would consult the specific documentation that comes with any glass cooking vessel for guidelines appropriate to it.  (And in case this isn't clear, I would NOT recommend using borosilicate glass vessels on the stove top unless they are specifically designed for such use.  Even lab glassware will eventually crack if not used over an even heat source, which is why labs tend to use various heat diffusion devices when employing an open flame on a glass vessel.)

For example, the Pyrex company had a set of glass pots for stove top use called Flameware, which was discontinued (I believe) in the late 1970s.  Instructions can be found here, which state (among other things):

  Heat uniformly, using low to moderate flame [...] Do not heat when dry
  or cook to dryness.  [...]  Add water before food is put in dish and
  stir occasionally while boiling. [...] When dish is hot, avoid pouring
  in cold liquids. [...] Avoid setting dish on damp or cold surfaces.

All of these warnings have to do with avoiding stress created through rapid temperature changes, which will eventually cause a pot to fail.  Note these are warnings for a line of Pyrex specifically designed for stove top cooking.

For a standard producer of borosilicate glass for stove top use today, see JENA's Trendglas, whose products here are specifically designed for direct heat:

  The very even wall thickness ensures outstanding thermodynamic
  qualities so that our glass products can be placed directly on heat
  sources. [...] Our glass products [...] show a high resistance to
  sudden temperature changes with a temperature difference of
  140°C/284°F (three times as high as normal glass or lead crystal
  glass)

These glass products have instructions here.  And that document includes similar warnings to the Pyrex products discussed above:

  [...] Always use evenly distributed heat and never heat your Trendglas JENA product empty.  The heat source and the glass shall be
  heated together.
  Avoid sudden cooling, don't place the hot glass under cold water or on wet hot pads. [...]
  Only heat water-containing foods on the stove, never use it for heating solid foods or oily liquids.
  Make sure that the hob is not smaller than the bottom of the glass product. [...] When using a gas stove, we recommend using a gas stove
  grate.

Basically, glass is a substance that can crack from thermal shock.  No amount of engineering is going to make a glass vessel as durable and resistant to thermal shock as a metal pot.  That said, scientists use borosilicate glass all the time in complex procedures involving heating and cooling, and exploding glassware is rare unless you do something very stupid.  But cracks and failures of glassware that is used over and over for applications involving thermal stress and rapid temperature changes are also to be expected.

If you follow the manufacturer's instructions for your pot and take advice like that listed above (avoiding thermal stress, heating gradually, etc.), some glass pots can last for many years or decades.  And you may get away with occasionally forgetting and making a mistake.  But even if cracks don't appear immediately, those stresses can build up over time and eventually cause failure.

EDIT: After reading over some of the comments that have appeared, I wanted to incorporate some ideas and re-emphasize a point I stated above: I would NOT recommend using borosilicate glass vessels on the stove top unless they are specifically designed for such use.

Some of the answers on previous questions about borosilicate versions of Pyrex (still to be found, particularly outside the U.S.) say it may be possible to attempt to heat borosilicate containers (Pyrex or otherwise) on the stove top, but I would strongly advise against this unless it's actually a vessel labeled for stove top use or described in its instructions as appropriate for stove top use.

It's not just borosilicate glass itself that makes a pot or other vessel safe for the stove top.  Glass intended for use on the stove top usually has higher standards for production.  It is often more even and thinner (like lab glassware) than some other types of glass bakeware and kitchenware, as thicker glass will have a larger thermal gradient between the surface and interior that can make the glass vulnerable to fracture.  It may employ a somewhat different formulation of ingredients in the glass (to respond better to thermal stress, rather than to emphasize durability).  It may also have specific design features in terms of its shape and variance in thickness to account for the type of expansion that occurs during stovetop heating (i.e., heating from the bottom) vs. bakeware that will usually expand more at the top (because food inside will be cooler in the initial stages of baking, while the top of a glass baking dish may get hotter without food in direct contact with it).  And I'm sure there are other design features that make glass safer for stove top use.

User SiHa linked a video showing what can happen if borosilicate glassware is inappropriately heated.  That measuring cup is specifically labeled as not for stove top use, and it's not designed for that sort of stress.  A measuring cup is probably only expected to take the variation in temperature caused by things like introducing boiling water, not an open flame applied to it.  But also note that the catastrophic failure in that video (and mild explosion) likely happens due to two things:

the uneven heating of a blowtorch, which already inflicts a huge amount of stress even without the introduction of water; the third cup breaks even before they apply water to it
the thickness of the cup, which is designed to be durable and to resist breaking when handled roughly or dropped, not for heating; the thickness allows more energy to build up in the cup before fracture, leading to the explosive burst, rather than the more mild fracture than would likely occur in a thinner vessel

I don't mean to scare anyone too much here, only to emphasize the importance of only using glassware designed for direct heat on the stove top.  As I mentioned in my original answer above, when borosilicate glassware designed for direct heating fails, it is more likely to crack (perhaps crack a lot, but still simply crack into pieces) if handled appropriately.  That can create a mess, but it's usually not dangerous or explosive unless one does something stupid with it.


Should french fries be fried two times? Most professional cookbooks tell me to fry french fries two times. First at a lower temperature of about 150-170°C and then at a higher temperature about 180-190°C.

Reference: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:French_Fries#Variations

Related: What varieties of potato would be good for chips / french fries?

What are the advantages of frying the potatoes two times?

The lower (first) temperature actually cooks the potato so that it is tender, the hotter temperature (second) is what gives the crispy golden coating.

If you just did the lower temperature, your fries might be too soft. If you just did the hotter temperature they would be too too tough.


What is the best way to thicken the liquid in this recipe? I've made this recipe:

https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeedtasty/videos/1658203764432266/

  1 Red Pepper, Julienne Cut
  1 Green Pepper, Julienne Cut
      1 Yellow Pepper, Julienne Cut
      1 Onions, Julienne Cut
      2 lbs. Chicken, Sliced
      2 tablespoons Taco Seasoning
      1 Can Diced Tomatoes
      1 Lime
      ⅛ tsp. Garlic Powder
      8 ounces Cheese

Cut the peppers and onion and place one half into the crock pot
Place the unsliced chicken into the crockpot. Cover with 1 tablespoon of the taco seasoning. Turn the chicken over and cover other half with remaining tablespoon of taco seasoning.
Add the garlic and diced tomatoes
Add remaining peppers and onion
Squeeze lime into the crock pot
Cook on High for 3 hours
Remove the chicken and slice.
Add the chicken back into the crock pot and cook for another 10 minutes.
Use the filling for a tortillia, adding some cheese before eating while it is hot.

several times and it is quite good.

However, after it is cooked, there is a lot of liquid. I've tried draining the liquid, but a lot of the flavor goes along with it.

If it matters, I use frozen chicken breast which is fully thawed before cooking.

Any suggestions?

If you are making a tortilla filler then you probably don't want that much sauce in the end product, so rather than thickening it you might want to consider reducing the amount of liquid that goes into it in the first place. Peppers and onions both shed water as they are cooked, and canned tomatoes have water as well. You don't want to lose your peppers, so I would suggest adding less canned tomato and substituting it with some tomato paste. How much to do depends on the quality of the canned tomatoes, as there's a big difference in quality out there. You get what you pay for - cheap canned tomatoes have water added to the end product, you'll typically get a thicker result and richer flavor with good canned tomatoes as there's more tomato in the can in the first place. That may be all you need to do.

My go-to thickeners are roux, cornstarch and arrowroot powder. A roux is flour fried with butter which is then added to the dish and cooked to a temperature that activates the thickening properties. The good thing about roux is that you can cook it to different levels to add flavor to a dish, but in this case you don't probably don't want that flavor. Cornstarch is relatively flavorless and needs to be heated to a certain temperature to activate it's thickening properties. Arrowroot is a plant product that thickens at a very low temperature, so you can add it after cooking to warm food and it will thicken it without more cooking. In fact, cooking it too much will break down it's thickening properties. It thickens almost instantly too, so there's less guesswork, you just add and stir until it thickens to the consistency you want. Both cornstarch and arrowroot should be mixed with a small amount of water into a slurry before being added, adding directly in powdered form tends to cause clumping.

Another option would be to add a small amount of gelatine at the end of the cooking process, this would thicken up the sauce when it gets cool, and has nice mouth feel.

So first you could try adding a bit of tomato paste and less tomatoes, or using a thicker brand of canned tomato. Or you could thicken using cornstarch or arrowroot depending on whether you plan to cook the sauce additionally afterwards. Experimenting with gelatine might be more work than you want to do, but it has nice properties.


How to clear your palate between different flavored dishes when cooking? I found myself making a couple of disparate-tasting dishes. One was a salad dressing with blue cheeses and garlic, and another was meat flavored with thyme and rosemary.

I tried to taste both while cooking, but as I sit here and write this, all I can taste is the salad dressing.

I'm guessing this might be covered in some formal cooking education: how do you clear your palate when cooking multiple dishes, each with a strong and powerful flavor?  I am asking this from the point of view of the chef, not the diner.

I would assume that this could become problematic as the size of the kitchen gets larger, and the number of strongly-flavored dishes would become more prevalent.

My first thought is to tie them together or plan them in order to closest ingredients that might lend flavor to the next.

On another note, here is an article at About.Com written by By Rebecca Franklin a French Food Expert: http://frenchfood.about.com/od/explorefrenchfood/a/palatecleanser.htm

Traditional palate cleansers:

Apple and Calvados Sorbet
Lemon Sorbet
Lime Sorbet
Mint Sorbet

Unorthodox palate cleansers:

Sparkling water, with or without a twist of citrus
Lightly brewed green, black, or mint tea, with minimal sweetener
Celery sticks or fresh tart apples
A sprig of parsley
Flat water with a twist of citrus

Here is, Fig & Brie “Bites” found here: http://entertainingiseasy.com/fig-brie-bites/

I would add fresh mint leaves and ice to a glass of water or ice cubes with mint leaves and put them into sparkling water or citrus in sparkling water.
I'd try mint or ginger tea,
a creamy cheese or port wine cheese on table water crackers,
or even something creamy like shrimp scampi might be helpful as well.

Please let us know what you choose :)


How do I identify a bad sharpener? I have a cheap plastic board with an in-built pull-through sharpener, metal and ceramic. I have have trouble believing that this can be any decent, but I have tried it on a bad knife. The knife is now noticably sharper. Does that mean this is actually good? Or will a good sharpener make it even sharper? Or is this a bad sharpener and will long-term damage my blade?

Which of those is true, and how can I tell if that sharpener is good or if I need a real one?

All sharpeners remove steel. When sharpening a knife, you ideally want to remove as little steel as possible to get a very specific angle on the blade edge.

If you were getting a blade sharpened professionally, they would typically go through different grits to get it smoother and smoother and eventually a polished edge. For a home pull through sharpener, you're using a single grit that will do most of the work. Ideally it would be something in the middle that will maybe take a little longer to remove nicks in your blade & grind the edge down, but not pull off too much steel.

There are two dangers with a cheap sharpener, that I can think of:

It removes too much. If the grit is too rough, it'll burn through your knife, destroying your blade quicker than necessary.
It sharpens unevenly/angle is wrong. If the angle is wrong, it could either make the blade more prone to chipping by making it too narrow, or not sharp by making it too wide, thus wasting your time. If it's really bad, I guess it could produce an uneven edge too.

Hard to say what is exactly happening in your case. That all said, if it's a cheap blade and your knife is sharper, then use it maybe? Without knowing what it was, I don't know that I'd gamble with a good blade. "Cheap plastic board with a in-built sharpener" is probably a clue that it's cheap though.


How to get a sourdough like effect without the hassle of a real sourdough starter? I enjoy making bread, but the bread I make using standard yeast of course lacks that sourdough taste.   But the process of making and maintaining a sourdough starter frankly requires a bit too much work and consistent attention from me.  Is there a way to approximate that sourdough taste using a process less complicated and high-maintenance than a "real" sourdough starter?

(As a footnote, ideally this would be a process that could start the night before one made bread, but not much more than that).

You can try a pâté fermentee. This is essentially a dough you leave to prove overnight. It is how most french bread is made. You simply make half a batch of dough, leave it overnight, then make the other half and knead the PF through it. While the flavour isn't quite as sour as sourdough, it does have a bit more of a tang than 'normal' bread.

You might also try a slow, 2 or 3 day prove in the fridge for any bread dough.


Do I need to sift flour for quick breads? I am making mini quick breads for Christmas. The recipe calls for 3 cups of flour.

Do I need to sift the flour?  If so, should I sift it before or after measuring?

quick breads are typically dense and do not require sifting, they also do not require kneeding. They are supposed to be quick and easy :)

If the recipe calls for "3 cups of flour, sifted" then you would measure 3 cups of flour, and sift that. I have never seen a recipe call for "3 cups of sifted flour" but if it did you would have to sift, and then measure. Hope this helps.


Can chicken not completely cooked then cooled be fully cooked later? I cooked some chicken but didn't realise it hadn't completely cooked through. It then went in the fridge and a day later I cut through it to discover the problem.

Is it now safe to put that chicken in the oven to finish cooking it or am I risking major health issues?

Please don't bother.

Meat spending any significant amount of time in the danger zone of 40 F - 140 F (4.4 C - 60 C) that has not been fully cooked should never be re-chilled to be served later. Given that Salmonella can be found throughout poultry, not just on the surface, and that it's almost guaranteed that your poultry had some level of a pathogen present, you shouldn't risk it.

Your not so thorough cooking, likely to an internal temperature of 120 F - 130 F, has basically heat-shocked the bacteria present imbuing them with a much higher than usual heat resistance. On top of that it likely took at least a few hours to get the meat back below 40 F (at which they can still grow, albeit slowly), so depending on the initial amount of infection and the time spent in the danger zone you likely have a bacteria population minimally in the hundreds of millions, possibly in the billions.

In this answer of mine I give a lot of detail regarding the relation between temperature and duration and it's effect on Salmonella. The important take-away is that with any reasonable temperature death is not instant, it's merely a percentage of the population that is killed at any given temperature and duration. As few as 100,000 Salmonella cells can get you sick, and it takes much fewer for E. Coli. So even if you're killing five-9's worth of bacteria, is it really worth it?

I'm all for eating rare meat (not poultry), but only if I'm confident in the quality and handling of said meat before it reaches my plate. Think of it this way, if the meat were exposed to these conditions before it reached your plate it would be considered gross negligence, and would likely result in a recall.

The guidelines that many agencies publish to safely cook meat all assume typical levels of contamination, given proper handling (though they do err greatly on the side of safety). They simply aren't accurate when you are starting with meat that has a population large enough to sicken or kill a small village.

I'm not even going to begin to address the toxic waste products produced by some pathogens, which are not destroyed by heat.

Throw it out and prevent this in the future by being sure to cook it all the way through. It sounds like you likely just grabbed the chicken out of the refrigerator and threw it directly on the heat, this can lead to the exterior cooking too quickly before the interior has time to cook. Get in the habit of setting your meats out for 30m to an hour so that it reaches room temperature throughout, but cook it immediately, do not re-chill it.


First Pork Roast Predicament I cooked a 4 lb. pork roast for about an hour and twenty-five minutes in an open top roasting pan at a steady 350F. It reached 154F in the center so I pulled it out of the oven. The top came out nice and crispy. I let it rest a bit. When I went to cut it it split open at the center-line. The inside looks like it has a somewhat pink center. The juices came out on the pink side too.
What I see in the web says that this normal. I am a  bit shaky though. I am wrapping both halves in foil and putting them in the fridge until tomorrow so I can figure this out.
Any thoughts?

You're good.
Many people have fears about pork because of trichinosis, which has led to people overcooking port until it is dry and unpalatable. Trichinosis is extremely rare in most places, so you could eat it raw if you wanted to with very, very low chance of getting sick. Previously the USDA guidelines was to cook pork chops or roasts to 160°F (71°C), however there has been a recognition that this is overkill and it has been revised down to 145°F (63°C) as evidence has shown that temperature instantly makes the food safe. 154°F is far above what you need for safety.
Your pork was a bit pink in the middle and still juicy, this is a good thing.
Note: the guidelines for ground pork, beef and lamb are still to cook to 160°F (71°C).


What is meant when a spice is water-soluble? Coriander and basil are said to be water-soluble. However, I'm not quite sure what this means.  If you put the leaves into water the leaves do not dissolve. They are still there at the end.

I know certain nutrients can be water soluble — e.g., vitamin C — but what is meant by a spice?

"Water soluble" vs. "fat soluble" refer to the flavor of the spice, rather than the physical leaves, seeds, or grains.  That is, if you put a bunch of basil leaves (especially dried ones) in a glass of warm water, and leave it for a few minutes, the water will continue to taste like basil even after you've strained out the leaves.  With fat soluble spices like whole cumin seeds, you generally need to "bloom" them in hot fat (like butter or vegetable oil) for their flavors to spread.  As a rule, all spices are fat-soluble but some are water-soluble as well.

Of course, in reality almost all spices are both water and fat soluble to some degree.  It's just that some spices spread their flavor much better in fat that in water.


Why did my Creme Brulee end up with lots of oil? I used a youtube recipe for passion fruit creme brulee. I followed the ingredients and the steps and my creme brulee ended with lots of oil on top of it.

Why did this happen?

EDIT.

My burnt sugar topping was chewy as well, instead of crunchy. Any tips?

If the custard over baked, the liquid could have separated from the solid. The creme will look loose, or semi-liquid, when it is removed from the oven after gently baking bain marie (created by the water poured around the ramekins, placed in a larger container).  The custard sets during cooling, first on a rack and then in the frig. The sugar may have absorbed the liquid, and became more of a caramel as it was heated, rather than the burnt (brulee) crust.


Substituting maple syrup for maple extract I found a recipe for maple scones I might try, but it calls for both 1/4 cup maple syrup and 1/4 tsp maple extract, and I only have syrup. I don't have any idea how strongly flavored the extract is compared to the syrup, but it seems like I should be able to reduce some syrup, take out some of the sugar, and be just fine. How much maple syrup would it take to get the flavor contained in 1/4 tsp of extract? I can balance the recipe from there.

(I've seen this question, which does have a comment saying it wouldn't work in frosting, but this is a bit different.)

I would take some of the maple syrup that you have and cook it down in to granulated Maple Sugar.  A tutorial is here.  Then, as maple sugar is about twice as sweet as regular sugar, substitute it into your recipe accordingly.  That should help infuse your scones with additional maple goodness.


Why buy a more expensive kitchen scale It seems about time for me to give in to peer pressure and get a kitchen scale like everyone else. It seems like they would give my cooking more consistency if nothing else.

I've payed attention to scales as I've been in various stores. Their prices seem to range widely- from $20 at Harbor Freight to a couple hundred at Bed Bath and Beyond.

My question is two-fold:

What processes benefit most from the use of a scale?
How much should I expect to pay for a decent scale? Is it worth saving up to get the top of the line or will the bottom of the line work just fine?

Although I've come to find a lot of uses for my kitchen scale, the ones that immediately pop into mind are:

Exact measurements.  When a recipe
calls for a cup of baby spinach, for
example, that's going to be hard to
measure.  Not going to be a problem
if you're dealing with weights.  This is extremely important with baking, where exact measurements are absolutely necessary.  Ideally, the recipe would have both,
but if not you can often convert via
the nutritional info on the bag -
it'll say something like 1 cup (28g).  A cup of flour varies wildly depending on various factors, for example whether or not it was sifted.
Portion control.  I helped my wife do
Weight Watchers before our wedding,
and I can't imagine trying to figure
out 1 portion (3oz) of lean meat without it.
Learning.  I'll weigh a piece of meat
before and after cooking it to see
what kind of weight loss I get from
moisture, for example.

When buying, you want to think about the following:

Capacity.  Cheap models often only go to 5lbs, whereas more expensive can hit 10 or 15.  Becomes important when you're cooking in bulk, may not be important depending on your cooking habits.
Digital vs balance. I don't trust balance (analog) scales, they're too easy to have become uncalibrated, and I don't want to be calibrating every time I need to use it.  Digital scales are easier to read, and very easy to go between US standard and metric measures.  Also, digital scales have a tare feature, which is invaluable (as KeithB pointed out).
US standard/metric.  You definitely want a scale that can do both, recipes may have either.  Most scales should handle this.
Plate/bowl. I find that scales that come with a bowl are unnecessary, I prefer one with a nice large plate that I can put my own bowl onto.  With the tare feature that almost all digital models have, you can zero out your weight so you can pick any bowl to meet your needs.  The larger the plate, the better, so you can fit more stuff on it if you're not using a bowl.

As far as price goes, I think $20 is too cheap, and is likely to become unreliable quickly, if not immediately.  That said, I think over $100 is too much as well, that's likely to be based on design or name.  My current scale cost me about $50 and works great, and I check its calibration regularly and haven't had a problem yet.

One specific example from our house - I make smoothies every morning from 20 oz frozen fruit, 10 oz soy milk, 6 oz greek yogurt.  My wife is following a very specific nutrition guide right now, so I then split it into 12oz for her, 24oz for me.  Getting her nutritional info right without a scale would be all guesswork (and I've come to learn, through using my scale, that my guesswork used to be pretty far off - it's much better since I started using the scale regularly).


How do I mimic trader Joe's (dark) Chocolate covered Espresso Beans? I'm trying to mimic the thick, rich, dark chocolate covered espresso beans made by Trader Joes. These sweet morsels have a thick chocolate coating that easily gives in when bitten. The beans inside shatter into the chocolate when under any pressure, and don't have an imposing taste. In my own tests the espresso beans have had too significant a bitter taste and the chocolate hasn't clung to the bean.

I see a need to reduce the bitterness of the bean and increase the clumpiness of the chocolate.

Some observations that may help:

There is no such thing as an espresso bean.  There is only coffee, which is available in many different varieties and roasts.  You will want to experiment to find one that you like as the center of your candy, based on its flavor.

For candy, you definitely will want an Arabica, I think, not a Robusta variety.  Additionally, you want a single variety of coffee, not a blend, so that you have essentially the same flavor for each piece.   If you don't already know a quality roaster, there are many on the Internet who will ship.
All properly roasted coffee should be pretty brittle and frangible, and crush when bitten.
You can double-dip or even triple-dip your beans to get the thickness of coating that you like.  I cannot say why the chocolate may not be "clinging" without more information--but make sure you are using (and probably tempering, which is a entire discusion on its own) real, quality chocolate or coverture.


Storing Deep Fryer Oil How long may I store used deep fryer oil. I always strain my oil, store it in it's original container and place it in a cool, dark place.
Thanks,
Floyd

If you strain the oil using a coffee filter inside a funnel, it will catch even the tiny bits that would slip through a wire strainer, making your oil super-clean. Store in the refrigerator, ideally in a glass bottle or jar, and it will keep for at least six months. I haven't stored it undisturbed for longer than that, so I can't speak to how well it keeps past that point. If you use and then re-filter the oil, you can start the six-month count over. I have only repeated this twice, so again, I can't speak to how the oil keeps when you do this many times.

One more item: I don't know if it matters, but I use grapeseed oil. I would assume that this also works for other frying/deep-frying oils, but I can't say for sure.


What should I look for in an alternative to crème fraîche? I have lots of great recipes that call for crème fraîche, but for some reason, it's very difficult to find it in my neighborhood. I hear that sour cream is an acceptable substitute. However, in my view, if whoever originated the recipe wanted to use sour cream, they'd have called for sour cream in the first place! So I don't want to just substitute sour cream for crème fraîche by default.

I have also heard that many types of yogurt can be used, or crema mexicana, or many other products. I imagine that certain products are better in certain recipes than others, in terms of substitution. What are the properties of crème fraîche that can be emulated by which other products?

You can make your own crème fraîche. Just inoculate heavy cream with buttermilk. From The Splended Table:

  Ingredients

  1 to 2 tablespoons cultured buttermilk
  2 cups heavy cream (pasteurized, not ultra pasteurized or sterilized, and with no additives)

  Instructions

  Combine the buttermilk and cream in a saucepan and heat only to tepid (not more than 85F degrees on an instant reading thermometer). Pour into a clean glass jar. Partially cover and let stand at room temperature (between 65F and 75F degrees) for 8 to 24 hours, or until thickened. Stir and refrigerate at least 24 hours before using. The cream will keep about 2 weeks in the refrigerator.

The results from doing that are so close to "real" crème fraîche that I can't tell the difference unless I'm tasting them side by side. If you want absolute authenticity, you can order the Real Culture, follow their instructions, then use that crème fraîche to culture many further batches of real Crème fraîche.

EDIT: HA! :) Here's Kenji's $.02 on the subject: Serious Eats


Does proofing time depend on the quantity of dough? One recipe, for example, specifies the dough should be left to rise for 4 hours. If I make halt the amount of dough, will the proofing time change?
I'm not providing the recipe because I will be trying and experimenting with many in the next few days.

No.

The proofing time of a dough is a function of the ratio of yeast and available water, and the temperature of the dough. Notice these are ratios. If you doubled a recipe but didn't double the yeast with it the dough would rise much more slowly.

The quantity of dough will only play a role in rise time if the dough is a significantly different temperature than the surrounding environment. In this case the dough in the center will rise at a different rate than the dough on the outside.


Freezing partially cooked hamburger patties I want to make a large batch of hamburger patties from frozen ground beef (thawed properly).  My question is, can I partially cook then freeze?

It would be possible to come up with a protocol to do this safely, however the more time that meat spends in the so-called thermal danger zone the more you need to thoroughly cook it at the end. It's hard to understand what you would be gaining by doing this.


Substitute for Kirsch in Leckerli (Basel Lackerli) cookies? With the U.S. holiday season soon upon us, I've been anxious to start making my annual batches of Leckerli cookies (a Swiss cookie, flavored with cloves and candied citrus!).

However, disaster has struck. I am out of Kirsch, and can't find another bottle locally! I think I bought the original in Boston, when I lived there... but rural Maine doesn't offer the same grocery opportunities.

So, my question is, does anyone know of a reasonable substitute for Kirsch? It's basically a cherry liqueur, just not sweet like a liqueur. "Cherry brandy" might be a better description.

I would use any uncolored brandy made from distilled fruit. Himbeergeist, sliwowitz, or what you can lay your hands on.

Kirsch doesn't taste much like cherries, and I suspect that it functions more as a solvent for some of the aroma in the spices than for adding its own taste. Even though it does contribute a bit, the taste will be subtle, and other slight fruity notes from a different fruit brandy will blend with the heavy spices just as well.

In a pinch, you could use a colored brandy too, like Chantre. But it will add more of its own flavor, and while it can make a good combination, it will be further from the original than a random obstwasser.

I would avoid any liqueurs, they will add way too much foreign taste, and also won't have enough alcohol to solve the spices in the same way.


Black rice mixed in white In the long grain white rice (parboiled) there these occasional grains of darker brown to black grains. Any idea what these are?

These are grains of rice that have not been polished. Rice comes in many colors. The outer hull needs removed like wheat. Then to mids or inner skin polished off. The mids is were the oil is. If not removed rice will go rancid in 3 to 4 months. They will not harm you.


Can I filter out vanilla bean seeds? When I scrape out the seeds out of my vanilla beans and simmer them with milk or incorporate them into batter, they always leave little tell-tale black dots in the finished product. Is it possible to filter them out somehow and is it something commonly done in the professional kitchen? I don't think I remember seeing these dots in restaurant desserts. It's not critical, but I'd rather my panna cotta be pristine white :-).

A chinoise will not--I speak from daily experience--filter out vanilla seeds. A coffee filter would, but my question is: why on earth would you bother? It's annoying to do (and depending on what the product is, filtering through a coffee filter would ensure you lose other things), and seeing actual vanilla seeds in the final product tells your guests that you are using real vanilla beans, not extract.

Professional kitchens do not, generally speaking, attempt to remove the seeds for the reasons noted above.

@stephenmacdonald, most dessert recipes that call for a fine mesh strainer do so because there is the possibility of chunky things ending up in the product. In the case of that recipe, I would guess it is to prevent chunks of undissolved gelatine from ending up in the final dessert.


How to separate fats from liquid and where do unsaturated fats go? If you have some liquid from roasting, stew or soup etc and you want to separate the fat, I believe the normal methods is to get a spoon and remove it from the top or let it come to room temperature, solidify and then remove it.

If it solidifies and you remove it, isn't it only the saturated fat you are removing while the unsaturated fats stay behind?  How do you remove unsaturated fats also?

Saturated fats (eg the white part of a steak or chop) are generally solid at room temperature while unsaturated (eg olive oil) are not. Generally the advice for getting fats out of soups and stews is to chill it so it all solidifies. Since it floats whether it is solid or not, there are also techniques like skimming, absorbing with a paper towel or bread, etc. (See How can I remove excess fat from stews or soups without refrigerating? for examples.)

The temperature at which something solidifies is a poor way to test whether a fat is saturated or unsaturated, and it's not an important distinction really. If it's important to you to get all the fat from something, then chilling and waiting is probably the most effective way. If you don't have time for that then you either eat a little fat (which for most people is fine) or you make a different dish.


Is it possible to substitute butter with egg yolks in cookie dough? I would like to know if it is possible to completely replace butter/margarine with egg yolks in cookie dough? Or in any other kind of butter-based dough while we are at it. And, if it is possible to do it, what are the basic principles of such substitution?

Butter and egg yolks have very different profiles in terms of their uses in recipes and constituent parts.

Butter usually has 80-85% fat by weight, while egg yolks are only about 25-30% fat.  Butter has only a trace amount of milk proteins, while egg yolks typically have 15% or more protein by weight.  Butter has only a small amount (about 15%) of water, while egg yolks are about 50% water.  And then there are all sorts of differences in trace chemicals, which also have big effects when cooked (e.g., eggs coagulate, while butter melts).

I've never tried such a strict substitution myself.  But extra egg yolks are common in many baked goods, and I've seen people substitute a single egg yolk for a small amount of fat or the reverse.  As for the effect of additional egg yolks in cookies, Serious Eats summarizes:

  Egg yolks also provide some moisture and protein, but more importantly
  they provide a well-emulsified source of fat. When cooked, egg yolk
  forms a tender protein coagulum that can keep cookies tender and
  fudge-like. A high proportion of egg yolk leads to a more brownie-like
  texture in a finished cookie.

Meanwhile, if you lose butter, you'll be eliminating significant amounts of fat and flavor.  The texture will also be altered significantly: since butter melts during baking, it contributes significantly to cookie "spread" rate.  (The extra moisture from egg yolks may help the cookie dough to spread, but it may make it harder to work with.)  If your recipe involves creaming butter and sugar together, the texture may also be affected, because creaming introduces air bubbles that can lighten the cookies.  Eggs too contribute to leavening, but that effect is mostly from whites.

In general, egg yolks are going to provide much more moisture than butter but lower (though still important) amounts of fat.  You may need to play with the other liquid proportions to get a useful batter.  And the protein and tendency to coagulate will alter the structure of the cookies considerably.

My guess is that most cookies with such a substitution will come out fairly dense with an odd fudge-like texture and "eggy" flavor.  If you're substituting a single egg yolk for a small amount of butter, it might work with a little tweaking.  But if your recipe has large amounts of butter, the final cookies will be very different and perhaps unpalatable.  In that case, you'll probably have to substitute a few different things for the butter to produce acceptable results (specifically something else to add sufficient fat and to balance the flavor of the cookies).

Or, an easier solution would be to find a recipe or type of cookie that doesn't require butter.  Producing good results when removing one of the major components of a recipe will often require significant amounts of experimentation.


How can I liven up run-of-the-mill stir fry? Rice or noodles, onions, garlic, sesame oil, and soy sauce are a pretty standard stir fry base.

How can I liven this up a little? I'm not looking for major additions, like chicken, eggs, etc. I'm looking for ways to make the base itself a bit more... vibrant and interesting: Herbs, spices, veggies, etc.

I've been experimenting with things like anise, fennel, peppercorns, clove, even MSG, but all of these things just seem to reinforce the same old taste I'm familiar with (sorry, I wish I knew taste words to describe it better), they all have similar "vibes" to me. I also tried experimenting with hoisin sauce but it just seems to muddle everything together. Green onions seem to help a little, when very coarsely chopped.

I'm looking for things that can add some new, compatible but contrasting flavors, rather than enhance or bring out the normal flavor, especially (but not necessarily) things that can make each bite slightly different rather than being uniformly blended in. The meat of this question is flavor pairings with onions/garlic/sesame/soy.

(I hope this question is OK here, the help center did suggest that recipe modification questions were OK, but I'm not sure.)

I notice you didn't mention fresh ginger. That's a very distinctive flavor addition that is commonly used in stir fries.

Also, don't know if this counts as a "major addition" [that you aren't asking for], but since you do mention veggies: bok choy, "baby" bok choy (which I think is a different plant from "adult" bok choy), or mustard greens seem like innocuous vegetables but really punch up the cruciferous flavor in a dramatic way. (especially the mustard greens)


When grinding flaxseeds in a coffee grinder, is it safe to add some water inside? http://www.drdavidwilliams.com/how-to-relieve-constipation-naturally/ says

  Flaxseed is inexpensive and you should be able to find it at your
  local health food store. Keep in mind that if the seeds aren't
  crushed, ground, or broken, they will pass through your system intact
  and you'll lose the benefits. Except for decorating the outside of
  bread loaves or muffins, I would recommend grinding the seeds in a
  small food processor or a blender. Small, inexpensive coffee grinders
  also work well for this purpose. (If you intend to use a blender,
  adding a bit of water or liquid to the seeds will make the blending
  process much easier.)

When using a coffee grinder to grind flaxseeds, is it also advised to add some water to the seeds? Or will adding some water cause danger and damage to the coffee grinder due to short circuit caused by water?

My coffee grinder is KRUPS F203 Electric Spice and Coffee Grinder with Stainless Steel Blades, 3-Ounce, Black:

Coffee grinders are designed for dry grinding, not wet grinding. The mention of water in your quote is for a blender, not a grinder. There are also wet-dry grinders, but that's not one.

So, I'm not sure if it's actually dangerous, but it's certainly not designed to have water in it. And either way, since it's not meant for wet grinding, it's not likely to grind wet things well.

Blenders, on the other hand, are designed for liquids, so it makes sense that blending a slurry might work better than something dry.