What is the difference between liquid and powdered pectin? We have powdered pectin and have a recipe that calls for liquid. What are the differences between the two? How are they made? How do their uses differ? How do you substitute one for the other? what changes to a recipe will it require?

This seems like it should be fairly straight forward, but the Internet is being no help.

I found the following on the internet

Use only the type of pectin called for in your recipe. Powdered pectin and liquid pectin are not interchangeable in recipes. The preserving books seem to confirm that the reason liquid and powdered pectin may not be interchangeable is that the liquid version is always added after boiling but most types of powdered are added to the raw fruit or juice.

Source


Are there cuisines that rarely use sauces? A recent question got me wondering: are there any cuisines that rarely, or never, use sauces?
There's many cuisines that are very sauce-centric: French, Italian, Thai, Szechuan, Mexican, etc.  But are there cuisines that use sauces so rarely that you could open a restaurant and not have one sauce on the menu, without really going out of your way to do so?  I can't think of one.
Let's include some definitions to make this question answerable:

Sauce: a liquid, puree, or paste that adds flavor to a dish or seasons other ingredients
Cuisine: the complete foodways of a cultural or regional group (not just a specific dish or specific type of specialty restaurant)

Let's also limit this to "cuisines that you could conceivably open a restaurant for"; while there are definitely groups of people who live in remote areas, don't trade, and thus don't have any basis for sauces, I'm asking for culinary traditions that have chosen to turn away from them instead.
Are there any?  Can you name one or two?

Pilav-and-kabab-centric cuisines, such as Afghan, Uzbek, Tadjik seem sauceless. Of course I cannot prove that they don't have them, but I have never seen one.
Armenian (and perhaps Turkish) cuisine also deserve close inspection.


Which type of onion causes the least eye irritation I am willing to forgo a little taste if I don't have to take 3 breaks while dicing an onion. Should I use red, white or yellow to minimize eye irritation. I have a small fridge/freezer so freezing them isn't an option.

The onions that cause the least tears are those with lower sulfur content.  But it turns out that it's not just the variety of the onion that's a factor, but the sulfur content of the soil they're grown in (eg, areas of Georgia, where Vidalia onions are grown).  Of course, this means they don't have the same 'bite' as you'd get from other onions.

In the U.S., at least, they're typically sold as 'Sweet' onions.  They may go under names such as Vidalia, Maiu Sweet, Mayan Sweet, Walla Walla, etc.  They tend to be yellow varieties, but they're fairly obvious in their shape-- they're not round, they tend to wider than the length from the ends.  They also tend to be more wet than regular onions, so they don't store as well, and thus have a shorter season (or they're flown in from South America, for those of us in the U.S.)

If I were to rank them, from least to most tear-causing, I'd say:

sweet onions
green onions / scallions
red onions
other yellow onions
white onions


Why add salt to the water when cooking rice? Given the great answer to the question on adding salt to water when cooking pasta, I am curious whether the same explanation holds for rice as it does for pasta (flavor and starch gelation)? Is there more at work?

Flavor is true in my experience, but what else?

For rice it depends.  Cooking any starch in water will first cause the starch granules to swell and eventually tangle up with each other (the gelatinization).  Dissolving sugars or salts in the water slows down the process by raising the temperature the swelling starts.  While few prefer pasta as a stuck blob of strands, the same is not the case for rice.  I like my Basmati loose, but my risotto and sushi sticky, so salt may be required for Basmati and optional for Arborio.

There are many techniques for controlling the starch for rice.  To control the starch gelatinization of rice:

cook it like pasta with lots of water, then drain; or
par cook it

Method 1 won't avoid the grain surface starch gelatinization, but it will help with stickiness (you may oil coat it after draining).  Method 2 delays the starch release allowing you to finish a risotto in seven minutes.  Cool for parties or for restaurants.


Should I be suspicious of meat/seafood on sale? Recently a local grocery store had a sale where Fresh Salmon Fillets, apparently normally $6.99/lb, were dropped down to $1.99/lb.  My parents were all too eager to load the car with 20lb of salmon fillet, but I was much more hesitant. I was slightly suspicious, because what reason would they have to discount salmon fillet so heavily?

So that's my question.  Should I be suspicious of meat/seafood that is on sale?  Especially if it's heavily discounted?  Is there something wrong with the meat? Like is it low quality or something? Why else would stores heavily discount these things then?

In the case of quickly perishable items like meat, when it's not an advertised sale, shops will sharply discount prices if they anticipate that they will be otherwise left with product beyond the sell-by date. So the answer to your question is both yes and no.

There is nothing wrong with buying something just before the sell-by date, but you do need to use or freeze it sooner rather than later. For everything but seafood, I jump all over those sales. I can barely tell the difference between super-fresh and right-at-the-sell-by-date for most items. Seafood is an exception for me, but that is just me. I will pay extra to get super-fresh seafood, even though I'll buy milk and meat right at the sell-by date if it saves me a few pennies.

So in this case, like many others, the key to making an informed choice lies in reading the label. No reputable grocery will alter the sell-by date. At least in the US, getting caught doing that will close a shop down and land people in jail. So read the label (or the tag on the meat-case window), and be informed about what you are buying.


Can I adjust the cooking time and temperature for my braise? My recipe says to braise beef in the oven at 180 C/350 F for 1.5 hours. Dinner is in about four hours. Can I also get away with sticking the dish into the oven at a lower temperature (say 150 C/300 F or 120 C/250 F) and expect it to be just done for dinner? If so, to which temperature should I set my oven? Is there any way I can convert or calculate this myself?

This answer may be too late for you, but in general a braise can be done at a lower temperature as long as the food doesn't stay in the "danger zone" for too long.  See this answer for more information on the danger zone.

For example, this recipe advise to have the oven at 300 F for an and hour per pound.  In the tips section, it states that the author sometimes drops the temp to 250 F.

Braising is fairly forgiving and is typically a method used on tougher cuts of meat, so going slightly longer shouldn't be a problem.


Eggs in a convection microwave I'm trying to cook eggs in a convection microwave. It is NOT using microwave to do it - I've made bread, pies, etc in it. Any recommendations on timing and temps?

Assuming that you are going to use your convection microwave without the microwave function, your question boils down to "How do I boil or bake an egg in a (toaster) oven?".

The answer? Slowly.
In an oven, heat transfer is via air, which is a way worse conductor than water. So you put your eggs either directly on the grill rack or in a small container. Many sources recommend a metal muffin tray, because all the hot eggs han be handeled at once and in the rare case of breakage, the mess is contained. Temperature recommendations vary a bit, but for hard boiled eggs, the rule of thumb is:

  30 minutes at 160-180 C / 320-355 F

A word of warning:
Do not bake your eggs too long!
If the temperature of the egg exceeds the boiling temperature, the water in the egg turns into steam and you have created a little egg-bomb, which may go off inside your oven or while you are handling the hot egg. The effect is better known from failed attempts at boiling eggs in a microwave, but the danger is real.


Have I over- or under-cleaned my cast iron dutch oven? There are several questions on this site addressing how to fix a cast iron pan or dutch oven when it collects rust or gets rock hard black food melted into it, including this question that I posted yesterday.

The TL;DR version of that question was that I cooked a pork roast in my dutch oven at way too high a temperature, and the animal fat and other juices (apple cider vinegar, etc.) essentially fused with the cast iron (just kidding! but not really, take a look at the photos in that question above).

However, after following the suggestions of scrubbing with steel wool, what I have been left with is a situation where I can't quite tell how clean (or not) my cast iron dutch oven is:

So you can see in the pic above, after scrubbing this thing hard for about 20 minutes w/ a steel wool (to the point where it started to break apart and send nice little metal slivers into my hands), there are some portions that are now smooth and black, and other parts that are a dull, shiny gray. I can't tell which is the case, either:

The smooth black areas are still areas where animal fat/juices are burnt/charred/fused into the cast iron, and the shinier gray areas are the parts that I've actually managed to clean; or
The smooth black areas are the places where I have correctly sandblasted the burnt/charred/fused animal fat away, leaving behind the original surface/coating of my dutch oven, but the gray shinier areas are places where I've gone too far and worn away the outer "layer" of my oven

So my first question is: which is it? Did I take the scrubbing too far, or do I still need to put in more sweat equity to get the whole thing gray & shiny? And if it's the latter and I've taken scrubbing too far, then what are my remedies here (if any)?

Another tangential question worth asking here is: does this even matter? My understanding of cast iron cooking (which is very little, obviously) is that its good to let some residue cake on to the metal, for adding flavor in subsequent cooks. And that as long as you coat it with oil to prevent rust, you're good to go. So, either way, am I good to go? Why/why not?!? Thanks in advance!

The black areas look like seasoning, which is essentially burnt-on oil/fat. You want that (though probably you don't want proteins or sugars so much, but I'd guess you've removed them now). Seasoning is somewhere between a dull matte black and semi-gloss black, depending. Wet with the tiniest bit of oil (e.g., wiped on with a paper towel), it should turn semi-gloss to fully shiny.

The metallic gray is bare iron; you need to season that promptly, before it rusts (apply oil, heat, repeat a few times); we have questions on how to season a pan already.

Personally... I'd just attempt to season the whole thing at this point. If the seasoning fails to adhere to some of those black areas, then I guess they need more sanding. But I doubt it.

PS: A good pair of gloves should protect your hands from steel wool.


how to get powerful flavours when spherifying Whenever I try to create something delicious using spherification I find that whatever has gone in comes out quite bland (I've tried using fruit juices (non-citric), liquers, soups).

When I taste the food before it goes into the salts, it usually packs quite a punch; so, it's quite disappointing when it comes out and has the lovely texture of caviar but no flavour!

Any suggestions / ideas gratefully received!

Are you doing regular spherification, where the alginate goes inside the sphere and the calcium on the outside? If so, try doing reverse spherification instead, so the goopy alginate doesn't dilute the flavor.


Sweet potatoes stored in direct sunlight I know leaving potatoes out in direct sunlight is a bad thing as they can develop solanine which is toxic. I know sweet potatoes don't develop solanine, but are there any other reasons other than spoiling to avoid storing sweet potatoes in sunlight?

Sweet potatoes are not in the potato family (Solanaceae) and as you say, do not develop solanine, or other glycoalkaloids such as chaconine. The only toxin they are listed as having in Medical toxicology of natural substances is ipomearone, typically produced in response to fungal infection. I cannot find any indication that is produced in response to sunlight. The toxicology book above says 'consumption of sweet potatoes has not been linked to human toxicity'.

While it's hard to be completely certain, it seems to me that there are no reasons other than the likely higher temperature to avoid storing sweet potatoes in sunlight.


Dried beans, cooked in an acidic sauce, haven't softened enough - can I do anything now? I know why my beans haven't softened - I was adapting a recipe (that calls for tinned beans) to use dried - and there's vinegar in the sauce.  I soaked an assortment of beans from different packs overnight, and cooked in the slow cooker on high for 8 hours.  That would normally be plenty even in chilli with a fair bit of tomato.  As the beans came from different packs that were fine a week ago, and  were uniformly too firm, I don't reckon it's that the beans are too old.  They were just about edible last night.  A further 12 hours on low overnight softened them a little more, but they're still firmer than I'd like.  The recipe isn't online but it's beans, onion, garlic, spices, treacle and vinegar, similar to a vegetarian Boston Baked Beans.
The solution for next time is easy - add the vinegar when they're nearly cooked - but I made several portions and would like to make the best of what I've cooked.
Is there anything I can do at this stage to make them soften further? Would neutralising the acid and cooking some more help?

Blender.
That will get them soft.  Then you can fry the bean paste, like refried beans.


Fermentation: volume vs. time This is specifically a question about chiles, but I hope it can be (semi)universally applied.

I was watching a documentary on how they make Tabasco and it was effectively: age chile pepper puree in oak (whiskey) barrels with salt poured over the top for about two years. Cut the resulting mix with vinegar. Strain. Bottle.

So I thought I would try to do something similar, but on a smaller scale and I found a 3 liter oak barrel online that I figured might do the trick.

My question: if I put three liters of chile puree in the three liter barrel and pour a bunch of salt on the lid like Tabasco does, will I need the same amount of fermentation time? My gut says no, but I have been wrong before. Also, if I do need less time, how can I figure out how much less time I need?

So, I checked Wikipedia, and want to make sure you plan to add salt into the barrel WITH the chile puree. I'm not sure why they would add more on top, but I'm not judging, here. However, if you want fermentation and not nightmare juice, you NEED to mix salt into that puree. It looks like you want 2.5% salt.

Another general advice thing I need to mention-- When your puree ferments it will grow. The bacteria magicking your mash into sauce will produce gas that will literally push your sauce up and out of your container if you don't give it some room to, quite literally, breathe.

To answer your actual question, when it comes to fermentation, smaller amounts don't actually mean smaller fermentation times. Your chile peppers will all be nice and full of bacteria and natural sugars to feed them, and the salt will help keep the bad stuff from taking over. More bacteria would give you a faster ferment, but the amount of bacteria you have depends on the amount of peppers you use. The time of your ferment will depend on your environment and personal preference more than anything.

If you WANT a faster ferment, you can look into adding extra bacteria to start things off. You could add some dried chile flakes (Korean flakes are mild but tasty if you've never tried them) or look into tossing in a commercial starter. But doing either of those things will change the character of your final product.


How to tenderize bell pepper skin / peel Consider the scenario: You cut the bell peppers in 1-2 CM squares, throw them in a pan with some oil and 1/6 teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate. You let it simmer until you get a mush.

At this point the bell pepper's peel / skin is tough to chew on.

What can you do to get the peel tender soft?

Without finding something on the internets, I'm going to boil it together with tomato sauce, diced onion, carrot, celery and minced meat for 2-4 hours and tell you how it went.

You can't. If you want a pepper puree, you have to remove the skins mechanically. Else you get a puree with "scales" of skin inside.

You also mention making a stew out of the peppers. The skins are normally not removed for a stew, just eaten along. Many people prefer to not add the pepper at the beginning, but only to throw it in for the last 15 minutes, so it doesn't overcook. This results in pepper pieces which are crisper overall, so it might not be to your taste.

If you absolutely need a stew in which the pepper is soft but there are no skins, you can probably char the pepper and peel it first, then cut up the peeled pepper and use it in the stew. But if you put it in as early as the meat, it will probably disintegrate and not be recognizable as pieces any more. If that's your goal, you can save a lot of work by mixing into your liquid ready made ljutenica (which has more vegetables and a more complex flavor profile) or pure bell pepper paste, if you can get it.


Sausage discolouration - is it safe to eat? This morning, I found some sausages in the fridge that had been there all week.  The top of the sausage (that is, the surface of the skin facing upwards) had turned brown.  I initially thought that if I just fried them long enough, this would be fine; however, while frying I did a quick search on the web, got spooked and threw them away.

My question is: what causes this discolouration and, have I needlessly thrown three very tasty looking sausages in the bin?

My question is: what causes this discolouration

Many meats are dyed to make them look fresher. They add red, cause meat is red right? Well no. Most meat will "brown" or "gray" as it is exposed to the air and the blood dries up (or drains out). This is not, in any way, a sign of bad meat. In fact it "may" be a sign of good, natural meat.

A YouTube Video that explains it

  and, have I needlessly thrown three very tasty looking sausages in the bin?

Yes, probably.

Important note

When in doubt throw it out. A week in the fridge (not freezer) is border line for me. I would have probably cooked it, but I wouldn't fault someone else for not cooking it.

You can usually look for smell or slime to tell if meat is bad.


Does store-bought salsa have an expiration date/shelf life after being opened? So I like salsa, but don’t eat enough of it to use it all in a few days. In general, does store bought salsa—that is stored in the supermarket on open shelves without temperature control—go bad even if refrigerated after opening?

I’ve personally used store bought salsa a few weeks after opening and it smelled fine and there was no sign of mold. Was this an error on my part because I’ve never gotten sick from that stuff; just want a more informed answer if possible.

Like all shelf stable foods, it's fully packed with preservatives... And how long it lasts after being opened, that generally depends on the processing and preservatives in the product.

Being on the safer side, I'd say, even after opening and kept sealed airtight, within 1-2 weeks you should be done with it. But I'm sure, the manufacturer has the right information, written somewhere on the jar...


Is yogurt plus milk considered buttermilk? I've read somewhere (it was a vanilla cake recipe, IIRC) that 3/4 cup yogurt plus 1/4 milk is buttermilk. A recipe (buttermilk biscuits) calls for buttermilk and I'd like to know if I can use this formula to make buttermilk.

Technically, this is not precisely buttermilk, but it's pretty close in both composition and usage.

The term "buttermilk" can actually refer to a wide range of fermented milk varieties.  Traditionally, buttermilk was produced by allowing natural bacteria present in cream to ferment some of the sugar lactose into lactic acid.  This made churning butter from the cream easier and also helped protect the cream from spoiling.  After the butter was churned and removed, the liquid that remained would be your buttermilk (today referred to as "traditional").

Nowadays, mass-produced "cultured" buttermilk is produced by taking pasteurized low-fat milk and introducing bacterial cultures to produce lactic acid in a similar fashion.  That's similar to how yogurt is produced, but yogurt is generally allowed to ferment for longer until the milk proteins set and thicken.  There are many varieties of yogurt with slightly different cultures from each other and from cultured buttermilk, and the beginning fat content of the milk can differ too.

So, technically these are distinct, but if you use milk to thin out yogurt, you're producing a beverage that (like buttermilk) contains lactic acid, producing that distinctive tangy flavor, and which (like buttermilk) is somewhat thicker than milk.  Your identified ratio is the same as other recommendations that I found while searching around, so you can definitely use this to substitute.

There are also other substitutions available.  This thread also covers similar information, in addition to being a colorful exploration of related terms.


What kind of pan works best with a waterbath? Whenever I bake cheesecake or flan, my springform pan always leaks into the water bath or vice/versa.  Is there a better type of pan to use when baking with a water bath?

You pretty much have to use the sprinform pan with cheesecakes, otherwise you can't get the cheesecake out of the pan. If you don't care to remove the cheesecake from the pan whole, then you can use anything you want—a deep cake pan would work well, for example.

There are two ways to help keep the springform pan from leaking:

Wrap the sprinform pan (the entire bottom, and up the sides) in aluminum foil. Use two layers of foil, especially if you're using the cheap thin stuff.
Find a round cake pan slightly larger than your sprinform pan (say, a 10" wide, 3" deep pan with a 9" springform). Sit the springform pan inside the cake pan, then put the cake pan in the bain-marie (so the water isn't actually touching the springform pan). This suggestion comes from Cooks Illustrated (sorry, paywall), who tested this and found the small gap doesn't matter.

If you're doing a lot of cheesecakes, then you can get a 10"x3" cake pan on Amazon for $10–15.


Why cool creme brulee? Why bake, cool then torch the crème brûlée? Why not skip the cooling? Is cooling for setting?

Cooling for 4-24 hours is in almost every recipe I find.

Crème brûlée is supposed to be served cold, with a hard, crisp caramel layer on top. So that requires cooling after baking. The baking is needed to set the crème, it might just be a bit firmer after cooling. To ge the hard caramel, you need to add the sugar on top and then torch for a short time, just before serving.

You can't have the caramel formed during baking, or refrigirate after torching, as the caramel would absorb water from the crème and turn liquid (or at least get very sticky).


Traveling with sourdough starter We recently got a sourdough starter, and have loved trying out many different recipes with it.

In a few weeks we will by flying home (after spending the summer in Alaska), and we would really like to take the starter home with us.

What's the best way to get it safely through the airport?

Treat it like any liquid.  You don't need much.  Just put some in a 100 ml plastic bottle if carrying on.  Alternately, if checking your bags, put your starter in a larger plastic container with a screw cap...like a Nalgene bottle, for example.  You can build it back up once you get to your destination.


Preparing chicken burgers for sous vide then freezing while keeping shape I am having a hard time finding good, reasonably low fat precooked chicken burgers currently, presumably due to COVID; I used to buy these for reference. As such, I figured I'd prepare my own.
I'm shredding (in a Cuisinart) raw, boneless/skinless chicken thighs (with most of the fat removed that's external but leaving the intramuscular fat), and then adding caramelized onions, cooked garlic/bell peppers, and spices or BBQ sauce, then forming into patties, placing in a vacuum bag, sealing, and cooking in my sous vide at 150 for an hour or so.  Then I let them cool for a bit, and put them in the freezer.  I prepare them from frozen in a pan (directly, no oil or steam beyond what they produce themselves).
Batch one went well, except that they don't keep their shape well.  Between sous-vide and freezer, they end up  in really odd shapes or even bent (presumably because I don't have a perfect spot).
Are there things I can add to the recipe, or to my technique, to help them stay a bit more flat and less thin?  The main thing I've seen that I'm not including is bread/breadcrumbs; I'd prefer to not include that (as it's empty calories), but if this is the specific reason it's in there I could reconsider.  I'm also using thighs, not breasts, in part as they have the fat profile I think is best - but if breast meat would do better in this application, I could certainly switch.

You're missing a binder of some kind. You're adding some fairly moist fillings to ground meat, which is already moist and whose structure has been destroyed. You need something to soak up the juices of your burgers as they cook, and that's the purpose of the breadcrumbs you're missing. I know you said you would prefer not to include them, but that is the easiest and probably best solution. Egg (or just egg white) is another common binder, but with all those already-moist ingredients and no breadcrumbs, I wouldn't recommend it.
However, there are a couple of other options you could try.
You could try adding a few tablespoons of cornstarch or potato starch to your meat mixture. That would have the effect of thickening up juices as they're released during cooking-- if the temperature is high enough for the starches to gel.
Another option is more of a technique (which I confess I've never tried, so I can't personally vouch for its effectiveness). This recipe uses no binders, no breadcrumbs or cornstarch at all. Instead, it calls for a portion of the ground meat to be fried off beforehand and then mixed in with the rest of the ingredients. The mixing in this case is actually kneading; the recipe specifies that kneading very very well is key to maintaining the structure of the finished patty.
In any case, as far as the patties being misshapen from the freezer goes, consider making an attempt to rearrange a flat spot for your burgers, at least when you first freeze them. Once they're solid, they can be moved to a more convenient spot in the freezer.


Subs for baking mix/ eggs and condensed milk? I am trying to make my own protein cookies/bars. This way I know what is in them. I have a good idea on what I can replace oil and eggs with. What I am still unsure of is what to replace the biscuit mix and the sweetened condensed milk with. I don't want to use flour,dairy or sugar.Can anyone help?

Don't try to modify the recipe, unless you're ready to have a lot of failure before you get something you like. Making substitutions for all the main ingredients in a recipe (flour, sugar, dairy/fat) is a good way to make it fail.

Look for recipes for peanut butter protein bars, presumably vegan, gluten-free ones. (I tried searching for vegan gluten-free peanut butter protein bars and found this one - probably at least a good starting point.) Even if you can't find something that meets all your requirements, you can get close, and not have to make as many substitutions.

You can possibly replace the biscuit mix with a gluten-free flour and some leavening, probably in a ratio like you'd use for self-rising flour, 1.5 tsp baking powder per cup of flour, and 1/4 tsp salt. (The biscuit mix may also have a bit of sugar normally, but most of the sweetness in your recipe is from elsewhere, so that shouldn't be an issue.)

For sweetened condensed milk, you can likely use coconut milk (so that there'll be some fat, and it'll be thick) and artificial sweetener to taste.

For eggs, you can try an egg replacer in a carton, or flax or chia eggs (ground flax/chia seed and water). If you've also lost the binding power of the flour, you may end up needing more egg replacement to compensate, or even want to add things like oats help it all hold together.

But with all those substitutions, you're likely to end up with something really far from the original recipe. The texture will likely be pretty far off, if it even holds together. It'll really be best to start with a recipe that's closer to what you want.


What ingredients are used in peri peri Powder? I have been looking for possible ingredients that are being used to make peri peri powder.

Is there any significant difference between peri peri powder and peri peri sauce. Interms of ingredients?

Both are similar, and there are varied recipes for peri-peri powder, as well as sauce. What they have in common are peppers (one or more varieties) and the seasonings and spices. The sauce, of course, contains liquids. Although not meant to be comprehensive, here are many of the ingredients you'll see in basic recipes for both.

Peppers: peri peri, red chiles (cayenne), birdseye chiles, thai chiles, serrano, sweet red pepper

Seasonings & Spices: salt, sugar, garlic, onion, black pepper, lemon peel, cinnamon, cardamon, ginger, paprika, chili flakes, oregano

Liquids: water, vinegar, oil, lemon juice, lime juice


Why use chopped tomatoes and tomato paste/puree? I have seen a number of recipes that call for a tin of chopped tomatoes and some quantity (usually a tablespoon or two) of tomato puree (USA: tomato paste). What is the reasoning behind using tomato puree as well? Does it give a different texture or flavour?

Tomato puree is concentrated tomato.  So where it is called for in conjunction with other tomato products, be they fresh or tinned, it is an attempt to increase the tomato flavour/presence in the dish without increasing the bulk or water inherent in less concentrated products.

Additionally the flavour of puree, having gone through a reduction process is somewhat different, more intense and rich than straight tomatoes.

Indeed, canned tomatoes tend to be surrounded with juice that is more reduced than would occur naturally.  Which is part of why they are used against fresh tomatoes.


Sourdough bread crust will not rip open I have been baking sourdough breads for a little over a year now. I have had great successes as well as terrible failures. Lately, I had to switch the oven I am using because the one in my apartment does not reach the heat required. I am using a pizza oven set to 250-300 degrees Celsius. The temperature can be adjusted from 50-350 for both the top and bottom element.
I have sprayed one of the loaves with water before baking and the other I have not. The results are the same in my opinion.
This is the process I am using since the summer:

Ingredients:
600g strong bread flower
200g strong wheat flower
200g whole wheat flower
750g water (in Germany tap water is fine to use for baking so I do)
25-30g salt
100g active starter

Process:
Feed starter in the morning with 50% flour & 50% water.
Combine water and flour for autolyse.
Wait around 4-6 hours for the starter to be ready.
Combine starter and flour.
Slap and fold.
Wait 30 minutes.
Add salt.
Slap and fold.
Wait 15 Minutes.
Stretch and fold.
Wait 15 minutes.
Stretch and fold.
Wait 15 minutes.
Stretch and fold.
Wait 30 Minutes.
Stretch and fold.
Wait 30 minutes.
Stretch and fold.
Wait 2 hours.
Preshape.
Wait 10 minutes.
Shape.
Put in proofing baskets overnight in the fridge.
Take out of the fridge in the morning and slash the bread
Bake at 250° degrees for 20 minutes.
Bake an additional 10-20 minutes at 200° Celsius for browning.

This somewhat complex recipe has yielded amazing looking and tasting breads. I am aware that this much work is not required but I like doing it. I also do not adhere to the times perfectly as sometimes less and sometimes more time is required to get the dough to the right point.
I am scoring the bread once down the middle about a centimeter deep (about a third of an inch) sometimes deeper sometimes shallower.  The end result is the same.
What is happening in the oven is the following:
The bread starts to rise but as it does so, the crust is already forming strings(water vapor present or not) and prevents the crust from breaking open where I slashed it. The end result tastes perfect, but has humongous holes at the top, where it was supposed to rip open.
I have these pictures of today's baking run:

The darker loaf (the right one) has been baked without being sprayed with water first.
As you can see, the crumb is nice, up to where is becomes moon craters. The tops have been slashed but not ripped open as they are expected to. Can anyone give me some advice on how to achieve this again? In my dutch oven it worked well almost every time. I cannot use that anymore though because the oven I have at the moment does not reach the temperature I need as I said before.
TL;DR
I have made good dough with very good oven spring. I have slashed my loaves but cannot get an open crust.

I believe that the top element in your pizza oven is your biggest problem. It is broiling the top of the crust, cooking it too quickly. You can use it to preheat the oven, but don’t use it when the loaf is in the oven.
The temperature of the oven may be off as well, if it’s running too hot that could make the problem worse.
Although you’re not having blow out problems, the answers to this question may help.
Bread doesn’t split at the score


How do I defrost frozen flour tortillas? There is a wide variety of suggestions about how to thaw frozen flour tortillas.  What works best?

I buy tortillas in bulk (36 to 48) at a time. I freeze them because even our family of 6 won't go through them fast enough if left in the refrigerator! I stack them with individual freezer wax paper between the tortillas (get them at warehouse stores such as costco) and then place in a plastic freezer bag or in a plastic storage container.  I THAW them in the microwave 6 at a time, papers removed, then wrapped in a SLIGHTLY damp kitchen towel. 30 seconds on high does it for the stack.


gooseberry "turnover" filling very thick We got a lot of gooseberries from the garden, so I decided to make some gooseberry turnovers.
I found a simple recipe online: puree the berries, add bread-crumbs, cornstarch and sugar. Mix it, and fill some puff pastry. In the over, done!

But, the filling is so thick! I know gooseberries contain a certain amount of pectin, but even after removing the cornstarch and reduce the amount of bread-crumbs, it still ends up as a very thick, "solidified" substance.
Another problem is that the stuffing is quite liquid, which makes it difficult to fill the puff pastry. (that's why the bread-crumbs are added)

What can I do to thicken the stuffing, but prevent the filling from becoming solid?

I can't find any resources on what to do when you have food with too much pectin in it, but you could combine the goose berries with something which has a low amount of pectin, check out group II or III in this pdf. Don't puree your other ingredient totally and you'll get a thicker filling, as well.


How long is homemade spiced apple cider good for in a sealed Mason canning jar? I bring the cider to a boil and simmer the spices for 15 minutes. Immediately after, I pour the cider into canning Mason glass jars with the lids that have the button. How long should I expect the cider to be good for unopened?

Assuming you follow the usual procedere of cleaning and boiling ("sterilizing"1) the jars, filling the hot cider in hot jars and closing immediately, you should be fine for a few weeks. Or not, there is always a slight risk of the jars not sealing properly and your cider not being acidic enough.

But:
Processing the jars as you would for other canning and repeating the processing after a day or two should get you on the super-safe side (including eliminating the very, very slim botulism risk from your spices).

This is probably overkill, even a standard waterbath canning should leave you with a cider that stays good for a year or more.

Just remove the rings after the jars have cooled well, so that any faulty seal becomes obvious right away.


How should I prepare a whole (already roasted) leg of lamb bone for stock? So, I already made the leg o lamb and have some set aside for stew after I make the broth.  I chopped the huge bone in half so it will fit in a lobster pot.  The question for me at this time is: will it help to roast the bone for half an hour pre-stock?

I spent so long looking online with no specificity found on this question that I've grown impatient and already started roasting the bone at a lower heat than I might usually--only 325 F-- since I figure it couldn't hurt.  But I wonder if it's necessary/helpful since the bone has been roasted (albeit beneath the meat) for four hours already.

Also, there is a little meat still on the bone before roasting, but mostly connective tissue and stuff.

Thanks for any tips about re-roasting leftover roasted meat bones!

It is good to roast the bone before using it for stock in order to get color on it. Color adds flavor, so it is worth it. Only the bone exposed in the oven in the original roasting will have gotten any color as the rest was covered in meat. Don't worry about cleaning it completely, a bit of meat here and there isn't going to hurt your stock.


How to liquify butter -- and keep it liquid? Is there a way to liquify butter and keep it in a liquid form at room temperature (at minimum) or in a refrigerator (preferably)? I can't seem to find any solution on the web. Everything seems to point to making clarified butter, which is not what I want (plus, the ghee I've seen is solid at room temperature).

Is there anything I can do / add to the butter to keep it liquid?

You could blend it with an oil that does not itself solidify in the refrigerator, but that's no longer butter, it's possibly "butter flavored oil" - don't use olive or coconut as they solidify in the fridge (or moderate room temperature for the coconut.)


How can I tell if homemade ginger syrup has gone bad? I made some Ginger syrup using the liquid I boiled the root in for candy. It's just water and sugar. I put it in a plastic liter bottle (from soda water) in the refrigerator. How long can I keep it like that and how can I tell if it's gone bad? It has separated so that there are little bits of ginger in the bottom, but when I shake it, it looks fine. Also, is a mason jar better than the plastic bottle?

How long this will last depends largely on the ratio of sugar to water in the final syrup.  Sugar can inhibit the growth of microbes by reducing the water activity of the solution, but this is dependent on the amount of sugar.  According to a book that I consider quite reliable on these matters, a syrup composed of equal parts sugar and water (by mass, not volume!) will generally keep unspoiled for about 2 weeks.  A syrup with 2 parts sugar to 1 part water will keep as long as 3 months.  These both assume that you're keeping the syrup refrigerated in an airtight container, which it sounds like you are.  Unfortunately, unless you know the exact ratio, it's tough to predict exactly how long this will last.

Discard immediately if you notice any of the following:

Any visible mold (hopefully this one's obvious)
A cloudier appearance (harder to judge since you have some suspended particles; you might try running it through a fine-mesh strainer)
Any gas bubbles or outgassing when you open the container (this is a sign of fermentation)

You might also consider adding a small amount of alcohol.  This provides another hurdle to microbial growth, and would extend your syrup's shelf life to somewhere between 3-6 months.  I generally add about 1/2 oz of 80-proof (40% ABV) vodka per 8 oz or so of syrup.

Regarding a mason jar, the main advantage these have is that they won't trap flavors the way that plastic can when re-used.  A strongly-flavored substance stored in plastic for a time can contribute some of its flavor to the next.  Since you're storing a strongly-flavored ginger syrup in a former soda water bottle (which is nearly tasteless) this probably isn't a concern, but if you used the bottle again whatever you put in it might come out tasting subtly of ginger.  Glass doesn't have this problem.


How do I stop metal-bottomed pots squeaking on my gas hob? I have a gas hob and metal-bottomed pots. The support for the hob is made of metal and is coated in black plastic, like the image below.  The previous owner has worn away at the layer of plastic that allows pots to move freely and quietly, so the metal is exposed.

The problem I'm trying to solve is that skillets and pots squeak horribly when they are moved due to the metal-on-metal scraping.

One option is to replace the support, but this seems wasteful and it will crop up again;
Another option would be to heat the metal and use a plastic dip; in school we used a heat-and-dip treatment to treat metal products to give them this nice finish, but I don't have the equipment.

How can I mitigate this noise?  Is there a nice way to completely stop it?

Perhaps use a gas ring reducer to lift the skillets or pots away from the original hobs.

There seem to be various shapes and sizes, both bare metal or enamel coated options in various outlets.

As long they don't squeak themselves against either the pots or hob sounds a relatively cheap and easy to replace solution, and don't require changing the whole hob.

They also don't seem to affect stove efficiency or heat distribution negatively in any significant way.

Alternatively you may use some sort of gas ring heat diffuser, though I suspect these will have a larger effect on performance and efficiency.


Soft dinner rolls always taste bland or flat I proof Granular Rapid Rise yeast in mix of milk/water/honey/touch of flour and 100 - 110 degrees, adding the yeast.  Always proofs really well, doubling etc. I have made these so many times, you would think I would give up,,  I cook alot, bake a good deal, and always seem to get a great shiny dough, buttered and rises with all the unpredictability yeast dough can - moisture content, temp. etc   I like a softer dough, not quite sticky, and punch down, and rise a second time. I know the times that I've allowed rises to happen too quickly - but generally an hour for each rise, almost double rise first time, and 3/4 rise the second time. I use eggs, milk, water, King A. Unbleached AP Flour, some sugar* and some salt*.  sometimes I mix in butter, sometimes mix of shortening/butter, and like tonight, very little butter, with heavy cream instead of milk.
I think the texture is good, very consistent crumb, soft crusts ( egg wash or butter), and they look great.  Trouble is the taste:

Seems to me that butter helps, but really salt and sugar will affect the flavour/taste the most.  Would you agree with this?
I like a sweeter dinner roll, and with the sugar in the proofing liquid, I may only add another couple of tablespoons no more.
Perhaps salt is my weakness, I love salted things, and try to add as much salt as I feel I can, but worry so much about harming the yeast, am I just not putting enough?  tonight, I put a total of 1.5 tsp in dough of 4 eggs, 4 cups flour, 3 tablespoons of sugar, 2 tablespoons of honey, 1/2 c. water, 1/2 cup whpping cream, for a total of 1.75 cups of liquid.  Dough was predictably soft and sticky, but came together, so while kneading added approx 1 more cup flour until just soft, shiny, and smooth.  I kneaded by hand for about 2 - 3 minutes until I felt the dough was not too elastic, smooth and formed a nice soft ball.  The rises were as mentioned above, pretty good.
I have half of the dough in the refrig. to perform a slower rise, which I understand develops a better yeast flavour - I hope so, but now I realize that the finished rolls are just bland.  Like just the flour taste, maybe a touch of the honey, but otherwise, flat, cardboard flavor.  Hard to throw them away when they look so good, texture is great and all that unsalted butter waiting to go on them!

I need advice please -  what am I missing or doing too much of?  Do you think longer rises?  More salt?  less yeast?  Sorry for the long question - wanted to give you as much info as possible! thanks,  Brad

You've answered this question yourself.

Flavor in bread comes from:

salt
yeast action

and to a lesser degree

fat
sugar

Obviously you have plenty of fat and sugar.
As you suspect, your yeasty flavor will be improved by letting it rise longer in the fridge.

Flat flavor in bread is almost always because of not enough salt. I agree with you that you don't have enough.
As the saying goes: "Bread without salt is insipid"

For how much salt is good, see this question: Amount of salt in bread

About 2% of the flour weight. In your recipe with 5 cups of flour (600g) that would be just over 2tsp of table salt (12g).

I use kosher salt and would probably use closer to a tablespoon for a batch of bread this size.


What is the conversion rate between dry beans to cans of beans? A recipe calls for a can (15oz) of cooked beans. How many cups or oz's is that to dry beans? Is this conversion even possible to estimate given that beans differ in amount of water absorption?

According to the Kitchen Companion, a terrific general handbook which I recommend, 1 lb (about 2 cups) of dried beans is roughly 6 to 7 cups cooked beans, and one 15oz can of cooked beans is roughly 1.75 cups drained, making it equivalent to 1/4 to 1/3 lbs ( or 1/2 to 3/4 cup) dried.

Per my personal experience, dried beans increase in volume from 2.5X at the low end (red lentils, mung beans, etc.) to 5X at the high end (garbanzos).  3X or 3.5X is a good median value for this.

So what kind of beans are we talking about?


Does anyone cook/eat bladders? There's a few places in the world that really don't waste any part of an animal when it comes to cooking, but I've yet to see any form of cooked bladders.

Is it an item that is cooked -or- eaten anywhere in the world?

Yes.  Here's a specific example.  Asian cuisine also has a strong tradition of using a wide variety of organ meats, many of which are considered delicacies.

The bladder would be a particularly tough piece of protein to prepare, but you can make just about anything palatable with proper cleaning and a long braise.


How to taste a real ranch dressing outisde of the US When I have been to the South Carolina, US, I fell in love with the popular american Ranch dressing. As an foreigner, I do not know much about this dressing, its origin and sorts, and never bought it in supermarket, but I really liked this one, which was served in McDonalds:

After coming back to Almaty, Kazakhstan, I made several attempts to find this sauce in my home city and feel this taste again. However, they all have failed - there are hundreds of sauces and dressings here: from mustard to caesar dressing, from local manufacturers to Heinz, but there is no ranch - I am not sure if it is simply not popular here or it is just perishable. Even McDonalds Kazakhstan doesn't serve the ranch.

I have only found ranch in a store once, in a plastic, but it was really AWFUL. It was something like horseradish with tons of vinegar and mayonnaise. I was really dissapointed. I am not quite sure if it was deteriorated or it should have tasted like this.

I have several possible ways to obtain ranch dressing now: I can order something through the local import store. They offer this manufacturer (image). I can order Hidden Valley ranch dressing (image) from Amazon. However, I don't want to spend money, wait for a month or two, and get disappointed again.

Now, I have several related questions, that would really help me. I strongly believe that you can know the answers, because you live in this country and some of you buy bottled ranch in supermarkets.

So, does McDonalds ranch somehow differ from the bottled, sold in supermarkets? What kind of ranch dressings do taste the same, fresh and tasty? Is there a chance to order ranch from the US from Amazon and receive it until it deteriorates?

I would like to have the most possible information about this lovely thing.

I use this copycat recipe to make it at home. Depending on who's coming for dinner, I change up the herbs and the type of vinegar I use, and I usually use half black pepper and half white pepper. Other than that, just use it as is.


Substitution for egg to bind hamburger mince My wife is having pregnancy cravings for (homemade) hamburgers, but has developed a prenatal allergy / intolerance to egg.

What is a possible replacement for egg to stop a hamburger pattie from collapsing into mince during cooking?

Have you tried not adding egg? In my experiments, egg is needed when you add breadcrumbs, but if you just form some ground beef into a patty and fry it, it doesn't fall apart. Hm, let me clarify that. If you take a single blob of ground beef straight from the styrofoam and press it in a patty press, it doesn't fall apart. If you take two pieces and put them next to each other in the patty press, it does fall apart as you cook it. So when I need to add an extra bit, I add it on top. That works. So there is at least one way you can make a hamburger without adding egg. Now, if you wanted to mix spices into the beef, then you might have a problem. I'll admit that. Better than nothing, though.


How to slice bread thinly so it won't crumble? I make sandwich bread to replace store-bought. However, I need relatively thin slices for peanut butter and jelly and other kid-friendly sandwiches. Any tips for slicing bread?

What I've always found works for me is to skip the bread knife and use a very sharp, smooth knife instead - chef's knife or similar - and slice the bread gently so the sharpness of the knife cuts it, rather than relying on the force or pressure from the hand that can encourage crumbling.  It also helps a great deal to use a knife that's long enough, so that the slicing is a smooth, continuous motion and the tip of the blade doesn't pass through the bread - this can snag, and encourage tearing or crumbling.

I've cut slices with an edge a half a centimeter wide with this technique.  Any thinner than that and the corner of the crust may crumble or tear off entirely, usually at the bottom corner where the crust gets stiffer again and prefers to tear right off rather than cut.  Though to be fair I'm usually quite poor at judging crookedness of a cut and so the other edge tends to be a bit thicker.  If you can already cut straight slices, this may not apply to you.

The serrations on a bread knife tear the bread up more - you can get smooth cuts, but at the loss of all the bread under the knife (the knife's width) being processed into crumbs.  That kind of knife works better for really sturdy, crusty loaves where the extra crumbs are worth it to get through the thicker crust cleanly - and usually thicker slices are preferred to better enjoy the crustiness.  A smooth knife is better for cutting thin slices, especially if the bread is soft - though it also works reasonably well on bread that's dense or crumbly.

So what you do is, if the crust is stiff (or just because it makes a cleaner cut), use the tip of the knife to break the uppermost part of the crust (jab it in and saw sideways) to make a notched line in it where you want to cut the bread.  It should be deep and wide enough so that the edge of the knife will be through the crust when laid in the break sideways, as for cutting.  The crust is smooth and tough, and especially if the crust is smooth enough to slip, the crumb can squash down before it cuts the first width of the crust - undesirable, and more likely to crumble.  But once it's broken, the knife can cut sideways through the thin crust much easier.

Once the upper crust is broken lay the knife in the break, and gently, gently, start moving the knife back and forth.  You are using a sawing motion and cutting with the sharpness of the blade, not the downward force of your hand.  And once you reach the bottom crust, you will need to use a lot of pressure or force to cut through it cleanly, or it will remain attached at the edge and may tear - or else angle the loaf up a bit to slice though that crust diagonally.  Crust takes direct pressure against the flat of the crust well and bends before it breaks, but sideways pressure against the thin edge of the crust, poorly - that is why the top and bottom are particularly troublesome to cut.

You can, once the cut gets a little deeper, gently start pulling the slice away from the loaf, to give better access to the area being cut and reduce friction to the area already cut.  Obviously, this trick - opening the angle of the cut - works better and/or can be done sooner to a bread with a more flexible crust, since a stiffer crust or crumb may crack a bit under the sideways pull unless it is quite gentle or the cut is already quite deep.

It sounds very fussy, and the first few times it may take some concentration, but it is honestly easier done than said.  Stab the crust to break it, and after that use little downward force with smooth even cuts to make sure the bread is sliced with sharpness rather than torn with pressure.  You will still gets some crumbs, but it should be a lesser, more manageable amount.


Does no-yeast dough need to rest? I'm learning to make wheat tortillas, and it called my attention that this person is not letting her dough rest.

Would you let the dough rest even if the recipe does not have any yeast? or is it not necessary?

Thank you

There is a difference between resting and proofing.

Resting allows flour to absorb water and lets the gluten that was formed during kneading to relax. Both of these make it possible to work with the dough.

Proofing is letting yeast produce CO2 to raise the dough.

Yeast doughs do both in the rest period after they are kneaded. Unyeasted, glutinous, doughs only have to rest so they can relax and be worked with.

In a tortilla recipe, if you are rolling the tortillas out by hand you will find it much easier to do if the dough has rested. If you are using a press it won't make much of a difference. If they are corn tortillas and don't contain gluten then there is no point to resting at all.


Interpreting a recipe from Mrs Beeton: "rather a brisk oven" Old recipes are well-known for being imprecise, especially about temperature, but when they call for a "hot" or "cool" oven we can get a decent idea of what they're talking about.  This one:

SODA BISCUITS.

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

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

[italics mine] is less clear. Presumably brisk=quick cooking=fairly hot, but that could still be anywhere from say 180°C to 250°C.  As I'm considering baking it to see how they turn out, finding a similar modern recipe to copy isn't really possible, because I don't know what constitutes similar: a biscuit (UK)? a scone?
I've asked about another aspect of the same recipe, and the idea of baking it was prmpted by a discussion about the meanings of biscuit at english.se.

To give oven temperatures in degrees is a fairly modern invention:

In our (great...) grandmothers' time, ovens didn't have thermostats and dials, but were heated with wood or other fuel and adjusting the temperature depended on the skill of the cook (more or less wood, more or less air..) and hence recipes gave "classes" of temperature, e.g. high heat or low heat. I even have a German cookbook from the 1930 that still gives verbal descriptions ("bake at moderate heat") instead of temperatures.

Another verbal scale used "speed terms", refering to how fast the food cooked. A fast oven for bread, a brisk oven for cookies, a slow oven for delicate confectionary or long braising and so on.

There are many conversion tables for the cool-to-hot phrases, but I couldn't find one explicitly including "brisk".

But if you note that brisk is slower/cooler than fast and fast = hot, this places brisk in the moderately hot category, or, plainly put, around 200C. A few degrees more or less will be your choice and depend on your preference for lighter or darker biscuits and also a bit on your oven. Look for visual clues like browning or rising.

This fits modern recipes, that suggest a similar range for cookies. So I suggest you give it a try and adjust according to your preference and test batch.


How to substitute butter with combination of butter and shortening in cookie/biscuit making? Sometimes when I bake cookies, they either come out too soft or they become rock hard. I have read somewhere that baking cookies with butter makes is spreadable in the oven and gives it crispy texture, while using shortening makes it firm in the oven and gives it a flaky texture. What if I can use both in any of the cookie recipe replacing it with 100% butter or shortening? I want my cookies to have melting in the mouth and flaky texture.

The texture of a cookie is based on much more than the fat used, shortening or butter.  In fact, within some basic limits, they are fairly interchangeable in most cookie recipes, flavor not withstanding.

Switching to part or all vegetable shortening will not yield a flaky texture.

The method by which the ingredients are combined, and how the cookies are treated, mixed, or rolled is a dominant factor in the final texture.

As Sourd'oh points out, your variation is more likely to be a result of over-cooking or under-cooking.   The individual size of each cookie can make a considerable difference, especially with very small cookies.

If you are getting inconsistency within the same tray, you may not have uniformly sized cookies.  A cookie scoop or disher can help with that, as can practice.

To get a truly flaky texture, you would need to use a recipe and method specifically designed to create flakiness.  These cookies are often built with a variation on the laminated methods used for biscuits, where butter is cut into the dough, and then moistened.   When they are rolled out, the pieces of butter flatten into layers, separating the flour layers, and providing the flakiness.


What can I use to replace white cheese in a roasted red peppers pate? So, there's something I usually prepare for myself. It's pretty straightforward (since I have 0 knowledge and skills in cooking). I add roasted red peppers (from a can), white cheese, onion, garlic & olive oil in a food processor and blend them to a smooth puree.

However I have a new friend who is vegan and I want them to try this, so I was wondering what can I use to replace the white cheese?

I suppose the cheese is kind of necessary & I cannot just skip it because it "softens the pepper's strong flavor".

Well, there is white vegan cheese.  What I would recommend is that you make it prior to serving it to your buddy, and taste it with the new vegan cheese and see if that's the taste you're aiming for.  A super quick Google search found "white vegan cheese" with no problem.  You might even find some at your nearest grocery store.


Alternatives to onion gravy Whenever I cook a dish with either no meat, or when I can't get any of the juices from the meat, I tend to make a gravy based on onions.  I'm wondering what alternatives there are to onion gravy.  To be clear, this is a gravy to compliment a meat dish (that is, I'm not looking for vegetarian or vegan options, necessarily).

I have seen mushroom gravy options, but I have a feeling that would taste strongly of mushrooms and overwhelm the dish.

You don't need onions or mushrooms, you can make gravy from strong stock, thickened using a roux or cornstarch slurry. This only really comes out well if you can get concentrated stock, it's not really that good with stock cubes, as they aren't really stock, more of a flavored salt.

My go-to gravy recipe uses Knorr stockpots, which are widely available in the UK and EU (from what I've seen in my travels), in the US they seem to be marketed as Homestyle stock, and they look like the same thing. I start with a roux made from 25g flour (about 2 tbsp) and 25g butter, cooked for about 2 minutes to give it a bit of color, then add 1 beef and 1 chicken stockpot and 600ml water, which is 2/3 of the normal dilution. I bring it up to a simmer, add some pepper, a drop of honey and a splash of dark soy for a bit of richness and color. If I have drippings I use those instead of butter to make the roux, if I have juices I will add this in addition to the base gravy recipe without adjusting it, it's just bonus flavor. If I have neither it still comes out well.

The flavor of the gravy comes from 2 things:

The roux: cooking the flour down to give it some color gives depth of flavor. You can use a cornstart (cornflour) slurry after heating but I find you can tell the difference. You can cook the roux longer and get more flavoring, at some point you start to lose the thickening power. You can make more roux than you need and spoon it out, adding it until you get the thickness of gravy you like
Concentration of the stock: you need a more powerful meaty flavor for gravy, thin stock won't cut it. If you have thin stock you can concentrate it down by gently simmering it to evaporate water.


How much water does pasta absorb when it is cooked? How much water will dry semolina pasta absorb when it is properly cooked?  For example, how much water would one pound of farfalle or spaghetti absorb?

I am guessing the shape of the pasta doesn't matter, just the absolute weight.

I am not looking for how much water is required to boil it, nor what temperature is required, just how much should be absorbed.  I like my pasta cooked a minute or so past the box "al dente" stage.

The application is single burner cooking (I only have one available).   I can make the sauce, then add additional water and pasta to cook directly in the sauce, making for only one burner being required, and only a single pot to clean.

I understand the actual amount will require due to the vagaries of how much evaporates, but I expect that to be a minor adjustment.

You need 1.1x as much water as pasta for al dente! I measured this myself, cooking penne rigate (in water, not sauce) - 200g of pasta weighed 420g after being cooked and thoroughly drained.

The estimate below from the nutrition facts is 1.4x, which probably corresponds to typical American overcooked pasta - a surprisingly large difference from mine. I'm guessing you'll be somewhere between, maybe 1.25x.

You can also ballpark it from nutrition facts. Cooked spaghetti has 31g carbs per 100g pasta, and dry spaghetti has 75g carbs per 100g pasta. So 100g dry pasta turns into 100g*75/31 = 242g of cooked pasta, meaning the added water was ~1.4x the weight of the pasta. So for a pound of pasta, that's 1.4 pounds or about 2 2/3 cups of water. Given people's tastes, this might be a little past al dente, so I would personally start with maybe 1.25 cups of water then add a little more if necessary. (I'll also try cooking pasta normally and weighing it if I get a chance.)

Note: if you have a significantly different variety of pasta, it will obviously behave differently. This is for pasta that's 13% protein and 75% carbohydrates. For the standard 2oz/56g (dry) serving on the package, it'll say 7g protein and 41-42g carbohydrates. I checked Barilla, De Cecco, Ronzonni, Garofalo, Safeway store brand, Trader Joe's store brand, and those nutrition facts, and they all matched. If you're branching out to other styles like whole grains or egg noodles, things will obviously change, but things are very uniform in the US.


Is it safe to put a plate directly on a recently-on gas burner? As someone who lives in an apartment with a small kitchen, I often find myself repurposing the stovetop as a food prep space.  I've always tried to avoid putting plates down on a (gas) burner that was recently on, in case there's any residual heat in the guard (the iron part that actually holds up the pot...not sure of the correct word).  I have cracked warm glasses by pouring cold liquid into them, and I don't want that to happen with a plate.

However, I'm putting hot food straight from the pan onto that plate, and the pan was just recently on that burner.  If the heat from the food doesn't crack the plate, does that mean that it would be safe to put the plate on the burner?

I don't recommend it. I have had a plate crack before after being placed on a recently turned-off burner, and on another occasion ended up with burned fingertips when I totally forget that I had done so. I have in the past used a cooling rack over recently used burners that gives you a bit of elevation, and an automatic work space/storage space. Hope this helps.


Keeping the bubbles in sparkling gelatin desserts I've had a few attempts to make gelatin desserts (jelly if your English) using sparkling wine. While I get the flavour of the wine coming through I struggle to keep the bubbles. Is there a technique for doing this?

As Chris says, its to do with the setting time of the gelatine vs the bubbly.

Ensure all of your containers are chilled (maybe even frozen? - I put mine in 3/4 hours before making the actual dish) before you add the (chilled) champagne and get it into the bottom of the fridge as quick as you can.

I suspect though cannot prove also that a smaller container (I use wine glasses or similar) will work better than one large dish (trifle sized etc).


How do I clean a refrigerator with no removable shelves? I believe this has been asked already but I'll ask it again. How do I clean a refrigerator with no removable shelves? I am renting an appartment so this fridge isn't mine exactly. I have no idea what make or model it is either and I'm guessing it's pretty old (70s or 80s 90s at the latest). I tried to adjust the shelves when I first moved in bc they looked like they could come out and I can't fit tall bottles in there on any shelf. However, I was not able to remove the shelves because the fridge is shoved flat into a corner so the door won't open wide enough and the door including the shelves looks to be one piece. On the inside there is one glass or plastic (clear) shelf with removable drawers underneath but the shelf itself appears to have been screwed or otherwise permanently secured to the fridge. I can wipe it clean no problem but I'd rather not have to leave it open to dry for fear of it burning itself out. Also towles notoriously don't to much of anything in my appartment because I got cheapies and there is no airflow due to my appartment having all windows on the same wall and being located directly above the laundry room. My fridge isn't much better due partly if not all to it's age. So again, how can I clean it without ruining the thing?

200 proof alcohol to the rescue! (If you cannot get that locally, use the cheapest vodka with the highest alcohol content you can buy)
Pour a bit into an atomiser for best results (but a good spray bottle will do¹), spray a tiny amount inside the fridge and wipe it off with a kitchen towel after a few seconds.  It'll sterilise your fridge and any leftovers you didn't wipe will evaporate naturally.
Warning:
200 proof alcohol is combustible, so don't:

cook
smoke
burn candles
...

while you're doing this and please: keep the kids away and store any leftover alcohol in a safe place.
You'll go from a dirty fridge to the cleanest fridge in a 50 mile radius.
:-)
Note¹: A spray bottle will do, a squirt gun will not: the alcohol has to be nebulised at least a little...  ;-)


What is the base of a seasoning blend for something like roast chicken? I'm not looking for the recipies, I'm just looking for the principle behind this idea.

There is a product that I love which is a seasoning blend that you put in a roasting bag with chicken that then goes in the oven for an hour. The sauce that you end up with in the bag is thicker than water but not very thick at all.

The seasoning blend is floury with lots of herbs and spices in it and I'd love to try and replicate it so that I can get the taste without all of the preservatives in the store-bought version.

I guess that I'll have to experiment with the spices, but can anyone tell me more about the floury base? Is this just flour or is there something like corn-starch in these things?

Without a reference to the specific product, I would assume that it is in fact flour.

It's very common for many chicken (and other meat) recipes to call for dredging in either seasoned flour, or flour followed by an egg wash and spice/breadcrumb mix. Since these commercial mixes obviously have to be completely dry, they are most likely to be seasoned flour.

Check out some recipes for seasoned flour (alternatively called seasoning flour), you'll probably find them to be very similar to the mixes you've been using.


Marinade with or with out sugar? I want to marinade some meat to infuse with some flavors.
(Ribs as it happens, with liquid smoke, whiskey, orange liqueur, spices)

I was about to put in some brown sugar as well; but I was wondering if that would work against me.

Reasoning: The sugar will draw out moisture from meat. So the general flow will be out rather than into  the meat.

(I am planning on adding some sugar, hoisin sauce, etc; tomorrow when I bake them (before grilling them))

However most marinades I have seen have sugar in them.

Is there some reason for that; or is it just easier to put all the flavors in, in one go?

Yes, the sugar will temporarily draw some moisture from the meat.  However, that sugar/water solution will also gradually diffuse into the meat, and the sugar will end up pulling in more water in the long-term.

In any case, the effect is usually small, and any (probably temporary) moisture loss will only be from the outermost 1/8" or so of meat, which will likely dry out in the cooking process anyway.  (To see how the marinade mostly works on only the outermost layer of meat, see some of the photographs at this link.)  The interior of the meat will likely not lose any moisture at all, particularly in a wet marinade.

Over many hours or days, small molecules like salt and sugar in a marinade will be able to penetrate beyond the surface layer and flavor the meat, but the process of moving beyond the surface is quite slow.

Mostly, one includes sugar in a marinade to thoroughly coat the surface of the meat with sugar, which will aid in browning reactions that enhance the flavor of cooked meat.  Too much sugar can cause the surface to brown excessively or char, but a little will significantly enhance the flavor of the outer layer.


What can I do with batter that has lumpy sugar in it? I was making a scratch cake, and my sugar (to my chagrin) was inferior.  When I beat it into the batter, it turned into many tiny lumps.  Has anyone ever figured out how to solve this problem?  I beat it for a long time on high speed, but there were still lumps.

If there's no way to fix this type of problem, could I get some hints on how to prevent it, e.g. how to smash all the sugar lumps before I put it in the batter?

Edit: For clarification, this batter is very thin, and the recipe requires beating it on the highest speed for three minutes straight. So that's not a big issue with this.

Also, I did mix the dry ingredients (including sugar) together before anything else.  I used the mixer to try and break up the lumps (when the mixer only had the dry ingredients in it), and when it had stirred for 5 minutes or so, I thought it would be better to proceed with the recipe and add the wet ingredients, hoping that they would dissolve the sugar.  They didn't.  After beating it for the required three minutes, I just put it in the oven.  I didn't actually beat the batter any longer than the recipe said to; the only thing I did that the recipe didn't tell me to was to stir the dry ingredients for 5 minutes.

The cake seems okay.  Maybe when the lumps are small enough, the heat of the oven takes care of them?

Don't most cake recipes require mixing dry ingredients first? Well, what's been done has been done.

The standard professional chef way of getting lumps out of anything is to pass it through a fine strainer. In your case a standard metal pasta strainer should work. Put the strainer over a bowl, pour the batter in and use the back of a large spoon or ladle to gentle press the batter through. The lumps of sugar will be left over and you can just crush them then.

Whipping the batter might work the gluten proteins in the flour which will make for a tough chewy texture. Some cakes actually take this into account and others it is bad, so be careful.


Caster Sugar Substitute In India, we use fine sugar known as "bura chini (or bura sugar)". Recently, I read a recipe for scones which required caster sugar. While, I am not quite sure it they are same but both have quick dissolving properties and are superfine. I am curious if one can be substituted for another.

Caster sugar is just ordinary table sugar that has been ground to a finer texture. It is still grainy like sand rather than completely powdered.

Bura, on the other hand, is caramelized and dehydrated. It is typically made by dissolving table sugar in water, then boiling off the water. This results in a texture like that of caster sugar, but a deeper flavor.

Generally sugar in a recipe provides more than sweetness. The texture of the end result is affected by the sugar. Since bura has less water than regular caster sugar, it will probably result in a drier scone.

Also, part of the taste of any baked good comes from the caramelization of sugar that occurs during the baking. Since bura is already caramelized, it will be more prone to burn.

Finally, bura is intended for desserts like laddus, where sugar makes up a much higher proportion of the ingredients and the overall flavor is supposed to be sweet. Why use it for something like a scone? Sweetness is an important contributor but not the main goal for scones, and there is no point using something as complex as bura when its flavor profile will be overwhelmed by the other ingredients.

For these reasons, I think you are better off just grinding ordinary table sugar rather than using bura. If you don't want to go through the bother of grinding, I think you'll have better luck using the sugar as is instead of using bura; though that isn't a great choice either.


Baker's Ammonia with yeast—good idea? I recently made a moderately successful gluten free loaf of bread from a recipe for Japanese Milk Bread from the book Gluten Free on a Shoestring Bakes Bread. Respecting the author's trade secrets, I won't copy the recipe here, but suffice it to say the dough ends up very much like wheat bread dough.
EDIT: a little detail: the recipe uses whey protein isolate, pectin, and modified tapioca starch to emulate gluten, a water roux, and for leavening, yeast + 1 egg. I used active dry yeast, not instant yeast, but followed the cookbook's direction of multiplying the amount by 1.25~1.5. The dough also undergoes bulk rising in the fridge over a period of two days.

However, it's not perfect—a little heavy. I could allow longer proofing times, but I was worried about the bread becoming too sour. Other Seasoned Advice questions say that mixing synthetic leavening (i.e. baking soda or baking powder) and yeast generally is ineffective or causes bad flavor.

However, baker's ammonia (unlike baking soda) decomposes completely into water and gases, so I'm wondering whether it would provide a good alternative that wouldn't "ruin" the bread while still helping the yeast, which doesn't seem quite up to the task of making a light, airy loaf.

Can you list the leavening agents used in your Japanese Milk Bread?

Baker's Ammonia is NOT a good choice. The milk is likely to trap the ammonia and leave an awful taste. Baker's Ammonia is Ammonium Bicarbonate and Ammonium Carbonate and was used before Baking Soda. You should only use this for low moisture baked items like crisp cookies and crackers where the ammonia can vent out and not get trapped. Ammonia also interferes with Yeast's ability to communicate and since Yeast needs moisture the two should never be combined.

If your Milk bread recipe has baking soda or baking powder you'll need to study the ingredients and look for the leavening agents need to be pH balanced to ensure that enough leavening acid to fully activate the carbon dioxide rise without leaving an aftertaste (soap if too much baking soda, sour if too much acid). Milk can be matched to baking soda. You probably should add Baking powder which already includes the right amount of agent to acid to cancel out, but if the recipe is relying on the milk as an acid you may need to keep the baking soda to keep a balanced taste.

As for which kind of baking powder you need to look at the ingredients. MCP only gives 1 rise within 2 minutes of hitting a liquid so you need to mix and get into the oven quickly to keep it fluffy. Look for SAPP which will give you a second "double" action with a rise once it warms up in the oven. If you see bubbles hitting the surface then the dough isn't able to trap the CO2 (why gluten breads are better at this).

You could use baking powders with aluminum sulfate, but between the inedible aluminum salt ingredient and the bitter taste it can impart I wouldn't bother unless you really want a strong second leavening boost when it hits the higher oven temperature.

If you want to make this with yeast and are failing it is probably because the yeast isn't up to the task. Look for INSTANT dry yeast (also sold as breadmaker yeast). It has a finer granulation than Active yeast and doesn't require mixing with water before hand.

I've been working on a leavening book and have found that the secret to a good yeast that can give you a strong lift is to make your own yeast starter. Take a mason jar and add equal parts water to flour and a spoonful of yeast (fresh, active or instant it doesn't matter). It is important that the water have sat out for 24 hours on the counter before using (tap water has chlorine which if not vented out will kill most of the yeast). It is also important you use the same flour as your recipe. The goal is get the yeast used to converting the flour's sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide (that gives your milk bread the rise).

Use a chopstick to mix the flour, water and yeast in a mason jar and after you get a pancake batter consistency put a lid on the jar and leave it on a piece of cork, plastic or wood cutting board (just not a cold piece of tile or metal). Each day open the jar and look for bubbles and smell for alcohol (the key sign of a happy yeast taking to your gluten free flour). Go ahead and dump 1/2 in the garbage (don't clog the drain). Add another equal amount of water (left out 24 hours) and flour and mix. Recap and check again tomorrow.

After a week you should have a pretty good yeast champion that will outperform your sleeping dry yeast. Go ahead and swap in the activated yeast and count it towards your flour and water portion of your recipe. Don't use milk in the growing of your yeast since it is likely to spoil and either make you sick or make your bread sour from bacteria converting lactose to lactic acid, perfect for sourdough bread, but not Japanese Milk Bread!

Make sure your Milk bread gets a chance to proof in a warm environment. If it is too cold the yeast just won't work.

Hope that is helpful and it is cool seeing your question on how to get a better rise in your bread!


do flavors transfer? I brought out my old cast iron pan and scrubbed it with salt and seasoned it yesterday.  I have used it in the past for a few things but not much.  I want to start using it on a regular basis.  Question:  If I am only using water to "wash" it after cooking, won't some of the flavors transfer to my next item?  For example, if I saute onions and then want to make pancakes next.  Thank you!

First, ensure that you season your pan correctly.  Once your cast iron pan is seasoned; that is, a layers of oil have polymerized on the surface, cleaning it with soap and water is not a problem. While working to build up a good seasoning, you can clean by using salt as an abrasive and wiping out well.  Both of these methods will eliminate the possibility of flavor contamination.


What is the difference between kidney beans, navy beans, and black turtle beans? I want to know the difference between what I think are similar bean types: kidney beans, navy beans, and black turtle beans. I know that these beans come from the same plant, are almost the same nutritionally, but are differently colored and shaped.
What I do not seem to find, is what is the difference in terms of cooking and flavor? Are they differently flavored? I have seen some pages saying that kidney beans take longer to cook, but I do not know how the other two compare on that.

Here's a chart showing soaking and cooking times for different kinds of beans. Note that your "black turtle beans" are the same as the "black beans" on the chart.

Kidney Beans: soak 6-8 hours, simmer 60 minutes
Navy Beans: soak 6-8 hours, simmer 45-60 minutes
Black (Turtle) Beans: soak 4 hours, simmer 60-90 minutes

In practice, beans can be soaked for longer than the listed times, really as long as is convenient to you. I usually soak mine overnight on the counter if I'm sure I'll cook them the next day. If I'm not sure whether I'll get around to cooking them the next day, I soak them in the fridge and leave them there for up to several days.
Actual bean cook time can vary somewhat depending on how old the beans are. So in practice, you should expect to cook them for at least the minimum recommended time. After they've simmered for that length of time, spoon out a couple of beans and test for doneness. You can test them by biting them (if they're soft, they're cooked; if they're hard they're not). Or blow on the hot beans; the skin on cooked beans will usually crack open and roll back.
Yes, different varieties of beans taste different. Navy beans have a fairly neutral taste. Kidney beans and black turtle beans each have their own distinctive taste.


Nitrous oxide gas leak when charging ISI whipping cream dispenser When I charge my relatively new ISI cream dispenser, the N2O gas leaks around the top and body seam, resulting in failed whipped cream.  I've tried everything to tighten the seam, including adjusting the gasket and tightening the top very hard.  The demonstration videos show the cook lightly tightening the top and they seem to have no trouble.  What am I doing wrong?

Is it clean? it does not take much pressure to properly seal an iSi. Either it is dirty or it is defective. I have had the issue you describe, the issue was not actually in the gasket around the top of the container, but instead in the gasket around the nozzle. It must be completely clean to hold pressure.


What happens when chocolate is overheated further than 50C/120F? I've been googling about this for a while, and it seems to be a common practice to avoid overheating chocolate in the context of tempering. Here's an example source mentioning the fate of overheated chocolate: How to Fix Overheated or Seized Chocolate

Dark chocolate should never be heated above 120 F, while milk and white chocolates should never be heated to above 110 F. It is quite easy to exceed these temperatures if using a double boiler with boiling water, or if microwaving on full power.
Overheated chocolate will lose the silky shine of melted chocolate and become thick and muddy.

Considering the beans are roasted in way higher temperatures like ~ 130C/270F. I don't see why this should be avoided, or whatever the problem it would cause, should be reversible.
I would think the only problem would be about fat bloom or breaking the suspension (or emulsion if any). But I think, a good blender should fix the issue. But is there some other thing happening physically or chemically when chocolate is overheated to say 80C/180F?

What you get is something like a Hershey chocolate bar:

To someone who's only ever had Belgian or Swiss high-quality chocolate his entire life, and tries a Hershey Chocolate bar late in life, it'll taste "burnt" and not nice at all, whereas if that's what you grew up with, it'll taste "normal"...

As you're wondering why, you seem to have grown up with that taste, so you don't see what all the fuss is about, whereas any Belgian or Swiss national will not like your product (and why Hershey is not very popular in that region).

There is no way to fix overheated chocolate to the chocolate connoisseur except to throw it away and start anew.


How could I use liquid flavorings to make a version of a jelly-topped cookie? I recently tried to make jelly-topped cookies (specific recipe was from home, but here's an example recipe) using an assortment of flavors, including maple syrup, homemade sumac syrup, homemade elderflower syrup, vanilla flavoring, and a pandan flavoring that I bought at my local Asian market. I thought I could just make a dent in the cookies and fill them directly with the flavorings; I was wrong. I sort of expected the liquids to cook off (which happened), but I thought they would at least leave flavor residues behind (that did not happen).

My goal is to be able to make small amounts of a bunch of different flavors and then use them to bake a single batch of cookies with a diversity of different jelly toppings. I already make homemade syrups for pancakes and marinades and the like; I'm not going to go through all the effort of making and storing dozens of different types of jellies too, not for just the occasional baking day.

So what is it about jelly that makes the flavors last better through the baking process? What would I have to do to a liquid flavoring to make it last through the baking process? If I made a paste out of flour and liquid flavoring, would that hold the flavor? Is gelatin important/useful in order to retain moisture? Any and all help appreciated!

Fruit preserves have a lot going on. They have a lot of sugar and pectin and sometimes fiber from the fruit. They have already been boiled for a while and the fruit flavors that are left are there to stay.

Liquid flavorings are mostly alcohol with volatile flavoring compounds. They are added late to a recipe because they boil off easily- at a lower temperature than water boiling.

I don't know of a way to prepare liquid flavoring so that it will be less volatile. I can't think of a time that I've seen that done. Perhaps if you mixed it into another jelly that would buffer the heat during baking. Perhaps an apple jelly with your flavoring mixed in. I suspect most of the flavor would still boil out unless you added the jelly right at the end of baking.

I think you would have more success with making a topping that you can add after the cookies are baked. It would be a different texture without the candied edges but it would still be good. Pectin NH glazes are used commercially for this kind of thing.


What is this type of cookware called? I asked a question about a "Wonder Pot" a bit ago, and this item came up on a search. I don't think it's a wonder pot though. The center hole is effectively much smaller, and there are not any vents in the lid. There isn't a "flame tamer" either, although this part may be lost.

I keep seeing cookware like this in thrift stores, and I'm pretty sure it's for one specific task. What might that task be?

This one had me scratching my head for a while. I came across the phrases "stovetop oven", "raised center skillet", "steamer pan" and a bunch of other dead-ends.

Well, I finally stumbled onto "Ultimate Dutch Oven":

Looks familiar, doesn't it? This one is cast iron, but what you've found is clearly a non-stick version of the same thing.

It's sold as camping gear. The raised center in the middle is what they call a "convection cone". Presumably it's meant to emulate a convection oven (inefficiently, I might add, since there's no fan) - the vents in the cone are a means of distributing the heat, to help mitigate the usual skillet problem of the bottom being overcooked while the top is still raw. I'm pretty sure that nothing is actually supposed to go "inside" the cone, other than hot air. It's probably fairly effective if you're cooking over an open flame (i.e. extremely hot air).

A 3" high non-stick version of this would seem to be of pretty limited use. I can imagine trying to make "baked" potatoes in there, or maybe pre-butchered chicken parts? As you can see from the link above, the "full-size" version can hold a couple of small birds, and again, it's cast iron, so it's infinitely more useful for outdoor cooking.


Why is there such disparity between the calories in a banana and the calories in this pack of dried banana? If I Google

  calories in banana

I get the result of 89 per 100g.

However, this pack of chewy banana
says 320 per 100g.

Why the difference? The ingredients are

  Dried Banana, Rice Flour, Preservative (Sulphur Dioxide)

Do rice flour (which I presume is to keep the pieces from sticking) and sulphur dioxide add 3.5x the energy to a pack of dried banana?

Most of the weight in fresh fruit is water, which has no calories.

When you dry the fruit, the remainder is concentrated, so there are more calories in a given volume or weight.

Sulfur dioxide is a preservative with anti-microbial properties.

The claim of 3.6 times the energy is specious.


What is the padding with red substance inside of steak packaging? When I buy steaks, sometimes they include a padding in the packaging, on which the steak sits, which contains a red substance:

What is it? What is its purpose, and can I assume, that it is not poisonous? I unintentionally cut into this one and it had some contact with the steak.

That "padding" is an absorbent pad made of paper and plastic; the "red substance" inside is the juices (often mistakenly believed to be "blood") that have seeped out of the meat; the purpose of the absorbent pad is to absorb this liquid and keep the interior of the tray dry. Without it, the liquid would pool up and potentially spill out when the tray was opened or handled. Because the "red substance" came from the meat itself, no, it is not poisonous; the packaging is regulated to prevent toxic components from being used, so it too is not poisonous.


Substitute for blood? We're working with some 16th century recipes for sauces that call for blood (among other things). However, several members of the group try to keep kosher, and besides, I have no idea where or how one would acquire blood for cooking.

I know I can substitute egg for the protein/thickener aspect, but what about the flavor? What does blood actually taste like (when cooked)? I've had blood sausage, but all I remember about its flavor is the generous quantity of black pepper. Would a red wine and some salt come anywhere close?

Depending on the animal, blood would impart a somewhat metallic taste and a certain “richness” - not really the umami-meatiness of red meat, more like the earthiness of liver - with a slight sweetness.

The flavor profile will be quite different depending on the animal, with pork being more neutral than the more intense and metallic beef.

A substitute would depend on the recipe. But the acidity of red wine is very much not what blood would contribute to a dish. If the binding properties are to be ignored, think “beets plus sautéed mushrooms”, as a very, very vague flavor approximation. But if your sauce is rich per se, you can probably just skip the blood without doing much culinary harm.


Can you sharpen a ceramic knife? Can you sharpen a ceramic knife?

Ceramic blades can only be sharpened against something that is harder than it is.  I would recommend sending it back to the manufacturer for sharpening if needed.  Typically it is done using a very hard abrasive wheel because of the risk of the blade breaking, you do not want to do this without proper safety equipment.


What should the consistency of pudding be? Like the title suggests, I'd like to know what should the consistency of a (chocolate) pudding be.

We don't actually have "pudding" where I am from, so I am having trouble deciding if I have made a pudding or just some sort of chocolate creme or if pudding is nothing else but a glorified random chocolate creme.

I know there are different types of pudding, but still any guideline would be appreciated.

If it helps I am using a mixture of:

cocoa - 150ml
sugar - 300ml
cream -  50ml
cornstarch - 130ml
milk  - 820ml

I know I should measure some things by weight, but it's a long story. To clarify when measuring the cornstarch I shake the measuring cup until the starch is nice and compact, so it should be a lot.

What I get is a pudding that is thick, but if I angle the pot it still flows and tries to "escape". I am wondering if it shoul not be so thick that it would refuse to move even when the pot is angled?

It sounds to me like you are making your pudding almost as thick as it should be.

It should be able to stand up a little. In other words, if you spoon some into a desert cup or small bowl, it should make a pile. It shouldn't be solid like ice cream, it should be smooth, but still stay in a pile shape.

Do you have custard where you live? It should be similar to that in thickness. Though custard is very different from
Chocolate pudding.


What causes yogurt in sauces to split? How to prevent it? A lot of my favorite curry recipes have a yogurt based sauce in them, but on a pretty regular basis when I make them, the yogurt ends up splitting into basically curds and whey. What causes that, and how can I prevent it?

As an illustrative example, last night I made a simple tofu curry as follows:

warm evoo in a pan
add chopped onion, saute briefly
add curry seasonings, allow to warm/season the oil
add cubed tofu, toss to coat
cook for a while, tossing periodically to lightly brown the cubes
turn heat off
add plain greek yogurt
stir to combine

In the few minutes it took to finish the rest of the meal and start plating, the yogurt had separated so I had a clumpy, lumpy, yogurt soup instead of a smooth creamy sauce.

Yogurt is a mesh of denatured milk protein that traps the whey.

When yogurt is over-heated those proteins tighten and squeeze out the extra whey. When the protein matrix is cut it will also leak whey.

To combat this add a little starch. A little cornstarch mixed into the yogurt will prevent the yogurt proteins from over-coagulating. All heated yogurt sauces that I have seen include starch for this reason.

I should also add that this problem occurs mostly with lowfat yogurt. Extra milk fat in yogurt will interfere with the protein's ability to coagulate the same way the starch does.


Microwave more than one container at a time If package says to microwave 7 minutes for one container, how long for three?
I want to cook all three packages at one time but it doesn't give me multiple microwaving times. Microwave shouldn't be multiplied by three, I know that.

There's no general answer. As you say, it's probably less than triple the time for one, and unless it's really small, it's probably substantially more than the time for one. But depending on the size and shape, it could be all over the place in that range.

You pretty much just have to try it and check periodically, starting perhaps after 10-15 minutes to get an idea. If it's relatively large compared to your microwave, you may also need to rearrange them periodically to get even heating, maybe every several minutes, in which case you'll get a very good idea how fast it's heating and don't have to worry about all the rest of this.


Substituting table salt for kosher salt when brining chicken How much regular table salt should I use when brining chicken pieces?

I don't have kosher salt, just regular iodised table salt. Does this really make a difference? I thought salt was salt.

Additionally, I have never found non-iodised salt for sale in South Africa. There is, however, a big fad in "Himalayan Crystal Salt" at the moment in South Africa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayan_salt). Would this be better to use?

If you can find canning or pickling salt, it's not iodized (and has no other additives, unlike some kosher salts), so won't contribute any off flavors that roux mentioned.

However, the different grain sizes will be a problem as they pack denser, so based on a chart from Marton's salt that ManiaxZX linked to in discussing differences in salts, they'd recommend cutting the salt by 20% when changing from kosher salt to table salt to canning/pickling salt.