How can I make my baked tortilla chips crispier? We make our own tortilla chips by sectioning up tortillas and baking them in a bit of oil and seasoning at about 375˚ F for 12 minutes. The outsides get nice and crispy but the insides of the thicker chips stay fairly soft.

I'm wondering if it would be wisest to try to increase the temperature and decrease the time or vice versa. I suppose I'm essentially dehydrating the chips so my instinct is to decrease temperature and increase time.

Thoughts?

I would try baking them at a lower temperature without the oil some first, to get them partially dried out, before adding the oil and seasoning and crisping them. If the oil's on them the whole time, it'll slowly soak into the chips, instead of staying more on the outside where you want it, and depending on how much you're using, it might also be making it a little harder for water to escape.

The other main option would be to use thinner tortillas, but unless you're making them yourself, that might not be possible!


Freeze ice to far below 0 Celsius? Residential freezers are reasonably set to just below 0 degrees C: any colder doesn't preserve food any better.  But if I want to chill a liquid without overly diluting it -- say, bringing a sauce down to room temperature, or a martini to drinking temperature -- one ice cube at -100 degrees is better than twenty at -5 degrees.  (Dry ice (CO2) wouldn't cause dilution either.)

So what's a practical, not overly expensive (under USD 100?) way to store a small quantity of ice (or dry ice) at home for, say, a week before it warms up from such extreme temperatures?

Most of the cooling from ice comes from the melting anyway. That's why ice makers, which don't freeze as cold as freezers, are still useful.

It takes 334J/g to turn ice at 0C into water at 0C, but only 2.03J/g to warm ice by 1C. So to halve the amount of ice you use to get the same cooling you'd need to freeze it to around -150C. If you're going to do that you may as well use the liquid nitrogen directly, because that's the most likely way to get ice at -150.

If you use dry ice or liquid nitrogen in the kitchen, you need to look into the precautions (and regulations if it's commercial) that you need to take.

You should be able to cool the sauce by transferring it to a bowl sitting in an ice+water bath (this cools faster than sitting it in a bowl of ice because of contact area). If that's not enough, here are some ideas that can be used as well

This is done with wine and cocktails - it might work with your sauce:

make a batch of the sauce (or a base without cream/egg etc.)
freeze it
use the frozen sauce (base) to cool the final sauce. It may dilute ingredients you couldn't freeze but this will be much less noticeable than diluting with water.

Sitting a bowl inside another bowl, with the gap full of ice+water, then frozen, should get you a very effective cooling device for moderate quantities. It should scale to a litre or so per vessel if there's plenty of room for ice in between. The inner container should have decent thermal conductivity and/or thin walls - a stainless serving dish would be ideal.

Another approach is to use an ice/salt bath for freezing point depression. This can be used to make ice cream so gets really quite cold. You could precool a bowl in that and then put your sauce in it.


What is the orange coloured cream inside McAloo Tikki called and what are its ingredients? The McAloo Tikki:

(McDonalds' official page has a smaller image.)

I have seen the onions, tomatoes, Aloo Tikki, and an orange coloured cream inside this burger.
I wish to know what is that cream called and what are its ingredients?

I cannot speak to its accuracy as I have no experience with this item or McDonald's at all outside the US, but Time In Kitchen in their recipe for a homemade version indicates:

  For sauce, beat hung curd in bowl and add pinch of salt and tomato
  ketchup and mix well to smoothen it in order to avoid any lumps and
  keep it aside

Then again, according to SipputySup, it is "basically Thousand Island dressing)".

This question itself now appears on the 2nd page of google results when searching for "Aloo Tikki sauce" :-)


Will a crockpot brown ground meat? For chili con carne, can you brown the ground beef, onions, peppers, etc in a crockpot (without the lid on) and then add the other ingredients to finish by slow cooking?

It is possible, but only if you have the right type of crock-pot. Most crock-pots are not designed for searing and as such do not get hot enough, quickly enough to sear the meat properly. You also run the risk of cracking the ceramic pot due to uneven heating/cooling as you add the meat.

There are specific models of crock pot with a sear function. If you were to try, I would recommend that you get one of these.


Can I substitute baking soda for kansui powder? Related: What does kansui do to dough in noodle making?

I'm looking to make my own 拉面-style noodles. I've read up a lot about kansui and making your own kansui with a powder mix of sodium and potassium carbonates. I've also seen some recipes that substitute kansui powder with baking soda.

Can I use baking soda to substitute for kansui? If so, in what proportions? If not, what other common ingredients can I use to substitute?

Harold McGee tackled alkaline noodles a while back. He found that baking baking soda actually changes it from sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate. This is a reasonable substitute for the kansui called for in alkaline noodles and can be substituted 1:1 in recipes. The noodles may not get AS yellow as they would with both alkalines present in kansui but it's a small price to pay for not having to hunt down that ingredient.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/dining/15curious.html?_r=0

The key part:

  Just spread a layer of soda on a foil-covered baking sheet and bake it at 250 to 300 degrees for an hour. You’ll lose about a third of the soda’s weight in water and carbon dioxide, but you gain a stronger alkali. Keep baked soda in a tightly sealed jar to prevent it from absorbing moisture from the air. And avoid touching or spilling it. It’s not lye, but it’s strong enough to irritate.


What is the name for this technique to prepare eggs? I prefer to make my eggs similar sunny side up, but I flip them and cook them on both sides. I don't use oil, so they're not fried either.

I crack them into a pre-heated pan at medium high heat, wait until the yolk solidifies a bit, and then flip them and wait a little bit less time. The yolk usually has a film over it, and often comes out somewhere between runny and solid, depending on how long I leave it.

I'd actually call those "over medium" or "over hard", not over easy. A perfect egg over easy would have all of the egg white totally cooked and solidified, but the yolk should be almost totally runny. Over medium would be a half-solid, half-runny yolk (more or less), and over hard ("over well" works too I guess, I've never heard that but maybe one of the two is a regional term) would mean the yolk is totally cooked through and solid.


What main course Indian cuisine I can make out of potato with sweetness in nature? In continuation to my previous post. What main course Indian cuisine I can make out of potato with sweetness in nature?

As pulao and dry vegetable taste terrible with this kind of potato.

Use them with sago to make microwave sabudana khichadi. The dish is a nice blend of flavors and one of the ingredients is sugar. Just reduce the amount of sugar to 1 teaspoon or less, depending on how sweet the potatoes are, instead of the stated 1 tablespoon.

My experience with that particular recipe, by the way, is that the given 2 minutes total of microwave time is too little. I have a recent model microwave with 1100 watts of power but it still takes three minutes microwaving on high power + five minutes standing time for the sago to be cooked. I also prefer to use dalia (roasted chana dal / bengal gram) rather than peanuts, although peanuts are traditional.

As an aside, sabudana is sometimes erroneously called "tapioca". The Wikipedia page on sabudana notwithstanding, sago and tapioca are not the same thing. Sago is made from the pith of the stems of sago palms, tapioca from cassava root. They're both starches and the pearls look more or less identical, but they behave differently. For one thing, sago takes about an hour of soaking; tapioca, about four or five at minimum. Soak sago that long and it will fall apart.


What's the fastest way to hull a strawberry? I often need to hull and slice large batches of strawberries.  But hulling by cutting a cone out of the top of the berry with a paring knife can be slow work.  How can I quickly remove the core (the hard white part near the stem) from the strawberry?

What do professional chefs and kitchens do to quickly hull strawberries?

I don't usually hull strawberries, but when I do I use a straw. The idea is that you push the straw up through the tip of the strawberry and it comes out at the stem. For pictures you can see http://amy-newnostalgia.blogspot.com/2010/06/hulling-strawberries-with-straw.html are just Google "hull strawberries with a straw"


Can I make jam out of bottled plums? I have 4 large jars of plums (Santa Rosa), which I bottled. The instructions said sugar would not be needed, however, they are so sour they are awful!!!  What can I do with them rather than throw them out? Can I make jam from them now that they are already cooked?

Assuming they were canned safely (sounds like they were acid enough that this is likely) you can certainly dump them in a pot, add sugar (and possibly spices), stir a lot and cook  (and stir) more to make jam, then can that if you like. Be sure to stir well until all the sugar is dissolved, so it does not burn.

Making jam is a long cooking process, so "pre-cooking" won't bother it.

I have done this with a different variety of plum when there was a bumper crop one year and I was scrambling to preserve it as fast as possible before it could rot. I then made jam out of some of the quick preserves when there was more time.


Why did my sweet potato hash turn soggy when frying in a non-stick pan, and crispy in a cast iron? I was making a sweet potato hash for pizza topping the other night, and tried to fry the first batch in a non-stick pan. The hash never crisped up and was soggy, so I ended up mashing it instead. The next batch I fried in my seasoned cast iron, and it crisped up like a good hash.

Does anyone know why this happened? To me, it doesn't make a lot of sense if both the pans were equivalently hot with the same amount of oil to fry in. The hash in the non-stick pan also seemed to absorb more oil, but again, not sure why.

Details:

I used a similar amount of bacon fat to fry both batches in
The hash was seasoned with garlic, salt and various spices (no onion)
Similar heating levels, preheated both pans
No lids were used
The non-stick pan is a nice Teflon coated Calphalon, and has pretty good heat retention; I use it for stir fry successfully

The theories that have come out in comments are most likely right on. Cast iron is special in how well it retains heat. Give cast iron ample preheating time, and you can drop in cold food without a significant drop in the temperature of the pan. That equals crispy. Even a pretty good and heavy non-stick pan is not going to give sweet potatoes the kind of crisp you can achieve with cast iron.

You mention higher sides in the non-stick pan. That alone probably wouldn't make much of a difference, but considering that you're already seeing a greater drop in temperature as you put in the potatoes, the higher sides would hold in more moisture in the cooler pan. That is not a friend of crispiness.

You say that you preheated both pans to about the same temperature. I actually hope your memory is a little off on that :) One of the great joys of cooking with cast iron is that you can and usually should pre-heat it to a quite high temperature without damaging the pan. Teflon, on the other hand, should never be preheated beyond a very moderate temperature for a very short time. Some people go so far as to say that you shouldn't preheat it all. So if your beginning temperatures were about the same in the pans, they shouldn't have been. After you put in the potatoes, forget about it. You'll never get the same kind of crispy sear with a teflon pan as you will with cast iron, even if you don't know how to best exploit the advantages of cast iron.


Slow roasting fresh ham How long does it take to slow roast a 13 pound bone-in fresh ham? We want to bring it to 190 degrees F to break down the collagen.

There is no single answer to this question.

Even saying you want to bring it to a temperature of 190 (I infer F) is overly simplified, as the conversion of collagen to gelatin is dependent on both time and temperature.  It goes faster at higher temperatures, but still takes time.  There is no single magic temperature that when you hit it, the conversion is done.

The time it takes to cook the fresh ham will depend on the size of the ham, the method you use to cook the ham (for example, braising versus dry roasting, and the oven temperature you set.

The time will also depend on whether you want to be able to pull the pork (although should is somewhat better suited to that application), or carve it into slices.

Roasting at 225 F, 10-14 hours would not be out of the question.  At 325 F, it may take 6-9 hours.  Start checking for donenesss at the beginning of the time.

The ham will be done when you can put a fork in it and twist without too much resistance, demonstrating that it is pullable.


How can I make fine powder from leafy herbs? I've been curious about how to make fine powder from leafy herbs for some time now (I don't mean merely flakes). We can have large amounts of tarragon, basil, etc. in the garden. It would be nice to be able to make a fine, powdered form. How can I do this?

I'm especially looking for alternatives besides coffee grinders, since I'd be uncomfortable with using that solution.

Mill them.
When you dry them very well ( so when you think they are dry put them in oven for 20 minutes at around 40 Celsius).

Then use mortar. This is it exact use in kitchen, to turn moist things into paste and dry things into powder.
If you don't have one use poor man hand mill.
Put leaf on large cutting board and then use smaller one on top. Move it in circular motion with little to no pressure.


Can you make soup or stock with just Canada whelks, no meat? Many Hong Kong whelk soup recipes use meat, even Michelin 3 stars Lung King Heen!

Can I make soup or stock with just whelks and vegetarian ingredients? I don't want meat!
When I skipped meat in this recipe, theresultant soup taste weird and fishy. Why? What can I add or replace?

I live in Toronto. Supermarkets here carry Canada whelks. I don't know if the issue is the whelks. Are Hong Kong whelks different from Canada whelks?

yes, you can just use vegetables and seafood for you recipe, the result will be different; you can use a strong vegetarian broth or a seafood/fish stock.
If using only vegetarian and fish/seafood ingredients, it will taste fishy; that's the point, isn't it ? Depending on the base stock (vegetarian or fish), you might get different results.

About whelk, I've got no experience cooking with them, I only use brined ones and eat them as-is.


Icing Made with Yogurt powder I am looking into making icing using yogurt powder. My question is, would it still need to be refrigerated after I make it. The ingredients in the product I am look at are nonfat milk solids, whey solids, lactic acid.

It will absolutely need refrigeration. The reason why the powder is shelf-stable is that it is dehydrated and lacks the water bacteria need to survive. Pretty much everything you could mix it with to make an icing will contain water, meaning that it is no longer shelf stable.
Even if you were to mix it with something without water, e.g. shortening, the strict food safety answer is that it still needs refrigeration until somebody has ran the necessary microbiological tests to prove that it doesn't.


Minimal time to boil squid I know that squid is often cooked for one-two minutes to make it still tender. However is one minute enough to kill possible parasites? What is the minimal time of boiling for squid? If that's important then lets say it's already cut into small rings. It's frozen but I am worried that freezing might be incorrect or not enough.

As is usually the case with food safety, it is not purely the time something is cooking, but the temperature. Most recipes, even for fresh squid, call for a very short boil in water. If, out of an abundance of caution, you wanted to make absolutely sure that your squid is cooked safely, the CDC mandates that the internal temperature of seafood should reach 145° F [~63° C].

The most cautious method available is measuring the internal temperature of your cooked squid to ensure that it is up to temperature. That is the most surefire, consistent way to test food safety.

However, this is probably overkill and is especially overkill if your squid are already frozen.


Can I add "stars" pasta or very small soup shells pasta to boxed chicken broth & make in the microwave? I have boxed chicken broth I want to quickly make in the microwave and I want to add either tiny stars pasta, or "small soup shells" pasta. Both pastas are tiny, about 1/4 inch width & height. I don't have a stovetop available. How can I make everything in the microwave, preferably together/all at once? I would like a way to make about a quart at a time, including pasta, about 2-3 servings, maybe a quarter cup of pasta... I never made either of these pasta forms so don't know how big they will expand so I'm thinking a couple Tablespoons to a quarter cup dried pasta.

Thanks for any help!

i's put the pasta in regular water and microwave them for a couple of minutes; try 3, 4 minutes and adjust for doneness.

Once they are done, add them to the already heated up soup.


Why did my "Turkish Delight" turn into a horrible goopy mess? I don't normally make a lot of confections but decided recently to try a few new things.

Yesterday I used this recipe for Turkish delight which I originally found on the Hydrocolloid Recipe Collection.  It uses agar as the gelling agent and appears relatively easy to prepare (that's why I tried it).  Basically you just dissolve some agar in warm water, orange juice, and lemon juice, add sugar, simmer it, then cool and refrigerate to set.

Unfortunately, what I ended up with after refrigerating overnight was closer to the consistency of jam or marmalade than a Turkish delight.  It was far, far from delightful.

When I prepared this I didn't actually follow the source URL and noticed a few differences that may account for the problem (but I'm not sure, that's why I'm asking):

The original recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon of agar; the one in the collection specifies exactly 1.2 g.
The original recipe specifically says to cover with a cloth; the collection recipe is not so specific, it just says to cover (I used plastic wrap).
The original recipe says to refrigerate in an ice-water bath; the collection recipe does not (I just put the dish in the fridge).

Other issues that may have been causes:

It turned out that my scale wasn't precise enough to get exactly 1.2 g.  The amount I used could have been anywhere between 1 g and 2 g.  In retrospect, I wish I had checked the original recipe and simply used the 1/2 teaspoon that it called for.
I got the agar from an Asian grocery store, and the packaging clearly said "agar agar", but I did notice that it had two ingredients, the second one (after agar) being vanilla.  I'm not sure whether this is normal or whether it might have been diluting the agar mix.
I did notice that it did not seem to be gelling at all while it was coming down to room temperature.  It was basically a soup until it had been refrigerated.

Can anyone identify the most likely reason why this didn't work out?  Did I use too little agar?  Too much?  Could some of the differences between the two recipe versions be important?  Could it be something I haven't thought of yet?

And equally importantly for the purposes of this question, can I fix it or am I going to have to throw it out?

I've worked with agar a lot, and made a few things from the HRC. Of all of the things you've identified as possible problems, I think the biggest likely ones are the quantity of agar, and the agar powder itself. Everything else about the cooling issue is normal. Agar powders do vary. You want to find one that is pure, unadulterated agar, not one that is setup to be a pre-prepared dessert as those are weaker.

If just for a laugh you want to try to save this batch, heat it back up until the agar fully melts, shear in a second amount equal to what you did last night, making sure it fully dissolves, then let it set again. I'm pretty sure that will work.

You can also pick up a sub-gram scale on Amazon for around $20. Thanks, drug dealers! They are very helpful when making small batches of "molecular" recipes.


Can I use chestnut roaster clay pot to roast coffee at home? I got the attached clay pot chestnut roaster. Can I use it to roast coffee at home?

I believe so. Technically you can use the hood of your car. Rosting coffee (and nuts) is about the heat, not the material. Just keep the heat gentle, give it its 15 minutes or so and don't "french roast" is to death.

And tell how it came out.


Can I bake bread in a cast iron Dutch oven with the lid on, or should I use tin foil instead? I have a Cuisinart cast iron enamelware dutch oven that I purchased recently to bake bread in the oven.  I am supposed to bake at 450 degrees.  The pot states it can be baked up to 500 degrees, however does that include the lid.  The lid is cast iron but has a knob on it that I am unsure of. Please send me info as my bread is rising and needs to be baked.  Should I just cover it with foil?  I don't think I will get the same results.

Presuming the Cuisinart knob is made of the same material as the Le Creuset one (Phenolic), the given maximum temperature is 375°F.

However, many people (including this thorough article) recommend covering it with foil to protect it at higher temperatures. Also, I would suspect that giving 375°F as the limit means that it's OK to go higher, just not too often, and also they won't guarantee it above that temperature.


What to do with old coffee beans? I have several bags of quality coffee beans brought from Costa Rica. Their best before date is over a year ago. I just grinded and made a pot of coffee of them, and although it was drinkable, taste wasn't that good anymore.

Is there any other culinary use for coffee beans? Any recipe where their fresh taste isn't as important as in a cup of coffee?

Coffee can be used for a variety of things BESIDES drinking straight.  Off the top of my head, you can use less-than-perfect beans for:

Chocolate mousse and cakes: brew into coffee, and add to the chocolate mix for a richer flavor
Ice cream and sorbets.  Coffee ice cream is awesome, and the cream will mask defects
Chocolate-covered coffee beans.  These make a great pick-me up snack for mornings, sweet and caffeinated.
Coffee-flavored simple syrup, for baking and cocktails.  Use equal weights coffee and simple syrup.
Compost.  Grounds compost very well, especially if used

In a pinch, stale beans also make great projectiles.  Got squirrels on your bird feeder?  Coffee bean slingshot!


bacteria forming in reheating of baked potatoes I understand that if you do not correctly reheat a baked potato bacteria can set in botulism. what is the correct temperature you need to avoid temperature abuse.  Also can you use the baked potato for other uses ie hash brown that need to be reheated

Because potatoes are grown in the soil, they are a natural source of Clostridium botulinum. C. botulinum could grow in a cooked, foil wrapped baked potato that is not maintained at proper temperature because the combination of cooking and foil wrap create an anaerobic condition. C. botulinum requires an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment in which to grow.
Bottom line: wash your potatoes, don't use foil, cool properly, reheat properly and you'll be fine.


Does salty water become more or less salty after boiled? If I have water containing a certain concentration of salt and I boil the water to the point that I have, say, half of the initial water left, will the leftover half have a higher, lower, or equal salt concentration than the initial whole?

It will be higher. If (for example) there was 1% salt in a volume of water, then that water halved, you will be left with 2% salt content as only the water has evaporated.
This is actually how salt is made commercially. Salt water from the sea or lakes is evaporated until no water is left, leaving just the salt residue afterwards.


is frozen hamburger ok to eat after the sell by date? I have a pound of hamburger meat that has not been opened yet. The sell by date was on may 23 2013. Is it ok to eat?

Assuming you didn't buy it frozen, the sell by date is for when it's just in the fridge. As long as you froze it before that date, and you use it immediately after thawing, it'll be safe to eat. If it was already frozen when you bought it, the sell by date is just for quality, not for safety.

In either case, if it wasn't wrapped tightly it may have lost some quality. Things do slowly dry out in the freezer if the packaging or container isn't airtight, so the texture can deteriorate, and they can also take on odors from the rest of the freezer.


Why is delivered pizza often oily? Forgive the heresy, but I've recently had some pizza delivered. I noticed it was quite oily, and I have seen and heard horror stories of pizza basically drowning in oil.

This does not happen when I make pizza myself, even with salami on top the amount of oil is small, and certainly not soaking through and through.

Is the oil added intentionally? Some (e.g. Asian) delivered foods are put in oil to keep them hot, but that does not seem to be a viable option for pizzas.

I have had a pizza with a drizzle of olive oil on top (in addition to some basil, pesto, and something else). As best I remember, it did not end up looking, feeling, or tasting particularly "oily", although it was visually apparent (olive-green lines).

However, that was a high-end pizzeria; I've never seen oil on a delivered pizza, at least not any that was intentionally added as a separate ingredient. Oil that is orange or yellow comes out of the cheese (and salami or other fatty ingredients) during cooking. Inexpensive ingredients often have much more grease than higher-quality alternatives.


Cooking Buffet-style Bacon When I was a kid, every month we would go out to a high-end restaurant or country club buffet for Sunday brunch.  At these buffets, I would be confronted with hotel pans with fancy chrome lids resting in their stands above Sterno stoves.  In one of these pans would be one of my favorite things: bacon.  Thin, very evenly browned in a deep red color, lacking any char marks, and also with none of the broad strips of chewy fat I was used to, these paranormally crispy, light productions were somehow piled high in ten pound portions in a pan, free for the taking.

Now, my parent's and my own history of pan-cooking bacon produced none of these qualities.  Differential rates of shrinking end up with bacon that never cooks evenly and turns wrinkly (whereas many strips of 'Buffet Bacon' end up flat as a board), and always with significant texture differences between fat and lean streaks, something that was difficult to discern in this dish.  I've finally managed to create a bacon product I enjoy more than my parent's iteration, with thick center-cut bacon cooked on low heat for half an hour, only half a dozen strips at a time... but I still wonder at the crispy deliciousness I enjoyed as a kid, produced in such quantities as I can barely imagine.  The few attempts I've made at oven-cooking bacon either resulted in the strips sticking together or a series of small greasefires.

How would I replicate 'buffet bacon'?

Restaurants--especially large scale catering and buffets--almost always bake bacon.

It is extremely effective, and very easy.

Lay the bacon out on rimmed sheet pans, in a single layer.  For extra crispiness, use a rack, but cleaning the racks is not fun.

Bake at 350-400 F (I give a temperature range since you may be using the oven for other items) for approximately 20-30 minutes (depending on temperature, thickness of bacon, and desired level of crispiness).

If you didn't use a rack, remove the bacon to paper towels to soak up the excess grease.

The bacon will be very flat and very uniform, and can get very crispy.


What reactions require oxygen to impart flavour? For most cooking, I like to keep the lid on the pot as much as possible, except if the technique requires otherwise (e.g. reducing a sauce). From what I can tell, most flavour comes from Mailliard reactions, which do not require oxygen.
Are there any reactions in food which require the presence of oxygen (i.e., lid off)? Of so, with what ingredients, flavours and/or techniques are these reactions associated?

Oxygen will oxidize food, and oxidized food is a sign of degradation (brown bananas, brown apple ...)
The only thing that comes to mind with oxygen, is its use in wine making.
"In some wines, oxidation is used to create an effect or to ensure that the wine conforms to a particular style. In others, it’s a misstep that leads to a spoiled bottle. And yet oxidation, in which juice comes into contact with oxygen, is an unavoidable part of the winemaking process."


Why fry onions without oil and then add oil? In several recipes I have seen lately, the instructions are to sautee onions and garlic without oil for a few minutes, and then add oil and continue until golden. If it's of any help, these are Ethiopian traditional recipes.

I know that the two processes are different, due to heat transfer by the oil, and the Maillard reaction etc.
What could be the reason to start without oil and then add it though?

According to Wikipedia,

  the preparation of a wat begins with chopped onions slow cooked, without any fat or oil, in a dry skillet or pot until much of their moisture has been driven away. Fat (usually niter kibbeh) is then added, often in quantities that might seem excessive by modern Western standards, and the onions and other aromatics are sautéed before the addition of other ingredients. This method causes the onions to break down and thicken the stew.


What can I mix with a sweet liquor to cut its sweetness? I have a flavored liquor, Salted Caramel Crown Royal, that is really sweet. What kind of mixer could I use to cut its sweetness?

Add a splash to hot coffee for a fabulous liquor coffee, or use with cold brewed coffee in a Tiramisu dessert. Adding fat (i.e. mascarpone) and bitterness (i.e. coffee) or sourness (i.e. citrus suggested in first answer, or natural yoghurt) will help balance the sweetness.  Also chilling sweet food and drink reduces their detectable sweetness - perhaps make an alcoholic sorbet or frappe.


Making tomato mix thicker without surge in calories I got on trying to eating more healthy and as a part of that, I take a few tomatoes, cucumber and garlic and blend that into a sort of a drink.  It's far more convenient and quick to smash a bunch of veggies into a blender and mix the crap out of them, rather than slicing and hacking. It also scales better - making a mixaroo of 3 or of 5 tomatoes takes the same amount of time, whereas slicing time is proportional. So I'm aiming at eliminating any obstacles along the way to wiser food choices.
I'd like to make it less liquidish, aiming for a thicker texture. I've tried adding broccoli, cauliflower, nuts and seeds. I tried adding oat flower and soy protein powder. It gave an improvement but to be acceptably substantial, I need  to push in quite a lot, which kind of defeats its purpose.
Is there something very calorie thin but structurally dense that I could smash into my drink? Extra bonus if it's rich on fiber.

Your primary option if you want to add a thickener, you can use any hydrocolloid you wish. I will not list them here again, since it isn't necessary that every single question on thickeners on the site gets the full list. You can download Martin Lersch's free reference book, Texture: a hydrocolloid recipe book, and start experimenting. I can also not tell you which one will be the best for your case - they all produce different textures, and it depends on your personal preference which one to use, and anyway, you have to see which one is accessible for you.
A second option for getting any tomato based liquid thicker is to either cook it down on your own, or to replace some of the fresh tomatoes by concentrated tomato paste.
The third option, deseeding, was already given in Keith Ford's answer.
And you already mentioned the fourth, bulking up with dry ingredients such as your soy powder.
I would say the four together give you a pretty wide range of alternatives, try them out and see which one you can best live with.


Roughly how long should I cook 3.5kg pork belly ribs in electric smoker? I know they are done when they are tender—not at a set number of hours. But we need to eat at about 6pm for logistical reasons.

Was thinking of putting them in at 4am so 13h total cook time + 1h rest.

Anyone done this before? Want to smoke at 225 degrees Fahrenheit.

Based on your comment, you are basically barbecuing pork belly with the ribs still attached.  I like the approach these folks take.  You will want to maintain your smoker temperature at 225F (107C).  You will also want to use a probe thermometer.  They suggest treating the belly almost like one would treat brisket; that is, when the internal temperature reaches about 165F (74C), to wrap it in foil.  Then, continue until the internal temperature reaches 200F (93C).  Their belly took 8 hours using this method.  Given that yours still has the ribs attached it will likely take a bit longer.  It's hard to estimate time beyond this.  You will want to monitor temperature.  If it is done early, just keep it wrapped and place it in a cooler.


How did/do the Russians make carrot tea? A while ago I read a book about the Russian Civil War (it was Blood on the Snow by Emanuel Litvinoff) in which the characters frequently drank coffee made out of acorns and tea made out of carrots. I tried naively making carrot tea by grating some carrots and pouring hot water on them, like I would make ginger tea. But the resulting brew did not taste strongly of carrots.

How is carrot tea brewed--what part of the carrot is used? I would also be interested to know whether there are any other countries in which this has ever been a popular drink.

You use the leaves, not the carrot themselves. I don't know for sure this is what your Russian Civil War book was talking about, but I know it works, and besides, if they were desperate enough for acorn coffee and carrot tea, I imagine they were eating the carrots. This site suggests that you might need 1/4 cup of carrot greens per 1 cup of water; you can find plenty more searching for "carrot top tea".


How do I convey an order for over medium eggs without runny yolks? I'm not a chef; I'm a (new) waitress and a few days ago a customer ordered her eggs over medium, but she didn't want the yolks runny. She was very insistent on this, and said she would send them back if they were runny so I put the order in as over hard eggs because I thought the very definition of over medium is that the yolks are just a bit runny.

She was pissed and sent the over hard eggs back and told me that she didn't want over hard. So next I tried putting them in as over medium but well done and put a note "yolks not runny". She sent these back too and was absolutely livid, and complained about my terrible service to the manager.

How should I have translated her request to the kitchen?

Not to be dismissive, but this just sounds like a difficult guest to me. I think you'll find that this happens from time to time and it can be tough to know exactly what they're asking for.

There are two major possibilities here:

She was looking for the standard definition of "over medium", but has gotten under-done eggs before and thought she was clarifying; instead her additional information ("not runny") just confused things.
She's got some non-standard definition of "over medium", in which case she's going to find it difficult to locate any kitchen that can deliver. This is a bit like defining a "medium-rare" steak as one without any pink in it, then getting mad when you receive a well-done steak.

From a server's perspective, it sounds like you tried a couple ways to deliver what she asked for. Her not being satisfied with that could be the result of the kitchen not quite meeting your request, her not really knowing what she's asking for, or other factors entirely. Perhaps you addressed her in a way she found disrespectful or annoying, and used her eggs as a proxy to complain.

(A side note from my experience: somebody insistently telling you up-front that they'll send back their food is a huge red flag. It almost always means they're looking for an excuse to cause a fuss.)

Frankly, it's not unusual for someone having a bad day to take it out on service staff over something minor. It's an occupational hazard. When this happens, be polite and clear with your manager about what happened and explain the situation as best you can.


Is it safe to cook raw meat (beef) and veggies in the same pan? Is it safe to first make sautéed onions and then cook raw (thawed) beef in the same pan? I plan on cooking the meat thoroughly (no pink), so I figured I should be okay, right?

As long as you cook the meat thoroughly (i.e. if it reaches a safe temperature), most pathogens should be dead and it doesn't matter in which order you put the vegetables and the meat in. However, the order does matter if you don't want to have your garlic or onions burned while the meat is undercooked or raw vegetables while the meat is overcooking.


Why do my stored cashews smell like fish? I have a 30 Oz plastic jar of Roasted, Unsalted Archer Farms Cashew Nuts. I've noticed that after having it 'open' for a week or two (i.e. the lid is tightly screwed onto the jar, but the initial paper seal has been broken), the nuts begin to develop a fish-like smell. They are still hard and there is no sign of mold --- the nuts are perfectly good, but they don't taste quite like typical cashews.

First, what's going on here? I read somewhere that this is due to oxidation, perhaps a too-high moisture level in the air when I open the jar. Second, how can I correct this? Would it be better if I were to keep the cashews in the freezer? Should I buy salted cashews instead? Intuition tells me that salted cashews should not be affected by this issue, as the salt would absorb the moisture.

I believe the fat in your cashews is becoming rancid. That would most likely be caused by oxidation. Exposure to air is the chief culprit. However, exposure to light or heat could also accelerate this.

I'd wager you got a jar of nuts that wasn't quite sealed. Have you had this problem before with other jars of these nuts? 1-2 weeks is an abnormally short period of time for this problem to occur in a sealed container.

It's also possible that the nuts are old. Have you checked the "best by" date?

Freezing does not stop oxidation. It would ensure a relatively cool and dark storage place for them, though.

The only way to stop oxidation is to prevent air from touching the food.

Equipped with a new jar with a tight seal and a cool, dark storage place... I think you'll do just fine in subsequent cashew ventures.


Should whole coffee beans be stored at room temperature, the fridge or freezer? My coffee is normally used up within 1 week and is of unknown age on purchase, do I need to do anything extra to make it last a week?

If you use your whole beans within a week it's probably not worth storing it in the refrigerator or freezer. Coffee beans should be stored in a cool, dry place. They can last 1-3 weeks in your pantry. Ideally you should store them in an airtight opaque container. They degrade quickly in the presence of light, heat, or oxygen.

If you want to store them longer, then they will last 3-4 month in the freezer.

Source:

http://stilltasty.com/fooditems/index/16941


Is there a way to quantify smoke in meat while cooking? I've observed across multiple meats and cuts of meats that the other impact of smoking varies greatly. Additionally, while actually smoking my perception of the flavor is overloaded and doesn't return to normal until probably the next day.
The three variables I consider are the
meat itself, the time spent in the smoker, and the temperature.
Outside of extremes (like obviously too hot or too short) I find it virtually impossible to disentangle the individual variables' impact on desired outcomes (smoke flavor added, fat rendering, protein breakdown) and undesired outcomes (dry, tough, et cetera)
The goal is to adjust my recipes more purposefully and efficiently; not just to follow someone else's recipe.
Is there a proxy (not simply tasting) way to know the amount of smoke penetration or smokey flavor?
Edit: I'm thinking something along the lines of the charts showing sous vide eggs by temperature, or the doneness of a steak, or milk in tea. The intent is to known that "it's done enough" while smoking.

Well... yes. There are analytic chemistry techniques used to measure the concentration of phenols, which are the primary contributors to a "smoky" flavor. You could test samples taken from the meat at different depths to measure penetration. You'd need a reasonably well-outfitted chemistry lab to do a good job of this.
Honestly, though, objective measurements are not the right way to go about this. There's a reason food scientists do both chemical and organoleptic tests. Objective chemical measurements are always going to be an imperfect approximation of subjective experience. If the color of the test strip tells you something's not very smoky, and your tongue tells you it is, which are you going to believe?
If what you're looking for is a way to reliably compare the results of multiple attempts over time, just take small samples and freeze them, then compare them [using your tongue] once you're back at max taste.


What does buttermilk do to fried shrimp batter? I have been using ice water in my shrimp batter and it seems to make the batter too hard after frying them.  Would replacing the ice water with buttermilk make the batter less hard but still crispy?

Yes, the fat in the buttermilk should result in a slightly softer, less brittle, batter. The exact crispiness will depend on frying temperature and duration of course.


How to steep honeysuckle I would like to make honeysuckle ice cream (or some other honeysuckle flavored food item).

  What is the best way to extract the flavor from just picked honeysuckle flowers?

There seems to be no consensus among the various internet recipes I've found.  All suggest something like "add boiling water and soak" or "bring to boil then let cool", possibly followed by letting sit in the refrigerator over night.  I tired one version of these last year to no avail (no honeysuckle flavor).  Honeysuckle has flowers now and won't one week from now, so there's scant time to experiment.

One last question: how do I know when is the best time to collect the flowers?  I've heard morning is best, but I notice the flowers are often very fragrant also in the late evening.  I guess after rain is not good (that may have been my mistake last time, actually).

The proportions will be key.  In your case you probably need to use the minimum amount of water to cover the petals; you can always dilute later, though for making ice cream you presumably wouldn't dilute with water.  In fact you may try steeping directly in the liquid you plan to use.

You need a lot of flowers. Recipes for honeysuckle wine ( for comparison) vary widely: One steeps 6 cups of unwashed flowers in a gallon of hot sweet water for an hour, but another brews on 2 pints of washed flowers for 4 days (note regarding quantities: the former is American, the latter British).  Neither says whether that volume of flowers is packed; I suspect not.  Both also include raisins, common in country wines to make them a little richer.


What can I do with the fat skimmed from chicken stock? Two days ago I prepared some chicken stock. During the preparation, I took care to skim the grayish foam (as per procedure) and all went well. I usually freeze it for future use but this time I didn't have the time, so I put the stock in the fridge.

Later on I noticed a thin yellowish crust formed at the top of the cold stock. My guess is that it's fat that separated from the rest of the stock, so I skimmed it and saved it.

Is it really fat?
What can I do with it?
Should I return it to the rest of the stock?
Would the lack of fat adversely affect the stock?

Yes, it is really chicken fat rendered during the stock making process.

Called schmaltz in Yiddish, it is an ingredient in its own right.  For example, you can use it to fry foods, or instead of butter in creating a roux, when you would like the chickeny flavor it provides.   It is a key ingredient in matzo balls, and similarly, makes spectacularly good dumplings of various sorts. You can refrigerate it for several months, tightly covered.

It is not necessary to return it to the stock, although you may use it as an additional ingredient in the dishes you make with the stock.

Stocks are normally defatted anyway, so you do not need to return it to your stock.


How to choose non-alcoholic beverage pairings for filets mignon? I'm serving filets mignon with goat cheese and balsamic reduction to guests who don't drink alcohol. I'd like to serve a beverage with our meal that complements the steaks as nicely as red wine would (even if not in the same way). I'd also like it to be a sort of festive beverage. I was thinking along the lines of sparkling cider, but that will be way too light and sweet for the heavy meal.

There's a long tradition in the culinary world of pairing wines with meals or specific types of food, and the same goes for beer. What do I need to keep in mind when looking for a beverage that can hold its own against my filets? Are there any general rules for non-alcholic pairing, like there are for wine pairing, that would apply in this case?

I have had success pairing steaks with freshly pressed apple juice, as the tartness helps offset the richness and fats of the meat and cheese. An apple/raspberry mix works beautifully, too, as does apple and blackcurrant.

While ginger beer and ginger ale may work, you run the risk of the drink taking over the show, which you don't want.

Two more pairings that work well: Apple and cherry juice is beautiful. Blueberry juice (100% blueberries, with no additives) have much the same mouthfeel as a good red wine, while giving flavor notes all of its own.


Pizza Stone in Electric Oven I would like to invest in a pizza stone and have read that leaving it in the oven is acceptable and possibly preferable in some ways. However, my oven my electric. Do I leave the stone on the lowest rack mere inches from the bottom heat source or should it be a particular distance from the coils?

What about when I am baking casseroles, cookies, etc. Is it safe to put a pan directly on top of the stone?

A final question... is using my oven in broil mode also safe for the stone? My electric in "broil" is just the top heat source turned up super high.

The stone will be fine kept in your oven all the time, but there are trade-offs. The biggie is that your oven will preheat slower than you're currently used to--potentially quite a bit if you get a large or heavy stone. And you will really need to make sure that the stone has reached the desired oven temperature (by preheating longer) or the way things cook in your oven will be thrown off. The oven may claim to be fully preheated before the stone is really up to temperature because the thermostat just measures the air temperature, which can be higher than the stone, or even the sides of the oven for a while.

The upside is that your oven will retain heat better and generally be more even in its heat. So if you are willing to properly preheat that stone, you'll probably benefit in the long run.

As you've divined already, you'll have to put it on one of your oven racks as low as it will go toward the bottom of the oven. You don't want to put it right on the coils, but you want it as close as it will go. This means you'll have one less rack available to you. In practice this may not matter much, but it's a thing.

I wouldn't recommend putting a pan directly on the stone, but that's because it would completely change how heat gets to the pan. When a pan is on a rack, there's heated air circulating around from all sides. If it sits on a preheated stone the pan now has direct heat conducted to the bottom--which will change how things cook, and many things you'd cook in the oven don't want that direct heat.

Broil mode should be fine with the stone in the oven. I wouldn't want to put a cold stone right up by the broiler as the thermal shock might crack it, but with it at the bottom of the oven there should be no issues, even if the stone isn't heated up.


Is it possible to keep puff pastry dough in the fridge for future use? I made puff pastry but there's extra dough in my kitchen that I don't want to make more Torte Milanese for which I needed puff pastry. The extra dough doesn't contain butter and is not the required dough yet. Where and how to keep it for future use?

The dough will keep 2-3 days only in the fridge. Freeze and defrost when you need it and it will keep for a month or more. Just wrap it well to prevent off flavors and freezer burn.


What happens to dough when sugar is added? I've been experimenting with a brioche recipe. After mixing the first few ingredients (flour, liquids, etc.) and develop some gluten, I add the sugar per the recipe's instructions. At this point, it seems that the dough starts taking on a different texture -- smoother, and almost wetter-looking.

What exactly is happening to the dough when sugar is added? Why is the texture changing? Is it really getting wetter? I doubt the sugar turning into a liquid during kneading to cause this effect. I'm assuming something else is going on???

The sugar competes with proteins and starches (read:flour) for water. With less water available for the flour, fewer gluten chains are able to form resulting in a more tender dough.


Looking for Chicken & Dumplings pointers A young lady I know has informed me that "Chicken & Dumplings" is amongst her favorite dishes. I have only attempted this a few times with only marginal success. Mostly my dumplings end up too bland and too loose. I have tried both of Alton Brown's recipes and (sorry Alton, I'm sure it is my fault and not your mothers') I am still not happy with the results.

I would greatly appreciate any sage advise from the readers here.

I'm not sure about the texture (looseness), especially since those are two different methods. My best guess would be that it's just a flour measurement thing - moisture content in flour can vary, so the best thing to do is look for hints in the recipe about the desired texture (like "It should tear slightly as it falls from the beater"), and increase or decrease the flour to match.

The primary flavors here are salt and chicken, so first just check the amount of salt in both dumplings and broth. For the chicken, you're getting all the flavor out of it by making broth. So make sure you used enough chicken (and not too much water), and that you cooked it long enough. Those recipes use a pressure cooker - if you don't have one, it takes way longer to cook, of course.


Cooking meat and potato dish at same time & temp, I want to cook stuffed chicken breasts that require 375 degrees for 55 minutes I need to cook two stuffed chicken breasts at 375 degrees for 55-60 min. and a hash brown potato casserole at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.  Help me calculate the correct temp. and time if I bake them together.

Your hash brown potato casserole should be just fine at 375F (191C). Just cover it with foil if it starts to brown too much, and figure it may be done perhaps 5 minutes sooner than specified in the recipe.


Food safety with mixing raw meat Is it safe to place raw beef on the same surface that a full raw chicken has been on? I intend to roast the beef but I'm wondering if I should take any precautions?

In general, it is not a good idea to use the same surface for poultry and other foods; you would have to assume that cross-contamination has happened.

In this specific case, since you mention roasting, assuming it is a whole muscle cut, even if contaminated, the pathogens will not quickly penetrate to the interior—they will remain on the surface.   Don't cut slits in the meat (such as for inserting garlic, or the cross-hatching on a pork roast) which would allow penetration deeper into the roast.

Assuming you cook it so that the exterior reaches at least 155°F/68.5°C, then your roast should be fine.  Just make sure it is well browned which is a sure sign that the surface temperature has (well) exceeded 155 F.


What is the roasting time per pound for a spatchcock turkey breast? I am using the spatchcock method of roasting a turkey breast. I have found cooking time per pound for a whole turkey. I thought roasting a turkey breast was less time per pound vs. a whole turkey. So bottom line, what is the roasting time per pound for a spatchcock turkey breast?

The answers duck the question.  No, you don't determine doneness by time, only by temperature, but when you're planning a meal, you don't want to have the potatoes done and still have to wait two hours for the turkey.  So, you CAN estimate cooking times based on research/experience.  I smoke my turkeys so I'm smoking at about 250F.  I also spatchcock the birds to even cooking and speed cooking times.  But I know I can figure ROUGHLY 15 minutes per pound for whole turkey or breast.  If you cook a whole bird or a whole breast not spatchcocked estimate ROUGHLY 30 minutes per pound.  If you're roasting at higher temps, cut your estimate to probably 12 minutes per pound spatchcocked, and 20-25 minutes per pound not spatchcocked.


Is it safe to transport meat in a coolbox with ice? If you buy say sausage rolls and pork pies on a Thursday and keep in the fridge overnight, then travel Friday for 5-6 hours with them in a cool box with ice blocks, then put them back in the fridge Friday overnight, then serve up for buffet on the Saturday, is this too many temperature changes over 2 days?

As long as you have enough ice to keep them cold the whole time, that's the same as just putting them in your fridge for a couple days: they'll be chilled, stay chilled, then get served, whether warmed or just naturally brought toward room temperature.

So be sure you have enough ice, and as usual be sure not to let them sit out forever to serve, and you'll be fine.


Improving texture of yogurt based ice cream- stabiliser? I've made a test on a recipe for coconut-yogurt ice cream, and I need some thoughts on improving the texture.

It was churned using an industrial ice-cream maker.
It is based on a recipe I found online, only difference is the online recipe contained cocount based yogurt (which I want to avoid). I really would like to use Greek yogurt and coconut puree for this recipe.

Recipe I used:
500 gr of Greek yogurt
300 gr of frozen coconut puree (boiron)
4 tbsp honey
200 ml of double cream

The taste is super nice, but it is rock hard and once melted turns into soup.

One option is to make an englaise base (which I'm kind of trying to avoid as all of our other ice creams are currently englaise based), another is to use a stabiliser (I'm just not sure which one...). I also thought of maybe using a mixture of glucose and sugar, or even trimoline...??

Thanks!!

It looks like, you have very large ice crystals forming. One thing I’ve noticed in the recipe is the sugar content is rather on the lower-end. Around 80 g from the honey and 36 g from the coconut paste. Almost 10% by weight. Normally what you expect is 15-20%.
The amount of dissolved sugar in the base will help lowering the freezing point.

Before crystallization can begin, the temperature of the melt must decrease below the freezing point. When the melt is a solution, the solute lowers that freezing point to an extent based on the nature of the solute. Freezing point depression, being a colligative property, is based on the moles of solute present in solution, not on the mass. Therefore, a gram of glucose (with about double the number of moles of sucrose) would lower the freezing point more than a gram of sucrose. Proteins, being very large comparatively, have no measurable effect on freezing point.

I would double the sugar content with either invert sugar (which glucose + fructose) or as the paper above hints glucose.


Keeping homemade soup I occasionally make soup and then freeze it in separate containers to be eaten at a later date. Most of the time I keep one or two servings in the fridge to use in the next few days but I never know how long to actually keep these in the fridge. This time I made this soup http://allrecipes.co.uk/m/recipe/7404/creamy-carrot-and-potato-soup?o_is=LV, It doesn't have any cream in it at the moment so ignore that part. Do people have a particular rule of thumb or does it really depend on to many factors in order to have a specific answer (content,  cooking method etc.)?

Homemade soups should last 3-4 days in the refrigerator, which is a good estimate for almost any cooked food.

If you want longer storage, most soups freeze pretty well, unless they contain pasta, which gets very mushy.  On the other hand, it is easy to leave the pasta out of the main batch, and add it later at the time of service.

See, for example:

StillTasty:  Chicken Soup   Vegetable Soup


What does it mean when an egg splatters and the white is greenish-yellow? This morning I decided to make some eggs. I cracked open the first egg and it just all sort of splashed out onto the pan, the yolk already liquefied and the whites with this yellowish-greenish hue.

I cracked open a second egg to see if the whole carton was like that, and it came out just fine, with white whites and an intact yolk. I still threw it out because that does not look safe to eat.
The carton shows a Best By October 2020, so it's a little out of date but not by much.
What happened here?

From The Splendid Table:

Older eggs (which are still safe to eat) tend to be more alkaline, which encourages a green reaction similar to that green ring you can get around a hard-cooked egg yolk. The green is harmless, but pretty much inevitable in older eggs.

From Quora:

If the yolk is breaking easily then the eggs are either older eggs or lower grade eggs. The highest grade eggs is AA which not only looks at shell quality, but also the yolk quality. AA eggs should have a tall firm yolk. Over time the yolk becomes less firm and resilient causing breaking when it's cracked. Just because the yolk is breaking doesn't mean the egg is no good, just lower quality.

Conclusion:
As long as the egg doesn't smell, it should be safe to eat, making sure to cook it thoroughly instead of leaving some parts liquid.


How do I make a pot of coffee on a bbq grill? I am going camping and love to drink coffee. How do I make a pot of coffee on a campstove bbq grill? I am a klutz. I think you can boil water in a pan once you light the fire but what do you use as a coffee pot? A thermos coffee pot?

You have two 'convenient' options:

Get a Campfire Coffee Pot, similar to what you have (almost certainly) seen in "old westerns". If you plan to do much camping, this is probably a good option. I have linked to one available at Amazon, but almost any camping supply/sporting goods store will carry something similar. (McDonald's disclaimer: Hey, this is going to be HOT, handle with care)

Army Coffee, A trick I learned from an mess sergeant when I was in the service, this is a great technique for making LOTS (5-20 gallons) of coffee. Over an open fire get a large pot of water boiling, pour in loose ground coffee directly into the boiling water. Allow to boil for 5 minutes and remove (carefully) the pot from the water. Once the boiling stops wait one more minute and "whack" the side of the pot on the outside with a large metal spoon, this will cause all (ok "almost all") the grounds to sink to the bottom. Gently ladle the coffee from the pot to your cups. This may not be "Bigbucks Coffee Approved" but it will it will get you going.


Pressure Cooker - Same Settings, but much tougher meat I often cook chicken thighs in my InstantPot pressure cooker, 12 minutes on high with a marinade and it turns out tender and perfect each time.

This time, however, the thighs were still a little frozen.  I had let them thaw for 2 days in the fridge, but I could tell when I squeezed them that they weren't thawed all the way through.

I put them in the InstantPot for the same amount of time with the same settings, and they came out quite tougher than usual (but still done all the way through).

My theory is that it took the Instant Pot longer to get to pressure due to the temperature of the chicken thighs, and so ended up cooking them longer...

What could be the cause of the dramatic difference in toughness?

I'm assuming since you said "this time... still a little frozen" that you were starting from frozen Thighs the times you had success, and that the only real difference is that these particular thighs were not fully thawed. If that's not the case you could have another issue entirely.

In these kinds of situations I think the best we can do is use the information available to try and guess at the cause. Rather than the issue being that the thighs were overcooked and thus tough, I think the issue was likely that the thighs were less cooked than the tender ones you're used to. If you're leaving the Instant Pot for the same amount of time, the internal temperature of the chicken thighs would not effect the overall temperature of the device much at all since it is insulated by the surrounding meat.

Starting from a cooler interior of the chicken thighs (frozen vs refrigerated) could mean that the thawed thighs were cooked past the threshold of toughness and into the point of being soft/tender again, whereas the frozen thighs wouldn't have yet reached that point due to the temperature difference.

This is, however, just a guess. The only thing you could really do if this happens again, to try and test this, would be to put the thighs back in and cook them for a proportionately longer time.

Best of luck!


My hand mixer came with dough hooks, can I knead dough with it? I bought a fairly inexpensive (<$50) hand mixer a while back, and when I was organizing the kitchen I came across a set of dough hook attachments for it.

I thought dough was too heavy for a hand mixer's tiny motor to knead, but if that's the case, why did it come with dough hooks?

Can I use my hand mixer to knead dough?

If you do most of the kneading while the dough is very wet (like Jeff Varasano recommends for his pizza dough here http://www.varasanos.com/PizzaRecipe.htm), you should be able to do most of it with even a comparatively weak hand mixer and not have too much trouble holding it steady enough (see link - gluten IS working even though the dough is still only slightly more dry than a batter).

That said, if you try to work with a drier dough, even if your motor can handle it (which it likely can't), it will probably be more difficult to hold the mixer than to just knead the dough by hand.


What are good techniques to prepare liver? I don't like liver, but now I have to start eating pork liver because of its high iron content.

There are some ingredients which I have disliked for years, then suddenly started liking when I discovered how tasty they can be when prepared properly. An example is an aubergine: throw it into a stew as it is, or deep fry it so it soaks up three times its way in oil, and I don't want to see it. Blanch it to reduce the bitterness, dry it before it touches fat, combine it with rosemary, and it becomes one of the best veggies ever.

I was wondering whether there is some cooking technique which transforms liver into a lovely treat. My biggest issues with liver are

  the texture, which is too crumbly, almost sandy, and a bit dry
  the intensity of its earthy, fatty, almost rancid flavor.

At least, it tastes that way when my mother or grandmother prepare it, I have never eaten it in a restaurant.

Do you know a way to mitigate these problems? Advice on good combinations, be it side dishes or herbs/spices, is also appreciated. Also, what is the optimal pH range? I'd tend to use some acidic components because of the fatty flavor (e.g. make a sauce by deglazing the pan with lemon juice), but is this really a good combination, and how does it affect the texture if the acid is added while preparing?

Liver (like any offal) needs to be as fresh as possible.  Liver naturally has a dense texture, so over-cooking it results in the dry shoe leather effect that causes most people to hate it.

Soaking it in milk is a common technique, but I grew up with venison liver cooked quickly in a pan with spice mixes (usually a slightly spicy "cajun" or lemon-pepper).

I would suggest looking up some more modern recipes to see if you can find one that appeals to your tastes.  Chefs like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who are keen on re-introducing people to these less popular cuts, tend to have recipes that will appeal to a modern palate.


What is the history of the white chocolate macadamia nut cookie? By now in 2019, white chocolate macadamia nut seems a very typical cookie flavor (in the United States), available from lots of different shops and in lots of different brands.

I'm pretty sure I never saw them as a kid in the US in the 1980s.  I have a strong memory of macadamia nuts being a rather exotic food at that time, associated with Hawaii.

Who invented the white chocolate macadamia nut cookie?  How did it become popular?

I'm not certain of this answer, but if I had to make a bet, I think the cookie at least was popularized, if not originated completely, with Debbi Fields of Mrs. Fields' Original Cookies.

Macadamia nuts appeared in pairings with (milk or dark) chocolate, usually just in chocolate-covered versions or chunks of nuts in chocolate going back to at least the 1970s.  While I could find sporadic references to macadamia use in baked goods, I couldn't find any references specifically to white chocolate and macadamia in this era.

Macadamia nuts were an unusual ingredient in the 1980s (often associated in the U.S. with Hawaii), but Mrs. Fields' cookies began using them, perhaps due to the connection of the company in one of its earliest store locations in Honolulu during its initial expansion in 1980.  At some point in the 1980s, several macadamia nut flavored cookies were introduced by Mrs. Fields, including pairings with semisweet chocolate, coconut, and white chunk with macadamia nuts.  This page indicates that the white chocolate flavor was available by 1987.

But what evidence is there that Mrs. Fields in particular popularized this flavor?  Well, I could find no references to this pairing before 1987, when we know these cookies were sold by Mrs. Fields.  However, Mrs. Fields didn't just stop with cookies: in 1986-87, in addition to chocolate-dipped macadamia nuts, it tried to introduce ice cream with chocolate and macadamia nuts and even chocolate chip-macadamia soda.  The Mrs. Fields company seemed obsessed with macadamia-chocolate items at this time.  A Hawaiian book in 1988 could immediately make the association from macadamia nuts to Mrs. Fields, stating that:

  Macadamia-nut pie and macadamia-nut ice cream have become Hawaiian
  classics.  Famous Amos' and Mrs. Fields' macadamia chocolate chip
  cookies would not be nearly as good with any other nut.

While both Famous Amos and Mrs. Fields apparently had macadamia cookies by this time, it was the white chocolate chunk version by Mrs. Fields that seems to have brought a new wave with it.

All other references outside Mrs. Fields to specific pairing of white chocolate and macadamia nuts date to the late 1980s or later.  The earliest references I can find in Google appear in ice cream flavors (see this LA Times article from 1988), but there also appears to be a trend in brownies made with white chocolate and macadamia nuts around this time, as in the first mention of the pairing in the NY Times in 1989 as well as this AP reference in 1990 to white chocolate macadamia nut brownies.  One also begins to see references to cheesecake (NY Times, 1990) and tarts (NY Times, 1992) flavored in the same way at upscale restaurants.  One of the earliest references Google seems to find for cookies is in 1993, where the Chicago Tribune covers a designer of high-end gift baskets, several of which seem to include white chocolate macadamia nut cookies.

After an initial period when the flavor pairing was apparently associated with higher-end cuisine and cookies, it began to spread more widely.  By the mid-1990s, the white chocolate macadamia fad was in full swing, as the Washington Post could announce in 1996 that the most recent Joy of Cooking Christmas Cookies book contained recipes for "monster-size cookies in trendy flavors such as mocha walnut and white chocolate macadamia."

In any case, I don't have clear evidence that the cookie flavor pairing originated with Mrs. Fields, but it seems likely to have been popularized by that company in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

EDIT: Further evidence from Google Ngram of the popularity of the phrase "white chocolate macadamia" beginning its rise in 1987 through the mid-1990s, so at least we can narrow down the time period.


What can I substitute for butter in a custard-based pie? This weekend I made a great buttermilk pie.  Creamed butter/sugar add eggs / flour flavoring buttermilk and bake.

I want to reduce the calories.  Is there a substitute that I can use with this custard like pie?

The recipe uses 1 stick of butter to 1 3/4 cups sugar

This is the complete recipe
Buttermilk Pie

1 3/4 C. sugar
1 stick unsalted butter (1/2 C.) room temp.
3 large eggs
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
pinch of salt
3 T. all purpose flour
1 C. buttermilk
1 9" pie shell, unbaked

Cream together the sugar and butter till well blended. Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time, until the mixture is nice and smooth. Add in the vanilla, salt and flour. Beat in the buttermilk until well combined. Fill the pie shell with the buttermilk mixture, just to the top of the shell. Bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour 10 minutes – Let rest before serving

Butter in this type pie is there to add "richness". It is possible to leave it out entirely and save about 800 calories, but it may not satisfy your definition of a good dessert. If you reduced the amount to 1/2 a stick (1/4 cup), you would reduce the total calories by about 400 and still have a very nice pie.

I would not recommend replacing the butter with a reduced calorie margarine or spread, as they contain water and other stuff that will not improve the pie.


What is the "hot" and "cold" category that Chinese culture separate their food into? I am unsure if this categorization of food exist only in Chinese culture or if it exists in other (Asian) cultures. In China, a lot of the food is separated into either "cold" or "hot".

Some examples of "cold" food types are:

most fruits (apples, pears, etc)
tea
some herbal remedies(gingseng, ram horn water, etc)

Some examples of "hot" food types are:

some fruits (mangoes, pineapple, etc)
deep fried foods
pan-seared/ pan fried foods
coffee

Generally since I was young, I've been brought up to eat a balance of the "hot" and "cold" food. I was curious if this "hot" and "cold" categorization can be quantified into anything concrete? Can this categorization be backed by any sort of food science that finds a similarity between all the "hot" foods and all the "cold" foods.

Per AsianResearch.org's article The Ancient Theory Behind Chinese Food:

  Generally
  speaking, foods that have a higher water content are considered cool,
  or yin, in nature. These are often foods that are boiled or steamed.
  Foods that have a higher energy content, particularly from fat, are
  considered warm, or yang, in nature. These are often foods that are
  fried or roasted.

  [...]

  From [Chinese traditional element theory] comes the idea of the five flavours −
  bitter, sweet, spicy, salty and sour.

  These flavours are subdivided into yin and yang. Sweet and spicy foods
  are considered to be yin, while bitter, sour and salty foods are
  considered to be yang. The five elements also correspond with the
  colours red, yellow, white, blue and green, which are all considered
  when choosing ingredients.


What are the two unnamed parts that came with new Char-Broil gas grill? I just purchased a new Char-Broil gas grill today. It came with a manual, which I read before doing anything else. What puzzles me are two unidentified parts that are not mentioned in the product manual. Does anyone know what these two parts are called and what their purpose is?

Photo #1: Small metal item that came in bag with manual.

Photo #2: Metal piece hanging by chain from left side of grill.

Here it the item in better context.

I just bought the same grill earlier this week. The second item is a match holder as moscafj mentioned. The first is used when assembling the bottom of the cabinet: the two pins slot into a pair of holes on each wheel mount, which locks the wheel in place allowing you to screw the wheel in. After the wheel is in, you remove the pin to allow it to freely rotate.


Canned cubed tomatoes vs crushed I have a recipe (for pumpkin turkey chili) which calls for 14 oz can of cubed tomatoes. All I have is either 10 oz cube canned tomatoes or 14 oz crushed tomatoes. Which should I use?  Does it make a difference using the correct quantity but the incorrect type of tomatoes?

In a chili application, the recipe is going to be forgiving.

You will get a little more texture from the cubed (diced) tomatoes assuming that your recipe doesn't then cook them down a considerable time; more absolute quantity of tomato flavor from the crushed simply because you have more of it.  Both should give you good outcomes.

Choose the one that you think you will prefer, and don't worry.


Homemade Vinegar Safe? There's a recipe for homemade vinegar that's basically water, brown sugar, and pineapple peels. Is this safe? I'm thinking that there'll be some mold, etc. or even methanol.

Yeast eats sugar and makes alcohol,
Acetobacters eat alcohol and make acetic acid which is vinegar.

Both alcohol and acetic acid inhibit other microbes. Once your solution is alcoholic or acidic enough there is no risk of mold.

However- this recipe does not include any yeast or acetobacters, it relies on getting the necessary microbes from the air and the surface of the pineapple. During that initial period there will be a risk of some other microbe taking over and spoiling the batch.

Personally I would take out a little insurance and include a pinch of yeast in the initial mix.

If you have an old bottle of undistilled vinegar around you might have a colony of acetobacters (called a "mother") growing in it already. This wouldn't be necessary to prevent spoilage but would speed up your vinegar production greatly. You would add a piece of the mother after most of the sugar had been converted to alcohol. After your first batch you could use the mother in future batches.

This sounds like an awesome experiment and I'm going to have to try making some as well.


Cheese suggestions to replace melted Velveeta I have been given the honors of making appetizers for the family Christmas dinner. One of the traditional recipe calls for melted Velveeta, to go over a cooked sausage "pate" on top of a small piece of rye bread.
To not hurt any feelings I'm going to make some of these with the traditional Velveeta, but for others I would like to replace the Velveeta with some other cheese. I'm assuming I'll have to make a thick bechamel sauce. I need help with what cheese, or up to 3 cheeses, I should melt down. Any suggestions would be considered.

FWIW the sausage is usually fairly mild, not much spicier then the rye bread it is on.

If you want the smoothness of melted processed cheese, but not the extra trouble of making your own, you can use processed cheese in other flavors such as Swiss, sharp cheddar, extra sharp cheddar, and pepper jack. (Just to name a few.)

Another option is canned or jarred process cheeses in various flavors.

Lastly, and probably what I would use, are different varieties of very young, soft cheeses. They tend to melt well and if young enough, don't need any additional ingredients.

As an example, I make a mac and cheese with a very young Gouda. It is quite literally just the macaroni and cheese. The cheese is to die for creamy. On the rare occasion that I end up with a slightly more mature cheese, a tablespoon or so of cream is all it needs to get to that smooth, creamy point.


Substituting Dried Cranberries for Fresh/Frozen I have a slow cooker recipe (for meat) that calls for 4 cups fresh or frozen cranberries. Fresh are out of season, and frozen out of stock at my usual stores.  All that's available are dried cranberries.

I'm wondering about the advisability of getting the dried cranberries and re-hydrating them in the other fluid ingredients of the recipe (e.g. apple juice) over the stove, and using them in the slow cooker as usual.

Is this a reasonable thing to do?  If so, what measure of dried cranberries will substitute for 4 cups frozen?  And how much fluid will that amount of dried cranberries require to re-hydrate to 4 cups?

I wouldn't.

I'm guessing that a recipe which requires 4 cups of fresh cranberries has them as either the majority ingredient, or the #2 ingredient by weight.  With that assumption in mind, I'm recommending against this.

Fresh cranberries are very high in ascorbic acid (Vitamin C).  This makes them extremely tart, which is a big part of their flavor. In dried ones, all of this acid and about half their tartness is destroyed by the drying process.  Dried cranberries are often sweetened as well.  As a result, a rehydrated dried cranberry won't taste a lot like a fresh one ... compare fresh table grapes and raisins for a similar difference.


How could I keep one-ingredient "ice cream" soft? According to this question, guar gum and xanthan gum can be used to keep ice cream soft by preventing ice crystals and keeping the air that's been mixed in from leaving the ice cream.

We have tried making one-ingredient banana "ice cream" by freezing bananas for an hour and then mixing them in a blender. It creates a yummy banana ice-cream-like pudding. (I put ice cream in quotes, since there's no actual cream.)

However, if you try to freeze the results, you get a mess full of ice crystals and losing the appeal of the original dessert.

Could additions like guar and xanthan gums help to maintain that yummy texture over time? If so, since I've never used them, I'd like some help figuring out how to do so.

Thinking about this from first principles, a banana is about:

75% water
20% carbohydrates (mostly sugar and a small amount of starch)
Less than 5% combined fiber and protein
Trace amount of fat (generally considered to be zero).

The anti-crystallization effect of guar gum works on the water component, so adding a small amount of guar gum actually should be of some benefit.  The hard part is getting it all dispersed; you don't want to over-process the banana (you'd lose the creaminess) but you also need to hydrate the guar gum in order for it to work its magic.  You also need to avoid over-thickening, which might be difficult even with the very small starch content in a typical banana.

Bananas convert more starch to sugar as they ripen, so I suspect you'd have more success trying this on very ripe bananas that are, essentially, little more than sugar and water to begin with.

Incorporating and maintaining air is something that I just don't think you're going to be able to do.  Proteins and fats can both participate in foaming (egg whites being an example of the former, and heavy cream being the canonical example of the latter), but bananas have neither of those.  There's simply nothing to whip, and thus nothing to stabilize, so neither xanthan gum nor any other emulsifier/stabilizer is going to do you much good here.

If you really want to incorporate air then you're going to need more than one ingredient.  My instinct would be to say coconut milk, which has relatively high fat and pairs well with banana (and obviously is also vegan / non-dairy), but I can say from experience now that coconut milk just doesn't have enough fat.  You could try cooking it down first to get the fat ratio up, or using coconut oil, but I'm not sure how it would taste.

Traditional ice cream is about 60% water, which means the amount of guar gum that most people seem to get the best results with (about 1 tsp/qt) is about 0.87% of the total water.  For a small (100 g) banana, that's about 75 mL of water corresponding to very close to 1/8 tsp of guar gum.

So, I'd give this a try with 1/8 tsp of guar gum, forget the xanthan gum.  Try adding it after you've frozen the banana for the first time, when you first pop it into the blender.

No guarantees, but, you can probably afford to waste one banana in the attempt.

Update:

I thought I'd give this a try myself since (a) it seemed pretty easy and (b) I can always use more non-dairy dessert recipes.  Here's how it came out with 1/4 tsp of guar gum for 2 bananas, after being frozen for two days:

You can see that ice crystal formation is pretty minimal, and although some parts did harden a bit (much like ordinary homemade ice cream with low overrun), they returned to normal consistency within just a few minutes.

Of course it still tastes like frozen bananas, so if I were to do this again I think I'd probably try adding a few other flavours.  Also note that even though the texture is decent, the colour is getting dark, and I have no doubt that this would eventually turn black after enough time in the freezer - and the lemon juice trick doesn't really work so well when the whole thing has been blended up.


How can we keep the crisp part of French Fries for longer time? Since few time I observed that whenever I make french fries, after 15-20 mins of its making it is getting loose. Is there anything doing that we can maintain the crisp of the fries for longer span i.e. for at least 20 mins or so?

I am no expert but I recently moved to a student apartment in the Netherlands and my roommates have some experience making fries.

I'd say one of the main factor that makes the fries get soggy is the steam that comes out of them. If all of the fries are very close together, like in a bowl, the fries will basically steam themselves. To prevent this try to spread them out as much as possible. What we usually do is put the in an oven tray (with parchment paper) and season them.


Fastest way to cook a baked potato? Baked potatoes are great as everyone knows but what is fastest way to cook them (obviously preserving the taste).

Normally I do about 10 minutes in the microwave and then in the oven till the top starts to crisp.

But is there a better way?

Grilling / broiling the potato after it comes out of the microwave is quicker than baking it and achieves the same crispy outside.

If you really prefer them baked though, you can speed this up by inserting a large metal skewer into the potato while it's in the oven


How to keep meringue white while baking? I made pavlovas last week from 4 egg whites and about a cup of sugar whipped together to a SUPER form meringue. I piped them on to a tray and baked first on 120 degrees for an hour and then on 70 degrees for another hour.

Somewhere in the middle of baking the pavlovas turned brown. They were stil tasty, but how can I keep them white, like I see in restaurants?

First, double check that your oven temps are accurate with a thermometer that you can place in the oven.

After that, two things I would try..

Rack Positioning

I've baked meringues at similar temps without browning. It could be the position of the rack within the oven? If it was mainly the top that browned, move lower. If it was mainly the bottom that browned, move higher.

Turn Off the Oven

The other thing you could try is turning the oven off for the second stage of baking. I've baked meringues at 200 degrees F for an hour before, then I turn off the oven, prop the door open for about 5 minutes to cool, then close the door for a few hours.

Hope one of these give you the results you're looking for.


Tips for getting a meat loaf to come out just right? I'm very new to cooking and honestly don't enjoy it all that much, but I am trying to expand my skills beyond very simple foods like tuna helper and chicken, so I thought I would try making a meat loaf as the next step.

However, since I've never made one before, I'm not really sure what I should be looking for in a recipe, or if there's anything I need to know about the preparation that might not be mentioned in a recipe.  I'm wondering about things like:

Does it matter what type of meat I use?
How do I control how heavy/dense it is?
How can I make sure that it doesn't fall apart?
What oven setting should I use so that it cooks all the way through but doesn't burn the outside?

Any other useful tips would also be helpful.

You'll likely do better first trying a recipe, and see how it comes out and we can tell you how to adjust it for your preferences, but a few things to consider when making meatloaf:

Don't squish the meat or work it too much while you're mixing it; you'll end up with a rather dense meatloaf.  (unless of course you like that sort of thing).
Some people prefer on fattier grinds of meat for a 'juicier' meatloaf ... I personally go with 85/15 or fattier.
Mixing types of fat with different melting characteristics will also change the texture; for this reason, some recipes call for adding pork sausage, or a blend of ground pork, beef and veal.
Vessel is important -- some people will cook their meatloaf in a loaf pan; personally, I like a little crust on mine, but because of the grease that comes off during baking, I use a broiler pan.
Shape will affect the crust and cooking time -- a larger cross-section will need a longer cooking time, but the top may crust up too much; you can either tent with foil while cooking, coat with a glaze, top with bacon strips, etc.
Mixing the meat while chilled will keep the meatloaf less dense, but allowing it to warm up before cooking will allow it to cook more evenly.  (so the outside isn't overcooked while the middle's still cold; especially important if you're not going with a glaze or similar)
Almost any vegetables can be added as a filler, if you pre-cook them to soften and remove most of their moisture so they're not overly wet.  Onions, bell pepper, carrots, cellery, dark greens (spinach, chard, etc), summer squash (eg. zucchini, yellow squash) all work well.
To speed up cooking time, or if you're living alone and know you won't eat the whole thing, consider making smaller loaves.  You can even make it in a burger patty size & shape for individual servings.


Good Idea to Buy Discount Meat For Freezing? My local stores for some odd reason sells chicken legs for about 1.5 EUR per kg, they are not old products according to the packages. I have made a lot of chicken soup lately but I am starting to get enough. If I buy it a lot and freezes it, how long does it last and which factors do I need to consider with frozen meat? I had lately one package 2 days old and I just moved it to fridge because I cannot consume too much meat.

Please, suppose I have a large freezing box empty, I am not worried about space. Suppose that I am freezing my chicken for future chicken soups.

Related questions

I am more interested in whether the chicken may become bad or something like that and how should I process it differently to non-freezed chicken? Question here.
Does the chicken change over time and how long is it wise to have the chicken frozen? Like does the nutritional profile of chicken change? The fats will surely go bad (not verified) but are there some other factors? Because of fat spoiling, is it better idea to freeze non-fatty parts of meat? Question here.

I suggest you read the transcript to the Good Eats show on freezing, or, better yet, find a copy of the episode to watch.  (Good Eats is an American TV show focusing on food science.)  Here are some relevant excerpts:

  [In the freezer,] any present bacteria are going to have a devil of a time finding the moisture they require to live, breed, survive. Since they themselves contain a considerable dose of H2O, freezing halts bacterial activity altogether, though some of the little beasties can survive to decompose another day.  While it is in this frozen state, the meat will remain unspoiled for years. But there's a problem. You see, home freezers work very slowly. That means that as those little H2Os start to line up inside, they'll create huge, sharp, jagged crystals that will rise up, slicing and dicing their way through cell walls, muscle fibers, and pretty much anything else that gets in the way.  Now while frozen, you won't notice this damage. But when it comes time to thaw, all of those perforated cells will start to leak out moisture all over the place. It's called drip loss and it's not a sign of good eats.

Therefore, if you are buying the meat fresh (i.e., it is not already frozen), then you need to take special care in how you freeze it:

  One good way to prevent drip loss is to freeze the target food very, very quickly to a very, very low temperature. So that instead of creating huge, jagged, nasty ice crystals, you get very, very tiny little ice crystals.

The episode goes on to describe a process for freezing meats at home (basically, the idea is to use small pieces of meat, freeze them separately on a sheet tray, and then once they are frozen transfer them to a bag for long-term storage).

Even though the meat will technically be safe to eat for years, there are a few caveats.  For one thing, the environment in the freezer is very dry.  That can cause moisture on the surface of the meats to sublimate and form ice crystals, otherwise known as freezer burn.  This can be avoided by packaging the meat in a vacuum (e.g., vacuum sealed bags), however, if you don't have a good vacuum sealer, I would suggest limiting their freezing to 6 or 8 months in order to avoid freezer burn.  Another reason to make sure you use an air-tight container is that fats are very good at picking up flavors of other items you might have in the freezer.

I am fairly certain the "fats will surely go bad" claim is a myth, especially since fat alone is a good preservative.  Perhaps you should ask that question on Skeptics.SE.


How to ration salt in small quantities? I have high-ish blood pressure and the doctor said keep the salt under control.  It is easy to ration controlled amounts of salt when cooking large amounts of stews and similar foods and you add salt by teaspoon.  But I don't really make stews that much, most of my cooking are single or double servings that I just salt with a sprinkler.  I do have a nice salt sprinkler, about 8 oz, however, it is very difficult to gauge a proper amount of salt approximately so I often either over- or under-salt.

Is there a device that will accurately measure portions of a teaspoon and at the same time allow me to sprinkle them evenly? Because, if I measure maybe a quarter of a teaspoon, sprinkling it between fingers doesn't distribute salt as evenly as using my sprinkler, which is, like I said above, prone to inaccuracy.  Is there any way (a device of some sort) to reap the best of both approaches?

You may need to practice sprinkling salt --

Get a large piece of paper or plastic, that's preferably not white.
Sprinkle some salt on it.  Try from different heights.  You might also try different types of salt (I find coarser salts easier to control)
Roll up the paper (or plastic), so you can pour the salt back into a small dish to try again.

Once you're comfortable with sprinkling salt :

Measure out the salt.
Pour the salt into your off hand.
Use your good hand to take pinches of the salt & sprinkle it on the food.

If you're really wedded to a shaker -- you might consider a grinder and coarser salt.  If you know how many grinds it takes to get a teaspoon, you could roughly estimate how much salt is going in by counting grinds.


Do I need to freeze my rye flour? I got ten pounds of rye flour from the amish store yesterday. They only had a single, two-pound bag sitting on the shelf but, when asked, the man behind the counter said they actually have lots of rye flour but keep it all in the freezer because otherwise Something Bad will happen to it. It's organic and I think it might be wholemeal but I'm not sure.

I haven't been baking for terribly long, maybe 8 months or a year, but I've never frozen my rye flour. Is this a legitimate need? Ten pounds of flour takes up more freezer space than I would prefer. Thanks!

Rye flour should be stored in the fridge or freezer. This is because the cold air will slow down the oxidation process which is what makes the flour turn rancid.  It will keep in the freezer for up to 6 months, slightly less in the fridge. Just give it a sniff when using it to make sure it is still fine.

Make sure it is properly sealed before storing it because from my own experience, it has resulted in the flour tasting and smelling like the freezer (other food etc). Use an airtight plastic or glass container.


Can you freeze jalapenos? It's getting colder outside and I have a lot of jalapenos in my garden.  I like eating them fresh (not cooked) on homemade tacos and omelets, etc.

If I freeze them and thaw them out later in the winter, will they still be as spicy and crunchy, or does the freezing and thawing take some flavor away from them?

I have a whole freezer full of jalapenos - so yes, you definitely can.

They definitely retain their heat just fine.

They keep their texture better if you do 2 things:

Use a vacuum sealer and take out all the air - to reduce freezer burn.  Because of this, I recommend you freeze them in batches.
Blanche them for 2-3 minutes in boiling water and then drop them in freezing water.  From what I've read, this destroys a particular enzyme that helps not break the pepper down further.  I've done this and not done this - and doing it definitely helps on the texture.

They should be good for a little over a year in a vacuum sealed bag - as far as the texture goes.  They should never go bad otherwise.

Cos and Sobachatina - bring up another good point: freezing fast and effectively.  You can try AB's method that Cos points out, but I do what Sobachatina does.  Freeze on a single layer on a tray in the freezer.  They freeze quicker and better than dumping them in a bag.


Can coffee beans be roasted in an airfryer Having recently invested in an airfryer, I was wondering if it would be suitable for roasting coffee beans?

The model I have is this one and goes up to 200C.

Has anyone attempted this with any success?

I haven't tried it myself, but I'm pretty sure that it would work. In general the temperature you need is between a 150 and 300 degree celsius, but the best way to find out is to try and see what works best for you. There are plenty of sites explaining how to roast coffee beans at home, even with less "advanced" gear (popcorn makers, ....).

There are a few things to be careful about:
You are working at high temperatures and the airfryer is not built for roasting coffee, so you shouldn't leave the fryer alone!
You should be aware of the strong smell that roasting coffee produces, I'm not sure if the coffee smell/taste (and I'm not talking about a fresh ground coffee's aroma) will affect the taste of other food you plan to fry. And last but not least, this won't produce very good coffee, since you don't have much control of the whole process.

Try:
https://www.breworganic.com/Coffee/HowToRoast.htm
http://www.sweetmarias.com/instructions.php

Good luck!


Ice pop recipe using egg yolks by two different ways A few days ago i started reading about popsicles recipes. Searching this out i found out about two sort of recipes using almost identical ingredients to make a creamy popsicle.

The first recipes uses:

sugar, egg yolks, milk, heavy cream

1) Beat egg yolks and sugar until thicked and paled. Then put the milk and heavy cream on medium heat (not to boil). Then add 1 cup of the milky mixture in the egg yolks mixture and whisk; then put this in the milky mixture to cook whisking all the time until is ready.

The second recipes uses:

sugar, egg yolks, milk, corn flour

2) Whisk off the heat sugar, milk and corn flour. Add the milk gradually and whisk until the ingredients are dissolved, and then whisk in the egg yolks. Cook until ready.

Why in the first recipe we beat the egg yolks with sugar and at the second recipe type we just whisk them in? I would like to know the logic behind this and which recipe is better for the final result.

Because the recipe writers were used to those methods--seriously.

According to Harold McGee, in his On Food and Cooking (revised) beating eggs and sugar until they are pale--or even until they thicken--is only useful to indicate that the sugar is fully dissolved.  Otherwise, it makes little difference to the outcome of recipes.