Storing fresh sourdough I would like to know what is the best way to store fresh baked sourdough so that it maintains a nice crunchy crust and a nice soft, slightly moist, light texture?  I usually store it at room temperature in a large tupperware with a loose fitting lid or on the countertop. I have finally succeeded in baking the perfect sourdough; I am very happy:) I now just need to know what storage method I should use. I know it stores well in the freezer.

I don’t think it is possible to perfectly preserve both crisp crust and moist crumb. There is always going to be a degree of equalisation of moisture between crust and crumb.

The only way to have the experience of fresh baked bread every day is to bake it every day. That said, one of the joys of sourdough is its characteristic ageing. It’s perfect with butter on day one, by day two it’s good for sandwiches and by day three it’s perfect for toasting.

My preferred method for storing is wrapped in a cotton cloth and kept in a metal breadbin.


What can replace milk, for vegan pancakes without eggs? Please see the question in the title. My goal is to make vegan pancakes without:

eggs,
milk,
any milk alternative that uses Natural Flavours, like soy or coconut milk.

I live in Ontario, Canada and visited these 6 stores, yet all their soy and coconut milks contain Natural Flavours: Loblaws, Longo's,  Metro,  Noah's Natural Foods, Whole Foods Market, Your Good Health.

I would also add Rice Milk is a good alternative also and can be home made.


A very specific synonym for a potatoes au gratin type recipe Many years ago, we went to a restaurant that served a little cube of potatoes that was in the same category as my Mom's scalloped potatoes, but much more refined. It was not soupy, and the potatoes were sliced very thin.

Since then I have seen the specific name just once, and I have not been successful at finding it through a Google search which always rolls back around to the word au gratin.

I think Potatoes Dauphinois maybe what you are looking for. Thin sliced potatoes seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic, covered in cream (often topped with cheese) then baked in a gratin dish.


Soymilk for drinking vs. soymilk for tofu making Many recipes for tofu start from soymilk, many others start from scratch, but most of either kind share a whole variety of approaches, i.e. the order of the soaking, boiling and blending operations, the duration of the soak, the length of the milk cooking/simmering, whether the milk should be strained before simmering or the other way around. Recipes for drinking soymilk vary on a similar fashion, apart from the fact that they aim to remove the so-called "beany flavor" that seems to be haunting homemakers.

Assuming the invariance of the final product in terms of flavor, firmness, coagulation etc. there are some choices that result in consistent operational advantages, such as the boil-and-blend method which leaves out the discomforts of the soak, or the option of straining the milk before the simmer so that all you have to do to get to the coagulant insertion is wait for it to come down to temperature.

My question now is: can we make such an assumption? Some other sources suggest for example that a soaking time longer than eight hours inhibits the soymilk's ability to coagulate properly, but others point out that it would yield a better drink. Same goes for simmering time, let alone all other variables and orderings I briefly listed above.

I tried making tofu twice using a combo lemon juice and salt as a coagulant, but the results were ricotta-like and silken tofu, while I strive for firm to extra-firm. I mostly blame it on my previous lack of a cooking thermometer which I just purchased specifically (together with some nigari crystals) for this purpose, so I thought I should ask if there are other parameters I might be leaving out of the investigation.

TL; DR: Just read the stuff in bold.

Your title, your problem and your question (btw question is general but complicated) while on the same subject matter are not the same.

In regards to your quest for firm and extra-firm tofu, the OP doesn't state much about the process after the coagulation.  Which similarly to cheese making is the (arguably) the most crucial factor in the final texture.  firm and extra-firm tofu is pressed with heavier weights, and for longer periods of time.

The choice of coagulent (nikari, gypsum, acid, etc), temperature of the milk and the mixing method can also affect the texture of the final product.


What can I subsitute for Aluminum foil in the oven? I am allergic to Aluminum I am allergic to Aluminum and have always had a problem with what else I can use to line baking dishes or pans in the oven and toaster oven. Can you give me an idea of what else might be oven proof for this use? I used to just leave it and scrub like mad but now my arthritis is too bad for that.

Oven bags will take the heat:

  The plastic used for manufacture of the oven bag must be chosen so that it will not melt at the temperature during cooking and thus spoil the food. To this end, many oven bags are formed from a special heat resistant nylon.

I'm not having any luck finding the material in a convenient roll form, but Reynolds and other manufacturers make the bags in a variety of sizes, some of which are large enough to be cut up and line your dishes and pans.


My dad used my tea brewer with coffee and now the plastic makes my tea taste like coffee. Bleach? How can I get the coffee taste out of the plastic in my tea brewer. Its all plastic. Will bleach ruin it?

Plain white vinegar is the normal way to remove coffee tastes and stains. Hot vinegar works better


What can I do to add more flavor into my beef barley soup? This time around my beef barley soup is tasting a bit on the plain side. It has the right amount of saltiness but is lacking in the flavorful department. The ingredients used thus far have been:

Beef Stock, Water, Salt, Ground Black Pepper, Seasoned Pepper, Rosemary, Onions, Carrots, Barley, and Cubed Beef.

What can I do to help boost its flavor?

If you use self-made beef stock, try boiling a bit longer, so that the flavour of the beef is a bit more concentrated.
Boil your soup a bit longer.
Use more beef stock and/or cubed beef.
I don't know how much herbs you put in. Maybe a bit more pepper or rosemary can make a difference.


Reducing spice in sauce How do you make already prepared sauce less spicy? I must have used too many hot chili peppers or cooked them too long. Is there something to off set it from being so hot? The sauce is for General Tso's Chicken

There is no robust way to do this in the general case, other than to create  second batch with no additional hot peppers (or a reduced quantity), and combine them.  Of course, then you will have twice as much product.

In some cases, adding a masking agent like sour cream or cheese, which tame the effect of the spiciness may help, but those methods would be very odd with a Chinese dish.

Depending on the degree to which you have over-spiced your sauce, simply using it more sparingly may help.   Traditionally, Chinese food is not swimming in sauce in any case.


What temperatures should I keep my refrigerator and freezer set at? For a refrigerator, if it's cooler, items like milk and meat last a bit longer. However if I set it close to freezing then some items start showing frost on them. What temperature should I set my refrigerator to for best overall results?

Since the person answering is likely to know, I'm also asking what temperature I should set my freezer to.

Daniel is spot-on with his answer. I'll elaborate on it a bit here.

As indicated by his bottled water in the freezer trick, a full freezer is a happy freezer. The same applies to the refrigerator too. While I wouldn't put random bottles of water throughout my refrigerator, it's important to know that the fuller your refrigerator is, the more it holds its temperature when opening/closing, and the less energy you'll use. However, you don't want to jam pack it so full that there isn't any airflow around your stuff, because this can hamper the cooling efficiency as well.

The ideal refrigerator temperature is 35°F (1.6°C). You're not hugging the danger zone like you would be at 40°F (4.4°C), and you're distancing yourself sufficiently from 32°F (0°C) that you don't freeze half the stuff in your refrigerator. That said, the temperature within your fridge can vary rather significantly with normal usage.

The coldest parts of your refrigerator are the back, and the bottom. The back because the cooling element is there, and the bottom because warm air rises. If items you don't want frosty are getting frosty, then move them away from the back of the fridge. I would avoid putting items in the door of your fridge that are particularly sensitive to spoilage. The items in the door of your fridge can easily get as high as 59°F (15°C), and do so often. Putting milk and eggs in your door will significantly decrease their shelf life. Butter is OK in the little covered section in the door, because the door actually helps keep it's temperature a little better. You also generally don't want rock solid frozen butter.

So, put your meats on the bottom shelf in the back, your condiments (mayo, ketchup, mustard, etc.) in the door, and put everything else where it fits.


What is a "Bubble Gum" flavor There is a "flavor of bubble gum", not only for bubble gum, but also for kids toothpaste and milkshakes.

Is it possible to reproduce this taste in the kitchen?
What ingredients are required?
Are they available to consumers or are they 'commercial chemicals'?

Amazon offers several "Bubble Gum Flavoring" or "Bubble Gum Extracts" in both "Natural" and "Artificial" varieties. While the manufactures don't list specific ingredients this is one recipe:

  Here is my basic bubble gum recipe based on "10 parts..." the key is really in the wintergreen, cinnamon and clove.  Fruits can vary a bit-but you will find this to be the "ticket."

  3 parts banana flavor 3 parts pineapple flavor 2 parts wintergreen, 1
  part cinnamon and 1 part clove.

  As I said Bubble Gum flavor is complex and not just one or two notes.
  The oldest formula included a fruit like "king fruit" or "passion
  fruit" but I find most any tropical flavor will pull through.

Whether you (or various manufacturers) choose to use "natural" or "artificial" versions of these flavoring is an individual choice, but it is clearly not limited to "Just artificial chemicals".

Beware that wintergreen oil is quite poisonous: as little as a teaspoon can be fatal. The Drugs.com page on it contains the following: "The highest amount of methyl salicylate typically used in candy flavouring is 0.04%." "Because of this toxicity, official labelling requirements have been changed so that no drug product may contain more than 5% methyl salicylate."


How do you prevent chicken from sticking when searing? My method of making stewed chicken is to sear the outside, take the chicken out, add veggies, saute, THEN add the chicken and cook until its ready. That way the chicken gets a sear and is not overcooked.

But when I flip or take out the chicken the skin just sticks to the pan. If I will deglaze using wine, it will lower the temperature of the pan, making it harder to get a sear before the inside gets over well done.

Use a heavy bottomed pan. Heat pan medium high.  Add oil.  Place chicken skin side down.  Don't move the chicken.  Once you see browning, gently see if the chicken releases.  If it does not, leave it.  It should release with some gentle nudging, but it should not be moved if it doesn't release.  Usually the issue arises when the meat is flipped or removed too soon.


How to achieve a super leavened cake as the Pierre Herme ones? I made several cakes in my life. I know the difference between different leavening agents. I know that low temperature tends to make flatter cakes, but I never could get this kind of shape. If I use a super hot oven I burn the surface and I don't get this shape, there must be something else. Does anyone have experience doing this? Does anyone have a recipe from any modern pastry chef showing this kind of cake? Maybe gluten content in the flour could help?

Thank you

Pierre Herme's "Cake Ispahan" is basically a pound cake flavoured with rose, raspberry and litchi, then glazed.

Let's look at the ingredients as reported on PH's own online shop:

Sugar
water
wheat flour (GLUTEN)
EGGS
cream (MILK)
butter (MILK)
freeze-dried raspberries (2,6%),
freeze-dried litchis (2,6%),
hydrogenated vegetal fats (coconut and palm kernel oils)
whole MILK powder
cocoa butter
natural rose flavor (0,6%)
chopped ALMONDS
baking powder (E450I, E500II and corn starch)
emulsifier : GMO-free SOYA lecithin
potato starch
Guérande salt
natural vanilla extract
dyes : cochineal carmine, E129 and E171.

Emphasis mine on the ingredients that are functional to the cake texture and leavening.

The above looks like the product of some serious food engineering. It's a recipe highly tuned to keep cost down, be highly reproducible, keep well for long periods of time, and of course still be delicious.

Now, how do you get a good tasting pound cake with a huge, cartoon looking dome like Herme does, but without the resources (or just the time) to tinker until you find that 0,3% of potato starch is the right amount? luckily you don't have many of the constraints that lead to that recipe: you can increase food cost (since you don't want to make a profit on it), you can tolerate some variability in the product, and it doesn't have to keep as long (we all know it will be gone in two days after baking)

So, here's the key elements to obtain a big dome:

Cream the butter in a stand mixer, and don't stop until it's very fluffy
Keep creaming while you add eggs (adding them slowly and at room temperature helps the stability of the emulsion

or:

Whip eggs in a stand mixer, and don't stop until they're very fluffy
Add oil or melted butters, keep whipping

then:

Use the weakest flour you can find
You can make your flour even weaker by swapping 10% of it with potato starch
Don't skimp on chemical leavening. Don't even think of skipping it entirely.
Either just before putting it in the oven, or as the crust is beginning to form (5-10 minutes), make a cut on the surface lengthwise, to make sure the crust will split there and not make different splits in undesired places
A smaller pan size seems to work better


Cooking steak on the grill First and foremost, I am a member of a few other Stack Exchange sites, and I haven't been this excited about one for a while. I'm basically a nerd that's trying to get into cooking, and I couldn't be more happy they made this :)

Onto the question,

Growing up, I've always grilled on gas grills. Recently, I've moved into an apartment with my girlfriend and we are only allowed to have a charcoal grill. It's a tiny one (I think), probably about 1.5 - 2 feet in diameter. I use the charcoal that are already covered in flammable material (the black ones), and they work pretty well. I basically follow the directions every single time I go to light the grill. I put about 30-40 bricks in the middle of the grill in a pyramid shape, light them in several places, and then watch it burn. I do this until the flame pretty much dies down and the bricks are about 80-85% covered in grey ash. After that, I put the cage back on the grill, let it heat up so I can clean it off with the brush, and then shake the bricks until they are even across the bottom.

Right after this I put the steak on (right in the middle where there's the most heat from all the bricks burning in the pyramid towards the top before I spread them out). Now at this point, I NEVER have any idea how long it should stay there, when I should flip it, if I should flip it more than once, what I should look for before I flip it, how fast it's cooking - I basically don't know anything. I'm a guy, I hate how I can't grill great! :(

I usually end up either over cooking it so it's tough, or under cooking it and it's still bleeding in the middle. I like my steaks right around medium, and I can never seem to get them perfect. I had a perfect one once, and it was 100% luck. I don't have a thermometer or anything to test the meat with (maybe I need to invest in one?), nor do I have anything that I can test how hot the grill is inside. The grill has a basic black cover with a little vent so I can control the air getting inside, but no thermometer or anything.

Can I get some tips? I'm cooking a steak on the grill for my girlfriend tonight that has been marinating for over 24 hours, and I don't want to mess it up!

P.S. And I almost forgot! The steak I am cooking tonight is a London Broil.

Thanks!

Here's a couple of hints:

Learn to judge doneness by feel. See this answer for a good guide to temp by feel.
Learn to judge grill temp by hand. Hold your hand palm down about 3-4 inches above the grill. If you can hold it there for a second or two, it's hot; 3-4 seconds is medium; 5-6 seconds is low.
Sear first. Start with a very hot grill. You want about two minutes per side. Do not move the steak while it is searing. Make sure you've given the grill grate at least 5 mins to heat up.
Use a two level fire. Once you've seared your steak, you want to finish cooking over a lower heat. Build a two level fire by putting the coals on one side of the grill rather than the whole thing. Then sear over the coals. Then move it to the other side to finish. If the grill isn't wide enough for a two level fire, you could try quenching the fire by cutting off air flow. That will cool it quickly.
Finish with the lid on. This helps cook by heating the air rather than just using direct heat.
Change your fuel. Stop using lighter fluid. Use a chimney instead. Hard lump charcoal is better than briquettes. It's easier to light, creates less left over, and burns hotter.
Rest your meat for a few minutes before eating. Be aware that it will continue to cook during this time, so you want to pull it off a little early.
Read up on cooking steak. There are a bunch of good questions on this site!


Can I use flavored beers in beer bread? I'm making beer bread and only have blue moon or leineys lemon shandy. Would these work without a fruity flavor overpowering the bread?

I've made rather good bread with Hoegaarden, so I assume any witbier like Blue Moon would be fine. There is a noticeable flavor contribution, but it isn't overpowering or unpleasant (unless you don't like witbier, I guess). I don't think I'd use the shandy, but it wouldn't necessarily be overpowering - the bread would probably just taste somewhat lemony.


Garlic Infused Oil—Safety I recently received a bottle of garlic and herb infused olive oil as a gift. It came in a fancy bottle with a cork on top. I tried it out last night and it's terrific.

I've heard about the dangers of garlic infused oils and the possibility of botulism. Is this something I have to worry about with a store-bought oil? Are there any precautionary measures I can take?

We had a very similar question about making your own garlic oil here:

Botulism, Garlic, Cold pressed Olive oil and mason jars

Oil is effectively an anaerobic environment, which promotes the growth of the bacteria and spores responsible for botulism.

However, these types of risks are common in home canning.  Major factories producing canned or bottled goods are going to want to protect themselves against millions of lawsuits, so they are going to take steps to pasteurize (for lack of a better word) the foods before packaging them.  Commercially-packaged infused oils have probably either been heated, acidified, or filtered to guarantee food safety.

On the other hand, the linked question above demonstrates that there are people out there who aren't taking the appropriate precautionary measures.  If this oil came from a well-known company with a good track record then I would not worry (and you can always contact them if you are worried); however, if it came from somebody you've never heard of, and can't find any reliable information on - i.e. somebody who's making this stuff from home - then I might be a little more concerned.

If you trust the source, then trust the oil.  Otherwise, you might want to try sterilizing it yourself; you need to either heat it to 250° F (121° C) or expose it to acid conditions.  Neither of those things are really desirable; heating it can taint the flavour or even burn the oil depending on what kind of oil it is, and if you want to take the acid route, you basically need to to pickle it.  But there you have it, that's what you can do if you don't trust the safety.


Can I use garam masala instead of curry powder? When I don't have curry powder can I use garam masala as a substitute? Can it give the same taste as curry powder or not? If use garam masala how much should be added?

No, you won't get the same flavor or color. Curry powder is a blend of turmeric, cumin, coriander, and sometimes fenugreek, black pepper, mustard or cardamom. Curry powder is generally added towards the beginning of a recipe and cooked with the food.

Garam masala is a finishing spice blend shares some of the ingredients of curry powder (cumin and coriander) but is significantly different in that generally has cinnamon, bay leaves, fennel seed and cloves. Garam masala has many aromatic spices in it, and it is generally added towards the end of a recipe to give it an aromatic punch.


Why stirring an over-fermented sourdough starter caused it to rise a second time to about double the original size? After feeding my sourdough starter, I let it rise to about 2.5x the original height. It eventually collapsed. 24 hours later, after it was well over fermented, I stirred the starter with a spoon. It then suddenly grew back to 2x in about 1 to 2 hours, without adding any water or flour. Can anyone explain this phenomenon?

You actually kneaded the dough. This puts some of the flour and water into contact with yeast that didn't have access to food cause it already ate all its sources within their grasp. Feeding these yeast cells this way caused the second rise, a common method in bread making.


Hot vs Cold Chinese culinary standards Is lamb chops cooked in frying pan considered hot (Yang) or cold (Yin) by Chinese culinary standards.

I would go with 'yang' for seared lamb.

I come from a Chinese family that owned a restaurant for some time. Yin has always been characterized as gentle or moist cooking techniques such as steaming, braising or simmering (gau yuk aka kau yuk). Yang has always been characterized as abrupt or dry cooking techniques such as searing, frying or roasting (stir fry, crispy duck). Crispy duck is actually a combination of yin and yang, as it is first braised then seared. Don't listen to me, I've been brain washed.

Edit: In cooking I would consider 'yang' as intense or harsh and 'yin' as gentle, rather than hot and cold.


Can adequate heating transform spoiled food into safe food? Suppose I have some food that became unsafe or contaminated by any means besides explicitly adding dangerous substances.  It could be past the expiration date, or handled unsafely by leaving at room temperature too long, etc.  Another possibility to consider is botulism from damaged cans.

Would it be possible to resurrect food from these situations, making it safe, by sufficiently heating it?

That'd depend on the exact microbes involved in making it unsafe (or, since you probably don't know, the short answer is "no").

There are basically two ways microbial growth makes food unsafe: either by the presence of the microbes themselves, or by toxins the microbes create. Sufficiently heating the food will kill enough microbes, so those ones will be taken care of. Unfortunately, some of the toxins are heat stable, and it just isn't possible to heat the food to a high enough temperature to destroy these toxins without turning the food to charcoal.

The FDA's Bad Bug Book gives details about specific pathogens and their heat-stable and heat-labile toxins.


What is a good way for a beginner to start sous vide cooking? I am just about to start experimenting with Sous Vide cooking. My plan is to start out with some very simple equipment (A PID controller and a kettle) and slowly build up until I have made my custom awesome Sous Vide cooker. (I'm an robotic engineer, so I'm looking forward to this bit).

To start with, I'd just like to try the simplest Sous Vide recipe I can. Something that:

Requires low accuracy
Is safe for a pregnant woman
Takes less than 2 hours

What meat is reliable for a first sous-vide attempt, and can be cooked in such a short time?

Start by estimating the accuracy of your temperature sensor and controller.  You're going to need to do some comparisons with reliable thermometers for this step.  I'm guessing you don't have any laboratory grade thermometers at home that have recently been professionally calibrated.  (Who does, really?)

Start by finding two or three digital cooking thermometers (preferably different models) that seem trustworthy.  Then calibrate your PID controller by measuring the temperature of a mixture of equal parts crushed ice and water.  It should be 0 °C.  While you're at it, use the ice slush to check the accuracy of the cooking thermometers you found.  Recalibrate or replace them as needed.  Finally, heat some water to around 60 °C (or whatever temperature your think you'll be using most often for cooking).  Then measure the temperature with your PID controller and the cooking thermometers.  That should give you a pretty good idea of how accurate your PID controller will be during cooking.  (If you find that your PID controller is accurate at ice temperatures, but quite a bit off at higher temperatures, you likely need a new temperature sensor.)

Sous vide accuracy is frequently in the neighborhood of +/- 0.1 °C, but +/- 0.5 °C is often good enough.  I'm not sure what "low accuracy" means, but let's say, for example, that you estimate your accuracy to be +/- 2.0 °C.  In that case, simply raise the temperature setting by 2 °C to compensate for the margin of error.  It might result in a different level of doneness than you want, but the food will probably be safe.

Take a look at Douglas Baldwin's A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking.  Not only does it have some excellent recipes for beginners, but it also has some great safety information.  If the food is to be consumed by pregnant women, you don't just want it to be cooked.  You want it pasteurized.  The guide includes tables for looking up the pasteurization time for fish, poultry, and meat (beef, pork, and lamb).  If the meat is starting frozen, add about 30 minutes to the cooking time.  If a recipe's going to take too long, use the tables to adjust the meat thickness or temperature in order to reduce the cooking time to your preference.  Keep in mind that your shouldn't start the timer until the food is in the water bath and the water is up to temperature.  So, save time by heating the water first thing when you're ready to cook.


How to make instant noodle with egg? I made instant noodle, just put the noodle into boiling water for about 3 minutes, and noodle is already. But this time I want make this with an egg, how? should I break the egg first and then put the egg into a boiling water for a minutes then I put the noodle or vice versa?

It depends on whether you're adding the water to the noodles or vice versa.

If I'm boiling the noodles on the stove for three minutes, I measure the right amount of water, and after the noodles are cooked I usually lift (most) of the noodles out of the water and into the bowl, drop the egg in and let it cook in the water while I add the seasoning to the noodles, then pour the egg (and as much water as I want) into the bowl.  I tend to lift the noodles out because they splash more when pouring, but no reason you couldn't add the egg to the noodles and water straight after they're cooked, or even during cooking.  If you do you add the egg as soon as the stove is turned off, the residual heat in the water cooks it enough.  If you don't want extra water in your noodles, you can lift it out with a slotted spoon, or pour most of the water out first, then add to your noodles.

If I'm pouring boiling water onto the noodles (already in the bowl), I add the egg first, even break the yolk and stir a little, lay the noodles on top, and pour the boiling water.  In this case, the water will cool too much to cook the egg fairly fast, so it needs to be there from the start, and almost scrambled to cook more evenly.


How do I convert between the various measurements? I found a recipe that's using one or more measurements that I don't recognize. How can I convert it to a unit that I use locally?

Alternative question template: (to improve searchability):
How can I convert an Imperial weight or volume measurement (tsp, tbsp, cups, ounces, pints, quarts, gallons, pounds) to an equivalent Metric measurement (g, kg, mL, L)?

Common U.S. Volume Measurements:

1 tbsp = 3 tsp
1 fl oz = 2 tbsp
1 cup = 8 oz
1 pint = 2 cups
1 quart = 4 cups
1 gallon = 4 quarts

Common U.S. to Metric Conversions:

1 oz ~ 30 mL
1 cup ~ 237 mL
1 quart ~ 1 L
1 oz = 28.4 g
1 lbs = 0.45 kg

Common Metric to U.S. Conversions:

1 kg = 2.2 lbs

Online Converters:

Google: Type a conversion such as "1 tbsp in mL" and it will automatically convert it for you. This is generally the fastest option.
Wolfram Alpha: Same idea, gives you a little more information and lets you disambiguate between similar measurements (e.g. US tablespoons vs. UK tablespoons).
Convert-Me - Cooking Ingredients: Converts to every well-known measurement at the same time. Can convert (approximate) volume to weight and vice versa, for many ingredients.
Food.com Measurement Converter: Same thing, a little easier to use, but slower.

iPhone/iPad:

Kitchen Calculator
ConvertBot
Smart Chef Conversions
Cookulator
Convert
...or just search the App Store.

Android:

Unit Converter Ultimate
Cooking Conversions
...or just search the Play Store.

Printable Conversion Charts

Cooking Measurement Equivalents (InfoPlease)
Measurement and Conversion Charts (StartCooking)
Conversion Tables (Delia Online)
Converting Recipes to Metric Measures (The Metric Kitchen)
Heirloom Weights & Measures (About.com) - archaic/non-standard measurements

(Note: Use your browser's "print selection" feature to print just the conversion chart)


What can I do to prevent big holes in the bottom of bread loaves? Can you give me any ideas to control this type of hole in bread?

When I had a similar result many years ago, I finally figured out that the problem was a combination of how I shaped the loaves and letting them over rise in the pan.  It also looks to me that these loaves were twisted when formed.  If so, perhaps try a different method of shaping them such as a braid, for a similar look.  Moreover, check your recipe for how much the dough should rise in the pan before going into the oven.  Some call for rising to the level of the bread pan, some call for an inch (rarely more) above the edge of the pan.  Finally, make sure your oven is fully preheated, especially if using a baking stone.


How to heat up a pan on an induction burner? When it comes to a cast-iron skillet, the benefit of using traditional methods is that if you want a super hot pan, you heat it for a long period of time before adding fat to the pan. The instructions say never place an empty pan on an induction burner. So for me adding oil at the beginning was non-sensical, Within a very short period of time the oil was smoking but the pan itself was cold except for the bottom. So how do you get a screaming hot cast iron pan before adding any fat?

The instructions say never place an empty pan on an induction burner

"Never" is a strong word. Too strong.
Of course, you deviate from the manufacturer's instructions at your own risk. But as long as you are careful to not cause harm to the pan or the burner, it should be fine.
The main risk to the burner is overheating the pan, which then gets hot enough that the heat coming from the pan back to the burner is too much. Any decent burner should include a thermal cut-off feature in its design though. The most likely outcome here, at least if you don't do it over and over again, is that the burner simply will turn off. Not a desirable outcome, but at least you can recover from it.
The main risk to the pan is to heat it too quickly, rather than too much, with the heat gradient causing the metal to warp. See e.g. Do induction cookers increase risk of cracking cast iron?. How big a risk this is depends on how powerful the burner is, and how high you set the power.
An induction burner can indeed heat a pan very quickly, and it's tempting to take advantage of that. But if you're heating up an empty cast iron pan to sear something, it will pay to be patient. A radiant electric or, especially, a gas burner heat the area around the pan to a significant extent, which allows the whole pan to heat somewhat more evenly. With the induction burner, you need to let the heat move from the bottom of the pan to the sides by heat conduction through the metal itself, which takes more time.
Note that while cast iron is immune to permanent damage to the finish from high heat that is a risk with other types of pans, especially non-stick surfaces, you can still burn off the seasoned coating if you leave the empty pan at too high a heat for very long. It's simple to fix, just by re-seasoning the pan, but it's certainly inconvenient.
So…go ahead and heat up the empty pan on the induction burner. But increase the power gradually, allowing the sides of the pan to heat up along with the bottom, until you get the whole pan at a suitable temperature.
(For what it's worth, the main issue is the health of the pan. As far as actually cooking goes, if you're just searing or frying something, it doesn't matter very much if the side of the pan are still cold. You're not using the side to cook, so it can be whatever temperature it winds up at, as long as the bottom of the pan is hot enough. Though, keep in mind that having heat in the side helps as a reservoir of heat to reduce the temperature drop of the pan surface when you put something in it.)
Additional reading:
Wikipedia: Induction cooking
Can I heat an empty pan on induction?
PreHeating for High Heat Cooking w/Induction?


Safe to leave oven on at 180F while at work to cook ribs? I'm currently at work and I'm having a little panic attack.

I followed a recipe that require the ribs to be wrapped in foil and cooked at 180F for 9hours.  I left about 30 minutes ago and for who knows why I didn't think it could be a bad idea before, but now I'm feeling unsure and worried.

The ribs are wrapped in two layers of aluminium sitting on a baking sheet.  The ribs were coated since last night in a dry rub and I've added sauce on them this morning before closing the wrapping again.

Please give me your thought.

Edit: I just wanted to give you guys an update.  So by precaution I asked my boss if I could take the rest of the day off and he agreed to let me go around noon (4+ hours into cooking), a risk I had to live with.

When I got home, my house was still standing in one piece and when I opened the door the smell running through my nose was incredible. I left the ribs to cook in the oven for another 5 hours before attempting to put them on the grill of the BBQ at high setting.

The ribs were a bit too tender so I lost some in the process of grilling them, but the taste was amazing.  It's the first time I manage to cook rib without boiling them first and I can honestly say I'm satisfied with the result, though I would probably cut down on the last hour in the oven.

As for the safety of this adventure, I think it would be safe to redo it unattended especially because of how low temperature is set, but as other people mentioned it is important to have a clean oven.

Happy safe cooking everyone.

EDIT 2: I have an electric oven.

Yes, there's a risk, but it's not significantly higher than having most other home appliances turned on  (eg, a lamp, dehumidifier, dish washer or dryer).

Although it heats up, a full-sized oven is insulated, and you're not operating at a very high temperature.  Provided it seals well, even if there's a fire, there would be little oxygen to sustain it.  I would not trust a toaster oven or desktop oven. with this sort of thing, as they're not as well insulated, nor do they tend to seal well.

As ovens are based on temperature, and will cycle on an off, rather than just feed in a constant amount of power (such as a cook top) ... so it won't get so hot that it causes other issues.

Update: I made the (possibly incorrect) assumption that this was an electric oven.  I don't know that I'd trust a gas oven the same way (as I would assume that it is not well sealed) ... although people leave their home heating systems and water heaters on without shutting them off when they leave each day, so it's probably not an issue.


I want to substitute liquid oil with a dry product I would like to know if there is a dry food product available that is a good substitute for vegetable oil or butter.

I want to package dry mixes that I can take camping with me where hopefully all I would need is to add water to cook it.

Bisquick is a dry product that contains partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil and leavening. You can get recipe ideas from their website. With the Bisquick, some powdered eggs and powdered milk, you could create all kinds of fun mixes for camping.


Difference between cooking apples and eating apples What is the difference between cooking apples and eating apples? With so many varieties of apples to choose from, how to choose the apples that are suitable for baking and cooking.

There are many different varieties of apples, some are good for baking because they hold their shapes, some others do not, but can be good for apple sauce or jelly.

Most of the apples are good for eating raw.

There are many lists and charts available on the internets that show all that.

For example :
https://bestapples.com/varieties-information/varieties/

or :
https://www.theyummylife.com/Apple_Fact_Sheet


How far in advance can sweet potatoes be peeled? How long (hours or days)can sweet potatoes be peeled before they are used?  Do they go brown quickly like regular potatoes?  Are there methods for holding them?

Speaking as someone who's had to prep ahead two garbage barrels of sweet potatoes for a giant gumbo event:

If you're just peeling them a few hours ahead, then just hold them whereever.  Unlike russet potatoes, sweet potatoes (especially garnet yams) do not turn brown or lose texture on exposure to air.

If you're going to be holding them for a couple days, then drop them in cold water and refrigerate it.  Or drop them in ice water and add more ice about twice a day (this is what we had to do, it took 2 days to prep all the ingredients).   Wrapping them tightly in plastic wrap might also work, but I haven't tried it.


How to create Yellow Bread Is there a way to make regular white bread yellow without using turmeric or dye? I have tried several recipes, including one using corn flour, which is good, but tastes rather like corn bread, and one using turmeric, which did not mix well and was more gold than yellow.

Another option is to make an enriched bread with a lot of egg yolks in it.

Challah comes to mind but there are also regular sandwich breads that use the same technique. They have more fat and are therefore more tender and richly flavored than leaner sandwich breads.

They tend to be a pale yellow rather than a bright yellow you'd get from a dye.


Meals safe in danger zone I'm on campus for most of the day, and since eating on campus is expensive, I would bring leftover dinners with me. Since they would sit in my backpack for several hours before eating, I would use one of the many microwaves on campus to heat it up to kill any harmful bacteria that may be present.

I'm at a new college now, and there appears to be only one public microwave on the entire campus, which makes bringing leftover dinners inconvenient.

The Problem: The food I bring with me will sit around in the temperature danger zone for several hours before eating. Heating it back up and keeping it cool are not very feasible.

The Need: Meals that don't need to be kept cool or heated up. The only thing I can think of is sandwiches, and the only sandwiches I can think of are boring turkey slices on white bread. So, what kind of meals can I make then?

May I suggest investing in an insulated lunchbox and ice pack (decidedly un-sexy, but practical), or storing in a campus fridge?  These can extend length of time food is at a safe temperature considerably.

Thermoses are wonderful things; a good thermos that is filled with fully heated/cooled food and kept properly sealed will keep the contents out of the temperature danger zone for at least 4 hours.  The brand-name manufacturing site claims 6 hours in the safe zone for commercial products, with up to 16 for hot substances.

Failing this, cheese or PB&J sandwiches are pretty nonperishable.  Remember that cheesemaking was originally intended to preserve the nutritional contents of milk for prolonged periods without refrigeration, and harder cheeses stay safe for longer.  The catch is that they will exude some oil if kept warm.   A similar principle applied to heavily cured meats, which are treated with nitrites or smoked, allowing them to be safely kept at room temperature.

A personal favorite meal for me is baguette, cheese, and a cured sausage.  If you want to go even simpler, you can have a quite satisfying meal with  a really good artisan bread and a dipping container of herbed/peppered olive oil.


the sugar content of raw corn on the vs cooked corn on the cob Is the sugar content of cooked corn on the cob higher than the sugar content of raw corn on the cob? I had a nutritionist tell me uncooked corn on the cob was like eating a non starchy veggie.
true or not true?

This is a difficult question, as there are many different varieties of corn on the cob -- the stuff sold in the United States is typically significantly sweeter than that grown in Europe.

Once cut, corn starts a process that will convert its sugars to starch.  To make store-bought corn taste like fresh cut corn, they've specifically bred corn varieties that are extra sweet.  'Sweet' corn used to have a sugar concentration of around 10%.  Today's 'Supersweet' varietals are closer to 30%, and the sugar lasts longer after it's been harvested.

Cooking stops the breakdown of the sugars, so if you cook freshly cut corn, it'll have more sugar than a similar ear that's let sit for a few days (in transit, in a grocery store, etc.)

If you're buying raw corn on the cob in the grocery store, it will likely have less sugar in it than that same variety sold as cooked corn, simply because they'd have cooked it within a day of the harvest, if not the same day.

However, variety can play just as much of a role, as 'sweet corn' cooked an hour after harvest might still have less sugar than raw 'supersweet corn' a day after harvest.


What are sugar-free sweets actually made from? I was eating a sugar-free "Polo mint" the other day and the question popped into my mind "So, if this isn't sugar.... what is it??"

I understand they use an artificial sweetener (Sorbitol), and Magnesium Stearate as a lubricant, but these don't explain what is the BULK of the sweet actually made from?

A Google session came up with a lot of people asking this question (about sugar free sweets in general) but no solid (!) answers.

It appears that he main ingredients of sugar free Polo Mints are:

Sorbitol - a non-sugar (technically a sugar alcohol) sweetener with less calories per gram than sucrose, about 2.6 kilo-calories per gram compared to sugar's 3.9.  E420 in Europe.
Magnesium stearate - this appears to not be metabolizable.  E470b in Europe.
Mint oils

I did a quick check of UK labeling laws, and it appears all ingredients must be listed.

So the answer is:  the sugar substitute itself, sorbitol provides some of the bulk of the candy, with most of the rest being the magnesium stearate.


How to best hold wild rice I'm making mushroom soup recipe and I'm looking forward to serving it at dinner tomorrow. I have powdered the shitakes, sliced the mushrooms and the wild rice is in the oven now. In order to serve the best possible soup, where should I stop preparation tonight? If I were comfortable with all of the ingredients, I would prepare the soup up to the addition of cream. Unfortunately, I know nothing of wild rice, and how best to hold it. Will it be OK overnight in the fridge? Even better, can I leave the soup (up to the cream addition) on the porch overnight? It's expected to dip 10 degrees F below freezing and stay there until morning.

EDIT: My best guess is to add the rice to the soup now, store overnight on the porch, and add the cornstarch slurry, cream and the rest just prior to service. Would the wild rice hold up to that?

Wild rice, if left in the soup, will absorb water until it is bloated and mushy.   You should therefore refrigerate it separately, and add it as you are finishing the soup.

Foxes, deer, raccoons and so on aside, assuming the temperature outside is at 40 F / 4 C or lower steadily, you can use it as a giant fridge/freezer.  Of course, if the temperate goes as low as you have indicated, your soup base is likely to freeze, which may be inconvenient.


How would you restore sweetness and moisture in this bundt cake? This is a follow-up to my first question about this bundt cake recipe.

I baked that bundt cake again with some changes from a blog post that @Stephie's answer linked to. Specifically:

reduce 2.75 cups sugar to 1.5 cups
use 4 whole eggs instead of 3 whole and 3 yolks
use 1/3 cup cream instead of 3/4 cup

The consistency and crumb are now excellent. It looks like a pound cake (see photo). But things are a little dry and no longer sweet enough so I'm looking for advice on next steps to head back towards the original while still making the dough work. It seems like the only way to increase sweetness is to add some sugar back. For dryness, would you

increase cream
increase yolks
decrease cooking time
other?

My suggestion would be to just go with the sugar increase, it might be sufficient to increase moisture. You can combine it with less baking time, if you want to - try using a thermometer and bake to 94 C, maybe 96 if it gets out underbaked.

If it still feels dry, you should add fat, not water. Increase the butter, and maybe add one more yolk.

You can also use an artificial sweetener instead of sugar, but it will again increase your dryness problem. An interesting option would be to use another form of sugar - replace part of the original sugar with some molasses or a syrup (corn syrup, agave syrup, whatever you find). It will make a moister, heavier cake, but also change the flavor profile.

I must also say that people rarely find pound cake to not be moist enough. If you don't like it that way, you might be the kind of person who likes cakes extra moist, so it might be worth looking into cakes soaked in syrup after baking. You will find most recipes for that from Middle Eastern sources. If that's what you like, you might want to try syruping this one too, it will solve both your moisture and your sweetness problems.


Extra Firm Tofu past expiration date: safe, but for how long? How long past the expiration date is pre-packaged extra-firm tofu safe, tasty and wholesome.  Generally, expiration dates are for sissies, but something about the tofu made me think twice.

I've seen the fresh tofu expiration question already posted: how long is tofu good for? , but thought there may be a difference with the tofu from the grocery produce section.

Tofu is high in protein, with a neutral PH. And it (normally) doesn't contain any preservatives like salt, sugar or nitrates. Bacteria love foods like that. If it's past the date, chuck it out.


Method for including bacon in an otherwise vegan chili? So I've got a vegan chili I make on a regular basis that I think is pretty darn good, but I'm always looking for ways to make it better. (I'm not actually vegan. Obviously.) Last time I included bacon and bourbon but the effect was... not what I had hoped. The bacon became very soggy and the bacon flavor was non-existent. (So was the bourbon flavor, but that's neither here nor there.)

Here's my current method for the chili in broad strokes (makes about 10 cups):

Saute onions, peppers (as well as the chili peppers), and cumin
seeds in some oil until onion is translucent
Dump in beans, tomatoes, liquids (usually beer + veggie broth), and spices
Pressure cook in the instant pot for ~6 mins
Add some tomato paste and then simmer to reduce for 30-60 mins until desired thickness

My first attempt at this was just throwing in 3-4 slices of already-cooked, chopped up bacon in during step 2, but clearly that didn't work so well.

How can I get this to go better so I have a present-but-not-overpowering bacon flavor without gross floppy bits of bacon everywhere?

You have two different approaches from Catija and eckes, depending on what you favor, but you could also combine both approaches -

Start by chopping up the bacon, and then cooking it in the pot until it's nicely crisped and the fat is rendered.

Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon, to paper towels to soak the remaining fat from the bacon and leave it in it's crisped state.  Leave the drippings/fat behind in the pot, and use that instead of oil to saute the vegetables.  This will allow the bacon flavor to permeate the dish, overall, a bit more.

Then, either just before serving, or on the side to sprinkle over the served dish, add the bacon or allow the eater to add, themselves.


problems with buttermilk biscuits I found the following recipe for buttermilk biscuits:

mix 2c flour, 1tsp salt, 1Tbsp baking soda
cut 6Tbsp cold butter into mix
add 1c buttermilk
pat and fold on floured surface, cut into round biscuits and put in oven

The first time I made it, I used plain white flour. The buttermilk made it wet, but not overly so - it became a very sticky dough.

I recently tried again, but this time I used spelt flour instead. The mixture was significantly "wetter" after adding the buttermilk - so much so that I added some (wheat) flour on top to try to get it to what the previous batch was like. They also didn't rise as much when baked.

What explains the difference? My theory is that spelt has less gluten, so the dough didn't hold the CO2 as well when baking. But does this also explain why the batter was so much "wetter" with the same quantities of flour and buttermilk?

In quick breads, as opposed to yeast raised breads, it gelatinized starch that creates the structure of the bread, and holds the leavening.

However, according to my research, most spelt flour (which is in fact a variety of wheat) is whole grain flour, so the bran will interfere with structure development.

My quick research indicates that spelt flour recipes requires less liquid to hydrate than standard wheat flour.  According to What's Cooking America, this is because spelt flour is more water soluble than standard wheat flour (I interpret this to mean that the starches in it are).

If you google "spelt biscuits" you will find a variety of recipes that are tuned to its characteristics, such this one from All Recipes or this one from King Arthur.


How is "nacho sliced" jalapeño different from regular sliced? I noticed that my grocery store sells jalapeño that is "nacho sliced". How is this different (if at all) than just normal "sliced"?

I do understand that the product on the right is labeled "no heat", and that is a significant difference between these products. I am not asking what the difference between these products is in general: I am asking specifically about nacho-sliced-ness. How is a "nacho sliced jalapeño" different from an ordinary "sliced jalapeño"?

Bonus question: why are nachos pictured on the jalapeño that is not "nacho sliced"?

As near as I can determine, "nacho sliced" is simply a marketing term for such pre-sliced, pickled jalapeno peppers.  A quick Google for the term brings up several brands which appear identical to one another.  There are also similar combinations of the words such as "nacho jalapenos, sliced".  The bottle on the right is the only one labelled as such, but they're basically the exact same thing.

So, the only difference?  The "no heat" on the right-hand bottle, and some other subtle changes to the packaging.  It's marketing fluff, not a real distinction.

Bonus answer: they probably decided that the picture on the right bottle looked healthier, or lighter, or more colorful, or some dang thing.


How will less flour affect molten lava cakes? I made some molten cakes the other day, using this recipe from Betty Crocker. However, it is very "cakey." The molten cakes I've had before in restaurants have had more of a "truffle" consistency. Much denser, and smoother in consistency (I'm unsure if this is what is meant by "fudge like" or not). The molten part of the restaurant cake also seems thicker. I'm assuming this is related to the relative densities of the cakes.

Is this a simple instance of just needing to reduce the flour? Or is there more to it?

Here is a list of the ingredients the recipe calls for:

  Unsweetened baking cocoa
  6 oz semisweet baking chocolate, chopped
  1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter or margarine
  3 whole eggs
  3
  egg yolks
  1 1/2
  cups powdered sugar
  1/2 cup Gold Medal® all-purpose flour*
  Additional powdered sugar, if desired
  Sugared kumquats, if desired

Here is a picture of the desired molten cake:

versus the Betty Crocker one:

If you're not getting the exact results you want, I suggest you experiment with a few things and expect a few learning experiences along the way. Look at three or four other recipes and look for ideas of things to try.

As noted in the comments you might want to adjust cooking time and/or temperature. If you're oven is too cool you might have cooked the inside more to get the same external look than if it had been at full temperature. So try more heat or less time. If you think it was too soft inside do the reverse.

That said, it sounds like you don't really like the intended results from the recipe, so you'll probably want to make other variations.

Depending on how things are combined in the preparation process you can try experiment with flour and fat levels. Remember that if you liked the outer layers adjusting the flour will effect those too. Some recipes include unmelted chocolate pieces put into the cake as you pour it into the dish. That will give you more of the texture you see in the first picture (the heavier chocolate will depress into the weak structures below it). You might also want to try adjusting the overall chocolate amount and how much butter you melt into it.


My beef roast is dry on top and soggy on the bottom, how to correct it? When I put a lamb roast on, I rub it in salt, put a few dabs of garlic and pour two glasses of red wine in, and leave it in the slow cooker for 8 hours. Everyone who has never tried this before says it is the most amazing lamb roast they've ever tasted. People who have tasted this before, say this is the 'standard' way to do a lamb roast. (assume 2kg leg of lamb).

When I try the equivalent with a beef roast (2kg leg, rub in salt, 2 glasses of red wine, leave to roast for eight hours) the result is ok, but leaves something to be desired. The result is a little dry on top, and soggy at the bottom. I feel like there is a 'standard' way to cook a beef roast that I'm missing. (My mother suggested perhaps it needed some beef stock).

Lamb meat is tougher and more fatty than your typical beef roast. 2 cups of red wine is a lot of acidic liquid and that can eat away at the meat as to tenderize it.

Your mother may be right, some beef stock to thin out the alcohol may in fact do the trick. Also, rotating the roast would be a good idea as well since a beef roast will dry out at the top because it's not as fatty as lamb. I would typically rotate my roast every now and again if I'm not using an electric rotisserie. I definitely recommend an electric rotisserie for beef roasts.


Is a rillette typically cooked in fat? I want to know if you have cooked your pork to the point where you can 'pull' it can you further cook the rillette in fat / lard in a similar way to what a confit is done or is the fat just poured over the the cooked pork when you seal the meat in the container?

Can you use pink salt (Nitrates) in your cooking process so as to make the rillette store for many months?

Rillette is pork cooked in fat (not really confit, but close to).

Most of what I've seen on the internets is that you can freeze the rillette for longer storage; if not, keep at most for 30 days in the fridge.

You can pour a little bit of the fat on top of the rillette in the container, mostly for extra flavour, not for long term conservation.

I don't know enough about pink salt (Himalayan salt or the Pink curing salt ?) to help you there.


Mould on top and bottom of white wine vinegar I didn't realize there was mold on the top and bottom of my white wine vinegar until I had added a teaspoon into the ingredients for Tzatziki.  Is it OK to use or should it be discarded?

It depends; if it's formed a solid disk and was/is floating on top, what you probably have is a vinegar mother, not mold.  It's a bacterial colony of acetobacter, and probably happened because your vinegar still had a little bit of alcohol left in it for the bacteria to feed on.

You have several options if this is the case:

You can leave it in the bottle; it will do you no harm.
You can filter it out with a coffee filter or similar and discard it.  Your vinegar will be fine.
You can put it in a bottle with (perhaps not so great) wine and/or the leftovers of bottles and make vinegar.


using crumbs mixture multiple times [is it safe?] I made a crumbs mixture for chicken breast strips. I coated them in beaten eggs, then coated them in crumbs mixture and fried. I have leftovers and I would like to just put this into a bag to use later time.

My mother said not to do it because there was egg in it, and it can contain salmonella or something - but my thinking is: I'm gonna fry it anyway so salmonella will get killed by heat. But I don't know.

Is it OK to use crumbs mixture after I mixed it with chicken coated with eggs? I'm talking using it like week later, not the next day.

In my mind, salmonella is not the issue here. I would be generally worried about who knows what growing in the crumb-and-egg mixture over the course of a week.

Whole eggs, uncooked and in the shell, take a surprisingly long time to expire (even longer if you have farm eggs that haven't had the cuticle washed off). But once you crack them open and mix them with other ingredients, you drastically increase their capacity to serve as a growth medium for microorganisms.

My advice to you is do not reuse such a mixture after the cooking session during which it was prepared. Is it going to hurt you to put it in the fridge overnight, and then use it to make some cutlets for breakfast the next day? I doubt it. But we're not talking about caviar and saffron here; bread crumbs are cheap, and a little egg and seasoning is easy to throw together next time you need it.

If you're concerned about convenience, season the bread crumbs and put them in a resealable bag. Store this bag in a cool place and take just as much of the bread crumb mixture as needed each time you want to make a breading. Use a new egg each time and throw away the excess.


Moving cast iron from fridge to stove I made a really big one-pot meal in a cast iron (enameled) dutch oven and I'm fairly lazy. So I take all the leftovers once cooled, slap the lid on, and put it in the fridge.

The next day, it's time to reheat the food. Again, being lazy (and not owning a microwave), I want to just put the entire dutch oven right onto the stove and crank on the gas.

Is there any danger in damaging the dutch oven (cracking of the iron or enamel) by putting very cold iron onto the burner?

According to Le Creuset's care and usage instructions for their enamel coated cast iron cookware, sudden drastic temperature changes may result in cracking.  Other anecdotal remarka on various cooking websites also agree that cracking can occur from sudden tempurature changes.

Le Creuset website


Spring rolls splitting when frozen I was wondering if anyone knew why my spring rolls split when I freeze them? They are a larger spring roll, filled with veges, noodles & meat. I wrap them in 2 sheets of pastry and I put them in a container 3 spring rolls deep. It's not the weight of the spring rolls on top because the top layer are just as split as the bottom layer. They also get quite soggy when defrosting due to the condensation in the container melting.
Thanks

Water expands when it freezes, so you probably have an excess of water in the spring rolls that is causing the skins to break when you freeze them. Try draining the filling as much as you can before freezing them, or leaving a bit of excess room when you wrap them.


Pan instead of a skillet I'm going to be cooking salmon in a white wine sauce & the directions indicate that I need to use a skillet. I don't have one of these, would I be able to use a normal pan or a frying pan instead of a skillet?

If I do use a non-skillet pan, will that mean I need to take special measures to ensure the same end result; or is the skillet just preferable, but bearing little practical difference for this task?

A normal frying pan would probably work just fine for you. If you use a non-stick pan you'll tend to get less crisping on whatever you're cooking and if you plan to deglaze to make your sauce you'll get less yummy bits to work with. However, I've used non-stick cookware to make a lot of things (porkchops in white wine sauce, yum!) and it usually turns out fine. Just be aware, too, that if you're using non-stick cookware to fry and your recipe calls for any kind of cooking oil, you should probably use a little less to avoid that gross oil-soaked effect.


Can you overmix a gluten-free cake? If you're making a regular cake, you add all the first ingredients (eggs, butter, sugar, ...) and mix everything well. When you add the last ingredient, the flour, you mix until it's just incorporated, since over-mixing can make the gluten form and you'll end up with a tough cake.

If you work with gluten-free flour, can you mix as long as you want?

I run a gluten free bakery and yes, over mixing is a concern for many cake batters, cookie doughs, pie crusts, etc. I find, what makes overmixing an issue is the gums used in the recipes. This being either xanthan or guar. An over-mixed cake batter will become very stringy and goopy, and will not pour smoothly when run off of a spoon, for example. Cookie dough, when over-mixed, will become very tough and elastic-like. Cookie dough should break apart easily when you separate it, but an overmixed cookie dough will stretch when pulled apart... Kind of like play dough or fondant.

Just like when baking with wheat flour, GF recipes that use gums (so pretty much all of them) yield a tougher, somewhat unpleasant texture.


How much brine do I need to freeze icecream? Suppose that I am making ice-cream the old fashioned way, by keeping a bowl of ice cream base in a bigger bowl of table salt solution cooled to below freezing.

How much brine do I need per 100 g of ice cream base?
Does it depend on the type of ice cream I use (philadelphia (no egg yolks) vs. french (with egg yolks) vs. gelato (starch-thickened))? What is the direction of the dependency?
Does it depend on the overrun of the ice cream base? (I tend to keep a part of the cream aside, whip to soft peaks, then gently fold into the cooled base). What is the direction of the dependency?
Does it depend on the brine concentration? What is the optimum concentration?
Assume that I can stir the base until it has frozen. How big a difference will this make?

I have a freezer which can give me -23°C, if I remember correctly. I could practically freeze the brine (which melts at -17.7°C, as I was informed in chat), or keep it close to freezing, before I start the ice cream making. Assume that I fill the inner bowl with ice cream base at fridge temperature (around 4°C) and that my stirring can't scrape the sides of the inner bowl efficiently. The inner bowl is likely to be made of glass (but if there is substantial difference in using a thin steel inner bowl, please tell me, because in this case, I am likely to get a new bowl specifically for ice cream).

As always, my goal is the creamiest ice-cream possible, with as few crystals as possible.

Brine

Some assorted thoughts, before I try to guess an actual quantity:

Dependence on overrun shouldn't really be significant, as long as you're mixing well. The air doesn't add significant heat capacity, but it will make heat transfer less effective by providing some insulation, so you do need to mix well.

I can't imagine dependence on type of ice cream being that huge - whether you're using cream or egg yolks, you've still got plenty of water. I found a table for specific heats; it looks like eggs have a slightly lower heat capacity above freezing, and slightly higher after. I'm not sure about just the yolks, or about the latent heats of either. In any case, the properties of the ice cream custard will be somewhere between water and those. (Wildly generalizing, ice cream might be 1/5 sugar and 1/6 fat by weight.)

The more salt you have in your brine, the colder you can get it before it freezes. You won't be able to get it as cold if you don't have as much salt. I think you were slightly misinformed in chat: 0F (-17.7C) was defined (for whatever reason) using ammonium chloride. Saltwater brine (sodium chloride) can reach -21.1C (-6.0F) with 23.3% salt by weight (source: wikipedia). I believe the freezing point is roughly linear as a function of salt concentration; in any case, it'll be the most effective with the highest concentration.

You missed one factor that may well be bigger than anything you listed: heat coming in from the environment. This will depend on how well insulated your outside vessel is, the ambient temperature, and how much surface of the brine is exposed. (Also on how much you're gripping it with your hands, I suppose.)

As for quantities, I could try to ballpark something using specific heat/latent heat, but I think a far better method is to just look at the recipes for "ice cream in a bag" - the general idea of those is to put the ice cream mixture in a smaller plastic bag bag, inside a gallon bag full of icy brine, and shake. There are a lot of recipes using a sandwich or quart bag with 1/2 to 1 cup volume (probably ~120-240g) ice cream mixture, inside a gallon bag with at least 2-3 cups of crushed ice plus plenty of salt (maybe 300-600g? hard to say). I also found this one with the brine just in a bowl, using a pint (probably ~475g) of ice cream mixture and 3-4 pounds of ice. The latter is a little easier to estimate based on; it suggests for 100g of ice cream mixture you might need 300-350g of brine. (The other recipes are consistent with this.)

Mixing

This is really a separate question from all the brine stuff. If you want to get good ice cream, you absolutely must mix (churn). This both helps minimize crystal size and incorporate air. (Unlike whipping a liquid, mixing during freezing doesn't have to be as vigorous to get the air in.) It's possible that if you freeze it fast enough, you could make up for the air part with your pre-whipping, but I suspect you'll lose a bit of that volume during freezing. So at the very least, stirring will break up crystals, and it may well give you airier, fluffier ice cream too. (I'd be careful with that New York Times recipe I linked to; it's going to be prone to giving you unwanted crystallization if you don't take care with the "kneading", and may not leave a lot of overrun.)

General advice

I know you may have reasons not to do this, but in general, if you're willing to go to this much effort, you might as well buy an ice cream machine if you can. The part that you freeze will probably take up less freezer space than the ice/brine you'd otherwise use, and it'll also do the churning for you.


Is my pork Safe to eat after 3 hours sitting out?? So I put some pulled pork in the crock pot on low for about 5 hours when my boyfriend turned it off without me knowing.. Recipie said 7 hours total on low. So after about 3 hours of it being off we turned it on warm and left it on overnight.. In the morning I turned it back up to low and it cooked for about another 5 hours (I was told you can't really overcook pulled pork, just gets more tender) and I am wondering if it is safe to eat??

Short answer:  "warm" is not guaranteed to be a temperature where pathogens will not grow--it is just intended to keep food warm for a short period of time as you eat dinner or similar.   It may even be creating conditions that will incubate any pathogens present and help them to grow.

Additionally, you had this food in a completely uncontrolled temperature environment for at least three hours.

You should discard this pork.

See also:  How long can cooked food be safely stored at room/warm temperature?


Can I boil a full chicken for several hours? I know I can boil a chicken for about 30 minutes

I want to boil a chicken with vegetables, lemons and some spices for 3+ hours. Can I do it safely?

How is the chicken fat going to affect the texture/taste?

After maybe 45 minutes to an hour, the chicken will be very soft and falling off the bones, the broth will have a strong but pleasant chicken flavor, and the lemons and vegetables will probably be completely depleted and disintegrated.  This is usually a good start for home made chicken soup. At this point you'd probably strain it, let it cool, remove the meat from the bones and be left with soup.

After 3 hours the chicken meat will start to get mushy and disintegrate, the cartilage and connective tissue of the bones will also be melting and releasing gelatin into the broth, the vegetables will also disintegrate.  This would result in a pretty strong chicken broth that is full of gelatin, which would be good once you strained everything else out.

If you did not remove the fat and skin from the chicken, the will mostly melt and leave rendered fat in the broth, but some of the skin will never melt and will remain with a very unappealing texture and flavor.  The fat will generally float to the top and can be pretty easily removed once the broth cools.


Can white rice be burned without looking yellow, brown or black? I try to boil my rice by using just enough water, if I don't cook it in enough water or cook it for too long, the rice will burn.

However, when I burn the rice, I detect it because some of them stick to the pan, and some of the rices close to the once that stick might still taste bad. When cooking with spices, it becomes hard to notice these slightly charred tastes, so my question is as follows, is it possible to burn rice without any indicators like decoloration and stickiness to the cooking surface?

Probably no. Burnt rice will smell burnt and turn black and impact a lot of the rice.

I've burn rice, and it ends by discarding everything.

On the other hand,
There is a brief moment between cooked rice and burnt rice when the rice on the bottom of the pan is just getting crispy, like the Paella's socarrat.


Same spaghetti sauce recipe for over 30 years I’ve been making the same spaghetti sauce for over 30 years and everybody loves it! But,the last 6+ times that I have made it it tastes acidic. I can’t figure out why.  It’s a very Basic recipe using tomato sauce, a can of whole tomatoes, a can of tomato soup to cut the acidity ( I know that sounds weird but it works)  onion garlic, etc   I use  a little chicken broth and red wine if I have it handy. I always use my Dutch oven to cook it. I add meat balls the last hour or so.  Does anyone have any idea as to why the flavor is different now??

I'm assuming multiple people are tasting the acidity.
Different tinned tomatoes can have widely different acidity. These seem like a much more likely source for acid than any other ingredient, even the red wine. The soup is likely to be fairly neutral. The onion, garlic (and probably other soffrito) are somewhat alkaline. Can't imagine you've lacto-fermented your chicken broth or your meatballs.
OT but there's some great threads on balancing acidity already.


Can I use cornstarch in fondant icing? Can I use cornstarch instead of gelatin in a fondant icing? If so, what is the needed quantity of cornflour/starch given that the original recipe asks for 1 teaspoon of gelatin?

I want to know because I'm a vegetarian, so I want to avoid gelatin.

If you google "vegan fondant recipe", you will find a number of recipes for fondant which do not use gelatin.

In general, they use agar agar in lieu of gelatin (most seem to use flaked agar agar substituted one to one by volume for gelatin powder), and include glycerin as an anti-cracking agent.  Most seem also to use some hydrogenated vegetable shortening.

While it is possible that a cornstarch gel might be effective, I have not tried this, and none of the references I could find mentioned it—they all seem to use agar agar.

. . .

If you are not averse to a commercial product, the Satin Ice prepared fondant is certified kosher pareve, and vegan, and so contains no animal products.  There may be acceptable commercial products, but this one came up several times in my research.


Can I season a stainless steel frying pan? After the advice I gave about seasoning a cast iron pan,  one would think I knew. I don't though. I have 2 large cast iron pans I use regularly but I'd love my good quality small stainless steel pan to have the same hard lasting seasoned non-stick coating my iron pans have. I've injured my wrists many years back so I'd like a pan that's easy to move without the strain. I don't want to use anything like spray Pam either.

Considering how seasoning works, it sounds do-able except for one problem. The top layer of a cast iron pan isn't completely smooth but slightly porous. That's why an oil film is able to initially stick to the pan. I'm not sure a stainless steel pan's surface is porous.

The way most people think of a new stainless pan being seasoned in preparation for use isn't what I mean. That's not a long lasting finish. I want the tough finish you get seasoning a cast iron pan by multiple oiling, heating and cooling. So has anyone tried and if so, what were your results? I don't want to experiment on my one good small pan.

It is not something that I would do - I just use stainless with sufficient oil. But if you really want to try it, then yes, you can make it stick. It is more difficult than with cast iron, but it is not impossible. First, steel does have "pores" (actually crags) on a microscopic level. It is not that much smoother than forged iron, which is also seasoned. Second, we have had enough questions around here of people complaining about "ruining" their stainless when they accidentally polymerized oil onto it. Third, my pans also hold a bit of polymerization on the walls, where splatter meets the hot metal.

I cannot give you the exact conditions under which it will work, but I don't think there is much difference between the best process for seasoning stainless steel and the best process for seasoning iron. The difference is in that you have a much smaller margin for error. But with good technique and patience, you should be able to do it on purpose.


Strawberry smoothie tastes grassy? I've been making enjoyable strawberries at home. However, recently, I used some different strawberries. The new strawberries are bigger, less sweet and a lot less sour, so I'm putting in more strawberries than before. Everything else is the same as usual, with ice, sugar, and milk.

The smoothies, after the change in strawberries, have had a grassy taste & smell, hinting of grass and dirt. The strawberries should be clean and have their stems cut off. The grassy taste goes down with extra ice, but so does the sweetness.

How can I make my strawberry smoothy taste less grassy? (with the new strawberries)

How do the strawberries smell? If they don't have a strong strawberry smell, you won't be able to squeeze any more strawberry taste out of them. You can try adding a strawberry extract to add more strawberry flavor; maybe start with 1/4 teaspoon.


How long can I safely keep a thawing pork shoulder in the fridge? I purchased a rock-hard, six-pound pork shoulder at the farmers' market on Sunday and have been thawing it in the fridge since then. As of this afternoon, it's still not completely thawed, and I'm starting to wonder if the thawed outer layer of the shoulder might go bad before its inner layer thaws. How long can I continue to safely thaw it?

Unless your fridge is above 40 F (4 C), it won't go bad. I've had large frozen turkeys take 4 days to thaw before. Just use it once it is fully thawed, don't let it sit around thawed for several more days.

There's no food that I'm aware of that goes bad in the time it takes to thaw it. The stilltasty link below shows 3-5 days for refrigerated meat, and 4-6 months for frozen. Transitioning from frozen to thawed though, I generally count on defrost time + 2-3 days.

If you want to thaw it faster you can always use the cold water method. Simply place it in a sink full of cold water (submerged) and change the water every 30 minutes. The rule of thumb for turkey is 30 minutes of thaw time per pound. I imagine pork shoulder would be similar, maybe a little longer?

Additional Info:

http://stilltasty.com/fooditems/index/18060


Is it possible to cream clarified butter with sugar? Will it have the same benefits as shortening and oil? Is it really possible to cream clarified butter? And considering that clarified butter is 100% fat, am I correct in assuming you'd get the taste of butter and also the leavening benefits of shortening if it was creamed with sugar? And when melted, would it work just like oil?  Basically the best of butter, shortening and oil into one?

Is it really possible to cream clarified butter [with sugar]?

Sure, why not?

  And considering that clarified butter is 100% fat, am I correct in assuming you'd get the taste of butter and also the leavening benefits of shortening if it was creamed with sugar?

You would get the taste of clarified butter (and sugar, of course), but that's somewhat different from the taste of regular butter. The "leavening benefits" of creamed butter are pretty minimal, but they'd still be there.

  And when melted, would it work just like oil?

Well, like melted clarified butter with sugar on the bottom, sure. The creaming wouldn't really have an effect here.


How to prevent carrot juice from turning brown? I've been juicing up carrots with a centrifugal juice extractor. There's a lot of overhead (prep and cleanup) so it makes sense to do a big batch and keep it in the fridge for a couple of days.

Unfortunately, the refrigerated juice seems to turn brown pretty quickly. Here it is after 48 hours:

The pulp has precipitated to the bottom and retains its pleasant orange hue, but the juice has turned an ugly and unappetizing brown. It tastes better than it looks, but the flavor has suffered too. It's pretty extreme at 48 hours, but there is significant browning even at 24.

I'm using refrigerated carrots and putting the juice immediately in a plastic screw-top (Ziploc) container in the fridge.

Is there anything I can do to keep my carrot juice looking and tasting fresh?

This is classic enzymatic-oxidation browning. Two main culprits - oxygen and a group of enzymes (polyphenoloxidases) that promotes a reaction between oxygen and polyphenolic compounds in the juice.

The juicing action will inevitably end up stirring into the liquid a lot of air which will end up dissolved in it. Air has 21% oxygen in it. Solubility of gases improves with lower temperatures. So, cold juice will hold more oxygen, and warm juice less. Unless you do your juicing inside a sealed cupboard filled with nitrogen, you will not be able to exclude oxygen from getting inside your juice. At lower temperatures, the enzymes become less active which will slow down the browning and counter the higher concentration of oxygen in your juice, but given enough hours, browning will still happen. You can try putting a barrier on the surface of the juice (a sheet of parchment or plastic for example) as soon as you finish juicing and before you put it in the fridge to prevent more oxygen from dissolving into the juice as it chills. It is unlikely to stop the browning.

You can restrain the enzymes by making the juice more acidic, with lemon juice for example, or vitamin C as suggested above (the key is pH not how much Vitamin C it naturally has) or citric acid. That would only slow down the browning and you might not like the altered taste.

You can deactivate the enzyme permanently by heat which means heating the juice to at least 65C, or better still, heating the carrots before juicing to well beyond 65C briefly. I suggest cutting the carrots into smaller pieces and putting them into a very hot water with any of the above acidic additives. I am sure heating will inevitably affect the taste, but it will stop the browning. It works with apples and pears. You can play with timing so that you destroy a certain amount of the enzymes, enough to have a good compromise between less browning and less taste change.

There are suggestions you find online such as freezing. You can freeze your juice, but again it would only slow down the browning a bit more, it will still happen given enough hours.

Other more extreme (and normally impractical) ideas include vacuuming the juice to extract dissolved gases from it, or using UHT and high pressure methods to break the enzyme.

I typically use 65C acidic water to blanche whatever fruit or vegetable, and I use a barrier on the juice surface before storing/chilling.


Is this Pomegranate Molasses rescuable? I was trying to make Alton Brown's Pomegranate Molasses, but had trouble converting his "medium-low heat" to my electric (glass top) stove.
I ended up with what commenters on the above link describe as "Pomegranate Candy" because I let it get too thick and it solidified as it cooled.
Other than starting again with lower heat or less time, is there any way to rescue it? Can I reheat it with more pomegranate juice (or plain water) added to rehydrate it somehow?

Yes. You can dissolve your pomegranate candy in plain water and cook it to a more usable consistency. A candy thermometer is useful here. But if you have any instant read thermometer for cooking, you should aim for around 220°F (104°C) max. If you get to 230°F (110°C), you'll be making candy again.
If you don't have a thermometer handy, I recommend getting a cup of ice. As you recook your syrup and notice it start to reduce, take a spoonful and drip a little onto your ice. That will chill it quickly and allow you to see where the final product will be texturally.


What is the difference between tripe and offal? Simple enough question.  What is the difference between offal and tripe? I think they are both made from the less desireable parts of the animal but would like to know what the difference is between the two.

Offal is a general term for any parts of the animal's innards which are not the conventional cuts from the muscle and bone.  It would vary by cuisine, but could include liver, kidneys, heart, brains, stomach, or tongue.  Those particularly fussy about what they eat might even extend it to things like tail and neck, although most wouldn't regard these as offal per se.

Tripe, on the other hand, refers specifically to the stomach. It's usually washed, and often bleached, then slow cooked, although again, the preparation varies by region.  Common tripe dishes come from the stomachs of cow and sheep, and despite falling out of favour as a cheap alternative to regular meat, it's still quite popular in some parts of Europe.


Why would IQF shrimp say "do not force thaw under running water"? I recently made a recipe that called for thawing frozen shrimp by running them under cold water.  However, I noticed that the IQF tail-on shrimp I buy from Costco state, "DO NOT FORCE THAW UNDER RUNNING WATER".

Why might they add this capitalized warning?  Would it be a safety issue or a texture issue?

Three possibilities that I can think of:

If the water weren't cool enough and they were big shrimp, it could raise them to a temperature at which bacteria could develop.
If the water were actually warm or hot, it could start to cook the shrimp.
If the shrimp were defrosted directly under water, not in a bag, they could absorb some of the water and the texture would become mushy.

So of course Costco could write "If you defrost the shrimp under water, make sure they're in a bag and the water is cold." But perhaps they feel that people are more likely to read a warning than an instruction, so their current wording is safer.

Just guessing, anyway, but a quick Google search doesn't turn up anything more likely or useful!


How do you poach chicken? How do you poach chicken?

By hunting chicken in a game preserve? ;-)

http://www.recipetips.com/kitchen-tips/t--324/poaching-chicken.asp

The essence of poaching chicken is a gentle boil in water, stock or other flavorful liquid. I really like poaching chunks of chicken in a thin sweet-and-sour sauce, then thickening the sauce, adding pineapple chunks, and serving over rice.


What does resting mean I'm a little confused with what resting actually means.

I've typically seen this term being used where you move food (typically meat) from the oven/grill/heat and then keep it warm for "some time" (maybe 10's of minutes depending on the size).

What has confused me is Gordon Ramsay's burger video, where he is cooking burgers on a BBQ. He then moves the burgers to the "resting" rack (if that is the right term) within the BBQ. This rack is still above the heat. To me, this is not resting, this is cooking at a lower heat.

https://youtu.be/v191Y8AUk6w - He says this at 4:43 where also says "they'll continue cooking". AT 5:50, he closes the lid!

I'm assuming resting does not mean "left alone" because many recipes, such as a roast, call for us to put meat in the oven and leave it alone until cooked.

So my question, which may be a double question is: Is there a definition of what resting means and if so, what is it?

There is, as you've seen, no universally precise definition. Broadly, though, "resting" refers to allowing heat to diffuse through the food. Although the burgers are "still cooking" once placed on the higher rack, the amount of heat being applied is nowhere near as high as when they were on the grill, and following the resting the temperature differential will be lower than when they were first taken off the grill.


Difference between New York strip and a first cut strip What is the difference between a New York strip and a first cut strip steak?

From Huffington Post:

  Strip steak: The multiplicity of names — New York strip, club steak, Kansas City steak, shell steak — attests to the popularity of this steak. Tender (but not too tender); well-marbled (i.e., generously endowed with fat); and richly flavored — what more could you ask for in a steak? Not that you asked, but a center cut New York strip is Steven Raichlen’s favorite cut. Tip: Sometimes you’ll find supermarket strip steaks labeled “first cut.” This makes them sound more exclusive, but actually the “first cut” has a visible line of gristle running through the meat. That’s why “first cut” strips cost about half the price of the more desirable center cuts of the short loin.

(Emphasis mine.)


Can a good cast iron seasoning really be built from butter? I don't get it. Various net pundits assert that it's a bad idea to season cast iron with butter, because butter consists of proteins + fat, and the proteins will burn and be incorporated into the polymer mesh. That collective wisdom says that it's quite alright to cook with butter after a pan is well-seasoned, but one should not season a pan with butter.
Yet a maker of cast iron pans provides a recipe (for cornbread) that does exactly that: they say that this is a good way to season a cast iron pan.
I'm not expecting you to be a polymer researcher with intricate knowledge of whether burnt proteins will slide off during pan cleaning after cooking with butter, or will be incorporated into the seasoning (but hey, if you are, perfect!).
What I'm asking is this: do you have practical experience using butter as the main source of building up a seasoning? If yes, how good is the seasoning?

As long as you use clarified butter (ghee), ie; with the solids removed, there's no obvious reason it shouldn't work as well as any other fat.


What is the purpose of vermouth in potato leek soup? I have taken elements of a number of different recipes and have developed my own recipe for potato leek soup.  The ingredients are:

Potatos
Leeks
Vegetable and chicken stock
Butter
Garlic
Heavy cream
Salt, various herbs and spices
Vermouth

Quite a few of the recipes I built mine from included the dry vermouth so I built it into mine as well.  In an 8 qt stock pot I use 2/3 cup (specifically Martini & Rossi Extra Dry).  It's not enough for me to notice a flavor difference between batches that I make with it and without.  That leaves me to wonder what it's there for.  I guess it could provide a touch of sweetness.  Would it be for the acidic factor as well?

If you need more detailed information on the ratios of ingredients I'd be happy to share, just left it out for brevity.

Vermouth is a fortified white wine that has been infused with herbs, spices and fruits. You should expect it to add those flavors to your dish.

Have you tasted the vermouth on its own? Are you sure you can't identify it? If you still think you can't, I'd suggest tasting your soup as you add each ingredient and concentrate on what flavors each ingredient adds.

For what it's worth, Cooks Illustrated has reviewed Martini & Rossi Extra Dry and classified it as "not recommended" due to tasting medicinal and harsh.

Gallo Extra Dry California and Noilly Prat Original French were both recommended, in that order.

They used a pan sauce as well as straight tasting for their reviews. Perhaps you could try that yourself and see what flavors vermouth gives to a pan sauce, as compared to a white wine. You might find out that you're overpowering or masking a flavor in your vermouth with some of your various herbs & spices.


Where can I buy fresh water prawns? Seafood Watch persuaded me that I ought to experiment with fresh water prawns in my cooking.

Problem: I'm in central Texas, and I can't find any.  The local fish markets and grocers offer no leads, and I've failed to find any good options for having them shipped on line.

Remember that a lot of this seafood naming is odd sometimes. Prawn is often used to refer to what we used to call shrimp.

In the UK I get these in brine from my local supermarket, marked "krabben im lake" or something similar ...


What is the most energy efficient way to cook meat on an electric stove? I have a reduced sense of taste and smell; so when I cook, things like preparation times, cost of ingredients, energy efficiency, healthiness and to a small extent novelty of the dish play a slightly more important role than taste or even texture (for taste I usually just add some bitter Marmite or some extra hot Chakalaka).  There is one taste that I do not like and that is the greasy taste.

Thus I sometimes find myself cooking some cheap cut of meat to put on bread.  So I am asking how do I make my cooking more energy efficient? Here are the constraints: it should not be mince (unless that answer can be easily tacked on), the precooking preparation time should be most 10 minutes (the actual cooking time does not matter), it should use a minimal amount of oil (if at all), the meat should be well done and I am cooking in a stainless steel pot on an electric stove.

Should I cook the meat quickly or slowly (higher temperatures lose more heat per second, but cook the meat faster)?  Should I cook it in water or fry it (for cooking in water, more heat is transferred to the meat, but energy is lost due to evaporation and it takes energy to heat the water)?  The only thing that I am certain of is that I must cook with the lid on.

I am also interested in the science behind it.

As @Jefromi says, there is no simple answer. Also depends on your definition of "cooked".

For water vs oil,  most likely oil is more energy efficient. Frying a 16 oz steak takes only ~5/10  minutes, whereas boiling 16 oz of meat in water will take at least double that time, even if you use exact same pan and exact same stove. If you cut the meat more strategically, you can save some energy, which brings me to 2nd point.
The shape of the meat will have a big influence. For example, a 1 inch thick tenderloin will take considerably more energy to "cook" compared to 4 tenderloin steaks of quarter inch, assuming you can lay all 4 steaks in a pan together.

There is a saying that in ancient China, stove fuel was hard to come by, thats why they always used to cut the meat as thin as possible so that the dish finishes cooking fast with minimum stove-time. Don't know if its historically accurate, though :)


Cleaning silver with aluminum Will the silver get broken down (disappear a little bit) when cleaning silver utensils with boiling water, baking soda and aluminium?

Aluminium is just a catalyst (is not consumed) in this reaction

Silver sulfides are in theory reformed back into silver, so none should be lost. In practice the sulfides will have moved the silver away from the main surface with pitting etc, so some silver will be lost, but there is no product that can put the silver back in place anyway

A large surface area of aluminium, and plenty of heat improves the reaction

In the days before marketing companies selling us crap in cans, people used to use a purpose made sheet of (rather impure) aluminum for this very purpose, it had hundreds of tiny holes punched into it to improve the surface area


How to melt glucose? I recent backed a pie that included glucose and the recipe pretty much only said melt glucose...nothing about how to use it which lead me to much agony :)

So the question is ... is there a common ratio of glucose/water that you should use? I clearly failed in the beginning thinking that it should just be thrown into a pot and then heated...it sticks together into big blocks :S In the end I put in some water, but I assume that was a bit to late since it never dissolved 100%

If it's for a pie, by melt the recipe author probably meant to dissolve in the least amount of water.  You can do that by making a glucose syrup, as Pulse mentioned.  Place one cup of dextrose with a third of a cup of water in a pot and heat until dissolved.  Commercial glucose syrups are typically 10 to 25% water.

If you melt solid glucose in a pan, which happens at about 146°C, it will burn.


Oil vs butter in chocolate sponge cake cake I baked a Victoria chocolate sponge cake. It did not turn to be a sponge cake at all. I wouldn't call it hard, but it was definitely not a moist cake. It was kind of fudgy (but it won't pass off for a fudge cake either).

I was wondering if I could replace the butter with oil and also add milk to give me a nice moist chocolate cake. If I could, can I replace the amount of butter I used with 80% oil and 20% milk. Will that work??

Please help.

You have attempted one of the most precise baking exercises of all... The Victorian sponge. I personally prefer to use Delia Smith's recipe. It make for a super light sponge. To make it "right" ensure that your butter and your eggs are at room temperature. My ingredients (pardon my metric) are as follows...

225 g    Butter (8 oz)
225 g    Caster Sugar (8 oz)
4 x      Medium Eggs
175 g    Self-Raising Flour (6 oz) Sieved
50 g     Cocoa Powder (2 oz)

If I deviate from this I am sure to end up with pancakes... Make sure that you sieve your flour well... It needs lots of air.

Chocolate cake on the other hand is a completely different monster.

150 g    self-raising flour, sifted
50 g     cocoa, sifted
220 g    caster sugar
80 g     butter, softened
125 ml   milk
2 x      eggs lightly beaten

Its a much heavier recipe; less SR Flour, more mechanical integration (4 minutes instead of one; more moisture in the form of milk; less eggs...


Undercooked areas in chicken breast even though thermometer reads 165 degrees in thickest part I pan fried chicken cutlets and stuck the thermometer in the thickest part and it read 165 degrees but when I ate a bit there was a small spot of pink, slightly raw tasting chicken, kind of on the side. These were fairly thin pieces. Does the thermometer average the temperature and while some parts may be quite hot can it still have colder spots? How do you ensure that all of the cutlet is cooked if the thermometer is missing the cold spots? My thermometer seems reliable when I use it on roast or baked chicken.

If the raw spot was in a thin area, I'd suggest that it was caused by the pan frying method.

A thin spot could leave a gap between the surface of the pan and the meat itself, and so not absorb much heat.

To reduce these indentations, you can mechanically reshape the meat before cooking (e.g. squash down the higher parts).

In addition, or instead, as soon as you start cooking, it's a good idea to use the spatula to briefly press the meat onto the pan's surface.
This will flatten the bottom face of the meat and give it uniform contact with the heat.

By the time you turn it over, the meat will have become firm, so you won't be able to fully flatten the second face against the pan, but that's okay as the thin parts will already be mostly cooked and the parts that still need heat will be in contact with the cooking surface.