How do I tell if my fermented sauce has gone bad? Related to another question of mine:

I found this recipe for a lacto fermented hot sauce. Basically you take blended up chiles, 2.5% salt, water (not sure if necessary), and oak cubes (I kind of just want to buy a small barrel) and age it all together for 3 months to 2 years and cut it with vinegar. Easy enough.

However, in the answer to my previous question it mentioned that I might end up with "nightmare juice". How do I ensure that my sauce, assuming I use enough salt, has not spoiled (or at least is not unsafe to eat)? If I add garlic or other herbs/spices to the mix, will this change?

The thing about fermentation is that it's a biological process. It's been used for thousands of years to prepare a wide variety of foods, it's extremely easy, and it's (generally) pretty safe if you follow the appropriate guidelines. But biological processes are inherently messy, and things can go wrong. You must be aware of this and able to identify as best you can when a product has fermented unsafely.

One thing to note here is that the related answer's comment about "nightmare juice" is related to the potential consequences of not adding enough salt. This is one of the basic guidelines of lactic fermentation. You need a high enough salt concentration to kill or render inert most of the bacteria that are naturally present in our air and food, while still providing a hospitable medium for the cultures that process food through lactic fermentation. (On the flip side, adding too much salt will prevent much of anything from surviving, in which case you're salting or curing rather than fermenting.) As the food ferments, those cultures will produce enough lactic acid that they'll kill off most anything else trying to grow. But there's always the risk that something hardy enough to survive that environment and potentially harmful to humans will make it into your ferment.

Other guidelines for the process include using clean equipment (to reduce the risk of adding unintended or unsafe bacteria in the first place), making sure your ferment stays submerged (to maintain the salt level throughout; this is less a concern with a blended product like your pepper sauce), and releasing excess gas if you're using a sealed vessel (so it doesn't explode).

Once your ferment is completed, you'll want to check for certain indicators of spoilage or fermentation issues:

Continued outgassing. Lactic cultures will usually produce a lot of gas during the first week or two, and then slow down; if you're seeing a lot of excess gas produced after about a month of fermentation, it can be a sign that some other opportunistic organism has moved in, and it's best not to risk consuming the product.
Discoloration. Like canning or other preservation methods, fermentation will usually oxidize the bright chlorophyll greens of certain vegetables (beans, cucumbers, etc.) and it will mute some other colors. But it should not drastically change the color of the food otherwise. If you have pepper puree that's predominantly orange when it goes in, it should be mostly the same after fermentation. Big patches of different color are a major indicator of spoilage.
Obvious surface scum or growths. Anything that looks like it's growing on the surface of your ferment isn't a good sign; it can indicate unwelcome bacterial or fungal growth and should generally be considered unsafe.
Unpleasant smell. This can be a little tricky; lacto-fermented foods do have a certain tangy, vinegar-ish smell, and that's to be expected. But if your ferment smells like it's rotting, it probably is.

As far as adding other ingredients... as long as your salt balance isn't affected, this won't usually disturb a ferment too much. As the many varieties of kimchi show, lots of different vegetables can be fermented successfully and eaten safely. But like canning, it's best to work from an established, known-good recipe, particularly if this is the first ferment you've tried on your own. Added ingredients can make it more difficult to detect things like color changes; you may instead wish to find a similar recipe that includes the sort of flavor additions you want, and work from that instead.


Food safety of sauerkraut whose brine evaporated below surface? We started a batch of sauerkraut about a month ago. We used the outer leaves of the cabbage to cover the shredded cabbage below. The cabbage was brined with adequate salt (about 2 tsp per pound). The brine level was well above the surface of the cabbage, which was displaced even more by a plastic bag filled with additional brine.

We last checked it about a week and a half ago, but the brine was at the same approximate level.

Today we checked it, and the brine level was below the surface of the cabbage. The top leaves smelled musty, so I removed them, as well as the 2 or so inches of cabbage below them. At that point, the cabbage smelled exactly as it should - salty, lactic-acidy. It also tastes excellent.

Most recipes I find simply note that if the brine level drops below the surface, just add more brine. My concern is that I don't know how long the brine has been below the surface.

I know most toxins can't survive in a lactic-acid/salt-rich environment, so are we ok? I am planning to hot pack and can today just to be safe, but it seems to be passing all visual/taste/smell tests. My biggest concern would be botulism, but botulism can't survive with that amount of salt.

Am I ok? Or should I err on the side of caution?

Unfortunately nobody can give you a definitive answer about your batch without testing. But I can give you more information to help you make a more informed decision.

As you are, I'm concerned about botulism. You mention that "botulism can't survive with that amount of salt". I'm not sure whether that's true. If an environment is salty enough, or if it's less salty but acidic enough, you're all set. But the question is what's enough; at some point it's far less likely, but not impossible, for clostridium botulinum to survive.

Your primary defenses were (1) a salty, acidic environment below the surface, and (2) oxygen at the surface. It's hard to know whether the cabbage tissue at the surface was anaerobic enough; maybe so. As for acidity at and near the surface, if mold was involved somehow that could lead to a drop in acidity. From Sandor Katz's excellent The Art of Fermentation, p. 50:

  Molds can also digest lactic acid, lowering the acidity of the ferment that enables it to be effectively preserved.

So...

if the surface environment became tolerable for c. botulinum, and
if it grew in that environment, and
if it produced botulinum toxin, which then got into the submerged kraut

then as I understand it, boiling and canning won't change the presence of that toxin unless you boil it for at least 10 minutes. (Thanks to Josh Caswell for pointing this out in the comments).

On the other hand... that is a whole lot of ifs.

I'm just an informed layperson, so you'll need to make your own food safety call based on this and information from others. My guess: your kraut is just fine.

But because I always err on the side of caution, in the same situation I'd probably chuck the batch (with tears in my eyes). Though not in this exact situation, I've done it many times, and it hurts, but I sleep better, especially since I share my ferments with others.

Or if your "hot pack" will heat the kraut long enough to address both botulinum spores and toxin—I know nothing about canning—you're probably fine too. I'm not sure what that does to the kraut's texture, and you lose probiotic benefits, but it sounds like addresses the safety concern, at least for botulism.

Some more sources:

The CDC has lots of info on botulism, as does Seasoned Advice.
The Three Biggest Fermenting Mistakes You're Already Making has a concise list of fermentation warning signs.
NC State University has a safety sheet on fermenting vegetables.


Why does the fat on my chicken broth sometimes solidify, sometimes not? I've been making chicken broth pretty much the same way for decades. I cut up a whole chicken, cutting through the bones of all but the breast and thighs (to release marrow). I pretty deeply brown the pieces (with skin) in the bottom of a stock pot, then remove. I then saute roughly chopped onion, celery and carrot in the chicken fat until browned, then I deglaze with a little wine or sherry. The chicken pieces go back in the pot with a gallon of water, I bring just to a boil, cover and turn off the heat. Now it sits for a half an hour or so. I then fish out the breasts, refrigerate the breast meat, and return the bones and the skin to the pot.  I simmer the remaining pieces for about another 40 minutes, remove the thighs, reserve the thigh meat, break the bones, return the skin and bones to the pot and slow simmer everything for the better part of the rest of the day. I allow the broth to cool, strain through a colander then a fine sieve, then refrigerate overnight.

Here's what's weird. Half the time, I can simply remove hard solid fat from the top of the chilled broth. The other half of the time the fat separates and thickens, but never solidifies, I end up dirtying my fat separator. I can't figure what could possibly be different from one batch to the next. I generally even buy the same brand of chicken and I only add a tiny bit of oil (vegetable) for the initial browning.

Even weirder, sometimes the broth is so full of gelatin that it is actually harder than the fat, it makes for a good soup when that happens, but makes separating the fat a bit of a pain.

It's down to what the chicken ate while it was alive. Saturated fat sets, olive oil sets if you chill it, but not otherwise, and a number of seed oils do not set (rapeseed for instance). When you make a stock which has solidified fat on top, that's saturated fat, so I'd hazard a guess that the stock where the fat doesn't set means a healthier eating chicken, because it contained less saturated fat to start with.

UPDATE: Thank you to the person who bothered to do the research and said my answer 'might have some merit'. Chickens are no different from human beings - the fats you put in are the fats floating round your bloodstream and depositing in various places; think about corn fed chickens, where the fat composition is slightly different, not to mention the colour of the flesh itself. That will be a partial explanation; when taken together with the fact that not all chickens, even in the same flock or brood, get to eat the same diet, because the pecking order dictates that some free range birds don't always get the pick of the food, explains differences in chickens from the same supplier. Of course, if you can come up with another explanation, I'd be delighted to hear it...

UPDATE 2: Perhaps I should have been clearer. I am not for a moment suggesting that the fats eaten are deposited in their original form, but if you know anything about biology (chickens or otherwise) then you'll know that certain synergies occur, depending what's put in, which change the composition of any fats deposited within the body system. Hence the connection between eating lots of saturated fat and having high cholesterol in humans, for example.

UPDATE 3: Rumtscho: Can't find any scientific evidence so far to prove this theory regarding chickens, but, for interest's sake, and to prove how much of a difference it can make, farmed salmon in Britain no longer has a balanced omega 3/6/9 ratio, as it should do, and still does in the wild. It's because the feed had to be changed, and the consequence of that has been a much higher level of omega 6 in particular. I'm still looking for something on chicken.

UPDATE 4: Now I've had time to look properly, it's not at all difficult to find scientific evidence, there's plenty of it. There's a study carried out by The American Society for Nutritional Science in 2000 comparing the fat deposition (and other metabolic processes) between chickens fed the same diet, but one lot with saturated fat included in the form of tallow, and the other lot with polyunsaturated fats. The fat deposition in the birds fed tallow was greater, and the composition of the fat contained more saturates compared to the polyunsaturated group. These results reflect previous studies (Sanz et al 1999 and 2000).

Effectively, it's like everything else - you get back what you put in.


Best way/temperature to get maillard reaction on meat/steak Background

In relation to this question/answer. What temperature does the Maillard reaction occur?

The answer to the question above states that over 400F/200C there is basically no maillard, only caramelization. It also states in the chart that you get most flavor full result between 250F/110C and 300F/150C. This goes against what I believed; I though the hotter the better (within reason). Therefore I use a blow torch. But maybe what I like is a mix of some maillard and some caramelization.

Question

With respect to the temperatures described in the previous question. Would my meat taste better if I used a 300F/150C pan instead of a very hot blow torch?

The meat will pass through various temperature ranges when heated.  The moisture in the surface layers of the meat will gradually evaporate, and once they are dried out, the temperature will start to rise more rapidly.

I think the balance of caramelization vs. Maillard also has to do with specific proteins and sugars available, but you're right -- around and above 400F/205C, caramelization proceeds fast enough that there's generally little opportunity for Maillard (the sugars break down too fast).

In any case, the issue isn't how hot your heat source is as much as how long the surface stays within particular temperature ranges.  If your meat surface actually gets significantly above 400F/205C for a significant period of time, it will start to burn.  But even after a couple minutes in a pan, the meat surface may not be equal to the pan temperature.  Why?  Because generally moisture is constantly escaping from the layers immediately below the surface, and that moisture will keep the interior below the boiling point (212F/100C).  That lower temperature steam needs to be heated as it approaches the surface, which will keep the surface temperature from rising too fast.  In a very hot pan or under a very hot heat source, a significant dry crust will eventually form and ultimately start to burn if the heat goes on long enough.

To get to your exact question -- if you use a 300F/150C pan, the following things will happen:

You'll lose a lot of heat immediately when dropping the food into the pan, lowering the pan surface temperature temporarily.
Now you might have a pan surface that is only close to boiling water temperature or something, and that's not high enough to cause significant Maillard browning in a reasonable amount of time.
The surface of the meat will gradually come up to boiling temperature, requiring a fairly large amount of energy.  That won't allow the pan surface temperature to recover significantly for a while.
Once the meat surface hits 212F/100C, the water in the surface meat needs to boil off.  It takes a huge amount of energy to evaporate water compared to the amount of energy it takes to raise the temperature.  While that's going on, the meat will get "stuck" at boiling temperatures for a while.  (This is quite visible, for example, when you crowd a pan with too much meat, and you get moisture pooling in the pan for a couple minutes that has to burn off.)
Note, so far, you don't get any significant Maillard browning going on, and no caramelization at all.  If the surface meat has taken too long up to this point, it can acquire a boiled taste/texture that may not be optimal and may change the kinds of browning reactions that eventually do occur.  Eventually, enough water boils out and the surface layers become drier.
Once enough surface moisture is boiled out of the meat, it can resume rising in temperature, which will happen much more quickly.  But if the pan is still only going to a maximum temperature of 300F/150C, it will take some time.  (Remember that the surface of the meat is still in contact with much cooler interior layers, which still have moisture that's generally not at a temperature more than 212F/100C.)  And heat transfer rate depends on the difference in temperature between two things.  So if the pan is 300F/150C and the steak is 212F/100C, you'll get a relatively slow temperature rise, and the closer the meat gets to 300F/150C, the slower the temperature will rise.
Eventually, after a few minutes, you'll get close enough to 300F/150C that Maillard reactions will occur noticeably, and you'll get some browning.  Even then, the browning may take a while, because you still have the moisture coming out of the meat, which would probably keep the surface layers below 300F/150C.

Now, if you start out with a pan that's at 500F/260C (or even higher), the pan surface will transfer its heat (probably dropping down to 200-300F/95-150C in the process), and accomplish steps 1-5 in a matter of seconds instead of a matter of minutes.  At that point, the layers of the pan underneath the surface will still have a lot of heat (since they started at 500F/260C instead of 300F/150C) and will transfer heat back to the pan surface.  So after the first few seconds, the pan surface rapidly begins to rise again getting to 300F/150C fairly quickly, which will produce maximum Maillard reactions.  Wait a little while, and you'll start getting significant caramelization.  Wait further, and the meat will burn.

What's the ideal pan temperature to begin to get maximum Maillard in a brief time?  It really depends on the material of the pan and its size and thickness, as well as the amount of meat you plan to drop into the pan (which will influence how much heat is needed to get through steps 1-5 quickly).  When starting out with a superhot pan (say, 700F/370C or so), you'll get a lot more caramelization, less Maillard, and you'll have to be careful not to burn the meat if you wait too long to turn.  With a pan that's only 400F/205C to start, you should get more Maillard, but it will take longer to brown, which may not be ideal if you want to keep the interior of the steak cooler (medium rare or whatever).  With a heavy pan that transfers heat slowly (e.g., cast iron), I'd generally go with something around 550F/290C personally, which seems to be a reasonable balance.  If the meat is going to crowd the pan, I'd go higher to burn off all that excess moisture as quickly as possible.

[Edit: As rumtscho noted in comments, the type of range -- gas, electric, or induction -- could also affect heat transfer and recovery time for a pan to come back to high temperature.  Also, there are many specific properties of materials that will influence the heat transfer rate and recovery time, including the rate heat moves through the metal (thermal conductivity), the amount of heat stored in the pan (heat capacity), the rate heat conducts out of the pan surface (diffusivity), and the rate that radiative heat comes off the pan, which is mostly dependent on color (emissivity).  Note that the heat capacity and thermal conductivity are often combined in one number to give a sense of "thermal inertia" or "effusivity."]

With a blowtorch, the temperature is obviously quite high, and the heat will be continuously replenished (unlike a pan, which has a temperature "recovery time").  You can go through steps 1-5 almost instantaneously.  Whether you get more Maillard or more caramelization will depend on how hot the flame is and how close you hold it to the meat surface.  You might experiment with backing the torch away just a bit and use it for a slightly longer time.  It might change the effect and flavor profile slightly, but I've never played around with this much myself.


How significant is the Pickle Spice blend to a corned beef? I was out of pickle spice and Kroger did not have it. So I looked up a few recipes and averaged them with the spices I had on hand. I used ground ginger and apparently that made the solution cloudy, I have a Bay tree so it is pretty heavy on the bay. I used prepared mustard as I had no seed. But how much flavor difference can there be when it is done and I then simmer it with garlic, etc . It may be a little different as I am making the corned beef from a pork loin.

The exact spice blend for any 'Pickling Spice' varies from maker to maker, from region to region, from season to season, etc...

It sounds like you found substitutes for each of the basic flavor components, so this plan looks good so far. The 'corning' process traditionally is a long, slow process which is usually approximated by a spice blend that gives a similar flavor, and a long, slow cooking process that cooks but leaves the meat tender.
There is more about the history, and how 'Corned Beef' is not a traditional Irish dish in this article.

Your use of pork loin is another substitution, and be careful, as the loin is relatively more lean that the brisket that corned beef is usually prepared with. Check on cooking time, as a several hour simmer, which is great for a 3# brisket, could make the pork very dry.

The cloudiness from the ginger will resolve as all the spices simmer together, and protein will come out of the meat. You aere on the right track, just know that you are making an interpretation of the dish, as a number of variables have changed. Cook, enjoy, take notes, adjust.


What is a good recipe that uses a lot of evaporated and/or sweetened milk? I have 60 oz of evaporated milk and don't know what to cook with it.  I have found some recipes, but they only call for 12 oz to be used and I'm about to get another 36 oz.  What is a good recipe (or recipes) that use a lot of evaporated milk?  Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, or desert recipes are welcome.  This question taught me that I can turn some of it into sweetened condensed milk, so that can be one of the ingrediants too.

Flan, a type of custard, is the same as crème caramel, tasty desert.

Pumpkin pie uses a bunch of evaporated milk.

Ducle de leche is a terrific desert topping and filling, translated literally it means 'sweet of milk'.  The reason I mention this is that in Argentina and Chile, cans of sweetened condensed milk are boiled, unopened, on the stove for some hours to produce dulce de leche.  I understand that what you have is evaporated milk, which is different; there is no reason not to try using it to make this delicious treat.

Here is a link with a bazillion uses for evaporated milk:

http://www.carnationmilk.ca/recipes.aspx


Substitute for egg yolk in chocolate truffles? I have a recipe for chocolate truffles (basically butter and chocolate) that also includes an egg yolk; presumably to help smooth it and increase the richness.

I know that the recipe would probably work just omitting it, but,

Is there a non-perishable, and preferably vegetable based, substitution that could be used?

Classic French truffles often add an egg yolk for enrichment. You could use a pasteurized egg product if you'd like, or depending on the recipe you could leave it out all together or replace it with cream since you're using a butter ganache. Alternatively, you can stream in 1/4 cup of boiling water/cream per egg yolk very gently and while whisking to bring the yolks up to 160 degrees. This must be done slowly to prevent the eggs from scrambling.


baking cupcakes in a commercial sized pan? I bought a 24 cup cupcake pan from a restaurant supply store because I am baking cupcakes for my daughter's wedding.  The cups are regular size, just in one big pan.  Should I place the pan on the middle rack, as usual, and do they need to bake longer?

Yes and Maybe. You should definitely place the pan 'centered on the center rack' of a well pre-heated oven. The heat should be absorbed evenly and allow all of the cupcakes to bake at the same pace. (If your oven has 'hot spots' you may wish to rotate the pan once, 180°, about half way through the expected cooking time).

As for how long to bake them, do not let time @ temp be your guide to 'done'. As with any cake, use the toothpick test (stick a toothpick into the center of a cupcake and pull it out, if it is clean, they are done.) You should start testing this way at the 'expected' baking time.


Peeling cupcake liner from chocolate mold I am trying a new recipe that creates a chocolate mold by brushing chocolate inside a cupcake container. The challenge now is to get the paper off the chocolate mold. It seems to be sticking to the point I would have to mess up or break the newly formed chocolate mold. I have them in the freezer now to help harden the chocolate but don't know how I will get the paper off.

I've done something like this before.

Since you are making bowls, I assume this will eventually be filled with something. Depending on what that something is, perhaps you could wait to peel the paper until after you fill it?

For instance, in my case I was making my own peanut butter cups. If I pulled the paper off with just the shell, the bowl would shatter. However, after I filled it with PB and topped it with chocolate, I put it in the freezer and it had enough structural integrity to hold up to the stress of peeling the paper off. Then, I let thaw.


Lemon vs lime in choc chip cookie recipe Can I use lime instead of lemon in my choc chip cookie recipe? It calls for 1/2 teaspoon and I have no lemons. Would it be better to just omit or use 1/2 teaspoon of lime juice?

It's really hard to say without seeing your recipe. (Why is there lemon juice in the first place?) In general, lime juice will provide about the same amount of acidity (good), and the flavor will be similar but not quite the same (probably okay, maybe won't go as well with the chocolate). If you've made this before and you can't really taste the lemon juice flavor in the final product, then don't worry about it. If you haven't, well, I doubt half a teaspoon in a whole batch of cookies is providing substantial flavor, so I'd say go for it, unless the cookies are for something really important.


Can you season over some thin flash rust and get a usable pan as a result? What are the downsides of doing so? I've had a carbon steel pan with some thin flash rust spots. I've tried to remove them by scrubbing, but after applying a new layer of seasoning it turned out I hadn't removed all of it.
While I find a lot of posts online about how to remove rust from pans and how to prevent rust in pans, I can't find a clear answer to the question whether a thin layer of rust under layers of seasoning is actually harmful. The way I see it, once there's enough seasoning on top of the rust there won't be any oxygen for the rust to expand and the surface that touches your food is free of rust.
What are the downsides when you have some flash rust in a carbon steel pan and continue seasoning over it until the pan stops giving off rust when rubbed with an oily paper towel?
Some of the problems I can imagine happening (but I'm not sure if they will happen):

The seasoning won't hold onto the pan as well as it would without the flash rust.

The new layers of seasoning won't 'grab onto' the rusty parts meaning that you will never arrive at a point where the existing rust is trapped inside layers of seasoning. In other words, when rubbing it with an oily paper towel the pan will always continue giving off some rust.

An iron pan is one single piece of substance. It just stays the way it was cast.
A patch of rust is a brittle, powdery substance. It will crumble with time, pieces of it falling off, no matter if they have a bit of seasoning on top or not. So, you will end up with these spots being "naked" again.
Additional to that, in any kind of applying coatings (in the kitchen and outside), "hiding" pieces of other stuff under a coating (even if it is "just" an old patch of the same coating you are applying) is a hallmark of shoddy work. The integrity of your new layer is compromised, and you get quality problems over time. Any professional painter spends more time sanding away old paint than applying new one. It is just a physical property of coating layers that they require an even surface with known-good qualities. If you want a good coating on your pan, you will have to do the stripping work.


Should pressure only be applied at the top of a pastry bag? I was using a pastry bag for the first time today, and used both hands to squeeze the frosting out, applying pressure on the side and at the top of the bag. My friend said it's better to only apply pressure at the top; that's what she's seen in cooking shows.

This clashes with my understanding of the underlying physics; applying pressure at the diameter is easier, and the only negative consequence I can imagine is applying too much pressure unwittingly because of this. Is there anything else that would discourage using both hands to squeeze a pastry bag?

Usually you would twist the top of the bag (hint: don’t overfill) to close the bag and to get a “basic pressure level”, which will depend on the consistency of whatever is in the bag. Somewhat taut, but not leaking out of the nozzle.

Then you hold the bag closed at the twist part with thumb and forefinger, a bit like a ok-sign, just closer. Gradually closing the fingers, more sequentially that simultaneously, allows you to be very precise with the amount of pressure and thus with the flow at the nozzle. Twist the top further every once in a while to keep the bag tight.

If you are clenching the bag somewhere in the middle, you will

a) lose the “basic pressure level” after some of the batter/cream/icing was squeezed out
b) have a harder time controlling the “flow (which will for example influence the “tips” of a swirl or the top of a macaroon),
c) risk the top opening up and the filling overflowing and
d) warm up the content of the bag, which is often undesirable, changing the texture and at worst, melting it.

There’s a very good and practical reason to practice using only one hand - you need the other to maneuver the cupcakes/cookies/cake you are decorating. While for cupcakes you may get a decent enough swirl with a “two-handed clutch” method, there are more advanced skills like piping flowers on a flower nail where you really need the extra degrees of freedom.


How do tempura chefs touch 350 degree oil without being burned? In this video of a chef deep frying shrimp, he repeatedly applies more batter to the shrimp, clearly touching the oil over and over. Does the batter protect your fingers? Is it just a short enough time to not be burned? It seems like this shouldn't be possible in oil hot enough to cook meat. Is this a safe practice?

Because his fingers are covered in the tempura batter, which forms a very thin protective shell. Also note that he's in and out very quickly - he doesn't let his fingers just sit in the oil.


French whisk handle has rocks in it? I'm at a restaurant supply store and I'm looking to buy this heavy duty French whisk manufactured by the company WINCO and I'm shaking the handle and it sounds like there are small rocks or sand in them.

They all have it.

What's that about?

It could be sand, used to weight the handle. The weight is an important part of the design. I assume some manufacturers use sand instead of just thicker/heavier steel because it's cheaper and easier to manufacture.

For proof that at least some whisks are made like this, here's a whisk with Amazon reviews that mention sand and even a picture:

It's just inert weight. It's not going to come into contact with your food. I guess if you get a defective one and the handle comes open and dumps sand in your food, you'd have to throw it out, but otherwise it's not really anything to worry about.


Can you peel a soft boiled egg? Is there anything other than the temperature of the shell making it difficult to peel? I'm sure the white would be firm enough to withstand a gentle peeling if you're careful?

I was hypothesizing about it as a potential easy alternative to poached (all contained nicely in it's own shell for cooking), but I've never seen it before. Is it impossible, just a stupid idea, too risky (i.e. being squirted with trapped hot water from the white/shell etc.) or just something that hasn't been tried?

Yes it is absolutely possible!

Soft-boiled eggs are delicious. I make them all the time, love it especially on ramen:

( source )

The trick is to boil the egg in a rolling boil for 5 or 6 minutes depending on the size of the egg, then dumping them in cold water to stop them from cooking further. This product might help too.

You have to be a little bit more careful than with hard-boiled eggs when peeling, but it really isn't very hard to do!

I then dip the meat from my ramen in the egg yolks, and later break the white in pieces and eat it with the noodles. Yum!


1 ltr Milk is not curdling even after squeezing 2 lemons; What could possibly wrong? I was trying to make Paneer (a type of cheese). So I boiled once then added 2 table spoons of lemon juice. Milk should be separated out instantly from water but it's been 20 minutes.. And milk is still unchanged.

Milk proteins will coagulate at particular temperatures and Phs. You wrote that you used 2 Tbs of lemon juice but you didn't say how much milk you added that to. If you used too much milk then the mixture will not be acidic enough. Follow a recipe.

You also wrote that you boiled the milk once. I don't know if it is a language barrier issue but it sounds like you boiled the milk in the past. The milk needs to be at near boiling temperatures when you add the acid. The combination of heat and acid will cause the milk proteins to unravel (denature) and tangle up with each other (coagulate) which will result in the curd you are looking for.

If the milk has been handled well, that is if you didn't leave it out overnight, then it has likely not spoiled and you can try again by either adding more acid or bringing to a boil as necessary.


How to make crispy chicken wings like KFC? I want to prepare Chicken wings more crispy without using micro oven. Can anyone tell me how to prepare it?

Some general tips.

Use a deep fryer ( or a large cast iron skillet with less oil; have a proper thermometer to help you keep the oil temperature stable (250°-300°F)

Don't overcrowd the skillet, 2, 3 pieces max per batch.

The chicken should not be too cold when cooking it (because the time the inside will be cooked, the outside will be burned) get it out of the fridge a little bit in advance.

Prepare a simple egg-wash and a mix of flour and spices and salt/pepper (experiment to find what you like)

Put the chicken pieces in the egg-wash, transfer to the flour mix, coat well, remove excess flour ; then back again in the egg-wash and again in the flour mix.

Then you can let it rest a little while (10 minutes) while the oil gets hot.

Fry the chicken 10, 12 minutes until the exterior gets to a nice golden color; take one piece out and check the doneness (temperature and/or visual clues).

Transfer to paper to absorb some of the excess oil.

eat it.


What are the swirling attachments for on mixers? I have a hand held mixer similar to the one here,

The egg beaters are straight forward, but what do people typically use the swirling attachments for? Do they put less air into the mixture??

These are dough hooks. They are used to knead yeast dough. They are useful, especially if you are trying to work with higher hydration dough which sticks in hand kneading, but many handheld mixers don't actually have the torque needed to knead dough, so if you need them, make sure to buy a good model which can get the task done.


Are there different grades or styles of bacon? In commercials and when I go to restaurants (even fast food!) the bacon that I get is a reddish brown color and seems to be mostly meat, or at least meat textured.  However, when I buy bacon at the grocery store, it's inevitably almost all fat.  It curls badly when cooked, creates a ton of grease, and never looks anything like what "professional" bacon does.

I've tried thin sliced, thick sliced, apple wood smoked, etc. , etc. and I always seem to have the same problem.  I try to look through the packages and I can never find anything that has mostly meat (lots of white fat).  Even when I find a pack that looks good, it seems like the few slices I can see are meaty, but the rest are again mostly fatty.

So, what is the secret?  Where do restaurants get their perfect bacon?  Do I need to ask the grocery meet department for a secret stash of pro bacon?  Do I need to go out of my way to a special shop?  Is there a name for what I'm looking for other than "bacon"?

I'm in the US, Texas.  I know other countries have different ideas of what "bacon" is (right?).

In the UK there are two main cuts of bacon.

There's "streaky bacon", which is cut from the pork belly.   This is mostly what you get in the US.

There's also "back bacon" which is cut from the pork loin.  This is generally more popular and is very much leaner than streaky bacon.  In the US you call it "Canadian bacon".

You can also get "middle bacon" which is cut from both, i.e. a contiguous cut from belly to loin - a piece of streaky bacon and back bacon combined.


How can I start down the path of eating less meat? Recently I've been giving more thought to the idea of moving toward a more vegetarian diet. The trouble I've encountered, though, is that it seems hard to find recipes and eating suggestions that are not full-on vegan/vegetarian.

For example, I don't enjoy whole wheat bread or other whole wheat things, but those kinds of things are often worked into vegetarian recipes. Regular pizza with white flour is fine by me, at this stage. My theory is that if I try to change too much at once, none of it will stick. I want to eat more veggies, but I don't want the dogma that comes along with vegetarianism.

I'm not looking for strict vegetarian or vegan. I'm not planning on giving up steak or chicken at this point in the journey. I do want to eat a few vegetable-based meals per week to get more veggies in my diet.

What are some resources (books, blogs, etc.) to get started eating more veggie-based meals?

EDIT, in response to comments:

In regards to the why behind this question, I'm simply looking to eat healthier. It's not for the sake of the animals (sorry animals, but you taste nice).

I'm looking for a few "staple" recipes that I can make on a regular basis that'll be mostly made of veggies. I like (and make) lentil soup, for instance (with chicken broth in it), and I had a curried cauliflower soup recently that was very good.

Maybe what I'm looking for is a book of vegetarian-ish recipes that focus on ingredients from the local grocery store rather than specialty items from a health food store.

Further to my comment:

If you think of all of your meat-centric meals to be something like 60% meat, 40% (vegetables, carb filler) then just adjust the proportions.

If you have 300g steak and 200g vegetables on the side, then start by changing to a 200g steak and 300g vegetables, and keep adjusting as necessary.

Pasta with meat and vegetables, just put a bit less meat in and a bit more vegetables in. I used to do 500g dry pasta, 1kg meat, 1kg vegetables, but now I simply do unchanged 500g of pasta, with 600-800g meat, 1.2-1.4kg vegetables.

Your recipes don't actually have to change, as long as you don't go completely off the reservation. Once you cut out meat completely, or have very little of it, you may find your food lacking in flavour, and it's then that you will have to do something else to add more flavour back in. As long as you still want to have some meat in your food, you can keep doing what you've been doing, just adjusting the ratio of meat to vegetables.

Good luck!


Does the use of kosher salt vs. table salt lead to a higher overall sodium intake? When using kosher salt one has to use more kosher salt than table salt to achieve the same level of saltiness. Does it mean that using kosher salt causes one to consume more salt (or sodium)?

Kosher salt is the same thing (though I'm pretty sure it's not iodized), but the crystals are less dense and larger. There's more air in each piece, and they don't pack together as tightly. That means you have to put a larger volume of kosher to get the same amount of actual sodium chloride (salt).

Think of it as the difference between ice cubes (regular salt) and snow (kosher). Both are water, but ice cubes are way denser than a scoop of snow. When melting it, you'll need more volume of snow to come out to the same amount of water as you'd get from a few ice cubes.

So no, it's not worse for you.


Can I dissolve sugar first before steeping tea? I am usually making big batches of sweet tea (20 gallon+). My problem is that after steeping the tea the temperature in the boil kettle will have dropped to the point where it becomes difficult to dissolve the sugar. Last time I had a big sugar crust left at the bottom of the kettle that had hardened.

So my idea is now to dissolve the sugar first and then steeping the tea bags in it.

Will this have a negative impact on the tea (reduced extraction rate from the tea bags etc.)?

No matter when you add your sugar it will still form a nasty crust in your kettle as it will not fully dissolve without stirring. In fact brewing tea in your kettle directly is not a good idea either as it will discolor it over time and may even impart flavors depending on the material. You need to pour the water into something else to brew it in.

As to when to add the sugar it will definitely have an impact on the tea brewing, whether that is negative or positive will depend on your personal taste, the amount of sugar added, and the kind of tea you are using. Tea brews better when water still has dissolved oxygen, and adding sugar may reduce the available oxygen. It may also interfere with the water extracting flavors from the tea, which could change the resulting flavor. You'd need to try it both ways and see.

Try not to overbrew, 5 minutes should be enough, after that you'll start to extract more tannins.


Can I build a fond with seitan? I plan to adapt a chili recipe into a vegetarian one, and I plan to use seitan to get a bit of the umami flavor that the beef usually brings in the chili.

However, I usually build a fond in the bottom of my pot by browning the beef, to get more complex flavors. Can I do the same with seitan ? I fear that seitan will stick a lot to the bottom more than creating a good fond.

Yes*
*However, you may find the results from using seitan only disappointing.
In my trials so far, I was able to build a fond with seitan. It tasted primarily of toasted bread, and burned easily. While my memories of other fond-forming foods (meat, alliums, mushrooms) are hazy, I am pretty sure that they produced more fond and had more complex flavors in practice.
Experiment Details
Materials
All described experiments were run using the same commercially-prepared seitan product (Outdated US text data here, official site here) in all trials.
Factors specific to this product that may differ from seitan made at home or by other brands:

The oil present in the prepared seitan may influence fond formation
Flavorings (kombu, soy sauce) may make significant contributions to savory flavors
Other recipes may have additional, fond-forming carbohydrates (added sugar, onion and other aromatics, etc.)

One 8 oz pacakge was used per trial.
Results
For the first trial, I tried browning large pieces in a single batch. Most of the seitan did not stick to the pan at all, lifting easily even after considerable amounts of time (~1 minute) left unattended. Only a small amount of fond formed in the center of the pan, where most sticking occurred. The fond was cooked until quite dark. After deglazing and reducing, the result was a few teaspoons of smoky and charred liquid with a significant savory component.
For the second trial, the seitan was first chopped into smaller pieces (about 0.5cm x 0.5cm x 1cm) before browning. As before, all pieces were cooked in a single batch. Less oil was added to the pan, and there was more sticking in this trial. More fond seemed to form, again primarly in places where the seitan pieces stuck to the pan. The fond was cooked to a lighter color than it was in the firsts trial, and the result of deglazing and reducing was primarily savory with burnt and smoky components.
For the third trial, the seitan was chopped into smaller pieces before cooking. In this trial, a two-batch approach was attempted. The behavior of the first batch was similar to the behavior observed in the second trial. The fond left in the pan by the first batch seemed to develop undesired charred flavors despite the addition of the relatively moist fond of the second batch.
Additional Comments
It seems that seitan does not release that much water when pan-fried, and the water it does release is not enough to re-integrate fond with unbrowned seitan. You may get better results by finely chopping, shredding, or grinding the seitan and browning as much as possible in a single batch.
Aside: "[sticking] to the bottom [instead of] creating a good fond"
In my personal experience with seitan (and other foods), "sticking to the bottom" is highly correlated with fond production. This correlation was most dramatic when cooking larger pieces of seitan; large pieces that did stick (usually in areas with less oil) would leave fond in the pan, while pieces that did not stick would crisp up but leave no perceptible amount of fond.
While I was unable to find a single authoritative source that outright claims that fond is solely or primarily produced by food sticking to a pan, many sources appear to be consistent with that claim. Selected quotes from articles:
Serious Eats

All the tasty browned bits left behind after searing meat are called fond...
Because I want to encrust the bottom of the pan with a golden crackly fond...

The Kitchn

In both cases, small particles of the food being cooked will stick to the bottom of the pan ... This is what is called the fond.

Cooking for Engineers

Fond is the highly flavorful, browned bits of meat stuck to the bottom of a pan after sautéing.


How can I grow my own yeast (sourdough starter)? I would like to always have my own culture of yeast (sourdough starter) in my fridge at home. Does anyone know how to grow yeast and keep it alive?

Most bakers refer to this as a starter and it is extremely easy to keep up.  You will need a plastic bag or a jar to keep it in, a cup of warm water, and some flour.  You can either grow some wild yeast or add a particular strain to the growth solution depending what you are trying to do with the yeast.  Once you do that, just leave it someplace warm but not over 100 degree F. Then once a day, you feed the yeast by removing half and adding back a half cup of flour and a half cup of water.  Once it starts foaming remove to the fridge and remember to feed once a week.  It will be with you for the rest of the your time on earth.

Also, that half you take out when you feed it? Makes a great gift to other baking or cooking friends.  Also, if you devolop a dark smelly liquid, just stir it back in, it is normal and nothing to worry about.


What is the most common mozzarella used in Italian pizza That's a curiosity I have after visiting Italy.

I ate pizza all the time but I couldn't differentiate the variety of mozzarella on them.

What is the most common mozzarella used on their pizza?

Mozzarella di bufala
Common Mozzarella
Fresh mozzarella
Burrata
Smoked
Curd
Other?

I'm not sure what you mean by "common mozzarella."  If you mean the dried out "low-moisture" stuff you find in the U.S., that's just not common in Italy.  If your pizza actually had "mozzarella" on it, it was likely either actual mozzarella di bufala (from buffalo milk, the traditional version) or fior di latte (i.e., cow's milk mozzarella, which we'd call "fresh mozzarella" in the U.S.).  Those two are pretty much the definition of "mozzarella" in Italy.  Other cheeses or forms would rarely be called simply "mozzarella."  Mozzarella di bufala is more expensive and is often advertised specifically on a menu, though some purists might say that just the term mozzarella by itself should indicate buffalo milk (as opposed to fior di latte).

Now, there are commercial forms of fior di latte available in Italy which have lower moisture content specifically for pizzas, though I don't think anywhere near as low-moisture as the typical stuff you find in an American supermarket.  Other pizzerias will drain the fresh fior di latte for several hours before using on a pizza to avoid excess moisture and an excessively soggy pizza.

All of that said, Italians put all sorts of different kinds of cheese on pizza.  It's not uncommon at all to have a grated hard cheese be the only cheese on a pizza in some regions, or even no cheese at all (e.g., Rome's pizza bianca).  It's quite possible you were served pizza with some other "melty" cheese too, but it wouldn't have been called "mozzarella" on a menu.

EDIT: I see now that the OP is from Brazil.  I don't know what sorts of mozzarella are common in Brazil, so I don't know what "common mozzarella" means precisely in the question (as I said already).  Just for clarification: in the U.S., there is a very dry "low-moisture" form of mozzarella often used for pizzas.  My experience is that in other countries, the lower moisture form of mozzarella is still quite moist, though it can be sealed in a plastic wrapper without brine/packing liquid.  In the U.S., this form of mozzarella would generally still be considered "fresh mozzarella," just without brine.  However, obviously mozzarella packed like this is rarely "fresh" as in Italian "fresh" mozzarella, which is often consumed the day it is made.  So again, I think the exact difference between "common mozzarella" and "fresh mozzarella" would vary significantly by country, but hopefully my answer above is still clear.


Adjusting Microwave Times There's this really cool microwave lemon squares recipe that I've been dying to try out - only, the recipe insists on the cook time being 3 minutes on 80% power. I don't have a microwave where you can adjust the power, so is there any way to change the cooking time so I can make the recipe on full-power?

Without any other information besides "80% power", this really isn't a very well written recipe. If you don't know the wattage of the microwave used in the original recipe (i.e. how much is 100%?), you are in the situation of the musician in the movie "Spinal Tap", who prefers the amplifier whose volume knob goes up to "eleven" when all the other amps stop at ten.

But it doesn't matter anyway if you have no way to adjust the power of your own microwave. You will just have to experiment with different times. This is the case whenever you use a microwave oven for anything. As the saying goes, "microwave ovens vary". The prescription given by Paparazzi, ...[ 3 minutes X 0.80 = 2.4 minutes ] seems like as good a starting guess as any. Test the lemon squares a little before 2.4 min., & keep cooking in increments until they're good, then record the final cooking time for the next batch.


How do I get homemade mayonnaise to taste like store bought mayonnaise? I recently made a batch of homemade mayonnaise, having found myself with left over egg yolk from another recipe. I decided not to flavor the mayonnaise with any mustard. The mayo ended up tasting like mostly oil. I decided not to use mustard since the store brands never taste like mustard. How can I adjust the flavor so that my mayo tastes like the typical mayo you get in stores (particularly Hellmann's brand)?

For the record, here is how I prepared the mayo:

For every 1 egg yolk I have, I added 2 table spoons of white vinegar to activate the emulsifier. Then I slowly dripped in vegetable oil until the mixture started to look a bit like yellow mayonnaise. At that point I started adding and stirring into the mixture large portions of vegetable oil until I got to my desired thickness (I like the thicker mayo). I should note that the color was still a very light yellow, perhaps not enough vinegar.

I have to make both mayonnaise and aioli every day at my job. We sometimes do R&D on off days and we spent quite some time trying to imitate our favorite gourmet mayonnaise. I think that we were successful, here are some tips:

Lemon juice comes closer to that crisp tartness that I taste in even cheaper mayonnaise. Try using the juice from lemons, limes, or both and see where that gets you.
The store bought brands don't taste like mustard, but let me emphasize that mustard is vital to getting you closer to that taste. There is a specific "tang" to store bought mayonnaise that doesn't come from the acid -- you can get very close to this tang with mustard. I use a good quality dijon when I make mayonnaise and the difference is noticeable. Keep adding dijon in small amounts and observe the change in taste. I end up 2 - 3 tablespoons to my batch.
Experiment with fresh garlic and/or garlic and onion powders.
Try adding white pepper instead of black pepper and see where that gets you.
I add a little water at the end. I find that it tones down some of the intensity of the acid and dijon.

Also, you don't have to add your acid in the beginning. In fact, I almost always add mine after the initial "setting" of the emulsification. It is easier to control the thickness and flavor of my mayo; I use my acid for my first thinning and then add oil to adjust from there.


How to measure a dough humidity? Different flours have different levels of humidity, or they absorb different amounts of water during mixing. It would be useful to be able to measure the dough humidity to judge the ratio of ingredients and avoid a failed batch.

This is especially useful when variations on the choice of flours are done, so that the "tested" formula does not apply anymore.

Are there cheap tools to do it?

You don't need anything special, just a scale. Put a trivet, then a pan on a scale and tare it. Next, pour in a certain amount of flour, say 100 grams. After that heat the pan and therefore the flour up on the stove, which will evaporate the water, then re-weigh (that's why you have a trivet: you don't melt your scale). The difference between measurements will tell you the humidity of your flour.

I personally don't think there's much to be gained knowing this. Recipes are written accounting for water content in flour, they don't expect flour that's completely dry. I've baked a lot and I've never had a situation where the humidity of the flour has made a noticeable difference, especially when considering other environmental variations.


How do you cook flavored pasta? How do you cook special pasta that is flavored (tomato, squid etc)? Do you salt the water the same way? Should you incorporate less flavorful sauces to not mask the initial flavor of the pasta?

You cook it the same way as you cook "regular" pasta.

As for the sauces, try to keep it related to the flavor of the pasta.

Squid ink pasta should be used with seafood sauces (vongole...)

For tomato pasta or spinach pasta, I tend to keep the sauce as light as possible; just olive oil, garlic, little bit of herb as to not hide the pasta colors; no cream sauce, no full-on tomato sauce or ragu sauce.


Can fermented pickles be processed? I'm new to fermenting. I would like to make fermented dill pickles. My question is: Can I process fermented dill pickles in a water bath to ensure a longer storage life? I have made pickles in the past, using vinegar, and then processing for 20 minutes in a water bath. Is this safe and effective with fermented pickles?

Thanks,Joe

Yes.  The National Center for Home Food Preservation recommends low temperature pasteurization for fermented pickles, where you put them in a 180F water bath for 30 minutes.  This avoids softening the pickles through cooking.  Make sure that they have completed fermenting before this, as the pasteurization will stop the fermentation process.


Cooking fruits with hot sauces i use canned peaches, pears and pinneapple in some of my sauces. I usually cook the fruit with the sauce. Would there be a difference in flavor if I was to cook the sauce then blend the fruit at the end instead of cooking it. Guess I'm wondering if the fruit flavors would have a more fresh and apparent flavor in the sauce.

If you are 1) cooking the fruit a fair amount of time and/or 2) using not-too-little amount of fruit compared to sauce, there will , almost definitely, be difference in flavor, and yes, it should have more "fresh" notes, and it will also miss some of the cooked-fruit notes. If you are after fresh notes, may I suggest using frozen, or even fresh fruits?


Shredded steak for south east asian dish I have a recipe for Nasi Goreng, which calls for 1/2 lb of shredded raw rump steak.

I'm not sure how one goes about shredding steak - any suggestions?

I agree that there is a translation issue. For recipes I've used, I will cross-cut the meat into thin slices, then thinly slice the meat WITH the grain. The result will have a stringy texture - not 'bad' stringy, but stringy like good braised meat that can be shredded or 'pulled.'

This has worked for me for Korean dishes like Bulgogi and a few others.


How to avoid using artificial food coloring in cookie and cake decorating It's been a week since I started some cake and cookie decorating, and normally one needs many colors to come up with a lovely colorful final result whether it is Butter cream, royal icing or fondant. So I'd avoid using artificial food coloring as much as possible. Searching the web, I found a few articles suggesting to use different fruits/vegetables to make homemade/natural food coloring but I am not positive it will work since other than the flavor, it means adding too much liquid. Is there any way to avoid artificial food coloring without the aforementioned problems?

Natural food coloring kits, consisting of powdered concentrates, are available at health food stores in some regions, eg http://shop.biovegan.de/biovegan-farbspass-farbende-lebensmittel-5x8g is common here... and in this case, there is no cochineal in there, since insects/arachnids do not widely qualify as vegan, and this brand (as the name says :) specializes in organic and vegan products.

Turmeric, Annato, mild paprika and similar spices color extremely strongly, one would need to add little enough not to mess with the cake chemistry. Coloring juices (beet or blueberry juice etc) could be cooked down to a high concentration. Some of these color differently based on pH (turmeric, anthocyanins like beet juice), but one might need to compensate taste-wise for the colored layer being alkaline or at least less sour than one would prefer...

Turmeric, especially fresh, can help with the brightness even if you aren't aiming for yellow - stuff's strongly flourescent (means: will emit visible light when excited by ambient ultraviolet light) and will make everything appear more radiant in sunlight and many types of artificial lighting. Same would go for quinine (as can be found in certain drinks) if the food can take the bitterness, but quinine has more of a blue flourescence that won't come across as very bright.


Adding sugar and honey to sourdough culture I am interested in this site's members' opinions on how adding two spoons of sugar and two spoons of honey would affect a sourdough culture.  I am wondering if adding sugar and honey to the starter culture will have any desirable effects on the resulting sourdough.

I'm experimenting and curious if this addition would lead to any new types of flavour?

Adding sugar or honey to a sourdough culture will increase the activity of the yeast for a little while, but it is unlikely to create "new types of flavour". Honey and Sucrose (Table sugar) are both just simpler sources of glucose and fructose that the sourdough microbes usually get from breaking down the starches in flour. Unlike flour, honey and sugar do not provide much (if any) protein which the sourdough microbes need in order to grow and reproduce. The effect of sugar or honey on the lactobacilli isn't predictable without knowing which specie are active in your specific starter.  Some prefer maltose almost exclusively and would slow down if fed sucrose or honey, while others prefer fructose and would become especially active if fed honey; possibly leading to more sourness in the final product.

The purpose of a starter is to leaven bread composed of mostly flour and water. As such, it has always been my opinion that you should only feed your starter flour and water. Adding other things only serves to contaminate the culture or "teach" it to need additional food sources.

If you just really want to experiment feed you mother culture normally a few times, let it become active then set aside half of it for experimentation and half for safe keeping.

See Also:

Sourdough starter developing alcohol


How to minimize the impact of unpopped kernels and kernel shards in popcorn? I've always had a fear of eating popcorn. The idea of breaking my tooth on a popcorn kernel is terrifying, the thought of getting a kernel shard lodged between my teeth or gums makes me squeamish, and I cringe at the possibility of chomping on a burnt piece. I suspect this all stems from some badly-made Jiffy Pop that my mom would serve up as a kid. It's not a debilitating fear or anything, I just avoid eating popcorn.

I don't really talk about my popcorn-phobia, so I can't really blame my brother-in-law for getting me a subscription to a "popcorn of the month" club for Christmas. But that said, I'll be soon stuck with bags and bags of popcorn. I could offload these to my co-workers, but instead I've decided to overcome my fear of popcorn as one of my New Year's resolutions.

It's been a solid few decades since I've tried popcorn, so I'm taking some baby steps and any tips would be appreciated. Specifically, my questions are:

How do you avoid breaking your teeth? Does shaking the bag force loose kernels to the bottom? Is there a type of popcorn that doesn't "shard" as bad?

Don't eat the popcorn straight from the bag. Put it into a nice large bowl. This will provide enough room for the unpopped kernels to fall to the bottom. As for hull shards between your teeth, dental floss or a toothpick will take care of that quickly and relatively neatly. Avoid burnt pieces by watching as you pour the popcorn into the bowl and as you take pieces to eat from the bowl.

Alternatively, set it all aside and serve it (in a nice bowl) when you have guests over. They are unlikely to notice you're not eating any.


Hard boiled eggs outside the fridge I saw the question How long can boiled eggs be stored in the fridge? and it reminded me that as easter approaches here in Austria, my girlfriend's family will decorate a lot of hard boiled eggs. They store these eggs on the counter and eat them well over 2 weeks later. I was wondering what exactly is the risks involved here. Shouldn't they go bad before that, or am I too instanced in the american everything should be refrigerated culture? Are they just accepting a higher risk here?

This is kind of a holy war question, oddly. The official party line is "Two hours, just like any other food" but there has been an informal and impromptu Easter-driven experiment in progress for the last two-thousand years or so which most people have participated in and which argues strongly against the hard two hour rule. This doesn't mean the two hour rule is wrong: it's just really conservative.

In a nutshell, cooked solid protein tends to be quite resistant to bacterial contamination. Historically, cooked meat was stored for days with a low (but non-zero) chance of significant contamination. Even today, raw meat is "aged" for several weeks in some circumstances without ill effects.

So yea, it's probably not going to kill you, but if you want to be 100% safe, you should stick to two hours. If you're willing to take some risk, use your senses. Eggs stink when they start to go off, and the human nose is very sensitive to spoilage.


Rib Roast Rare standing up or lying down? I have a 4 inch thick one which I'd like rare. Will it make a difference if I cook it standing up or flat in the pan? And at what temperature? I have an electric oven.

Use the ribs as a roasting rack. In the spirit of the day, I will share with you my favorite technique. For rare, rare, cook to 120F (49C), that will carry over to 125F (52C).


How to adjust for making candy from corn syrup instead of sugar? I've recently started to experiment with making hard candy from straight corn syrup rather than conventional sugar, and so far it has worked remarkably well. Aside from increased sweetness and improved mouthfeel in the final product, the process is faster and more reliable — there is no need to wait for sugar granules to dissolve, and the corn syrup boils nearly uniformly from start to finish without any need to adjust the heat or any risk of going out of control. It's been consistent enough that I'm comfortable leaving the pot entirely unattended on a timer until nearly the final minute and doing other tasks while waiting for the syrup to come up to temperature.
However, hard candy recipes produced in this way seem to end up slightly softer than they do when making them with traditional sugar, and it's really not clear to me why this is — if this is due to the corn syrup requiring a higher temperature to reach the same moisture level; if fructose sugar glass just softer generally even at the same hydration, or something else.
For hard candy at least, I've considered trying to add back in some amount of regular sugar again to try to be able to make harder sugar glass, but I have especially for more specific candy types like nougat (that are sensitive to viscosity/hydration) it really isn't clear to me how to compensate for this difference.
Unfortunately despite searching I have yet to find even a shred of information on the subject of making candy using corn syrup in this way; all of the google search results are polluted with sources that do little else but spout the evils of corn syrup and decry the very concept of using anything but the One True Saccharide for candy-making, and with "fructose free" candy recipes that straight-up walk you through the process of hydrolyzing part of the sugar to make the fructose yourself, without bothering to mention that fact.
Does anyone have any sources or know where I can find actual information on how to use corn syrup for candy-making, and how to compensate when making a substitution for regular sugar?
In a perfect world I'd love if I could find a reference source with information on how to derive (or even just tables listing) the temperature/hydration and hardness curves for different sugar mixtures, but even just basic information and recipes would be great.
The particular syrup I'm using here is Golden Barrel High Fructose 55 (although my question isn't limited to just this syrup in particular). Here's the description from the datasheet:

High Fructose Corn Syrup 55 is a second generation high fructose syrup. The principle sugars, fructose and dextrose, give it a sweetness comparable in most foods and beverages to sucrose or invert sugar. The high sweetness level of high fructose corn syrup 55 provides desirable characteristics to carbonated drinks, still drinks, and processed foods.

Also, here's my best sugar glass recipe at this point, for reference:

Dispense 1 lb of HFCS55 into a pot. Place the pot on the stove on high and set a timer for 14 minutes. Return once the timer goes off and continue to heat for about another minute, until temperature reaches 310 F. Remove from heat and wait for it to cool below safe temperature for additives. Stir in color and flavor, and process into desired shape.

This document seemed like it might answer your question as it talks about the temperature it takes to crystallize supersaturated sucrose solutions in the presence of fructose glucose and corn syrup.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242257775_Crystallization_of_the_supersaturated_sucrose_solutions_in_the_presence_of_fructose_glucose_and_corn_syrup
From what I know about candy making it is because sugar starts out as a crystal it can recrystallize after heating easier. With hard candy (glass candy) you're manipulating the sugars to reform the crystals how you want them.


Creating a specific cream for a cake? My grandma used to make a waffle cake with chocolate cream filling, Romanian/Hungarian/Russian style.

My mom is trying to recreate it, without success. But she doesn't exactly know how to make the cream.

I had one recipe with sweet cream and chocolate pudding, but it didn't work well — it was too wet.

I had another recipe with cocoa and halva, where you cook them both with some water, butter and sugar, and it too didn't work — also too wet, and too chocolatey.

How can I find a decent recipe for the filling? Are there any names I should be searching for?

I assume we are talking about a variety of the Eastern European treat called Oblatne (or a variety of that name)? Which consists of five to eight layers of store-bought wafers (not "waffles" - in some languages it's the same term for both, I know), "glued together" by a fatty or caramelly cream, pressed for a few hours and cut into little diamonds? Like below:

Source

There are two main methods to create the cream, one based on condensed milk, dulce de leche or caramel, the other on butter, margarine or shortening. Often with an addition of nuts, chocolate and a dash of alcohol. Often, some raw eggs are included as well, so take the appropriate measures for these recipes.

The common trait is low humidity in the filling, because otherwise the wafers become soggy and - worst case - could even disintegrate.

Recipe requests are off-topic here, but a creative use of the terms wafer, cake, country of origin or some neighboring country, oblatne or oblate and your preferred filling ingredients in your favourite seach engine should set you off in the right direction.


Sous vide a whole chicken : temp/time? I have a butterflied chicken in the fridge that is marinating in a mojo mix.

I have read many times to SV it at 148f.
But what about time?
I would like the bird to be uniformly cooked and the meat to be juicy but not stringy.

What do you think would work best?

This is a very crude estimate:

If you have a 1kg chicken cooked straight out of the fridge at 2C to 65C, and assume that the chicken has thermal properties of water (near enough given that it is 70% water give or take), you need roughly 265kJ.

Heat transfer is limited by surface area and thickness of the chicken. If we approximate the chicken as a cylinder with say 150cm length and 10cm diameter, with a total surface area of 628 sq-cm, the average heat transfer rate for the temperature range is around 24W. So, it would take 11,141 seconds (or 186 min or just over 3 hours) to move 265kJ from the water into the chicken to bring it up to 65C.

If the chicken were fully immersed in water without a bag, heat transfer would be much quicker since the cavity will also be filled with hot water and the path length is roughly 1/4 of the bagged chicken. So, expect cooking time to roughly fall by 3/4.

thermal properties assumed: Cp 4.2 J/g/K, conductivity 0.6 J/s/m/K


What are these clear parts in beef steak? I can identify the large white strips as inter-muscular fat, the red meat as muscle, and the small white parts throughout the muscle as intra-muscular fat, but what is the clear tissue (circled in orange and blue)?
Should it be removed before serving?

This looks like gristle.
I wouldn't go hacking at the steak just to remove it. If the eaters don't like it, they are free to cut their steak around it and leave it in their plate.


What is the best utensil kit for the cost? Ideally I would like a set to build a kitchen around. Knives and the most vital and commonly used utensils. The best kit relative to it's price, and not leaving out important things like varied spatulas, whisks, spoons and other vital implements. Basically everything except cookware.

Similar post What knives are "required" for a serious home kitchen?

As knife sets available/affordable with vary from region to region, from year to year, and from wallet-size to wallet-size, I think it'd be best to answer this is a general fashion. I have worked as a chef in the past in a restaurant where we were expected to bring our own knives, although generally the one thing we were expected to bring ourselves was a long (20-25cm), broad-bladed, chef's knife. I am by no means the most experienced on this topic, but having expanded on my own knife collection in the past I can add my own real-world advice.

Firstly, you probably want to choose a brand. I do like the look of the global knives, but don't personally think they're good value for money. There are other brands out there, but there's a good comparison of 20cm chef's knives here:
http://www.cookingforengineers.com/article/129/Chefs-Knives-Rated

If you are buying for a kitchen, I wouldn't get a bagged/cased set unless you want to keep them hidden in a drawer/cupboard. A bag or case is for carrying from place to place, IMHO. It may be cheaper than a set with a fancy rack, so I suppose you could combine it with a magnetic knife rack, but from my experience it's a bit too easy to knock knives off these... Probably not a good idea if there are small kids around. If there are small kids around, super-sharp knives are probably best kept hidden somewhere out of the way.

Secondly, I'd think about what you use your knives for. I expect most sets will contain a main 20cm chef's knife, a shorter filleting knife, and an even smaller pairing knife. If you bake or buy whole loaves, you'll probably want & find everyday use for a bread knife to do your crusty creations justice. I own a tomato knife and I find I use it a lot, tomato knives are also useful for other delicate vegetables where you may want to disturb the flesh as little as possible (I use mine for finely dicing red onion for salads, I find it easier to keep everything uniform than when using my other knives).

From there I'd consider what you cook and what other knives you may want to add to the set. If you're partial to a roast more than once a year, and haven't succumbed to the temptation of an electric carving knife, a matching carving knife and fork might be tempting. If you eat a lot of cheese, you might find a cheese knife a useful addition, etc.


How should I substitute jalapeño peppers for fresh green cayenne peppers? I'm making tomato relish and my recipe requires 10 fresh green cayenne peppers, which aren't available at this time. I can buy Jalapeño peppers and would like to substitute those, but I don't know if I should use 1 to 1.

I use a bushel of tomatoes, peeled, cored, seeded; lots of work involved. Add peppers, onions, sugar, vinegar, a little canning salt and cook til real thick. Recipe calls for 8 cups of coarsely chopped tomatoes; I double or triple the recipe most of the time in order to can enough to use til next summer. It's canning season in the southeast USA!

I'm not sure you're familiar with it but I'd like to introduce you to the Scoville Scale:

  The Scoville scale is the measurement of the pungency (spicy heat) of chili peppers or other spicy foods as reported in Scoville heat units (SHU), a function of capsaicin concentration. The scale is named after its creator, American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville. His method, devised in 1912, is known as the Scoville Organoleptic Test.

  Unlike methods based on high-performance liquid chromatography, the Scoville scale is an empirical measurement dependent on the capsaicin sensitivity of testers and so is not a precise or accurate method to measure capsaicinoid concentration. [emphasis added]

This scale is subjective but having many people rate peppers at similar levels gives a pretty decent scale of relative "hotness".

On the scale, the Jalapeño rates between 2,500 and 10,000 Scoville units

  It is of mild to medium pungency, 2,500 and 10,000 Scoville units in general.

While the cayenne rates around 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville units:

  It is generally rated at 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville units.

It is unclear whether this range includes the immature, green varieties, though some charts place the cayenne at 50,000, so that could give the lower 30,000 as the rating of the green peppers.

So, even at its lowest rating, the cayenne pepper is three times hotter than the jalapeño's higest rating.

Relative hotness aside, I don't believe there's any reason you can't substitute the two. There are two important factors to be mindful of:

different flavor profile

  Classified, as a hot pepper, Green Cayenne chiles are not as hot as in their more mature red form, yet still offer a pungent heat with a fresh grassy, chile pepper flavor.
  The crisp and juicy flesh of the Jalapeno pepper offers a vegetal flavor and a spicy bite with heat increasing as the pepper peaks in maturity.

different water content

the jalapeno is more wet as it has thicker flesh while the cayenne has thinner flesh. This alone could affect your final product a bit, though you say you cook it down a lot, so it may be less impactful than a fresh salsa.

I'm would not recommend increasing the ratio to 3-1 to make it more hot because I'm not certain that having a higher ratio of heat producing content will actually make it taste as hot as the cayenne ever would - and it will add some volume to your relish. In the end, using jalapenos instead of cayenne will certainly be a different product but that doesn't mean it will be bad.

You can always taste as you go and add more spice before it's finished cooking if the flavor is too mild. Remember, though, that spicy flavors can change as a product ages, the way chili always tastes better the second day.


Chia seeds as replacement of oil in bakery I found that chia seeds mixed with water form a somewhat gelatin mixture that can be used for bakery instead of oil or butter.

I would like to try it but I have no idea if I should replace 1/3 cup of oil with a 1/3 cup of this mixture and what would the proportion of water/seeds be.

Can anyone give some pointers.

Thank you.

According to Pure Goodness:

  Chia gel can substitute for half the butter in most recipes! The food
  will bake the same and taste the same (or better) from the addition of
  the chia gel. All you need to do is divide the amount of butter or oil
  in half, and then use the same amount of chia gel to fill in. [...] Everything from cookies to cakes to muffins, pancakes and
  waffles can be made with chia gel as your butter replacement.

Other sites bracket this range, recommending 25% replacement of the butter or oil (some indicating that it is very hard to tell the difference at this ratio) to as much as 75% (but that is fairly unusual); 50% seems to be the most common recommendation.

My survey of sites shows that most recommend making Chia Gel with a 1:9 ratio of seeds to liquid (usually water).  The instructions at Health Central are fairly typical:

  Put water in a sealable plastic container and slowly pour seed into
  water while briskly mixing with a wire whisk. This process will avoid
  any clumping of the seed. Wait a couple of minutes, whisk again and
  let stand for 5 to 10 minutes. Whisk again before using or storing in
  refrigerator (Gel will keep up to 2 weeks).


Why isn't my mornay sauce smooth? I've been reading the Geek Cookbook, and decided to try the Mac & Cheese recipe from it, making the sauce from scratch - seemed simple enough! I've never made a Bechamel or Mornay sauce before, though, so this was new to me.

I made the roux fine, and mixed in the milk, which produced a smooth sauce. Once it started to thicken, I added the recommended amount of cheese (200g, to 2 cups milk). I used a pre-grated mix of mozarella, cheddar and romano. After mixing in the cheese, the sauce took on a fine, lumpy consistency - something like pureed cauliflower. Bringing it back to a simmer caused some of the surface to start to resemble a more normal looking mac & cheese sauce, but stirring returned the sauce to its previous grainy consistency.

Once it was simmering briskly, I left it on the stove simmering for 5-10 minutes to see if it would smooth out, but it did not appear to improve.

What did I do wrong?

Pre-grated.

Don't use pre-grated cheese for any sauce where consistency matters. Pre-grated cheeses are almost universally coated with cellulose to prevent clumping. This will muck up a good sauce every time. If it's going into a lasagna or a mac & cheese though, chances are it will go unnoticed by any but the cook.


Aside from saving gas or electricity, why cover the pot? There are some recipes that insist that you have to cover the pot when cooking. For example, in this video recipe for Bolognese sauce (at 7:36).
I understand that this might save gas or electricity by reducing heat loss. But does it serve any other purpose?
I do not consider it to be essential for the food not drying up, since you can leave the pot uncovered and just add a bit more water at the beginning, or add water at the end if you notice that too much has evaporated.
The only thing I can think about is that this might increase the humidity inside the pot, and perhaps the steam will help cook the food or change the flavor somehow. If this is true, what types of food would benefit from cooking with the lid on in terms of flavor?

PS: This is related to Why not cover the pot? but not the same.

It retains heat & steam pressure, so you achieve a simmer or even a boil with less power input & less water loss.
Great for long-cook sauces. Not so good for starchy things which may boil over if you're not careful, or have the pan too full.
As with most things, familiarity with how your stove/pan/lid combination reacts to a slow simmer will determine how well this works for you. If your stove won't drop low enough, you'll burn things, or need to get a simmer ring to reduce the risk. If you tend top make things too wet, you need to adjust over time.
Making anything to an online recipe needs you to be fully aware of how your own kitchen responds to wet/dry/timings. I don't think I ever blindly follow a recipe, I modify to how it needs to turn out based on my own experience with similar ingredients/quantities.
If I guess wrong, then I'm reducing sauce in a flat panic over the last 10 mins… not a good feeling, but familiarity breeds content ;))
There was at one time folk wisdom that said, "if it grows above ground, lid off, if it grows below ground, lid on"… which I have pretty much ignored for most of my adult life.
Sure, potatoes boil best with the lid on, as you obviously retain the heat, but I'm pretty sure I've never boiled a leafy vegetable in 20 years, I steam them… incidentally using the 'spare' steam from my lid-on potatoes.


What bones for beef stock I finally may have found a somewhat local source for veal bones and want to start making stock in earnest.  I've done chicken and turkey stocks before but for those I use entire carcasses.  I've browsed around a bit and haven't really found any concrete info on what bones I should be using.

Before I make the trip to the butcher (he's about 30-40 minutes away) I'd like to know what to ask for.  I've seen a couple references to avoid marrow bones a bit, and some references to neck bones, but I'd love to read/learn more about exactly what I want.

My goal is a rich nicely thickened (gelatin) stock that I can use for a delicious soup, or as a base for my sauces.

Thanks!

To get that gelatin you're looking, you need joint bones and lots of them.  The back, neck, tail are great for that.  If you've ever made Ox tail soup you'll know what I'm talking about as you'll get a really thick coating on your tongue from the gelatin that is disolved from the tail's connective tissues.

The reason for avoiding marrow bones is because it can make for a cloudy stock if the marrow gets broken up and the fact that marrow bones don't generally have the highest amount of connective tissues.  Cloudy stocks also are caused by boiling of the stock instead of simmering.

Typically when making stock bases, you want them to be as clear as possible so you can use them for just about anything.  A cloudy stock doesn't make a consomme look very nice.  However, if you are just going to use the stock in items which don't demand a high amount of clarity then don't worry too much.

When you go to your butcher ask for knuckle bones(joint bones) and chine bones(back bones) as your first choice.


The dough in my bread maker collapses just after cooking starts Every time I try to bake some bread in my bread maker, it rises at first but just when cooking process starts and the device increases the heat, the dough collapses!

I tried several recipes with white bread, french bread, whole wheat bread with various amounts but always this happens.

My device is Even Baker XBM 1029S. There is not much info about this model but it seems to be a clone of "Cookworks Signature Breadmaker". The same menu, LCD, Buttons.

I would first check on the type of flour I am using. To produce breads, always use flour that contains the highest protein count. It is this protein that produces gluten, and the more of this protein the stronger the gluten. This can be called a multitude of things, from 'Strong Flour', to 'Baker's Flour', to 'Best For Bread'.

Another thing you might want to do is check your mixing times. If your dough is undermixed, the gluten will not be strong enough to properly expand and hold structure from the CO2 produced by the yeast. Likewise, if the dough is overmixed you can see the same problem.

just a couple of things to start.

EDIT: you don't mention what type of flour you are using at all... If you aren't at least using a 50% mix of wheat flour, you aren't going to get proper rise as wheat flour is the only type that contains 'gluten'. Even when you buy 'whole wheat bread', this is usually a mixture of flours.


Tool/shears for cutting the backbone out of turkey Because I like the dark meat of turkey cooked differently than the white meat, this year I cut my Thanksgiving turkey into parts for cooking and it turned out great. I don't plan to ever roast a whole turkey again. However, cutting the backbone out of my small, ~13lb (~6kg) turkey was really difficult. As a matter of fact, I badly sliced my finger doing it with standard kitchen shears and a knife. To make things even more difficult, my dominant hand has a bad tremor and both hands are weak.

I have a much larger (~20lb, ~9kg) turkey for Christmas.

I've read reviews of kitchen shears, and even the highest rated just don't look strong enough for the job especially considering my difficulties. The ones that look close are ludicrously expensive.

I'm thinking that I might have better luck at Home Depot. If I buy a tool to use for cutting poultry bones, I would only use it for that purpose.

What might do the trick for me? Any advice regarding technique would also be welcome.

The brute force aproach

Typically when shears don't cut it, you bring in a saw:

Butchers use them to halve cows or pigs, cut through large bones and generally chop down an animal in short time. For the home cook, the larger versions (bandsaw, hand-held circular saw, ...) are certainly overkill, but smaller ones are quite useful.

A hacksaw is in every butchers' toolbox (figuratively speaking) and available at every Home Depot or similar. Ask your shop assistant for the recommended sawblade and other details. The ones sold as tool might not be fully compliant with local food safety regulations, but if you don't plan to sell your food, a good scrubbing to remove oils and other residue from fabrication should suffice.

If you plan to do some butchering - at least for small-to-medium sized animals - on a regular basis or love electric gadgets and have a few extra dollars, I found a small hand-held, cordless electric bone saw plus a video showing it in action. As I see it, it should be possible to operate it even with limited strength and dexterity.
 (Source)

The surgical aproach

My first impulse when reading your question was to approach it as a surgical problem - if your existing tools can't cut through the bone, you can always use a scalpel or similar knife to dislodge the ribs from their joints one by one. You don't get a nice clean cut, but can always trim a bit afterwards. This procedure shouldn't require much strength, a tremor might be a problem, though.

The completely different aproach

You might not need to remove the backbone at all, unless you insist on a traditional spatchcooked bird. the kitchn features an article on how to spatchcook a turkey "the Latin American way".

In short, you bend the bird's legs outwards, slice towards the hip joint and dislodge the tighs. Cut towards the wings until you can flip the breast part up, then finally cut through the backbone:

(More details and step-by-step instructions here.)

This means you are only dealing with some thin lower ribs and one cut through the backbone. You get two pieces, the breast (plus wings) with the whiter meat and the legs with the darker meat. It should be easy to procede from there.


Gluten formation in cake dough I have no experience in cooking. So I apologize in advance if this is a simple question.

The first cake of my life that I made yesterday swelled very well in the oven. It had a soft texture when eating. The only problem was the interior was a bit dense.

I've been researching what might cause this. Many people suggest that gluten formation in cake dough is not good and to prevent this, the mixture should be mixed slowly and gently after adding flour.

It is said that gluten is important to keep air bubbles in the dough. Because carbon dioxide gases are expanding during cooking and gluten needs to be strong to avoid air bubbles coming out.

There's a few things I'm curious about. Very strong gluten causes an elastic structure and this will have an undesirable texture especially during chewing in foods such as cakes.

But if we want a fluffy cake, don't we need strong gluten? If I don't have a strong gluten, won't these air bubbles go out and create a denser structure during cooking? Isn't that a contradiction?

What happens during cooking? Is there something I know wrong? Doesn't the expansion of carbon dioxide gas when heated and the presence of strong gluten to hold it make up the fluffy structure in the dough?

Here is my Carrot Cake Recipe;

2 cups (250 grams) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
210 ml vegetable oil
4 eggs room temperature
2 cups granulated sugar
3 cups grated carrots

Note: Firstly I whisked together the oil, eggs and sugar until fully combined.

Thanks for your help.

Gluten development is not something you need for a cake to rise, excess gluten development in a cake leads to a tough cake, dense cakes are usually caused by a different reason. With a carrot cake my first thoughts would be:

Too much moisture: carrot and other vegetable cakes can get very wet due to the moisture in the vegetables added, an overly wet batter (not enough flour and sugar to balance it out) can lead to a dense cake. You can dry the carrot a bit before using it to reduce this, or add a tad more flour
Underbaked: one common mistake new bakers make is baking to a recipe time rather than a result, if you bake a cake for 45 minutes that doesn't necessarily mean it is done, that time is a guideline. When you bake a cake the batter dries and crystallizes, trapping the air, if you underbake it this lattice isn't completely formed and it loses the air - you see this massive oven spring and then the whole thing collapses. The skewer test method isn't very reliable, next time keep baking until the cake springs back then you press it with a finger on top. I personally use that method and back it up with temperature measurements made with an instant read thermometer. A heavier cake like a carrot cake is done when it reads over 200°F (94°C), lighter cakes would want a higher temperature, closer to 210°F (99°C)


Egg YOLK replacement? I am making an old family recipe for Easter Bread, but I would like to make a vegan version of it for a friend.

The non vegan ingredients that the recipe calls for are:

milk (substituting with almond milk)

butter (substituting with Earth Balance)

3 egg yolks

Help!! I can not think or find a good alternative to just 3 egg yolks. I am questioning the consistency of a lot of the suggestions I have found online.

Thank you in advance for all suggestions and ideas!

In an article I with a very quick google search found here, it seems that you can

  blend 1 tablespoon of flax or chia seeds with 3 tablespoons of water until mixture is thick and creamy.

However, I suspect that this would add a gritty texture that would be unpleasant in easter sweet breads. You would probably find that a full-fat yogurt is a good alternative, having both protein and fats.

I also found this article, which uses chickpea flour, flour (wheat, rice, sorghum), water and oil.


Sausage made of cheese and meat? Is there some kind of sausage that blends some kind of cheese with meat? In Brazil we have a kind of cheese that has almost the same shape of a sausage, I guess this could exist.

Cheese Kranksy or Kasekrainer is the common sausage with cheese. Around 10% cheese seems typical

They taste great, and are very popular with children


Old recipe conversions My old recipe for buckeyes (cookies) calls for one package of crackers. That was when the box was a pound box. Does anyone know the conversion since the box is now less weight and less crackers?

Just divide one pound (16 ounces) by the weight of the box you have now. For example, if the new box is 14.4 ounces (seems to be a common size for graham crackers), then you need 16/14.4 = 1.11 boxes.

You might find Google helpful for this kind of thing: you can search for 1 pounds / 14.4 ounces and get an answer.

In the end you're probably best off just weighing, though: get enough boxes to have more than a pound, then weigh out a pound.

Or... if you're in exactly this situation, with a 14.4 ounce box that contains 3 packages of 9 crackers each, then that 0.11 of a box is an extra three crackers (27 * 16 / 14.4 = 30).


Making Sourdough starter in the UAE I live in the UAE where the climate is hot and humid.

I started making a sourdough starter on the 28th of October and today, 30th October it seems to be doubling quickly. It has a strong acidic sweet smell. Even though I made a stiff dough when I fed it in the morning, the starter seems soupy now.

Does this mean that my yeast is growing rapidly?

Do I need to increase the feedings?

One of the main differences from sourdough to standard bread yeast is that it is composed by a complex fauna of bacteria and yeasts that do lactic fermentation as well as alcoholic fermentation. Therefore acidicity is indeed a positive sign of activity in your sourdough.

The tricky part is that as the pH of the dough lowers, it triggers the digestion of the gluten network, 'destroying' the protein structure that holds the air and making the dough look like pancake dough. So when baking with sourdough one needs to be careful with how long you ferment.

This will depend on the initial quantity of sourdough you use, the temperature of the place you leave it resting, the strength of your flour (protein/gluten content) and the humidity of the flour (typically 15%).

If you are in a very hot place I would recommend either letting the dough in a colder spot (e.g. top part of your fridge, or a wine fridge) or using a smaller quantity of sourdough. By trial and error you can gauge the initial quantity for the time you want to leave it unattended.


'Caramelization' of tomato sauce in slow cooker For the last few years I've made my tomato sauces in a slow cooker ('crock pot'), or actually, in a machine that is sold as a 'plate warmer' but works great for low temperature cooking. I pre-heat the ingredients on my stove, then transfer it to the slow cooker for 10 or 14 hours to let all the flavors blend, then I puree and can the result. When I first learned this technique, I was told not to stir the sauce, because the long cooking time makes the sugars at the top caramelize and that would bring out a great sweet flavor. Indeed the top, after being in the cooker for that long, browns a bit, and the flavor is great.

However, recently I was learning a bit more about caramelization to understand my baking better, and it turns out that there are no sugars that caramelize at temperatures < 110 °C. So now I'm wondering - is this caramelization of my tomato sauce just a myth? The machine only goes up to 90 °C. I've checked the temperature at various depths in my sauce with an infrared thermometer, and indeed the temperature is nowhere higher than that. Anyone have more than anecdotal information on the chemistry of making tomato sauce?

Short answer: if it doesn't get heated to the caramelization temperature then it does not caramelize. The science is here, and it says you need at least 110 °C for fructose.

Browning in your case is probably not caramelization, but a Maillard reaction, which

  is a chemical reaction between an amino acid and a reducing sugar, usually requiring the addition of heat.

Maillard reaction can happen at lower temperatures if given enough time.

Lifted directly from this very useful answer that cites the excellent Harold McGee's book On Food and Cooking (emphasis mine):

  There are exceptions to the rule that browning reactions require temperatures above the boil. Alkaline conditions, concentrated solutions of carbohydrates and amino acids, and prolonged cooking times can all generate Maillard colors and aromas in moist foods. For example, alkaline egg whites, rich in protein, with a trace of glucose, but 90% water, will become tan-colored when simmered for 12 hours. The base liquid for brewing beer, a water extract of barley malt that contains reactive sugars and amino acids from the germinated grains, deepens in color and flavor with several hours of boiling. Watery meat or chicken stock will do the same as it's boiled down to make a concentrated demiglace. Persimmon pudding turns nearly black thanks to its combination of reactive glucose, alkaline baking soda, and hours of cooking; balsamic vinegar turns nearly black over the course of years!

So in your temperature range:

~212-300 °F (100-150 °C) - Maillard gets slower as temperature goes lower, generally requiring many hours near the boiling point of water
~130-212 °F (55-100 °C) - Maillard requires water, high protein, sugar, and alkaline conditions to advance noticeably in a matter of hours; generally can take days