Forgot to add salt to french fries while soaking it in hot water I tried to make french fries at home for the first time. As I searched over the internet, there are four steps,

Soak the potatoes in cold water for 20 mins
Soak the potatoes now in hot water for 10 mins with salt in it(I forgot to add salt in water)
Fry the potatoes in sim mode for 10 mins ( I did that already)
Fry the potatoes now in a high manner until they get brown (I need to do hereafter)

After the third step, I realised I had not added salt while soaking the potatoes. Is there any way could I add salt now before/while fry it?

Any salt added during the soaking step won’t make your fries significantly salty, during blancing the potatoes will precook and absorb some water and if salted, some salt (a 3% brine is suggested here). But the average French fry recipes I am familiar with typically don’t salt the water and many don’t parboil. - I never salted any soaking water and still got good results.

Fries are usually salted (or spiced, if you prefer) right after the last frying step when the remaining frying oil helps the salt stick to the fries.

In short: Yes, there are sources that insist on salted blanching water, and maybe it’s the way to perfection, but if you didn’t, simply salt afterwards.


When to add marzipan? I want to bake a cake with the following ingredients:

200 g butter
200 g sugar
200 g grated marzipan
4 eggs
50 g flour

This is a classic recipe were you cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at the time and fold in the flour. However, I'm in doubt when to add the marzipan for best result.

Is it best to mix sugar and marzipan first, then start to cream with this mixture?
Is is it better to cream butter and sugar first, then add marzipan and stir until smooth?

What should I do?

I would cream together the butter and sugar then add marzipan, eggs and flour in that order


How can a tandoor oven cook skewered meat evenly I am going to build or buy a tandoor. Before I invest, I have done some research into how to cook in one.
The part that confuses me is, all the video's I have seen, show the skewers in the tandoor that are nearly vertical as per this picture.

In my mind, this would make it impossible to cook evenly enough given the meat at the bottom of the skewer is closer to the heat source and as such, will cook much faster compared to the meat closer to the lid (that is further away from the heat source).
I'm not aiming for perfection with my question, meaning, I don't expect every piece of food to cook 100% perfectly / evenly etc. One video (at 7:50) I've seen even shows that the meat at the top was a higher temperature compared to the meat near the heat source.
My question is, how can this cook so evenly?

It is called a tandoor oven, not a tandoor grill or a tandoor hotplate. It is enclosed, and with thick walls, which means heat is coming from the sides too, not only the bottom. Also, there is convection, and with a lid on, the hot air doesn't escape.
In short, it is the same principle as any other oven.


How do I season potato wedges or quartered roasted potatoes with 'Leon's Baked Fries'? From to right: Leon's official website, 2, 3. Google has more images.

Clicking on "MORE" (as per the green arrow) unveils:

Ingredients
Crisscut Fries (Potatoes, Vegetable oil, Modified starch, Corn flour, Rice flour, Salt, Starch, Spices, Garlic powder, Onion powder, Raising agents: Sodium Bicarbonate, E450(i), Yeast extract, Spice extracts Thickener: Xanthan Gum, Dextrose),
Leon Seasoning (Spices (Paprika, Smoked Paprika, Coriander (ground), Black Pepper), Herbs (Rosemary, Thyme, Oregano), Dried Garlic, Sea Salt, Smoked Salt, Onion Powder

Do I just mix the ingredients (hereafter IGT) in a bowl, and then  strew Leon's Seasoning  over baked potato wedges or quartered roasted potatoes? This  looks wrong, as the pictures above exhibit little seasoning on the fries.

If this is right, at what stage do I speckle?

Or must the mixed ingredients be in(ter)jected in the potatoes?

Normally spices are added after frying the potatoes (fries, wedges...)

If you add the spices before frying, either they will fall off the potatoes or burn and turn bitter in the oil.

The spices are probably finely grounded (powered) so it is not really visible.


Is there an alternative wrapping for tamales? I'd like to have a go at making tamales, but the corn husk wrappers are hard to come by here. Is there anything I can use as a substitute wrapper?

I've had the same problem once. The first substitute is banana leaves. But they're not easy to find either.

The second one is using big leaves of chard. Tamales will be done in the same time and you could eat the leaf if you want. I've tried it once and it came out great.

Here it's a recipe for tamales from Michoacan made with chard. Here it is a graphic step by step recipe for tamales with chard. They are written in Spanish, let me know if you need a translator ;)

PS. My mexican mother in law used to do it with chard.


What will happen if you cook in a container that has traces from another day of cooking? Basically the idea is you're bored of doing the dishes and you want to save time.

Is it unhealthy? Will the chemistry alter a lot?

Assume the container has been in the fridge [and what had in it isn't spoiled] and the traces are what remains if one quickly puts the remains out with a fork. The food recipe has been the same.

There is no food safety issue involved, but in most cases, there will be a problem with taste. I think that the most important factor is whether the recipe involves heating (in the container in question) or not.

If you must heat something in the container, don't reuse. Different parts of a heated recipe are added at different times (e.g. for a stew onions and tubers first, then meat, then fluid, then the delicate veggies, and herbs at the end). Having some pieces of the old vegetables at the bottom will interfere with that. Even if you don't have such a dish and are heating everything at once, you will cook the old food for the second time, overcooking it. It will taste bad, or even burnt - not only the old pieces, they will give their bad taste to the rest of the dish.

If you don't heat in the container, but only do some physical changes (mixing, whipping, blending), it will probably be mostly OK. Take care with dishes where the mixing order is important - if you made a soufflé mixture in a bowl, you cannot start another one in the unwashed bowl, because you have to beat the egg whites in a clean bowl. If you get impurities into the eggwhites before they are beaten, they won't aerate properly, even if mixing in the same stuff after they are stiff presents no problem. For a chemically leavened (baking powder or baking soda) batter, you cannot start the dry part in the bowl which contains moist batter traces. And if you made anything which ferments, you will have some overfermented fragments. I wouldn't do it with yeast containing recipes, but if you are making yoghurt, you can just see it as a part of your starter culture.

If your food doesn't belong to these exception categories, you are probably OK. Still, your food will get some off tastes. Even if you remove the last of the old food immediately before the new cooking process (and do you really start cooking just after you've eaten?), the old food will have left dried traces on the walls of the container. These will mix or dissolve into the new food. The drying alone will have given them an unpleasant texture. If we are talking pieces, or even worse, purées of fruits or vegetables, they will likely have oxidized as well. Anything which changes its taste with age (like fish) is better washed away.

So much for the downsides: not game-breaking, but they exist. On the other hand, I cannot see any big gains. Cooking gets much more utensils dirty than the container in which the food is stored/prepared. If you are already doing them in the sink, elbow-deep in soapy water, the marginal effort for rinsing an additional item is close to nothing. And if you have a dishwasher, I don't see any reason to not use it. Conclusion: there is no reason to do it, even though it won't poison you if you do.


Will double-action baking powder lose potency if not baked immediately? I use double-action baking powder to make waffles. If I bake the waffles immediately, they rise nicely. However, if I bake the waffles more than 3 hours after making the batter, they don't rise as well.

How far in advance can I make the batter and still have the waffles rise? Or what can I do to maintain the potency of the baking powder?

Joy Of Baking has an excellent article on how baking powder and baking soda work.  It indicates (emphasis added):

  Most baking powder used today is double-acting which means it reacts
  to liquid and heat and happens in two stages. The first reaction takes
  place when you add the baking powder to the batter and it is
  moistened. One of the acid salts reacts with the baking soda and
  produces carbon dioxide gas. The second reaction takes place when the
  batter is placed in the oven. The gas cells expand causing the batter
  to rise. Because of the two stages, baking of the batter can be
  delayed for about 15-20 minutes without it losing its leavening power.

There are a very few applications using chemical leaveners that can be held longer (such as refrigerator muffins), but the batters tend to be much, much thicker, so that the generated carbon dioxide bubbles are trapped within the dough until baked.

The best way to have convenient access to something like waffle batter right when you want it is to prepare a dry mix of all of the dry ingredients (including the chemical leaveners), and then add the wet ingredients at time of preperation.   Here is an example for waffles; or there is Alton Brown's pancake mix recipe.


Removing turmeric stains from white plastic Possible Duplicate:
  How do I remove turmeric stains from metal/plastic cookware?

I had tried detergents to remove some light turmeric strains off a plastic but after it failed then someone told me to keep the plastic affected with turmeric strains under sun rays in the afternoon. So, I kept it for 15 minutes and the strains were just vanished! How did it work?

The sun's UV radiation breaks up the dye (color) molecules that have stained your plastic. As the bonds in these molecules break down the color starts to fade and eventually may disappear.

This is why some plastics, paper, and other items with color fade over time when exposed to a lot of sunlight.


Brining vs Salting - what's going on? The issue of whether or not to salt a steak in advance is ancient, but I think it's fair to say that there is at least some consensus that salting meat is associated with drier steak, because of the moisture that the salt draws out. For other cuts/meats, it seems to be a more complex issue.

As somebody who watches lots of cooking videos online but is by no means a cooking expert, I can't help but notice a recent trend in brining meats of late - along with sous vide, it seems like the "in" thing right now.

So my question is: what is the science/logic behind this, and how is it that salt water seems to have the opposite effect (i.e. adding moisture/improving meat) than just normal salt marinating? Why does salt water add/help retain juiciness/flavour/moisture, but regular salt takes away?

I've seen all sorts of things being brined - from pork chops, to fried chicken, to roast duck. I can't imagine you'd brine beef or lamb but... I have no idea. Enlighten me please!

The question starts with an inaccurate assumption.  Salt does NOT necessarily result in "drier steak."  Salting a steak will draw some moisture out of the outermost layer of meat initially.  That's true.  However, salt also helps to break down the outer muscle structure of the meat.  Thus, within 10-15 minutes after meat is salted, water will actually start moving back into the meat, and after somewhere around 45 minutes to an hour, all of that "lost moisture" will be reabsorbed.  (I covered all this in more detail, with some links, in an answer to a previous question.)

If you use a rub and allow the salt to penetrate at least an hour or so, you won't lose moisture and will actually end up with a more flavorful outer layer of meat.

And yes, salt used long-term, like in dry-curing, will eventually dry out meat more.  Salt attracts water, so it will gradually draw water out of meat, but then the water on the surface will evaporate.  Thus, the salt will draw out even more moisture to the surface, eventually drying and curing the meat.  But this is a process that happens over days, weeks, and months, as water migrates much more slowly internally within meat.

As for brining, the reason why it increases moisture is because physical and chemical systems like to come to equilibrium.  Higher salt content outside the meat means that the salt will gradually flow ("diffuse") inside  the meat to equalize the concentration.  But salt is attracted to the water molecules it is dissolved in (the same reason it draws out moisture in dry curing), so water comes along with it, thus carrying in moisture.  In the case of curing, there's no water for the salt to carry in with it, so you just end up eventually with a dry, salted hunk of preserved meat.  But in brining, there's excess water, so it's attracted and follows the salt inward.  The process is largely diffusion, but osmosis plays a role too.  (And I've also said way more about this in another answer.)


Oven Spring when first stage of recipe includes a ten hour first rise I am baking Swedish Limpa Bread. The recipe calls for mixing rye flour with a molasses/ anise seed, salt and water mixture and letting rise overnight or nine to ten hours. Does this exhaust the sourdough starter, leading to little rise in the bread? How can I rectify this problem?

Generally when you have issues regarding oven spring at home, the problem is heat and steam in your oven rather than yeast activity. In commercial bakeries, sourdoughs are frequently fermented for overnight or longer, so that shouldn't be a problem. A lot of the expansion you see in the oven is from the moisture in your dough converting to steam before the crust has set. In a bakery, we can achieve this by using steam injected ovens which allow the crust to remain elastic longer. Bakeries also use hearth and convection ovens which transfer heat into the loaf more efficiently causing it to create steam faster.

To recreate this at home, you can try moistening the crust of your bread before baking it or trying to create steam in your oven. You can encourage steam by starting your oven at a higher temperature and turning it down after a few minutes, or by baking on a pizza stone to simulate a hearth. It's important to get the steam down first though, as the heat transfer without steam will cause a lot of crust cracking and weird rising.

It's also important to note that if your dough has a high proportion of rye flour, rye traps bubbles via gums called pentosans rather than via a gluten network like wheat dough. It generally won't rise in the same way that wheat doughs will.


Should Chorizo Be Peeled Before Cooking? For years I've been chopping up Chorizo and cooking it, with no other preparation. I've recently been told that I've been doing it wrong and should peel the Chorizo first. It's pain to peel, and I've not noticed any difference.

What is the skin of a Chorizo sausage made of, and should it be removed before cooking or not?

It depends on what chorizo you're using. If you're using soft (i.e. uncooked) chorizo then no, you don't need to remove the skin, because it should cook with the sausage. If you are using the cured, ready to eat chorizo you should take the skin off as it will be tough.

This may well vary by brand, incidentally.


Making molasses cookies less soft I have tried molasses cookies with the following recipe:

3/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup yoghurt
2 tbsp oil
2.5 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
cinnamon and spices.

The cookies are soft and cake like. How can I make them less soft?

The original recipe called for 1/2 cup white sugar. I reduced it to 1/4 and still find the recipe too sweet.

I want to keep the recipe eggless.

Thank you for the help.

Both the oil and the yogurt are helping to make these cake-like. The easiest fix might be to find a different eggless recipe which calls for butter (or shortening of some kind) and no yogurt. Maybe look  for "ginger snaps", and if you don't want the ginger you can leave it out. I'm pretty sure ginger snaps without the ginger would have to be called "molasses cookies". The following will probably get edited away since exchanging recipes seems to be a no-no, but I did find one recipe here     http://www.spiceupthecurry.com/eggless-gingersnap-cookies-recipe/#wprm-recipe-container-26703

If you want to tweak the recipe you have, my first recommendation would be to substitute butter for some of the oil. Evidently you are open to a little experimentation since you already modified the sugar quantity.

Which brings up sugar quantity: not sure if you want "less soft": brittle and crispy ? -- or "less soft": hard ? White sugar promotes the brittle and crispy characteristic, and flour promotes the just-plain-hard characteristic. So if you want crispy and less sweet, maybe removing some of the molasses would be better than removing white sugar. Losing some of the liquid from the mo. in the batter might also help with getting them less cake-like.

I have made ginger snaps that came out real hard and clunky (sort of like the cheap ones in the box at the supermarket) just by putting in a little too much flour. If that is what you are going for, a little more flour is your answer.

Keeping the cookies in the oven just a teeny bit longer can also harden them up a little.

Of course changing stuff will require a little trial and error to get a good balance, but keep an eye on the dough as you tweak things to make sure the consistency remains reasonable. If you already decided to go ahead and halve one of the ingredients just to see what happens, then it sounds like you are ok with experimentation.


Can you put egg shells down the garbage disposal unit? The Google has conflicting answers. I come from a background of "everything goes in the garbage disposal", my wife's background is "never put anything in the garbage disposal". I suspect reality is somewhere between us.

Note: I'm talking about the garbage disposal unit under the sink.

I've always put egg shells down the disposal.  The "official" word from one manufacturer is:

  Most forms of food waste can be put
  through the food waste disposer —
  bones from fish and poultry, meat,
  large meat bones, fish scraps,
  vegetables, fruit, egg shells, and
  much more. Very stringy or fibrous
  foods such as celery should be
  avoided. Food waste disposers are
  designed for food waste only and
  packaging materials should not be put
  into the disposer.

Given that this manufacturer says you can put large bones in a disposer, I can't imagine that eggshells would do any damage.

And as a practical matter, I've seen name-brand disposers at Home Depot for $100, so even if you felt you were shortening the life of your disposer by a small percentage by putting too much into it, it's not a big deal to get a new one.


Is there such thing as a chimichilada? So a burrito is made with a flour tortilla; it is wet if you put sauce on it.

An enchilada is basically just a wet burrito, but made with a corn tortilla.

A chimichanga is a deep fried burrito.

What is it called if you deep fry an enchilada instead of or before putting sauce on it?

There's an additional complication to your question. Chimichangas are closed-ended while enchiladas are open-ended, so calling an enchilada a wet burrito isn't quite right. In fact, burritos often come drenched in sauce. For reference, the Chuy's Fajita beef burrito with ranchero sauce:

Other differences include size, which changes how many you're served. You're generally going to eat one burrito or chimichanga while you'll get 2-4 enchiladas (or more, depending on size).

I think the more similar fried (or baked), open-ended corn tortilla food you're looking for is a "taquito" or "flauta" (the latter is often with a flour tortilla, too).

  A taquito (Spanish pronunciation: [taˈkito], literally Spanish for "small taco"), tacos dorados, rolled taco, or flauta (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈflauta], literally Spanish for "flute") is a Mexican food dish that typically consists of a small rolled-up tortilla that contains filling, including beef, cheese or chicken. The filled tortilla is then crisp-fried or deep-fried. The dish is often topped with condiments such as sour cream and guacamole. Corn tortillas are generally used to make taquitos; the dish is more commonly known as flautas when they are larger than their taquito counterparts, and can be made with either flour or corn tortillas although using corn is more traditional.

Because it's crispy-fried, they're generally not topped with a liquid sauce, which helps preserve the crisp shell, particularly as they are generally eaten as finger food.

Some potato taquitos from Hilah Cooking:

Full disclosure: I enjoy dining at Chuy's but am unaffiliated with them. I know Hilah but found this image/recipe serendipitously in a Google search.


Using an ice cream maker with its own compressor I'm used to using the ice cream makers where you have to freeze the bowl first, but have now got a used Andrew James model 3368 ice cream makers with its own compressor - but no manual.

I've read about putting a saline solution between the machine and the mixing bowl (I'm guessing for thermal conductivity?), and I know some machines have to get down to temperature before use but I can't see a way to do it with this machine. Do I need to worry about either or is it likely OK to just plug it in and use?

Usually with compressor machines you just turn it on and get it super cold, then make sure the dasher is spinning before pouring in the mix. Make sure the mix is below 40°F (4C) beforehand. I also chill down the spoon, container I’m putting the ice cream in, and any add-in’s I’m adding to it. Then spin it until the motor starts slowing down, or until it gets to a firm soft-serve consistency. Enjoy!


How do you prevent salmon from falling apart when frying? I have tried frying salmon filet and besides the fact it was very raw on the inside it fell apart when I tried to flip it over. Why?

*Skin was on.

The best technique I've found for frying fish is not to flip it at all. I start the fish on the stove, skin down, then I finish cooking it in the oven. You need an oven safe frying pan of course, cast iron or a high-temperature non-stick works well. You get a nice crispy skin this way.

If you are set on flipping then you need to be gentle, think of it as turning over, not flipping. Get your spatula completely under the fish and lift it off the pan a bit, then putting your fingers on top of the piece roll it over, last let it gently drop onto the pan - keeping your fingers off the surface of course.


Sour cream pound cake I have a recipe that calls for

a Duncan Hines butter cake mix
4 eggs
½ cup sugar
1 cup Wesson oil
8 ozs sour cream.

Cook in preheated oven 1½ hours at 300.

I have made numerous cakes like this and they turned out beautiful until Duncan Hines changed the cake mix from 18oz to 15oz. Since then I have not been able to make this cake without problems.

I added ⅓ cup of another mix and it ran over and fell.
I made a mixture of 1½ cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ¼ teaspoon baking soda and added 6 tablespoons of this mixture to my cake mix and it still ran over and fell. This one tasted fine but was not pretty.

Do you have any idea what I can do to make it where it won’t fall and run over?

If the package of cake mix got smaller (and otherwise didn't change) then you could try reducing every ingredient by a similar amount, to keep all the ratios the same.

If the package decreased from 18 to 15 ounces, that's makes the new package 83.3% (15÷18) the size of the old one. You'll want to reduce other ingredients similarly.

Your "18 oz recipe" was:

18 oz cake mix
4 eggs
½ cup sugar
1 cup oil
8 oz sour cream

With the eggs, an exact reduction would be 3⅓ eggs, and ⅓ egg is just silly. I'd suggest rounding down to 3. To keep the other measurements at round fractions, the ratios will get thrown off a bit.

If you keep all the measurements even fractions for a "15 oz recipe" you might try:

15 oz cake mix
3 eggs
⅓ cup sugar
¾ cup oil
6 oz sour cream

I've rounded everything down on that... Which means I think it might be a touch dry compared to the original.

A slightly fussier attempt at a "15 oz recipe" would be something like this:

15 oz cake mix
3 eggs
⅓ cup + 1 Tablespoon sugar
¾ cup + 1 Tablespoon oil
7 oz sour cream

That still might need some tweaking to get it "just right"... And of course, if Duncan Hines changed more than just the size of the box, your recipe might need more careful adjustment.


How to find out if an egg has a cracked shell before boiling it? The cracks are practically invisible to naked eye but while boiling, they spew out all the yolk into the water creating a lot of mess. I'm wondering if I could test an egg before boiling it, so I could use the cracked ones for making omelettes, for example.

The main reason eggs crack while boiling isn't because they are already cracked, but because of the sudden change in temperature from cold to hot.  The same thing can happen to glass or metal, or practically any substance.  (I've actually broken a glass coffee table top once by setting a pie pan out of the oven on top of it to cool... after a couple minutes, the top crashed to the ground, giving me quite a start!)

Some suggestions to prevent eggs from cracking while boiling can be found here. A summary is:

Let the eggs warm to room temperature on the counter for 20 minutes before boiling.
Put the eggs in the pan before heating the water, and raise the water temperature slowly (i.e. don't set the heat to 'High')
Add vinegar or salt to the water to help heal any small cracks.
Cook the eggs slowly.


Baking Turnips But are coming out burnt or soggy I have tried baking turnips but they turn out very soggy or burnt.  Any ideas?  Below is the recipe I was using.

Oven 350
Turnips
Olive oil
Rosemary

I baked the slices on a baking sheet with the olive oil and rosemary brushed on both sides for about 30-45 minutes.

To be honest you are going to seriously struggle, it's possible but hard. I've had similar issue's trying to make sweet potato mash.

To begin with you are going to need to run the sliced turnips under cold running for a little while (20mins) not sure why but it does help. (also helps with potato and beetroot crisps.

Instead of going in the oven full wack from the start you'll want to start low (130c) for 20-30 to help dry off excess moisture. Then remove the tray from the oven. Turn the oven up to 200c let it get to temp. Now toss the crisps in oil,  season with quite a lot of sea salt (a lot of it will fall off so don't be tight throw it on) and  return the crisps to the oven. Check ever 5min turning each time until they start to colour. Initially while still warm they will still be a little soft but once they cool down they will start to crisp up.

Also worth considering is a product from msk called 'crisp film' which really gives this kind of thing that "walkers" style crunch.

Side note: I think I used the word crisp far too many times ...


Is the oily liquid from roasting a turkey worth keeping? I placed a 14 lb young Round Hill Frozen Basted Turkey in a pan, and roasted it inside an oven.

After it was roasted, there was quite an amount of oily liquid left in the pan. Is this liquid worth keeping, and for what purpose?

Before you use the drippings, taste them. If they taste good on their own, they will be great for gravy. Often, the oil left in the pan after roasting turkey is used to make the roux to thicken gravy to go with that turkey. If it looks like all oil, you can use it as such.

Especially since the turkey was pre-basted, the drippings might be a mixture of oil and juices. Pour the drippings into a clear container so you can see just how much is oil and how much is juice. Scoop off the oil and cook it (and added butter as necessary) on the stove (preferably in the roasting pan) with an equal (roughly) amount of flour.

  To make a roux gravy, the basic formula is 2 tablespoons fat, 2 tablespoons flour, and 1 cup of liquid to equal 1 cup of gravy.

Quote from about food which meshes with my own experience.

As you cook the flour and oil to a medium brown, try to scrape up any brown bits stuck to the pan. Those are huge flavor bombs. The liquid portion of the drippings poured off can be added with the broth that is the liquid part of the gravy.

The above link leads to more detailed instructions.


Is it okay to store sandwich (tonkatsu sandwich) in a container? i'm thinking of making sandwiches at home and bringing them to the office. Is that okay? I mean, does tonkatsu sandwich have to be hot or warm before it should be eaten? I'm thinking of selling this at our office.

As long as the tonkatsu is cooked and then cooled appropriately (ie relatively quickly), then stored at appropriate temperatures (ie refrigerated) until consumption, you should be fine. The length of your journey to work will be the main factor - you need to keep the food cool enough, so a cool bag with ice blocks may be in order. Then you need to make sure they remain cool until they are consumed. Whether or not they should be reheated is probably a matter of taste.

Also, check your local regulations for selling food for public consumption. It will vary from country to country, but many places will require a kitchen inspection and permit before you can legally sell food.


How is British tea prepared? Do you add any flavor of British breakfast tea?
I need to know how it is prepared; either with or without additional flavor.

The British tea? Don't know what that's all about. Anyway...

English Breakfast Tea is a mixture of Assam, Ceylon and Kenya teas that is often served with a dash of milk and sugar to taste. The UK Tea Council discusses their view of the appropriate way to serve each variety at the supplied link. I would think that a great majority of British people take their tea with milk (I don't find the type of tea used palatable without, as it is somewhat bitter and high in tannins, and I don't think many other people do either). When I say a dash, what I mean is somewhere in the region of 10% of the volume of the cup, rather than the half and half or thereabouts used in beverages like chai.

Most British people (in my experience at least) use teabags which are simply added to the cup and hot water poured on top. However adding several spoonfuls of loose tea to a teapot is not uncommon, as was probably done for millennia wherever tea was drunk, prior to the invention of the teabag.


Can I use meat thermometers to measure room and oven temperature? Can you measure the oven temperature or room temperature for things like proofing bread when better alternatives are not available? How accurate will it be?

I have a TheromoWorks Thermopop which I heard good things about. Just writing this to know if it matters.

A meat thermometer is a device that can be left in food in the oven, the thermapop is not a meat thermometer because the plastic casing and electronic are not oven safe. If you put your thermapop in the oven and left it there you'd destroy it. You could use it to measure air temperature outside the oven without a problem, although you'd use up the battery quickly if you left it on constantly.

The two most widely available meat thermometer types are mechanical ones which stick into the meat and have a dial you can read, and electronic ones which have a probe on a wire which goes into the meat in the oven. Either type can be used to measure oven temperature, you just put the probe in the oven without being in meat.

Given how dirt cheap oven thermometers and room thermometers are these days there's not much net gain though, you may as well invest a small amount of money in the right tool for the right job.


Bottling and Storing Cold-Brewed Coffee? I'm a bit of an iced-coffee snob – I love a good, rich tasting coffee, and love the smooth flavor of cold-brewed coffee; unfortunately, the only time I have to make it is the weekends, and it lasts for one to two days in the fridge before being consumed, leaving the rest of my week relegated to Keurig brewed over ice, or a trip to Starbucks.

I had the thought to brew coffee on Saturdays and to store it in lock-top amber bottles in the refrigerator on Sunday, but I wanted to know how long I could expect the coffee to be safe to drink? Is there anything I can do differently to extend the shelf-life of my cold-brewed coffee?

Most cold-brew advocates that I have seen actually create a coffee concentrate, that they then dilute to drinking strength.

This article from The Nourishing Gourmet is typical in indicating that the concentrate can be held for about one week; the recipe at The Chow says 5 days.  Bon Appetit is an outlier claiming you can prepare the concentrate up to two weeks ahead of time.

The general consensus is clearly that you should be able to get through the work week, in any case.


Canning with candles I am not sure about the right terminology as I am not a native speaker, but is it possible to conserve solid food in a jar with a candle?

Boiling is used to decrease air and for the food to be well conserved it must not have much oxygen. The food is suffocating. A tea candle placed inside will suck the air too and will extinguish when there is no sufficient air inside.

The short answer is: No.

The more elaborate answer is that certain bacteria are anaerobic and food needs to be heat treated to ensure it can be safely stored. Especial mention: Clostridium botulinum which leaves deadly toxins.

The tealight inside the jar will not produce the heat needed for pasteurization.


How long can coconut liquid/cream last (open) in the fridge? I'm usually left with an unfinished can of coconut cream or liquid when cooking, and I store them in a closed plastic box in the fridge.
How long can they last?
It says 3 (for the cream) and 4 (for the liquid), but I already checked it after a week and a half and it smelled and tasted just fine.
Both of the items have shelf life of around 2 years, and doesn't need to be in the fridge before opening, if this information might matter.
Are there any visual differences when it's no good anymore?
Is it possible to save them in the freezer after opening?

Extra details:
Coconut liquid:

The coconut liquid ingredients as written on the box are: coconut extract (60%), water.
The brand is AROY-D
Looks like that

Coconut cream:

17-19% fat

Edit: I checked out this question about coconut milk, but it's not the same - I'm asking about the two other types - liquid and cream (it might be that the answer is similar, but the question is different).

Coconut cream, being generally oily, will give out rancidity in taste and smell once it rots. When extracted fresh as done in asia, coconut cream typically expires in a matter of hours. Since yours is canned, it's likely to have been reconstituted from coconut powder, ridding it from the spoiling enzymes in fresh coconut.

As long as you open your cans cold and keep its leftovers cold thereafter, it's easy to beat the printed expiry. The thing with coconut cream and liquid, it rots so suddenly, as soon as you turn your back. So its manufacturers are wary of users who aren't familiar with how sudden these things rot, which is why asians press and cook them within the same few hours.


What are some good substitions for alcohol in cooking? One of my favorite recipes these days is making a good bananas foster dessert.  Everyone I know enjoys it, to some extent, so it's a go-to dessert, for me.

One of my concerns, however, is that since the recipe calls for rum and banana liqueur, I can't (or at least I choose not to) serve it to anyone too young.  I'm not so concerned with the legal age limit as with serving it to very young children, like a nephew under 10 years old.  The idea is to burn off the alcohol, but I assume there is still some that remains in the dish after it is served.

So what I'm wondering is, what are some good alternatives to alcohol in common dishes?  I obviously won't get the same "flambe" presentation from the bananas foster, but it seems like a small tradeoff when considering I'll be able to serve it to more people.  (I wouldn't make the dessert for my sister, if her son couldn't eat it too)

EDIT: Not to take away from any answers, but I did find a website detailing some common alcohol substitutions

I can't give you a list with good substitutes for common dishes. First, I doubt that my common dishes are your common dishes. Second, it would be too long. If you want to substitute alcohol in a dish, you have to understand what it does in the specific recipe, and then use your imagination to think of an ingredient which will have a similar effect.

Alcohol has mostly three effects in a dish. First, it is a liquid, and its bulk must be considered. In recipes where the ratio is important (mainly batters), if you leave out the alcohol, you have to add some other liquid to maintain the original ratio.

Second, alcohol adds its own taste. A small part of it is the taste of the ethanol itself, but cooks mostly use beverages with a strong taste of their own as a component of the dish.

Third, alcohol is a solvent. It can get more taste out of your other ingredients than pure water. (Ever wondered why vanilla extract is alcohol based?) This is especially important in recipes which give it a longer time to interact with the other ingredients, such as the slow boiling of a coq au vin.

Depending on which of these effects are important to you, you have different options to act.

Just leave it out. If you aren't baking, you probably aren't that interested in the ratio. And if you expect the result to taste well enough without the alcohol, the simplest solution is to skip it.
Use a liquid substitute. This is especially important in baking and confectionery, but you can decide to do it in any case. Depending on the original kind of alcohol and taste you are aiming for, you can use pure water, a liquid trying to stay close to the original taste, or a liquid which gives a completely new taste profile to the whole recipe. For example, in a sweet dish like your foster dessert you can use caramel dissolved in apple juice instead of dark rum if you want to mimic the original, or cherry juice to create a cherry-banana dessert. Common liquids to use are sugared water (when the original recipe had a sweet liquor), a fruit or vegetable juice, a herbal infusion, clear stock, or pickle liquid. Don't be afraid to use more than one liquid to get closer to the effect you want. If the recipe already uses some other liquid, you can just use more of it.
Use a spice or condiment. This is when your main concern is the taste, and you don't care about the missing liquid. Again, you could be trying to mime the original closely (using orange zest instead of Grand Marnier), or just using any strong spice so the dish doesn't become bland. It is up to you. A special case is to use only a taste "essence": for some beverages common in baking, you can buy a propylene-glycol based condiment which approximates their aroma. Rum essence is widely available, but I'm quite sure that the whiskey flavored ice cream in the supermarket isn't full of real whiskey.
Leave the alcohol in the recipe (possibly reduced). Obviously impossible in some circumstances, like a wine sauce, but quite feasible in others. You don't have to drown the dessert in rum and flambe it. If you use 20 ml of rum per 1000 g of other ingredients, a child who eats a normal serving (150 g) will consume somewhat less than 1.2 g of ethanol if no alcohol at all is cooked out - and in practice, if the recipe calls for cooking, maybe half of the alcohol will evaporate, and a very young child will probably not eat the whole serving. I don't think that such miniscule amounts are problematic for children.

Of course, you are free to combine these solutions in any way you see fit, depending on which effect(s) of alcohol you are trying to imitate. For example, if a baking recipe calls for 50 ml of calvados, use 15 ml of calvados, 35 ml of apple juice, and a breath of powdered cinnamon. Or baste a roast with a mix of tomato and carrot juice instead of red wine. The possibilities are endless, you just have to be clear on why you are choosing whatever you are choosing.


How to store hot sandwiches? I am a student that recently moved to a student apartment, I have been making grilled sandwiches and storing them in aluminium foil to eat at uni. However, this causes the sandwiches to steam themselves inside the aluminium foil and the bread becomes mushy. How can I prevent this? Is there any way to store it and be able to carry it in the backpack without it steaming itself?

Thanks!

No, you can't make a grilled sandwich, seal it and expect it to still be crispy later. You can reduce the mushiness quite a bit by letting the sandwich cool completely on a wire rack before you package it up. If you don't have a wire rack you can make a lattice out of chopsticks or skewers, the important thing is that the bottom of the sandwich can air cool.


How can I cool tea quickly? Imagine you're making someone a tea, but for whatever reason they have to leave soon. How can I cool the tea so that they don't have to choose between leaving it unfinished or burning their mouth? Ideally the method should not only be fast, but also let me reliably reach about the same temperature every time.

I've thought of the following:

Add additional milk - cools tea, but affects taste.

Heat the water less - won't make tea as hot, but might affect how well the tea infuses.

Add cool water to boiled water - would cool down a fully-infused tea, but hard to control resulting temperature.

Put it in the fridge for 30 seconds or so - would cool tea, but seems like a bad idea.

What is wrong with a regular ice cube? As you state that the tea is not yet ready, you just use slightly less water and then add the ice cube, which has a fixed temperature.

I use this for large scale ice tea production. As I use 1:1 hot water : ice cubes I simply brew a double strong tea.


Using dried cranberries instead of chocolate chips in cookies Can I use dried cranberries instead of chocolate chips in my GF cookies?  Will it work the same?
If so, should I correct the sugar amount in the recipe?
Thanks

Of course it won't be the same, it will be different. If the cranberries are sweetened, which dried cranberries often are, then just a straight substitution should work. The cookies will be a bit tarter, but should be just as delicious.

If the dried cranberries are unsweetened, then it probably does make sense to add a bit of sugar. You can do that by adding perhaps 1/8 more to the cookie, or you can glaze the cookies with a powdered sugar/water glaze.


Sugar/Citric Acid Coating giving Gummy Bears a Wet Look So I'm able to make my gummy bear recipe just fine. Its just a simple mix of the following:

1/2 Cup water
1/4 Corn Syrup
1 6oz package of Jell-O Brand gelatin
2 packages of gelatin (Out of the four pack boxes)

I'm assuming you know how to make this recipe into bears at this point as this question isn't about the recipe more so the coating. However this recipe is from the ever so popular gummy bear video on YouTube found here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3_dV-e4d9c

So the bears are made, chilled, came out great. No issues. Except they're definitely not AS clear as the YouTube video, but again not really the point. Taste fine, and are firm.

So, I add a PURE sugar coating, let them sit out for a day, and harden up. They're good to go. Its a solid dry sugar coating similar to sour patch kids, or those little orange or cherry slices you get at the gas station.

However I wanted to create some type of sour coating similar to sour patch kids. I tried buying this product here:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/UBO-Citric-Acid-7-5-Ounce-USA/647638748

Its Ball Jar brand Citric Acid. I added this to a 1:3 ratio of citric acid to sugar, and then coated my gummy bears. After letting sit out for a day to dry up and harden, i come back to the gummy bears looking wet, sticky, and not easily handled.

I'm wondering if anyone has any advice to solve this problem. Its my first time posting here, so hopefully someone can help. :P

I've never eaten soft sour candies. Is the sugared  coating sour too or just the body of the candy?

The reason your candies became sticky is citric acid is generally sold in the anhydrous form. Citric acid exists in anhydrous and monohydrate forms. In the anhydrous form, it's plain citric acid with no water molecule attached. Monohydrate form has a single water molecule attached to the single citric acid molecule.

The anhyrdous form of citric acid is hygroscopic  - which means it attracts and absorbs water from surrounding air. I don't know if there's anything that can be done at this point since anything you tried to dry them (like heating them) would only melt the Gummi bears. And they'd only rehydrate afterward in anything you did that succeeded in driving off the water. It's the nature of citric acid. I use citric acid and keep mine in a glass jar with a tight lid and a few packs of silica gel to absorb moisture and it still tends to clump.

Why not remelt the batch treated with citric acid and make slightly sour ones but coated only with sugar.


Where can I buy online spices, sauces, extracts, etc. with international shipping? I already know Penzey's spices, which is good, but they don't sell sauces. Ebay won't work for me because it is too expensive to ship to Russia (judging from one bottle from one user). Amazon is also not an option as they will only ship books.

In particular, I'm looking for worcestershire sauce, fish sauce, pure extracts, sesame oil.

I found this thread: http://www.expat.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=189321 which lists a russian website. That might be of use to you. I can't comment on what they have as I can't read the site. Most of the other sources I know of are based here in North America. In general I would usually start by checking for a site based in my country that offers reasonable shipping. Even being in Canada I find that often shipping across the US border is cost prohibitive.


In ingredient lists, does "lime" mean the fruit or the chemical? Ingredient lists on packaged foods sometimes list "lime".  Does this refer to the citrus fruit, or to the chemical calcium hydroxide?

As an example, Mission Organics White Corn Tortilla Chips list "trace of lime" as the last ingredient.  This could indicate some part (or juice) of the citrus fruit, included as a seasoning (common in Mexican cuisine).  On the other hand, there is a process for preparing corn (maize in some dialects) which involves cooking it in a calcium hydroxide solution.  So if these chips are made using this process, "trace of lime" could refer to calcium hydroxide residues.  Which is meant?

Calcium hydroxide is pretty much insoluble, so it's hard to get every last bit of it out after nixtamalizing. A trace always remains. If the maker were selling lime flavored tortilla chips, which are sold the ingredient list would say something like "lime extract" or "natural lime flavor".


How do I make french fries that are crispy inside and out? I want to make french fries that are crispy through and through.  These days, it's very popular to "double fry" them, resulting in fries that are crispy on the outside and white and fluffy on the inside like a baked potato.  I hate white and fluffy on the inside like a baked potato.  I want them crispy all the way through.

Here's what I'm doing now: I make cris-cuts, using a cris-cut tool that I specially modified to make the slices even thinner.  Then I fry very small batches at 325° F for one minute only in safflower oil.  (It's a small deep fryer so I have to make small batches.)  When they are all done, I fry them again in larger batches at 385° for about 3 minutes.

The above seems to work all right, but is there some secret to get them really crispy on the inside?

I rarely bother to deep fry fries. I buy them precut, blanched and frozen in the supermarket and bake them in the oven. If I bake them as intended, they are fluffy on the inside. If I forget them in there for about double the time, they become harder and crispier throughout.

I don't think you can imitate this with a fryer only, because you need a certain temperature there, else the fries soak up the oil. So maybe do your one-minute fry first, then put the drained fries in an oven for as long as it takes. Or just start with the convenient prepared kind and use the oven from the beginning.


Any downside to pre making marinade and then putting it in the fridge? I was just wondering, is there any downside to making a marinade and then storing it in the fridge before it's used?

No, for most marinades, there should be no reason you cannot make them in advance and refrigerate.  It may even allow some improvements as flavors from any herbs or spices infuse into the liquid.

You just want to practice good food safety, which means putting it in the refrigerator as soon as it is made.


How to store fish bones? Suppose I was to cook some fish bones and make them soft.  If I wanted to use them in the future what would be the best way to store them?  Do I freeze it in which case after defrosting wouldn't it still be soft?  Is there any point leaving it in the fridge or are they something that can be left at room temperature indefinately? Also how long would they last for using the different methods?

If you produce edible food, it cannot be left at room temperature indefinitely. The bones in ossuaries are not cooked, softened fish bones, they are only the mineral part of animal bones, with the organic part decayed away. So there is no comparison there. Treat them like any other cooked food.

There is nothing which gets firm after going through the freezer, stuff gets mushier if anything. For bones, there shouldn't be any change in texture.

So the standard storage lifetime applies to them, just as for any other cooked meal: 2 hours outside, 3-5 days in the fridge, as long as you want in a -18 C freezer.


Where can I find food-grade beeswax to make Canelé? I am looking for food-grade beeswax to make Canelé.  On Amazon, all I can seem to find is "cosmetic grade" which is not necessarily meant for food usage.

@Adisak I was able to find one  source , although there may be many more.

I also found food grade paraffin wax, but it seems that it has a much lower melting point.

After a little reading it seems that making canelés can be a quite tricky and meticulous process, so you probably want to stick with the beeswax. They do sound delicious!


How does the taste of Bird Eye Chillies differ at different stages of maturity (green vs red)? What's the difference in taste between green and red Bird's Eye Chillies?

This is pretty much the same throughout the pepper family. The green chilis have "green" flavors - underripe, metallic, grassy. The ripe, red chilis develop more rounded, fruity flavors. You can just think of the difference between green and red bell peppers as a basic guide.


Curries from Scratch, a beginners guide I really want to start experimenting with indian food, without relying on jars of paste. I am looking for any good information so:

What spices to buy?
What equipment?
Any good books?
Any good web sites?
Any other resources?

What spices to buy?
I have listed commonly used spices/ingredients. If you are on a budget, purchase the ones with a (!) before them.
Powders and Pastes ("Masalas")

(!) Coriander Powder ("Dhania Powder")
(!) Cumin Powder ("Jeera Powder")
(!) Red Chilli Powder ("Laal Mirch Powder")
Turmeric Powder  ("Haldi Powder")
Garam Masala Powder
Ginger Garlic Paste (You can skip this if you have fresh ginger and garlic)

Seeds

(!) Cumin Seeds  ("Jeera")
(!) Mustard Seeds ("Rai")
Cloves        ("Laung")
Cardamon Seeds ("Elaichi")
Bay Leaves     ("Taej Pata")

Fresh Spices

(!) Green Chillies
(!) Garlic
Ginger ("Adrak")
Coriander Leaves ("Dhania")
Curry Leaves ("Kadhi patta")

Common Vegetables

(!) Onions
(!) Tomatoes (tomato is officially a fruit, ignore the heading)

Lentils & Beans
Buy these on a need basis, depending on the recipe.

Tur Daal (Yellow lentil. There are 2-3 yellow lentils, ask the store for Toor dal, which is most common)
Chick Peas   ("Chhole" or "Kabuli Channa")
Kidney Beans ("Rajma")

In the US, most towns have an Indian Store. A while back, a small packet of each spice/powder would be around $2.
What equipment?
To cook Curries, you don't need anything special.
A small grinder/food processor to grind spices is very helpful. If you don't have one, you can always crush the spices using a rolling pin before putting it in the frying pan.
A pressure cooker is helpful to cook/boil lentils or beans. If you don't have one, you can always cook them in an open container - it just takes more time.
Any good books? Any good web sites?
Sanjeev Kapoor and Tarla Dalal are two popular cooks in India. Their websites have some good recipes that you can pick up.
Youtube has some great videos on Indian cooking, but you need to know what to search. Read the blogs I mentioned above, pick up a curry/dish you find interesting and search it on youtube. That's perhaps the best way to find good videos.
Any other advice?
Just some little tips that I think would help you get started -

Most curries are based on Onion and Tomato. A generic recipe would be - "Pour a little oil in a frying pan. Add spices till they start to crackle. Add chopped onions and saute till golden brown. Add chopped tomatoes and saute for a few minutes. Add dry spices/powders. Add vegetables/chicken/meat and cook". This is the most basic Indian recipe, and others build from here.
Ginger Garlic paste is readily available, and is handy when you don't want to peel and crush garlic cloves.
Garam Masala powder is always added last
India is a huge country, and every region has its own distinct flavour. In general, North and South Indian food are totally different. The curries usually come from Punjab in North India, so searching for "Punjabi Recipes" is likely to get you better results. The most popular South Indian dishes are "Idlis" and "Dosas".


Is there any danger slicing pickles hours before frying them? I am frying pickles later tonight, and I would like to pre-cut all my slices to fry. Is there any reason I shouldn't cut them then put them back in the jar for later?

No, there is no danger.

Just slice the pickles then put them back in the jar or alternatively wrap them in foil and place them back in the refrigerator until you need them.


What happens to the flavour of meat when you cook it Star Anise with Onions? What exactly is the chemical reaction that occurs when you cook Star Anise with Onions?

According to Heston Blumenthal doing this intensifies the flavour of meat.

Ultimately what I want to know is can you use this on any meat based recipe? Won't the flavour of the Star Anise be overpowering?

It is basically the anethole (a phenol) of the star anise that react with the sulfur in the onion to create sulfur-phenolic aromatics.  In Chinese cuisine the same family of reactions is used with duck and pork.

The sulfur-phenols are also produced during the Maillard reaction, the reaction that gives grilled meat its characteristic flavor, so adding star anise to the onions will give your dishes more of that grilled, browned flavor.  The reactions of the compounds in the star anise with those in the meat are not the relevant reactions for flavor or texture.

From averaging a few recipes, I would say 1 star anise for every 250g of chopped onion.  Too much star anise will highlight the other aromas in star anise, so one has to use it in moderation and allow enough time for the reactions to take place.

Garam masala, a common Indian spice combination that is used in meat dishes, may have star anise.  Star anise is sometimes used in French onion soup — it intensifies the caramel flavor of the onions — and in Vietnamese cuisine, which today incorporates French elements.


Freezing Indian chicken curry---how to retain texture and flavor? I am planning to cook an oil-rich, Indian style Chicken curry that will look something like this: or this:

I am planning to cook a week ahead and freeze them, and my target is to keep the texture and flavor as close to the original as possible. Any freezing technique I should follow to achieve that?

My plan till now:

individually freeze the cooked chicken pieces in a tray, and maybe freeze the gravy separately.
Reheat in an oven in one layer(What temperature?), and sprinkle with garam masala to shore up flavor.

Any more ideas? Thanks!

When freezing meat (or anything really), one of the main places where the texture will change is with freezer burn. This can be minimized by double wrapping and preventing exposure to air. An extra really great way to minimize freezer burn especially given that your dish has sauce, is to cover the food with the sauce and then freeze the whole thing as a giant block. I'd just reheat it in a saucepan.


Why do some recipes recommend a short rest after mixing but before kneading the bread? Some recipes I see for bread dough recommend a short rest between the mixing (just enough to make the ingredients homogeneous) and kneading stage - often 10 to 30 minutes.  The dough seems to be a little easier to work after the rest, but what is going on there in such a short time?

Besides the initial gluten relaxing that mrwienerdog wrote about, another important effect is the absorption of liquid.

It takes time for the flour to fully hydrate with the available liquid. Before it does the dough will be more sticky and there will be less gluten available for kneading. Giving the recently incorporated dough a short rest allows the flour to pull in all the liquid it can and become much easier to work with.

A similar effect can be seen with pastry doughs. Even though often the goal is to minimize gluten development, a short rest gives the flour time to hydrate and can turn pastry dough from difficult to work and crumbly to soft and smooth.


Vacuum-packed cheese question (botulism) Vacuum-packed cheese, stored in refrigerator for awhile (2-3 weeks), then placed in freezer. Cheddar and Provolone.

Any risks, especially in regards to botulism...opinions sought. Never heard about botulism being a risk in vacuum-packed food until recently, and now am concerned and want to know about the cheese I stored in freezer if I can consider it well.

Thank you for opinions/information.

No, there's no risk. Cheese has too much salt and acidity to harbor botulism even at room temperature; there's practically no chance of it growing in the refrigerator even with low-acid food, and literally zero chance of it growing in the freezer on any food.

I don't think data is publicly available on individual botulism cases in the U.S. or worldwide, but aside from honey-related infant botulism, the vast majority of cases are reputed to be from improper home canning of low-acid foods (garlic, peppers, etc.), and that number is still very small. I don't think I've ever heard of a single case related to cheese.

Seriously, stop worrying about botulism unless you are either (a) caring for an infant or (b) canning your own foods at home.


What are the differences between baking in bulk and baking in smaller amounts? I know that you need different techniques and tools to bake in bulk. But do recipes need to be changed as well? How does one take a recipe that you would bake at home in a small batch (e.g. baking bread, pies, muffins, etc.) and then convert it into a bulk recipe?

Yes, recipes need to be changed as well.

The most important [IMHO] difference is leavening (yeast/baking powder/soda etc.)
The next issue is ratios, once you get beyond 'doubling' a home recipe your ratios will get out of sync.
When you multiply dry ingredients (other than yeast) do so By Weight rather than dry measure. (note for sugars in a yeast leavened recipe: sugar is often 'treated as' a 'wet ingredient', still multiply by weight, this will provide the correct amount of food for the yeast)

  Rule of thumb for yeast baking is to multiply everything but DO NOT
  multiply the yeast for doing 2X or 4X. When you are increasing the
  recipe by 8X you double the original amount of yeast. Your rising time
  may increase but that also happens with temperature variations.

  Rule of thumb for chemical leavening is to multiply carefully ALL
  ingredients. If using baking soda and acid, sift the baking soda with
  flour and mix the acid (vinegar, lemon juice, sour milk) with other
  liquid ingredients. That way you don't lose rising power when mixing
  more dough.
  But for chemical leavening, you have to bake the mix without it
  sitting around. So you might weigh and set up 4X, 4X, 4X if you need
  12X yield.[from King Arthur Flour]

  Home sized recipes can usually only be doubled safely. Beyond that,
  due to rounding, the ratios within the recipe will get out of sync. We
  have a number of pro resources here, take a look:
  http://www.kingarthurflour.com/professional/flours.html(Ibid)

These are, obviously, only 'general guidelines, your mileage may vary with any given recipe.


Removing long-term residue from teflon Over time, teflon manages to become coated by polymerised oils, similarly to the intentional seasoning on an iron pan. This tends to make the pan just too sticky for such as fried eggs.
I have tried the usual suspects - nylon mesh pan scrubs, Barkeeper's Friend & similar, those little bricks of mica, bicarb. - and all work to some extent, but none get it right back to the original 'teflon'. The substrate is aluminium, so even though a heavy oven cleaner will work well, it also damages any areas with scratches.
With cheap pans ($£€ 25 or so) I usually throw them out once they get to this stage, but for the last few years I've had a really good, expensive one. I retired it to dry frying only & replaced it a while ago, but it turns out it's still actually better than a new cheap one after just a year.
So, I'm back to trying to get this one back to an as-new state on the inside (the outside I really don't care about).
Does anyone have any sure-fire method I've not yet tried? Good for aluminium, bad for organic polymers.

You cannot use physical methods (scratching), so you are only left with the chemical ones. And for this kind of gunk, the only thing I know to work is a strong enough base.
In the mildest cases, oven cleaner sprays might be sufficient. If not, somebody suggested ammonia in the comments, and then there is lye.
The big problem is that any base strong enough to clean this stuff will corrode aluminum too. If your pans are teflon on steel, go ahead and clean them. If they are aluminum pans, maybe you can try the oven cleaner as a last ditch effort, but you are risking the pan itself. Else, all you can do is continue use them as normal sticky pans.
The usual modus operandi is actually not to clean them somehow, but not to let the gunk happen. Just like you don't use metal on Termin, to prevent the failure mode of "scratched pan", you don't use techniques which produce gunk, to prevent the failure mode of "gummed up pan". This means that you have to avoid anything with small amounts of oil, and either use the pan without oil (at low temperatures though, or you'll burn the coating), or with lots of oil at moderate temperatures, or for wet cooking.


How to refresh a frozen bagel My kids like their bagels like they just came from the oven or the bagel bakery with a crisp crust and soft chewy center. However, it is not practical to make bagels or buy bagels in the morning on school days. What can I do with a frozen bagel to mimic fresh out of the oven?

Buy or make fresh bagels and store them uncut in a plastic bag with the air squeezed out of it in the freezer for up to one month. When you want to prepare a "like fresh" bagel, run it briefly under water (I used filtered water) so that the outside crust is damp but not soggy. Wrap it tightly in foil with a small vent, 1/2" long by 1/8" wide, on one side and heat in a 400°F oven (I use our toaster oven) for about 15-20 minutes, depending upon how cold your freezer is. The bagel will be as soft as it was when it originally came out of the oven and the hot oven will cause the crust to crisp through the foil. Don't let it over bake or it will be rock hard though.


Art of making delicate French butter cookies (Madeleines) I love making Madeleine cookies, but I can't seem to make them without burning them. Well, they're not really burnt as far as cookies go, but they are too golden brown and have a slight crisp that Madeleines shouldn't have.

Baked for 14 minutes.

I've shortening my baking time to 10 minutes (4 minutes shorter than my recipe states), but they still are coming up a little too brown. (At 375 in a gas oven)

Baked for 10 minutes.

I'm afraid to shorten it too much because I don't want them to come out raw and mushy.

Any ideas how I can make my cookies softer, but still fully baked through?

If they're cooking too fast that they're browning and fully cooked through after 10 minutes instead of the recommended 14... that's probably a signal that you should turn the oven temperature down.

If you don't already have an oven thermometer, get one. It's possible for ovens' internal thermostat to be significantly off - by 50 degrees or more at times. Rather than depending on it, you will be better served by having a thermometer. These are generally inexpensive and can be found at most kitchen stores or on the web.

If you find that your thermostat is off, look into how to reset it, or learn the offset and add/subtract that amount from the dial temperature. If it's not off, try dropping the temperature by 25 F to start. The recommended oven temp seems to vary based on the recipe... from between 350 to 400 F. One thing that the 400 F recipe does is they place a cookie sheet under the madeleine pan, which may protect the underside somewhat.

Another possibility - you don't show your madeleine pans but to reduce browning, it's generally recommended to use very light colored pans. From Serious Eats:

  If you want foods to brown on the bottom, reach for a darker metal sheet pan because dark pans will absorb more heat and therefore more heat will radiate off the surface. I like to use dark pans when I'm baking pizza or crispy-edged potato wedges and roasted veggies that I want to brown. Recently, I've even started baking pies in dark metal pie plates instead of glass so the bottom of the pie crust heats up more and browns.


How long can cooked food be safely stored at room/warm temperature? If I leave fully-cooked food (particularly meat) out at warm temperature - say on the counter or in a crock pot that's been turned off -  how long will it stay safe to eat?

Does it make any difference if I re-cook the food afterward?

The USDA has this to say on it:

  Storing Leftovers
  One of the most common causes of foodborne illness is improper cooling of cooked foods. Because bacteria are everywhere, even after food is cooked to a safe internal temperature, they can be reintroduced to the food and then reproduce. For this reason leftovers must be put in shallow containers for quick cooling and refrigerated within 2 hours.

You'll find similar statements from government agencies around the world.  The safe limit for raw or cooked food is 2 hours in the danger zone (40-140° F or 4.4-60° C).

If you're a restaurant owner or cook, you must follow this rule, hold hot foods above 60° C and quick-cool other foods before refrigerating.  If you are not working in a professional capacity then you are not legally required to follow it, but if you are serving guests then it would be irresponsible (and possibly actionable, if someone gets sick) to do otherwise.

If you're an individual serving only yourself, then take whatever liberties and break whatever rules you want; it's your food, and your body.  But there's no table or chart anyone can give you; there's no single specific point at which a food transitions from "not entirely safe" to "probably will kill you" because it depends entirely on the food, the environment, your immune system, and a plethora of other variables. The rule is 2 hours, period; any longer and there is some non-trivial risk to your health.

Some hints, tips, and warnings:

The 2-hour rule is a conservative estimate with a safety margin. Don't ask what that margin is. It's like asking what the "real" speed limit is on a posted road; you might know from experience, but it could change depending on circumstances and exceeding it by any amount means you take your chances and accept the risks.
Don't put large, hot items (such as an entire pot of soup or chili) directly into the fridge. The residual heat will warm up and potentially spoil other items in the refrigerator.
To quickly cool large cooked items, use an ice-water bath and/or divide them into small containers. (Note: Don't use an ice-water bath for cast iron.)
Don't assume that re-cooking an improperly-stored item will make it safe. Most bacteria produce protein toxins, which are actually the primary agents responsible for food poisoning, and several of these toxins are heat-resistant. Cooking will not kill or inactivate these toxins and eating the re-cooked food will still make you sick.
Don't assume that cooking "kills everything" and that a cooked food or cooking surface is absolutely sterile. Cooking kills enough to make the food safe to eat, but some organisms - such as bacterial spores from bacillus and clostridium - can survive the cooking process and immediately start producing more bacteria. Sous-vide bags, crock pots, etc. are not safe environments for cooked food in the temperature danger zone.


How to spread peanut butter that is required to stay refrigerated? I recently bought some "natural" crunchy peanut butter from Harris Teeter. Other than natural my only other description is the oil rises to the top when it isn't stirred for a while. There is a very large message on the top that says:

Refrigerate after opening

However, I mainly use peanut butter for PBJ sandwiches and I cannot spread the peanut butter while its cold. I could set it out for a while, but that seems against the message on the jar.

Is there some secret to spreading this peanut butter when it must be kept in the refrigerator?

Even if you don't have to refrigerate I would like to know how to spread it. I live by myself and it could take 6 months to empty the jar, so refrigeration would help it last longer.

The easiest solution that comes to mind would be to figure out how much you need for a sandwich, remove that from the jar, set it on the counter to come to room temp (or put it in the microwave for 10-15 seconds) and then spread it when it's warmed up.

"Refrigerate after opening" doesn't mean that it must be in the fridge every second, though... so even if you left the entire jar on the counter for 30 minutes to warm up, it shouldn't pose much of a problem.


Cooking eggs too soon for Keto dough I've recently been looking at Keto recipes and Fathead dough came up. The recipe specifies that I should be careful to not cook the egg before you put the dough in the oven. It was really difficult to get the egg to mix into the melted cheese, almond flour mix. I'm wondering why I shouldn't just mix the egg in with the almond flour and cheese before melting the cheese?

Fathead recipe: https://www.ditchthecarbs.com/fat-head-pizza/

I love Fathead dough!*

No, don't microwave the egg. If the temp gets up to about 145°F, the proteins in an egg will solidify and you'll end up with bits of scrambled eggs smushed into the pizza crust. Unless that's your thing, I wouldn't microwave the egg.

But...you are right. It can be hard to mix the cheese(s) and flour together and then to incorporate the egg into that mixture.  So...the real secret is to just use your hands to mix it all together. It's messy but well worth it.


Good way to prevent grease build up in kitchen? My kitchen items end up getting a sticky grease coating when I cook regularly. Things not even near the stove top. I don't have an overhead fan, what can I do about this?

If a dishwasher is present, get dishwasher-safe boxes with a lid on them, and store less frequently used items in these boxes. Whenever doing a "deep clean" of your kitchen, put the boxes in the dishwasher while sorting out the contents.


Are Garlic cloves supposed to be put as whole or as chopped up pieces in a soup? Once I was making soup with a friend and the recipe called for a few cloves of garlic.  She was ready to throw the garlic cloves into the soup whole without chopping them up first.  I would've thought that it would make more sense to chop it up first and she had never heard of doing that.

Does anyone ever cook with whole garlic cloves?  My friend's parents are from Spain so perhaps in other countries this is a common way to include garlic in a recipe.

From my experience and what I've seen, garlic cloves are often applied to soup in un-chopped glove.

Overtime, the boiling will release the garlic's sweet to the soup without melting itself into the liquid or dissolving into tidbits that attached to the ingredients.

I have also seen people pan fry the garlic gloves to golden brown before dumping them into the water. I believe the purpose is to harden the outside of the garlic while getting more exotic flavor out of it.

Otherwise, I would chop/dice/smash garlic for dips and frying.


How Can I Make Flour More White When Under Process In Flour Mill My father is a flour miller. He wants to know how he can make wheat, or flour more specifically, whiter during the milling process. Is there anything that can be done before in preparation or after the process?

Flour will whiten over time when stored. It generally takes several months to get a whiter color. Most flour manufacturers wish to speed this process up and so they actually bleach the flour using cholrine or benzoyl peroxide. This bleaching process also removes nutrietns which is why flour in the U.S. that has been bleached must also be "fortified" by having nutrients added back in.

There isn't much you can do beforehand. After milling, you can either bleach for immediate affect or store and allow it to whiten naturally. Keep in mind that different flours are usually bleached with different chemicals depending on what you plan to do with the flour.

I'll leave it to you to decide if it's worth the time and nutritional value to mix chemicals in to your flour for what is purely a cosmetic benefit.


Cooking shakshuka without burning the tomatoes I've tried cooking a basic shakshuka a few times, and always come up against the same problem of the tomatoes burning to the bottom of the pan before the eggs are fully cooked.

The basic recipe I follow is:

Fry onions until translucent
Add spices and fry for another minute or so
Add chopped tomatoes (from a can, because I'm lazy) and stir everything together
Make small hollows in the mixture and break an egg into each
Stand back and wait for eggs to cook
Scrape burned mixture off the bottom of the pan while serving

I say the problem is the tomatoes burning to the bottom of the pan, but obviously it's actually the whole mixture, I just suspect that the problem is something to do with the tomatoes burning and sticking.

I'm cooking the whole mixture on a gas hob on the lowest heat possible (though there are smaller hobs I can try if that's the issue) using a Tefal non-stick pan (which at least makes cleaning a little easier).

Am I not adding enough oil to start with? Is the temperature too high? Is my choice of pan not suitable? Should I be stirring carefully around the eggs while they're cooking?

I have a few suggestions:

Use room temperature eggs so they cook faster. Egg white cooks at 150°F (65°C), room temperature is usually about 70°F and refrigerator temp 45°F. That difference is close to 50% more cooking time
Add a bit of water. Maybe your mix is too thick, if there isn't enough water in the mix it's more likely to burn, this dish depends on having enough moisture
Make your dents deep, get the egg as close to the pan as you can. Also, make the dents big enough that your eggs spread about a bit, more surface area means the egg cooks faster
Use smaller eggs so they cook faster
Keep the heat up more. I know it sounds counter-intuitive but if your pan is too cool you will lose a lot of heat at the top due to evaporation, the top will be cool but the bottom hot. Try a medium heat, but pay attention to 2.
You could cover the pan, I don't like this because you want the dish to lose moisture, but you could try it. If your canned tomatoes are very thick you may actually have too little water, so you could try keeping the heat low and covering it
Bake it instead once you put the eggs on, this will give an even heat on the top. It's not a traditional way to make it but if if you are results driven it may work for you


Questions about cookware set I am looking for a new set of cookware.

Being a graduate student, I don't
earn much money, so I'd like to know
if there are some suggestions about
    what are available on the market
    with reasonable quality and price,
    according to your experience. Mine
    current set is Cullineary Edge 7PC s/s Cookware Set - Bakelite Handle

It cost me around $20~30. However
    after three and four years, the
    bakelite knobs and handles started
    to become shaky, more or less, and I
    have to tighten their screws every
    now and then, until it became
    impossible recently. But still I can
    bear its quality, with its
    relatively low price.  I found some on
    the internet, such as

Cook N Home 7 Piece Stainless Steel    Cookware Set,
Fntinc 02207 7Pc Cookware Set -    Bakelite Handle,
Mainstays 7-Piece Stainless Steel    Cookware Set
Cuisine Select Alverton 7 Piece    Stainless Steel Cookware Set.

It kind of confuses me, because they
all look similar to my current set
but with different levels of
customer reviews
As I searched on the internet, I
prefer those health-friendly, and
the only thing I know is to choose
stainless steel without non-stick
Teflon and aluminium. For example,
Cook N Home 7 Piece Stainless Steel
Cookware Set

Its features are:

Mirror polished stainless steel body
Aluminium capsuled bottom
Stay cool bakelite handle and knobs
Tempered glass lid
Dishwasher safe

I am concerned about the usage of
aluminium. According to
what it says, is aluminium just used
on the outside of the cookwares and
in no contact with food inside? What
is the purpose of "Aluminium
capsuled bottom"?

Thanks and regards!

You don't need to buy your cookware in a complete set like this. I would start collecting a few pieces at a time, of reasonable quality, though you will pay a bit more per piece. You're really not saving money if you have to replace all your cheap cookware every few years.

You could probably handle 90% of what you want to cook with only a skillet and a 2 or 4 quart sauce pan. Buy whatever pieces fit your cooking style.

Steel, non-stick, and cast-iron all have advantages and disadvantages. This information is probably duplicated elsewhere on this site:

Steel - non-reactive and durable. More difficult to make delicate foods like fish and eggs, due to the food sticking.
non-stick - Well, it's non-stick. Food doesn't stick to it. However, even a high-quality non-stick pan will wear out over several years. Also, it's difficult to sear meats.
cast-iron - Properly cared for, can sear meat AND be non-stick, and will last a lifetime. However, it's heavy, and requires knowledge of how to properly care for it (see questions on this site)

Steel cookware can have a few upgrades:

A "disk" of aluminum or copper, welded to the bottom - greatly improves heat distribution from plain stainless steel. Thermal shock can make the disk fall off, though.
"Clad" steel, where a layer of aluminum is sandwiched between layers of stainless steel - even better heat distribution, more durable, but more expensive

If I could only buy 2 pieces, on a budget, I would buy a cast-iron skillet and a disk-bottomed sauce pot.


What squeezes out juice better, auger or press? I'm thinking to buy manual juicer. I considering two options: plastic auger one or thick aluminium press.

Like this:

And this:

Looks like the top apparatus gets my vote:
takes care of breaking up the juice vesicles and the pressure of the top plunger helps squeeze it out.

I find so many unpopped juice vesicles in my Mexican citrus press (bottom picture). Too much pressure and I get unwanted bitterness from oils of peel


How do I prevent venison (for jerky) from spoiling? I laid out some vension for jerky. It has been in the fridgerator for 2 days. I put it in the marinate today. how long can I leave it so it does not spoil?

stilltasty.com gives you 3-5 days in the fridge for fresh, raw venison.


How to keep rice in a biryani from burning and sticking together? The bottom part of my  Biryani always  gets burnt, rice always gets sticky but I want each grain separated. How can I prevent burning & stickiness of rice?

Some options:

Prepare the biryani in an oven (used when making biryani with uncooked meat) in a really thick, covered oven pan, with no foiling at 200 degrees Celsius for around 30 mins. It won't stick to the bottom or get burnt.
Keep a cast iron tawa underneath the pot the rice is in. Rice won't stick.
Add some ghee at the bottom of the rice before layering.
Keep the heat low. "Dum"ming the biryani is steaming it rather than cooking it with high heat. You'll also need to seal the container.

The sticky rice at the bottom is called "khurchan", and some people actually find it delicious. The burnt rice is because of the lack of liquid and the high heat. Happens mainly because the water evaporates while cooking.

There's a similar question asked here: How do I avoid dry meat and burned masala and rice in biryana?


Why do English recipes of “sauce marchand de vin” call for Worcestershire sauce? The “sauce marchand de vin” is a French red wine thick sauce typically served with meat. Its recipe in my French cookbooks call for two main ingredients: red wine and brown stock. It also uses shallots, butter, flour and black pepper, but I understand the two ingredients cited previously are the main ones.

However, many recipes I can find online (here and there, for example) on English-speaking websites add Worcestershire sauce. Not all of them do, but I still wonder: what purpose does this extra Worcestershire sauce add? I'm not too familiar with it, but if I understand it might bring some spiciness (already somewhat covered by black pepper).

So, what do you think it brings to the recipe and overall taste?

Worcestershire Sauce is added where the recipe wants a fast way to develop or add savoury richness, umami.

It's often used where umami would develop over time with slow careful cooking (and heavy bottomed pans). Adding this extra ingredient is a good cheat where you just want that kick without the wait.


Is it safe to eat a lump of Jamon that grew some mold? A lump of Jamon in my fridge grew some white mold. Is it safe to eat if I scrape all the mold away?

Edit: this is white mold, of the sort that grows on Camambert cheese, or so it appears. Not green or black mold.

Only for your information. The spanish ham can get moldy every time, because the curing process will not stop. And for sure you can eat after cleaning with oil. All this ham have mould but before it is sold they also clean it with oil or fat. Mostly the customer don't see it, but sometimes because of the humidity or if it is hot it can appear again, but it is not a problem for health (it is exactly the same as with the cheese.


Rotisserie spit ,iron rod? Is it OK use a plain iron rod for a Rotisserie spit?

I have a solid piece of iron rod that is about 1/4 inch diameter and from what I can see it has no coatings. It just looks like extruded iron.

Could this be used as a spit safely? Or should I be using stainless steel?

Stainless steel wasn't invented until 1913. Plain iron then plain steel was used for cooking spits for over 3,000 years and for quite some time after 1913.

It is highly likely that it is safe to use as a spit


Cooking meat/fish without Maillard reaction(a.k.a. browning) Maillard reaction (browning) is the chemical reaction that occurs during frying. Almost all the recipes on cooking meat/fish are all about frying. Even if it's not frying it still mostly incorporates frying and/or browning. Most recipes of stewed meat suggest frying before actually stewing. Recipes for soups require frying everything before adding it to the soup. Recipes for baking mostly require to pour oil on top of everything to use browning.
Are there any good methods to cook meat/fish without browning?

I agree with Joe: wet methods are generally good for preventing browning.

The general policy is just to use temperatures which are as low as possible (while ensuring food safety and cooking until "done").  The other thing you want to avoid is very long cooking, since browning reactions can still occur if you cook something long enough at a low temperature.

Wet methods are often best both because they naturally keep the temperature of the food below boiling, and the circulating liquid helps to raise the food's temperature faster (which tends to allow quicker cooking).  Compare that to roasting (or similar techniques) at a very low temperature -- in that case, it will often take much longer for the food to get up to a "done" temperature (which can sometimes be a food safety issue, particularly in large hunks of meat).

Acids can also inhibit browning a bit, though low temperature and shorter time are most important.

The sous vide technique is perhaps the optimal method for preventing browning, since you cook the food in a sealed bag to a low temperature (and usually one specified to ensure food safety).  You also contain all the juices, etc. of the meat, rather than other wet methods where they tend to be lost to the surrounding liquid.  (If you are going to consume the liquid as well, that can be good, though.)

The main problem with all of these techniques is that some meats are considered much less appetizing without any browning.  For example, many people love a steak cooked to a perfect "medium rare" inside, but they brown the exterior -- and even that thin layer of browned bits is enough to give a lot of flavor to a bite of even a thick steak.  If you didn't brown the outside and just had the whole thing "medium rare," it would be a different experience.  Think of the interior of a medium rare prime rib -- in that case, many people often tend to use some salty flavorful "jus" or another kind of sauce to add flavor while eating the meat.  So in some cases you might look for recipes that add a sauce or other complementary flavorful foods to go with the meat (and replace the missing flavor from browning).


What ratio of rice is needed for lentils to be a "complete protein"? From what I understand Lentil needs Rice for the maximum benefit of its high protein quantity, of course that will then increase the carbs. What is the minimum ratio of rice to lentils to maximize protein to carb ratio while making the protein complete?

  Incomplete vs. Complete Protein
  Complete proteins contain all nine essential amino acids. The main sources of complete proteins are from animal based food, such as meat, seafood, eggs and dairy. Soy and quinoa are also complete proteins. Although incomplete proteins sounds like they are lacking and not as nutritious, they just need to be paired with another type of protein. For instance, adding peanut butter to bread creates a complete protein. According to Columbia University, the proteins do not need to be eaten together to receive the health benefits but any time within 24 hours will suffice.

  Lentils and Protein
  Lentils are rich in amino acids and high in protein. However, regular lentils are lacking in two essential amino acids. Because lentils do not have enough of these nutrients, the healthy legumes are an incomplete protein. However, lentils can be sprouted which changes their nutritional components. Sprouted lentils have an increase in all nine amino acids, although the exact increase is variable. To sprout your lentils, soak the seeds in cool water for eight to 12 hours. Rinse the lentils and store in a jar in a cool place for a few days, rinsing every eight hours.

Source: http://www.livestrong.com/article/527529-myth-of-lentils-as-an-incomplete-protein/

  Grains
  Grains, such as rice, oats, wheat, rye and corn, can act as complementary proteins for legumes such as lentils. They contain the cysteine and methionine that lentils lack, and lentils provide the lysine that grains do not contain enough of. Whole grains are a more nutritious option than refined grains. Legumes and grains are one of the most common pairings for complementary protein. Indian daal with rice is an example of a lentil and grain dish.

Source: http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/foods-mixed-lentils-provide-complete-source-amino-acids-1195.html

Preamble

I will act in the interest of the OP and not close the question. I assume that my premise that the ratio doesn't matter (explained in the answer proper) is an established fact (at least I don't know of any source claiming the opposite). If we find a claim to the contrary, we will have to close the whole question, because it means that there is no undisputed answer even at that very general level, and the question falls completely in the field of "unverifiable" nutrition.

Answer

There is no such ratio, as complete proteins are not about ratios. They are about minimum intake of essential amino acids. This means that, if you would only eat rice and lentils and nothing else (or at least no other sources of protein), there is a minimal amount of rice you have to eat per day to not get deficiency symptoms. If this amount of rice is X gram, then it doesn't matter if you eat X gram of rice and 2X gram of lentils, or X gram of rice and 10X gram of lentils. The ratio of rice to lentils is irrelevant.

The more interesting question for you is probably what is the minimal amount of rice you have to eat per day. There are freely available nutrition value databases such as the one derobert linked. Once you have determined that you want to eat at least Y mg of a given amino acid per day (supposedly it will be an amino acid not contained in lentils), you can use a simple rule of three calculation to find out how much rice you need to eat in order to get Y mg of the amino acid in question.

But how do you decide how much you want to eat? There are government approved RDAs, as well as thousands of sources at all levels of credibility which recommend their own intake levels, usually pointing out that RDAs are intentionally conservative. We cannot help you with that decision. It is completely off topic for us, and it is up to you to find such sources and decide which one to believe. Consulting a nutrition professional is a very good option if you are going on a highly restricted diet; they will probably be able to give you such a value. Personally, I wouldn't trust a number given to me by a stranger on the Internet, and would try to keep in mind that the minimal amount (under which you get deficiency symptoms) and the optimal amount are most likely not the same, but many sources conflate them.


Why are my sponge cakes not rising? I have baked various types of sponge cakes for many years and they have always been fine, but recently, every cake I bake is not rising properly. I am a bit perplexed as to why this could be when I am following the same tried and tested recipes. Could it be my oven? How could I check this out?

Thanks in advance.

Seeing your recipe would be helpful here. Older sponge cake recipes rely only on beaten eggs for leavening. Newer recipes use chemical leaveners as well.

Common reasons for sponge cakes not rising (or not staying risen) are:

Not beating the eggs long enough
Even with the addition of chemical leavening, getting enough air into the eggs in advance is important to the characteristic structure of a sponge cake. The eggs should be very pail and fluffy. Some recipes explicitly call for beating the eggs for at least 15 minutes.
Old baking powder
Baking powder can lose its effectiveness after a long time. This is easy enough to test. Just mix some baking powder with warm water and if it bubbles actively it's good.
Old oven
My oven recently started struggling to keep temperature. I had to recalibrate many of my recipes until I fixed it. Some things like sponge cake are very sensitive to this because they rely on the initial blast of heat to produce the steam that blows up the bubbles in the batter before the eggs set.
This is also easy to test with a cheap oven thermometer.
Opening the oven early
If the oven is opened when the cake is just starting to puff up then that high heat will be lost and the steam will escape from the unset eggs and the cake will fall, never to rise again.
I realize this would be a change in your behavior which may be unlikely but it is a common reason for sponge cakes to fail.


Whey from yogurt to curdle milk I know that adding acid to milk being cooked, will yield curdles that one can strain and store as cheese.

Is it possible to use the whey from my homemade yogurt (now greek-style yogurt), but instead of cooking everything in a pot, I let it sit in proofing temp for a few hours? Will I get the same result, while preserving the cultures?

The milk used for the yogurt was not cooked. The yogurt was subsequently strained over coffee filters. So I have as much whey as possible.

If you let the whey sit with the milk at proofing tempreatures (about 42 to 49 C for lactobacillicus bulgaricus, somewhat lower for bifidus, streptococcus delbrueckii and some other strains), you'll get yogurt again.

In order to get your type of "curds" (corresponding to Russian tvorog, or German quark, or Indian paneer), you need to use acid and heat together. The yogurt whey is a good source of acid, yes. But you definitely have to follow the process as it is, including the heating.


Preventing a burnt burger patty when pan frying So when I cook the burger patties on a frying pan (I lack fancier methods of cooking them), the bottom tends to get burnt pretty black. Yet when I bite into the burger, you can see that it's only a thin layer of burntness outside, but the inside was medium-rare.

Is there a way to prevent them from being burnt too dark? I'm not sure if eating too much burnt stuff is good for the body. Perhaps it's a different oil that I must use? (I'm using canola oil atm).

I would try frying at a lower temperature. This will slow the burning of the exterior, but you'll need to re-assess how long to fry them to achieve medium-rare doneness.


What is the best way to fry rice cake? I have some white rice cake. The instructions say to soak it in water overnight, then either fry it or simmer it. I tried part of it simmered some time ago, and didn't like the bland taste. So today I shallow fried some of it. I had soaked enough for two batches. The first batch went in when the oil was at about 190°C. They took a lot time to get ready, and soaked up too much oil in the process, coming out greasy (despite the fact that I packed them in paper as soon as they came out of the pan). For the second batch, the oil had gotten at above 250°C, actually above the smoke point. These cakes puffed up, forming air pockets between the cake body and some kind of thin "skin" on the upper side. The underside fried quickly and well, but when I turned them, the puffed bubbles kept the cakes from contact with the fat, so this side stayed almost unfried.

Is my frying technique wrong? Should I drain the cakes for longer time before frying (they had about 10 minutes of draining now)? Is there an optimal temperature for frying them so they neither get greasy nor puff up?

Edit: I didn't know that there are many kinds of rice cake. Mine are dried.

The first one is raw, non-soaked. The second one is from the first batch (greasy, pale). The third one is from the second batch (with the bubble).

Those are Shanghai Rice Cakes - Nian Gao  If you google, you'll find a bunch of recipes for what I think of as the "standard" rice cake dish, with shredded pork and cabbage.  In most of them, the soaked/softened rice cakes are added at the end, after all the other ingredients, so they only get lightly fried.


Film on top of my almost vegan potato / onion / parsley soup I make this soup from a very simple recipe - except from a little butter, it's vegan:

1 yellow onion
1 garlic clove
2 medium potatoes
1 bunch of parsley with the stems removed
1 bouillon cube
1 1.2 liter of water

I sweat the onions / butter / garlic - I then add the potatoes and the water - bring it to a boil, let it cook for 15 minutes then add the parsley and the bouillon cube. I let it cook for another 5 minutes - then I blend everything in the vitamix. (blender)

The soup tastes delicious and is creamy for having no cream, however, this thin film develops on top of the soup.
What is this? Is the starch from the potatoes separating and sticking together? Is there any way to get rid of it?

Since you mention the film develops after cooling, it is likely to be a very thin layer of fat.

There are some sources of fat in your recipe: the butter you sweat the onions and garlic in, and the bouillon cube. Both of these are very minor sources of fat, but it's still present. A quick stir after warming should incorporate it back in, or you can instead skim it off when the soup is completely cooled.