Peeling very ripe plantains? I'm following the "slit & peel" advice,  but I'm not getting consistant results.

Sometimes,  my ripe plantain (90% black)  has a peel that is impossibly hard to remove -  it's dry and sticks to a very soft flesh. I end up throwing most of it away -  even though the bits I mange to save are sweet and tasty.

Have I stored it incorrectly?

It would appear that I have no trouble peeling 50% black plantains, but as they get closer to full black (max sweetness), they tend to dry up and the peel sticks.

I will often freeze black bananas that are too soft to peel, then thaw or run warm water over them till I can remove the peel from the still frozen fruit.


How to stuff bread puffs (Gougeres) The other day someone delighted me to a Stuffed Gougere. Mind you, I've made these delicacies at least 50 times, I've never figured out a way to stuff them without either ruining the crust, the puff, or without having puff-plosions.

The question is, how is it possible to stuff these darn things, with either wet, cheesey, or whole objects without sacrificing the puff or the crust

Gougeres are not stuffed, at least in Bourgogne. The dough contain the cheese (Gruyere) and nothing is added to it after the fact. Well cooked gougeres have the cheese in the center still moist and gooey, giving the impression of an after the fact filling when in reality the cheese has been in the dough all along. If the inside of your gougere is dry, it's been in the oven for too long. Note that using anything else than gruyere, or eventually comté, is probably not going to get the gooey delicious result.

I guess the only way to add a filling would be to do it the same way you do profiteroles: simply slice the gougere horizontally with a sharp knife, add whatever you want inside, and put the top back in place.


How to store parts of whole chicken for long time? I bought cooked whole chicken. According to stilltasty.com and with my experience, for more than 1-2 days, I have to place it in the freezer. But then if I want to eat a part of it, I have to thaw it all. So I thought to break it in parts.
 But then again, the parts stuck together. Then I place it under a jet of cold water and separated the part I wanted. Do you have a better idea?

When you want to freeze things so that they don't stick together, you need to freeze them separately and then combine later. So, for example, if you're freezing blueberries, you can freeze them on a cookie sheet and then combine them in one bag or container.

For chicken, I wouldn't advise freezing the pieces uncovered (as you do for blueberries). Instead, I would package the pieces in containers that only hold one meal's worth. You can always defrost more than one package if necessary.

This could be a plastic container or wrapped individually in plastic wrap or aluminum foil, or even a zippered plastic bag. Any of these would allow you to unwrap individually and defrost.


How do you make meringues? I've scoured the internet to find the recipe for one of my favorite childhood sweets, and since I'm away from home, I can't buy it by weight and I definitely can't afford to buy a tiny piece for $3 or $4 all the time.
I came across a recipe and I did everything exactly as the recipe said, but I ended up with this.

Now THIS is what I actually want to eat, I bought it at a Venezuelan place a while back, but they only sell singles.

Any ideas on how to end up with the fluffy sweet white one?

As you have not posted a recipe I can't tell you how to fix it for next time. I can't tell you what is wrong with them though.

Brown, because the oven was too hot. I do mine by blasting in oven at 135c for 15min then turning it off and going home. Then when I get back to work in the morning they are perfect.

Flat, because... Many possibilities

Over/undrr whisked eggs
Too much/little sugar
Too much moisture
Time between whisking eggs and getting them in the oven was too long (5min maximum)
Fat has got into the mix. Possibly from a dirty bowl/whisk/bit of egg yolk or even your hands.

To help control the whisking of eggs I mix about 1 part corn flour with my sugar. And an equal amount of white wine vinegar. So whisk your eggs up to stiff peaks, tip in your sugar/cornflour mix whisk a little till it starts to dissolve then add the vinegar. Keep whisking until all the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is really shiney (rub a little between your fingers if it feels grainy keep whisking).

As soon as it's whisked (use the old trick of holding the bowl upside down if it stays you should be fine) get it straight on a baking tray however you want and into the oven. This part is critical the longer it sits UN cooked the more likely you'll have a disaster.


Filling tart with beans/rice for baking I've found a recipe for a lemon tart: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/380616/greggs-tangy-lemon-tart

Everything looks fine to me and I get what to do exactly, but I don't understand the part that says:

  Line the tart with foil and fill with rice or dried beans. Bake for 10 mins, then discard the foil, and bake for another 20 mins until biscuity.

I have got two closely related questions:

What is the purpose of this step? What would happen if I omitted it and baked straight for 30 minutes?
What type of foil should I use? I suppose it's not the plastic one since it would not survive the baking temperature of 160C. Or would it?

The rice/beans in this step act as a form of what are known as pie weights. They are used in order to maintain the shape of the crust as it is being baked. If you eliminate the weights during baking, you may encounter undesirable levels of puffing, curling and shrinking. If you'd rather brown the top of the bottom crust while baking, an alternative method often used is placing a second pie plate over the one containing the crust, and the metal should assist in browning the crust.
Use standard foil.


Adding malt powder to a conventional brown bread machine recipe I'm English by birth and miss the 'old fashioned' style Granary bread of my youth. I use a breadmaker and have 'fine-tuned' recipes to produce something approaching the bread I miss: I add small quantities of several types of grains and pumpkin and sunflower seeds.

Now, however, I've purchased a quantity of malt powder in the hope that I can reproduce the malty flavour of 'real' Granary bread.

Question: How much malt powder should I add to my recipe?

As it's really hard for us here on Seasoned Advice to quantify a memory from your youth, please experiment using the binary empirical method:

start with one spoon ¹
if that's not malty enough for you, double the dose
keep doubling the dose until it's too malty
then go halfway in-between the too low dose and the too high dose (E.G. if 4 is not enough and 8 is too much, take 6)
keep on halving until you get it just right (E.G in the above example: 5, 4.5, 4.25, 4.125, ...)

If you get it just right, dream of childhood memories...
:-)
¹ Obviously "spoon" is a non-SI unit and can be a coffee spoon, tea spoon, table spoon or even a ladle depending on the size of the bread and how malty your memory of the Granary bread reallly is...  ;-)


Some fishermen tell me I caught a Trout Salmon. Does this fish differ much from ordinary salmon? Like the title says, got a couple questions about the fish I just caught...

Firstly, is there anyway to confirm what type of fish this is? 'Ordinary salmon' or 'trout salmon'?

Lastly, does it differ much in taste from 'ordinary' salmon? I want to search for some good Salmon recipes but I want to be sure I'm looking at the right recipes for the right fish.

Cheers.

I've had Salmon Trout.  They are a pink fleshed trout, that mimics the flavour of Salmon somewhat.

My favourite preparation is to do it as a Yerevan Trout.  Essentially Roast the fish filets, prepare the sauce - Lemon, Butter, Capers, Artichokes, and any pan juice you can get.  Serve beside your favourite rice.


How to make bread mould resistant? With the bread I bake, they become mouldy within two weeks.

With the bread I bought from the supermarket, usually whole wheat, I would have the loaf gradually consumed and by the 6th week, it would still not turn mouldy.

What did they put into the bread that makes it mould-resistant? Is it natural?

What ingredients that I could safely mix into the dough to make my bread mould resistant?

There are many "natural" or "clean label" ingredients that work as mold inhibitors. Most of them work by adding some acid and thereby creating a more inhospitable environment for mold. Some of the popular mold inhibitors (at least is some U.S. bakeries) are: cultured whey, vinegar, and raisin juice.

I think vinegar and raisin juice are good options for home use.

Vinegar

Works by adding Acetic acid. The white vinegar you buy in the grocery store is typically 5% acetic acid (at least in the U.S.).

To inhibit mold, the recommended amount is 0.5-2.0% of the flour weight of 5% acetic acid vinegar. Add with your other liquids.

Raisin Juice Concentrate

Raisin juice concentrate has been shown to be effective at retarding mold and bacteria growth in bread. It works by adding Propionic acid and Tartaric acid. Further, it seems that a home baker should be able to purchase this in reasonable quantities and at a reasonable price.

The recommended amount is 5-10% of flour weight, by weight. Add with your other liquids.

My personal experience is positive: I used to purchase a whole-wheat bread with raisin juice concentrate and it lasted forever.

This study from the Journal of Food Science, Application of raisin extracts as preservatives in liquid bread and bread systems, found very dramatic increase in shelf life.

  The mean mold-free shelf life of the bread containing 7.5% water extract [of raisins] was 18.1 +/- 3.3 d at room temperature while the negative control was mold free for 9.4 +/- 2.4 d. The antifungal efficacy of the extracts in bread was equivalent to 0.24% calcium propionate in 21 d of storage. Doubling the concentration of the extract did not improve the mold-retarding property in bread. The bread containing raisin paste, the percentage of which in dough was equivalent to 15% raisin extract, exhibited a stronger antifungal activity than did the extracts in bread.

Notes

Both of these can inhibit yeast activity which you may need to compensate for by increasing yeast or proofing time.

Sources: some personal experience, this really interesting article from Oklahoma State University, Clean Label Mold Inhibitors for Baking, and the study linked above.


Is white cabbage that has turned rose-colored still safe to eat? We sliced and grated some white cabbage three days ago and left it salted and completely covered in a plastic container. It has since then turned rose-colored. The top layer was pretty dry when I opened it tonight. We had it on our journey and the weather has been pretty cold these days.

The big question: is it bad now? I mean, it didn't taste differently, there was no fermentation... Anybody have a clue if it's still safe to eat? We like to travel around and want to eat some of the cabbage mixed with salad cream in the next few days... So it's only salted and cut right now and completely airtight covered in a plastic container.

Are you trying to make Sauerkraut?

Either way for the pink colour you have a non-desirable bacteria growing. While most Sauerkraut has some of this, it is not always safe to eat. Time to throw it away?

If you salt cabbage, you need to ensure not too much salt is used (1% to 2% max), and make sure it is packed down very firmly, so only anaerobic bacteria will grow in any numbers

It doesn't need to be in a closed container, but it should have a firm fitting lid, without an air gap on the top

Also, once it goes past 20°C (70°F) you run the risk of getting other undesirable bacteria and yeasts, and general food rot


Mixing a banana with homemade sunflower butter turned into a horrible, leathery substance. Why? I often make sunflower butter in my food processor by pureeing raw sunflower seeds. Today I decided (after the seeds became creamy) to blend a banana into the mixture. The result was horrible:

Almost instantaneously the creamy substance turned dark and leathery, and it did not taste banana-y or sunflower-y at all. Why did this happen? I have mashed up bananas into my sunflower butter before and this did not happen.

I suspect the textural change you experienced is analogous to the seizing of chocolate (which is also a ground, fatty seed--in that aspect similar to a sunflower seed).

Sunflower seeds are fairly dry.  The consist mostly of fat, and starches, and protein.  When you add a small amount of water (from the mashed up banana), the starches in the sunflower hydrate and absorb the water, making it thick and giving the textural transformation you experienced.

If this hypothesis is correct, adding enough additional water to fully dissolve and suspend the starches will give you a smooth fluid, or paste again.

As to the taste perception, that I cannot comment on.


Is there such a thing as a single malt vodka? NB: There are products branded as single malt vodka (so the quick answer is Yes), but my question is more about whether such statements have any real meaning?

More detail

In a discussion the other day a friend pointed out that whisky (/ whiskey) isn't whisky until it's been aged in a barrel for some time.  Before it goes into the barrel it's essentially vodka.

That triggered a thought; the "malt" in malt whisky refers to it's being made from malted barley.  As such, I assumed that were you to take the pre-aged whisky ("new make spirit" / vodka), that must therefore be a single malt because it has the same malt as the whisky which would be made from it.

My friend pointed out that the single malt whisky is a single malt not because of the malt going in, but based on what comes out of the barrel; i.e. if made in a single barrel it's a single malt, if the combined contents of multiple barrels it's blended.  Thus, he argued, calling something single malt before it's been aged makes no sense, even though the ("single") malt is put in before the aging takes place / "no malts are extracted by aging".

I guess the argument's similar to talking about cake mix; i.e. if I baked a chocolate sponge and a vanilla sponge I'd get 2 cakes which would be distinct (even if I mashed them together a bit), whilst if I blended the cake mix I'd only get one cake / technically it was baked from a single mix even though that mix was itself a mix of mixes / the term single cake mix has no real meaning here (so single malt vodka wouldn't either).

I think you (and your friend) are confusing two similar terms.

"Single Malt" - the making of spirit from a single type of grain by a produced by a single distiller (for whisky, that's malted barley in the UK and malted rye in the US)
"Single Barrel/Cask" - the process of bottling each aged cask of liquor separately without mixing the casks together first.

"Blended" refers not to blending of the various casks from one batch together, but instead to blending together whiskys distilled by multiple distilleries or blending single malt with grain whisky. From the Wikipedia article on single malt:

To be called a single malt whisky in Scotland, a bottle may only contain whisky distilled from malted barley and produced at a single distillery. The regulations of other countries may allow malted rye.
If the bottle is the product of malt whiskies produced at more than one distillery, the whisky is called a blended malt or vatted malt, or pure malt. If a single malt is mixed with grain whisky, the result is a blended whisky. Single malts can be bottled by the distillery that produced them or by an independent bottler.

So, in the case of "single malt vodka", that apparently means

“So what is meant by single malt vodka?” Elena queried.
“Most often, single malt vodka is 100% malted barley as the only ingredient.”

If you look at brands of vodka that call themselves this, this seems correct. Valt,  Franciacorta Single Malt Vodka, East Coast Single Malt Vodka, and several others list the sole ingredient as "malted barley". Whether it's aged or not seems to depend on the maker.


How to separate milk kefir grains? How many kefir grains will make a quart size of kefir? I think I have too many grains in one batch. I also am still a novice, been at this five months. I enjoy making it, and have many grains. Some very small, some the size of a pearl. What is the best way of separating the grains?

From this comment on a passionate homemaking article, the commenter suggests that 2 Tbsp per quart of milk is an appropriate amount of kefir grains. In my personal experience, I've found that the amount is fairly variable, and that half to twice that suggested amount will produce kefir relatively quickly (how quickly, of course, changes with the amount present).

As far as separating them goes, they should pull apart relatively easily with the use of a couple of plastic spoons. While it is possible to smash them apart, this won't actually damage their ability to ferment kefir. My recommendation is to keep a 2 Tbsp measuring cup sanitized the next time you change out your milk, and add them to the fresh milk once there are enough to fill up the cup. The remainder can be used on another batch, eaten, or put in a sealed jar in the fridge with a smaller amount of milk to serve as a backup for later. Your worst-case here is that you just throw away the excess, which I would only consider "bad" if you can't find someone to give them to.


Am I on wrong track or is my Apple Cider gonna waste? I am new to this forum. I am questions regarding ACV. But for this I am writing the complete scenario for understanding.
Last year, I made ACV (watching some tutorials from YouTube) and ingredients I used were:

Water
Sugar
Apples as whole
During the making of it, I had the smell of something acidic going around in the kitchen and i guess it was fine but even after fermenting and preserving it for a long time, I couldn't see the Mother in it (the cloudy film in it).

Question 1: Did I do something wrong in it? Although I took care of everything even I tasted a bit sour and acidic too. I still have it preserved in a bottle.
Moving ahead, about 2 and a half week back from today, I started to make another batch of ACV and ingredients I used this time were:

Water
Sugar
Apples as whole
Yeast (a lil bit, not much)
Previous batch ACV (just a glass of it in a jar)

Problem is that I am actually worried about is, when I stirred it after one week of starting, I could see some bubbles in it, but after 2nd week when I looked at it to stir, I couldn't see any bubbles in it and majority of the apples were sunken to the bottom, I tried smelling it closely. Okay, it smells a bit of acidic of maybe alcoholic but it's aroma isn't spreading like the previous one in the kitchen.
Question 2: I am worried if this batch is waste, is the yeast in it is dead, if there is less sugar in it, is there something else or if it's going fine? (No, there is no mold or something in it, that's atleast a good sign)
Question 3: I am not clear till day that how long do we have to ferment apples then enclose the liquid to form the Mother?
Please guide me, because I really am worried about it.
Update: I read somewhere that it happens when sugar is in excess. I just added some yeast to it and i can see that bubbling going like right now that made clear that i think i got messed up with yeast since start because i think i made a mistake by adding a lil bit hot water not lukewarm water. Will check it regularly, hopefully I have to keep a strict check on sugar and yeast so that the process could proceed smoothly.

I just finished two batches of vinegar, one with apples and one with peaches. I use plain quilter’s cotton to cover my jars, as I think cheesecloth lets in too many bugs. At least where I live.
I use only fruit, water, and sugar. I stir it every day for about 3 weeks.  You can smell it and tell when it goes through the alcohol stage. And you really should be tasting it every day. You shouldn’t need to add any yeast, or more sugar. Just let it do it’s thing for a while. You won’t always get a mother, either, although for my peach vinegar I ended up with 3. I would give it another week or two, stirring and tasting every day. If you can get your hands on some pH test strips, this can also help you to know when everything has converted to acetic acid.


Why is my meringue soft, moist and discoloured? There is a similar question to this, but without a recipe and no satisfactory answer...

I used 3 egg whites with pristine metal utensils. Absolutely no moisture, fats, etc.

Whisked slow, medium, fast, evenly spaced timing over 5 minutes.

Towards the end, around 4 minutes, started adding tablespoons of icing sugar and letting them whisk in.

Continued whisking for a further 2 minutes once all mixed.

Beautiful texture and gloss. Stiff and awesome.

Preheated oven to 100c, spread meringue out for a pavlova.

In the centre of the fan assisted oven on 100c for 2 hrs 10 mins. Turned off and sat until cold (over night and it was actually 5 hrs.)

The first 2 times I did this I got perfect results. Couldn’t wish for better. (First time I used granulated caster sugar, second was with icing sugar which gave a better texture.)

The next time I made 2 pavlova bases and put them in at the same time. Shelves were close together but still centred.

Exact same ingredients, conditions, etc.

This time they came out fluffy, like bread on the inside. Moist to the touch. Stuck to the baking paper. Most worryingly they were a discoloured orange on the outside.

I have now made another at the end of the day, but only one this time. It has turned out the same:

What makes a meringue stay moist? What makes it discolour? Is there anything I should look at considering that I did exactly the same thing each time?

One thing that can affect meringues is humidity. I find that I have to bake them at nearly twice as long in the summer to get them to dry out completely.


Nuts and raisins don't stick to cookies after baking I decorated my cookies with raisins and nuts, but no matter how deep I pressed them into the dough, they fell off after baking. How can I avoid that?

This likely happens when the fat in the cookie dough sizzles out and make the nuts & raisins slip out, or the cookies expand greatly during baking, pushing out the nuts & raisins.
If possible, try reducing the fat content and the amount of leavening agent of the cookies. Another solution is to roll out a paper thin layer of dough to press onto the tops of the cookies.
If the problem really is due to excessive expanding of the cookies, flipping them upside-down on the baking sheet before placing them in the over might help.


What part of oatmeal cookies are making them soft / chewy? I'd like to recreate the texture of an oatmeal cookie in very different flavor profiles, ie savory / umami. I'm tinkering with only the rolled oats for now, but I wonder if the chewiness could be coming from another ingredient, or a specific ingredient interaction during the cookie making process. For example, do I need creamed butter to achieve that texture or can I do without ?

To be clear I'm not looking for a cookie recipe, more like an analysis of how they come together. But if you have a recipe of a savory "oatmeal galette" or similar, I'll gladly take it. Thanks for your answers.

There are several ingredients and procedures that work together to determine the structure and texture of a cookie.  At the end of this recipe on ChefSteps, there is a very detailed explanation.  I am sure it is possible to make a savory version, you are just going to have to be creative in your approach.  If you search their site, they also have tips for making gluten free cookies more "cookie-like."  You might explore the use of different sugars, which have differing levels of sweetness.  You can shop Modernist Pantry, for example, as an online source of these ingredients.

In direct response to your question, and according to the information in the link I provided, the following ingredients contribute to the texture of a cookie: sugars, butter (its temperature...and how they are mixed), liquid-to-flour ratio, temperature of the dough when it is baked, and whether or not you choose to compact them after baking...so, there are a lot of variables that you will need to experiment with.

Alternately, for savory applications, you could use a tuille.


Baking cakes in the Microwave ovens as compared to Electric ovens Is there a difference in the output or in the procedure when baking cakes in the Microwave ovens as compared to Electric ovens?

What are the basic and crucial differences found among cakes baked in the above mentioned different equipments?

Question: If we run the microwave (which has a convection feature) on "grill and convection" mode only, does it become same as rectangular "Electric ovens"? Please explain why and how too.

Yes, there is a difference. You shouldn't be baking a cake (or anything else) in a microwave oven.

A microwave oven excites the water within your food. When you put in dough or batter, the excited water doesn't bind with the starch the way it does under normal heat, it escapes the starch, leaving you with a stone-hard piece of dough or batter.

There is something called "five-minutes microwave cake". I haven't tried it, but in the recipes floating around the interwebs it gets eaten while still hot (so probably before it has had the chance to get too hard). It also seems that there is a very small heat frame in which it gets OK. Bake it too much, and it will get hard, or burn. Bake it too little, and you end up with a mug of warm batter. It is also supposed to be a cupcake, I suspect that if you try to bake a bigger portion at once, there will be enough temperature difference in different zones of the batter to get underbaked, baked and hard portions all at once.

Bottom line: if you want to try for the fun of it, make a cupcake in the microwave, and watch your energy input (microwave watt setting and time) very closely, then eat immediately. You can find recipes all over the Web, e. g. on Instructables. If you want a real cake, don't bake in a microwave.


Is Dahi Thermophilic or Mesophilic? Is Dahi (Indian homemade yogurt) Thermophilic or Mesophilic?

Traditional Foods: General and Consumer Aspects page 103:

As specified under the Food Adulteration act of 1955 (India):

  Mild dahi is made from mesophillic lacto cocci such as...
  ...Sour dahi contains additional cultures belonging to the thermophilic group.

Looks like there's a lot more info in the link, including typical prep methods.


How do big companies make sure their product always looks and tastes the same? When professional bakeries or companies such as Dunkin' Donuts or Panos create their dishes, how do they make sure the end product has the same look and taste as always?

Do they just premake huge volumes of the dough, and let the establishment simply pour the stuff into a shape (e.g. muffins) so they always deliver the same muffin to the customer?

If so, what machines do they use for it, as opposed to amateur cooking to always use the same amount of grams of each ingredient, and the way it is mixed, etc?

how do they make sure the end product has the same look and taste as always?

This is the realm of quality control. It involves such activities as:

developing processes that are as consistent as possible
measuring the product against a standard
identifying and eliminating sources of variation

It's easier to control a single large-scale process in a factory than small processes duplicated at many locations, so as much as possible they'll deliver pre-mixed, pre-measured ingredients to retail locations. Equipment will be standardized and automated at each location. A recipe then becomes very hard to screw up, something like:

  Add one sack of standard donut mix, one container of eggs, and one
  bucket of water to the mixer. Press the "Mix-2" button. When the mixer
  stops, transfer dough to sheeter/former and press the green button...

Disclaimer: I've never worked in a franchise donut shop, and actual recipes may be more or less complicated than the made-up one above. But that's the general idea, and it's deployed widely in manufacturing whether or not the product is food.

You can do some of the same things at home if you want to simplify a recipe that you make frequently.

The easiest way to get started is to measure ingredients by weight (if you don't already). It's a lot faster and easier to make, say, a bread recipe if you can skip the measuring cups and just pour flour into the mixing bowl until you reach the target weight. Repeat with water, yeast, salt, etc. You don't dirty any measuring cups, you'll get more consistent results, and you'll save time.

Another step in that direction is to pre-mix whatever ingredients you can, so that you can make a big batch of mix once in a while and then measure out just one thing instead of four or five each time you make the recipe. Pre-mixing can reduce the shelf life of the ingredients, though, so it's not always idea. If you can't pre-mix, then you can at least pre-measure ingredients, or use measuring tools that are suited to the quantities that you need. For example, if you make bread daily using 24oz. of flour, you might get a 12oz. scoop and pre-measure the salt and instant yeast into small containers. Then your recipe is something like:

  Add two scoops of flour, a container of salt, a container of yeast,
  and a pint of water to the mixer...

Of course, one of the nice things about home cooking is that it's not exactly the same every time. Who wants to eat the same thing every day?


What is meant by "neutral" oils? What is meant by "neutral" oils? Conversely, what would make an oil not neutral? When is it important that the oil be neutral (or not)?

Context would make me more sure, but I expect this is referring to neutral flavor.

If you need oil in something for purposes other than flavor, and want to make sure that the other flavors in the dish aren't affected or obscured, then you'd want a neutral oil. For example, for frying and sauteeing, we rarely use strongly flavored oil. (There's the additional problem that many flavors are destroyed at high heat; many more aromatic oils have lower smoke points.)

Oils like sesame oil, chili oil, and walnut oil are decidedly not neutral. On the other end, oils like canola oil and grapeseed oil are neutral. Close to neutral, there are very mildly-flavored oils like peanut oil. Somewhere more in the middle there are things like olive oil, which has some flavor but isn't overwhelmingly strong.

Note that sometimes there's more than one type of oil from a given source, often a more refined one that's more neutral and a less refined one with more flavor. For example, refined olive oil is quite neutral, but extra-virgin olive oil has plenty of flavor; "regular" peanut oil is fairly refined and mild, but there are also flavorful roasted peanut oils.


Food Scientists: Please Explain the Final Dough Temperature (FDT) Formula This is undoubtedly a question for a food scientist. I have seen online a formula to calculate the water temperature needed to achieve a final/desired dough temperature:

water temp = (FDT)*(mult. factor)-(room temp)-(flour temp)-(friction factor)-(preferment temp)

So for a desired dough temp of 78ºF on a straight dough (no preferment, mult. factor = 3) worked by hand (friction factor = 0) with room temperature flour (say 72º), you would need to make your water 90º, i.e.,

90 = 78*3 - 72 - 72 - 0

I've practiced this a couple of times now, and it seems to work to within a degree or so...magic! I'm baffled as to why, though. It seems quite suspect that no weights are contained in the formula. And, getting even more scientific, no specific heats.

Can someone please explain where this useful formula comes from? I'm a physicist by trade so this is really fascinating, and I would love to know the derivation. (Math doesn't scare me.)

For reference, here are two of the places that I found this formula:

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2018/05/29/desired-dough-temperature
https://www.theperfectloaf.com/common-bread-baking-calculators/

Thanks!

If kneading does not significantly heat up the dough, and the process is sufficiently quick then, by basic thermodynamics, the final dough temperature (FDT) is the average of the temperatures of the ingredients. (JoutlawPhysics points out in a comment below that this assumes equal masses of ingredients, which is usually only approximately true.) Hence

FDT = (water temp + room temp + flour temp + preferment temp)/4.

Here 4 is the `multiplication factor'. In general the multiplication factor is the number of temperatures involved, minus one. Rearranging the formula above we get

water temp = FDT*(mult. factor) - room temp - flour temp - preferment temp.

Your formula is the small generalization allowing for the heating effect of friction during kneading or mixing of the dough.


Are my refrigerated pork chops & onions safe to eat? I cooked pork chops with onions two days ago and refrigerated the leftovers pretty quickly. I checked it today and there was a lot of congealed fat around and over some of the onions (not submerged though). I looked at related questions but still not sure if this a botulism risk. Thanks!

This is not likely a botulism risk. It should be safe to eat assuming the following:

Refrigerator is functioning properly and keeps food below 40 F.
Food was not previously sitting out longer than two hours at room temperature.

The USDA provides a useful guide on Refrigeration and Food Safety. This section is pertinent to you:

There are two completely different families of bacteria: pathogenic bacteria, the kind that cause foodborne illness, and spoilage bacteria, the kind of bacteria that cause foods to deteriorate and develop unpleasant odors, tastes, and textures.
Pathogenic bacteria can grow rapidly in the "Danger Zone," the temperature range between 40 and 140 °F, but they do not generally affect the taste, smell, or appearance of a food. In other words, one cannot tell that a pathogen is present.
Spoilage bacteria can grow at low temperatures, such as in the refrigerator. Eventually they cause food to develop off or bad tastes and smells. Most people would not choose to eat spoiled food, but if they did, they probably would not get sick. It comes down to an issue of quality versus safety:

Food that has been stored too long in the refrigerator or freezer may be of lessened quality, but most likely would not make anyone sick. (However, some bacteria such as Listeria monocytogenes thrive at cold temperatures, and if present, will multiply in the refrigerator over time and could cause illness.)

According to their storage time chart, cooked pork is approaching spoilage after 3-4 days, i.e. it will start to taste/smell funky. So it should be fine to eat, but of course, use your best judgement — and consider finishing up those chops sooner than later.


Lid popping when I checked for seal the next day I made peach chutney yesterday, hot ingredients into hot sterilized jars.  Wiped the rims. After submerged in boiling water 20 minutes, and sitting placidly on counter all the jars popped but one.  Today when checking the seals, depressing the center of lid, the one that had not popped on its own, popped.  Now I am not sure if the seal of that jar is good.
Is it OK to store it, or should it be used and refrigerated immediately?

You should either store that jar in the refrigerator or reprocess it with a new lid.
The vacuum formed is not going to be as strong as your other jars and may be temperature sensitive. It may stay sealed on the shelf, but it may not. I wouldn’t risk having to discard the whole jar.


How to make a good mash potato Possible Duplicate:
  How can I make a silky smooth, rich mash?

My mash potatoes are usually not very tasty.

I sometimes add some cheese or butter (together with milk) but I never manage to make a good one! Probably the quantities are wrong.

Could you give me some help ?
Thanks

I usually season my mashed potatoes with salt, pepper and lots of muscat nut.

Apart from that, boil the potatoes in really salty water. The difference between adding the salt to the water rather than adding it later on is really astounding.


Is it possible to be able to withstand intense flavors while preserving sensibility to subtle ones? Is it possible to appreciate the taste of a dish subtly spiced with black pepper if you're capable of taking part in a chili eating contest? Or will it be impossible for you to feel the difference?

If you can drink a glass of unwatered down lemon juice, can you feel the slight change of taste that comes from a lemon slice in a cup of tea?

If you can withstand a shot of 96.6% rectified spirits, can you tell apart a glass of apple cider and a slightly fermented 1.2% hard cider?

It's probably true that tolerance for extremes of a specific flavor or sensation will be associated with less perception of slight amounts of that same thing.

So for example, if someone can tolerate extremely hot peppers, they're unlikely to notice a very small amount of heat. It doesn't even have to be extreme: it's quite common for someone with a decent tolerance to not notice that food is hot, while someone else with low tolerance will think it's hot. Similarly, if someone is somehow not sensitive to acidity at all and can drink lemon juice, well, they don't can't perceive that taste so they probably won't notice a tiny bit of citric acid added to water.

But none of that means they'll be unable to perceive different flavors. Black pepper is a different flavor from a hot pepper, so someone with tolerance for extreme heat can most likely still taste black pepper. Someone with tolerance for extreme acidity might not taste the sourness of a little lemon in water, but they could probably notice the fragrance. Someone with tolerance for hard alcohol might not as easily notice the alcohol content of cider, but they'll certainly be able to taste the sweetness, carbonation, and apple that differentiate it from water.

You seem to also be interested in someone having extreme tolerance for everything. First off, keep in mind that there are two parts of perceiving flavor: taste and smell.

Your tongue perceives a small number of basic tastes, most of which it's easy to overdo, like the heat and sour you mentioned, or bitter or salty. For those, if someone has an extreme tolerance, they are likely to be less discerning about smaller amounts. Sweet is probably an exception; everyone can eat pure sugar, and also taste hints of sweetness. Bitter is also a bit unique in that there are a wide variety of bitter-tasting chemicals, and people can have different sensitivities to different ones.

Most of what actually makes foods unique is the more diverse things your nose senses. For most of those, it's not really realistic to ever encounter extremely intense versions. But generally I would expect that yes, if for example you can smell orange extract and hardly smell anything, then you definitely won't notice a hint of orange. Note that this is not about withstanding intense flavors, though, but rather about not really perceiving the flavor in the first place. If on the other hand, it's just that you tolerate it, that might just be normal, and your perception of small amounts would be just fine. A more realistic issue is simply familiarity: if you're used to all your food being orange-scented, you'll stop noticing it, and probably won't notice slight variations, but you would still notice the absence.

If hypothetically someone really couldn't perceive normal amounts of basic tastes and aromas, then yes, they would have trouble knowing on their own how to cook food that others would enjoy. They could of course still follow recipes, or learn what works for others, and even be creative with guidance from others.


can you use metal pans in combo convection/microwave ovens can you use metal pans in combo convection/microwave ovens

Can... possibly, if they don't spark too much.

Be used successfully... no.
They will block the microwaves, making the exercise rather futile.

If you're using only conventional heat, then fine, but not if you need the microwave energy.


Can I adjust soup texture right before serving? I'm terrible at getting the right texture for soups and stews. Adding boiling water to adjust the texture right before serving is my usual response. Would this work as a long-term solution, or does it affect other aspects of the taste?

This will also water down the flavour of the soup. Depending on the type of soup you are making you may have some cooking liquid left over which would be far preferable to plain water.

In fact it's not a bad idea to start with a little more cooking liquid than necessary. Use a fine-mesh sieve to separate the soup ingredients from the cooking liquid. You can then re-introduce the cooking-liquid a bit at a time until you arrive at the right texture. That gives you a margin of error.

Adding milk, cream or sour cream are also possibilities, again, depending on the soup.


What is this Tibetan dessert? Hi, does anyone know how to make this dessert? It is from Tibet originally, and can be found in a French restaurant under the name 'dolma'. (both the name of the desert and the name of the restaurant)

The white component is 'fromage blanc' (fresh cheese) with honey.

I had it years ago. The main square component was rather sweet and tasted like it was made of flour (and delicious)  but not too sugary.  I can't remember whether it tasted at all  salty or not. No fruits or obvious vegetables inside. (no carrots)

There were a couple outside possibilities that I saw - though its worth noting the differences in description mean that the dish you had would have to be a variation specific to that restaurant, as far as I know.

One possibility was the cream cheese burfi - it is specifically mentioned to be a tibetan dessert, and the major flavors would be cream cheese, sour cream and milk (which would blend into the fromage blanc), but it is also made with flour, salt, baking powder, and of course sugar - which might give the right flavor profile that you mentioned.  It is traditionally made with nuts (almond and cashew) and also raisins, but this might be a simplified recipe to suit that particular recipe, as I mentioned.

A bit of an outside possibility, but the description for gtor-ma cakes sounded like a possibility - made with parched barley flour and butter, the flavor profile would indeed be strongly of flour and not too sweet (and the fromage blanc with honey would give the whole a sweeter taste for a dessert dish).  Problem is, this cake is usually elaborately decorated as a religious sacrificial offering, mostly in cones (so perhaps not plain squares unless the restaurant was making their own very liberal interpretation of the dish).

Final possibility I saw, was Thue, a traditional dessert that best fits the appearance of the dish, but seems maybe less of a match tastewise.  Thue is made with dri, a harder cheese (like parmesan or something) finely grated, brown sugar, and unsalted butter - mixed into a smooth, slightly crumbly paste and pressed into brick form.  I look at the picture and think this dessert fits, even with a sprinkle of brown sugar on top, but the taste I imagine would be different from what you described, saltier (but still sweet) and rich, and not much like flour since the main component is sharper, drier cheese.  Maybe the flavor profile would be closer to your description if this restaurant also mixed in barley flour, like tsampa or pa, where dri cheese is mixed with barley flour, tea, sugar and butter - but that's a snack and not a dessert.

In the end, I think a better description of what the dish tasted like would help a lot to figure out what's in it - though it can be hard to describe offhand and after the fact, I know - so I though I'd offer up these dishes because maybe one of these descriptions can jog your memory of the tastes enough to guess which it was (or worse comes to worst, make them and find out)?


Is it safe to reheat food in plastic containers? Is it safe to reheat food in any type of plastic container or are there only some types of plastic ware that are safe to use?

There has been quite a lot of discussion regarding the safety aspects of cooking/reheatin foodstuffs in plastic microwave containers. I'm not sure there is, as yet, any conclusive evidence one way of the other.

If you have to reheat food in plastic containers, make sure they're labelled specifically for that purpose. Personally, I'd use glass or ceramic.


How do I flavor fish en papillote? I cleaned and gutted a whole fish then stuffed with
rosemary and garlic. Wrapped it foil and cooked it on
charcoal grill. After it was done cooking, the fish lacked
the flavor of the herbs.

How much rosemary and garlic did you stuff into the fish? A sprig of rosemary and a clove of garlic in a 4 lb fish isn't going to do much, but too much would overpower the fish.

I personally like making a rub for the outside of the fish of whatever I am stuffing it with. In this case, take a few rosemary leaves and a few cloves of garlic and make a light paste , then rub it on the outside of the fish. Then, stuff the fish with rosemary sprigs and garlic cloves (sliced or mashed if possible to extract more flavor). Whenever I stuff a fish, I also tend to add 1 tablespoon of butter and spread it on the inside of the fish to act as a conduit for the flavor.


Substitute for pumpkin pie filling I have a recipe for a French Toast Bake which calls for 30 ounces of pumpkin pie filling.  I am looking for something I can substitute since my family is not crazy about pumpkin flavor.  Any ideas?

Puree of chayote with (nutmeg / clove / allspice / cinnamon / just sugar) (however you like it) works well. It's an Asian staple and available around the world in most Asian markets. It has no real detectable taste of its own, it just takes on the flavor of whatever you cook it with or put in it.

If that's not available, you could sweeten a puree of butternut or regular squash and get the desired outcome.

With either method, be careful with your moisture content - you want it to be pretty much the same as pumpkin pie filling for the recipe you want to try.


Israeli restaurant-style falafel and hummus, how do to make? How is authentic Israeli restaurant-style falafel and hummus made?

Is there any secret?

Thanks in advance!

(yes, I know, I cheat by posting a non-answer)

I don't think that there can be a real answer to that question.

There must be dozens of "authentic" recipes for Falafel and hummus; and I am not talking about westernized variation of the recipe.

In the case of the hummus, maybe the chickpeas are fresh or dry, maybe the olive oil is different (generic vs. cold presse), maybe the lemon is more or less sweet, maybe the tahini is home made versus store bought.

Maybe the mix was blended to a smooth texture or just enough to have chunks in it, maybe it was hand crushed in a mortar?

You see there can be a lot of variation, not just on the recipe, but on the ingredients themselves.

If you want to make hummus and falafel at home, you will need to find a recipe (or, 2, 3 more) that appeals to you, and experiment with it by add more or less of that, or more or less of that other thing so you can discover the recipe that you really like.


Can meat freeze from the inside out? We received a turkey recently which was meant to be 'fresh'. When it arrived it was frozen on the inside. We are told that the fridge was probably set a bit low so the turkey froze on the inside.

I'm not rocket surgeon, but I would have thought that meat would always freeze from the outside in, and then thaw from the outside in. Meaning in this case that the only way for the turkey's inside to be frozen would be for the whole turkey to have frozen and then partially thawed.

My question: is it possible for meat to freeze on the inside first or is by butcher pulling a fast one?

That's not how it happens. Turkey can be labeled "fresh" as in -never frozen- even if the turkey is held at temperatures below freezing. By law, 26F (-3.33C) is the cutoff in the US. If the turkey spends weeks at 27F, it can still be labeled fresh even though it would be considered frozen to any of us mere mortals.

So, if a turkey has spent 2 weeks at 27F, and you buy it and put it in your fridge, it's going to be frozen on the inside for a day or so, despite being labeled "fresh".

Here's more, pointed out by Phillip in his comment. From the Good Eats transcript:


How do I ask for eggs, sunny-side-up, but with the top cooked more thoroughly? If I ask for eggs, sunny-side-up, they will have yellow barely cooked yolks.  At home I avoid this by placing a lid and creating hot air or steam that cooks the top more thoroughly.  How do I ask for this style at a restaurant?  What term do I use?

You can ask for eggs over easy.
This is when the cook flips the egg over once it's ready and allows the wolk to cook a bit on the hot surface of the pan.
The phrase is an American one, if I'm not mistaken, but is probably understood anywhere.


Why do HK chefs let water faucets run unceasingly, when the basin overflows? Doesn't this waste water?  I screen-shot 7:45 of Executive Chef Sze Man Sui  at Yè Shanghai on Kowloon Hong Kong.

and 0:42 of Paul Lau at  Tin Lung Heen, Ritz-Carlton HK.

This appears to be a dipper well: a continuously running sink used to rinse utensils. The water runs continuously to remove contaminants, always leaving a clean supply of water to rinse dirty utensils and, in this case, to clean out the wok.

They are rather wasteful: the linked article states they use 30-60 gallons (110 to 230 L) of water per hour.


Can I freeze Parmesan? I am thinking about buying a larger amount of Parmesan and freeze it for later use. Is this possible? How long can I keep it for? How is the taste/texture affected?

Yes, you can freeze parmesan cheese. Even without freezing, Parmesan is very durable since the low water and high salt content prevents mould from growing. The younger varieties may be more prone to mould growth (having a higher water content), but I've kept ripe Parmesan (30-36 months) for at least a year in the fridge without problems (and it would probably have stayed good much longer). Just remember to keep it wrapped in paper, not in a sealed plastic container to prevent a buildup of condensation.


Looking for meat ingredient suggestions for a Yoghurt Cake recipe I know the flavours of "meat" and "sweet" can sometimes go together well. There's a sausage and fennel (licorice sensation) pastry that I very much enjoy. That's the concept this question is based in.

We're having an office bake-off based on Yoghurt Cake.  I'd like to do something different and use meat in the cake instead of fruit, seeds, nuts or assorted sweets.  However I can't find any recipes online that include meat.  I know bacon is often all the rage so that interests me but I'm open to any kind of meat.

I'm not a cook and am looking for some seasoned advice about what meats to use in a standard Yoghurt cake recipe, and the best way to prepare the meat for it.  This is one example of a standard Yoghurt Cake recipe from which I would base my own concoction - http://happyhomebaking.blogspot.ca/2007/09/another-yogurt-cake.html

Bacon works well in sweet dishes because it is quite sweet itself. Why not try a sweet-cured bacon in a subtly maple-flavoured cake?

You can really boost the sweetness of the bacon by putting it in a very low oven for long time. It pretty much crystallises.


Collapsing, dense pound cake I’ve been trying a UK recipe that worked for me last year (I live in Canada). It’s a simple:

220g butter
220g caster sugar
4 eggs (220g weight in shells)
220g self raising flour
lemon zest
3-4 tbsp elderflower cordial

For 6” tins at 350F for 40-45 mins in middle of oven. I’ve also tried to scale it up to 9” tins. The issue I’m having is, 1) the creamed butter and sugar either curdles or is on the verge of curdling with the last egg addition, despite beating the batter really well between additions; 2) the cakes deflate in the middle to form craters during cooking (so before I even take them out of the oven); 3) after removing the outside rings to level the cakes, they are obviously dense, but the flavour is great. I’ve checked my oven temp with an oven thermometer, I’ve tried adding a little less egg, I’ve tried beating the butter and sugar for longer, only just incorporating the flour to avoid over mixing, adding a little extra baking powder and cooking for less time. STILL the cakes sink in the middle and come out dense (I get that this type of cake is more dense anyway, but I can’t stop the middle sinking)! Any ideas or advice would be amazing! I’m trying to make a friends wedding cake with their fave recipe that I made last year! But it’s stressing me out that I can’t seem to fix this :( Thanks so much.

So there are a lot of things that can make a cake collapse, and from reading the comments, I see you've done the basic research. Unfortunately, the best I think anyone can do is make suggestions for how to determine whats wrong.

**Make sure you are weighing your ingredients. Your recipe is in grams, so I assume you are, but it's worth saying.

My first step would be to eliminate the self-rising flour since it is hit-and-miss. You can easily add leavening and salt to regular flour and thus know exactly how much of each you're using, and that eliminates variables.

Since you're taking the time to properly emulsify the butter and eggs, I'd even make a small batch without any chemical leavening and see how that turns out. Too much leavening has the same effect as incorporating too much air and can cause your cake to fall. Chemical leaveners are a fairly recent invention, and technically aren't required for a lot of traditional cakes.

Also, when doing the initial beating, you really want to spend the most time beating the sugar into the butter, and then beat the eggs until just combined. Overbeating the eggs doesn't just risk incorporating too much air and inducing collapse, but can cause your cake to feel dry or crumbly even when it seems a-okay on the outside. I know your recipe says otherwise, but unless you're relying on the egg/butter emulsion for leavening, it seems like an unnecessary risk.

The other thing I notice in your picture is that the outer edge obviously cooked first, and my first impression is that those cakes are rather tall. I've found in the past that the deeper my cake batter, the more prone it is to failure. You could try baking your cakes across more tins. That will help the center set faster compared to what you have now. The edges will still set more quickly, but the difference might not be so great that the whole thing collapses. My mom is a fan or torting her cakes, but I personally find it easier to just bake separate layers for a shorter amount of time.

You could also try reducing your oven's temperature a bit. All oven temperatures fluctuate, and sometimes the oven thermostat will go out of whack (I had a hard time with my landlord for over a year because of a malfunctioning thermostat...). I found a blog post that talks about the changes temperature can bring in a cake: to summarize, cake baked closer to 300 is lighter and fluffier, while cake baked closer to 400 is denser and has more caramelization. After 45 minutes, any cake would be caramelized, so lowering the temperature might be worth a shot. Check out the pictures: https://thecakeblog.com/2015/04/baking-temperature-comparison.html

Those would be my initial tests, and I wouldn't do more than a half-batch of anything while you're experimenting. I'm sure butter is expensive where you live too. And if you really want to be careful, remember: it's best to only change ONE variable at a time. I know it's frustrating, but if you're really at a loss, it's better to make small batches and small changes.

Other things I might try if I can't get the results through ANY of those ideas would include those edge-insulating strips (I've heard you can fold wet paper towels in foil and wrap them around your tins to encourage even rising), and even reducing the amount of cordial by microwaving it or something in case that amount of liquid is messing up the pound cake chemistry.

On a different note: I don't know how much time there is before the wedding, but you could try making a different cake or two and soak it with an elderflower/lemon syrup to get that same kind of flavor. It can be mind-numbing to keep trying the same recipe over and over, especially if something's not going right. If you need a break, or need to prove that you can bake a cake, d*****, try a yellow cake or something, make a nice syrup and ask your friends to try it for comparison. As @aris said, pound cake isn't necessarily the best for a wedding cake. You don't have to think of it as a failure, but let them sample the pound cake and another option or two if you can, and let them decide. Is that particular cake everything they remember, or was it the elderflower cordial that they really loved?

Hope things turn out!


What are things like Bread, Rice and Cereal collectively known as? I'm not sure if this belongs here or in the English language stack exchange but here goes:

We have broad classifications like "Fruit" and "Vegetable" and "Meat"/"Protein". What do you collectively call bread, rice, pasta, cereal etc. My first guess was "Grains" but that feels like referring to the unprocessed thing rather than the food.

There are several terms which you can use, depending on the context of writing (or speaking).

A very simple one is "the starch". It is mostly used in the context of meal planning, such as "What starch are we going to serve tonight" or "When planning a vegetarian meal, it is best to first decide on the starch and then select sides that complement it".

"Grains" or, mostly interchangeably, "cereals" is what academic specialists for nutrition and diets use in their jargon. If you read a textbook on nutrition, that's where you will find breads, etc. There, the context makes it clear that the word doesn't mean simply uncooked kernels. The nonacademic literature on dieting is more likely to use "carbs" - see Chris H's answer for more detail on that usage.

In legal language, for example rules and regulations about food product labelling, or import and export regulations, you will frequently find phrases like "grain products".

Since none of these terms is unambiguous, outside of these genres of writing you will probably have to go for something more descriptive, for example "foods made from grains" in a colloquial conversation.


Turning a cast-iron grill into a smoker I have a Char-broil gas cast iron grill.  This is one of the style where the flame is under cast iron pans filled with lava rocks rather than cooking the food directly.  Works great for when you don't want to bother with charcoal.  But I digress.

My question is: I think this type of grill would make an excellent smoker, and has anyone tried doing so before?

were you able to keep it at the right temperature?  How?
how much wood chips did you use?  Did you soak them?
did you try to seal it to keep the smoke in?  again, how?

Any cooker with a lid that mostly closes the BBQ will work as a hot smoker. It doesn't have to be a perfect fit for hot smoking

Just add something that smokes with the radiant heat. Place it under the grill to the side, or on top of the grill if there is room. A crushed up bunch or tea tree or lavender twigs works fine. If the smoke runs out, add another bunch

Any wood will do, it doesn't need to be "fancy smoker chips" *. It doesn't need to be soaked or fiddled with in any way. Wood with nice smelling sap/oils seems to be better, but experience tends to indicate that any old wood will do

For temperature regulation, just concentrate on cooking correctly and safely. The smoke will do its magic regardless. You generally need more than ten minutes in smoke to make a decent impact, but for thin cuts or soft flesh fish you can do it in less

Referenced from Nathan Myhrvold talk promoting Modernist Cuisine


Is it safe to add raw eggs to homemade coffee creamer? I've been looking for a decent dairy-free coffee creamer alternative. I stumbled upon a blog post for 'paleo coffee creamer' that has just 3 ingredients: a can of coconut milk, 2-3 eggs, and some vanilla extract.

In the blog comments, many posters said that there's no way they would include raw eggs in their homemade coffee creamer. I probably would've said the same thing, but the author mentioned something along the lines of 'the heat from the coffee tempers the eggs, making the creamer safe to consume.'

Is this true?

It depends on how hot the coffee-egg mixture is (and remember, adding it will cool the coffee), and how long it stays at that temperature.

Given that coffee does not benefit in flavor from being left around, you want a fast process, which means the mixture should be at 160 F (71 C) for several seconds at least... it can cool after that.

Since coffee optimally brews at about 195-205 F, this should be in the realm of possibility.


How can I use up a large quantity of egg? (This is not a recipe request, as I will try to make clear.)
It's Easter egg season in our household, and my 5 ½-year-old niece is going for quantity, not quality. This means that we have an even-larger-than-usual quantity of the blown-out innards of all the eggs we've dyed with food-safe dyes.1
So, we're talking whole eggs, not fully scrambled, but not exactly in a separable condition, either, and with the occasional streak of purple or pink.2
At this point, we're all deathly sick of scrambled eggs and omelets. We've even gotten tired of the Hungarian harbringer of spring, tojásos nokedli, which is basically spätzle with a scrambled-egg sauce.
What other types of things could we look into cooking that would most efficiently use up all these eggs? By "efficient", I mean things that don't require a whole lot of other ingredients. Obviously, I've eliminated the most efficient use, i.e. just cook the eggs (=scrambled eggs), but there's got to be other things we could do.
1 We try to stick to food-safe dyes around kids, because they're not terribly good at not sticking their hands straight in the dye, and from thence in their mouth.
2 e.g. if an egg was accidentally left in the dye overnight, which never happens, no sir, not here, never. :)

Perhaps some breakfast strata would do the trick.  I don't know how many ingredients you're looking for, but the basic recipes would (in addition to eggs) include bread, butter, cheese, milk or half-and-half, and a few meats, vegetables, and/or herbs.  I've seen variations that use potatoes and rosemary, some that use bacon and scallions, some that use spinach or asparagus.  Quite a variety.

My favorite ones are behind a paywall, but if you subscribe:
http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/506-breakfast-strata-with-sausage-mushrooms-and-monterey-jack
(Cooks Country also has a strata-inspired recipe called Featherbed Eggs that I love.)

Otherwise, you can find strata recipes anywhere:
http://www.food.com/recipe/ham-asparagus-strata-85885

Another one I quite enjoy is called Eggs Piperade, which is essentially scrambled eggs with a stir-fry of peppers, onions, and tomatoes.


Toasting bread in a gas oven I am trying to toast bread in a gas oven on a rack about 8 inches from bottom, but all the toast in the centre part of the rack are burnt and the ones to the sides are perfect, is this a normal thing with gas ovens or is my oven faulty? The bottom cover is in place I have not adjusted anything, I use a temperature setting of 180 degrees Celsius. Please do not chastise me for trying this I am just experimenting to see if I can Economize on equipment and even energy as most of the times something else will be going in the oven.

I suspect that it is because of where the flame is at the bottom and that I could place a thick metal plate on the centre of the oven floor, to prevent this, but I prefer to hear from someone with experience or any other expert.

We do that frequently. Hot spots develop in our oven too, but we control the thing by just swapping the bread from center to edges twice along the process.

I think adding a "thick metal plate" would do too, but the toasting time will increase (or at least the time needed to pre-heat the oven will be greater).

HTH!


Unexplained Butterflied Roast Chicken Success Yesterday I started working on a six pound butterflied roast chicken a little too close to an evening meeting.  I butterflied the chicken and patted it as dry as possible inside and out with paper towels.  I then mixed up some olive oil, lemon juice, salt, cracked pepper, chili powder, onion powder, and cumin and liberally applied it all over the skin.  I'm not sure I really managed to completely flatten the chicken, as I'm fairly weak and it was a large bird, so the butterfly technique wasn't perfect.  I put it under a pre-heated broiler and started out following this recipe, with the chicken cooking for about 6 minutes skin-side up, then 6 minutes meat-side up, then I put the oven on 375 degrees F (190.5 degrees C) with the chicken skin side up.  Ever time I flipped it I poured some of the collected juices over the bird.  Because the bird was so big, it wasn't done after about an hour of cooking when I needed to leave, so I put the broiler on low for about 3 minutes before leaving, and then I shut the oven off to keep from charring my chicken and burning the place down.  At this point the thigh was around 140 degrees F at the thickest part.  I was gone for about an hour.

When I returned, my spouse didn't want to eat the chicken until we'd verified that it had come to temperature, so we turned the oven back on to 400 degrees F (204.4 degrees C) for a few more minutes.  The bird went way beyond minimum temperature - the thickest part of the thigh was well over 175.  I expected it to taste disgustingly dry.

Instead what we had was the most moist, tender roasted chicken I've ever had.  The skin was crispy, the meat fell off the bone (literally when we moved it off the rack).

What was it about this accidental cooking method that worked so well?  Did the time in the hot-but-not-on oven do anything?  Was it just the initial recipe and the size of the bird?  The basting?  I'd love to reproduce the flavor and texture of my chicken, but do I need all the accidental steps?

It sounds like you accomplished something like braising in your oven. Low moist heat for an hour will definitely make meat fall off the bone for something as delicate as a chicken. The skin was crisped up by the broiler, of course.

You could probably accomplish something similar by crisping up the skin in a pan or under a broiler, then putting the chicken and some liquid in a crock pot (slow cooker) for an hour. Brining the chicken first helps prevent it from drying out. If you didn't brine yours, it's possible that there was enough salt in your rub to do the job.


How should I make jam out of coffee cherries or coffee cherry husks? I would like to make a jam (or perhaps more like a preserve/conserve or even marmalade; see this question for distinction) out of either

the entire, whole coffee cherry (a.k.a. coffee berry; beans and all), or
the skin and pulp of coffee cherries (i.e., the flesh of the fruit -- everything except for the beans. Often discarded from "normal" coffee production, these skin, pulp, and pectin remnants seem to be called "husks", which sounds a little odd or misleading; thanks to @Jefromi for articulating this).

Edit: I tried to clarify the usage of fruit and husks; I'm trying to use the canonical terms as best as I understand them.

A bit of background for completeness: coffee beans (really seeds) grow inside a fruit that grows on the coffee tree. This fruit of the coffee tree is commonly called a coffee cherry or coffee berry, (looking a bit like a red cranberry or cherry when ripe). There are good pictures on that linked Wikipedia page, and a botanical diagram at wikia.

I found a source of dried coffee cherry husks (i.e., the dried skin and pulp of the fruit). In general, one can infuse these husks (or the whole, dried fruits), as a tisane, to make coffee cherry tea (also called cascara, or qishr -- see another Coffee.SE question for more on coffee cherry tea). I haven't (yet?) found any source of whole coffee cherries, so I intend to start with the husks (dried skin and pulp only). I could even consider gelling the brewed coffee-cherry tea as a jelly, if all else fails.

My questions are:

Has anyone (around here) made jam/preserves with coffee cherries or the pulp/husks?
Does anyone know the properties of coffee cherry fruit/husks, as pertain to jam-making? E.g., natural pectin content, if the skin/pulp is starchy or totally inedible, or other relevant factors.
Are there any traditional methods for doing this? E.g., recommended sugars to use, recommend gelling agents (pectin, agar, gelatine, ...), how to prepare the coffee fruit/husks for use, etc.

The credit for this question (and my obsession therewith) goes entirely to @EricPlaton over at Coffee.SE, by his original question about the topic, with a bit of suggestion by @Jefromi to ask about foodstuff-process-related topics here at SA. It sounds coffee cherry jam is made locally in some coffee-producing countries, so this concept isn't novel; however, prepared jam doesn't seem to be available more broadly.

As a side note, I've had coffee jelly, which is produced using (conventional, roasted, brewed) coffee and agar or gelatine, but that is not what I'm asking about. I'm also not here talking about using the roasted or un-roated beans themselves, which might be a separate, fascinating (to me) topic...

We have a coffee tree we have been growing in our sun-room for 10 years.  This year after we harvested the coffee cherries and hulled the beans, I decided to try making coffee cherry jelly.  I didn't find any good recipes on the internet, so I decided to "wing it" and it turned out fantastic. This is what I did:
I had about 2 cups of coffee cherries. I put them in a pan and covered them with about 3 cups of water.  I brought them to a boil and let them simmer for about 30 minutes, then let them cool in the water.  I put a strainer over a bowl and strained off the liquid from the coffee cherries and then squeezed the cherries to get all the juice out. Throw away the squeezed out coffee cherries and keep the liquid.  The liquid will be a reddish-brown and be a bit cloudy, but don't worry, it will clear up as you make the jelly.  Next, I measured the liquid and had about 2-3/4 cups.  I added 1/4 cup of organic lemon juice to the liquid, stirred in 1/3 cup of powdered pectin. Stir to dissolve the pectin then bring it to a full boil.  Use a really large pot for this because it will rise up when at a full boil.  When at a full boil stir in 5 cups of sugar, all at once.  Bring back to a full, rolling boil that can not be stirred down and boil like this for one minute.  Take pot off the heat and spoon the jelly into clean jelly jars. It will make about 5 small jars of jelly.  Once the sugar goes in, the jelly should turn clear. Skim off any foam that might form on top before pouring into jars.  Allow to cool and set.  The color will be a beautiful, chestnut red and the flavor is mild, almost like honey.  Enjoy!


Hersey Cookies and Creame Treat I am planning on making a cute little desert for my family that involves steam melting (putting the bars in a glass bowl under steam) hersheys Cookies and Cream chocolate bars and then pouring them in a ice tray as a mold. However I want to coat the White Chocolate in the Milk Chocolate upon pouring them into the mold. Any ideas of how i could do that due to it seeming quite impossible in my mind?

Basically, you have to either pour the hot one over the cold one, or dip cold in hot.
Freeze the first solid section in the moulds, then set on a wire baking tray & pour over your second layer.  This method will bind to the wire if you're not careful.
Alternatively, dip the cold in the hot & lay on a non-stick surface. This method tends to spread out a bit, so leave plenty of room around each chunk. Alternatively, don't dip to full-depth to allow for some run-off.
DaringGourmet has a recipe showing both methods, though over a different substrate - Marzipan Truffles


What can I use instead of annatto? Annatto is a common spice in Mexican cookery, especially in the Yucatan. However, like many Mexican ingredients, it's hard to find in Europe. What can I use as a substitute to give the same colour and approximate flavour?

The flavor is described as being very mild and unless the recipe calls for a ton of the stuff it is probably being used mostly for color.

The color it gives is a yellow-orange. Substitutions used are turmeric, paprika, or a mixture of the two. It was often used itself as a substitution for saffron but of course saffron would be too expensive to make the substitution back.

If your recipe does use a lot of annatto (or you are serving it to people who claim to be able to detect the difference) then your best bet would probably be to just buy it online. It is a seed so it isn't fragile and ships well.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=annatto


Can you thaw frozen cookies in a tin without them getting soggy as a result? I've read that you should remove frozen cookies from the packaging you froze them in to prevent them from getting soggy, but is there anything wrong with putting them in a tin to thaw out? Would this cause them to get soggy?

I'm asking about scones in particular.

The more airflow you have, the less likely is for them to get soggy. The original container is especially bad, since it will likely condense moisture on its surface while coming to room temperature.  A room temperature tin will be better than the original container, especially if you don't close the lid, but still far from optimal. It would be better to thaw them on a cake cooling rack, or on a plate lined with kitchen paper, then transfer to the tin after their surface has warmed up.

If you really need to keep them in the tin (e.g. you will travel with them, or you have pets likely to jump onto a plate of cookies), you can try placing a well sized pack of activated charcoal in the tin, or maybe carefully use another dessicant such as silica gel (warning, the gel itself is not edible, and the colored versions shouldn't come near food - make sure nobody comes across the pack and thinks it's sugar for pouring over the cookies). But this is not guaranteed to work, so I would prefer the cake rack solution.


Why are quiches baked in fluted tins? Is there any particular reason why quiches are usually baked in a fluted tin, rather than in a regular straight-sided cake tin?

TL;DR Quiche pans are fluted because quiche crusts are ruffled.
Quiche crusts are ruffled for the same geometric reason as muffin liners and some coffee filters are ruffled. Try fitting an inelastic disc into a cylinder, covering the bottom and sides, and the disc builds ruffles on its sides. Since the ruffles of the crust are somewhat fragile, they are best supported within flutes.

This is one of the cases (much rarer than most people think) where it has an objective advantage, as opposed to randomly developed tradition.
Quiches are made with a crust of shortbread or flaky savory pie dough. This dough is not very friendly in handling. It tends to crumble rather than stretch, sticks everywhere to the point of smearing, and has low tolerances with respect to temperature, mechanical stress, and others.
Imagine you have just rolled out your crust - which is hopefully all in one piece, evenly thick, not stuck to your counter or to your rolling pin, not so cold as to crumble from stiffness and not so warm as to smear or lose its flakiness, and circular (as opposed to a map of the Scandinavian peninsula complete with fjords). Getting all these at once is already an achievement which requires quite a bit of skill and/or luck. Now you manage to lift your crust from the counter and place it in the pan.
The crust is now lying such that its center coincides with the center of the pan. The edges are draped over the sides of the pan, so there is a gap between the crust and the pan. You now start fitting the crust into the pan by lifting the edge in one point, and gently stroking the radius pointing to that point from the center to the pan wall, such that the crust lays flush on the bottom of the pan. At that place where the crust meets the pan sides, both the crust and the pan have the same radius.
Now your crust is a bent disc. Let's say your pan is 3 cm deep and has straight, non-fluted sides. Then, if you have the crust follow the side in one point, the radius of the crust at the upper edge of the pan is 3 cm larger than the radius at the same point in the bottom of the pan. Choose a next point 1 cm further the circumference of the pan and also press the crust there. The arc of the pan between the two points will have a 1 cm span - but as the crust has a larger radius, its arc at that place is longer! Basically, when you try to bend the crust to go up the sides of the pan, it ruffles. And you have no elasticity to work with to somehow make the crust get together on top or stretch on the bottom - if you try, it tears or crumbles. You also can't just fit the ruffles beside each other - you can try, but their shape will suffer a lot during baking, if they don't break apart under pie weights during prebaking. If they survive, they will be underbaked because of their thickness.
When you have a fluted pan, the troughs of the fluting take in the ruffles of the crust. You now have a single-thickness crust everywhere without stretching, tearing, or whatever. It bakes properly and doesn't have any problems with geometry. Also, it looks pretty.
Given all of the above, I am pretty sure it was a major factor in the design becoming popular.

For those who have trouble imagining it visually, I found a video which shows the process pretty well. Interestingly, this baker strengthens the crust by folding it double and then smushing it into the flutes, something I have never tried.


Fully cooked chicken tastes kind of weird I bought some frozen chicken cubes, defrosted them in the fridge and put them in the oven for 12+ mins. The chicken was white and the juices that ran out was clear, so I figured it was fine. But it tasted a bit "raw", not sure how to describe it. After I put the rest of it in a bowl, I noticed that some pink juices ended up on the bottom of the bowl.

Microwaved some of it the next day and it still tasted a bit "raw". The chicken does have some of its skin left so that might be why? Not sure why its tasting like that, its killing my appetite.

Without knowing what extra ingredients were added during manufacture, I'll make the assumption we are talking about plain frozen chicken, and no other additives could account for the pink juices.

You said the cooked texture was normal, but you found pink juices in the bowl. This suggests to me that the chicken was not fully cooked. It sounds like it wasn't that far off or else the texture would clearly be very unpleasant all the way through. Did you ensure the chicken was fully defrosted before cooking? If is was still slightly frozen in middle this could be the reason why.

Microwaving raw chicken can be a bit of a hit and miss affair, microwaves do not heat food evenly, which is why dishes should always be stirred part way through cooking etc. I would use a covered dish or plastic wrap to trap the steam and keep the meat moist.

150C in a normal oven seems a bit low to me, I'd use 180C for 15 minutes, but it all depends on your oven.

I like a bit of colour on my chicken, so I would be tempted to fry these in a skillet with some salt, pepper and butter over a medium heat for about 10 minutes, turning every so often. This may give you better results with this particular product than the microwave or oven methods.

Chicken should reach an internal temperature of 75-85C (165-175F). If the meat splits easily with the blunt side of a knife that is generally a good indication it is properly cooked.


What is a good alternative to Sea Bass? I am cooking a recipe of Asian style sea bass. What would be a good, cheaper alternative to sea bass that is readily available in a UK supermarket?

Depending on exactly the recipe you are using it in, I'd either go for a meaty white fish such as Cod, haddock, or the cheaper fish like pollock.

You may also be able to get away with something like mackerel, which isn't as white and chunky but is much cheaper.

You should be able to get all of these in a UK supermarket.

You could also try a fishmonger (either in the Supermarket or independent) - ask them what you could use instead.


How can I safely jar up my homemade salad dressing? I'm wanting to jar up my favorite House dressing made with miracle whip, so I can sell it and give it away. I want to make sure I do it safely!

If you're going to sell it, you need to consider "legally" as well as "safely" (here, as in a number of situations, they're related). Check out the report "Cottage Food Laws in the United States" from Harvard Law School, or this report on the California Cottage Food Bill. Basically, with limitations, you can create and sell "non-hazardous" foods in home kitchens, but the phrase "non-hazardous" means different things in different jurisdictions. For instance, the Harvard Law report says that the 2009 FDA Code lists the following as potentially hazardous foods:

  meat, poultry, and eggs; fish and shellfish; cooked vegetables; dairy products; mushrooms; cut melons; unmodified cut tomatoes or mixtures of cut tomatoes; untreated garlic‐in‐oil mixtures; baked goods subject to spoilage (such as cream‐ filled pastries or others that must be refrigerated); reduced sugar jams and jellies; pickles and salsa; and, raw seed sprouts.

The basic theory seems to be that "cottage foods" must be intrinsically safe, so that even with poor preparation and storage they won't result in a dangerous product. So, even if you could make your salad dressing safely, if someone could potentially NOT make it safely then it probably wouldn't be considered a legal "cottage food".

The California Department of Public Health gives a long list of approved foods, and none of them match your dressing idea.

The Wikipedia article gives the primary ingredients of Miracle Whip as water, soybean oil, vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, modified corn starch, and dried eggs. It also includes potassium sorbate, but I'd still be concerned about the resulting product's safety, and your lawyer may as well.

(Not a lawyer or a food safety expert, YMMV, void where prohibited, use no hooks, etc. etc. etc.)


How to get stable and long lasting high temperatures in charcoal grill? I have Weber one touch spherical grill (18.5") and trying to cook steaks with direct heat.
I place steaks when grill thermometer shows 450-500F, but after 2 or 3 minutes temperature starts dropping and after turnover it can be 400F and continue dropping fast. Briquettes near the edge getting cold but briquettes in center still going.

I have tried with lump charcoal and Weber long lasting briquettes using chimney starter, yesterday I held briquettes in starter for 30 minutes, and briquettes were very hot and well burning, but got same temperature issues.

All vents are fully open, lid closed.
What am I missing?

I'm not sure how many steaks you're doing at once, but if you're not using the entire grill surface, stack the charcoal up. (Not sure how well it'd work with the entire grill surface and, e.g., two starters full of charcoal. With the grill open, it'll surely work.)

You can cook steaks with the lid off, that'll likely lead to the coals burning faster (hotter).

Stacking the charcoal does two things:

the stack is higher, so it gets the charcoal closer to the meat. You can't lower the grate on a Weber kettle, unfortunately.
there are more briquettes under the meat, each putting out heat.

A good stack is hot enough to brown a steak, even if you put it on the grill dripping with marinade (not that you should). Make sure to have a pair of tongs, you won't want your hands anywhere near it.


Safety of vacuum packed smoked salmon in turned off fridge? I have a piece of cold smoked salmon, vacuum packed, in my fridge.  Unfortunately when leaving the house I turned the fridge off accidentally and left the house for 8 days.  The house was unheated and the kitchen is on the north side so is unlikely to have got outside the 4-8C range and the fridge was unopened.  I shoved a thermometer in when I discovered and it read below 5.

I'm inclined to think in those conditions it should be OK but I'm not sure.  It doesn't look or smell any different than before.

If the salmon was actually nonperishable (perhaps refrigeration was needed only for quality), you're of course fine. You'll have to try to figure that out from the packaging or maybe the manufacturer.

If the salmon needed refrigeration for safety... the danger zone is temperatures above 40F/4-5C. Even in a warm house, refrigerators generally are insulated well enough to keep a safe temperature for up to ~4 hours. (Really old refrigerators, or ones with a damaged seal around the door may not do as well.) So if the room cooled down fast enough, the refrigerator would never have gotten into the danger zone. On the other hand, if it stayed at 10-20C for most of a day, the fridge may have gotten too warm for a while. You can try to guess at this based on your knowledge of your house and the weather, but it's hard to say from here. If you think the salmon spent several hours over 5C, and it needed refrigeration for safety, it's no longer safe. If not, it's fine. Take your best guess, and when in doubt throw it out.


How do you make pie with Citron watermelon (not just the rind)? Citron watermelon (AKA Pie Melon, Tsamma, and Colorado Preserving Melon) is said to be useful for making pies, preserves, jam, pickles and such. It is not used for fresh eating, typically, and is hard all the way through even when ripe. The interior is supposed to be high in pectin. (I believe Tsamma sometimes refers to a similar kind of melon that may have different properties, FYI.)

I grew one plant that got 9+ melons (the Red-seeded type from Baker Creek). So, I'm wanting to know how to make them into pie, since it sounds fascinating, and I love pie. How do you make pie with the inside of the fruit? I know there are recipes for watermelon rind pie floating around there, and those may work with these rinds, too, but it's mostly the interior that I'm concerned about. If your response involves both the interior and the rind, that's fine.

...NadjaCS seems to have already answered this question above, but here's a link to a website which explicitly gives a recipe for a pie-melon pie using diced and flavored pie melon. It also has a link to an antique recipe for what appears to be candied pie melon slices; I'm sure you could use those slices in place of the base for some other fruit pie.

https://ganga108.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/pie/


How to dissolve salt into mashed potatoes I am trying to find a way to mix salt into my mashed potatoes without having unpleasant bits of salt appear in each mouthful.

I usually steam them with their skins-on, before mixing in salt, and vegan butter with a touch of truffle oil.

I have tried:

Whisking the salt into the vegan butter before mixing them into the mash. But I can still taste bits of salt in the mash.
Whisking salt directly into mashed potatoes. This is even worse than 1.

Until the salt is dissolved, you will always have the problem of separate grains. It seems that your potatoes are not moist enough for it to happen on its own. And salt won't dissolve in fat.

My suggestion is to choose a liquid - and it can be water, if you insist on staying vegan, else dairy is the typical choice - and dissolve the salt in it. You don't need much, a teaspoonful may be enough. Once you have the salty liquid, mix a small amount of potatoes into the liquid until dispersed. Then add a bit more, repeat, using larger and larger portions of mashed potatoes, until all is mixed. This will give you an even dispersal of the salty taste.


First onion or first minced meat? When making e.g. spaghetti sauce, do I:

first sweat the onions and then add the minced meat?
first brown the minced meat and then add the onions?
do both at the same time but in different pans and add them together afterwards?

What are the advantages of preferring one of the options over the others?

In order to develop browning for a good, deep flavor on the meat, you need a high temperature and a long enough time that having the onions in the pan the entire time would leave them  overcooked.  Also, the onions would express water, which would lower the temperature to simmer or steam, preventing the beef from browning.

For these reasons, it is common to sear or brown the ground (minced) meat, and then add the onions to cook through when it is done or nearly done.

You certainly could cook the onions separately, either in the same pan, or in a different pan.   Many people don't consider the extra effort and cleanup to be worth any marginal improvement in results.


choux pastry, keep mixing while waiting for the roux to cool? I made some choux pastry last night, however it didn't come out quite right for what could be various reasons.

After making the recipe, I came on here loking for some tips and came across this:

Choux pastry (Chocolate eclairs) doesn't rise

In here @Aaronut suggests waiting for the roux to cool to below 65° C.  One of the issues with my choux pastry was that it tasted rather eggy and salty, so while the mixture didn't look like it scrambled (though i'm not sure how that might look), the taste suggests it might have.

While waiting for the temperature to come down, should I continue mixing the roux in my stand mixer or let it sit?

I don't mix my pre-egg mass (not sure that roux is the right word here), but I don't have a stand mixer. Leaving it alone works just fine as long as it is uniformly cooled. If you don't mix (or even if you do) make sure to check the temperature in the middle of the lump of dough, not on the outside.

As SAJ14SAJ mentioned, mixing it will expose all parts to the cooling air, letting it cool quicker. If this matters for you, there is nothing wrong with mixing. It may change the texture slightly in the direction of slightly chewier end product due to some gluten creation, but the difference won't be very pronounced and may not be noticeable at all, because the flour is well coated in fat.

So, the conclusion: you don't have to mix, but you can if you want to. No harm done either way, and it can go quicker with mixing.


1946 Horehound Beer recipe - what is "capaicine"? I was researching Horehound Beer recipes on (the old newspaper website) Trove.  I found the name of an ingredient - perhaps a herb, that I did not know: "Capaicine".
As best as I can read, this recipe is:

HOREHOUND BEER
Ingredients are: 4-lb. horehound herb,
18-lb. sugar, 1½-lb. licorice extract, 1½-lb.
treacle, 4-oz. quassia chips, 10-oz. crushed
ginger, 2-oz. coriander seeds, 2-oz. capaicine,
4-oz. caramel, 2-oz. tartaric acid,
¼-pint brewer's yeast. Suspend the horehound,
ginger, coriander and quassia in
a muslin bag in a copper and boil in
about 15 gallons of water for half-an-hour,
Add sugar and than other ingredients.
Strain off into fermenting vat,
Strain sufficient water through herbs to
bring up to 24-gallons. When at 80-deg. F.
break up yeast in a basin of brew and
stir into the bulk. Allow to ferment for
about 24 hours, skim off top and filter.
Fine down with one pint ale finings.

NOTE: Australia used imperial measurements until 1966.
As stated, I am unable to identify the ingredient "capaicine".  I don't think it's misspelling of "capsaicin".  I wondered for a while if it was maybe a misspelling of "cinnamonmum", but have since given up on this idea.
I could of course, be reading the old newsprint incorrectly.
NOTE: This particular beverage must be delicious, since it is to be made in ~100 litre batches.
Bonus question: Is the "caramel" referred to, a browned sugar-syrup (perhaps made from condensed milk) or a colourant?  A lot of recipes add "burnt sugar" for colour.

I suspect that the word intended was "capsicum". 2 ounces of chili pepper would be reasonable given the amounts of other spices. 2 ounces of capsaicin would be difficult to source and would make the beer essentially inedible.


How can I clean my oven window? My oven has a convenient window on it.  It is very old and covered in soot.  I tried what many recommendations say and used water and baking soda together, but it did not cut through the grime.  Does anyone know how to get rid of this mess?

Oven cleaner will take that right off. If you're sensitive to nasty harmful fumes you can get the fume free kind.

Make sure you follow the manufacturer's instructions to the letter, and make sure no kids or pets are around.


trying to rescue bland chicken soup that is already quite thick how do you save a bland chicken soup that's already quite thick? i made a chicken/leek/rice soup last night that has a nice thick texture but it's bland -- i definitely didn't use enough salt in the cooking process. i'm wondering if i sweat another onion in some chicken fat and/or butter, add the soup, a little more water, and some vinegar, that might bring out some more depth, but i'm a little concerned that adding more water will just reinforce the blandness. thoughts?

I always equate "depth" with "time".
The longer it simmers, the more depth it gains.
Adding anything you mentioned at the end may punch up the flavour, but I'd consider it to be 'top end' rather than 'depth'.
My first thought would be to drop it in a slow cooker & see how it is in 4-6 hours - with or without your added ingredients, though definitely half the salt you are considering adding if it really is under-salted. Salt during the process seems more effective than at the end. However, you can always lift it a little more at the end more easily than taking it out again if you over-do it ;)
I'd also consider 'cheating' with a good chicken or veg stock cube.
I'd be wary of vinegar, I'd be more inclined to butter &/or cream.


Does it matter that my pots are bigger than my ceremic cook top element? I need to replace my ceramic cooktop which is ten years old, but now most of the cooktops within my budget have smaller elements, so my frypan will be larger than the elements.  Does this matter?

Matching the size of pan to size of burner is the most important consideration for creating a cooking surface with even temperature.  Parts of the pan bottom that reach beyond an electric element will not heat well at all and could remain a hundred degrees or more lower in temperature than the center of the pan, depending on the pan size and design.  (Yes, I'm not joking -- I've measured such differences with an infrared thermometer.)

The folks who wrote the giant food-science book Modernist Cuisine did detailed tests and used computer models to determine what happens to heat distribution in pans under various conditions.  (Here's a link to an abbreviated passage which deals with the issue, and this video has a number of their images showing the differences in heat distribution, including large vs. small burners.)

From the first link:

  When it comes to heating food evenly... What matters more are the
  thickness of the metal, the size of the pan, and the size of the
  burner heating the pan.

Basically, they conclude that size of burner trumps just about anything else in terms of whether your pans heat evenly.  The best way to counteract burners that are too small is to add thickness to your pan, or -- as they recommend -- to get a conductive thick metal plate made from aluminum or copper to put over your burner.  That will help to spread the heat out a bit, though it will make your stove a lot less responsive, since it will take a long time for that thick plate to heat up or cool down.  And it still won't be the same as a larger burner.

(As an aside, in the quotation above, I left out part of a sentence that says "the metal the pan is made from is the least important factor," since I think that's incredibly misleading.  It's a combination of metal and thickness which determines the thermal profile.  Modernist Cuisine's own research shows that to get the equivalent benefit of more evenness from an extra millimeter of copper, for example, you'd need to add about an entire inch of thickness to a pure stainless steel pan.  From a practical standpoint, aluminum or copper are the only two materials where extra thickness in a pan to achieve evenness is actually feasible without creating a pan that would weigh several hundred pounds.  Aside from pans using aluminum or copper in the base, there's little reason to shop specifically for extra-thick pans -- you'd be better off getting larger burners or getting a copper or aluminum plate to put under your other pans.)

A personal anecdote related to this -- A few years back I moved into a house with an electric cooktop, and I attempted a chicken-and-rice dish in my large oval enameled cast iron dutch oven.  Despite having a rather large electric burner, the oval pot still stuck out over an inch beyond the burner on both sides.  I figured water would circulate at a simmer.  But I found out how much of a difference burner size makes: after simmering until the rice in the center was so soft it was starting to break down, the rice outside of the burner was still hard and crunchy.  It wasn't even cooked.  And this was in a dish with a lot of liquid that could potentially circulate around.  Since then, I've discovered the only way to cook anything in pans that are larger than my burners is to move the pan/pot into the oven.

In sum: If you're only planning on doing slower cooking at lower temperatures in your large frypan, you may be able to get away with smaller heating elements if you stir periodically.  If you plan to cook at higher temperatures (as you probably tend to do in a fry pan), you may have significantly greater difficulty getting things to an even doneness.  A thick aluminum or copper plate under your pan might help, but it can only do so much.