Salt cured egg yolk storage life Does anyone know long would salt cured salted egg yolks keep in the refrigerator?
I've seen a few articles including this one https://practicalselfreliance.com/salt-cured-egg-yolks which notes that its good for about "3-4 weeks if not longer", though some claim that it's only good for about 2 weeks.
Is there anyone here who could clarify which one is correct?

It depends on how you will store them ( individually wrapped, in a plastic box, vacuum sealed ?)
It can also depend on how dry is your fridge.
It also depends on how dry they are.
I'd say 2 weeks max; some say 1 month or more.
The Egg farmers of Canada advocacy group doesn't even say.
Don't make couple of dozen of them if you don't intend to use them relatively quickly or have access to vacuum seal equipment.
IMO, it's easy to cure 3, 4 yolks at a time and use them in that time span.
Anecdotal, I've kept vacuum sealed yolks (each one in its own little vacuum bag) for a couple of months with not issues.
(speaking of which I should do some today)


What do I need to get started with American style Barbecue? With summer on the way here in the UK, I'd like to start trying some American style BBQ - ribs, pulled pork, brisket etc. as well as perhaps the odd steak and even pizza - with a relatively limited budget. I had originally looked at a hot smoker like this, but I've also read that you can use a straightforward Weber kettle grill. I've also heard that a chimney starter is useful.

What's the best, most cost effective but still authentic approach? Also, are there any books or websites you can recommend for good recipes/techniques for a BBQ-noob?

My recommendations would be as follows.

First, buy a cooker that will do everything you need, but is priced reasonably. You will want something that fits the following criteria:

Provides direct grilling capabilities.
Convects heat fairly evenly, so that you can use it for low-temperature, long-time, indirect-heat cooking (what most people in the US would consider barbecue).
Has the capability to control temperatures easily.
Has plenty of cooking area.

The basic Weber 22.5" (57cm) kettle grill fits all these needs, on a modest budget at that. You can set it up for high heat grilling, low heat barbecue, and just about anything in between, just by how you arrange your fuel. When you close the lid and arrange all your fuel to one side of the chamber, the parts of the chamber that are not over the fire heat very evenly, allowing you to cook things like pulled pork and brisket. The vents make it easy to control temperature by limiting or expanding the flow of oxygen to your fuel. Finally, there are numerous after-market accessories available to if you decide you want to expand your horizons, such as cast iron grates, pizza stones, inserts that make your grill into a pizza oven, etc. So you can start off with a small investment, and then build on piecemeal with accessories. I would recommend the 57cm model, as the 47cm one makes it difficult to cook with indirect heat. Link here: http://www.weberbbq.co.uk/product/one-touch-original/

Once you have your tools, make these sites your bibles:

http://tvwbb.com/
http://amazingribs.com/

Both are full of great information for making good food on the grill.

This is exactly how I got started. Eventually, after I felt proficient enough with my Weber grill, I purchased their Smokey Mountain smoker, as well as a couple of additional grills. It's become an obsession, and one that I have been able to get into fairly cheaply.


Is it safe to eat food that was heated in plastic wrap to the point the plastic wrap flamed? I accidentally used plastic wrap instead of foil wrap over the salmon in the toaster oven. There was a flame.  When i checked the salmon,  the cling wrap was gone. Did it melt into thge salmon? Is the salmon safe to eat?

There are multiple types of film wrap, which are different plastics.  No matter what yours was made from, it almost certainly partially burned up, partially melted, and partially had other heat-based reactions leaving unknown remains on your food, possibly including dioxins, which are quite toxic.

In any of these cases, I would not risk finding out.

Discard the fish.


"Indian Spicy" vs. "Thai Spicy" What ingredient(s) make the spiciness from Indian food distinct from the spiciness of, say, Thai food?

Indian good seems to have a longer, slower burn, rather than a "sharper" spiciness of Thai. I know spiciness in Thai food comes from Thai bird chilis; what's the corresponding ingredient(s) in Indian food? Most of the recipes I've seen call for "red pepper" -- none of the ground red pepper I've used comes anywhere near that sensation -- is there a special kind of red pepper used in Indian cooking? Or something else I'm missing?

Well, that depends on the individual Thai dish or Indian dish and how it was cooked, of course.  But I understand what you're talking about.  However, the difference in heat sensations is not due to the kind of pepper employed. It's all about fat, really.

Frequently Thai dishes are made with fresh peppers, and have a lot of acid and salt in them (from citrus, tamarind, and other flavors) but very little fat (comparatively).  Because of this, many Thai dishes have an instant burst of intense hotness which goes away realtively quickly.  The paragon of this is probably Thai salads, like larb or green mango salad, which are highly acidic and very very spicy.

On the other hand, most Anglo-Indian food (familiar to Americans and British) is in the form of "curries" which use a slow-cooked dairy base (butter, milk, and/or cheese), and are spiced with dried ground or whole chile peppers.  As a result, when you first taste them the fat conceals the capsicum from your tongue, gradually revealing it as your saliva breaks it down.  Hence the "slow burn". (I've tried to find a medical reference for this to link, but have not been able to yet).

Similarly, Thai coconut milk curries can build up heat slowly and that heat sticks with you -- because of the hot peppers cooked in the fat of the coconut milk.

Incidentally, there isn't one kind of chile pepper used by either culture.  The Thai have dozens of varieties of hot pepper and Indians have hundreds (as well as a dozen different regional cuisines, a few of which are not spicy at all).  In the USA, these tend to get narrowed down to a handful of different pepper varieties (and substitutions like jalapenos) because of limited availability.  The spice you call "red pepper" could be any of a half-dozen different ground dried peppers of varying hotness.


How do I make brown rice bread rise without any wheat flour? My brown rice bread is not rising and I do not know if I am doing something wrong or if yeast does not work with brown rice flour.

I baked brown rice bread in the following way:

600 g brown rice flour
100 g Chuño
Whole yeast block
100 g flax

Any tips on how to make it rise without any wheat or other gluten products?

(I cannot eat any gluten, so I need a 100% gluten-free solution.)

I have been making a gluten free yogurt bread with the brown rice flour and haven't had any problems.  You are going to need xanthan gum with any kind of gluten free mix you need.

With the other gluten free bread recipes I have in my book, they are all calling for a tsp of vinegar in addition to the dry yeast.  Not sure if that helps with the rising, but my recipes have all come out exactly like the book says and haven't had a problem with them not rising.  I just turn my stand mixer on HIGH and don't worry about kneading the bread.


Should sweet potatoes be peeled when preparing them? I want to make a sweet potato dish -- maybe candied yams.  Should I peel the sweet potatoes before cooking or are these recipes intending for me to keep the skin on?  None say to peel the potato first.

Candied Yams, I would peel first.
However, for mashes and other similar soft dishes, I find it best to bake them until soft and then remove the peels when cool.


How do I prevent burning when searing in batches? Often, recipes require you to brown meat or pan sear meat. When working with large amounts, how do you prevent any of the bits that stick from burning?

A practical example: I marinaded chicken breast fillets with Chinese five spice. Whilest pan frying on a cast iron, pieces of chicken got stuck. Since I had to cook in multiple batches the pieces that got stuck eventually got burnt and ruined any possibility of using the fond (of course, you probably wouldn't use this fond, but this happens with beef too).

I want the cast iron to be hot for a nice browning but raising the temperature inevitably makes any stuck pieces of chicken burn even faster. Oil helps to a point but I don't want to use too much. Cleaning the cast iron becomes a pain because now there's charred patches that are rather hard to properly make out on the black surface. Any ideas?

Using slightly lower heat helps, but if you have several batches to do, mostly it's best to scrape/wipe out the pan between batches.  I would not use cast iron in this case, as you point out, it is difficult to clean quickly.  The fond can be scraped onto a plate and used at the end, alternately, the fond from the last batch can be used.


How to know whether the default coating on the iron cookware has totally come off? https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/29609/6168

  But you can't season a pan "on top" of the wax coating. The real seasoning would stick to the wax, and when the wax melts, the seasoning will come off. Therefore, you have to remove the wax coating before making a normal seasoning from polymerized oil.

So, yesterday I scrubbed hard the cookware with the steel wool and now instead of looking black it looks somewhat dark grey. When I run fingers on the dried vessel now, I see little dark grey powder sticking to my fingers.

How should I know whether the coating has actually come off? Do I need to scrub even more?

If all the seasoning is completely removed, it will look shiny like brushed or polished metal. This takes a lot of time, and often power tools. I would first ask whether this is what you want to do: does the pan feel waxy, and have a surface that turns glossy when heated? Then there is wax which can be easily removed with a scrub-brush while water is boiling in the pan. Finish with a little soap and hot water, and you're ready to season.

If it is, in fact, the seasoning you want to remove (if, for example, it is coming off in places, or parts are rusting, typically on cookware which has been left outside), the easiest procedure is to heat the pan very hot, either in the coals of a campfire, or in an oven on 'clean' to burn off the previous coating (don't do this with a pan coated in wax, the wax will burn and smoke), then brush with steel wool until the metal pan starts to show through. You will need to season with several coats of an oil like crisco or coconut, and this will take a lot of time. It's rarely necessary to strip a pan unless it is in awful condition.

At the point you're at, I'd assume that any wax or residue is gone from your work with the steel wool, and that you don't need to go as far as to strip the whole thing. To salvage it, put aside the steel wool, scrub with a plastic brush and hot water until the black residue is gone. Clean a little more using a rag and oil (which will pick up oil-soluble debris) until that is clear. Then season as you normally would, using a light oil like crisco in the oven.


Veggie burgers that Bleed I have found these veggie burgers that bleed; but as we can see the price is hefty (~$62 for 5 lbs). I want to replicate them at home. They would have to be very convincing - ideally, the person eating them will not recognize that they ate a plant product and not meat without being told.

What techniques and (vegetable-derived) ingredients can I use to imitate a real, bleeding meat burger?

The ingredient list on the commercial product already gives you several pointers to work with in building a recipe:

A legume protein is used, with additional binders (tapioca starch). Probably not in plain flour form, since that would result in more of a pancake than a meat like texture.
beet juice and paprika are used both for a reddish colour and to get some of the adstringency/earthyness of meat juice in there. Also, one can assume the end product to be relatively acidic (despite there being an alkali - potassium bicarbonate - present), otherwise beet juice would give you a blue off colour.
At least two layers of smoke flavor - mesquite powder, hickory smoke extract - are used
shiitake and yeast extracts - umami sources
an iron compound - probably not just for enrichment, iron-adstringency is a flavor component in meat taste...


Is it a good idea to use cardamom in chili? I am preparing a chili for a contest. The recipe calls for cardamom (along with chili powder and cumin). I have never cooked with it before. From my research, it seems this spice is used more commonly with Indian cuisine.

I do love Indian food. In fact, a good Indian friend at work tells me he does use cardamom, but most usually for sweets. His suggestion was to use garam masala instead of cardamom. But I wonder if the combination of cardamom and chili powder (and possibly cloves) will make my beef chili work.

Has anyone used this spice for anything other than sweets?  Does anyone have strong feelings about using it or omitting it in a beef chili?

Cincinnati Chili often has cardamom, along with cinnamon and cocoa. Cardamom is used in savory and sweet foods all over the world, not just in India.

If you have reason to want to try this particular recipe, then try the recipe as written. There are thousands of beloved recipes for all kinds of chili. There is no reason to say, "That one looks good, I'll do it just like that but omit a certain ingredient 'cause it makes me nervous."

Your friend's advice is a bit odd to me because Garam Masala usually contains cardamom (sometimes black, green and brown)

My advice is to either try the recipe as written, or find another with which you're more comfortable.

Or come up with your own. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to chili.

BTW, I love cardamom in savory. I make a Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup (Pho) that I crave if I haven't had it for a while. It wouldn't be right without cardamom.


Can bad honing technique spoil a knife? I was really happy bringing home my first quality Zwiling Chefs knife. Before cooking I ran the knife through some paper - sliced like butter! After I was done and washed dried the knife, I decided to try the test again. It began tearing the paper. That's when I picked up my honing steel I got earlier (20 cm, around 20$, no brand, with ridges down along) and pushed several strokes. The knife afterwards with a decent amount of pressure would cut the paper, but that razor sharp feeling was gone.

Should I get a different honing steel? Or do I just lack technique? Can I kill my blade? I learned mostly from YouTube videos, particularly the one by Bob Kramer.

Poor honing on a blade that was already in true can reduce the sharpness, as you have discovered.  This happens if your angle is off, and you knock the edge of the microscopic burrs or teeth over, presenting a duller cutting surface.

It is likely that proper honing will correct this, although it may never be quite as perfect as the blade fresh from the whetstone or factory.

In any case, you will not do any permanent harm to your blade with a honing steel (short of using it as a bludgeon), because absolute worst case, you can always have your knife resharpened, or do it yourself.   This may be somewhat inconvenient or costly, but is much less expensive than replacing a blade.


What is the purpose of using ice cubes in smoothies over frozen fruit? I usually make smoothies with frozen fruit berries and a banana with a liquid like orange juice or home made kefir.

I notice lots of smoothie recipes online call for ice cubes and fresh fruit. Is there a benefit to making smoothies that way? Since half your volume is crushed ice it seems like the result would be less flavorful.

Yes, it makes it less flavorful. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea.

Often it'll still be plenty flavorful even with a decent amount of ice in it. So by using ice, you save the trouble of having to freeze some ingredients first, and don't go through your fruit quite as fast. You can avoid having to keep fruit juice on hand.

It also lets you pretty easily control exactly how cold/icy you want the smoothie.
If you live in a hot area, smoothies with a decent amount of ice are actually pretty nice - they stay cold much longer, and the icy graininess can make them more refreshing.

I'm sure plenty of people would never dream of using ice and some people do all the time; feel free to go on doing whichever suits you! (I'm originally from Texas, and honestly, in addition to blending some ice in, I used to put whole ice cubes in after blending just to make extra sure it stayed cold.)

For a helpful comparison: a lot of really good sorbet recipes use a decent amount of water. For example, David Lebovitz's mango sorbet (from The Perfect Scoop) uses two large mangoes and 2/3 cup of water. Sure, it could use some kind of fruit juice instead, but I promise, it really really tastes like mango, and doesn't taste watered down at all.


Is it true that smell is lost flavor? This is a maxim that I hear frequently, especially as a defense of cooking methods that don't produce a lot of aroma: if the aroma is in the air, it means it's left the food.

As an example, some people complain about the lack of aroma produced in sous vide cooking, to which the sous vide advocates retort that this is evidence that more flavor is in the food.

Likewise, I recently saw Heston Blumenthal's roast chicken, where he went for a low-and-slow approach that produces little aroma: here, too, he claimed the flavor-retention defense to its lack of appeal. "Don't be disappointed, but my roasting technique doesn't flood your kitchen with good Sunday roast smells. This is a good thing, because smells are lost flavor" he said, while "SMELL = LOST FLAVOR" popped up on the screen.

I suppose it stands to reason, and that's the appeal of this explanation, but is it the truth? Does smelling a food necessarily imply that the final product will be less flavorful, and is it strictly because the aroma is escaping?

I would assume that this depends highly on the exact source of the aroma/smell.

One extreme is the highly volatile components of essential oils found in many fruits, berries, spices and herbs, which are the main source of their respective aromas or smells. It is easily observed that especially spices and dried herbs loose their aroma over time, which is basically caused by the aromatic components vaporising even at room temperature and actually vanish from the original product. The same would happen to fruits and berries, if they wouldn't decay for other reasons long before the aromatic components are "used up". Heating would cause the vaporising rate to increase and speed up this process. If you for example try to reduce fruit juice to a concentrated syrup by heating, you can easily end up with a bland, highly acidic residue, even if you have a nice fruity smell in your kitchen during the process. First the aromatic components vaporise, then the water and left over are perhaps not much more than the solid components in the fruit juice and most of the fruit acids. In this specific case, the aroma is actually in the air, because it has left the food.

One of the other extremes is where a heat induced reaction in the food is required to create the aromatic components. The most well known example is perhaps the Maillard reaction between sugars and amino acids responsible for the darker, brownish colour of roasted meat and on the surface of bread and pastries. The Maillard reaction creates highly aromatic components, which are responsible for much of the flavour or smell. The typical bread aroma is for example mainly caused by 6-acetyl-2,3,4,5-tetrahydropyridine, which is the result of a Maillard reaction between different components of the flour. Not using enough heat when baking bread would prevent this aroma component to be created in the first place, so baking bread at low temperatures is not a particularly good idea to get a more tasty bread. The main cause of the difference in taste between boiled and roasted meat is also the lack or presence of the results of the Maillard reaction.

In case of meat, other heat induced reactions except for vaporisation is also responsible for loosing aroma during the cooking process and may justify low-temperature cooking. When heating meat above a specific temperature, connective tissue (mostly collagen) contract and cause moisture to be pressed out of the muscle fibers in between. This moisture seeps out as meat broth, in which many of the meat's aromatic components are contained. Some of the aroma will probably vaporise and "be in the air", but in this case, the flavour has left the intended food (the meat), but most of it is still contained in a by-product (the broth).

As you see, there is no generic answer to your question, but having a nice smell in the kitchen when preparing food does not necessarily cause a catastrophic meal. There are lot of different physical reactions going on when preparing food, and understanding a few basics is very helpful when evaluating different techniques or experimenting on your own with new ways to achieve a tasty result.

Edit: After actually watching the video, I just wanted to point out an issue not directly related to the question. In the video, the chicken is roasted until it reaches a temperature of 60°C. In many countries, chicken meat is often infected with Salmonella bacteria, and at this temperature, they are not necessarily killed. Wikipedia tells that Salmonella is killed after 12 Minutes at 60°C or after 90 Minutes at 55°, so even if you measure 60°C at one point in the chicken, it is not unlikely due to uneven temperature distribution, that other parts are a few degrees colder, at which bacteria can survive for longer periods. To safely consume Salmonella prone food, it is recommended that the food is heated to 75°C at least for 10 Minutes.


What is the difference between Clam Chowder and New England style? What makes clam chowder a New England style vs. some other style?

There are several major varieties of clam chowder, which you can find enumerated on the Wikipedia page. New England clam chowder is characterized by a dairy base, usually with some sort of salt pork or bacon, and potatoes.

Note:  the term chowder basically just means soup or stew, usually with seafood of some sort--very different dishes may go by the name.


Knife is rusting after using it only twice I recently got a knife as a gift and after only using it two times it has started to rust, despite making sure to properly clean it and dry it after using it. There is also one large spot of black/blue discolouration on the back of the knife. Also I'm not sure if this helps but the branding on the knife says 'Okeya'. How can I avoid this happening and what should I do to treat the rust?

A list of methods for removing rust from knives can be found at Knife Depot.  In your case, as the rust appears very light and is recent, simply wiping with a vinegar cloth may be sufficient (possibly also needing a wipe with fine steel wool) and then wipe off any remaining vinegar.

In future, it is imperative that you dry the washed knife immediately and then apply a very thin coating of food safe (e.g., vegetable) oil (or fat) - wipe on then wipe off.  Also, don't leave the knife wet (e.g., while using it) for any length of time - wipe with a dry cloth.


Bottle of Cachaça 51 tasting like sour milk? Whilst recently shopping, I grabbed a bottle of Cachaça 51 intended to use for some flambé. Upon opening it, I found it smelling (and tasting) like slightly sour milk.

Googling for it, I didn't come up with any hits about it at all, which makes me wonder what's going on.

Edit: I have had a straight Cachaça before, but it was a different brand, and it didn't have this sour milk taste.

Further research on this revealed my own answer: Bagasse is the waste product from extracting juice of sugar cane, and if naturally fermented/decaying, smells like sour milk!

Depending on the grade of sugar cane juice (freshness of sugar cane itself, as well as heads vs tails of extraction), the juice can have some of the bad flavour from the bagasse, and it's sufficiently volatile to persist in the distillation process!


Is this mold on my jack links beef steak? I've attached a couple of pictures of my just-opened Jack Links beef steak. There are white mushy blobs of something on the inside of the packaging, and when I remove the packaging they mostly stick to the plastic and only in some places do they remain on the beef. They are gel-like to the touch, much like a gel ointment or such thing. I can't really figure out what they smell like, cause the smell of the seasoned beef is too strong.

Is this mold? I've read in some places that such things could be salt, but salt wouldn't be mushy to touch.

If it helps I bought this right now on my college campus store. We're in the northeast and it's pretty often rainy and wet here.

That isn't mold, that's fat. There's a good picture of mold on beef in this page. Beef steaks have lots of fat, what's happened is that the fat on the surface of the meat has gotten squished into the plastic and adhered. It doesn't mean your steak isn't safe to eat, if it smells ok you should be fine.


How do I prevent food from sticking to a standard (non-coated) pan? On cooking shows I always see cooks using ordinary pans without non-stick coatings, and nothing ever seems to stick to their pans.  But when I try the same recipes at home, my food always sticks.

What can I do to prevent sticking?

It depends some on technique, and some on what you're cooking. And it depends on your definition of "sticking."

Foods that are high in protein (especially those low in fat) are more prone to sticking. So a really lean white fish, which is almost all protein, will want to stick. Likewise, egg whites can stick. To some extent, almost any food that doesn't have a generous amount of easy-rendering fat will want to stick, but higher protein is more sticky.

To counteract this tendency, you need to compensate by putting some kind of fat (usually butter or oil) into the pan in advance of the food. Most people seem to get the best result by preheating the dry pan some, then adding the oil, letting it get up to temperature, then adding the food.

That's the simple summary, but it can get you pretty far.

There's another thing you might run into as well--high-protein items that stick at first will release on their own if you let them cook long enough at reasonably high temperature. So if you throw a steak dry into a hot pan, it's going to stick at first, but as the Malliard reaction occurs (that nice brown crust we love), the steak will actually release from the pan (or mostly release) of its own accord--usually after 3 minutes or so at high heat. The same is true of most meats, but with delicate ones like fish you're probably better off providing more fat/oil than counting on an easy release as the proteins denature.

Finally, what's your definition of "sticking?" If your food literally sticks to the pan, then the technique I gave in paragraph 3 above should help you out. If you are able to move your food around, but find that little bits stick to the pan and turn brown, that's to be expected. That's called "fond" and most people try to retrieve those delicious browned bits by deglazing (putting in a liquid and stirring/scraping as it boils down) and making a pan sauce. And even if you don't want to make a pan sauce, you can clean those stuck brown bits off by putting just a little water in the pan and bringing it to a boil. Scrape the pan with a wooden spatula (or even a regular spatula if you're gentle) while the water's boiling and stuff should come right up.


Why did pork tenderloin go pink in the fridge? I cooked a pork tenderloin to at least 165 degrees F, maybe 180. The thermometer was in a pretty thick part of the meat and it was pretty much grey. Two days later it is pink in parts inside. I was wondering if this is an effect of cooling. I could reheat it in the microwave to 165 degrees but don't know if that is necessary. Thanks!

Pork does tend to turn pink after refrigeration. The FDA changed the safe pork temperature to 145 degrees. If you take it out at 135 degrees it should be fine after sitting a few minutes. Especially with dry cuts like tenderloin, this will work wonders for juiciness! Yes, and it will be a bit pink in the middle and you don't need to reheat it.


What was a black substance on the surface of cooked brown rice? We had some brown rice that we cooked in tap water, and when it was done, there was something black or dark gray with a clay-like consistency on the surface of the rice. Around the edge of the pot it was pretty dense, while at the center it was only specks, and below the surface of the rice it wasn't present at all. What was it? Was it safe to eat the rest of the rice?

If this is the grey foam/scum that rises during the cooking, and eventually settled onto the surface and the pot itself, then it's just starch that gets released during the cooking process.  While not aesthetically pleasing, it doesn't change the flavor or texture of the rice, and is fine to eat.

Also, some people note this when their water source is hard water, so it might be the excess calcium/limescale from the water, itself, just like what accumulates on your faucet or in your coffee maker, but mixed with some of the previously mentioned starches from the rice, so it looks different.

(I'll try to find some authoritative links to confirm this, and post those as an edit when I have more time after work).


Low tannin dry red wine, good for sauces and stews? I really don't care for red wine, and I have been told that it's probably the tannins that I object to. If that's the case, what varieties of red wine should I look for when a recipe (usually a stew or sauce) calls for "dry red wine"?

The difference between red wines and white wines are that red wines are fermented with some of the skins, while white wines are not. Tannins come from the skins, and make people's mouth feel dry, hence more tannins mean a wine is called dry. So you cannot have a low tannin dry wine, as dry means tannic by definition. Much of a wine's characteristics come from the properties of the earth, water, and climate that the grapes are grown in (the french call the sum of these characteristics terroir), so you can get a dry wine from most grapes depending these factors. However, some grapes produce less tannic skins, and therefore overall produce less tannic, ie fruitier wines.

Common fruitier red varieties are pinot noir, garancha (granache), primitivo (Zinfandel), and pinotage. All these varieties should be available in US supermarkets. If you can find an Oregon pinot noir then that would be my choice, they are very good value and great tasting wines. California zinfandel used to be considered cheap plonk (because it was), but lately has had a resurgence and there are some fantastic wines from this grape.


Is core temperature a good indicator of bread doneness I've read so many recipes stating core temps as a way to tell when your loaf is ready. Me being a fan of measuring have bought a plethora of devices for measuring the core temperature of my loaves.

The most disappointing one is that a perfectly fine loaf of white wheat at 75% hydration is done at 95°C internal temp. This usually is after 18-20 minutes for a 375g water loaf.
I disagree. I need it to be 99 + 5 minutes.

I just did an excellent sourdough (should be done at 98°C). I did it 99 + 15 minutes.  That was good.

I put in the last sourdough loaf and accidentally forgot about it for a 52 minute total in the 230 fan oven. This was the best one. Internal temperature seems to be useless.

Why are my results so different from the recipes?

I'm not certain from the question about what "doneness" means.  Is the bread still "raw" inside at 95C?  If so, I'd guess something is wrong with the calibration of the thermometer.

Failing that, my guess is that this has to do with either various other external factors (e.g., the bread may be "set" inside, but the exterior is not browned sufficiently, or the crust dried out enough) and/or things having to do with moisture.

Once you get to 95C and above, the structure of the bread is definitely set.  It's not going to collapse if you pull it out of the oven.  It shouldn't taste "raw" or overly "doughy" inside.  The bread should be "done," at least in the sense of fully cooked.

But to my point about moisture: what generally happens to bread once it reaches a high internal temperature is that the internal structure gradually dries out.  It takes a long time for moisture to migrate out from the center and through the increasingly hard crust.  The interior of the bread will change from a spongy and "moist" texture to an increasingly dry and stiff one as time elapses in the oven.  The retained moisture when the bread is pulled from the oven also can have significant effects on the outcome: a dough that is very moist before bake and which doesn't expand much will often remain moist internally, and that moisture will likely rebalance itself during cooling, some of it going to the crust, which will soften.  If you want a crisp crust, you'll have to bake longer.

Some of it may have to do with the recipe.  For example, a quick hot bake may give good oven spring, but may not allow sufficient time for moisture migration.  So a crusty bread baked too fast may display a high internal temp, but then soften as it cools.  Turning the temperature down during the bake may allow for the desired texture with a longer bake (and without burning the exterior).  If your bake time is off from the recipe, the internal temperature may not be as reliable an indicator.

Some of it may have to do with loaf and dough characteristics.  As hinted above, oven spring and size of holes inside the interior plays a significant role in how moisture migrates internally.  If your bread isn't rising as much as the recipe assumes (or rising too much), you might need to change your bake time/temp as well as your assumed final interior temperature for the loaf.  Extra humidity absorbed or lost due to kitchen conditions at different times of the year can also play a role -- I've baked the same recipe under different humidity and temperature conditions with precise measurements and gotten significantly different results.

Lastly, of course your personal taste concerning doneness may vary from the person who wrote the recipe.  Sourdough breads can vary inside from everything from a kind of "creamy" and somewhat moist interior to a very dry and tough/chewy interior.  Personally, I like the former, but if you like the latter, maybe you are most satisfied with a result different from the one the recipe intended.

Bottom line is that internal temp is a guideline just like anything else.  But I personally have found it more useful than other guidelines (like the "hollow sound" test, browning level of exterior).  You may need to tweak according to your own experience and preferences.


Vegan substitute for cheese Though I read a lot about vegan substitute of cheese but I have not come across one that can be described as its perfect replacement especially in places where cheese is supposed to melt, like in Pizza. Does anyone has any experience with it ? Is it possible to make such vegan cheese at home ?

One thing to be aware of with many commercial vegans cheeses is that these work much better for melting over pizzas or casseroles if mixed with some additional liquid (eg by soaking the grated cheese substitute in some soymilk or soy cream and applying both together).

If looking to make your own meltable vegan cheeses, use recipes using plenty of fat and a combination of agar and tapioca starch as a starting point for experimenting.

Be aware that the mouthfeel of melted cheeses is quite a complex matter: It is more or less defined by a set of textures achieved at different temperature points (and probably the delay in texture change!) throughout enjoying a portion (which will cool down during doing so. Body temperature also plays a role here...).

Be aware that cheese melted over casseroles has a functional role in cooking them - once it is melted (melting temperature plays a role here..) it acts as a partial vapor seal, and probably also gives off or binds moisture/salt/fat.

Be aware that the melting behaviour expected of conventional cheese has regional subtleties to it: Somebody used to american-style processed cheese in these roles could be put off by the liquid separation/curdling/firming/hard stringyness effects you get from using natural cheeses, while somebody expecting the latter behaviour would probably consider the more homogenous result from processed cheese as mealy/stodgy/gloopy.


My milk chocolate is grainy - how to fix it? Below is the milk chocolate recipe I used. It's good enough, but grainy, not as smooth as I'd like. Any thoughts on how to make it smoother? Most recipes I find online have milk chocolate as an ingredient, and don't have milk chocolate as the final product.

Ingredients

50 g coconut oil

30 g cocoa powder

50 g powdered sugar

30 g dried milk powder (whole milk, Nido brand)

⅛  teaspoon salt

Directions

Melt coconut oil in double boiler

Add cocoa powder, powdered sugar

Mix

Add dried milk powder and salt

Mix

Pour into mold

Sylvia-

Hi! The graininess may be caused by either ingredients or method. When making chocolate, I choose to use cocoa butter as opposed to other fats. It marries with the cocoa powder in a way that other ones seem to have problems with. Furthermore, I choose to combine the cocoa butter and cocoa powder with a violent whisk prior to the addition of heat, to ensure that it is mixed very well before cooking together. Once the consistency is correct through cooking over the boiling water, I remove from the heat and add the sweeteners and milk, also adding salt to taste. Removing from heat isn’t necessarily required, but I find that it is less likely to roast on me.

Another note is that it would do well to give your course ingredients a whirl in a grinder or food processor. I use granulated sugar, or other times, unprocessed sugar. Both of these course ingredients get a good amount of time with blades to create a finer product. Seeing as you are using powdered sugar, this shouldn’t be a problem - unless it becomes lumpy.


Are soft boiled eggs and poached eggs identical? Today I heard from a friend, that poached eggs are simply glorified soft-boiled eggs and that there is no way to distinguish between the two except for the form. The only reason anyone does poached eggs is because soft-boiled eggs are kind of hard to peel.

He then told me that you can make a hole in an egg, soft boil it, than because of the small hole you can peel it easily basically eliminating the main disadvantage of soft-boiled eggs: difficulty when peeling.

The result is supposed to be identical to a poached egg.

I have had both soft-boiled eggs and poached eggs many times, and I always felt that poached eggs have a unique taste and texture.

Or is the hole in the egg mimicking the poaching because it lets water in?

You are supposed to make the hole on the flatter side of the egg, where the air pocket is.

I'll answer the question in your title.  Poached eggs are eggs, removed from the shell when raw, and cooked in a liquid.  The consistency of the yolk can vary depending on the poaching time. The consistency of the white is generally the same each time. Poaching usually happens at a temperature below the boil.

Soft (or medium, or hard) boiled eggs are eggs that are left in the shell, but cooked in boiling water. The assumption in the comments, that the cooking is stopped before heat reaches the yolk, in not correct.  Soft boiled eggs can certainly have yolks of varying consistency, it is just that they are not hard.  The white, is of course, protected by the shell to some degree, so the consistency can vary depending on the cooking time.  It is often more done near the shell, and of a looser consistency as it approaches the yolk.

Egg yolks and whites are very sensitive to cooking time and temperature, so small variations produce different results.  In addition, the yolk and white behave differently.  It is why many have found cooking eggs sous vide so interesting.

So, yes, the processes produce different results and should not be considered the same.


Pasteurized milk boiling dilemma Experts tell drinking pasteurized milk from carton is fine. But sometimes, when I boil refrigerated previously opened milk carton with oats, it curdles.
Does that mean it is not safe to drink milk directly from carton without boiling it? Or, is the problem with cooking oats and milk together?
I faced this issue with cow's milk. Will using soy milk make any difference?

The answer probably lies in your question:

refrigerated previously opened milk

Products that have been made shelf-stable by a heating process will be susceptible to spoilage again once the package is opened. While unopened UHT milk will last for months without refrigeration and ESL milk gets up to three weeks (depending on process and refrigerator temperature), once the package is opened, all of them will stay safe for a mere days only. The same is true for plant-based milks like soy milk.
So unless you have introduced some substance that encourages curdling (typically an acid), the curdling indicates that your milk has gone off and is no longer safe. Boiling will not remedy that.


How to make a non-salty cheesecake? There are lots of American cheese cake recipes which call for cream cheese. And I don't know about cream cheese in the USA, but in Europe, cream cheese is salted. It may be not as salty as, say, feta, but the salt is definitely noticeable. As a result, my cheesecake's taste is a combination of sweet and salty.

Do you have any ideas how to solve the problem? Of course, it would be perfect if you can tell me a brand of cream cheese without salt which I can get in Germany. But if not, I would like to hear ideas about how to make the salt less noticeable. Adding more sugar or using a different kind of cheese (e.g. mascarpone) are not an option. Or if it is normal for a cheesecake to taste that way (I have never eaten a genuine American cheesecake), please tell me so I can stop worrying about my cakes.

Also, I have observed that a cheesecake tastes less salty after a day or two. Is this real, or just my imagination (or me getting accustomed to the taste)? If true, what causes this to happen?

I would 'cut' a standard cream cheese like Philadelphia with mascarpone, which is essentially triple cream with a cream cheese-like texture.


Is it bad to marinate meat for too long? From my experience it is always best to marinate meat for a decent amount of time, so the meat can "soak" up the marinade and be more flavourful.

However, I came across this recipe here: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/cookandchef/txt/s2264630.htm

In the directions, it says: Add pork and marinade for a minimum of 6 hours or overnight, but no longer than 12 hours.

I was wondering, why does it say "no longer than 12 hours"? Isn't it good to let meat marinate for as long as possible?

Thanks.

Two things-

If the marinade is very strong or salty then the meat could simply become over flavored.

If the marinade includes a meat digesting enzyme such as papain then leaving it too long could turn the meat to mush.


Did 150 °C (300 °F) ruin my cream sauce, or is it just overcooked, or fine? I made a new recipe -that had chicken, mushrooms and onion sauteed in butter, to make a casserole.  I made a white sauce - butter/flour, lactose-free milk, and it thickened very slowly, so added some cornstarch, and it thickened nicely.
As the recipe said, I whisked in one cup of heavy cream, poured it over the chicken/mushroom/onion garlic mixture, then put it in a 13x9 glass tempered dish, covered with foil, tightly, and put it in an oven at 150°C (300°F); and it was in there for two hours, maybe 2.5.

When I got it out, it was brown, through and through, and it looked like butter had separated; no white cream sauce to be seen.  The flavors were separate, and althoguh I didn't like it, my husband ate it, and I am thinking it was burned through and through -- but I am not sure this was the way it was supposed to turn out.

The original instructions didn't have 2.5 hours at 150°C (300°F), but 100°C (225°F), for 2-3 hours - and the recipe used a dutch oven, which I don't have. The higher heat was an oversight.

Did I burn it?  Is it just overcooked, and edible, or is it bad?  I have absolutely no idea at this point, but I have been reading that cream sauces have a top heating level of 200, so I think I really blew it with the 300 degrees.

I think it would have been better to have kept the sauce separate and make it after the casserole has cooked.  White sauce needs the temperature reducing as soon as it starts to crack; indeed, lift it off the heat as soon as you feel this taking place. It is possible almost to thicken it completely from the heat already in the pan.


How can I save my curry - it's way too oily! I cooked a chicken curry in the slowcooker last night, I came down this morning and its way too oily.  I think because of this the coconut milk has separated a little too.

Any way I can save this, even a little?

Thankyou

Allow it to cool, then put it in the fridge for a few hours. The fat should rise to the top and harden, making it easier to scoop away.

If you can't wait for it to cool, either skim the oil off with a spoon or use some kitchen paper to soak it up.


Can psyllium husk be used as gelatin for jello? I need to make jello. Would psyllium husk work as a jello replacement?

Psyllium husk is a good source of soluble fiber, but it's not a very good stabilizer or a gelling agent.

If you want to replace gelatin inn recipes there's plenty of great vegan substitutes. I'd recommend using agar-agar instead; it's the closest gelling agent but it's stronger, so you need to use less than you're used to.


How to store homemade granola? I enjoy homemade granola, but my recipe makes quite a bit. Sometimes I use it all quickly, but sometimes not.

What is a reliable storage method? Should it be frozen? Can it just be refrigerated?

Although ours rarely lasts for more than a week, we typically just store it in an airtight container with the rest of the cereal.  I would imagine the fat could eventually go rancid, so if you need to store it for weeks or months, either refrigeration or freezing should work.  You'll still want the airtight container, however, to prevent any fridge funk from tainting the taste.


Small turkey for practice Thanksgiving is getting closer and I want to cook a turkey. However, I want to cook a test turkey first.

Problem is, the turkeys in the grocery stores will be massive, and I just want to practice on a small turkey.

I was wondering if I can just use a chicken for practice? What do you do when you want to practice something before serving it to guests?

I like to practice too if it's something I've never made before. Roasting a chicken will give you an opportunity to practice the all-important skill of correctly placing the thermometer, but chicken has a different flavor than turkey.

One option is to get the smallest turkey you can find, experiment with a brine (which I highly recommend for roasted turkey) and perhaps go into Thanksgiving with a bit more confidence.

You can always cut up the turkey meat and freeze it for sometime after Thanksgiving when you're no longer sick of turkey. Leftover turkey makes great tamales or enchiladas.


What am I doing wrong with my Kool-Aid pickles? I'm trying to make Kool-Aid Pickles (koolickles).  I've tried with quartered Ba-Tampte pickles and I seem to get it right, but I'm not seeing the results I expect with halved pickles.  I want to go with halved because quartered seem to shrivel unappealingly.

I have a 2 quart jar of manually halved pickles (they were originally whole).  Into the pickle brine I dissolved a cup of fruit punch Kool-Aid and a cup of white sugar.  After 2 weeks, the coloring has only soaked half-way into the pickles.  They look red on the outside, but are green on the interior.  My intent was to get the full red all the way through.  They taste almost right, but I think they could do with better penetration.

Am I going to be stuck using only quartered pickles?  Should I have used more Kool-Aid, or maybe a different flavor?  Should I consider a different pickle brand?

From your link and some other sources, seems that lenghwise cutted pickles will give you more color penetration (and probably flavour too).

Since adding too much kool-aid for the color would also change the taste, I'd go with some food coloring product.


Do I wash off the "silicone" before using my meat grinder I have a Lem Big Bite meat grinder which I always thoroughly clean and spray with food-safe silicone lubricant after each use.

My question is, do I "wash or rinse" the parts that I've sprayed BEFORE I use it?

I seem to lose a few ounces of meat around the auger when I'm finished, and I wonder if it's because my blade and plate aren't properly lubricated.

This breaks down to two separate questions. Should I clean silicone lubricant off my grinder before use? and Am I loosing meat around the auger because of improper lubrication?

I should not say it is 'required' to 'wash or rinse' before use, depending on how long it has been since you last used it and how and where it has been stored. It is likely that at least some dust or debris has settled into the silicone since it's last use making (at least) a quick rinse a good idea though. If it was recently used, cleaned and lubricated and stored in a good dust free environment the 'need' becomes less...(but what could it hurt to do it anyway.)

A certain amount of loss is to be expected with parts that are typically rather loose fitting to begin with. A fresh coat of silicon (or oil) on the parts before use (and after cleaning) might help, but if your losses are significant I would expect that merely lubricating the parts are unlikely to improve things. A grinder is essentially a gravity and manual pressure feed device. Once you have pushed all the meat into the feed tube (and probably pushed it down with a plunger of some sort) those last bits are unlikely to 'push themselves' through regardless of the lubricant.


How do I make a cookie with a cream filling (similar to an Oreo filling)? I want to make a cookie stuffed with the cream filling you find in an Oreo. I've seen a few cookie sandwich recipes that use a filling made with butter. My question is, since this filling will be stuffed inside my cookie BEFORE baking, would the presence of butter cause issues while it's being baked?

A filling made with butter will melt at baking temperatures, and probably spill out of your cookies, or at the very least stop the cookie dough from baking properly (it will either soak the dough with moisture, break open the cookie with steam, or both) and not reform into the filling you want.
Instead, you should look into making hollow cookies and piping or injecting the filling once baked and cooled, or if you want filled cookies then find a recipe for filled cookies (but the filling will have to be something substantially different).


What's the difference between thin crust pizza and a cracker My friend says that thin pizza crust is nothing but a cracker, but I think there are significant differences between the two products. For example, if you buy a store-bought cracker and add pizza sauce, toppings, and cheese to it, you won't get anything remotely like a pizza.
tl;dr: where do the ideas of pizza crust and cracker diverge?

Two factors:
Leavening: pizza crust is generally made with a leavened, yeasted dough, that has risen for a hour or more before rolling out.  Crackers are generally made with a "short" dough, which contains no leavening at all or only a tiny amount of chemical leavening.  Even crackers that are made with a yeasted dough (e.g. sourdough crackers) are not given a long time to rise.
Texture: crackers are generally supposed to, well, crack.  They should be crisp, crunchy, and/or flaky.  Whereas pizza dough is supposed to be chewy and/or bready, and certainly not crunchy.
Now, there's obviously some room for overlap here.  For example, if I roll out a sourdough pizza crust really thin and top it only with salt, and bake it until crunchy, it's not going to be particularly different from a sourdough cracker.  However, most pizza crusts are very different from most crackers.
Hope that helps!


Sauteed fresh pasta? I'm making fresh pasta and I'd like to put garlic in it. The problem is that garlic needs to be sauteed to taste good right? Since it doesn't take long to cook fresh pasta, will it work to just saute the pasta instead of boiling it?

Fresh as in not dried? Yes, that will work. Just watch your heat, ensure it doesn't stick to the pan.

Personally I would lightly sautee the garlic in a lot of olive oil (making the olive oil the eventual sauce), then toss in the pasta for just long enough to heat it through, and then nomnomnom.


How can I reheat leftovers without a microwave? We are swearing off our microwave for our own personal reasons. Aside from running the oven to warm up leftovers are there other appliances or cookware that use less energy to warm food up? We use a toaster oven for some things but it's not practical for everything.

Example: I want to warm up leftover roast and potatoes. The large oven seems like overkill to me. The toaster oven seems to re-cook things and overdo it, or might just be too small. What else could be used to warm that up?

We are in a similar situation, while the house gets remodelled we didn't want to buy another one.  The microwave we have is the combination microwave and exhaust fan model that's 10 years old, which can't be moved out without a lot of thought.

But we find that it is a rather indispensable modern workhorse for reheating leftovers.  As long as the foods you are reheating have some kind of water/moisture it will reheat in the microwave very well.

This being said, we have gone to using a pot and some bamboo steamers on the stove top to reheat most if not all of our leftovers.  The steamer is pretty quick if you have an induction cooktop, which boils water extremely fast.  We can reheat several things at a time, by adding more steamer baskets.  The bamboo keeps excess water condensation from dripping on your food, so no need to really cover it with anything.  It reconstitutes dried out food more moist and it doesn't overheat it.

But it doesn't work well when you want something crisp and warm. For this we use a convection toaster over, with the door slightly open.  We find that our particular oven gets really hot even with the convection fan running it tends to just burn things.  So having the door slightly open keeps the food from burning but still heats up.

We might also heat up a pizza slice on a cast iron grill or pan with a lid or a sheet of aluminium foil on top to keep the heat in.  Also keeps any splatters inside.

As for your particular foods, roast and potatoes.  I might try cutting it into smaller pieces and start with the steamer and then putting it in the toaster over just to crisp up the skin.  As for the potatoes I guess it would depend on how they are prepared.  But I think the combination of wet heat and dry heat will reheat nearly anything you got.

But I do think that the microwave is a pretty ingenious way to reheat food.


My dough is cracking (not crumbling) and more water does not help I am following this  Serious Eats pie crust recipe. It's the second time already where I struggle with the dough folding stage. The dough is too crumbly when I take it out of the processor. When I (gradually) add water it stops being crumbly but then it gets too cracky. You can't really move it around or roll it.

Adding flour or water does not improve the situation.

The serious eats article that accompanies this recipe does a good job of explaining what you are trying to accomplish.

You are trying to have wheat gluten that is interspersed with pockets of fat. The fat pockets are tender, the gluten is flaky. Perfect balance.

They dough that you have doesn't have any gluten development and is basically shortbread. If you press it into a pie crust it will be tender and flavorful but not flaky. It's still delicious so don't throw it out- it just won't be perfect.

There are three ways that you could have too little gluten:

Flour with too little protein
The recipe calls for all purpose flour. It needs to have some gluten but not as much as bread flour.
Too much mixing in the second stage
This recipe calls for some of the flour to be completely blended with the fat and then flour added in a second stage and only just cut in. If this second addition of flour is too thoroughly blended into the fat you get shortbread.
Not enough resting time
The recipe calls for resting the dough for at least a few hours and up to a few days. This is important. Only some of the flour in the dough has access to water to form gluten. The dough needs to be given time to rest to allow the flour to hydrate.

I love this pie crust recipe. It turns the traditional method on its head and it works very well. It has fewer tricky points for failure than the traditional method but it still helps to know what you are doing.
I highly recommend reading the article that accompanies the recipe.
http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2011/07/the-food-lab-the-science-of-pie-how-to-make-pie-crust-easy-recipe.html


Does adding vegetables to your brine add any flavour? What exactly does adding vegetables to your brine really achieve? Does it add any flavour to your end product?

EDIT:

Turkey brine and Frozen Mixed Vegetables.

I've been a fan of brining for a while and NO, adding flavouring to the brine won't make much if any difference in relation to the brining itself, which makes a lot of difference.

I have employed my most wishful thinking many times with brine, on the basis of the fact that pretty much every reference to it in recipes, on cooking shows, etc., always seems to promote the idea that the flavour will diffuse in the brine and be absorbed by the meat.  This is some kind of "look at the Emperor's New Clothes" tradition.1 I've gone to ridiculous extremes to test this, sometimes adding many ounces of e.g., paprika or thyme to < 1 gallon of very salty (4 tbls/quart) brine with a chicken overnight -- which is actually too much time, a few hours is plenty with that much salt.  In some cases I've gone overboard with the salty part, but despite all the piles of herbs, powders, an entire bottle of hot sauce, etc., you at best get maybe a hint of something on the surface.

In short, my opinion now is that while brining is awesome for pork and poultry -- salty and moist meat being far superior to dry and bland meat -- adding something to the brine and expecting it makes a difference is a complete waste of time and materials.

As per one of my comments on the question, I'd guess the issue here is that brining exploits osmosis.  From wikipedia:

  Brining makes cooked meat moister by hydrating the cells of its muscle tissue before cooking, via the process of osmosis, and by allowing the cells to hold on to the water while they are cooked, via the process of denaturation. The brine surrounding the cells has a higher concentration of salt than the fluid within the cells, but the cell fluid has a higher concentration of other solutes. This leads salt ions to diffuse into the cell, whilst the solutes in the cells cannot diffuse through the cell membranes into the brine. The increased salinity of the cell fluid causes the cell to absorb water from the brine via osmosis. The salt introduced into the cell also denatures its proteins. The proteins coagulate, forming a matrix that traps water molecules and holds them during cooking. This prevents the meat from dehydrating.

So the idea is that the meat absorbs salt ions, which then causes it to absorb more water.  This is through the cell walls, and I do not think large particles such as the stuff we might associate with "flavour" would be included.  Of course, some of the brine may be drawn into the meat between the (large congregations) of cells, but this is probably not a significant volume.

1. Some of these recipes call for really paltry amounts of flavoring too, an inadvertent testament to how nice the Emperor must look naked ("Umm -- I can so taste the rosemary from the brine!". Hogwash.).  They also often involve paltry amounts of time ("brine for 20 minutes"), I suppose because if you can pretend to taste rosemary you can also pretend to taste salt and appreciate moistness.  If you don't have at least an hour, do not bother.  At least quadruple that for a whole turkey.


What is the effect of adding sugar to the water when poaching eggs? I'm doing a food tech assignment and I need to know how adding sugar to the water effects the coagulation of protein when poaching eggs.

Sugar stabilizes proteins and reduces foaming (salting in).
I'm not sure how much sugar you'd need to add to your egg water to reduce dissipation and strand formation, but some protein structures are affected positively by sucrose concentrations below 30 grams per liter.


How long to cook syrup for Baklava? I want to make Baklava, but I do not know how long to cook the syrup for.
Some websites say 4-5 minutes, some say 20 minutes, and I am clueless...
I am using an 8x8 pan, 7 oz of white sugar and 7 oz of water.
Is there a specific temperature I should cook it to?
Edit:
To avoid confusion - I am not looking for a simple syrup recipe, like the ones used to flavor drinks or keep cakes moist.
I need a "light syrup", used for oriental sweets (as I've read), and most of the recipes call for "5 minutes of gentle boiling", so that is my best bet so far.

No, there is no specific temperature you need to reach. Once the sugar is dissolved (which will happen well below boiling temperature) you’re done.


What should I do if I bought prime rib roast too early? I have just purchased my Christmas prime rib from Costco (boneless). We are 13 days away from Christmas, so I think I bought it too early. Should I freeze it or dry age it on a rack in the coldest part of the fridge with salt and pepper crust?
Thanks!

Typical refrigerator temperature is a bit too cold for true dry aging. I don't think you will perceive much of a difference, even under ideal conditions, in only two weeks.  So, for me, the decision is based on whether or not I want a prime rib taking up prime real estate in my refrigerator.  I would freeze until a couple of days before your meal.


Can you safely can homemade caramel/butterscotch syrup? I've done canning of jams and jellies. I would like to make caramel and butterscotch syrups and jar them to give away, too, but I'm not sure if this is do-able since they contain butter and cream. Can this be done safely at home? If so, how long would they be good for?

I haven't seen a butterscotch canned recipe but the ball blue book has a couple syrup canning recipes that look fantastic. If you do any canning you should have this book. The recipes are invaluable.

These recipes use the hot water bath technique. The extremely high sugar content would be enough to keep it preserved. Modifying one to be butterscotch should be straight forward.

I wouldn't try any experiments that reduce the sugar content because then we're getting into the risk-of-horrible-paralyzing-death area of canning.


What is the difference between an herb and a spice? What is the difference between an herb and a spice?

I would think an herb is from a plant, but then I have no idea what specifically a spice is.  Not being much of a cook, they all seem related to me, and I often hear them referred to them all as "herbs and spices".

From fooducate.com

The difference between the two is where they are obtained from a plant.
Herbs come from the leafy and green part of the plant.
Spices are parts of the plant other than the leafy bit such as the root, stem, bulb, bark or seeds.
Examples of herbs include basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, parsley and mint.

From spice-racks.com

Herbs are obtained from the leaves of herbaceous (non-woody) plants.
Spices are obtained from roots, flowers, fruits, seeds or bark.
In some cases both a herb and spice may come from the same plant. Dill is an example of this.


Sous vide egg white falling apart on cracking I've been reading the sous vide guide on serious eats where eggs are supposed to come out like this where after sous viding, you poach it briefly to fully set the white. However when cracking my egg, the white simply falls apart completely, leaving the yolk exposed and an impossible to poach egg!

This egg is cooked at 66C for 1.5 hours, which in the guide has a 'fudgy' yolk (how mine comes out).

At 66ºC it's possible that the white gets too "crumbly" like yours. I always follow Dave Arnold's guide for egg temperatures and get good results around 64-65ºC.

You should try lowering the temperature to 65 or 65.5ºC, and make sure your eggs are not too old - the older the egg the more "loose whites" (the watery part of the whites) you'll get. It also affects the texture of the rest of the egg.


Can you get sick from milk that's been heated at a high temperature? If you have pasteurized milk that is steamed for lattes, could that end up making you sick?
The steaming seems to occur at a high temperature.

No, there is nothing about raising otherwise-safe milk rapidly to a high temperature that is going to make you sick. Unless you are already lactose intolerant or otherwise allergic to milk. Raising milk rapidly to a temperature above the danger zone (140 F / 60 C) is going to make it safer, not less safe.


Can you get food poisoning from calamari rings? I'm asking because cooking time can be hard to nail down - the quick cooking version involves cooking them for only 1-2 minutes (once thawed). It seems like such a low cooking time would be prone to error (some people sauté them instead of immersing them in oil, leading to possibly uneven cooking)

Is this type of food much lower risk of food poisoning compared to meat or other fish?

You can get food poisoning from every kind of food.

The thing with Calamari is that if you cook them too long they become rubbery.

Nailing the proper cooking time is something that can be learned by experience.

See this thread: How do you cook calamari / squid and avoid making it tough?


Can a failed cupcake be incorpated into a new cupcake? I was making white chocolate cupcakes, and forgot to put in baking powder.

I am baking a new set, and wondered if it would be possible to crumble up these failed cupcakes and put them in the new ones I am making?

Is this possible, or would the cake just become overcooked and ruin the taste of my new cupcakes?

I don't think "twice-baked" cupcakes would work out well. I think you would need a lot more than one extra batch to blend with it to get a decent texture. Mixing them directly into the batter would probably just make some odd texture in places. It might not be that noticeable but I think it is going to degrade your new batch of cupcakes and risk having even more unfortunate cupcakes to figure out what to do with.

Instead of mixing them into the other cupcakes, I think you could crumble them and use them in another way. They would make a good crumb topping (for ice cream, muffins, some of the new cupcakes or a fruit cobbler), or use the crumbs with some binding agent (chocolate, peanut butter, cream cheese, jam, honey etc) and perhaps some dried fruit or nuts to make no-bake ball or bar cookies. A lot of those recipes start with something like vanilla wafers or shortbread cookies and you could replace those with the cupcake crumbs. I think these crumbs would be a little less firm than the cookie crumbs but it should still work.


Stove-steamed rice gets burnt on bottom I've followed one of those countless videos on YouTube about steam-cooking rice on stove, particularly this one: How to Cook Rice Perfectly Every Time | Stovetop Method | Easy Asian Cooking
But three out of three times rice on the bottom burnt.
Cooking procedure:

Put rice in a pot and rinse twice
Cover rice with 2-3 cm water
Hard boil until water surface hits rice
Reduce heat to minimum, cover the pot and wait 15 min
Turn off heat and wait 5 min
Remove cover, fluff the rice and wait 1-2 min
???
PROFIT

Some more details:

Rice that did not get stuck to the bottom was delicious
Rice that did get stuck was not black or even brown
While boiling excess water out (when I first put it on the stove) I had to mix it with a spoon because some rice kept sticking to the bottom

I can see flaws in the method. Adding water by 'depth' is pretty inaccurate unless you use the exact same rice quantity in the exact same pan as the recipe author. Also, bringing it slowly to the boil like porridge is very inaccurate for your timings.
Let's try it a slightly different way. Use ratios & a flash-boil.
There's no absolutely ideal 'works for everybody' ratio as it depends on pan thickness, tightness of lid & stove heat. You'll end up between 1:1.5 and 1:1.75
Though this takes a lot of text to explain, it's actually really, really simple to do & once you have your ratios right for your kitchen, it will 'just work' every time.

Put the kettle on.
(This works best if you live in a 240v country, otherwise you might have to wait a few more minutes before you start 2;)

Using a small-ish saucepan with a tight-fitting lid & the heaviest base you have, pre-heat at full power as the kettle's coming to the boil. The idea of this is that the pan is hotter than the water as it goes in… but not on for so long it's glowing, or you can smell burning teflon;)

Add 1 cup  of rice to the pan as it's heating (cup, mug, measuring jug, doesn't matter so long as you use the same measure for the water. That way we're working percentages/ratios not inches). Don't bother to pre-rinse unless your rice is particularly dusty. Supermarket rice really doesn't need it these days, & pre-rinsing will change the flash-boil reaction.
Add salt now if you want salt.

Add a cup and two-thirds (middle of your ratio spectrum) boiling water. The water & rice combo will immediately flash-boil almost out of the pan. Immediately drop the heat to minimum (assuming gas, or take the pan off the ring for a few seconds if electric or anything not instant)
Stir once with a spatula, just enough to know the rice didn't clump, which it shouldn't if the water flash-boils on contact.
Put the lid on. (First time, until you get used to this, keep an eye on it to make sure it's not going to boil over as the initial heat drops away)

Simmer for 15 mins, without lifting the lid to check.
Don't be tempted to lift the lid to see if it's done…
This is a Schrödinger/Heisenberg* method - see below;)
This depends on your pan thickness & how low your ring goes. You learn this through repetition; after that, time it.
While you're learning the timing, then you'll have to just lift it slightly & briefly every minute from 12 or so. Once you've got the ratios for your pan/stove combo you don't do this.
Whilst you're learning at the lid lift stage, you're listening for a 'crackling' sound. That's the indicator your very last bit of water is evaporating off the pan base.

Switch off the gas (or for electric switch off & move the pan to a cold ring)

Leave 15 mins more. Don't lift the lid at all.
We don't need Schrödinger for this bit - the cat is alive;)

'Fluff with a fork' as they always say - or if you got it just right, a quick once-round with a spatula will do it. it won't have stuck.

Profit… or adjust your water ratio/timing/heat for next time.

A lot of this is learning your specific pan/stove. If your ring is hot or your pan is thin, you have to adjust your water ratio up slightly, so you arrive at the 15 minute mark as it crackles. This can mean you end up with a ratio somewhere between 1:1.5 & 1:1.75 If you err, err on the side of dryer.
Glass-lidded pans can take a lot of your early guesswork out of it, as you can see what's going on.
*Schrödinger's cat is a famous thought experiment. You don't know if the cat is alive or dead until you open the box.
We're additionally hampered in this by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle - that by the mere act of observing an experiment, you change the result.
Hence, you cannot know if it is done until you lift the lid… but by lifting the lid to see if it's done, you change the time it will take  & the amount of water required for it to be done.


Why are store bought paninis only par baked? I bought some mini paninis from the super market and the packet had instructions to bake them again for another 5-6 minutes before serving. Why are paninis sold par baked and not completely baked like other bread?

Convenience and longer term storage, plus a closer to freshly baked result compared to a pre baked item that has or is going stale to some degree,


What is the purpose of dry aging a steak? I picked up some Porterhouse steaks this weekend and intend to cook them up steakhouse style, dry-aged and broiled(US) under high heat. What does dry-aging do to the steaks, and why is this one of the steps to cooking a truly excellent steak?

I go into a lot of detail regarding steakhouse quality steaks in my answer here.

Excerpt:

  Any steak you buy in the grocery store is minimally wet aged. The finest steakhouses dry age their beef. The difference? Wet aging consists of simply vacuum packing the meat (as in a whole side of cow) and refrigerating it for about a week. After that, it's cut smaller and sold to stores. Dry aging is a more complicated and expensive process. Dry aged beef is hung for at least two weeks in a refrigerator. Moisture in the meat is allowed to escape and evaporate, which concentrates the beef flavor of the beef. The beef also grows a moldy rind which is cut off and thrown away. After the aging is complete you're left with 75-80% of the meat you started with. This commands a premium price.

Please note that the dry aging happens long before you purchase the steak. The entire cow is dry aged before it is even cut. You cannot truly, safely dry-age steaks in your home. There are refrigerator aging approximations, but they are just that, approximations.


My German Apple Cake sank in the middle and I don't know how to fix it I baked a German Apple Cake with a basic streusel on top, it rose on the edges and fell in the center. I'm wondering if it was because the streusel didn't reach the edges of the cake, or possibly because I put it on too early.

I followed the recipe I found on this website.

2 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 cups apples - peeled, cored and diced

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour one 9x13 inch cake pan.
In a mixing bowl; beat oil and eggs with an electric mixer until creamy. Add the sugar and vanilla and beat well.
Combine the flour, salt, baking soda, and ground cinnamon together in a bowl. Slowly add this mixture to the egg mixture and mix until combined. The batter will be very thick. Fold in the apples by hand using a wooden spoon. Spread batter into the prepared pan.
Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 45 minutes or until cake tests done. Let cake cool on a wire rack. Once cake is cool serve with a dusting of confectioners' sugar or with a Cream Cheese Frosting.

There are a few reasons a cake might sink. First, you may have added too much baking soda or the baking soda may have been old. Or, you may have allowed your batter to sit for too long. Both of these would contribute to your cake over rising and then collapsing.
 Otherwise, most cake-sink cases have a lot to do with temperature. It's possible your oven doesn't reach the temperature it's set at (can be solved with  handy thermometer) or you opened the oven too many times to check on your cake.
 If you're concerned about the streusel, try to apply it in a thin even layer, although I've never had a problem with it being so heavy the cake won't rise. Hope this helps!


When should I not use a cornstarch slurry? When thickening sauces, due to time constraints, my roommate almost always ends up making a cornstarch slurry and dumping that into the sauce instead of letting it reduce naturally. When would that be a bad idea? Or is it always appropriate to substitute?

Reducing a mixture is simply boiling out water present in the solution.  Adding a starch (either cornstarch or other flours) doesn't remove that water but instead causes the starch to expand and "trap" some of the water.

Cornstarch in particular doesn't work especially well when there isn't enough moisture in the base mixture, or if there's too much fat or sugar present, so it's not suitable for really rich sauces, for example pepper cream sauce.  It also doesn't work well in acidic mixtures like tomato sauce.

The worst thing you can do for a cornstarch-thickened mixture is to cook it at a high temperature (i.e. more than a moderate simmer) or for an extended period of time.  These will expand the starch granules so much that they pop, breaking the cornstarch and causing the sauce to thin again.  So, be very careful of cooking temperature when using a cornstarch slurry.

I have also found that cornstarch doesn't respond very well to cooling and re-heating, so it's not the best solution if you plan on saving some of the sauce for later use.


How to add fresh fruit chunks to ice cream? What are the key techniques when adding chunks of fresh fruit to homemade ice cream?  How do I prepare the fruit, and when is the best time to add it to the ice cream?  I don't want the fruit to be a hard icy chunk in the middle of the ice cream when it's served.

I've used strawberries in this example, but would like something that applies to other fruit like peaches, raspberries.

Last summer, we added fresh sliced strawberries to home made vanilla ice cream just after the ice cream came together in the ice cream maker.  But the strawberries were so wet that we lost the texture of the ice cream and ended up with flavored ice.

If you will you this technique to first freeze the strawberries. Then add the solid frozen berries to the mixture the berries will stay firm through process and then "warm up" (oddly enough) in the ice cream.


How much bones can be used in an 11 liter stock pot? I just bought a nice 11 liter stock pot. From your experience, what is the maximum weight of veal bones I can add to one veal stock batch in order to have enough volume left for my veggies and water? I'm starting with 2 kilograms, which should hopefully be ok, but wondering if perhaps I could use even more? I want to maximize my yield.

2kg of veal bones cut up for stock use from your butcher should need around 5 litre of water to cover.  If you use more then you're just thinning the stock and that'll mean you need to reduce it more later to get the same flavour you would have had if you started with the correct amount of water.

Why does this matter you may ask...well, along with the longer reduction time you'll taste changes to the flavour more as time goes by.  You're cooking it longer and the heat changes things, sometimes for the bad, sometimes for the good.  Mainly it's just wasted time reducing something that didn't need to happen.

When all is said and done after simmering for around 6 hours, you'll end up with about 3-4 litres of quality stock if you went with a 2kg:5L ratio.

If you use more water to start then you'll end up with more stock but of low quality.  Then you'll spend your time reducing the stock down until it starts to taste like the stock that you could have made with 5L of water.


Soups: Can I leave bones in indefinitely? Taste and appearance aside, is there anything wrong with leaving bones in a soup indefinitely, ie all throughout cooking, cool, refrigeration, freezing, reheating and consumption. I'm wondering about nutritional aspects.

I like making soups like this:
-Pile of bones, cover with water, add some vinegar, bring to a boil, simmer, let it rip for 2 hrs, add veggies and spices, maybe coconut oil (I like it =). Let it rip another hour. Cool, refrigerate. Then I have a bowl every day.

I notice the bones get softer over time, so are there more nutrients coming out even after cooking?

Basically I want maximum nutritional effect. Spices can hide any bad taste.

I always leave bones in stews and stocks, even when freezing. I don't think there is anything in bones that would accelerate spoilage, specially after being cooked for so long in high temperatures.

Nutritionally, I think there are two factors to consider

Bones are composed by a matrix of proteins and minerals. Cooking denaturate some of the protein tissues adding flavour and nutritional value (amino acids) to the broth. The longer you cook, the more you extract, until reaching a threshold. Hervé This has interesting experiments where he weights a piece of meat after different times of cooking and measure the 'flavour' it delivers by seeing how much weights it lost over cooking time. His conclusion is that cooking over this threshold is worthless. The same is true for vegetables, and probably for bones, each with a different threshold.
What make bones hard is the mineral matrix, composed by calcium among others. The reaction between acetic acid (present in the vinegar) and the calcium produce calcium acetate which is soluble in the stock, weakening the bones and making them softer. Maybe someone can add on that, but I am not aware of the nutritional value of sodium acetate.

So I would bet that leaving the bones in the stew can be at most beneficial. If you have cooked enough, it will probably not make much difference. If you have not cooked enough, the process of reheating with the bones will bring additional flavour and nutrition.


Substitute fresh garlic instead of garlic powder? I have a recipe that calls for garlic powder, but I only have fresh garlic on hand.

What ratio should I use to substitute?

I'd say about 1 clove for every half-teaspoon of garlic powder. There isn't going to be anything particularly scientific about this, since garlic cloves vary in size, strength and flavor but that will be in the ballpark.


Food Identification: Restaurant outside Batu Caves in Malaysia, what did we eat? I had a meal in one of the restaurants at the base of the Batu Caves in Malaysia that served a dish that I quite liked, but I failed to record what I ordered. I'm looking on Google Maps and I believe the restaurant is called "Dhivya’s Cafe".

The food was vegetables, at least potatoes if I recall correctly, served in a yellow curry-like sauce. There were pods in the curry that I think may have been mustard seed but could be wrong. It was served with bread.

Any ideas? Thanks.

Edit: Based on a comment I looked at the picture again and suspect it must have been the restaurant over. I've edited my question.

Also, here is a picture of the bread they served with it: https://pinoyfamilytravels.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/pinoyfamilytravels20120916-0001dhivyascafe.jpg

What you have on your plate is the most eaten pancake in the world - Dosa. This is a South Indian dish and since there are many South Indians living in Malayasia, I don't think finding this there is an extreme coincidence. There are many varieties of Dosa and the one on your plate definitely looks like Rava Dosa(a variety of Dosa cooked with more semolina in the regular Dosa batter).

For more insight into Dosa, you can have a look at this Wiki page:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosa

Dosa is served usually with Sambhar(the liquid yellow thing on your plate) which is like a lentil stew made with some vegetables and seasoned with mustard seeds and other Indian spices, coconut chutney(the white sauce) and takkali chutney(the orange sauce). Takkali in tamil means tomato so this chutney has tomato as its base seasoned with roasted lentils, onion and spices.


What are the functions of vinegar in cooking? I have used vinegar for flavor as a substitute for salt and noticed that it is used in salads, not sure why perhaps as preserver/flavour. But I have never realized that it could be used in much more like a thing to avoid potatoes turning mush, comment here. So what are the functions of vinegar? Why does it have such functions? According to this, pH of vinegar is about 2.4. It is very hard for me to see its applications. Please, teach why it works how-it-works.

Please, add some scientific tag like chemistry or homebrew-science to show that I am interested in proper explanations.

Vinegar is an acid. It is made from fermenting ethanol. This makes acetic acid.

Much like a kid's vinegar + baking soda = volcano science project, vinegar is sometimes used in breads to help the bread rise. My mom's banana bread is one example. And the more ripe the bananas are, the less acidic they are, so you need more vinegar in her recipe. My wife's mom's Banana bread recipe uses baking powder for the same effect using different chemicals.

Note: There is a difference between baking soda and baking powder.

Because it is acidic, it can be used in marinades to break down meats (or connective tissue). Follow the recipe for the marinade.

Vinegar (since it is an acid) also speeds up coagulation.

You can also use vinegar to preserve things like cucumbers. This is the process of pickling. The acid helps preserve the cucumbers (or other vegetables or fruits). Instead of vinegar (or other acids), you can use other, more natural methods of fermentation to pickle the vegetables. I've never done it, but I hear that they spoil quicker than the vinegar style pickling.

If you want to get into the science of cooking, I recommend "Professional Cooking" by Gisslen - it's a textbook for future chefs in culinary school


How can I cheaply cook a bratwurst that is similar to a grilled brat with only access to an oven or stovetop? I'm currently not TOO excited to spend $100-200+ for a propane grill. Is it possible to cook brats with a small budget (preferably around $20-30, but as high as a soft $50) and get that nice, crispy skin around most of the sausage on a low budget? I have a wobbly, thick, not-nonstick pan (on a glasstop stove), and an oven. Oh, and a good, thick, as well as many terrible thin nonstick pans at my disposal.

Most ovens have a 'broil' setting (where the top element is on, and not the lower element).

You'll likely want a 'broiler pan' so that you can drain the grease away from the food (and catch it so it doesn't light on fire).  They're under $20 online.

Set the rack of the oven so that the food will be about 2" from the upper heating element.
Heat the broiler on its hottest setting, but leave the door to the oven open.
Place the food in the oven, but again, don't close it.
Turn the food occasionally until it's cooked to the level you want.

As for the bit about not closing the door :
If you close the door to the oven, it might heat up too much, and shut off.  You need the element actively heating, so that you have radiant heating, not convection or conduction.  (this is also why you want the food really close to the heating element).  Note that this is for electric ovens -- I don't think gas ovens have the same issue.


Why should dried mushrooms be soaked in warm water? I was looking at some recipes online that included dried mushrooms (mostly porcini). All those recipes and this question mention soaking them in warm water.

Why warm water? Would there be a difference if you would use cold water?

Rehydrating dried fruits and vegetables in warm water is fast - mushrooms might take 15-20 minutes, though some varieties take longer, and it of course depends on how hot your water is. It would take a lot longer with cold water. You can still do it, and possibly more of the flavor will remain in the mushrooms (since you're not effectively cooking them slightly), but it'll take hours - not the kind of thing you can do without advance planning.


Cooking water spinach safely Apparently water spinach (kangkung) has a parasite as it grows in water. How does one cook it safely to ensure that all the parasite eggs/cysts are no longer viable? I worry that with frying they could still be alive inside the hollow stems. Is there a specific amount of time that it must be cooked? Cleaning the chopping board and counter with just soap and water is okay?

Water spinach, like other delta-grown crops, is host to a variety of parasites that can infect humans.  You should wash it in several changes of water; additionally some of my cookbooks (such as Asian Greens) recommend splitting the hollow stems to make sure they are clean on the inside.  Some sources recommend soaking it in salt water as well.

After that, it makes sense to blanch or steam water spinach for a couple of reasons; it kills any remaining parasites, and when frying raw water spinach without blanching, the stems tend not to cook all the way through.


Liquid glucose stuck furniture Since I was trying to make some marshmallows for the first time, I bought liquid glucose as was mentioned in the recipe. But, because of mishandling, the cap off the plastic container was not closed properly by me, and I kept it in a storage cupboard as it was. Now somehow it fell inside the cupboard and spilled inside it. It has now jammed the cupboard door. The problem is that it continues to spill and will soon waste the whole lot.

How can I dissolve this liquid glucose in order to open the door?

Glucose is water soluble, so you can use water to make it return to liquid phase. You can also probably use some penetrating oil / water displacing spray like WD40, which can also help a lot if some of it ended up on the cabinet door hinges.


Why does wind blowing on pretzel dough add a chewy texture? One of the steps in this pretzel recipe is:

  Once the dough has risen, place the trays next to a cold window with some wind blowing. A fan can be used if there is no breeze. This develops a skin on the pretzels which gives that special chewy texture.

What does the breeze do to contribute?

Note: This is done before the boiling step.

My best guess is that it will dry out the surface of the dough.  It may also pull some moisture from the inside of the dough, in addition to drying out the skin. A fan or breeze will let the air pull moisture from the dough - the exposure to a larger volume of air tends to pull moisture off, one reason it feels cooling.  The effect should be greater as the recipe specifies cool air, which tends not to hold enough moisture or humidity to interfere with this drying.

It makes sense that a dough with a dryer skin may be easier to handle during the boiling step, being sturdier and less likely to stretch or deform while being handled.  And I'm not sure, but I think a softer dough might be easier to work or shape, or the uneven drying to have other textural effects, which might be the reason drying the dough out a bit is better than simply using less water to begin with.

The dough will be boiled after this step, but while that will add moisture to the dough, the effects should persist.  A dough that was dried before boiling will still have less moisture than a dough that was not, after both are boiled - boiling can only add so much moisture in such a brief time. Also, a dried skin on the dough would also help limit water absorption during the boiling, since the water has to work through the skin to reach the interior.

Time and temperature also make a difference - a soak would certainly soften the skin back up, but the recipe's brief dip in boiling water will not have time to soften the skin before the heat starts setting it. It would be similar to how starch forms sturdy, chewy lumps if dumped into hot water, but would dissolve in cold and when heated thicken the liquid smoothly instead of forming clumps.  In this case, I'd guess the boiling would heat-set the starches of the dried skin faster than it can re-hydrate.

Another possible analogy that might help would be baking bread - the dough can easily form a skin when baking that changes the texture (by interfering with oven spring) which does not let it rise as easily, making a denser and chewier loaf.  Since that texture is usually undesirable in bread, it is prevented by keeping the surface of the dough moist and pliable with water or oil, and scoring the bread to give room for expansion.

It is additionally possible that heat-setting the dough, by boiling, also helps to set the shape and support a sturdy skin on the dough in order to interfere with any oven spring the pretzel dough might undergo, again giving a denser and chewier texture.  If so, both effects may stack for a more pronounced result.

Of course, much of this is speculation.  The exposure to air will dry out the edges and form a skin, but it is possible that there are some additional benefits (controlling temperature or affecting starch structure, perhaps) that come from adding this step to the recipe that I am unaware of.


How long will powdered turmeric last? I have found a transparent plastic bag of 300g of powdered turmeric in the back of a cupboard, bought in Mauritius in 2011, with a best before date of December 2013.
The bag is still airtight, and the powder inside is still behaving like a dry powder. Nothing suggests that the turmeric inside has gone wrong.
Will it be ok? Will it last once opened?

Does it still smell of turmeric… or more like cardboard? Many herbs & spices don't 'go off' so much as eventually taste & smell of almost nothing.
Test.
Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil, drop half a teaspoon of turmeric into it. Stir briefly. Don't burn it.
Can you smell it properly?
Pour out & let it cool.
Once cooled try dipping some plain white bread into it & tasting.
Does it still taste of anything?
My guess would be it's now little more than yellow powder. Great as a dye, not so much as a spice.
I'd think its saving grace, if there still is one after all this time, is that you bought it close to source. Supermarket spices can be as dead when you first open them as good ones at 2 years.
2 years is really about as far as I'd ever try to stretch though. 10 is more than pushing it.


Replacement for ground almonds in a joconde sponge I am going to try and make a petit gateau with a pistachio joconde layer, however I am not a big fan of almonds. Is there anything I can use that would act as a decent replacement for the ground almonds?

Original recipe is a Mary Berry recipe on the BBC good food site:

For the joconde sponge

3 free-range eggs whites
15g/½oz caster sugar
100g/3½oz ground almonds
100g/3½oz icing sugar
3 free-range eggs
30g/1oz plain four, sifted
30g/1oz unsalted butter, melted

I suggest looking for a recipe without almonds rather than substituting a major ingredient. If you can't find one without almonds, you may have to track down a similar cake recipe under a different name.

I'm sure it would be possible to find another ground nut that would work, but it would take some experimenting because the texture and water/fat content of different nuts varies significantly. Almonds in banking often end up softer than other nuts.

In some parts of Europe, ground hazelnuts are quite common as bulk ingredients in baking, so you may be able to find a recipe based on those with a comparable result. Or you could try the pistachios you mention as a main ingredient, but as I suggested, the texture may suffer.


Put two pork roasts in a crockpot overnight and forgot to plug it in I cooked a couple pork roasts earlier and took them out of the crock pot and then added two more in the still hot water/ juices etc.. Went to bed. Realized I must have unplugged the crockpot the night before when I got up in the morning to check them and take them out. Are these a definite throw aways?

It depends on the temperature. If any portion is between between 40 and 140 degrees F, then that's the danger zone, and you are indeed in danger if you consume them. Or, if part of it was colder and another part warmer, then the part in the middle is almost certainly again in the danger zone.

If everything was above 140 when you woke up, then you should be OK (but given the details I seriously doubt it).


Can I use baking powder to replace cream of tartar I need cream of tartar to make a special apple pie,but I have none can you tell me the correct substitute
I need a proper answer
The pie is called cracker apple pie the crust is made of crackers

Baking powder cannot be used as a substitute for cream of tartar.

Cream of tartar is used in recipes as a dry acid.

Baking powder has cream of tartar added to leavening agents that have a basic pH. Thus baking powder as a whole is not acidic.


First-Aid Kit for Kitchens No one is immune to injury in the kitchen. Cuts and burns especially are common and can be severe. I love cooking with kids and I feel that it's my responsibility to be prepared for potential accidents. Accidents happen in professional kitchens too, and dinner service doesn't stop because the chef cut himself. To be prepared, what items should be found in every kitchen?

The most important things in cooking first aid kits to me are liquid skin, vitamin C powder, and cortisone cream. Obviously antiseptic and bandages are important too, but I assume those are standard.

Liquid skin (basically clear nail polish) is antiseptic and helps to seal up cuts so they stop bleeding faster. It also helps to prevent the effect that any kitchen worker will recognize where an otherwise insignificant cut keeps getting reopened and filling your gloves with blood.

The vitamin C powder is a miracle for burns. You put a pinch in some cold water and rinse the burn with it. It's very soothing and seems to help them heal faster.

Cortisone cream is primarily a bakery thing. Prolonged skin exposure to flour frequently causes rashes and cortisone cream helps to relieve the itching and get the rashes to go away faster.