How to properly cook a kid? Goat. Goat kid.

I have a three month old goat kid that recently had to be moved to the freezer.

Most of the goat recipes that I see call for long braising in strong flavors. I assume they are using older animals with a lot of connective tissue and goaty flavor.

Is this true of kids as well? Can I just grill the meat like chicken or should I plan on doing a slow braise? Will this work for the rack of ribs as well as they seem to have more connective tissue?

I am going to be experimenting with this new meat but I want to waste as little as possible in my experiments.

Older goat tends to have a very strong flavor, hence why many suggest braising in strong flavors. You can braise your kid following these recipes - just remember to use 3/4th the amount of strong seasonings as you would for a regular goat.

As for grilling the meat, you could try to marinate the meat overnight with herbs and spices. Unlike chicken, which is a fairly blank canvas taste-wise, goat has a strong taste (even kid meat has a slight gamey/goat-y flavor). As I said, if grilling, marinate.

If you're braising or stewing, toss in a beer, some mint or basil and a few other herbs.

For the ribs - you could french them to get rid of some of the connective tissue and then marinate and roast them at low heat for a few hours to break down some of the connective tissue.

Good luck and great eating!


Do I have to change the baking time when I convert fahrenheit to Celsius? So in this recipe i should bake my cookies to 350 degrees F for 8 to 10 minutes.350 degrees fahrenheit is about 176 Celsius degrees and i dont know if I should change the baking time to more or less minutes.Anybody help me ?

No. 350F is exactly the same as 176.66...C

Follow the recipe in exactly the same way


Griddle pan vs. Large frypan? I used to have a Lodge cast iron griddle that fit over 2 burners but the middle wouldn't get hot properly so I put it in the closet.

Instead I bought 2 separate stainless steel demeyere brand griddles with a shallow lip around it:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31QS7WXC5QL.jpg

The more I think about it, is there anything that these stainless griddles could do that I can't do with a 12-13 inch frypan.

I'm considering buying 2 frypans instead.

Can someone help me please?

Handling flatbreads, pancakes, crepes, patties.... and other flatfood will  be more awkward with a deeper pan, you will need to lift (and probably damage) the food more to get a tool underneath it.

Evaporation can be quicker with a very shallow or completely flat pan or griddle, due to less possibility of steam gathering up in the pan itself (compare to the pathological case of sauteing in a stockpot). But the pans you bought are already very shallow.

The visual impression of the actual cooking will be far more mundane if frypans are used (if that didn't matter in cooking, Teppanyaki would never ever have been invented).

Also, cooking a 14+ inch long piece of food whole will be difficult.


What is special about pierogi dough? I wanted to make home-made pierogis. Is there a special dough that needs to be used?  I wanted the pierogis to be fairly thick - what type of dough would work best?

Some pierogi recipes include sour cream in the dough; they also often have more egg than a typical basic pasta dough.


What's the best way to cook BBQ ribs in the oven and grill? I have some pork ribs that I want to barbecue, but being relatively inexperienced with BBQ and lacking a decent grill thermometer, I want to simplify things by cooking them partly in the oven and partly in the grill. Researching online has thrown up many variations as to temperature, timing, and which order to cook them in. So, some sub-questions:

Is it better to grill the ribs first, then put them in the oven, or vice versa?
In either case, is it best to use indirect or direct heat on the grill to get the necessary smokiness and glaze?
What temperature should the ribs be cooked at in the oven and for roughly how long (I know outcome is more important than timing)
Should the ribs be wrapped in foil in the oven for the entire cook?

FWIW my instinct is to grill (with some wood chips for smoke) first, then oven, but my concern then is how to get a good glaze.

The goal with ribs is "low and slow" cooking to break down connective tissue.  But a quick sear will help to lock in juices and provide a good smoky flavor.  I find it's preferable to do this first so that the smokiness can work its way into the meat over the slow cook to come.

After seasoning, I would start with a sear on your grill over direct heat (8-10 minutes per side).  Then, either move to a very low indirect heat on the grill and cover, which will provide a more smoky flavor, or transfer to your oven at a very low temperature (most home ovens go down to about 250F which is what I'd use).  Baste both sides every half hour or so if you're using sauce.  It should take about 2-3 hours at this low temperature to get good results, although you can let it go a lot longer if you want.  I would have no problem at all cooking ribs for 6, 8, or 10 hours assuming you've got the time.

If you're cooking on the grill the whole time, the smoke will help create a delicious glaze.  If in the oven and the glaze isn't as thick as you'd like by the time you're ready to serve, you can crank on the broiler and place the ribs underneath for just a couple minutes to dry out the glaze a bit.

You do not need to wrap them in foil during cooking if you have quality ribs and cook them slow.  The only time I'd wrap them in foil would be at the very end once you have finished cooking, in order to keep them warm until you're ready to serve.


Where should heat comes from when baking brownies? I’ve tried baking brownies  many times and they are always burnt on the top (darkened to black instead of being brown). My question is where should I set the heat to comes from, from bottom, top, both and with fan or no fan.

Edit: I am using a electric oven and baking at 180 C

Fan ovens are generally regarded as 10% hotter than regular ovens, so I would suggest fan only, dropping the oven thermostat setting down by that amount than your recipe dictates. Fan mode will give you a more even, consistent temperature throughout the whole oven, whereas the different elements (and non-fan mode) will bring different results.

Using the top and bottom elements will concentrate the heat at the top and bottom of the oven respectively, and will also affect the texture of the top and bottom of whatever you are cooking. Non-fan may lead to hot-spots or the heat concentrating around the elements.

I find turning all the elements on at first to quickly preheat the oven, then switching to fan gives good results, but I have a very large 90cm single oven.

https://hummingbirdbakery.com/blogs/hummingbird-bakery-blog/oven-temperatures-and-baking-explained


Does baking time increase when making multiple Pumpkin Bread Puddings? The baking instructions for one Pumpkin Bread Pudding is 350° for 30-40 minutes.

Would the time change for baking three at the same time, 1lb 4oz each? Would the baking time remain the same or would the time increase?

It mostly depends on whether you're able to arrange them in the oven with plenty of space. If they all fit on one rack, with a few inches between the pans, it should be basically the same baking time. They're all still in an oven of the same temperature they'd be in if baked alone.

But if things get crowded, especially if you have to put them on the top and bottom rack, with one at least partially over another, then you may need increased baking time. They'll essentially shield each other, i.e. the air will end up a little bit cooler in the area between them. In that case you'd probably also want to rotate and shuffle them around once or twice during baking, to avoid them browning more on the exposed parts and less on the shielded parts.

The oven will also take slightly longer to come back up to temperature with more in it, but likely on the scale of a difference of a minute or two as long as it's a completely preheated full-size oven, so for something that's baked 30-40 minutes you don't really need to worry about. The most direct information I found about this was from BakeWise:

  Even if you have a well-preheated oven, if you open the oven door ... (the time that the oven was open can be over 1 minute) the drop in the oven temperature can be 175F/79C). Recovery time can be several minutes.

So having more bread puddings does extend that recovery time, not just by putting cold mass in the oven, but also by requiring the door to be open longer while you're loading them into the oven. But again in this case that's not the important factor; even if it adds a couple minutes to the baking time, you still need to worry more about the air circulation, and you were already checking in a 10 minute range anyway.


How do I find / buy "pastry bars"? In Moderist cuisine, they repeatedly refer to "pastry bars" for a number of techniques. However, when I try to search / find these things on the internet, my search engine results are hundreds of thousands of snack bars and other Kellog's "boxed products".

I've tried "baking bars", "baking weights" and a number of other variations.

Is there another name for these things that will help me find them?

Here's an image showing "baking bars" on a silicone mat to create a gel:

"Pastry bars metal" seems to work. The results I got were for "caramel ruler bars" or "ganache ruler bars". Other terms are "confectionery rulers" which gave me a forum that recommended getting them cut for you at a metal shop from stainless steel at whatever lengths you want for less than buying purpose made ones.

That said, I'm not sure that's actually what you're looking for. These seem to be bars for rolling out dough or fondant to a specific thickness, not designed to be used for shaping things the way your photo implies.

The term that I found that more closely resembles what you're looking for is "confectionery frames".


How do I substitute skim milk for dry milk in a muffin recipe? My muffin recipe calls for 1 1/3 cups of nonfat dry milk. Other than the 4 eggs, there is no other liquid. How much skim milk would I substitute for the dry milk?

You don't, it will not work.

You want to substitute liquid milk for dried milk.

What you don't realise is that the dried milk in such a recipe is acting as a bulking agent, ie. the dried milk is already substituting for some flour.

If you don't have dried milk, you should look for another recipe that doesn't use it, if you want to be certain of reliable results.


Why re-boiling milk doesn't boil over again? When I heat milk, at some point it begins to boil over.
When I reheat the same milk after it has reached boiling point once before, it doesn't boil over again, it just boils "normally". Why is this?
I haven't done extensive testing, and I can't seem to find information about this anywhere; be it in English or in my native language. But here is what has happened to me:

I make a homemade hot beverage with low fat milk, cocoa, sugar and coffee (a pseudo-Mocha). Enough for 2 cups.
I boil the pseudo-Mocha, and hope to pay enough attention to prevent it boiling over, but there is still the "rising bubble" phenomenon occurring.
I pour out one cup, the rest of the liquid stays in the pan.
A few hours later, I boil the pseudo-Mocha again.
This time, no bubbly phenomenon occurs, just "classical" boiling.

If you heat food high enough, you can cause chemical changes.  Letting it cool back off doesn't necessarily reverse these changes.
Typical changes include:

deactivation of enzymes
denaturing (breaking down) proteins
converting sugars into more complex forms
evaporation of part of the liquid

In general, we call this 'cooking', but there's specifically a term in English for that you're doing to the milk: scalding
I suspect that you've denatured the proteins in the milk, and proteins can create foams (such as what happens when you whip egg whites or the liquid from canned beans), but there might be other processes that have happened as well.
I also know that scalding isn't called for typically in modern cookbooks.  Part of this is because today's milk is homogenized and pasteurized, and so some of the chemical changes that we get from scalding have already happened.  But there are still quite a few people who insist that you need to scald milk for certain types of bread making, or you won't get the proper rise and final texture from the loaves.


Is Beer Can Chicken safe? Some time ago I've read about Beer Can Chicken.

I've never heard of this in my area, but it seems (and looks) tasty! So I would like to give it a try. There is just one thing that worries me:

Is it safe to bake a can on the grill (or in the oven) like this? Doesn't it give off any chemical flavours?

My main concern (would have been) BPA, as most cans nowadays are coated with BPA plastics inside to protect flavor.  Cooks Illustrated evaluated the BPA leeched into chicken using this method:

  Beer can interiors are coated with an epoxy that contains Bisphenol A
  (BPA). Is the popular method of cooking a chicken perched on an open
  beer can really a good idea?

  Some studies have linked BPA to cancer and other harmful health
  effects. To evaluate the ramifications of cooking chicken on a beer
  can, we roasted two whole birds, one set on an open beer can
  containing 6 ounces of beer and the other on a stainless-steel
  vertical roaster with the same amount of beer poured into the
  reservoir. After roasting the chickens, we collected their drippings
  and stripped each carcass, grinding the meat and skin to create
  homogeneous samples. We sent the samples to a lab to be evaluated for
  BPA content.

  In each chicken, the BPA measured less than 20 micrograms per
  kilogram, leading us to believe that the beer can cooking method is
  safe. (The Food and Drug Administration’s current standard for
  exposure is 50 micrograms per kilogram of body weight for adults, or
  3,400 micrograms per day for a 150-pound person.) For those who have
  any remaining concerns, there is always the vertical roaster, which
  works just as well as a low-tech option.

  Published May 1, 2011. From Cook's Illustrated.

There are several available vertical roasters that act just like a beer can.  Here's a photo of the Steven Raichlen SR8016:


How many years does canned jelly stay safe to eat? I have several jars of canned grape jelly that are at least 10 years old. Are they still safe to eat?

Canned food basically never expires. That being said, check to make sure there isn't any rust, dents, or swelling on the can, and make sure the food smells okay and there are no cloudy, mushy, or moldy bits of food. It should be safe if it passes all these checks.


Does canning stock raise its temperature too high? I've read that the ideal way to make stock is to:

crack the large bones
place the carcass in a stock pot
cover with water
bring it to a simmer (not a boil) on the stove
place the whole thing in the oven on 180F for 6+ hours (possibly add vegetables an hour before you're done)

Apparently the temperature is key. You don't want it to go over 180F because that ... does something to the stock. Harsher flavors or cloudy stock. Can't recall what.

After all of this cooking of stock is done, you want to preserve it.  Canning seems ideal because it frees up freezer space. But would the canning process raise the temperature of the stock above that 180F mark that seems so critical?

The purpose of using a low simmer during stock-making is to avoid agitating the liquid.  You want the fat to settle on top, but a rapid boil will simply disperse the fat and other impurities all throughout the stock, resulting in - as you've hinted at - a cloudy texture and possibly an inferior taste.

The other reason to avoid boiling is simply to prevent the stock from reducing too much.  If you're simmering for 6 hours, you could lose all the water.  If you leave the stock unattended during that time, and the water level drops too low, then you're not getting anything out of it; the water needs to be covering the bones in order to break down the collagen.

All that said, once you are finished with stock, you should have skimmed it and strained it through a fine sieve and probably a few layers of cheesecloth as well.  If you've made your stock correctly, it will be clear and have (almost) no fat.  Boiling it briefly at that point isn't really going to harm it; there's not enough fat left to cloud the stock and you're not boiling it for long enough to really reduce it.

So I would say go ahead and don't worry about the temperature.  As far as I know, nothing magical happens at 180° F, that's just a rough temperature guideline for "low simmer".


How long can a stacked carrot cake be stored I'm baking a cake for someone's wedding and need advice on whether a carrot cake can be stacked and how long can it be stored.

There are two main considerations here -- temperature, and icing.

For most stacked cakes, you typically don't want to store them in the fridge once they're iced, because the chill can cause condensation on the cake once it's removed from the fridge, which can adversely affect the job that you did icing it.

If your room temperature is relatively cool (ie, it's winter and you don't blast the heat, or it's summer and you're running the air conditioning), with most cakes, you're fine leaving them at room temperature for up to three days, with or without icing, although if without, you'll want it covered or wrapped to prevent it drying out.  (personally, I always bake my cakes the day before I stack and frost them, so that they've had a chance to thoroughly cool before splitting the layers apart).

My real concern is that carrot cakes often get a cream cheese frosting, and I would want to keep that refrigerated.  If you're not using cream cheese, then you likely don't have to worry, but if you are, I would bake the cake two days in advance, let it cool to room temp overnight, stack it (or at least, each tier), then put it in the fridge, and ice it the day of the event.

If that would be too tight of a time frame on the day of the event, I'd ice it a day or two before, but do whatever I could to prevent condensation.  If it's the sort of icing that crusts up a little bit, you might be able to let it sit out 'til it's set up well, then wrap it in plastic wrap / cling film, refrigerate it, then pull it out the morning of, let it get to room temp, then unwrap to do the final stack.  If it doesn't crust up, I'd look into getting appropriately sized cake boxes or other containers for when you store it in the fridge and let it come back up to temperature.


How do you remove the chicken smell from Tandoori chicken? The last time I cooked the chicken, it had a strong chicken smell. I know that the chicken was not bad because I was fine after eating it. Also, I defrosted it for 24 hours and immediately cooked it.

I'm not sure whether the flesh smell comes because of the marinade (something we need to add),

or the way it is cooked (like don't air fryer it, or don't use 200 Celsius for cooking, or keep the gas grill on low),

or do we need to wash chicken after defrosting it (WHO recommends not washing chicken to avoid the water splashing around, and I guess store bought chicken might be pre-washed, but not sure whether we need to wash it to remove the water that gets accumulated after defrosting it),

or is it to do with adding more oil while cooking,

or is it that I must be careful to discard all marinade that's left over in the bowl rather than use them to coat the chicken one last time?

I'm totally at my wit's end about to get rid of the chicken smell.

You should try a South Indian way to remove the raw smell of the chicken and this method applies for any meat. After defrosting the chicken, wash it and marinate it with some haldi (turmeric Powder),leave aside for 5-10 minutes and then start the actual marination.


How long does butter cream icing keep? My icing is 1/4 cup butter to 1 1/2 cups of icing sugar and a couple tablespoons of milk, so I'm thinking that with so much sugar, the answer is "almost indefinitely in the fridge."

So, as the title says, how long is it reasonable to keep the remnants of a batch?  Although I've made small amounts (like the above recipe) on occasion, I'd like to make a big batch, seal it up, and use it as needed.

(I realize that it might not work as well a month or two down the road, I'll experiment with it if I decide it's ok to use.)

Well you're kinda right about it lasting a long time due to the sugar content.  That will help the preserving process to the extreme.  However, to be pratical you should be looking at how long the butter fat will survive in the fridge before it starts to take on funky flavours and loses it's moisture.

You'll be fine in an air tight tub for a month or so but then flavour will suffer.  If you freeze it (it can be done but the quality will really suffer later) you can get away with 4-6 months before freezer burn kills it.

Honestly, I'd just do smaller batches and enjoy the higher quality product.  For what you save on time doing the larger batch, you'll give up on taste and quality later.


Cook lentils before or after shaping into veggie meatballs? I would like to make vegetarian meatballs out of green lentils. Will I get better results by grinding the lentils first into lentil flour and then forming into meatballs, or only grinding them after cooking them?

The recipe that I traditionally used calls for cleaned then boiled lentils that were then allowed to cool and then transferred to the food processor and reduced to a smooth paste.


Could a non-bitter eggplant become bitter after cooking? I've seen a couple of questions here, that touch the issue of aubergine bitterness:

How do you make sure aubergine doesn't go bitter when cooking?
Rubbing eggplants in salt

But nobody writes about the connection between the taste of a raw and a cooked eggplant. (Do not be afraid to taste a raw eggplant - it's not poisonous, you would have to eat 36 raw eggplants to cause any harm.)

So, if you chew a small bit of a piled eggplant before cooking, and it does not taste bitter, is that a guarantee that it will not taste bitter after cooking?

Hello Alexander and welcome! All of the information I've seen about eggplants say that it is less bitter with cooking. So, if it is not bitter when raw, it should not get bitter when cooked.

As you note, there are several ways to remove excess moisture and bitterness. Some of those would be salting, peeling, and removing the pith and seeds. However, most eggplants today are bred to not have the bitterness, or at least not as much.

Always be sure to use young, fresh eggplant as the more they mature the more bitterness they will have if they are prone to it.


Bread Proving Time in Warm Climates I'm following one Paul Hollywood's recipe for the "Basic White Tin Bread" from his book "
How To Bake".

In the recipe it states to prove

  for about 1 hour, until the dough is at least doubled in size and
  springs back quickly if you prod it slightly with your finger.

I followed the recipe and all seemed to go well until baking. The rise in the oven was poor at best. The crumb appears okay but it's very dense as you get to the bottom of the loaf.

I've been googling and it appears the problem may be that I have over proven.

Paul Hollywood is located in the UK and his book is aimed at locals (evidenced by comments about ideal kitchen temp of 20C to 22C, 68f to 71.6f). I live in Brisbane, Queensland. The ambient temperature yesterday was 28.5C (83f). He also states in the recipe to use water that is cool (around 15C / 77f) so I use water from the fridge mixed with tap water.

So my questions are:

Does the ambient temperature of the kitchen affect the prove time? If so how?
Does the water temperature have an impact on just the rise or on the proving as well?
Should I shorten the prove time and if so how to I judge how much?

They really boil down to, how do I factor in the sub tropical climate when using a bread recipe written for the UK and north America?

Btw, I'm not keen on continually poking the dough while proving as I'm concerned that this may affect the prove.

A higher water and ambient temperature definitely speed up proving and rising. The consequence is poorer flavour and dense bread. Generally the slower the rise the better the bread.

If you don't have somewhere cool in the house, try proving at room temperature for, say, 20 mins to get the yeast going, then finishing in the fridge. Or if you can wait, just put it straight in the fridge and wait overnight. Take it out an hour or two before baking to take the chill off.


Is thick fruit skin safe to be eaten? There are kinds of fruit where it's common for people to eat the fruit together with the skin (apple, grapes etc.).  But there are some where people would peel off the skin beforehand like the kind of orange, banana, water melon etc. The skin does contain a heavy dose of fiber, and am wondering is it safe, or even healthy, to eat the skin?

But has anyone eat fruits such as orange or banana wholly without peeling off the skin, and find any health issue (positive or negative)? Assuming the skin is washed clean, do people peel skin because just it taste bitter?

this depends very much on:

the specific kind of fruit you're about to eat;
Cultural normatives;
your personal flavor and preference;

For instance: I eat Avocados with the skin. Seriously. I do. Some of my friends consider it to be weird, but i couldn't care less - when they are ripe i just slice them as they are, stack 'em on a piece of bread and feast away with a sprinkle of salt.

Most fruits i know of have edible skins - even citrus skin, as sour and zesty as it may be, is edible - and is used for producing all sorts of sweets, flavor extract and even food for animals.

I wouldn't go ahead and eat the skin of the Durian fruit - it's probably 'edible' but.... i donno.... it just doesn't feel right (plus the smell of it is UNBEARABLE)


Chiffon Cake Problem I would like to know what are the causes for a chiffon cake to have a caved in centre.

After baking, the cake turns out with a nice dome. The cake is overturned immediately to cool. But after about 15 minutes of cooling, the centre of the cake which was previously a dome became caved in (not too deeply caved in, maybe just about 2cm from the level of the cake height.)

So the result after the cake is cooled, the top of the cake (which was previously the bottom) is light and fluffy and the bottom of the cake (which was previously the top) is dense.

The sides and bottom of the cake are evenly browned. The sides do not shrink as much as the centre.

The cake is baked at 160C-Fan for 45min for a 5-egg recipe. I use cake flour and a very small amount of baking powder.

Welcome to the site @Jules. Your temperature is right and you did get rise, it sounds to me like your cake was underbaked, which is why it collapsed. When you bake a cake (or any batter) you get rise from the creation of steam, expansion of air due to heat, and leavening agents creating gas from the reaction between an acid and a base. This expansion stretches the batter, which needs to crystallize in order to retain its shape. If you don't bake it long enough the structure of the cake won't hold, and when it cools it snaps back and becomes very dense.

The times given on a recipe are guidelines, you get different baking times because of differences in ovens, equipment, even the temperature and humidity of your kitchen. Because of this you have to bake to the result you want. The method I use for determining when a chiffon cake is done is to listen rather than touch. A chiffon cake pops a lot, it's done when the popping slows down to less than one pop per second. Firstly, don't open the oven until at least 10 minutes after the cake stops rising, you don't want to disturb it. At that point you'll probably hear lots of popping. I give 5 minutes between pop checks until I hear the popping noticeably lessen, then I check every 2 minutes. You can also use the touch test, you want the cake to spring back, but for me the pop test works every time.


How can I use white pepper without having the odor dominate the food flavour? I received several different pepper (spice) for christmas. One of them is a white pepper. Whenever I use (very) little of this white pepper in my dishes, the odor/flavor is very dominant cutting out all other flavors. How can I use this pepper without losing the other flavors?

It's interesting that this is your experience, since "common knowledge" is the white pepper is milder than black.  White pepper is the dried ripe fruit of the pepper Piper Nigrum, and the black is the unripe, cured and dried fruit.  Black is usually hotter than white, but generally they are considered to be interchangeable, with the white being used in sauces and in cream dishes for a better look (no black specks).

Since this pepper is so strong for some reason, I would advise that you only use it in dishes that rely on the pepper flavor to the exclusion of others, say steak au poivre, or pepper pot, or salt and pepper scallops.

Other than that you can cut back on the amount or grind it now and let it sit around for a while...pepper has its strongest, best flavor when freshly ground; it kills me to suggest that, but I'm trying to answer your question.

If it were mine, I would try to figure out a dish that this pepper would truly enhance, as I suggested.


can you cool manicotti noodles off completly before stuffing Can I cool off the manicotti noodles completely before stuffing them?

What is your method for cooling the pasta? Is the goal to have it cool enough to work with? Or to stop the cooking process, keeping in mind it's going in the oven later?

My opinion is that the only cases when you should rinse pasta after cooking is if you're making a cold pasta salad, or if you're going to serve it plain. The reason why you should avoid this method of cooling it in virtually every other case is because in a great majority of the time you'll be adding a sauce to your pasta and you want the starch that's covering the surface of the pasta to help the sauce stick. This way all of the ingredients in your dish will be well incorporated and just give it that little nudge that makes all the difference.

Ultimately if you end up with overcooked pasta out of the oven you can always reduce the cooking time in the pot and if your sauce has enough moisture the pasta will keep cooking through in the oven (which would most likely be the cause of your problem in the first place, but we're clever, we'll work around it, take advantage of that!!).


Why is honey and mustard mixed together runny? When I pour honey, it's very viscous.  Thick enough that if I put some on a plate, I could turn it upside down and back to right-side up without spilling the honey.

When I pour mustard, it's also quite viscous (although maybe not quite as much as honey, and it depends on the type and brand).

However, when I add the two viscous substances together, I get a very runny substance, closer to the viscosity of water.  Why does that happen?

I'm no chemist or anything, but the sugar is probably at fault.

Honey is a saturated sugar solution. So saturated, in fact, that it tends to crystalize over time.

Mustard is a mix of solids (mustard seeds) with liquids (water, vinegar and others). Its consistency is determined by how much liquid the solids can absorb.

By mixing both together, you add lots of sugar to the mustard. Sugar pulls liquid out of solids by osmosis. The concentration of sugar outside of the solid mustard particles is much higher than inside. To even out the concentration, water is pulled from inside the solid particles and dilutes the mix, making it runny.

You can observe the same effect if you sprincle fresh fruit with sugar. The sugar pulls the juice out of the fruits. In an industrial scale this method is used to produce dry fruit: substances like sucrose, invert sugar, corn syrup and of course salt draw the moisture out of the solid fruit or vegetable and leave a relitively dry product behind. (source)


Is it safe to eat the white “dots” in peaches? As you can see there are white "dots" where the seed used to be.

Is it OK to eat them?
What are they, anyway? (I was worried they're some parasite or disease of the fruit)

Meh, How Bad Could it Be?

Been eating peaches with these things for as long as I can remember. I seem perfectly fine and nothing ever happened to ... OMG ALIENS!! AHHH!!!

Harmless Callus Tissue

Anyways, more seriously, they're absolutely harmless and are just extra tissue called callus tissue, as sourced from these:

http://www.hmcfarms.com/what-are-the-white-spots-that-appear-inside-a-peach-pit
http://www.ehow.com/info_8774670_white-stuff-peach-pit.html
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_white_stuff_on_the_inside_of_a_peach

Ok, But What Exactly is that Callus Thing?

  Plant callus (plural calluses or calli) is a mass of unorganized parenchyma cells derived from plant tissue (explants) for use in biological research and biotechnology. In plant biology, callus cells are those cells that cover a plant wound. - from Wikipedia's article on Callus (emphasis mine)


How should chuck roast be grilled to maximize tenderness? Forgive me if this question has been asked before, I did a search and did not find it.

I have cut up a chuck roast into steak slices (relatively thin, maybe half an inch), tenderized it and marinated it overnight. I am now ready to grill it. I have read contradictory advice online on the best way to grill it, the disagreement being whether to grill it 'low and slow' or 'high and fast' to ensure maximum tenderness (that is, to preserve whatever tenderness was there and ensure it doesnt become 'tougher').

I know, chuck roast is not typically designed for grilling or doing what I'm doing, so I'm not looking on a lecture on that, I'm simply asking if I want to preserve whatever tenderness is there, will I have a better shot grilling it low and slow or high and fast?

As a side note, its grass fed beef, and just by throwing a few small pieces on a frying pan last night for a few minutes yielded (surprisingly) relatively tender meat.

Your best method of making chuck tender is to cook it low and slow, as per traditional barbecue.

The reason for this is that chuck is a relatively tough meat, full of connective tissue (the protein collagen, among others).

By cooking low and slow for a long time, you raise the internal temperature of the meat to about 170 F to 180 F for an extended period, at which temperatures over time, in the presence of moisture (either part of the meat itself, or external) the collagen will convert to gelatin, converting from a touch to a succulent and tender product.  This is the principal employed in both braising and barbecue (as opposed to grilling, which is a high heat technique normally).

Note that the collagen to gelatin conversion creates the tenderness, it is not preserving tenderness, since it was not a tender cut to start with.

At this point, since you have already sliced the meat, I believe your best approach would be to create an indirect fire or flame.  Place the meat in a disposable pan layered together to minimize drying, away from the fire, and allow to cook slowly for at a low temperature (say 250 F to 300 F air temperature as measured in the grill with its lid on) for several hours, at least about 4 hours and up to 8 to 12 hours, until it is fall apart tender.

You may also do this in the oven rather than on the grill.  It will also be amenable to braising techniques, as opposed to dry roasting/barbecuing.

While it is too late for this particular chuck, in the future you may have better success not slicing it prior to barbecuing.

If you are thinking of grilling as a high temperature technique and do not want to do the low and slow methods, I am afraid this will not work out well with chuck.  It is naturally not tender, and these high temperature grilling will not facilitate enhancing the tenderness.  If you are time constrained, you would be better off freezing your marinated chuck for another time, and cooking something else that does respond well to the fast, intense heat of grilling, like steaks or pork chops.


Why are jelly donuts usually raspberry flavored Why are jelly donuts filled with raspberry flavored jelly unless specified otherwise.  There are lemon filled, strawberry filled, etc but if you just ask for a "jelly donut" it will be raspberry filled.

I think this might actually be a regional thing. In my area, we're more likely to get blueberry or apple jelly doughnuts. It's probably got to do with whatever fruit is cheapest to use in large quantities for the location where the doughnuts are being made.


Which spice gives brown colour to Indian curry? Many of the premixed curry pastes and curry dishes I have eaten have a brownish / reddish colour to them.

I have a nice collection of spices that I cook with, but my curries seem to always look and taste quite similar. Most of these are a yellowy colour, dominated by turmeric.

Thinking of butter chicken and also a goat masala that is available at a local restaurant; what dominant coloured spice am I missing that would give my curries a red or brown colour?

I am assuming that these would introduce me to some new flavours that I can mix and match with.

Note: I already have paprika.

I've seen a lot of different curry recipes with varying levels of authenticity, but the most common ingredients I see in curries that might impart that colour are:

Garam masala (brown)
Chili powder (red)
Cumin (brown)
Paprika (red)
Tandoori powder (usually a mix of masala, cumin, ground red pepper, fenugreek, and others - very red)
Saffron (red)

Still, it's all kind of a moot point, because, in Indian restaurants the most common source of red is actually red food colouring.  Don't kid yourself; Indian restaurants use plenty of "artificial" ingredients - they also usually use food colouring in the saffron rice, which is how they get those few vibrant red grains to mix in with the yellowish rice.


Cleaning burnt-on grease with ammonia I recently ran into this (put your pans etc in a closed container {a garbage bag will do}, pour in a bit of household ammonia and let it sit for many hours) and love it.  However, I also have some pans with those black plastic? handles, is it safe to do on them also?  I also have a teflon pan that has some grease stuck on the outside.  Since there's no way to treat only the outside {it's the fumes that do the work, you don't immerse things} is that safe?

After asking this in multiple places and finding nobody with an answer I decided to test with the gunkiest cover.  The handle came through fine.  I'm not going to try the teflon pan.


Do you need eggs for extruded pasta dough? I'm wanting to make pasta using my KitchenAid pasta press. Many recipes I see use eggs, but some use only water. I'm thinking using so many eggs would get expensive if I do this regularly, so I'm wondering what benefit they add? Can they be partially or fully replaced with water?

The original pasta recipes of old were simply wheat and water.  Eggs or oil (the two most popular "water substitutes" in pasta recipes) are not at all necessary to make pasta dough, but they will have an impact on how the dough turns out.

Now, it's hard to give a firm "this is the best way to do it" answer, because everyone has their own preferences on pasta doughs, but you will tend to find that egg-based pastas are a litte more "creamy" than water-based ones.  In my experience, they work fairly well for rolling and cutting, but seem to be a little to "sticky" when extruding.  When I've tried it, the dough has had some issues with sticking to the various extruder plates, causing the pasta to tear.

Now, I have not tried it myself, but I've heard that water-based pasta doughs to much better with extruders/presses, because you can control that "stickiness" a little better and make a slightly drier dough, which comes out much more smoothly.  I've been meaning to try it myself, but have not gotten around to it yet (I really love the flavor of egg pastas, so I tend to just make those and cut them, instead   :)   ).


Are sausages made using the whole body of a chick? I have seen videos that chicks are going into a grinder alive. (Please don't watch this video if you are a sensitive person.)

Is it true that sausages are made this way, with all the body parts of a chick, (like bowels, feathers, and things people don't eat)?

First, most sausages are made from ground pork, not ground chicken. Second, most chickens that we eat are not killed as chicks but when they are larger. Third, in the vast majority of countries there are rules around cleaning animal carcasses before using them, such as removing at least the bowel contents if not the guts themselves. There are also rules about being humane to the animals. Putting live animals straight into a grinder would violate these rules.

But even if you don't believe in government inspectors, ask yourself - why make a nasty sausage with feathers, bones, and poop in it? Who would buy that a second time? And why waste (assuming by chick you meant a large fullsize chicken) the parts you can sell at a much higher price per pound or kg than you can sell sausages? It makes way more sense to remove the breasts and legs, and use the wings, back, neck etc in your cheaper dishes. Which, as I said in my first point, are probably not sausages because chicken sausages are unusual.

It seems the videos of very tiny chicks (just hatched) going into a grinder are real, but the output of the grinder isn't used for sausage or any other human-consumption. This is done for male chicks in egg-producing operations. The output of the grinder may go to pet food or simply be disposed of. Apparently the grinder is considered more humane than putting a bunch of live chicks in a plastic bag until they suffocate, or some of the other culling options. See Jefromi's Wikipedia link for more.


Tabasco flavor without pain? I love the strong flavor of buffalo wings, Tabasco, etc. Are capsaicinoids integral to this flavor, or can the "heat" be removed. I guess I'm not a fan of my mouth burning for considerable periods after the fact. Besides that, my SO is allergic to them, and I'd love to be able to make tasty tacos that she can safely eat.

The heat provided by capsaicin really is a pretty unique one that seems to have a lot to do with how it binds to pain receptors (see Aaronut's answer from a previous thread).  I think this component would be pretty much impossible to replicate with a substitution, unless you want to physically burn yourself on your meal.  You could experiment with alternative sources of strong, pungent flavor like garlic, ginger, black pepper, and horseradish, which are similar but certainly distinct.  Chinese-style tacos, maybe?

That said, Tabasco and other "pepper sauces" like buffalo sauce often feature vinegar as one of their primary ingredients besides chili peppers.  A few dashes cut with a bit of olive oil may help replicate some of that sharpness; think a strong vinaigrette.  It won't be quite the same, but it will help recapture at least one of those elements without causing harm to your unfortunate partner.


Roast Turkey - How to get the meat to fall off the bones Roughly, my procedure for roast turkey is:

start with a frozen turkey
a couple of days of partial thawing in the fridge
soak in brine for 12-24 hours to complete thawing and get it more-or-less brined
cook for 1 to 1.5 hours at 450
cook for 4 hours or so at 275

The resulting turkey is always good, but sometimes it results in a very "loose" bird with the meat falling nicely off the bones.  The meat-falling-off-the-bones bird doesn't look as nice for presentation, but I don't care about that.  I find it way easier to process.

So I'd like to achieve that meat-falling-off-the-bones state every time, but I don't.  I feel like my process is close enough to being the same every time, but I never know if I'm going to get the desired results.

Yesterday's bird was not as desired, and I noted that it had been brined for only about 12 hours.  This made me wonder if longer brining helps achieve what I'm wanting.  Other times I've just thought it needed to cook for longer, but doing so didn't seem to help.

I would assume that cooking at low heat for a long time would help get the right texture, kind of like how cooking a pork shoulder for 8 hours low and slow turns it into pulled pork. You might also want to add some liquid for your turkey to braise with - If it doesn't have enough moisture, the meat will tighten up, dry, and contract. If you braise it, it will absorb some cooking liquids. Not sure if braising a turkey is a great idea, though.


eggnog doubling the ingredients, what is the new cook time? I am attempting to make homemade eggnog. My recipe requires you to cook your mixture (which is good, as I am pregnant and can't have raw eggs but would love to taste my end result). I do however need to double all the ingredients as I am making a large quanity. How do I determine how long to cook it on the stove top? The original cook time is an hour. This is my recipe if this helps anyone.

The goal is not to cook the eggnog for a particular time, but to a particular outcome, in this case to hit a temperature of 160°F, which will thicken the custard (eggnog is a very thin custard).

The exact amount of time this will take depends on the size and shape of your pot, and the heat output of your element or burner, and is hard to predict.

You can use roughly double as a very rough estimate, but you will want to monitor the temperature, and remove it when it is actually done.


Duck breast; Trouble crisping skin I scored skin, started in cold, cast-iron pan, but as skin and breast contracted the major center of breast seemed to rise a tad from griddle and would not brown, even after 15 minutes. Only the edges seemed to brown.

How can I cook the Duck Breast so that all the skin browns without drying out the edges?

Without knowing exactly what's going on (i.e. looking over your shoulder), I can only answer in the general (some of which I assume you know, but will add in anyway).

Water / Moisture is the enemy of browning.  I usually use two temperatures when cooking duck, which may just be a more extreme version of what you're doing.  I'll cook low and slow until I've nearly gotten the internal temp where I want it, then I will remove the duck, wipe the pan clean, and crank the heat.  While the pan comes to temp (which takes about 5 minutes or so), the juices are redistributing in the meat, which helps keep it juicy.  If there is any moisture on the skin, I pat it down with paper towels.  Then I will reintroduce the duck to the pan (skin side down, of course).
Also, added weight can be quite helpful to force the not-flat breast to smoosh up against the flat pan more.  If you've got a second cast iron, while the main pan is getting ripping hot, you can heat the other - not to get the same temp, just to get warm enough not to cool the duck.  When the duck goes back in, the second pan goes on top to press down and help get added skin-to-hot-surface contact.  (If you've got enough good heat protection, you can pressdown on the top pan, too.  Obviously, be careful.)  I find the dual-pan trick to be only of limited usefulness.  No matter what I've done, I've never had a pan heavy enough to completely flatten the breast, so I usually let the top pan sit for a while, then I end up taking it off and turning the breasts to a side that missed some browning, and trying to get all the bits brown that I can by moving around in the pan.  It sort of works.

That's kind of the downside with any frying pan method to get duck breasts (which ain't exactly pancake-shaped) to brown as nicely as an all around method (like baking) can do.


Preserving Sauces With Meat I'm making a hot dog sauce that contains tomatoes, bacon & soy sauce. I've tried to preserve it with vinegar, but lost the taste of the product. What can I use to preserve the sauce in a glass container and how long could I store it in a refrigerator?

When preserving food, safety is of top importance, so I would not recommend experimenting haphazardly with sealed jars and preservatives. Generally, cooked leftovers can be kept in the fridge for 3 to 4 days with no special treatment. If you need to keep your sauce for longer than that, we need to do something else.
Pressure canning cooked meat is feasible; however, it uses specialized equipment. It also requires some exactitude to do safely. Unless you are interested in diving into the rabbit hole of canning, I do not think this technique would be convenient.
Using acid to preserve your sauce is a bad idea. Although vinegar or another acid can prevent microbial growth (for example, in a jar of pickles) any significant quantity will make your sauce too sour as you already observed.
Freezing is probably your best bet, both from a food safety and a convenience perspective. Put the sauce in a plastic container, or even better a plastic bag. It can be safely frozen for weeks or months. When ready to use, there are multiple ways to safely defrost the sauce. But the easiest is just to reheat from frozen, either on the stove or in the microwave.


Battle Of the Gums? (effects on Ice Cream) I am on a quest to perfect an ice cream recipe and am curious as to the texture and flavor differences between guar gum, agar agar, and xanthan gum.

I know all of these are used in various recipes, but is there a difference in overall taste and texture between these?

This has long been an interest of mine as well...

I have never used Agar Agar in ice-creams, however I've tasted some having agar agar in it... I've found the texture suffered a lot, and the flavor release wasn't really good in a cold application.

Xanthan gum is my go-to thickener in many applications; you can achieve almost custardy consistencies with it... And you can to some extend use it as a stabilizer in ice-cream as well, as it prevents big ice crystals from forming.

Guar Gum is poor man's Locust Bean Gum (in a way). It's has similar (or even better) crystal preventing capabilities like Xanthan gum; and it's also a good thickener. You can also combine it with Xanthan gum to achieve stronger thickening properties.

Now, my all-time favorite, even though you haven't mentioned it...
Locust Bean Gum is the best ice-cream stabilizer on its own... It's really expensive compared to other thickeners, and yet it has the best preventing capability of all. It's also an excellent thickener. In combination with many other thickeners (like... Xanthan gum, Kappa Carrageenan) it can form gels.

I basically find, LBG and Invert Sugar delivering the best ice-cream stabilizing effect and a great aid to the texture of it.


Why does caffeine taste bitter when added to tea? Black tea contains about 40 mg of caffeine. When adding 80 mg of caffeine powder, the tea tastes bitter.

Why doesn't caffeine that is already in the tea or in an energy drink taste bitter and how should caffeine be added to drinkable fluids so it has no taste?

Adding more sugar is not a very healthy solution either...

Caffeine is bitter, tea isn't too bitter because as you mentioned it's only got 40mg of caffeine. If you then triple the amount in there it's going to taste that way. Try adding 3 tea bags to your cup and I'm certain it'll taste just as bitter.

Energy drinks have copious amounts of sweeteners added hence why they don't taste like caffeine.

If you are hell bent on more caffeine without the associated bitterness but not adding sugar maybe a sweetener like stevia would be the way forward...


How can I salvage jelly that does not set? This is related but not a duplicate of this question.

Apparently, I used fresh kiwi and mango in my jelly, and now it does not set. I know what I did wrong; but what can I do about it?

E.g. Can I add gelatin powder to the mixture to improve the chances of it setting?

I know that as a last resort I can probably take the fruit out and consume them directly, but then the jelly would be wasted (drinking sugar syrup is...not very pleasant).

Your problem is actinidain, an enzyme in the kiwi (and to a lesser degree even in the mango) that causes the jelly to stay liquid. Heat deactivates it, so your first step is to boil the whole thing. The minimum temperature to denature actinidain is 60 C, but I recommend to exceed that, just to be sure. You should then add more gelatin, assume that at least a significant portion of the original gelatin was broken down, as evidenced by the non-setting.

If you don’t like the now-mushy fruit pieces after boiling, I suggest giving it a whirr with the immersion blender and calling it “mousse”. You could even add a bit of whipped cream, mixed in just before the jelly sets. (Note that adding a dairy product will only be ok after boiling, again the enzymes need to be deactivated or the whole thing will turn bitter as well.)


Mix parmesan cheese & garlic into sourdough bread dough before or after first rising? If I wanted to put parmesan cheese and garlic into sourdough bread dough (mixed into the dough, not just a filling), should I do it before or after first rising? Will it prevent a proper rise if I put it in with dough, water, and starter right away?

My initial reaction is that adding cheese and garlic could affect the rise, unless you are using a recipe calibrated for their presence.  Cheese would probably affect the texture of the bread, interfering with an even rise.  Garlic is fairly astringent and has some antimicrobial properties; this could very well mess with the health of your yeast.

If you're going to try adding these, it would probably be best to knead them in rather than trying to add them during the first rise.


Does water "go bad" in this sense? I have an electric water boiler in the kitchen. I put fresh tap water into it, boil it up, and use it for my coffee. Then, an hour later, I go back and press the button again and have it re-boil the now room-temperature water, and use it for another cup. Sometimes, several hours pass; sometimes, half a day.
When "too long" has passed, I tend to empty it and put fresh tap water into it, because it feels like it has "gone bad".
Is this silly? Can water really "go bad" like that? Is there any difference whatsoever between freshly poured water and water that has been standing still in the container half a day or even the entire day?
It's still gonna be boiled? Doesn't that "neutralize" basically any kind of water?

It doesn't go bad, but it does change the taste.
When water is just sitting there, water evaporates, but most things dissolved in it don't. Then, each time you boil it, the steam causes additional water to escape leaving the same amount of dissolved stuff in there. So, the concentration of dissolved stuff keeps going up.
Dissolved oxygen also decreases when you heat or boil water, changing the taste.
Finally, even if your kettle is stainless steel, it can eventually rust.


Soup has a floral taste Why does my home made Split pea & ham hock soup have a floral taste--I used fresh onions, carrots, Celery, Bay leaf, Vegetable Broth and pepper

Hard to know what you're tasting, but most likely the bay leaf.


Should traditional moule marinier have cream in it? I'm about to make moule marinier and was surprised to see a lot of the recipes had cream in them.  I'm sure I remember watching an episode of Celebrity Masterchef where they had to prepare moule marinier and the judges being surprised at the people who put cream in the dish.

As it is supposedly a sailors dish, and I can't imagine sailors having fresh cream to hand it seems unlikely that they would traditionally contain cream.  Is this right?  Should moule marinier have cream in it?  Or should I just finish the cooking liquor with a knob of butter at the end?

Traditional Moules a la mariniere is finished by reducing the cooking liquid until it is concentrated and then "mounting" it with butter (monter au beurre).

Mouclade is a traditional mussel preparation from the region of Bordeaux where the cooking liquid is enriched at the end with heavy cream and sometimes egg yolks, thus the reason the judges on your show were commenting that the cream was incorrect.


Can I accelerate the prep time for small tapioca pearls? I've got a package of Reese small pearl tapioca in front of me, ready to make tapioca pudding, but I forgot to factor in the recommended overnight soak. Is it possible to accelerate the process by soaking in warm or boiling water or by substituting a longer cooking time?

Yes, it works without presoaking. You have to cook them for quite a long time until they become quickly translucent, the small ones will need about 30 minutes at a moderate boil. It is not optimal, as the outside will become mushier in this long cooking time, but there are people who don't mind the difference.


How to make Ghost Pepper Queso I have an event coming up and the person who usually brings the popular 'Ghost Pepper Cheese Dip' can't make it.

I've order some 'Smoked and Dried Bhut Jolokia Ghost Chili Pepper Pods' but I have not idea how to deal with them.

I figure I need to soak them, then mince them and integrate them into a queso.

But that seems to too simple...insanely hot peppers, meat and cheese.

I'm thinking Velvetta, 80/20 hamburger, rotel, cumin...and maybe sour cream (to kill some of the fire)...

I'm make shots in the dark.

Any advice would be welcomed.

The basic question is how to work with your dried bhut jolokia chili peppers.

First and foremost, don gloves (and, afterwards, remove them so that they're inside out).

To rehydrate the pods, put them in a bowl and pour boiling water over them, enough to cover them.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit until the chilies are softened, at least 10-15 minutes. As though you needed them to be more intense (really), you could toast the dry pods (both sides) in a hot, dry skillet, before rehydrating.

As for the dip, follow any recipe for queso, such as your Velveeta approach, with sauteed meat, onions, and tomatoes.


How to customize the softness of custards like flan? How do you dial in the right amount of thickness vs soft melt in your mouth style?

These are what I believe affect it:

Ratio of eggs to milk
egg yolk to egg white ratio
condensed, evaporated, regular milk or cream
cooking time

how long to let it sit out after the oven before putting it in the refrigerator

cooking temperature
dish/flan size
dish thickness/material

Soft melt increases with fat and emulsifiers. Emulsifiers make the mouth feeling smooth and silky, but not as rich as fat. Firmness increases with proteins. Thickness increases with dry matter (a bit), proteins and additional binding agents.

I don't know which feeling you want to achieve, but here is a list of your relevant factors and what they do. The info (plus the info above) should be enough to tweak an existing recipe in the direction you want.

ratio of eggs to milk: more eggs mean more dry matter, more fat, more emulsifiers.
egg yolk to egg white ratio: egg yolks have fat, emulsifiers and protein. Egg whites have protein only.
condensed, evaporated, regular milk or cream. Let's take regular milk as base. In comparison, evaporated milk has proportionally more dry matter and fat. Condensed milk has even more dry matter because of the sugar. Cream increases the fat content a lot, and because fat is dry matter, it also increases dry matter - but the ratio of fat to overall dry matter is much higher than in milk (regular, evaporated or condensed). Don't count on the proteins of milk much, they are a relatively low amount and have been overcooked anyway (unless you use raw milk or cream).
Binding agent. Flour and starch add thickness only (flour has some protein too, but not much). Tapioca, arrowroot, etc. are starches. Gelatine is a protein, adds both thickness and firmness. Gums add thickness and emulsify. If you use something more exotic, ask in a comment.

The rest of your list doesn't really matter. Or, more accurately, it does, but there is one correct combination and you shouldn't tweak it in attempts to change the mouth feel.

It is actually wrong to measure cooking time. What you want to measure is the temperature your custard reached. Yolk emulsifiers start to work at about 50°C. Starch needs 70°C. The first types egg proteins start binding in the high-70s. Somewhere in the high 80s, other types of egg proteins bind too. You don't want this last binding to happen - if it does, your custard gets too firm and exudes some liquid after cooling. If you take it even higher, it gets not only firm, but grainy. If you let it simmer or boil, you also get biggish liquid-filled bubbles in a baked custard, and a sandy texture in a stovetop-stirred one.

So, the correct temperature is in the low to mid-80s. I usually aim for 85°C. The correct time is whatever it takes to reach that temperature, and depends on the rest of things you listed - but the relationship is so complex that the custards you'll ruin to determine the right combination for your oven/stove and dishes by trial and error will cost more than a candy thermometer (mine cost under 15 Euros). And if you go with the trial-and-error method, you won't be able to achieve a predictably good custard outside of your own kitchen.


Best knives that don't need regular sharpening I'm looking for a knife that doesn't need to be regularly sharpened. The knife is for someone who has damaged wrists, and they find it difficult to have to continuously sharpen their knife.

Ceramic knives will hold their edge 'forever', but are brittle. As long as they don't fall, they should be fine.

I googled "ergonomic ceramic knife" and a number of items popped up.


What ingredients can be used to make fried rice slightly sweet? I regularly buy fried rice from my local takeaway and I would like to recreate something similar. It is slightly redish in color (that's most likely chilli, but might not be, as it's not too hot) and tastes sweet and sour. I'm wondering what kind of ingredients they might be using to achieve this type of flavor, as the rice I make at home usually tasted pretty one dimensionally salty from the soy sauce. Could they be using something like tamarind juice, that's often used in Pad Thai recipes? What else can give fried rice a similar flavor profile?

Often there's no secret sauce that restaurants use, but plain old bog-standard sugar. I know it's boring, but there you go. They also may be using bottled sweet and sour sauce, which is also boring, but readily available in many supermarkets.

All is not lost, however, as if you want some more authentic ingredients then there are plenty of options. In my kitchen (which isn't big enough to satisfy my capacity requirements for exotic ingredients otherwise this list would be bigger) I have several ingredients which impart sweetness to Asian dishes:

Palm sugar: more of a Thai than a Chinese ingredient, but I use it for many different cuisines. It imparts a slightly syrupy flavor. In the UK this can be found in any big grocery store in the Asian section.
Sweet soy syrup: Also can be found under the name Kecap Manis, this is an Indonesian ingredient. It is basically teriyaki concentrate, it's salty, very sweet, and has some spices in it. I use it in all sorts of Asian cooking (and I sometimes add it to gravy to darken and sweeten it), and it would be my choice for the dish you want to make. I would add it instead of soy sauce until I have the sweetness I'm looking for, then add regular soy to bring the saltiness to the right level. Adding a little bit of water helps loosen it up
Honey: not a purely Asian ingredient of course, but honey can be magic anyway. The floral notes may be just what you need

Now for the sour:

Tamarind: you mentioned tamarind in your post as something to sweeten, but tamarind is actually quite sour. I use paste at home, it lasts forever in the fridge
Lime or lemon juice: of the two I prefer lime juice when making Asian cooking sour. I can't quite say why.
Rice vinegar: This is a very commonly used souring agent, I use it most often in Chinese cooking, and it would be my choice for a fried rice dish

Also worth mentioning is Mirin - a reduced-alcohol Sake, usually with a bit of salt added. It's used widely in Japanese cuisine. I personally don't use it much, but it's worth having in the flavor arsenal.


Seasoning a wok in the wrong way? I've just bought a wok recently and seasoned it. The only thing i realized at the end is that it never became blue, it's just a dark brown color. Is there a possibility to season it wrong? I've added a few layers of coat with oil, however i have no clue if this can be a health issue on the long run or not.
Thanks in advance.

You are probably not using the right oil and/or heating it hot enough.


Cake Projector Alternatives My wife is making a cake for some kid, and she asked me to come up with something brilliant to project an image of the Paw Patrol dog (like this guy) she needs to draw on the cake, but we don't have a projector - apparently that's what they use to draw on cakes, to project the outline of the drawing and "follow the lines" with icing.

Short of an actual projector, what technique can she use to do this?

That is totally doable. Just print out an appropriately sized copy of the desired picture and put a piece of waxed paper over it. Using a piping bag, trace the picture with frosting, filling it in. Then freeze the frosting and waxed paper. Once it is frozen, peel away the waxed paper, and put the pieces on the cake.

Here is a great pictorial of the process.


Is there a way to keep chocolate chips from melting in chocolate-chip waffles? My memory might be playing tricks on me, but I swear I've had chocolate chip waffles (or maybe pancakes) where the chocolate chips were still somewhat hard - in other words, not completely melted.   Every time I try, even if waiting for the batter to start cooking before adding the chips, they always seem to melt completely.  Waiting for the chips to harden would also mean the waffles get cold.  Any solution?

You can use the tips Jay gave you, or you could try to put in modelling chocolate 'chips' instead of chocolate chips. Modelling chocolate is a paste, so those chips won't be hard, but I've heard it doesn't melt, so it wouldn't be as soft as melted real chocolate chips. Since it's just (light corn) syrup and chocolate, I guess the flavour would be fine in waffles.


How do you dry herbs? We've had a container-based herb garden on our deck all summer, which has been wonderful.  Unfortunately, the weather is predicted to hit freezing in the next week or so, and now I'm looking for ways to preserve as much as possible from the garden.  I'll see if I have any luck moving the pots indoors and keeping them growing, but I'd like to trim the plants back and dry the herbs as I move them.

So...  how do I dry herbs?  Of course the goal is still cooking with them, so I'm concerned about food-safe handling.  But honestly, I've never dried herbs, and have no idea how to approach this.

One of the most memorable times I've seen someone dry herbs was Alton Brown on Good Eats: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5GkD2GQ3Tg

He creates this large contraption with A/C filters and a box fan... I've never tried it myself, but it was fun to watch.

I typcially do it with a food dehydrator like this one: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=14099344

I would just get one with multiple temp settings as you don't want to cook the herbs (in the dehydrator).


If you 'caramelize' an onion, does an onion contain sugar? I love the taste of lightly fried sliced onion. I've heard this referred to as 'caramelizing' the onion.

Is there sugar in the layers of an onion that is changed to caramel, or is this just a phrase?

My question is: If you 'caramelize' an onion, do they contain sugar?

Yes, onions contain sugar, just like most fruit and vegetables. It is not simply a common phrase, it is true caramelization.

They have 4.24 g of sugar per 100 g in total (wet weight). For dry weight 40% is sugar. See the USDA nutrient database for more details.


Pasta water usable with lentil pasta? I'm planning on making a pasta dish tonight that uses the pasta cooking water in the sauce. Something like cacio e pepe.  The pasta I've got is the high protein pasta that they make out of lentils or chickpeas. Since it's not normal pasta, will my pasta water still be usable in this way?

Yes, you should be fine. Pasta water is used to loosen a condiment, and allow it to be incorporated with the pasta during the final tossing/dressing of the pasta.  The water from traditional pasta will have some starches from the pasta in it, and does sometimes help "thicken" (to a pretty small degree in my experience) a sauce, but that is not typically relied upon.  If your sauce is too thin, just cook it a bit more.  Too thick, add a few tablespoons of pasta water.


Why does my cake lack air bubbles and looks like a molten mass? I have tried to do cakes many times and I frequently have the problem of my cake not having the bubbly structure I expect, but rather looking like a smooth mass on the inside.

So far I have attributed this to user error, but after my mom also had the same problem I am starting to think if it may be the oven?

What I have noticed is, that I have to frequently bake longer than the recipe suggests until the fork comes out dry. However, when using a thermometer the temperature seems to be generally OK in the oven, although it does seem to fluctuate a bit (+-5°C).

This is what my last iteration looks like:

What I expect is something like this, a structure with many bubbles:

This is a very vexing case, I douobt that anybody can tell from looking at your cake. So you will have to troubleshoot it yourself by first trying to bake a successful cake by following a traditional recipe and using best practices, and then, if that cake works well, start changing it back towards your preferred recipe one-by-one and seeing what makes the difference. For the test cake, you should bake a very standard recipe that has the best chances of rising well - I'd say that's a pound cake.

So, use following factors:

200 g eggs (4 whole eggs), 200 g white all purpose flour, 200 g sugar, 200 g cow-milk butter, 10 g baking powder (not baking soda!). Do not make any replacements here, and don't add other ingredients (flavors, etc.)
make sure the ingredients are all room temperature, and have gotten there slowly. Just leave them overnight, no "Oh I forgot the butter in the fridge, I'll give it 15 seconds in the microwave".
use the creaming method. Cream the butter and the sugar together until you see an obvious change in color and volume (can take 10+ minutes), then add the eggs and beat well, only then add the flour and baking powder.
Use freshly bought baking powder
sift the flour
bake in a 175 C oven for as long as it takes to pass the skewer test.

If that works, as I said above, you will have to slowly change the ingredients back to your preferred recipe and see when the change happens.

If it isn't work even for that, there is some hidden factor that is very difficult to guess at. You will probably have to ask a good baker to bake together with you and either show you how they bake, or have them watch how you bake, and see if that person can spot the problem. You can also have them bake in your kitchen and with your oven, to see if they get the same trouble - but if you measured your oven's temperature, there isn't much that can be going wrong there.


Sous vide the same meat on two days I plan to sous vide lamb chops, which is going to take 3 hours.  Since I have to work, it will be too late for dinner if I start cooking after work.  Can I sous vide it for 2 hours the night before, put it in the fridge, and continue cooking for another hour the following day?  Do I need more time on the following day as the temperature of the meat is lowered in the fridge?

No, you will need to cook it for the proper length of time all at once.

Sous Vide heats the food very slowly and depending on the density and thickness of the food, it can take quite a while for the center to come up to the finish temperature. Additionally, this temperature is usually lower than the temperature applied in other methods of cooking so it kills bacteria and parasites more slowly than high-temp cooking.

For proteins, an extended cook time is needed to get the center up to temp. Additionally, because the temp is lower, more time is needed at that temp to kill off any bacteria or parasites.

By not heating for the entire time at once, you risk never bringing the center up to temperature! It might be undercooked or worse, it might be dangerous.

Note: Some fatty proteins are cooked at a higher temperature for longer periods of time to also break down collagen and connective tissue. Not cooking them all-at-once will similarly not have the desired effect on the collagen and connective tissue.

Another Note: Some might wonder how anyone ever cooked and served a rare roast beef in the past if a long exposure to lower temp is needed to make the roast safe in the center. The answer is that contamination of beef with parasites is not common and even though beef does contain bacteria, the bacteria exists near the surface of the meat. The density of the meat makes it difficult for the bacteria to spread to the interior parts. This keeps the center perfectly safe to eat raw if you could somehow cut off the surface without inadvertently contaminating the center with bacteria from the knife.

SOLUTION

One solution is to cook the protein completely on a day when you do have the time. You can leave the lamb chop still in the vacuum bag in the fridge for a day-or-two and then drop it back into the water bath at the same temp on the day that you want to serve it. Because you have already killed all the bad stuff and it has remained sealed, all you need to do is get the center up to temp and it will be ready for the final searing step or serving.

That solution is not perfect however. Empirically I have observed that when using this method some meats will dry out quickly on your plate after slicing. It must be something with the proteins or cell structure so that it releases all of its water quickly after being sliced. I've mostly experienced this with leaner meats like beef chuck steaks. I haven't tried it on lamb chops, but they are similar in leanness to a chuck steak.


Which cooking method gives the leanest bacon? I've recently discovered the joy that is baking bacon. It's made me curious: does baked bacon render out more fat than pan-fried? How about microwaved?

It believe is more a question of temperature than technique. Low and slow typically renders more fat. When I want a maximum amount of fat rendered out I place thinly sliced bacon in a pan and cover with cold water. I then place over medium-high until the water has evaporated and then some depending on how crispy I want the bacon to be.


Does fresh mackerel have more omega-3 fatty acids than smoked mackerel? Are there more omega-3 fatty acids in fresh than smoked mackerel?

Is there something in process of smoking that would cause the mackerel to lose some of the fatty acids?

In other words, does the quality or amount of the omega-3 fatty acids (or other 'healthy' oils) in fish decrease over time? Is fresh fish have more or better omega-3 / polyunsaturated fats?

Theory is a good thing, but data is always better. Especially when somebody else does the whole work of gathering and evaluating it. Luckily, there is somebody who does it for food. Following data comes from the USDA. It is very verbose, so I had to cut off most of the screenshots. I left all the lipids in the first one just to show how much they measured, and only used the data for Omega 3 in the other ones.

The first data set is raw Atlantic mackarel. I picked Atlantic just because it was first in the list, they have several kinds.

Sadly, they didn't have data for smoked mackerel. But as Frankie points out, you can do a hot smoking process and a cold smoking process. I think that the cooking in both is very well approximated by cooking on dry heat, resp. salting. Of course, it is possible that the smoke itself destroys more fatty acids than just applying heat or brine, but these numbers give us an upper limit for the amount of omega 3 left after smoking.

Now we can start making conclusions.

  First conclusion: there is something fishy about the data.

Zero standard deviation for all the values in the raw fish? Zero data points for the salted fish?! I can only assume that they just wrote a zero where the actual information is missing from the record. Still, I think we can trust the data (because the USDA has no interest to lie and because we don't have a better data set).

Before we start making further conclusions, we should remember that these are values per 100 gram of end product. 100 g of salted mackerel isn't made with 100 g of raw mackerel! Luckily, the source also gives the water percentage of the samples (not shown on the screenshots), which is 43% for salted mackerel, 53% for cooked mackerel and 63% for raw mackerel. So, we should in fact compare the numbers per 100 g of dry matter (we assume that the cooking process neither adds nor subtracts dry matter - not exactly true for salting, but we can assume that the difference is small). The numbers are:

  Second conclusion: Heat (so presumably also hot smoking) destroys around 40% of the fatty acids in mackerel

This is straightforward, comes from the numbers in the table.

  Third conclusion: The salted mackerel didn't come from the Atlantic

Unless I have made a big mistake in my reasoning about the comparison based on dry matter, a salted fish has more omega 3 than a raw fish of the same size. The difference in data is small enough to have been caused by the choice of a different kind of fish (note that the standard deviation within a sample of the same kind of fish is 10 to 15%).

  Fourth conclusion: Cold smoking probably doesn't destroy a significant amount of omega 3 acids.

While the data comparison here has some problems (the assumed different kinds of fish, the fact that salting isn't the same as smoking), I think we can see the trend here. If the salted fish had lost too much of its omega 3 in the salting process, then it wouldn't have such high omega 3 values after the salting. We can assume that a cold smoked fish is also salted (my personal experience and Frankie's answer support that), so any possible preserving effect of salt should be present in cold smoking too. There is a risk that the smoke itself could destroy the fatty acids, but I doubt it. After all, the smoke doesn't penetrate the tissues very deep, so there shouldn't be much contact.

Of course, I am not 100% sure about the conclusions above, but I think it is reasonable to assume that they are true. I have tried to make clear any possible problems. So the short answer is: fresh mackerel and cold smoked mackerel have about the same amount of omega 3 fatty acids, but hot smoked mackerel has much less omega 3 than the original.


Can you make vegan garlic bread, if so how does the use of margarine effect taste and texture? I enjoy a nice garlic baguette so much, but I have to drink a pre-emptive, schedule 5, painkiller not to die from being so lactose intolerant. I was wondering if a solution can be found that does not include narcotics, maybe substitute the butter for margarine? I know the French would call it barbaric, but can you do it?

Margarine will  not impact the texture, and probably will not alter the end result dramatically.  It, of course, is not butter, so as long as the flavor is fine with you.  But, you also don't need butter or margarine. You can use olive oil.  Sweat garlic in olive oil.  Proceed from that point.


Does Domino's use rennet-free cheese? Does Domino's pizza's use mozzarella cheese for their pizzas? If so,is it also rennet-free?

According to the nutritional information posted on their website Domino's uses a blend of Mozzarella, American, Cheddar, Feta, Parmesan, and Provolone Cheeses.

Somebody, apparently, with similar concerns asked Domino's and received this response:

excerpt from letter, emphasis added:

  Domino's Pizza Diced Cheese for Pizza is a specially produced cheese
  made exclusively for our use. It is a natural dairy product, produced
  from cultured, pasteurized milk, rennet; and salts of calcium and/or
  sodium. The type of rennet used in the production of this cheese is
  restricted to a microbial-based rennet or a genetically-engineered
  rennet. Animal derived rennets will not be allowed.

  As far as the other cheeses (Cheddar, Parmesan, Provolone, etc.),
  Domino's does not specify the source of rennet used in these products.
  They may or may not contain animal rennet. This depends on the
  supplier's current source and is always subject to change without
  notification to Domino's Pizza.


Garlic clove has turned to a firm jelly texture I keep my garlic on my kitchen shelf by the window. Out of the whole garlic bulb one the cloves has changed to a yellow/orange colour and its texture is like hard jelly. Its slightly squidgy but firm.

How has this happened? Is it edible?

This is called waxy breakdown.  It's a defect rather than a disease, so you don't have to worry about a microbe or parasite.  My neighbors have used affected cloves and they're still alive, though I've never been able to make myself use them because of the texture.


Floating rhubarb in cake What causes diced rhubarb to float from the bottom of glass pan (where it was placed under a cake mix) to the top of cake mixture while baking?

Some doughs melt when heated, esp high fat doughs which rely on eggs/protein hardening, starch drying/thickening, or similar effects, and not gluten for structure.

And once the dough is molten, anything significantly lighter per cubic cm than itself will rise, anything significantly heavier will sink.


Why did this fondue become grainy and lumpy? We made some fondue the other night, and instead of being a nice smooth dippable fondue texture, it came out grainy and lumpy.  What went wrong?

Here's the recipe that we used:

1 clove garlic
3/4 cup Dark Ale or Other Beer
1 cup Emmenthal Cheese, Shredded
1 1/2 cups Gruyere Cheese, Shredded
1/2 cup Appenzeller Cheese, Shredded
1 tbsp Corn Starch

Slice garlic in half, rub in fondue pot.  Warm beer without boiling.  Mix cornstarch and cheeses.  Stir cheese into beer, one handful at a time, allowing to melt in-between additions.

I suspect that your cheese curdled.

This happens to me if I overheat the mixture- especially in the presence of acid. (I don't have any experience with using beer.) The cornstarch is there as a safety net to prevent this but obviously it is not infallible.

Turn down the heat and try adding a little more corn starch- it may not get back to perfect fondue but you may be able to pull it back to edible.


Sourdough starter with milk vs just using regular starter and adding milk separately? How much of a difference would it make to the final product and which one would be the better choice for any enriched sourdough breads/pastries/cakes etc?  And by "regular starter" I mean the normal flour and water mixture.  Thanks!

If it can be done, it will make lots of difference. Different sourdough recipes are geared towards breeding different bacterial species, which give their own taste to the final product.

There is no answer to "what will be a better choice". If you have a known good recipe for a starter using milk, then it is up to the eater to decide which result tastes better to them. It's literally a matter of taste.

Note that, if you just thought to pour some milk and flour together, this is a terrible idea. Fermented foods are only safe when following the recipe to the letter. A small change in the initial conditions can breed a completely different strain of bacteria - which can be simply yucky, but can also be seriously dangerous for your health. So if you don't have a trusted source which describes the exact way to produce a safe sourdough starter by using milk, don't experiment on your own.


Salted or unsalted butter I'm a fan of James Martin and have no problem with the amount of butter that he uses.  However, I'm totally unsure what type of butter to use!  Salted or unsalted?

It really depends on how much salt you like in your food.  Most recipes are written for unsalted butter because it makes it easier to control the amount of salt.  If your butter is salted, you can use it and it will probably still taste good.  Although, you may need to reduce salt a bit elsewhere in the recipe if it uses a lot of butter.  When in doubt, go with unsalted, then add salt as needed.


Substituting ground red pepper for dried red peppers I have a recipe that calls for 4 dry red peppers to be bagged during cooking & taken out when finished. Instead of using those, how much ground red pepper should I use?

I'm not sure if this works for cooking, but I use this method for oil or vinegar infusions: Get empty tea bags at the local tea or kitchen supply outlet. If the peppers are cayennes, put 1/2 teaspoon of ground cayenne per pepper into the bag(s), tie off securely, and use in your dish. Fish the bag(s) out at the appropriate time. Yes, grinding a pepper produces more than 1/2 teaspoon of ground pepper, but ground pepper has much more surface area than whole peppers, so you need to scale your ground pepper back to account for that. If the peppers are hotter than cayennes (habaneros, ghosts or reapers), cut back the powdered amount more. If they are mild, such as bell peppers or sweet pimentos, use 3/4 to 1 tsp of powder per pepper.


Why specifically use Passata, rather than tomatoes, in Ragu? When making real Ragu, what really is the specific difference between

using tomatoes (so, for say 1kg of meat, a big pile of tomatoes, chopped and cooked-in for many hours as the last step)
using Passata (so, for say 1kg of meat, a few cups of Passata, cooked-in for many hours as the last step)

What really is the specific actual difference in outcome or perhaps in procedure?

Is Passata really just for convenience?  That is to say: if the "inventors" (so to speak) of Ragu simply had lots of fresh San Marzano tomatoes on hand, they would simply use the fresh tomatoes and say "naturally, that's better than Passata".  Or is there actually some difference?

The primary reason is definitely convenience. If you don't want skin and seeds in your sauce, then you have to do some work to avoid it. Yes, it's possible, e.g. passing through a food mill, or blanching and peeling plus retaining only the flesh, but having it already done is a whole lot easier.

Passata is usually much thicker too, so it won't need as long a cooking time to reduce into a non-watery sauce as fresh tomatoes. On top of that, you don't have to worry about whether you can find good fresh tomatoes, e.g. if it's winter and they're out of season.

Your two cases for comparison seem to overlook this: if you just chop and cook, you'll have skin and seeds in your sauce, as well as excess liquid to cook down, while if you use passata, you won't. (Also, for what it's worth, you'd need pretty giant tomatoes to get the equivalent of 3/4 cup of passata out of one tomato.)

Of course, if you don't mind skin and seeds, it's also perfectly fine to simply cook fresh tomatoes and be done with it.

Note that you can often get similar advantages from other canned tomato products. In the US, crushed tomatoes are far more common, and a roughly similar texture. (Peeled whole tomatoes, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste can also be useful depending on what texture you're aiming for.)


Dry edges on sponge cake, nest 2 sheet pans for insulation? I'm tweaking a thin sponge cake with nut flour that I want to roll with a filling. My third attempt at the cake was delicious, but it didn't bake evenly. The edges were dry and there was a slightly sunken, dry section in the middle. The sections that weren't dry were great! I'm using a half sheet pan that's quite thin and may be a bit warped. I have another one just like it. Could it possibly help to nest the two pans to create an insulated baking environment?

There are a couple of things that can lead to uneven heating in an electric oven. Here a couple of things that can help.

Let the oven 'thoroughly' preheat. Are you putting the cake in before or just as the oven preheats? Let the oven sit for a good 5 minutes after it has reached the desired baking temp.
Keep the oven door closed until the expected baking time has been reached. Each time the door is open a significant amount of heat escapes, causing the elements to come back on for a longer period, this will cause the heat to circulate in an uneven pattern.
place either a pizza stone or another baking sheet on a rack above the cake (with enough room for the cake to rise). If the broiler element is coming on the direct heat might be causing the dry center (note: if you had a gas oven then I would put the stone a rack below the cake.)
finally, lower the temperature 25°F and extend the baking time.


Cakes cooked in same tin but come out different sizes I have recently made a wedding cake with 3 layers of cake for each tier.

For each tier the same tin was used for each of the 3 layers but when putting them together they were all different in size and had to be trimmed so the outside of the cake was even before icing. They had all shrunk away from the sides of the pan by different amounts. How does this happen and how can it be prevented?

It is so frustrating that this should happen. The cake mixture was done in a single batch, and I also use collars round the outside of the cake tins for even baking.

There are a few things that can affect the rise of the layers.

If you're baking multiple layers at once, even if your oven heats evenly, the cake on top will rise less than the one of the bottom.  The problem is that the top will crust, preventing the top layer from rising as high as the one underneath which is shielded from the radiant heat.
If you're mixing a large batch of batter, then dividing it between pans, the amount of batter in each pan might be slightly different from each other.  If you're beating it individually, the amount of time that you mix it can affect the rise -- too much mixing will develop gluten which can impede the rise.
If you're baking the layers individually, you run into the problem that the oven might have been different temperatures, or at least have absorbed a different amount of heat if the oven wasn't preheated for a sufficiently long time. The result is that the later layers tend to rise a little bit less, as the top sets a little bit earlier.
If you're baking the layers individually, but mixed the batter in one batch, then the leavening might not have quite the same strength as in the first batch, and reduce how well it rises ... which has the top set even faster, further reducing the rise.

One other possibility that I haven't tested is if you take things out of the fridge and leave them out while you're baking the other layers.  As the eggs and milk might now be between fridge temp and room temp, that slight change might affect the rise as well.


Storing cooked potatoes in the fridge So I read that storing raw potatoes in the fridge causes the starch to turn to sugar (which I don't want). So I store them in the pantry shelf. But what about cooked potatoes? Will storing them in the fridge cause the starch to turn into sugar?

The advice for storing raw potatoes is because they are still "alive" in a sense.

By storing them in the cold, you are telling them it is winter and they should be converting their stored starch into sugar so they can grow in the spring.

Once you've cooked them, that's no longer a problem - you've killed them, so the conversion isn't going to happen any more.  General food safety rules would then apply.


Bundt Pan for a Citris Olive Oil Cake? I'm making this next week (for guests, so I don't want to screw it up) Orange Olive Oil Cake. Of course it wasn't until I became married to the recipe that I saw it calls for a 10" round cake pan. That's about the one thing I don't have in this ridiculously well-equipped kitchen. The safe option is of course using a 9" pan and making cupcakes with the remaining batter, which is what I'll do unless I get some assurance that what I would rather do will work fine.

My understanding is that a standard 10" round pan has a capacity of 11 cups (not having one, I've never measured, but that's what I read from a couple of online resources). My Bundt pan has a (confirmed) capacity of 12 cups, so if this were the type of cake that I'm used to, I wouldn't think twice about it, I'd just use the Bundt. I've got a couple of concerns though about this particular cake.

Number one, the recipe calls for lining the pan with parchment. Obviously, that can't be done in a Bundt pan. The recipe starts with boiling down oranges in what could potentially be a very sticky syrup. If I were to use the Bundt, I'd probably spray with Pam. Just how sticky should I expect this cake to be? Is there anything more I should do to control sticking if I use the Bundt?

Secondly, the cake in a Bundt pan will obviously be taller but with a hole in the middle. Would you recommend dropping the temperature a bit? I'm thinking 15-20 degrees F, but I'm open to suggestions.

Just as an aside if you're interested, what do you think of this Orange Creme Fraiche as a garnish?

Volume of a 10" cake pan will vary with the wall height (which varies by manufacturer).  The 11 cup measure is for a 2" tall pan; if it calls for a taller pan, you might have issues.

As for how to deal with preparing the pan as you can't use parchment would be to butter and flour it; it generally works better than most cooking sprays.  If you use a cooking spray, look for a baking specific one -- they have flour in them, so it behaves more like a floured pan when releasing.

You can also make 'cake release', which is a blend of shortening, oil and flour (equal parts by volume) that you can paint onto the nooks and crannies of pans with a pastry brush.

As for the cooking temperature, I would shorten the time before I started checking for it to be done, but I don't know that I would drop the temperature; when you do, you end up with less doming but a denser cake.


How do I make macarons de Paris in a neat shape and make them rise with the lip? I have a recipe for macarons that works well; it says to use 2 trays while baking to get the raised lip.

I find if I crust the macarons overnight, that the lip comes up because the goo inside explodes like a volcano ripping apart the outer layer crust. My question is though: what are the optimal conditions - should the oven be hotter or warmer? how long is long enough for crusting

Finally, how do people make them in such nice neat shapes? Mine always come out looking misshapen.

I was lucky enough to get a macaron session from a Michelin-starred pastry chef before Christmas and he gave me some invaluable tips.

Use an Italian meringue recipe. In
other words, pour warm sugar syrup on
to the egg whites instead of sugar
from the cupboard. The eggs will
already have been 'cooked' into
structure and will not require any
crusting. They will retain the same
shape that you pipe them out at. You
can bake them straight away, or in a
couple of hours - they won't be any
different.
When piping, use a moderate pressure.
Don't wring the bag out. Keep the
nozzle approx 2cm over the tray and
maintain that height while you pipe -
let the weight of the batter spread
the macaron out evenly. When there is
enough mixture in place (about 4cm
across?) stop squeezing and flick the
nozzle away in a controlled circular
motion to avoid creating a 'nipple'.

I wrote about this including his recipe on my blog here.

PS. I just remembered that adding further weight to the Italian meringue technique a very prominent French chef in the UK, Raymond Blanc, said that he always uses this method. On his TV programme this week he said it delivers far more consistent results.


How do I get caramels to turn out grainy? Yes, I know the opposite of the usual question.  I've been making candy since I was a little kid. My caramels are always smooth and creamy.  My partner's father thinks they taste good but that the texture is all wrong.  He liked the gritty/grainy ones his mother used to make. Everything I have ever seen listed as a way to fix grainy caramels I have tried reversing.

I have tried many things, including:

adding granulated sugar late in the process
not using corn syrup or other invert sugar
cooking them at high temps
cooking them for too short a time
stirring or not stirring at all the wrong times
switching recipes
varying the fat content

I guess I am wondering what makes caramels turn out grainy.  It's not as far as I can tell, wholly related to the sugar dissolving/melting.  If it was adding some granulated sugar as it cools should cause more crystals to form.

Is it related to the liquid content? Because sometimes after months in a cupboard even ordinarily smooth caramels will have developed some graininess.

As you mentioned it is all about how the crystals form.

Some of the factors off the top of my head:

How saturated is the solution -
The more sugar packed into the syrup the more easily it will crystallize.
How quickly it cools -
The slower the bigger the crystals
Interference -
Do you have a starch or other sugar molecules gumming up the works?

Obviously you already knew this from your question.

Not using other sugars will help.
You might also try adding more sugar to the recipe at the beginning to fully saturate your solution. The fact that you add sugar at the end and it still dissolves in makes me think your solution could take a bit more. Letting the solution cool slowly with your seed sugar at the end should help.

You would think it would be easier to get it wrong. Perhaps you simply have too much experience doing it right.

Ask an amateur to try out your recipe and see if they fail properly.