why does my microwave beep half way through a defrost? When I defrost meat in my microwave, it will beep about half way through the cycle. I'm assuming this is to indicate to me that I need to do something, I'm just not sure what.

Am I supposed to check to see the progress?
Am I to remove the meat and re-evaluate?
Are there health concerns associated with ignoring the beep?

It's reminding you that flipping meat halfway through the defrost cycle will help prevent the bottom half cooking, while the top remains frozen solid.


Cookie dough consistency problems I have used the same rugelach recipe for years with out a problem.  This year however, the dough is pulling apart and shredding when being rolled out and up.  There are 2 different things this year, I used a different flour and we have been getting endless amounts of rain, so the humidity has been high.  The dough is also very soft.  Any ideas?

The recipe for the dough is as follows:

8 ounces cream cheese
1/2 lb butter
1/4 c sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour

-> mix all, refrigerate at least an hour ( I did over night). When I rolled it out onto a floured surface, it fell apart and became almost stringy.

This happens to me when I am in humid climates, worse still hot and humid climates. Moisture condensing out of the air on to the dough is the main cause. In a hot humid climate, taking a chilled dough out of the fridge only makes the condensation problem much worse.

I have tried estimating the amount of added water from condensation, but there are too many variables to make the results workable.

With your recipe, you do not have many degrees of freedom to counter the additional water from condensation. It is not as if you could control the moisture contents of butter and cream cheese. Perhaps you can begin by playing with more flour. Also, counter-intuitively, try not to have such a cold dough to reduce condensation. It is a balancing act in a hot-humid environment, not cold enough, the butter softens too much for a workable dough, colder, you get disproportionately more condensation and the dough becomes stringy.

This is in fact a constant nightmare with recipes when moving from one climate to another and one season to another.

The only rather unhelpful suggestion I have is that you have to keep experimenting with small adjustments and make meticulous notes, including relative humidity, kitchen temperature and dough temperatures at various stages of working.

--

Also, as @jay asked, it is best to use weight rather than volume. Did you change measuring cups?


Why is my macaroni salad absorbing all the liquid? I like to prepare my macaroni salad and refrigerate overnight.  The next day I find that my salad is dry, because the salad dressing has absorbed into the macaroni.  What causes the salad dressing to absorb into the marcaroni?  Please help me?

Pasta absorbs liquids, because it is made of starch, and starch absorbs water.  Tossing the pasta with oil will reduce the absorption, by coating them in a water-repellent layer.

Beyond this, the solution is simple: don't drain as much water from the cooked pasta, and add more dressing.  There's a limit to how much moisture pasta will absorb.


At what temperature should monkfish be prepared? At what internal temperature should you aim for monkfish to be properly cooked? According to this recipe, it should be at 145F (63ºC). Does anybody know a temperature chart for fish in general?

FYI I just found this and this reference.

To be perfectly honest with you, in all my years of cooking in kitchens I never took the temp of the fish.  It was always by feel and look.  Yes, I know that the gov't has guidelines that say 145F for fish but really when it comes down to it, if you have an 8oz cut of salmon/cod/monk in the pan, sticking an instant read into the middle won't do you much good.  (Caveat: If it was a salmon Wellington I would shoot for 130F as it's a fully enclosed package that you can't feel for doneness)

The thickness of the cut will make a huge difference in when you should pull it out as you get post-oven cooking during resting in which the heat continues to heat the core of the flesh up to a final cooked temperature.  That's why most chefs will take the roast out at a rare measured temp when they are shooting for a med rare serving state.

If your question is what state should monk fish be served, IE  med rare (like salmon) or rare ( like tuna) then I would say med-rare is your best bet.  Over cooking is a bad thing for monk fish and it goes from a lovely moist state to dry nastiness really quick.  A nice way to cook it that helps to give you a little move wiggle room when cooking it is to wrap it in Parma ham (prosciutto).  The little extra wrapping tastes great but also gives you a little bit of buffer as you get close to that magical temperature of doneness.

Hope it helps.


Is it always possible to visually determine if it's gas or electic stove? I saw stoves with flat glass-like surface and there red glowing circles inside when they're on. Are those a gas stoves? Are there gas stoves with fire inside or those flat stoves are all electric?

Gas stoves will always have "open" heating elements because the gas requires oxygen in order to burn and generate heat. Anytime you see a closed, glassed-over heating element, the heat is electric in source. However without more information about the design of the stove, it can't really be determined whether the heat is a traditional radiant heat element or an induction element (in which case the red glow may be cosmetic, generated only by lights to indicate that the burner is on).


Risk of eating potato skins with anti-germination treatment Most potatoes are given a chemical anti-germination treatment to stop them sprouting before we eat them.

With crispy potato skins and baked potatoes seen as a luxury, I wondered what research has been done on the health risks of eating potato skins and what government health advice says about this.

Obviously potatoes need to be washed first, to clean them and to remove residues of treatment. Should they be soaked first? I also realise that potatoes are safer when peeled.

Being told to wash, soak or peel potatoes makes me want to see hard research data or analysis on the food-safety of chemical anti-germination treatments for potatoes. Which is why I see this more as a biology question - where I originally entered this question - than a cooking one.

UPDATE I recently bought a bag of small potatoes which are promoted as "ready to cook in a microwave oven", though marked "With anti-germination treatment". The potatoes are in their skins, in a transparent bag which looks like cellophane. As the instructions on the bag do not mention washing the potatoes, I looked at the supplier's cooking instructions and was amazed that the video says "No need to peel them. They are ready to eat!" This seems to go against all logic.

The toxic stuff enters not only the skin, but even to 1 mm flesh.
Washing the potatoes is useless.
So, always peel your potato


Is there a word for the flavour shared by onion, spring onion, shallot, leek, and chive? Among the flavours of onions, spring onions, shallots, leeks, and chives there is one that they share. Is there a name for it?

Conversationally, "oniony". Everyone will understand that, and tend to say it naturally.

In a more serious cooking context, you could also get away with "allium flavor", though likely not in everyday conversation. There are a lot of alliums, including onions, garlic, scallions, shallots, leeks, and chives, so if you refer to the whole group, you're pretty obviously referring to the overarching common flavor. For example, On Food and Cooking has subsections called "The Flavors and Sting of Raw Alliums" and "The Flavors of Cooked Alliums".


Flourless Chocolate Torte I have just started my journey of testing and experimenting with a recipe for a Flourless Chocolate Torte. I really want to surprise my wife with a version of this classic that is like the one that she loves from a fancy restaurant. The description from the one from the restaurant is as follows:  "a rich flourless torte made with dark callebaut chocolate from Belgium finished with lightly whipped cream and fresh raspberry coulis."

Listed here is the first recipe that I tried.  It was, however, disappointing since it was more like a fudge cake.

What can one do to make a flourless chocolate torte so that it does not turn out like fudge by the forkful?  Are there any techniques that I, perhaps, could have messed up?  Is it better to use powdered cocoa along with melted chocolate?  Any help and even alternate recipes would be greatly appreciated.

From the recipe and your "fudge" description, I think the problem was that you didn't get enough air in the batter. Trying a different recipe is a good idea.

The way to get more air into a flourless cake is through the eggs. Look for recipes which require you to beat the egg whites separately to soft peaks. Mix everything very carefully, in the correct order. If your try still doesn't get you enough air, try more tricks. Whip your yolks with some liquid (maybe 10 ml per yolk) over a water bath (keep it between 60° and 70°C!), practically creating zabaglione. But really watch the temp with a probe thermometer - you don't get a good emulsion below 60°C, and you don't want your proteins to coagulate while whipping, they must do it latter in the oven (they start a bit above 70°C).

The other problem is that you might get too smooth a texture. First, select a recipe with less fat. Fat makes the batter softer, but also very smooth. Your hunch is correct: Choose a recipe which calls for both cocoa powder and chocolate. The powder has much less fat, resulting in a higher percentage of starch, and that creates a more cakelike texture. Another good way to change the texture is to use recipe which includes a nut flour. A raw almond flour will give you very little change in flavor, but if you don't mind deviating from the original, roasted hazelnut pairs very well with both chocolate and raspberry.

And as we are speaking of fat: you must use a good chocolate! Standard chocolate bars (Hershey, Milka) are no good. To cut costs, they use vegetable fat instead of cocoa butter, which changes the texture a lot. Then there are the manufacturers who use emusifiers and include even less cocoa butter. If you can get hold of real confectioner's chocolate (Valrhona, Callebaut), use it. If not, buy a chocolate bar which contains only cocoa mass, cocoa butter and sugar and nothing else - no vegetable fat, no emusifiers, etc. Also no milk solids, you want to make this kind of recipe with bittersweet to bitter chocolate. The one big brand I use for baking is Lindt Excellence (not Lindt Lindor!), but there are also some supermarket-branded chocolates with the right contents.

I don't have a tried recipe to offer you, but I am sure that the usual suspects have published something good. I think Smitten Kitchen had a nice big post on flourless pastries ones (but don't remember if they had a choco cake there), and Lebovitz and/or Desaulniers probably have recipes for a flourless choco cake too.


Can crumbled feta cheese last almost a year? This question talks about feta cheese in a brine or milk bath lasting up to three months.  What about crumbled feta?

I was looking through the fridge, and found a 1/2 pound open container of crumbled feta.  I have only used about an ounce of it.  There is no sign of mold on it, and it smells like feta cheese.  A small sample tasted okay.  The amazing thing is that I bought it in October or November: 8-10 months ago!

I have a recipe that calls for almost a 1/2 pound of feta, and I will be the only one eating it (so I'm not trying to impress anybody!).

I dislike wasting food, but I dislike being sick even more!

Is it safe to use dry crumbled feta that is so old?

I wouldn't claim to be an expert, nor would I want to give bad health advice. But generally, it's easy to tell if a cheese is still safe to eat - if, as you said, it doesn't have mold that isn't supposed to be there, and doesn't smell. If it were me, I'd eat it as long as it still has the same texture, color, and smell as it started with.


How can I increase the amount of gravy I can make from one roast? Making gravy per usual is a by-product of roasting or pan-frying something.  At that point, you take whatever jus you have in the dish and that essentially determines how much real gravy you end up with after you've de-glazed, added stock/water, flour, etc.

Looking for a method that results in more gravy (jus?) without wasting more meat/food.  I'm assuming certain cooking temperature/method/meat results in more jus and gravy.  That's what we're after here.

If you want more gravy you need to add more liquids and natural flavours.

Better if you have bone but . . . no bone:
Before you roast your beef sear it, so it has good colour when it comes out, deglaze the pan/baking tray with water/red wine/white wine or Madeira one of me faves and put that to one side. (in the gravy stock pot)
Add onions, carrots and parsnips in with the beef, and touch of water, olive oil and salt. Don't go mad with the water you're not poaching the beef!! Just enough to stop the veg burning - 5mm in the bottom (top up if needed).
 When the beef is ready (55C internal temp = medium rare more here) take it out of the tray, put the root veg to one side and and add the remains to your gravy stock pot.
Sear the bottom of the roast with a little oil (it'll be a bit soggy from sitting in the veg) then put it aside to rest (5-10 mins if you're in a hurry 15-30 for 3kg will come out lush!) deglaze again adding the resulting jus to your stock pot, which now had a wealth of flavour.

Use that stock pot to create a beast of a gravy! Make it in the usual manner, if you keep the onions in they'll make it thicker and tastier - a stick blender with give you a smoother texture if that's what you like!


Are fermented home-canned berries safe? I just opened home-canned blueberries and blackberries. They are probably 5 years old, and taste like alcohol. Are they safe to eat? I don't know anything about the original canner's intent.

The blueberries still have their skins and seem to be in juice.

Unless you know that the alcohol was added by the cook at the time of canning, I’d treat it as a sign that “something” happened. And in canning, “something” is always considered bad, because it means the food was in uncontrolled conditions.

I’d stick to the golden food safety rule of “when in doubt, throw in out”, just to be safe.


What role does salt play in pumpkin pie? My pie filling texture didn't seem right but I don't know what went wrong. The flavor was good, but the texture was a little off, but I don't even know how to explain the difference. But I later realized I forgot the salt. It's the only thing I can think of that made it different, but how?

Salt is fundamental to our sense of taste, leaving it out will definitely affect the flavor of a pie (or a cake, or a steak, or whatever) negatively. However, leaving it out shouldn't have affected the texture, you would need to use much more salt than I imagine your pie filling recipe called for to affect the texture at all.


How can I increase the extraction of gelatin and minerals from bones into my stock? I am interested in knowing how I can increase the solubility of gelatin, marrow, and minerals in my stock.

Thanks.

In terms of commercial food processing, there are more efficient ways to extract gelatin than slow-simmering the bones, generally by treating the organic matter with a strong acid prior to boiling, then using commercial evaporation and filtering equipment which is far more efficient than anything a home or even restaurant cook has access to.

According to Gelatin Food Science (see the "Gelatin Manufacture" section) it can also be first treated with a strong base solution before acidifying it, which lowers the isoionic point.  It's kind of difficult to explain exactly what that is if you don't have a background in organic chemistry; technically speaking it's a relationship between pH and electrical charge - but applied to extraction it refers to the pH at which the solubility of a protein (such as gelatin) is the lowest.  Lowering this is a good thing in extraction, because it means that the gelatin will be easier to filter out in an acidic solution.

Thus I have to point out the question is actually a bit contradictory; if your goal is the extraction of gelatin then you want to decrease the solubility.

But I think this is all going to be beside the point anyway, because none of this applies to stock making; the goal in food processing is to extract the pure gelatin, not to get a flavourful stock.  When making a stock you definitely don't want to use an acid solution, it's going to ruin the flavour.

Realistically, when it comes to stock-making, especially at home, the only way you're going to be able to extract more gelatin is to simmer it longer.  That's it.  When the bones break without any resistance, that means you've denatured all the collagen and you've got all the gelatin you're going to get.  I wouldn't worry about solubility because typically in stock-making you're already using more than enough water to dissolve all the gelatin that you could possibly hope to extract.


Welsh Rarebit in a microwave? Welsh Rarebit has always been a staple lunch for me.  Are there any other methods of cooking it, possibly in the microwave?  My method is as follows.

225g Grated Cheddar Cheese

Large spoon of butter

A few dashes Worcestershire sauce (Lee & Perrins)

4 tablespoons milk

2 teaspoons flour

Salt and pepper

Mix altogether in a pan over a medium heat and serve on slices of toast.

When considering your options, you'll need to remember that the cheese mix must have a certain cooking time independently of the heat source:
The flour needs some time to gelatinize. Basically, the flour, butter and milk in your mix form a roux. If you heat it too short, you'll get a floury sludge instead of the cheesy creaminess you are looking for.

So while it is possible to cook the cheese sauce in the microwave, it does save neither time nor effort. You need to heat the mix slowly and stir often. If you have only a microwave at hand or are very prone to letting the cheese mix burn a bit on the stove (and detest the pot-scrubbing), it certainly is an option worth trying out. You'll need to decide for yourself, whether it fits your cooking style.

Side note re. other recipes as mentioned in other answers:
I chose to tailor my answer to your favourite recipe because even as there are lots of variations in Welsh Rarebit recipes, I assumed you like yours (with flour, sans beer or mustard) or you wouldn't call it your "staple lunch".


Can we use baking powder instead of activated yeast for making pizza dough?if yes than in which proportion we can use it? Can we use baking powder instead of activated yeast for making pizza dough wouldn't it effect the recipe?if yes than in which proportion we can use it?

You can certainly make pizza dough with baking powder. However, adapting a yeast recipe to baking powder will be very difficult. I would suggest searching for a pizza dough recipe that already uses baking powder rather than trying to adapt your recipe.


What makes cooked chicken chewy? Fresh bought chicken, marinated for about 3-4 hours in fresh cream and spices when baked in the oven comes out as chewy at times. We have also tried marinating using yoghurt and changing the cooking time but its not as soft as it should be. What could we be doing wrong?

There are two main causes of chewiness in chicken when cooked this way:

Overcooking.   Overcooked chicken is chewy, possibly stringy, and dry.
Dried out on the outside.  Especially if the skin is removed, the outside may dry out (as well as overcook, even if the inside is not overcooked), leaving a leathery and unpleasant aspect to the chicken.

The solution for the first is not to overcook.  Use an instant read thermometer to know when chicken is done (approximately 155-160 F for white meat, 165 F - 180 F depending on your preference for dark meat).

The solution to the second is to cover, either with the sauce or braising liquid, or aluminum foil or similar so that it cannot dry out.


Chosing 2 pans - the most versatile solution I'm mot a noob cook, but it's the first time I'm buying myself a proper kitchenware. I have a hard time deciding which frying pan would be the best form me. In fact I'm pretty much set on buying 2 pans, as it seems there is no one pan that cover all the situations.

I cook pretty lot of italian food. I don't do meat too often (and I plan stopping eating it at all very soon), rather many vegetable/flour dishes. Usually I cook for myself (sometimes for 2), but often do big portions of the dish that will last me for 2-3 days. Of course sometimes I fry myself an egg or just need to fry some onion for some other dish.

I want a solid and versatile solution. I can and am willing to take care for it, so I don't mind if it needs seasonig or cannot be cleaned with soap.

Though I don't want to pay only for a brand name, budget is not that big of a problem, as I think it'll be a profitable investition.

After doing pretty extensive reading on my own it seems stainless steel, regular (non-enameled) cast-iron and enameled cast-iron are the most commonly advised. I'm pretty much set on that one of the pans I'll be buying will be cast iron, as it's said to be very solid and good for everything other than acids.

Questions:

Which one do you think would make a better addition to a cast-iron pan: stainless steel or enameled cast-iron? If stainless steel, then pure steel or one with non-stick/copper coating?

What sized do you think would be the best? I'm thinking about 26cm (10 inches) diameter. Should I go for a slightly bigger 28cm? I have even bigger problem with the depth. Should I buy a shallow frying pan (like this one: http://www.skeppshult.com/en/sortiment/professional/frying-pans/0260-2/) or deep pan (like this: http://www.skeppshult.com/en/sortiment/professional/deep-pans/deep-pan-25-cm/)?

Do you think a lid for the pan is a must-have?

What are the best materials for handles? Many manufacturers do wooden handles, but I doubt it being a good solution, as you cannot put a pan in the oven then. Are steel handles okay?

What brands would you recommend? (I'm living in Poland, so no US-only brands please) I heard Skeepshult makes very good cast-iron, but I also read that it's not use in buying expensive brand cast iron pan, as the cheaper solutions aren't any worse. For enameled cast iron people recommended Chasseur and Le Creuset (this one also makes stainless steel pans). What would you recommend for stainless steel?

If I could only have two pans, those pans would be a high quality 12 inch stainless steel skillet, and an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven. Both pans would have a lid. Tempered glass lids are nice on the skillet/fry pan, but the quality of the skillet is more important.

Fantasy Skillet

Fantasy Dutch Oven

Dutch ovens come in a huge range of sizes. Consider the size you want carefully, this pan should outlive you. Are you likely to be cooking for a larger number of people at some point in time? For someone to whom both are available, there is no way I would recommend paying $300 or more for the Le Creuset brand, when Lodge makes virtually the same pan for $60. I'll have some more info for you in a bit (note: we later discussed it at length in chat), but I probably won't recommend a specific brand unless I happen to find a credible source for such a recommendation.


Freezing cooked rice? I accidentally made way too much rice for a dinner party. My wife and I definitely can't eat it all over the next few days, and after that it will probably go bad. Is it possible to freeze rice that has already been cooked? It's flavored so unfortunately we can't use it for fried rice.

Yes you can. See my answer here: Safe to wash rice the night before and leave overnight before cooking? Just don't put it in the refrigerator first, portion it in the amount you will use at one time, put it into ziplocks and freeze. Of course, for food safety reasons you have to move quickly.


Our broiler "ruins" pans when we use it Whenever I broil something (like a piece of fish) in the oven, using either a 1/4 sheet pan or a 9 X 13 pan for example, any fats wind up burning onto the pan and I can't get the pan clean. It's almost like the pan which starts out nonstick winds up nonstick AND seasoned.

Is there a way to keep the pans from getting the fats burned on, even in the short time in the broiler, or is there a type of pan that resists the "seasoning" that goes on, so it's easier to get them clean?

As it stands now, we have a couple of pans that are safe to use in the broiler because they're already ruined. It would be nice to think there was a way to use whatever pan and not worry about it.

General advice, any time you're cooking something that is going to become one with the pan under high heat, cover the pan with foil before you put the stuff on it.

As another possibility you can buy a stoneware baking sheet. They season more like cast iron, so burned on fat is fine. Or you could just use cast iron...It's pretty much impossible to get something permanently stuck to cast iron, unless you were using it as a crucible to melt silver or something...


How to tell when water reaches 100 degrees Fahrenheit without a candy thermometer for the purposes of disolving gelatin? I found a recipe for a gelatin desert I'd like to try. But there was one step I don't feel prepared to tackle:

  In the meantime, in a small sauce pan heat ¼ cup of water to about 100
  degrees. Add the gelatin to the water and let dissolve.

I don't have a candy thermometer to measure the temperature of my water. Would it be sufficient to use hot tap water? Or should I bring the water to a slow or full boil? Does the precise temperature make a difference when dissolving gelatin or is it ok to be rather approximate?

Gelatin is quite tolerant, but with a few restrictions:

Never boil gelatine, because it looses it's binding/gelling properties.
Liquifying gelatine requires temperatures that feel "warm" to the touch, but not all recipes handle warm additions well - e.g. whipped cream.
Cooling liquid gelatine for heat sensitive recipes should happen fairly quick, and so should incorporating the coolish gelatine to the other ingredients : Stir well or you end up with "gummy bear"- like lumps.

So without knowing the details of your recipe I suggest using fairly warm water in the range of "warm bath water" or "comfortable for washing hands" but not at all "hot". (Note that I don't give a precise temperature range on purpose.)  Hot tap water should suffice, but heating it on the stove is fine, too. Just use gentle heat and don't let the gelatine rest on the bottom of the pot to avoid overheating.
Depending on your next steps, you might want to stir the liquid  gelatine until it's barely warm to the touch or add a few spoonfulls of whatever cool mixture you are planning to bind, stir, then add to the rest. For warm other ingredients, extra cooling is not required, just mix and let set.


Does dried milk powder retard yeast growth in bread making I have found that when using dried milk powder to soften the crumb on wholemeal loaves that the dough doesn't rise as well, even when using 25% strong white flour to increase the gluten.

Is this because of the milk powder?

Short answer, no.
Try souring the dough a small percentage to strengthen the gluten  -more elastic- which should help higher rising


The role of fat (butter, oil) in caramel-required recipes? Why in some recipes with using caramel, like, for example, caramelized walnuts or chinese caramelized apples, its required to melt sugar in oil or butter instead of making caramel with water or just melt the sugar per se?

typical recipe scheme looks like this:

melt and caramelize sugar in fat
put pieces of food into and cover by
this caramel
put the final product to nonsticky surface and let it
cool

so, question:
What the role of fat in such recipes? is it possible to use sugar caramelized by itself or with water? or it has influence on covering abilities of caramel? or smth else?

Thank you for your answers and time.

Well, I'd say it has mostly to do with texture, but also with taste.

To my knowledge there are three basic methods to making caramel:

dry:  without anything but sugar. In my opinion the most difficult method, as it tends to burn easily.
wet: with water added to make sugar syrup, which is then turned into caramel. The water evaporates during the process. It takes a bit longer, but in my opinion definitely easier to handle than the dry method. Also, as i recall, has a slightly different texture than the dry method caramel.
fatty: with fat, obviously. Fat doesn't evaporate and can get very hot, even though, not as hot as sugar alone. For me the easiest method. However, it should under no circumstances come in contact with water, or it get's very, very dangerous.

So in the first two cases you end up with mostly caramelized sugar and maybe water (depends on whether you let the water evaporate completely or if you try to end up with caramel sauce). With the third method, however, you end up with a caramel-fat mixture, which has of course different properties. For example, if it has enough fat, it turns soft again if it gets warm.

I think, for most of my applications, the fatty version gives a smoother, softer texture, which could indeed aid with the coating of nuts for example. This is probably, because most fats are soft or liquid when room temp. I think, it also affects taste, because fat is a natural flavor enhancer, which brings out the caramel flavor even more. Just like the salt in salted caramel. (On a side note, i think it also looks shinier, but that could just be my imagination. ;) )

As always with caramel: Be extra careful whichever method you're using. It is soooo fricking hot and you can burn yourself very, very easily. Stay safe!

Edit: for some extra science take a look at this paper I just found. It examines the effect of fat on caramel texture attributes. Might be interesting!


Are there common culinary uses for the addition of stearic acid? I was doing some research into flavorless (or flavor-neutral) acids that could be used to create certain things without altering the flavor of the outcome (say, an emulsion).

Stearic acid immediately came to mind because it's known to be associated with lowered LDL cholesterol when compared to other fatty acids, and it naturally occurs in many proteins such as beef / chicken / most fish. I knew it doesn't taste like anything because my parents ran a candle business out of our basement growing up, and I accidentally grabbed some thinking it was sugar, and was quite surprised when I tasted nothing.

I looked at a study which also breaks down the average content of stearic per 100 grams of various proteins and adding a few milligrams of it to something like a sauce definitely seems like it could be in the safe realm of possibility.

But I can't really find any references to any real culinary use for it other than its natural occurrence, which led me to wonder why it's not a more commonly used additive for the properties that it has? I'm also not certain if I'm over-estimating the efficacy of it used as an acid. I've never used it in any of the kitchens where I've worked.

Does anyone know more about it?

Its main "culinary" use is as a binder or texture agent in "processed" foods.  You'll tend to find it in stuff like chewing gum, edible wax, and various candy elements like coatings.

Aside from its natural occurrence (which, as noted in comments, comes in sorts of foods, but especially animal and vegetable oils and fats), it is also sometimes found in substances that are trying to mimic those oils or fats, like artificial butter flavoring, etc.

As a long-chain fatty acid, its solubility in water is limited, so it can't really be used as an "acid" in the way you tend to think about culinary stuff like vinegar or citric acid.  (And its effective pH would be way too high to do anything.)  The "fatty" part of the carbon chain also dominates the perceptual aspect of it, so it will taste more "fatty" than sour or acidic.


What vessel should I choose for Lactofermentation? Do I have to use a mason jar to ferment veggies? Or would any jar do? In case of the latter, does it have to be air sealed?

Any water-tight container can be used for lactic fermentation. The main thing you want is a way to keep the vegetables submerged in the brine, usually a wide weight placed over the vegetables, so a jar which narrows a lot at the top will be trickier to work with. (Using a plastic container may give a bad flavor.)

You should not seal a container being used for fermentation. Gas pressure will build up, and possibly make the jar explode.


At which temperature Parmesan cheese must be transported? I bought a piece of Parmesan cheese over internet. When it arrived (in a styrofoam box) I measured its temperature and it was 17,8° C  (64° F). I think it's too high...

Is this OK? What is the correct temperature for storing and transporting Parmesan cheese?

Thanks!

While ideally Parmesan may be stored (at home) in refrigerated environment, there is no harm done to it (assuming nothing else like condensation occurs) by allowing it to sit at a warmer temperature for a few days.  It is, after all, aged at ambient temperature for 2 years.

At least where I live, stores do not even put Parmesan in a refrigerated case; it is sold from tables at room temperature would would be slightly higher than what you measured in the shipping box.

I think your 18 C cheese should be just fine.

See also:  How to store Parmesan cheese?


Can self-raising flour be used in lieu of plain flour when making a roux for a bechamel? I have plenty of self-raising flour (which will easily take me until its best before date to use) but am running very low on plain flour which I use predominantly for making a roux and then ultimately a bechamel. Given the current circumstances it seems appropriate to use up things I already have in the cupboard, rather than purchasing more if I don't need to.

Will the added raising agents in self-raising flour (the flour I have is from Sainsbury's and contains Calcium Phosphate and Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate, apparently) affect the production of a roux and then ultimately a bechamel sauce from the roux?

Since you will only be using 1.5 tablespoon of flour for more than a cup of milk, it shouldn't impact the flavor. Also as there is no salt in the Sainsbury Self-raising flour, you will not need to adjust for salt. However, the alkalinity from the Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate as it heats and breaks down into Sodium Carbonate might impact the flavor. But, the acidity of the milk and butter should counter that, so it wouldn't be noticeable.


Soggy Italian calzones Why are my calzones always wet after I cut them? If I let them cool, the bottom is wet. Other then runny or soggy they're so good.

Possible causes of soggy calzones and their fixes.

The oven is too hot. It seems counter-intuitive, but this browns the crust to golden perfection before the internal temp of the stuffing reaches an ideal point. It won't get hot enough for long enough to steam out the sauce and ingredients. Cook at a lower temp for longer and broil to perfection if needed.

The ingredients have too much water. If you're tossing a ton of onion, mushrooms, green pepper, tomatoes, etc into the diaper, you'll have to adjust your cooking parameters compared to drier protein stuffings. You might want to saute the ingredients before incorporation to give them a head start on temp and water loss.

The sauce is too runny or under-cooked at the start. Make sure to use a thicker sauce, even than with pizza. Pan-heating commercial sauce before baking will help. You can even turn spaghetti sauce into calzone sauce if you simmer it long enough.

The crust is too greasy. While it tastes and looks great, if the crust is too greasy, it can seal in steam instead of allowing it to permeate and escape. While eventually the moisture will find a way out with swelling/bubbling and "geysering", a lot of water vapor will condense on the non-leaky spots and drip to the bottom; think about the sweaty lid of a rice cooker. You can also simply add vent slits in the crust (like buttery pie crusts often sport) if you have otherwise-good results with your current recipe.

Generic methods of reducing moisture include baking/resting on a rack instead of a plate/pan, opening sooner after cooking to allow poofs of steam to escape before it becomes liquid (many restaurants serve them split in half), and resting them upside down to hide some of the juice in the thicker less-soaked top crust.


How to create homemade special coffees I got bored with my regular coffe "Nestcafe Classic" or "Nestcafe 3 in 1". Are there tutorials how to create some awesome coffee? I don't mind if it's a latte, cappuccino or  espresso, as long as it tastes good. I know it's kinda vague. All I really want is something different and I could do it on my kitchen, fast, easy, cheap and that doesn't require me to have those advanced coffee makers.

Also if I could perfect the process, I would like to serve and impress my guests. But for now I'm the only one who's gonna be trying it.

Tools

I have the following:

Aeropress: Roughly $40 CAD, Quick and easy clean up, Makes a good single serving of expresso.

Moka Pot: They vary in size and cost, but can be found for about $30, makes a good strong cup of coffee.

French Press: Easy to find, about $50 for a decent one, Glass is common, Stainless steel is better, makes also a decent cup of coffee.

Percolator: I have a stovetop one that I bought for camping. Big in size and it's cheap. It makes coffee.

Vietnamese drip thiny: It makes a single serving of very strong coffee. I used this because it was really, really cheap and made a good strong coffee. I stopped using it as the aeropress is better.

I don't have one, but I've enjoyed what is becomming popular these days which is a pourover. There is also a few others (Siphon, True expresso machines), but I don't have much experience with them and some of them are a lot more expensive. They're relatively cheap as well.

If you're mainly making coffee for yourself, I'd look into an aeropress or the pourover. They probably make the best coffee and are both affordable. The aeropress is my daily coffee, because well it's awesome. I often serve the french press as it's bigger or the percolator if I have lots of guests that don't care for "good" coffee.

Coffee

First thing, find a source of good coffee. You're looking for somewhere that roasts their own coffee and sells it relatively promptly. There are a few online sources as well. (No I wouldn't start at Starbucks or the like...). I don't want to link to places I haven't shopped at, so you'll have to search yourself. Unless you're in Alberta, Canada...

If you really get ambitious you can source green beens online and roast them yourself!

Grind

If you can find a burr grinder (not a blade grinder) that would be ideal. You want to grind as close to making the coffee as possible. Coffee starts to "lose" flavour as soon as it is roasted, and even quicker after it's ground. A burr grinder will give you a consistent grind, which means consistent flavour. Coarse grind for french press, fine grind for the aeropress/expresso, medium grind for most of the others.

Technique

Now... for the preparation, that varies by whatever machine you use... Check the instructions or google around.

Resources

http://www.ineedcoffee.com/: Lots of good information about different brew methods, coffee in general.

http://coffeegeek.com: Really great site with a lot of coffee specific information. At the top there is a Guides & How-To section. If you click that they will have much better laid out guides as to specific preparations.


How do I use the clock on my Ilve oven? I recently bought an Ilve oven second-hand.  I can't figure out how to use the clock/timer functions.

The oven is 10-15 years old, and all the manuals I have found are for newer/different ovens.

Can anyone explain how to set the time and use the timer functions?  What do the 6 settings on the clock dial mean?

Below is a picture of the clock, there is a full picture of the oven itself here.

In the past I have had a lot of success asking questions of the Repair Guru at Repair Clinic (I am not affiliated in any way except as a satisfied customer).  You email them a question and within a day or two they get back to you with an answer.  Not all of my questions were obviously going to lead to me purchasing any parts, but they were very helpful anyway.  They may or may not have your manual available (a quick search of their site didn't reveal anything by Ilve, but I'm willing to bet they could help.

To ask a question, click this link and in the upper right, click one-to-one Repair Guru emails in the blue circle.

You have to register, but it's only so they can assign you a case and you can easily get back to it.  I use name+company@gmail.com formatting with my gmail address and no spam originated from them when I signed up a couple years ago.


Does a plain latte have chocolate in it? I cannot eat chocolate but would like to drink a latte.  Is there any chocolate in a regular latte?  I know you can get a chocolate latte, but need to know if a plain latte has chocolate in it.

No, it does not. A latte is espresso with steamed milk and a thin layer of steamed milk foam on top. Assuming your barista knows what he is doing, you'd have to specially ask to get chocolate in a latte, and then it would be called a mocha (in the US).


Does the direction matter in the Stretch and Fold method? I am currently making Poolish Ciabatta bread from the recipe in Bread Bakers Apprentice. Within the recipe, one of the methods used to shape and work the dough is the "Stretch and Fold" method. Essentially, you stretch the bread until it is a long rectangle and then you fold the two sides down letter style.

My question is, does it matter what direction to fold the dough in. Do I have to continue folding in the same direction so the bread dough begin to "line up" the gluten development?

Stretch and fold should be done in both directions.

One stretch and fold, in most techniques that I read, is stretching like you stay, folding, then rotating 90 degrees and repeating.

You can see an excellent example of stretch and fold in this video and here.  Where they do it and then turn it - that's one stretch and fold.


Working with sticky dough for pizza making I made a pizza dough with a recipe containing:
20 ounces of wheat, 2.25 teaspoon of Salt, 1/2 teaspoon of active yeast, 12 ounces water.

After a good time of kneading, I let it rise for around 2 hours. Then I made balls. Already I could tell the dough was very humid and bubbling. I let the balls at room temperature for around 10 hours and after, when trying to shape them, they are way too sticky.

Unless the recipe has an issue, is there any tip for handling sticky doughs for shaping pizzas?

A super sticky dough is exactly what you want for pan pizza. Take a look at what Kenji from Serious Eats has to say about pan pizza dough. He uses a super-sticky, no-knead dough, but I bet yours would be fine for this application.

I followed Kenji's advice to make this pizza, it was the best pan pizza I've ever had.

Using the pan made dealing with the sticky dough a breeze.


Sponge cake batter too runny I followed a new recipe for a sponge cake (Sour Cream Sponge Cake) by James Peterson.

The only tweak I made was to include some lemon zest in with the sour cream. When I combined the yolk mixture with the whites, I attempted to pipe the batter into ring as he suggested. However, the batter was too runny and I ended up baking it in a pie round, and the rise wasn't what I had hoped for (assuming because the batter was runny).

Has anyone made this type of cake which was runny, and found a solution? Would the minimal moisture from the zest make the cake runny?

Making stiff not dry egg whites is very important in any chiffon/angel food cake that is counting on the expanding hot air to give lift to the cake. I worked as a professional baker for 18 years. When making egg whites for chiffon and other such cakes we used a combination of salt sugar and cream of tarter using a planetary mixer. At home now I use 1/8 tsp cream of tarter 2tsp sugar and 1/4 tsp salt per two egg whites but do not exceed 1tsp salt at any time unless you cut back in the batter so as not have a too salty cake. Be very careful that the bowl is perfectly clean. Any type of oils will prevent your egg whites from whipping satisfactory Using a cold bowl and allowing your egg whites to be very cold also helps as the natural friction will break them down (like whipped cream). Also be careful with how aggressive you are with the folding. If you knock it down to much it will not come back. Hope this was of some help.


Which chili peppers does one use in arrabbiata sauce? I want to make an infusion in whiskey with these peppers. I can't find which peppers are used. The peppers described are dried, long, and thin.

"Arrabiata" is the Italian word for angry...angry sauce,which is the literal translation for sugo all'arrabiata the spicy Italian tomato based sauce to which you refer.  The spiciness comes from dried red chili. In Italy these red peppers are often referred to as peperoncini.  You would likely get the effect you were looking for by using good quality dried red pepper flakes.

This question and response addresses Italian peppers.


Poisonous Escoffier recipe? I found a strange recipe in Escoffiers's Guide Culinaire:

2939 - CHERRY WATER
Stone two lbs. of very ripe cherries, and rub them through a sieve. Put the purée into a basin with the stones crushed in the mortar, and let the whole macerate for one hour. Then moisten with one pint of filtered water, and strain the juice trough a woollen bag, or muslin folded in two and stretched.
Add a piece of well-washed ice and six oz. of loaf-sugar, and put the whole in the cool for twenty minutes. Flavour, when about to serve, with four liqueur-glassfuls of Kirsch.
The saccharometer should register 9° when inserted into this preparation.

To me, this sounds like a straightforward way to give your guests a nasty cyanide poisoning. But given the author, and the fact that this was probably served to a large number of people over the years, this doesn't seem to have happened. Is there anything in this recipe that would neutralize the amygdalin from such a large amount of ground-up cherry pits?

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or a chemist.
The recipe does not tell you to ingest the crushed pits themselves, just the juice that you extracted. The question then is whether you will extract a significant amount of amygdalin using water. This answer on the Chemistry SE suggests using methanol to extract amygdalin from apricot pits. This video also goes into extracting the cyanide from cherry pits, which takes quite a bit more effort than just letting the pits sit in water for an hour.
Thus: the recipe does not neutralize the amygdalin, but the final product is unlikely to contain dangerous doses of the stuff.


How do I make shelf stable legume dishes in vacuum bags? how do I make shelf stable cooked legumes in vacuum sealed bags at home?

If you want to shelf store the cooked legumes in plastic, you need to buy boilable pouches

They are a great space saver, and somewhat environmentally friendly as the oil/energy required to make one glass preserving jar can make 50 to 100 of these bags. And how many preserving jars survive 50 times without breaking!

You will find plenty of sources on the Internet, typical prices $50 to $200 per 1000

The process varies from each bag supplier and vacuum system, but is similar to normal home preserving

If you get the foil lined (light proof) pouches they will preserve food for many years

Example suppliers caspak pacrite

This process is popular in NZ and AU, but as I have just discovered, not so in the USA? So it maybe easier to order from here

The energy, weight, and space saving of plastic pouches is significant


How do I cook with Salsola (land seaweed)? I've seen Salsola in buffets, but don't know how to prepare it. How do I prepare it, because I can't seem to find a recipe anywhere?

Salsola soda can be eaten raw or sautéed quickly - as a very rough rule of thumb, think “spinach”.

If you are looking for recipes, it’s helpful to know that in Italian cuisine it’s called

  Agretti or
  Barba di frate

If you search for one of these names plus “recipe”, you should find enough recipes to work from there.


Is burnt microwave safe to use? Microwave popcorn left a burnt hole on the little metal plate inside the microwave. It still, works perfectly fine.  But is it safe food wise? Should i use it?

That's not a metal plate. it's heat resistant mica composite. The microwaves come into the oven through the hole behind it. You can take it out scrub it off, put it back in and be good to to go. Be gentle with the stuff. It'll crack if you scrub too hard. From the soot marks on the metal above the piece, you must have had a big blob of grease explode onto the shield, where it burned merrily. Clean the soot off too.
Pull the piece up gently to remove, and push it down under the clips to put it back.


Weird russet potato? I'm supposed to be boiling it, but this russet potato has this one smooth spot on it. It's not like the rest of the potato's texture, it's almost as smooth as my phone screen. Not oddly colored. Is this okay to eat?

(Click to enlarge)

I would guess it might just have leaned against a stone as it grew, the texture difference would be from the skin reacting to something pressing on it if so.  Or it might be a scar that's healed over.  I've seen lots of garden-grown potatoes with imperfections, they're usually not a problem.

It is probably safe to eat if there's no interior discoloration or other signs of trouble.  If you're really unsure, you can peel the potato, or just slice the peel off in that area.


40lb.round of opened grana padano cheese I bought a 80lb. round of Grano Padano cheese and had it opened horizontally to use 1/2 of it for wedding. We "chunked" out a good portion of the center so the guests could nibble on it while tasting wine. The other 1/2 we would like to save for another wedding that is 3 months away. We want to keep it uncut and do the same thing for the  Pre-dinner wine tasting. My question is: What is the best way to preserve it? I might be able to cryovac the whole piece and freeze it, but I understand it might lose some flavor and become crumbly. I can also refrigerate it. Would wrapping it in wax paper, then heavy duty aluminum foil, be the best way? I would be grateful for any answers!

I think your best bet might be to re-wax the cut surface with cheese wax, available from cheesemaking suppliers, and then store in the fridge, unless you have a cheese cave handy. In general a vertical halving will reduce storage loss by minimizing the cut surface - you could have had the same cheese availability by vertically halving the wheel (with a smaller cut surface) and then horizontally slicing the half you were using, opening it like a book if looking for the "whole round of cheese" look.

Your other best bet might be a bit too late, which is to be sure wedding one has paid for the whole cheese, and wedding two is prepared to pay for a whole cheese, so that if you open it up in 3 months and have a problem, the problem is only "smaller profit" not "taking a loss on trying to store cheese for 90 days after opening."

Linked item is just one I found as an example, not affiliated or even a customer.


Hard boiled eggs in "insta-pot" type device I am trying to hard boil my eggs so the yolk isn't mushy at all, and the yolk doesn't contain a greenish cast around the outside (which I think means they are overdone).

I am doing this in an "insta pot" style device, on a trivet above the water (the eggs aren't submersed).

Some of my eggs crack and leak, which is unappealing to the children (and for better or worse, that's a consideration).
Generally I lose 2 or 3 out of the dozen.

Any advice on how to stop the explosion?
* Am I releasing the pressure off too fast?
(I have tried doing it in short bursts instead of all at once with no noticeable difference)
* Is this caused by them starting too cold?
(generally they come straight from the refrigerator)
* Is it that I'm using large eggs instead of extra large?

All advice appreciated - sorry it is such a simple question for a site where I sometimes don't recognize the terms being used.

I use eggs right out of the refrigerator, large or extra-large (today's were AA Large, average 57 grams). I have also used room temperature eggs, and the difference was tiny. We can tweak for those variables.
The rack keeps the eggs at least a couple of centimeters above the water. This one has another tier so I can do up to a dozen eggs (actually fourteen) at a time. You can certainly jerry-rig something if you don’t have a rack. Keep the eggs vertical if you want them to be pretty.
Add 1 measured liter of cold water to the pan, put the rack in the pan, place the cold eggs on the rack, and set the cooker for 5 minutes at high pressure.
High pressure on the Instant Pot reaches 11.6 PSI. That’s lower than a standard pressure cooker (they run 15 psi), but it should be about the same as yours if it’s a similar type.
Now, this part's important regarding cracking: Time how long it takes your machine to warm up and start the clock. The warm-up should take at least about 8 minutes give or take a minute. You might even want to do this as a dry run with just the liter of water and tweak from there. If it takes significantly more or less time to heat up, that will affect your final result. So add more or less water as appropriate. You can also use warm or hot water, or add ice cubes to cold water to get that 8-minute warm-up time. If your cooker got to pressure significantly faster than that, that could totally have caused your cracking (see GdD’s answer).
Once it heats up, it’ll cook for five minutes.
After it cooks for 5 minutes (the Instant Pot beeps), let it sit without venting for five minutes. Time it carefully. That’s called a five-minute natural release.
While it’s doing its 5-minute natural release, prepare ice water for plunging the hot eggs. I use a pan with a lid for that. I’ll show you why in a moment.
Once the 5-minute natural release is over, vent the pot (if necessary to open) and immediately plunge the eggs into the ice water.
Let the eggs sit in the ice water for 5 minutes.
If you use a pan with a lid, now pour the water out and shake the eggs with each other and the ice. Peel. THIS is my favorite part of pressure-cooking eggs. Check this out, they just slip out of their shells.

And voilà!

Now, if you follow those instructions and they’re a bit overcooked or undercooked, adjust the natural release time. That you can control to the second. The 5-5-5 time routine has worked perfectly for me with cold, large eggs. If your eggs are extra-large, maybe add a minute to the natural release. If you start with room temperature eggs, subtract 30 seconds or so.
To illustrate how that works, check this out:

I forgot that egg after it cooked, and it stayed in the unopened cooker 26 minutes after the pressure cycle was done. See how dramatically overcooked it is? The natural release time gives you control.
This last egg went straight to venting/ice water (no natural release) after 4 minutes on high pressure, then opening the pot and plunging the eggs as quickly as possible:

I had never actually done that until tonight. That was yummy! An easily peelable, creamy,  very soft-boiled egg.


How to bake cake in pressure cooker instead of microwave? I have tried many time to bake a cake using pressure cooker,but every time it was not baked properly sometime it became very hard and sometime it will not baked overall,i am not getting that how to bake a cake properly using pressure cooker?

You should pre-heat the cooker for 10 to 15 minutes and not use the rubber of cooker while baking the cake. Place your cake on some sort of steel ring or on another pot so it will not be directly heat from bottom and bake your cake on low flame for 20 to 25 minutes.It will perfectly baked.

I also bake the cake using cooker for several time and it's perfectly baked.


How to store honey so it's fresh and the opening of the container is not always a mess? How to store honey so it's fresh and the opening of the container is not always a mess? The plastic container the honey comes in has a small opening for squeezing, but it is always a mess.

There are a variety of storage containers that can keep honey fresh, as long as the container is airtight. When I buy local honey in jars, I leave it in there; if I buy a squeezable container with a small dispensing hole, I leave it in there.

The key to avoiding sticky buildup (which frequently makes it difficult to open the jar or bottle, beyond just being icky) is to wipe down the container after dispensing honey. A damp cloth or damp paper towel, or even a slightly damp forefinger, is sufficient to remove the small amount of honey residue and leave the container clean for storage.


How can bitterness from dried mushrooms be avoided? A couple of times I've made the mistake of adding the liquid used to soak dried mushrooms back to my broth resulting in a horribly bitter taste.

The top answers here and here make no mention of bitterness. Instead they say the liquid should be reserved and used to add mushroom flavor. This can't be the whole story.

Could it be that different mushrooms require different preparation methods?

Recently I have been using a mixture of porcini and funnel chanterelle. Previously, I only used porcini, so perhaps chanterelles are the problem?

One online source (which I'll link to if I find again) suggested cold water should be used to avoid bitterness. Another online source (again, I've lost the link) says that warm water should be used and boiling water will cause bitterness.

I don't remember now but it's possible that I used boiling water so these claims sound plausible to me.

Does anyone know for sure whether bitterness depends on the type of mushroom or the method of soaking?

My advice: ditch the soaking liquid.

Here's what I just tried. I divided my dried mushrooms up into 10 bowls: 5 with dried chanterelles and 5 with dried porcini. I added equal amounts of water to each at the following temperatures 10°C (directly from the tap), 40°C, 60°C, 80°C and 100°C (or as close as I could get).

After soaking for 15 minutes I sampled the soaking liquid from each bowl.

All samples tasted astringent and bitter. Naturally the taste was less pronounced for the colder liquids, but not so much as I had expected. The liquid that the porcini soaked in tasted somewhat better than that of the chanterelles. None of the soaking liquid tasted good enough that I would add it to a stock; I was almost gagging when the experiment was complete.

I wrung as much liquid as I could out of the rehydrated mushrooms and used them to make a vegetable stock. With the flavor of the soaking liquid fresh in my mind I could still detect a note of bitterness. This was easily dealt with using a little salt.

The bitterness from the soaking liquid, I know from past experience, cannot be completely removed with salt.

Update: Looking at messages from an online forum here that deals with the same problem, I thought I'd look at some suggestions made there.

  Mushroom dust is the cause of bitterness.

There was an amount of dust in the dried mushrooms I purchased. However, I rinsed the mushrooms before starting the experiment described above, so dust doesn't account for the bitterness.

  Bitterness is due to bruised fruit that has oxidized before it dried.

I'm not 100% sure about this, but wouldn't bruising change the color of the mushroom? I didn't notice any discoloration. Anyhow this is a quality issue and I've more to say about quality later.

  Water is the problem; use a water filter.

The water in Stockholm is neither chlorinated nor laden with minerals (I have had the same kettle for years and there's not a hint of mineral deposit inside). This is not the problem.

  Mushroom quality is the issue. Use mushrooms that have been dried and stored properly.

Quality seemed like it could be an issue to me. My impression is that supermarket dried mushrooms in Stockholm don't have a high turnover and could have been on the shelves a good while. The mushrooms I used in the tests above had quite a lot of dust in their packages and that surely isn't a good sign.

Today I looked around for something of visibly better quality and found cloud ear and shiitake mushrooms in the local Asian store. These mushrooms look pretty good and their packages contained almost no dust. The dried shiitake were vacuum-sealed in a package together with an oxygen scavenger.

I soaked these mushrooms at 10°C and 80°C for 15 minutes. Cloud ear mushrooms don't have a strong smell and the soaking liquid didn't taste of much after soaking. The little taste I could detect was slightly astringent and not particularly pleasant. Incidentally, cloud ears don't rehydrate well in cold water and were still quite solid after soaking.

Dried shiitake, in contrast, have a strong musty smell and the soaking liquid was relatively strong tasting. I did taste some pleasant mushroomy flavors and for a time I had to weigh whether I liked the taste or not. Unfortunately these flavors were mixed with some definitely off tastes, among them the familiar bitterness. In the end I couldn't stomach more than three tablespoons of the liquid.

I had a notion that mushrooms soaked in cooler water might retain their mushroom flavor whilst leaching their bitter taste. To this end I drained the mushrooms that were soaked cold and added boiling water to them. After a further 15 minutes I taste tested again. Comparing this second soaking liquid to that of the shittake initially soaked at 80°C, the flavor was much more dilute. I'm sad to say that mushroom flavor is lost even when soaking cold.

My advice for now remains the same: discard the soaking liquid. If that strikes you as wasteful I would at least urge you to taste a tablespoonful of the stuff before you decide to add it to your broth.


What went wrong with these pots de creme au chocolat? I baked pots de creme au chocolat yesterday following this recipe, but something went wrong:

As you can see in the photos below, the chocolate seems to have separated out, forming a relatively firm top layer, while the remainder underneath is lighter in color and has an unappetizing wet mousse-like texture.

I followed the recipe closely, but let me add some clarifications to avoid ambiguity:

I made the chocolate variant only, so doubled the quantities of dark chocolate (I used 65%) and cocoa
I beat the eggs and sugar in a stand mixer with a wire whisk attachment, then added the infused milk and then the melted chocolate while still mixing on low speed
I poured the resulting mixture into eight 4oz glass canning jars (~3oz per jar). At this point, the mixture appeared to be homogenous.
I arranged the jars in a 9x12x2" steel pan, placed it into an electric oven preheated to 320 degF, then filled the pan with boiling water to about halfway up the glass jars.
I baked these until the tops would hardly wobble when I tapped the jars, which was at the 29 min mark
Once I removed the jars from the water bath, the layering was immediately obvious in all eight pots de creme. Interestingly, the bottom of the chocolate layer seems to roughly align with the water level in the bath.
After cooling briefly, I put lids on the jars and refrigerated them for several hours. The photos above are after refrigeration overnight.

The only possibility I can come up with is that I inadvertently filled the pan with cold water. I used an electric kettle, and while I thought I heard it bubbling in the background, my attention was focused on another recipe. Maybe I never switched it on.

Is this a likely explanation for these results? I can see how a cold water bath would result in uneven cooking, but I haven't been able to find good reasoning for why the chocolate would separate out on top.

You've answered your own question. The water bath should have gone all the way up to just above the crème in your pots. I'd also bet that you had this on the top rack of your oven, this type of water bath should be on the lowest rack to keep the tops from cooking faster than the bottoms which is what looks like happened. I've had the same thing happen with crème brulee before.

  Once I removed the jars from the water bath, the layering was
  immediately obvious in all eight pots de creme. Interestingly, the
  bottom of the chocolate layer seems to roughly align with the water
  level in the bath.


Other apple varieties for a Granny Smith fan When I buy apples I tend to buy the Granny Smith variety. I've heard that it's more of a baking variety than one for eating directly, but I like it better than others I've tried. The only two names I can recall are  Red Jacket and Red Delicious. I know there are tons of types of apple that I'll never eat unless I make an effort. Which types should I, as a Granny Smith fan, go out of my way to try? As far as I can tell I like both the acidity and the crispness of the Granny Smiths.

Wikipedia tells me that Granny Smiths "The tree is thought to be a hybrid of Malus sylvestris, the European Wild Apple, with the domestic apple M. domestica as the polleniser." I've been unable to find European Wild Apples nor any other varietals that are derived from them.

Granny Smith's popularity as a baking variety is mostly due to its firmness and tartness, which will offset the caramalized sugars from baking the apple and prevents the apple from falling apart, but theres no reason you can't eat it plain as well. Actually I also prefer fresh apples which arent too sweet, and granny smith's are one of my favorites to snack on as well.

Now, there are hundreds of different apple cultivars (or varieties), and many will probably not be available locally, and you haven't mentioned what it is you like about granny smith apples, so I can't specifically reccomend that many apples.

That being said, I would cross reference wikipedia's list of apple cultivars with attributes you like in an apple, and see what comes up. For example if you like tart apples you could try Honeycrisp or Pippins. If you like firm apples try Golden Delicious, or Golden Gala.


Why is the English word "curry" used for all these different dishes? More like meta-cooking question, but I believe it fits here better than on travel stack.

Why is English so poor at differentiating all those different things hidden under one common name: curry?

Is there a historical reason for that, such as similar (for the sailors in XVI century) food from different exotic countries?  Or do they have similar basis, like set of spices, flavors?

Background

There are at least few different dishes (or even dish families) from different countries that western people call curry, even if they are not similar:

India curry, which is I think the general name for multiple versions of thick sauces with meets, including butter chicken, masala chicken, etc.
Thai curries based on more watered-down sauces with notable taste from coconut milk. There are at least 3 of them (red, yellow, green), and in Thai language they are called ngang which is also the general term for soup (I can be wrong on this one).
Japanese curry
Filipino curry
The spice called curry - in stores in Europe you can buy this spice (in packs like black pepper, cumin, oregano, etc.) which is essentially mix of simple spices.
There are probably more things that are translated as curry in English.

So, how to differentiate it all? Do all of those have something in common? Or is it just a lack of distinct wording?

"Curry" is based on the Tamil word "Kari", which refers to any of various highly-spiced side dishes intended to be eaten over rice. Englishmen from the British East India Company encountered the Tamil word in their first explorations of the subcontinent, applied it more broadly to pretty much all Indian dishes, and used it in preference to words in other Indian languages.

By the early 19th century, "Curry houses" were established as restaurants in London.  As a result, when British travellers encountered highly spiced stews in Siam and Japan, they called these "curry" as well.  Many of these dishes were descended from Indian cuisine in any case.

If you're interested in this, I highly recommend getting a copy of Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors.  It'll give you a history of the last 600 years of "curry", and recipes besides.


How does double-bagging sous vide food affect cook time? Does double vacuum bagging food for sous vide cooking measurably increase the cook times? Or is the extra bag not thick enough to make an impact?

Plastics have a very low heat capacity. On top of that, the plastic in a bag is very thin. While you are doubling up on the imperfect vacuum in your bags, the effects should still be negligible.


What causes a cake to sink in the center? I just pulled an Italian specialty cake out of the oven and was disappointed to see that it has sunk badly in the middle. It's not to be frosted or layered, so it might still be quite good, but what could have caused the sinking? Here's the recipe, but I deviated considerably in the making of the puree. Orange Olive Oil Cake

EDIT: It wasn't pretty, but it was awesomely good! Maybe the best tasting cake I've ever made. My guest loved it too. It was very orangey, but not too sweet. Moist and dense, but not heavy. It was sublime.

EDIT #2: Here's a picture of a slice that shows just how badly the cake sank. I can't complain too much since the flavor and texture was so spot-on great, but I'd still like the final evolution to be pretty and tasty.

I made the cake from the recipe, and had no problems with leavening. I first cooked a marmalade of the whole oranges (including the pith) and all the sugar and then followed the recipe as given.

But during the marmalade cooking step, the whole thing cooked down a lot. I started with 950 ml of water and 225 g of sugar, and cooked to 107 Celsius, which means that maybe close to 800 ml of the water evaporated. The rest was very saturated. I don't know how exactly you made your puree, but you mention draining it, so I can imagine it will have been quite dry.

Now, if you look at a classic pound cake, the ratio is 1:1:1:1 for flour, fat, eggs and sugar. We have 225 g of sugar here and a similar amount of eggs. But we are using much less fat. It is common to use a fruit puree to partly replace fat, but if we are staying with the original recipe, even after 30 min of cooking, we will have much more added water and fruit pulp than the missing 160 ml of fat. So the authors seemed to have adjusted the recipe for the additional moisture by increasing the flour to 325 g.

What I did was to add only half of the flour I had measured out, and then a bit more baking powder as I had already mixed the leavening agents under the flour. If you didn't adjust the flour but cooked down the puree a lot, you might have ended up with a very heavy, floury cake, which couldn't leaven and collapsed under its own weight. My advice would be to try reducing the flour next time and go by feel until you have reached a proper batter consistency.


What's the role of milk or yogurt in sponge cake? Most recipes for sponge cake use a quantity of yogurt which sometimes is replaced with milk, or even soja or almond drinks.

In those recipes (flour, sugar, eggs, butter/oil, yogurt/milk, some flavouring), what is the role of the dairy product? Is it about protein/fat/chs, about water, about flavour, about colour? Do the substitution for soja or almond drink make sense, or exist better ones?

A basic sponge does not contain milk, yoghurt or other dairy, neither does his closely related cousin, the pound cake (except for butter, of course).

That said, obviously there are many recipes that use extra ingredients like dairy products. Usually the percentages of the recipes are a bit different from the "base" recipes. There are a few reasons to add dairy (or non-dairy):

Adjusting for fewer eggs
If you get less liquid from the eggs, you need a substitute to prevent a "dry" cake. Keep in mind that the water content may be different when using e.g. apple sauce, sour cream, milk or juice.
Changing flavour
The classic recipes can be a bit "eggy" or bland. Especially with non-dairy liquids like lemon juice or alcohols like rum or whiskey you can completely change the flavour profile. Dairy gently alters, e.g. yoghurt / sourcream gives a slight accidic tinge that cuts the sweetness of the sugar.
Reducing fat in pound cakes
Especially less-watery ingredients like applesauce, mased banana and sourcream can replace part of the butter, cutting calories and adding flavour.


What is the shelf life of pickled gherkins stored dry? Our almost 2 years old toddler loves oignons accompagnying pickled gherkins.  Unfortunately, trying to pick one by herself, she spilled all the pickle from a brand new (commercial, pasteurized) jar.  I guess the lack of pickle will affect the gherkins conservation : how long will they remain edible (kept in the fridge) ?  Still a few weeks, or rather a few days ?

You might see some loss of quality within a couple of months, but under refrigeration they will not become close to "unsafe" in that length of time. They're already "pickled", the worst you will face is dried out pickles. You can always add more "pickle" in the form of vinegar, salt, sugar and water (boiled and cooled), but it seems pretty unnecessary - two potato salads and you're done with them.


what is the purpose of lemon/acid in fruit maceration for pie baking? A lot of pie recipes will tell you to take out the liquid in juicy fruits, like apple and peaches, for pie baking.

The purpose is to avoid a soggy crust with too much liquid.

Some people even put tapioca starch to thicken the liquid.

Fruits must be macerated to take out the liquid. This is done by slicing and then adding sugar but also lemon juice.

But what is the purpose of the lemon juice? I know that it lowers the PH and increases the acidity.

But how does this assist in taking out the liquid from the fruit (I"m assuming this is the purpose).

Why don't  just skip it?

I googled it but the answers didn't seem scientific or accurate? E.g., lemon juice is to add flavor or it is to speed up the process (but how?)

While there might be an acceleration effect, sugar on its own is very capable of drawing out liquids quickly. Two other effects are probably much more important:

lemon juice is very effective in stopping cut fruit from oxidizing/enzymatic browning.
taste balancing. Fruit is naturally sweet and sour, adding heavy amounts of sugar can upset that balance too far into the sweet region, resulting in a cloying/one dimensional/stodgy character
in some recipes, keeping the sugar/fruit mixture from caramelizing/browning too much. Acid inhibits maillard reactions to a degree.
acid promotes sugar inversion when combined with heat, which slightly changes the sweetness profile (halfway to honey, more or less) and potentially significantly the texture (there will be no crystallization of loose sugar-water mixtures upon cooling).


Kosher veal steak more salty than kosher beef steak - is it expected and why? When I make veal vs. beef steak from kosher meat, it consistently seems to me that the veal is significantly more salty.

The steak isn't salted by me at all (aside from whatever saltiness remains from koshering process).

The difference persists between different methods (grilling in a stove pan vs. in convection oven).

The steaks (shoulder) are sourced from the same supermarket and to the best of my knowledge are sourced from the same producer by them.

Is this difference in saltiness something expected (or just in my head) and if so, why?

The steaks aren't rinsed (either one).

As a calf ages and matures into a cow, the structure, texture, and taste of the meat changes. Veal will naturally have a milder flavor and finer texture than beef.

The younger the calf, the less developed and dense the muscle structure will be. The less dense the muscle structure is, the more the flavor will penetrate the meat.

So, even in the same process, veal should pick up more of the flavor than beef would.

Also, because the flavor of veal is much milder, it would stand to reason that salt (or any other flavors) would stand out more prominently.


Does the Philips Air-fryer work as well as a standard deep-fryer? I've seen commercial ads about the Philips Air-fryer:

I'd like to hear answers from someone who actually tried it..

Does the outcome taste the same as if it was fried in a normal deep fryer?
Does the outcome have the same crispness? (or better or worse?)
Is it worth its price? (around $248)

I personally haven't used it. Lifehacker did a review on this when it came out though. Basically, it's more like a convection oven, as people  have mentioned. They bascially said if you don't own a convection oven and eat a lot of fries it's worth it, but it really is baking them, not frying.


My split pea soup is bland I have never cooked for myself and have just tried to cook split pea soup in a slow cooker. I tasted it after 3 hours and it had no taste at all. I simply put dry peas (pre split) in with water and a little salt.

What can I do to enhance the flavour?

Look for recipes and add in the things your attempt is missing.

The common denominator will probably be meat (ham bones are common), more salt, and pepper to taste. If you want to take a shortcut, you could use bouillon cubes or paste to provide both meaty flavor and salt, though pork is a lot harder to find than chicken or beef.

Salt and pepper you can just stir in. Same goes for bouillion cubes/paste, though you'll want to mix them into a small amount of soup first to get them to dissolve well and then stir that into the rest of the soup. If you want to add real meat, you'll want to cook it a while longer to get the flavor into the soup. Additional herbs and spices you'd also want some additional cooking time - the simplest rule of thumb would be to just look at the recipe and see how long it cooked the soup after adding those ingredients and do the same with yours.


Can all types of honey be used to make mead? What is the difference between raw and wild honey? Is it raw because of honey collected from apiary domesticated bees, and wild when collected from the forests? Can any honey be used to make mead?  More specifically, what about wild honey, such as Tualang Honey?

To address your 'headline' question: Yes, any kind of honey can be used to make mead, however the mead may have a significantly different flavor depending on the honey chosen. Orange Blossom honey will create a sweeter mead that is lighter in color (like a lager beer) where buckwheat honey will produce a mead that has more earthy tones (like an amber).

Raw honey is 'straight out of the hive' without any processing and sometimes without even any filtering. "Regular" honey has been pasteurized and always filtered. "Wild" honey doesn't have an "official" meaning, but is probably the same as "raw". It is likely just a marketing/branding label.

note: I did find one reference to 'wild honey' being from bees 'in the wild', I find this unlikely as collecting honey from 'wild' beehives is not very efficient, is destructive to the hive and not at all good for the bees.


Are there any substitutes for squash puree? I am trying to make a recipe that calls for squash puree. Unfortunately, I am unable to find any in stores. Is there a good substitute?

If you want something storebought, just get pumpkin puree - it is squash puree, not really even a substitute. Pumpkins are squash, and "pumpkin" is a pretty broad term, covering a lot of winter squash. In fact canned pumpkin is often made with things more similar to butternut squash than what you'd think of as pumpkin (jack-o'-lanterns and all). Just make sure you don't accidentally get some kind of pumpkin pie mix that has spices and maybe other things added.

I suppose if you can't find that either, you could also look at baby food, since squash is fairly common there.

If you really can't find anything in the store, though, don't just give up on the recipe. It really is incredibly easy to make - just cut squash in half, throw in the oven cut side down, bake until it's soft, scoop it out and mash up a bit. The actual active working time is only a couple minutes, and you'll probably get much better flavor than you would from canned goods.


Is it possible to keep battered deep-fried (pork) crunchy? I like the pork in sweet and sour pork to be crunchy, so I deep-fry it and only add the sauce at the last second - or often just have it on the side.  I'm thinking of making a big batch of S&S for a party, and I'm trying to figure out if I can do the deep-frying early, but still have the pork be crunchy.

Is there any way to do this, either by changing my cooking technique or by storing it a certain way?  Even if I can do it the day before, it'd dramatically simplify the party logistics.

The secret to crisp sweet and sour pork is mostly how you serve it

Roast, BBQ, grill (whatever you like) the pork so it fully cooked, but on the lighter side of done. Cut into bite sized pieces

If you want to deep fry (not actually required) use a thin and light tempura style batter (flour, baking soda, beer mixed for ten seconds works OK). Drain well. This can be done the day before and keep it in an airtight container, but reheating is as much trouble as fresh deep frying. Remember, when using a thin light batter deep frying only takes a minute

If not deep frying, finish and reheat under the grill (broiler) till it just starts to smoke

Use a hot Chinese style serving platter and poor in all your sweet and sour sauce fresh from the wok. The sauce and the platter should be piping hot, it doesn't matter if the the pork is not that hot

Pile the middle of the platter with freshly shredded raw cabbage and onion. This should make a low flat island in the sauce just breaking the surface of the sauce. You can use wok fried capsicum, onion, carrots etc instead of cabbage (not as good!)

Carefully pile the pork pieces onto the island

For extra zing add more shredded raw onion on top

For a coastal style, and some fresh shredded coconut and/or mango (not to everyone's taste)

Serve immediately with a large serving spoon, so guests can scoop up the sauce and pork all in one go


How much caffeine would there be if I reuse tea leaves in a second brewing? If you look for information about the amount of caffeine present in a cup of tea, the amounts vary depending on the kind of tea, if the tea is bagged or loose leaves, the brand, and other factors. Nonetheless, the values estimated range from the 25 mg in a cup of white tea to 50 mg in a cup of black tea, or maybe more.

Let's say I use 2 grams of black tea leaves and I brew them in 200 ml of almost-boiling water for the reccomended time of 5 minutes. I get a cup of tea with an estimated amount of caffeine of 50 mg. But then I reuse those same leaves and I brew them again in another 200 ml of water.

What would be the estimated amount of caffeine in that second brewing? Are there estimates for that? Can the result be at least expressed in an estimated percentage with respect to the amount obtained in the first brewing? Would that percentage be the same for other kinds of tea (green, red, oolong...)?

Related:

What is a reliable source for the caffeine content in tea?
How much EGCG and caffeine can specific amount of water absorb from tea leaves?

In general it looks like 65-75% of the total caffeine comes out in the first steeping, while 20-25% comes out in the second steeping. This was addressed in this paper which examined different types of tea. The results are summarized in this table. For more details check out this reddit thread.


Does meat/poultry keep in the fridge for just a couple of days after purchase, or a couple of days after the sell-by/use-by date? I usually freeze all of my meat unless I plan to use it within one day, but I was just wondering whether I could keep some raw chicken in the fridge until Thursday (three days from now). I wanted to make sure it wouldn't go bad, so I did some searching and it seems that most sites recommend discarding raw poultry after just two days.

But the sell-by date on the package is August 6th, which is six days from today. The implication is that if I had boughten this chicken six days later, then it would somehow last in my fridge all the way until August 8th (6+2 days).

Why does the usual food safety advice seem to be suggesting that raw poultry/meat will degrade much more slowly while on grocery store shelves? Are they kept colder there than in conventional refrigerators? Or will my chicken actually be safe to eat for another week?

The advice you see on sites is for poultry which doesn't come with an expiry date. It comes from the time when meat wasn't sold in individual containers with a date stamped on them. You buy poultry at the butcher, he wrapps it in wax paper, and you can keep that in the fridge for two days.

If you buy your meat in the supermarket, it does have a date, and that's what you should go by. If it is a "use by" date, then it is clear - this is the last day on which it is safe to eat it. If it is a "sell by" date, you can again turn to the advice you found. It is calculated conservatively, as is usual in food safety, and gives you a margin which is safe even for meat sold after lying around for a few days at the butcher's. If you buy the meat before the "sell by" date, you "get" extra time to use it.

  raw poultry/meat will degrade much more slowly while on grocery store shelves

While the system above would work without the need for such a mechanism, there is indeed a difference which goes in that direction. The supermarket meat is packaged under special atmosphere, which is low in pathogens and also differs from normal air in a way which inhibits bacterial growth. It is not sterile, and it definitely goes bad. But still, when compared to the butcher's meat, its total lifetime from slaughter to expiry date is longer.

This tidbit is not relevant to your practical question though, since this has already been accounted for in the choice of the "use by" or "sell by" date stamped on the package. I am simply sharing it for more background.


Where can I buy rose petals that are safe for human consumption? I'd like to make a rose petal jam, which requires roughly 14-16 ounces of rose petals. However, I've been warned to not buy roses from florists, due to potential pesticide issues from roses sold for being displayed, not for eating. Is there any place to get fresh rose petals that are organic and/or pesticide free? My guess would be a farmer's market or the like?

You can get them dried and otherwise processed from Amazon, rose water too. Fresh is going to be a greater challenge. I don't know of a better answer than letting your fingers do the walking or making friends with a gardener.

Of course, if money is no object there is always an option.


How is beer classified into different types? How is beer classified into different types?

Can the types of beer be arranged in a hierarchy with "ales" and "lagers" at the top? Are there beers that do not fall under either category or some that fall under both?

What are the divisions under these categories?

What are the defining characteristics distinguishing one type of beer from another?

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/101/ has a vast amount of information on beer styles.

To answer your specific question, an ale is top-fermenting whereas a lager is bottom-fermenting. Lagers are generally fermented at lower temperatures than ales.

I believe that lambics would constitute a third category, since they are traditionally fermented by wild yeasts, but opinion may vary on this, I don't know.

There are dozens of styles of ales and lagers and a few different lambics, but the method of fermentation is the main distinguishing characteristic between the three types.


Can I freeze custard? I have some spare egg yolks that I want to use and not throw away and I've decided to make some vanilla custard. But I have no use for the custard right now and might decide to make Portuguese tarts later.

So, is it possible to freeze custard and for how long will it keep? If yes, are there any tips to thaw it?

Custard does not freeze well, it has a tendency to separate. If you do freeze it, freeze it right away, leave it frozen for as little time as possible, and defrost it in the refrigerator. I wouldn't leave it in the freezer for more than a month.

One way to freeze custard and get great results is to make ice cream! If you have an ice cream maker, great. If not, that's OK too. Custard based ice creams get less icy than other types of ice cream when made without churning. Just thoroughly stir every half an hour while freezing for at least three hours.


Soft Boiled Egg Science I've heard that the white part of an egg cooks (solidifies) at about 63°C (145°F). I've heard that the yolk cooks at about 68°C (154°F). Is this true?

Also what chemicals do the white and yolk contain, and what causes them to cook at these temperatures?

As an answer to your first question:  what chemicals do the white and yolk contain?

Unlike the yolk, which is high in lipids (fats), egg white contains almost no fat, and carbohydrate content is less than 1%, it contains water, protein, trace minerals, fatty material, vitamins, and glucose. wikipedia

To get this kind of soft eggs:

Whites set at 155°F (68°C) and yolks set at 158°F (70°C). For best results, heat water to 180°F (82°C) as measured on an instant-read thermometer. After adding eggs, adjust heat to maintain temperature at 180°F for about 6 mins (+/- 15 seconds). If you do not have a thermometer, keep the water at the early simmer stage when tiny bubbles are just beginning to break the surface. food-lab-science-of-how-to-cook-perfect-boiled-eggs

So I guess what you have read is true. Hope to enjoy.


Bitter Taste: Beef Stew OK, made another beef stew in the crock pot and again, it has a bitter flavor.  No tomatoes, only 2 T canned tomato paste and 1 C cabernet.  Thinking maybe a lighter wine to fix this and/or eliminate the tomato paste? Add brown sugar?

It's the tomato paste. Many brands of tomato paste can have a bitter, almost metallic flavor if it isn't fried off first. I don't use it in crock pot recipes for that very reason unless I saute it in some oil for a minute before adding it. You can add some sugar but that doesn't counteract the bitterness.

Also you are adding too much of it, 2 tbsp for 1 cup of wine is very, very tomato pastey for lack of a better term. You could try half that and see how you get.

So try a bit less paste, fried off first or use a good thick canned tomato sauce instead.


How to prevent curdling in a local vegan coffee creamer- aka- Post Apocalypse hippy coffee creamer? Sorry, I got a few questions here.

1) I was at a vegan, locavore restaurant and their soymilk curdled in the coffee. Why did it curdle?

2) I thought, gee, they should use something like coconut milk, but that would clash with the (east coast USA) locavore them they have going on. So what will post-apocalypse hippies use in their coffee (or coffee substitute) for creamer? I've successfully made nut milk out of pecans and walnuts-- haven't tried it with coffee yet to see if it is curdle resistant, am I overlooking any options?

Was the coffee highly acidic or possibly salty? Coagulating agents that I know of consist of apple cider vinegar (which I personally use in my tofu making), magnesium chloride and calcium sulfate. Indeed, according to Wikipedia the common coagulants are salts, acids and enzymes.

Not being a coffee drinker I can't say this has ever happened to me. My boyfriend drinks coffee and I don't think he has ever experienced this, so it might be specific to each coffee. I have had soymilk coagulate in a cocktail I had once, but never when I make soy white Russians, so it must have had to do with the other ingredients in that drink, which have been lost to my memory.

Off topic, but what restaurant were you at?


Fresh vs Canned tomatoes in Indian cooking How does fresh and canned tomatoes compare in indian cooking?

I usually see recipes call for pureed or finely chopped tomatoes, which are added after the initial stage of frying the spices and onion. As I cook ALOT of Indian food, buying canned pureed tomato would save me loads of work, though I'm wondering if this would lead to a compromise in taste. (Or perhaps an enhancement of taste as canned tomatoes are riper? I read that Italian cooking usually is better with canned tomatoes...). Also, as canned tomatoes are usually peeled, I would get the added value of not having tomato peels swimming in my curry.

These are the factors to consider when using tomatoes in Indian cooking:-

1) Does the recipe need pureed or chunky tomatoes to contribute bulk to the gravy? >> if puree then canned is fine or even tetrapak puree. But stick to fresh tomatoes if you need to increase the gravy's volume. E.g.: Paneer Butter Masala where tomato puree is better vs. Matar Paneer where diced tomatoes bring out more tangy spicy flavor.

2) Do you need to keep the peel on or lose it completely? If you need to lose the peel, peeled & canned tomatoes can save much time over having to boil or microwaving the tomatoes.

3) What is the cutting style required in the recipe? finely chopped, coarsely chopped? This point is relevant in case the recipe needs only semi cooked tomatoes.

4) Are the tomatoes being used to add bulk or for flavor? Canned tomatoes do have a slightly different flavor specially if a preservative brine solution has been added.

5) In salads or Indian dishes like bhel puri, the way tomato pieces are added also contribute to aesthetics and make food more appetizing. so canned tomatoes are a stric no-no for such dishes.

And overall- Use Fresh Tomatoes >> tomato is one of the veggies which can be chopped fast & painlessly. To save time, turn your tomato over when chopping (fleshy side up, peel side down)


Hot Smoked Salmon on Big Green Egg What is the best process/technique to use for hot smoking salmon on a smoker like the Big Green Egg?

It's pretty easy:

Soak wood chunks or chips over night in water.
Start hard lump charcoal in BGE (or any smoker)
Scatter wood over the coals
Let salmon sit out for 15 - 20 mins to come to room temp
Get  BGE smoking and adjust temperature to 180F to 200F
Put salmon on grill
Smoke till finished. About 35-45 mins for 1 1/2 lbs fillet. It wants to be cooked through and flakey.

I'll often do this while smoking a Boston Butt, which is an all day affair. If I've got room, I throw a salmon fillet on in the middle of the day for lunch.

If you're just getting in to smoking with the BGE, I highly recommend the book Smoke and Spice.


Will my bizcocho dominicano cake rise? I'm planning to make the cake batter from scratch on Sunday, refrigerate it (not freezing!) for about 3 days, and bake it up on Wednesday. But I'm cramped for time on that day.

I've researched that the cake wouldn't rise as high, and one of bizcocho dominicano's known qualities is to be light. This probably isn't relevant, but I'm turning the cake recipe into a cupcake recipe.

What if I make the batter and leave out the baking powder until Wednesday? Then I can put the powder in and mix the batter so it can become fluffy again. Do you think this'll work? Will it still rise?

Sorry, but no.

The baking powder aids in making the cake light, but the main "rising agent" is actually the air incorporated in the batter by patient whipping, together with the eggs.

Now if you plan to store the batter for three days and then making up for the deflation by whipping again, you'll totally lose the fluffyness: The flour will have developed a lot of gluten during the storage time and the mixing after that time will aid in that again, resulting in a very dense cake.The rule for this kind of batter is always to mix and then bake as fast as possible.

If you can't reschedule to bake on Wednesday, you could probably bake the cake or cupcakes at a convenient earlier date, e.g. Sunday, and freeze them, then defrost either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, decorate and serve.


What energy efficient options are there for small baking quantities? This morning felt like some scones and had to pre-heat my normal oven to 220C which takes like 15m - just to bake a very small batch of scones (literally 4) which took 12m.

I'm a energy conscious bachelor and wont be baking for large quantities often so was wondering what my options there are for quick small scale baking (literally, a handful of scones / mini bundt cake / a couple of pastries).

My microwave is rather dated, so I was wondering if I could get something like:

https://www.lg.com/za/microwaves/lg-MS5696HIT
or

https://www.lg.com/za/microwaves/lg-MH8265DIS
or

https://www.lg.com/za/microwaves/lg-MA3884VC

Much smaller loading area which should heat up quicker and inverter tech should also be more efficient, but can it bake? Or perhaps something else entirely I'm overlooking?

There are a variety of counter-top ovens on the market that fit the bill. They range from fairly simplistic, to feature-rich and quite good. The most basic would easily bake a few muffins.  These are not microwave ovens, but more like your home oven on a smaller scale.  Searching "countertop oven" will yield many results.


why have the roast chicken pieces turned brown when put in a pot of boiling vegetables Making soup from leftover roast chicken from the carcass. Has been refrigerated for two days after cooking. Boiled some veggies - potatoes, onions, carrots, leeks, swede, and then put in chicken that was pulled from carcass. The chicken has turned a red-brown colour in the pot. Is it still edible?

It sounds like the chicken has taken the color of the soup base, as long as it was safe when you put it into the pot it will still be safe now.