Slow cooking chicken breast How much chicken stock should be used when slow cooking 3 boneless,skinless chicken breast? I used a 8 ounce can of chicken stock,and no water.

Typically with slow cookers, you want the liquid to come up at least 1/3 of the way up the meat.

If you're going to be cooking it for a very long time, if your lid doesn't fit well, or for some other reason you suspect there's going to be quite a bit of evaporation, you may want to add more liquid than that.

There are exceptions to this rule, as the shape of the item in there, if it's something that's going to give off lots of moisture, and the amount of food relative to the size of the slow cooker can throw things off, but 1/3 to 1/2 submerged is a good starting point.


Troubles with quinoa consistency I've been having some trouble cooking quinoa. I know that it needs to be cooked for long enough so that just the spirals are left, but the quinoa can often dry out quickly and stick to the pan when cooked for this length of time. Not cooking the quinoa for long enough can leave you with a slightly stodgy quinoa.
So my question is how can I cook quinoa for long enough, without it drying and sticking to the pan? Do I need to just add a bit more water than the instructions state (2 cups water to 1 cup quinoa) as it dries out? Do I add a little oil?

Quinoa is cooked much like rice- in fact it can be cooked nicely in a rice cooker.

The 2/1 ratio is correct. As with rice, the goal is to steam the grain. You should be cooking on low heat after it boils and is covered and you shouldn't be frequently opening the pot while it cooks.

I haven't had success adding water later in the cooking. It doesn't get a chance to turn to steam and instead just boils the grain to mush.

As with rice, some of the quinoa might stick to the pan, especially if it was cooked a little too hot or with uneven heating. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. With rice and quinoa I like the crispy bits.

Adding oil late in the cooking probably won't help you achieve the desired fluffiness.


Can you pop microwave popcorn on a stove? I move quite a bit and suddenly I found myself with microwave popcorn but without any microwave. I'd like to pop them anyway.

I've seen in movies how people pop corn on stoves in various ways but I have never seen it IRL. A quick search on the Swedish web didn't yield any good results - people said it was impossible.

Can you pop microwave popcorn on a stove?

After I found the pack of microwave popcorn again I decided to do a quick search on the English web.

I found that the corn in the bag is just normal popcorn mixed with some fake butter and that there'd be no issues popping it on the stove.

Then I looked for good ways of popping corn on a stove and found an excellent video with step-by-step instructions.

Find a suitable pot with a good lid.
Transfer the corn to a bowl (because it can be tricky to get it out of the bag).
Pour some oil in the pot, covering the entire bottom.
Put 2 corns in the pot.
Put the pot on the burner and set it to medium-high (7/9).
Wait for the 2 corns to pop.
Put the rest of the corns in the pot and put on the lid.
Shake the pot and continue to shake it every 10 seconds.
When there's 1-2 seconds between pops you're done!

Then season with butter, salt, or whatever you want.

The result was perfect! Even better than if you'd have put it in the microwave!


Why should we not store onions and potatoes together? I have heard that onions and potatoes shouldn't be stored together. Why will this make the potatoes spoil faster?

As you can see at the Chapter 7: Storage of horticultural crops of the book PDF: Small-Scale Postharvest Handling Practices: A Manual for Horticultural Crops (4th Edition):

If you look p.166 (p.173 on the PDF), you can see that the onions need to be stored in this conditions:

between 0-5°C with a relative humidity (R.H.) of 65-70%

If you look p.168 (p.175 on the PDF), you can see that the potatoes have different needs:

Fresh market: between 4-7°C
Processing: between 8-12°C
seed potatoes: between 0-2°C
But must of all, potatoes need very highest relative humidity (R.H.): 95-98% versus 65-70% for onions

So, if you store them together, either one or the other will be in bad storage conditions.

Further, as you can see at Section 7: Storage of horticultural crops of Small-scale postharvest handling practices - A manual for horticultural crops - 3rd edition:

Dry onions (Group 3) are very sensitive to moisture, which makes their storage incompatible with the high R.H. needed for potatoes.
New potatoes (Group 6) may also produce ethylene, which will badly damage green onions (Group 2) if stored together.

Anyway, storage of horticultural crops cannot just be resumed by "don't put this or that together", as you may have seen:
it is important to consider R.H., temperature, and many other factors.

If the subject interests you, all this (and many other things) is pretty well explained in the following references:

PDF: Small-Scale Postharvest Handling Practices: A Manual for Horticultural Crops (4th Edition)
Web: Small-Scale Postharvest Handling Practices: A Manual for Horticultural Crops (4th Edition)
WEB: Small-scale postharvest handling practices - A manual for horticultural crops - 3rd edition

Ethylene is also a "critical factor", and this topic is more developped in the following resources:

PDF: Postharvest Ethylene: A critical factor in quality management.
Book: Postharvest Technology of Horticultural Crops (see Ethylene in Postharvest Technology pp.149-162)


How can I fix my grainy buttercream? I have made this recipe for buttercream:
https://addapinch.com/perfect-chocolate-buttercream-frosting-recipe/
 It includes powdered sugar, cocoa, butter and vanilla. I made it according to instructions but unfortunately started with cold butter, so the buttercream came out grainy. To fix this I followed many tips from the internet instructing me to separate part of the mixture, microwave it, and then return it to the mixing bowl and mix on high for a long, long time. It's still grainy. Any more suggestions? How long am I supposed to be mixing it for? I've mixed it using a hand mixer for at least twenty minutes. Now the buttercream seems to be separating, and I can see grains of butter appearing.

If I understand your situation correctly, your frosting is not homogeneous. It sounds like the microwave fix that you have tried is aimed at softening pieces of too cold/hard butter that refuse to mix into the soft texture of the frosting. If you have already tried this pretty thoroughly, it's hard to believe the butter lumps wouldn't have softened enough by now.

So I wonder if your graininess is because the liquid (milk) and the butter are refusing to emulsify well. I was taught (the gist of) this recipe by my mother, and we are too lazy in my family to measure stuff, so this happens to my frosting all the time when I just put in too much liquid. Our fix is add more powdered sugar ...little by little of course, and sift it so as not to introduce sugar-lumps into the problem. Keep stirring it up, and pretty soon you will have a frosting with a teeny bit too much powdered sugar. It will be a little too dry. But now it should be easy to get it all blended into a smooth mixture just by mashing it against the side of the bowl as you stir. It might be a little bit too pasty for frosting, but at this point you gradually start to add in tiny amounts more of your liquid, stirring all the while, until you get your spreadable rich consistency back.

Yes, the proportions are now a little off since you have deviated from the recipe, but honestly, frosting is frosting. It's really just spreadable buttery sugar. If it works, and looks pretty, it's all good.


What can I use a tempered glass pot for? I've recently been thinking about what I can get rid of in my kitchen, and I've been debating throwing out a tempered glass pot like this (without the lid):

It's a piece of Pyrex Visions that I've had since college, that I've mostly kept for sentimental reasons. I really only use my cast iron in the kitchen these days, with the occasional copper clad pot thrown in for good measure and I can't really think of a good use for this vintage pot! Except perhaps living in fear of it exploding while on the stove.

Is there a good use for a pot like this, or should I just trash/donate it?

I see two sides of this question. First, should you keep a redundant tool in your kitchen, and second, is there a specific purpose to this pot.

I may be biased because my kitchen is small, but my point of view is to get rid of any redundant clutter. Get a few pieces of quality cookware and use them every day. There is no sense in having 3 pots which do the same thing, even if one is half a liter bigger than the other one. (The worst situation is when the small one is decent, and the big one is bad quality, but sometimes you need the volume, so you still keep the big one around). If you don't use a thing, remove it from your kitchen. (Of course, donation/ebay is better than trash from a sustainability point of view).

The second question is, even if you don't use it now, is there an occasion where you might want to use it? It so happens that there is.

Generally, it is a bad idea to use Pyrex on the stove (see this question), and the handle makes the pot impractical to use in the oven (you don't give a size, but I bet you can't place it in the center, if you're able to close the oven door at all). But there is something else you can do with it. This thing makes an awesome double boiler.

If you don't have a professional double boiler, the usual way to "build" one at home is to find a bowl and a pot so that the upper rim diameter of the bowl is slightly bigger than the pot's diameter. You put water in the pot, put the bowl on the pot so that its bottom is suspended in the boiling water, and fill the bowl with your ingredients. It works with any moderately heat-resistant bowls (including glass, but don't use nylon), but I prefer to use glass.

First, glass is a bad heat conductor, which means that it heats more gradually and you have more time to work before your ingredients overheat. This makes it much better than steel. Second, glass is transparent. This means that you can see the boiling water and adjust the temperature according to how strong your boil is. You can't do this with a metal or ceramic bowl.

The drawback to this setup is that at some point, your ingredients are close to overheating. You have to remove the bowl from the heat, and do so quickly. Well, by then the bowl is very hot, it is slippery on the outside because of condensed steam, and your mittened hands slip on the rim withot findind purchase, while the hot steam penetrates through the cloth to cook your skin. The best solution would be a glass bowl with a handle, and that's just what you have here.

The problem in using the dish as a double boiler top is that its bottom is rather flat, making it less suited for small amounts of ingredients. Depending on how much you cook at once and how big the pot is, this may or may not an issue. The second problem is that you can't shock cool it to stop an uncontrolled overheating. But being as easy to grab as it is, you can just keep a cool bowl on the counter and dump the ingredients into it in case of emergency.

Conclusion: if you think you need a double boiler often enough to warrant the room occupied by this thing, you can keep it. But if you don't use it often, there is no point keeping it around as just another pot.


Baking things into cupcakes! I've seen many things on the web of people baking things into cupcakes, whether it be a pre-baked heart cake shape into a cupcake or a hershey kiss and I have some questions!

When you put a pre-baked cake into cupcake batter and bake it again, does it become very dry since it will be double baked?
I've seen people put hershey kisses into cupcake batter for a surprise on the inside, would this work with just a candy melt disc, or would it just sink to the bottom?

THanks!

Pre baked cake won't go dry just from being baked again, though it might be easy to overbake the new cupcake, as Joe mentioned, since the amount of batter is much less.

Cake doesn't change just from being overcooked (well, browning happens - but I mean not becoming tough or anything) - the drying out is purely mechanical, and reversible.  Many baked goods can be reconstituted from being dried or stale by the addition of heat and moisture - so if your cakes were dry to begin with, the re-baking should actually help.

So, the moist batter you surround your cake in will keep it cool and moist while the batter itself bakes, and also layer on top of the cake to prevent browning from direct heat.  The inner cake will only become dry if there's no moisture left in the batter - and moisture travels back and forth, once the batter is cooked, so both will be moist or dry to the same degree.  As long as the cupcake isn't itself overbaked, the inner cake will be just fine.

As for chocolate, that's kinda a different question altogether and you'll get better answers if you ask it separately - but in brief, the most important thing about keeping chocolate suspended in batter is the thickness of the batter, with the weight of the chocolate coming second.  A melting disk, should be thinner and lighter than a Hershey kiss (unless I'm recalling a different thing), and the wider and flatter shape should be easier to suspend in the batter - that is, if it drops through the batter to the bottom, the kiss would also have settled to the bottom.


How to succeed with making omelette Sounds simple but I seem to fail every time, that is it turns into scrambled eggs instead. How do you make it so that you can flip it over both without it breaking and before it burns?

This depends on which type of omelet you want to make, I'll run through the three types I know how to make.

The thick Waffle House style omelet (it's the kind that poofs up and is about an inch thick all the way around, IHOP also serves this omelet) is achieved by beating the eggs and incorporating a LOT of air in to the mixture.  Restaurants do this by using a milkshake machine to whip the eggs.  This type of omelet is easy to flip and cook, you just put enough butter to coat the pan, pour off any excess and then pour your egg mixture in to the pan (you are going to have to use an omelet pan for this).  Let the omelet cook while occasionally swirling the pan in a circular motion.  When the omelet has cooked most of the way through flip by either the toss in the air and catch in the pan method (not for beginners!) or the fork and spatula method (place spatula underneath and hold omelet onto the spatula with a fork on one corner). This will yield a thick fluffy omelet but it can be hard to work enough air into the eggs at home.

The second type is the French omelet and it doesn't require flipping at all. The french omelet is what you see in fine dining brunches if you see it at all in the U.S.  This omelette is made by mixing your eggs and pouring the mixture into a medium low heat pan.  As it cooks you take a fork and pull the cooked egg off the bottom and into the center of the omelet. Here is a video that goes more in depth.

The third type is what I call the grandma omelet.  It's made in a frying pan instead of an omelet pan and features a fairly flat egg wrapped around some cheese and other toppings.  For this omelet you need medium heat.  You should coat the pan with butter and pour in the egg mixture to a heated pan.  Let cook for a minute or two, then swirl the uncooked egg to the outside of the pan use a fork to lift the very edge to allow the uncooked egg to take the place of the cooked next to the pan.  Let the egg cook till desired doneness (side note: your omelet should and will have a small amount of uncooked but heated egg, it should be not runny, but still not be entirely set) and add toppings and fold over.  Then serve.

To address your scrambled egg problem, you need to let the egg set more before attempting the flip and lowering the heat on your pan will take care of the burning. Just remember that eggs are extremely delicate and respond better to lower heat and close attention.

Also the names are just the ones I use in my head, if somebody knows the correct terminology, let me know and I'll update to reflect it.


Cues to a reliable or unreliable recipe? Over on this question about measurements we got into an interesting discussion about recognizing reliable recipes. What cues do you look for to recognize one you would trust? This is a community wiki question since it has no definitive answer. I'll throw out three to get us started:

Good signs:
+ If I can see a picture of the finished food and it looks delicious

Bad signs:
+ If the author doesn't know the diff between "1 cup of pecans, chopped" and "1 cup of chopped pecans"
+ If the ingredients aren't listed in the order you will need them in the recipe

I look for notes that give subsitutions. If the recipe creator can't be arsed to either provide subs or say "you really can't substitute," then it seems to me they aren't so much interested in cooking as they are in must provide dogmatic formula. This doesn't work for me.

Notes along the way--"you are looking for a texture like..." "the colour should be... but don't worry if it looks like..."--are essential.

A complete lack of "Oh by the way you should have done X an hour before you did Y" is non-negotiable. Anytime I cook through a recipe like that without reading first (caveat emptor, I know) I tend to end up swearing and throwing things. Timelines are key.

(By the way, I'll be hanging onto this thread as it will definitely help me with the cookbook project I'm working on. Thanks for asking!)


Why do gazpacho recipes have you put garlic and salt together, then mash with an egg? Why do gazpacho recipes have you put garlic and salt together, then mash with an egg?

What is the purpose?

Salt acts as a mechanical agent to help you make a paste out of the garlic. It prevents the garlic cloves from slipping against the mortar walls, and helps with the grinding and mashing. Salt+garlic is a common start for a number of mortar/pestle recpies in Spain.


Using Cheesecloth for Pancetta I am making pancetta for the first time and I've just taken it out of the cure to dry.  I have rolled it and am ready to hang it.  Before I hang it, what are the pros and cons of wrapping it in cheesecloth while it dries?  The recipe I am using says to cover it in cheesecloth when laying flat to dry, but nothing about wrapping it in cheesecloth to hang it.

I've made pancetta many times.  When rolling, I just tie with a string. Traditionally, it is just tied off.  Personally, I prefer the results when I just hang it without rolling...poke a hole, loop a string, hang...but that is just personal preference.  The only downside I can see to the cheese cloth, is that it might slightly slow the drying process.  Other than that, as long as you are working clean, I can't see a problem with it, but I am not sure it really helps you in any significant way.  Perhaps you could get a tighter roll with a sheet of cheesecloth?


When making bread, should I add salt early or late? Pros and cons A friend and I was to make bread together. We quickly found that we had been taught differently on how to make the dough.

I had learned to first just mix flour, yeast and water evenly. Let them sit quietly for half an hour to allow the flour to absorb the fluids. Then add salt and knead the dough.

He had learned to mix everything, knead fully then for the last minute add salt.

Can someone suggest the pros and cons of the two tactics?

The main challenge with adding salt in a bread recipe is:

Getting it distributed evenly throughout the dough
Not inhibiting yeast growth

Most recipes are 2% salt or less, which does not have a huge effect on yeast growth so that is not the primary concern.

Therefore, the easiest way to do it is to mix it with the flour, or with the wet ingredients early, so that it will be well distributed.  That is much harder to do once a dough has formed and started to develop structure.

However, if you are using a preferment (also called a biga, paloush or several other things) where you start fermenting some of the flour and water with the yeast early, you don't want to put salt in the preferment, as it would be much more concentrated, and the only purpose of the preferment is yeast development.


Is it problematic to use the water in which the Pinto beans are soaked, for cooking the Pinto beans? I read somewhere on this site that Kidney beans contains toxins so it is necessary to soak them. I soak them too overnight, but then I use the same water for cooking them. The water in question turns red after the beans are soaked. I do not throw away that water since it contains the taste, proteins, vitamins etc. of the beans.
Haven't cooked beans yet with the fresh water, is the taste affected when cooked with fresh water. Am I doing wrong?

The toxin in kidney beans is destroyed by boiling for around ten minutes, which no doubt holds true for any toxin in the water as well. So there should be no problem with using the soaking water to cook the beans, provided you cook them properly.


Is there a general rule as if should bake something at 375 or 350 degrees, or does it really matter? When I create my own recipe, I am never sure if I should bake it at 350 or 375 degrees. I have several cookie recipes that says to bake at 350 and others say to bake at 375.  Is there a general rule of thumb as how to decide which to use?

Experimentation is the key in any recipe development, informed by the effect of the variable under investigation.

In baking cookies, the affect of the oven temperature will effect:

Spread.   Cooler temperatures will allow the cookie to take longer to set, and so it will have longer to spread before it sets.
Height.  This is the compliment to spread; cooler temperatures will allow the cookie to spread more, so it will have less height.
Drying.  Cooler temperatures will allow the cookie longer to express steam, providing a somewhat dryer cookie.  At its extreme, you can make quite dry, wafer type cookies.
Evenness of cooking.  Cooler temperatures cook allow the to cook more eveningly from the outside to the inside.   Hotter temperatures may allow, for example, browning at the edge or surface while the interior is under-cooked.

In most cookie recipes, the difference between 350 and 375 F may actually be smaller than other uncontrolled variables like the type of oven, individual oven variance, type of cookie sheet, size of individual cookies, and so.   Additionally, within certain limits, there is a trade off between time and temperature.

For these reasons, you will need a high degree of consistency if you are doing dry runs to try  to determine the optimal temperature.


Can an enameled dutch oven be used for stir frying? I want to use a KitchenAid enameled cast iron dutch oven for stir frying Asian style. Are there any issues with using it for stir frying? I am a cooking newbie, and want to find healthy cooking options for others in my family who cook.

I wouldn't do it, for a few reasons :

Cooking over extreme heat can damage the finish of enameled cast iron.  It will typically cause discoloration if you have a white interior, and it may cause crazing (fine lines all over the place).  It can also soften the enamel enough to fuse he pan to the stove.
The high sides of a dutch oven hold in steam, which will change how the food cooks.
It's more difficult to keep things moving in a large pot to ensure even cooking when cooking over high heat.

You would be better off just using a skillet, and working in batches and re-combine everything when done.


Handles on pots loosen over time - can I loctite them? The handles on my pots loosen over time and I have to occasionally tighten the screw that attaches them.

Is there any reason why I can't or shouldn't use Loctite (screw locking compound) on them to secure them?

And if that's the case, why not send them from the factor pre-Loctited?

You could use Loctite 2046 which is food safe. They list deep fryers as a possible application, so it should also work on a cooking pot.


Is using hot water to make chapathi dough a good idea? One of these days, I accidentally used hot water in place of cold water on wheat flour to make chapathi dough. Coincidentally I found the dough to be much softer than usual. Also the kneading process had sped up by a bit. Is there any science to this observation or is it random?

Yes, using warm water helps keep the dough soft and also helps with the kneading.
Hot water denatures the proteins in the dough and also apparently makes it harder for gluten to form. I found this from this really beautiful video by Bong Eats. They recommend using boiling water to make the dough. I've tried it a lot of times, and it does work. It makes kneading easier, and the dough is softer.
Another tip: If you consume dairy, you can use a little yogurt while making the dough. That brings in the Lactobacillus bacteria, which slowly ferments the dough. That makes the chapathis soft and helps in keeping them soft for longer.


Why does this work? (defrosting steak) I needed to defrost a steak and followed the advice in this article.

In short you invert a pot, place the steak on top (bottom?), then place a pot with hot water on top of that.

To my surprise, it worked (took about 10-15 minutes though).

It does not seem intuitive to me at all. The steak was completely frozen, and 15 minutes later it was defrosted all the way through. How did this work?

Have you ever noticed that if you walk outside on a cold day and touch a metal object, the metal feels colder then the air? The reason is, solids and liquids transfer heat better than gasses do. If you set a steak on a plate to defrost, there is air above it, and a cushion of air below. When you sandwich the steak between two pots, one of which has a large mass of warm water in it, the heat from the water will flow into the meat, and the weight of the water squeezes the air out from beneith the steak, ensuring it makes good contact with the pot below. This all increases heat transfer and the rate of defrosting.

Edit: on a similar note, you can see the “cushion of air below” effect when boiling water. As a pot of water nears a boil, and there are just small bubbles forming and collapsing on the bottom of the pot, pressing down on the handles will improve the solid-solid contact area and you will see (and hear) the rate of bubble formation increase...and then decrease when you release the handles.


Is it okay to slow cook sausage casserole without pan frying the sausages? We haven't got an oven/hob at the moment due to kitchen refurbishments and I'm currently slow cooking sausage casserole in a 2.5L slow cooker. There's about 6-8 thick sausages in there all cut up into quarters and mixed into the casserole.

It's been on high for around 5 hours now and I was wondering if the sausages would be edible? They're 97% pork Debbie & Andrews sausages (more info HERE)

There's no health issue here, the sausages will be cooked enough to be safe. The reason you fry off the sausages first is that you make the casings more edible, get flavor from maillard reactions and browning, and maybe get rid of some of the fat (if you discard the fat that comes out of the sausages that is).

I'm thinking that the sausage casings could end up being a bit soggy, however that depends on several factors and you'll probably get a good result. Worst case is you don't eat the sausage casings.


How long to cook seafood in paella? This recipe for seafood paella says to add mussels, prawns, squid and monkfish to the paella pan 5 minutes before finishing, stir and then cover with a lid.

I made this twice and I have never been able to cook the seafood in 5 minutes. The mussels will still be closed, and prawns doesn't look red throughout. On the second try, I let it cook a bit longer and overcooked the seafood, which shrunk into a very small size.

How can I tell if the seafood is done? How long do I generally have to cook seafood for in a covered paella dish?

When I make a paella I never cover it, I find it keeps in too much moisture. My uncovered method is to put the fish in and cook for 10 minutes. If my mussels are small I will usually wait 2-3 minutes before putting them in, bu for "standard" mussels 10 minutes seems to work well. I use a low-medium heat on a large burner.


chef's knife for cutting chicken, or butcher's Hey guys, I've had a set of Global knives for a few months now and love them.

I cut up a whole chicken the other day, and had a bit of trouble getting through the bone, so use my large chef's knife as an axe/butcher's knife and chipped it in a few places. Global is supposed to be the superior brand, but is this normal?

So how do you guys handle tougher materials? Butcher/cheap/dull knives?

If you're just separating a chicken into pieces, you don't need to cut through any bone, and a chef's knife or a boning knife will work fine. You need to aim for the joints in between the bones, and cut the softer connective tissue.

If you're actually trying to hack legs and thighs into pieces (some indian curries, stocks, and other preparations do well with splitting bones), then you need a heavy duty meat cleaver (note: a "chinese cleaver" has a thin blade, and is unsuitable to cutting through bones). A chef's knife would work, but can dent or chip the blade of your expensive Global knife.


What's the best way to reheat grilled shrimp We are having a party in a few weeks and I would like to serve some grilled shrimp, but there will be fifty or so people, and I would prefer to cook all of the food in advanced so I'm not spending the entire party cooking.

Any ideas on how I can reheat grilled shrimp without making it tough? I want the shrimp to have a little bit of char on it (it has a sugar based marinade).  Could I grill it just enough to get some grill marks and then refrigerate it and then toss it in a skillet right before the party, or is there a better method?

Since grilled shrimp only require 2-3 minutes per side to throughly cook on a preheated medium-high grill, skip the reheating steps and all that time and extral effort all together. Just cook them once. It would be only worthwhile to cook and reheat if the initial cooking step took condiderably longer

The risk of overcooking during reheating with such a short total cook time is extremely high! No one enjoys tough, chewy over-cooked food

Additionately, guests love to help at a party; even if it performing trash duty or washing dishes. I'll bet if you ask the 50 or so guests for volunteers to cook the shrimp that you'll have over 40% of them step up to do it.


Unroasted coffee beans in the pantry, several years old: roast, toss, or other use? I just discovered a bag with about 100g of unroasted coffee beans in my pantry. I know they are at least four years old, and maybe 10 years. They've been in room temperature, dry storage the whole time. They look like beans, no mold, no ick.

I don't drink coffee any more. I want to get rid of these beans.

Should I give them to a coffee-drinking friend to roast?  Should I believe this question on whole coffee bean storage, that they are dead after a week, and throw them out? Is there another good use for coffee beans apart from making coffee?

After that long, the beans are almost certainly stale. While it's true that aged coffee is a thing, four to ten years is very long time to age coffee and the opinions on aged coffee seem to be mixed at best. I say toss 'em, although you could compost them or even use them for arts and crafts, I wouldn't recommend them for human consumption. It's doubtful that anyone would be harmed, seeing as caffeine is a natural pesticide and that would keep any 'ick' from developing, it probably wouldn't be a very enjoyable cup of coffee.


Cold smoked bacon biltong safety Just looking for a safety/sanity check here regarding making biltong from cold smoked bacon.

I would like to make bacon biltong using a recipe similar to this one:

1 kilogram Back bacon
4 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon chilli spice
125 millilitres white vinegar

How to make it

1. Place a layer of bacon in a glass dish.
2. Sprinkle with dry spice mix.
3. place next layer of bacon.
4. Spice and repeat till all bacon spiced.
5. sprinkle over vinegar.
6. cover with plastic wrap and rest for 4 hours.
7. Hang to dry, approx 2 days.

I make my own bacon (dry cure, EQC method with the cure + salt measured out to the nearest 0.01g using the calculator at http://www.diggingdogfarm.com/page2.html).

Recently I have moved from hot smoking to cold smoking and am concerned about the safety of making biltong from cold smoked bacon.

I understand the cure and salt kill off most/all micro-organisms, and a dry cure should in theory leave it fairly safe. Is this a reasonable assumption or am I being foolish? Would it be significantly safer to use hot smoked bacon or is there really no practical difference after 10 days of curing + smoking?

(Typically I would do 2 x 8 smoking sessions - the temperature is fairly well maintained/monitored through-out)

Caveat: I have never made biltong...in fact, I had to look it up.  I do make cured meats like pancetta, dried sausages, and bacon.  By way of example, pancetta is essentially bacon that is not smoked at all.  I use a salt and spice cure, then air dry to reduce the original weight by 30%.  It is then refrigerated.  It can be eaten raw, but in most applications is cooked.

My thinking is that if you are using nitrites/nitrates and salt in your bacon cure, you are greatly reducing risk.  Then, as I understand it, biltong is a dried product.  So, reducing water activity further reduces risk.  In addition, the vinegar creates an acidic environment...also inhospitable to spores and bacteria.  This generally sounds safe to me, but my only question would be about the "hang to dry, approximately 2 days." As I am unfamiliar with the product, I don't know what final texture you are trying to achieve. In general, dry curing shoots for a 30% reduction in weight (the safety reason for this is a reduction of water activity).  If you are going for a jerky-like texture, 2 days doesn't sound like much to me. I see recipes online calling for at least a week of hanging.  Overall, though, I can't see how this would be an environment that micro-organisms would thrive in. I am not a microbiologist or food safety specialist.  Just someone who reads and applies what I've learned, so I would be happy to be corrected if any of this sounds off-base.


What is this sandwich-salad dish? I found this open-faced sandwich-like creation in several French-style bakeries in East Asia.

The bottom is a narrow piece of toast.
On top of this toast the dish is a bit like a salad. This salad mostly consists of cabbage and lots of mayonnaise with various square bits of sliced ham and what might be bread crumbs mixed in.
It seems that at some thin layers of bread were baked right into the salad part and this forms a light crust on the top.

Several stores are calling it "凯撒", which means "Caesar, but I could find nothing about this dish anywhere on-line.Is this dish common in European bakeries? What is it called?

I'm not sure if there's a specific name for this particular combination, but as you mention it's specifically from a French restaurant, I'd call it a tartine, which is can refer to most anything served on a piece of bread or toast, cold or hot.   If it were small enough to eaten in one bite, it'd be a canapé.

Growing up, we'd call a similar dish made with tuna salad (a mix of cooked tuna, mayo, onions, pickles) on bread and broiled 'til it developed a similar crust as a 'tuna boat' (to differentiate between a 'tuna melt' which had cheese on top), but I don't know that 'boat' in this context is generic enough to really convey any meaning to the typical person.

Because you mention cabbage, the topping in its uncooked form might be considered to be a cole slaw, which translates to cold salad but in the US generally means a cabbage salad dressed with vinaigrette or mayonnaise.  Because of the ham and mayo, you might also call it a ham salad.

I'm not familiar with mayo-based cold salad recipes that use bread in them, but it's frequently used as a binder in crab cakes, which has some similarities as it's mayo-based and then broiled.


Boiled water left in a Teflon pot How long should boiled water used for powdered baby formula stay in a Teflon pot? Can it stay in the pot for days?

Water is not infinitely shelf-stable. No matter what you store it in, it keeps for a short time. The Brita instructions for their water filters say 1-2 days, and this sounds reasonable to me for normal use.

But because you are asking specifically about baby food, I would recommend to not let it stay at all. The reason why you are supposed to boil water for baby food is to kill any bacteria present in it. The moment the water's temperature falls to survivable temperatures, bacteria from the environment can start colonizing it. So if you let water stay around after boiling for a few hours, it will be as dangerous as water which has never been boiled. If you let it sit for longer, it becomes much more dangerous than just using tap water without boiling.

Bottom line: Boil the water fresh for each batch of formula, and use it as soon as it has cooled down to baby-acceptable temperature. If you leave boiled water stay around, it is worse than not bottling it at all.


What are the benefits and drawbacks of washing dishes in hot water? When hand-washing dishes, it seems commonplace to wash dishes in hot water.

This LifeHacker article about washing your hands in hot water versus cold water points out that:

  It's certainly true that heat kills bacteria, but if you were going to use hot water to kill them it would have to be way too hot for you to tolerate

But sometimes when hand washing dishes the water can be uncomfortably hot (i.e. you wouldn't put bare skin under it for extended periods of time and consider that gloves are sometimes worn) -- hotter than what would be discussed in the article.

Also consider this Housekeeping About.com article in which it asserts claims about using hot water:

  Cleaning Power

  Hot water actually helps to lift away and clean dirty dishes

  Killing Bacteria and Microorganisms

  Hot water is needed to effectively kill bacteria on dishes

  Cutting grease

  Water temperatures under about 90 degrees will leave a nasty greasy film on your dishes
  Grease cutting ability is severely hampered by cool water

  Drying Time

  Hot water dries much more quickly on dishes than warm or cool water

And also:

  Dishes will dry spot and streak free with hotter water

However, these all seem to be claims that can be easily assumed. Since most people use warm-to-hot water they would assume it is the reason the dishes are spot free or rinse off easy. Reading the article leaves me asking "why?", how?" and "but wait I just saw a source saying the water isn't hot enough to kill bacteria and microorganisms?".

There are no sources for the information either, and the fact it is About.com leaves me skeptical.

What, if any, benefits are there of hand washing dishes in hot water? What about drawbacks?

Before we proceed, we should note that not all dirty dishes are created equal. There are a few "groups" with different chemical and physical properties.

Sugar
Probably the easiest of all as it will happily dissolve in water. A bit quicker in warm or hot water than in cold water (iced tea, anyone?), but not adverse to being washed off. We can probably ignore it for our further discussion.
Starch, uncooked
Pure starch will easily dissolve in cold water, but tends to form lumps in hot water as anyone trying to thicken a soup or sauce can attest. This means all starchy dishes, from your bread bowl to the spoon in your bag of flour needs to be rinsed cold (first) or you will end up with a glue-like substance clinging to your dishes, your rag, your brush, whatever. You need to create a suspension, that is tiny particles floating in your water instead of a sticky goo.
Proteins, unheated
Unheated, that means uncoagulated proteins, like the yolks in your breakfast egg or that cup with fat-free milk, even the cutting board of your meat are comparatively easy to dissolve in cool-to-lukewarm water - everything below their specific temperature at which they denaturize. This does not mean that they are clean after that because there are:
Fats
This is the one group that really, really needs some solvent, aka dishwashing liquid for simple chemical reasons: Fats are hydrophobic, they do not mix with water. Your soap binds with the fat molecules forming larger molecules, that are then soluble in water. Hotter water speeds up this process, similar to sugar dissolving faster in hot water. Plus food fats that are solid at room temperature turn liquid when warmed which helps the soap to "get" the fat molecules. No need to boil your hands, though.

Now unless you serve a very restricted breakfast, your dishes will likely contain something of each group above, so you need an adjusted approach:

Those dishes that have starchy and protein-rich components may benefit from a cool rinse first. Then your dishes can go in the sink with quite warm water - hotter speeds up the "loosening" of fats and other crusts, but you need not "boil" your hands, gloved or not.

Yet we still have to consider our nasty hitchhikers:

Bacteria and their ilk
Let's get one misconception out of the way first: Washing dishes, whether by hand or in a dishwasher, does not remove all bacteria. You can scrub and sanitize to your heart's content, your kitchen will never be truly sterile. And it doesn't have to. The human body deals well with some "intruders" on average, they can even be beneficial.
What we want to do is to reduce the total amount of bacteria present and, if possible, eliminate those that are highly pathogenic. (Don't lick that raw chicken...!)
Unfortunately, the suggestion of washing your dishes with really hot water to kill them is impractical at best - Salmonella dies at about 70C / 155 F1, similar rules apply for Listeria.
Bacteria doesn't come alone, it is on and in the food. So cleaning the dishes well and removing all residue will in fact rinse the bacteria right off and leave the very few that still might cling to a plate without food, causing many of them to die. Much more critical is the great bacterial breeding ground near your sink: Sponges and rags may contain far more pathogens than a random plate - your food is typically not contaminated to the hilt from the start. So make sure you rinse your dishes well after washing, consider air-drying or at least use a fresh towel.

1 To be precise, it's a function over time and temperature, but that doesn't make much of a difference here.


Is the sink or float test for eggs accurate? I recently read that the sink-or-float test to see if eggs are still good is not a very reliable judge; eggs float because as they age the eggs lose moisture and air replaces it. That’s what I read. If that’s true, is there a reliable way to test the viability of eggs, aside from breaking them open and smelling them?

Eggs are a vehicle for a growing embryo.  When that embryo is developing, it needs nutrients and fluids, and the egg yolk and white are those reserves,  The fluid requirements decrease as the embryo develops, while the space requirements increase, and nature devise the mechanism of making the shell of an egg porous so that over time, while the embryo develops, some of the fluid evaporates.  If the egg is not incubated, it is still porous, the the fluid still evaporates, but rather than the space being used by an embryo, it is i filled with air as you read.

Thus, in general, if an egg is put in water, and it floats, it is old, or worse, it may be flat out rotten and have a build-up of gases from spoilage and bacterial contamination.  If it goes upright in the water, but stays submerged it is likely getting old as the testing method claims, while if it stays sunk it is presumed fresh.  These tests are, and should always be stated as almost completely unreliable and quick tests only.  Refrigeration slows down the evaporation.  Oil coatings can slow it more and can many other things which would make an egg look fresher than it is.

The only real reliable thing you can learn from such a test is if it floats, assume it is old, at the least probably very low quality and potentially bad, and not something you want to eat.  If it does not float, it may be good.  A reasonable use for the test is you have two container of eggs, one old, one new and you do not know which is which.  Put one set in the water and some or all float or at least go upright, then try the other and they stay sunk, and you know which is the old one.  Nothing about this test assures you the eggs are good, only which is more likely to be good.


Cooking with barleywine Given that barleywine is a strong ale, is it suitable in recipes which call for ale, or does the extra alcohol and stronger flavor overwhelm the recipe?

I realize the answer will be "it depends" if varies by recipe; I am more interested in whether the answer is "Absolutely!" or "Absolutely not!"

Barleywines initially have a large amount of sugars in them before fermentation, and brewers balance that by adding a large amount of hops.  There is a large bitterness factor in a barleywine, which you may or may not notice, depending on your tastes and the individual brew.   If you try to reduce it like you might with a wine, the bitterness may quickly get overwhelming.

With that in mind, I see no reason why you couldn't use a barleywine in any recipe that would work with a strongly flavored beer.

Check out The Home Brewed Chef for some great ideas for how to cook with beer.


Odour removing metallic soap: what is it and how does it work? When browsing for kitchen tools, I found a metallic soap. It's purpose is to remove any (food) odour from your hands. Here's a cheap ($2.55) example.

I am unfamiliar with this.
Does anyone have any experience with it? Does it really work? If yes, how?
Are there odours which it removes better/worse?

And does it last forever (This may of course depend on the brand and model) ?

These soaps are simply soap-shaped lumps of stainless steel.  You'd get the same results from rubbing a spoon on your hand, or rubbing your hands on the sink.

There's a ton of anecdotal evidence that stainless steel works; unfortunately there seems to be very little scientific evidence backing it up.  I've never read any in the past, nor was I able to find anything convincing while researching this answer.

Various explanations abound but should all be treated as speculation until some hard experimental data comes out:

About.com's Chemistry Ph.D thinks it's a chemical reaction with sulfur, but admits that it's speculation.  I find that explanation dubious at best, because the whole point of stainless steel is that it's non-reactive, and not all of the odours that S.S. supposedly removes are based on sulfur.
Another cooking blogger references McGee and postulates that it might be due to static electricity, which is sort of corroborated by the Straight Dope's hypothesis of ionization.  Follow-up comments to the former entry dispute his claim, as well.
Finally, the Straight Dope link above also suggests that the metal might simply be acting as an abrasive.  This, to me, is the most plausible explanation, but there's still no specific evidence supporting it.  Again, if you care about anecdotal evidence, someone did a little experiment on SD's discussion board and claims that rubbing with anything works - it doesn't have to be metal - which supports the abrasive hypotheses.  Then again, it's questionable whether the experimenter here actually impregnated the skin or just got a little scent on the surface.

So make of it what you will; nobody seems to know for sure why it works, but anyone who's tried it can tell you that it does work.

But don't waste your money on one of those "metal soaps" - just use a metal ladle, or the handle of a knife, or any other metal surface, and rub it on your hands under cold running water.


How does ambient humidity of flour storage influence dough? Cooking lore places a lot of importance on air humidity for doughs. When a dough fails, people quickly point that out as a possible factor, that happens on our site too.

Is it really true? I don't doubt that the actual flour moisture content changes, but is it noticeable in the dough preparation, or is the difference too small to matter?
If it makes a difference, what can I do about it?

I used to disbelieve the idea, as it has all the qualities of a nice myth. Turns out that I was wrong. And also, that the story behind it is more complicated than the myth makes us believe.

A nice example can be found on scientific papers published in the area of commercial food technology, like this one. An important quote from the abstract:

  Stickiness and consistency of doughs made from low-moisture flour were more sensitive to changes in dough water absorption than doughs made from flours of high moisture content. Dough water absorption level was more difficult to adjust in doughs made from low-moisture flours.

So, to answer the first point: yes, it makes a difference. If your house is very dry, this will change your dough. I am not a specialist in that area (did not know that there is a unit for measuring stickiness!) but I guess the difference will be noticeable to a home cook too.

Now for the second point: the usual interpretation is that "some water is missing, so just add it back in". That turns out to be wrong! The problem is not the tiny amount of missing water in total, it is that dough made from wetter flour reacts differently to added water. Dough-from-wet-flour is stickier, and also reacts less sensitively to changes in the added water.

So, can you counteract the effects? To some extent, yes. Adding a tiny bit of extra flour if your dough is too sticky on a given day, or slightly adjusting the amount of total liquid in doughs that are supposed to be dry, like shortbread crusts, can make the difference between dough you can work with and something that cannot form a ball no matter what you do. Still, getting the perfect consistency might not be possible with any dough.


When we go to the butcher's shop, which color meat should we choose? Cherry-red or brownish-red? When we go to the butcher's shop, we see cherry-red and brownish-red meat in the cooler. I know that change in color alone does not mean the product is spoiled. Color changes are normal for fresh product. USDA says "When exposed to air, myoglobin forms the pigment, oxymyoglobin, which gives meat a pleasingly cherry-red color."

The main issues I wonder are these;

1- When you go to the butcher shop and see 2 different colors from the same meat in the cooler, which color meat should we prefer? Cherry-red or brownish-red? Do these meats have any advantage over each other?

2- Can we say that brownish-red meat is better rested than cherry-red meat? Or is this just about oxygen contact?

Thanks

The color of beef and other meats is actually a pretty big topic.  It is influenced by the animal's diet, the particular breed, how much the muscle was worked, how much the meat has been exposed to oxygen, and how fresh it is. The USDA and other agencies put out articles about it, and it's widely debated which is "better".

There are some stores that will intentionally keep meet away from oxygen until it is displayed and then introduce oxygen to have the meat "bloom" so it looks particularly red, but this reduces its shelf life. It would actually be better to buy beef that has not bloomed and is more purple in color because it's likely to be fresher.

Another aspect for beef is the fat.  Studies have shown that grass-fed and free range beef has higher nutrients (which is why you see so many "grass fed" labels), and this causes the fat to take on a yellow color. This meat can have a much stronger flavor, and is sometimes gamier and a little tougher, even though it is more nutritious.  I prefer this kind of meat but some people don't.

I have learned to pick meat based on its appearance and the color is just part of it.  You learn to determine what looks fresh and does not, it's the color but also the sheen, how well it "stands up", is it flopping or falling apart, is there any kind of sheen on it.  There is a difference between the gray color you get from oxidation and the beginning of spoilage, and naturally darker colors of fresh meat. I will sometimes have the butcher flip it over so I can see both sides, they will of course put it in the case with the best side showing and if it's been sitting a while the underside may show that it is gray and starting to lose its freshness. I hate it when I buy a pre-packaged steak that looks good and bring it home and flip it over and it looks like it's several days old.


Will Cinnamon ever dissolve in a cocktail? I have this idea, that making a cinnamon, vanilla and brandy cocktail would be delicious,
and it is.
But it is also kinda grainy.

What I have been doing:

In a 500ml glass,
add 15m brandy, add 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder, add 1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract, add a few tablespoons of sugar (Still working that out).
Then I stir it vigorously with a fork, and I top it with soda water.

This tastes good, but there are still grains of cinnamon visible,
and when I get to the bottom of the glass I can feel them in my teeth (that is to say, there are more grains lower down -- they sink to the bottom maybe).

Is cinnamon soluble at all?
Is trying to put it into a liquid just not something I should do at home? (I have seen online cinnamon syrups)
Should i be trying to dissolve it in water instead of alcohol?

Cinnamon is the bark of a tree. It is either sold as rolled strips of bark (=cinnamon sticks) or ground.

It will not dissolve, neither in water nor in alcohol.

What you want to do is basically the same as was done commercially with the vanilla extract you are already using:  Extract the taste, then discard the bark itself.

Alcohol is a good choice for extracting volatile aromatics. You could try and soak a few cinnamon sticks or a few tablespoons of ground cinnamon in a "neutral" alcohol like vodka or - if you are using it exclusively for your signature drink - use the brandy. This process might take from a few days to a few weeks, so nothing you can do "on the spur of the moment".
Another good carrier for the cinnamon taste would be water. You can simmer a few cinnamon sticks in water, then sieve. This is the same method that is used for mulled wine or mulled cider. To extend the shelf life of the "cinnamon water", you might considering turning it into simple syrup by boiling it with an equal amount of sugar.

Whether you use water or alcohol is a question of personal taste and planned other uses. The shelf life of an alcohol based extract might be longer, but with a sufficiently high sugar content, clean handling and refrigeration the syrup will last long, too. Time is a factor: The syrup can be ready and cooled in an hour or so, whereas the alcohol will take significantly more time.

Both methods work for vanilla, too - you could even make a "instant mix" for your drink.

Be warned, though: Filtering ground cinnamon from a liquid can be quite a hassle. It tends to clog coffe filters, but is too fine to be held back by a sieve. If you decide to use ground cinnamon because that's what you have at hand, consider letting it settle at the bottom of your container and carefully decanting the liquid from top. A coffe filter or a cloth-lined sieve can catch stray particles. You should get much better results by using whole or coarsely crushed cinnamon sticks.

There has been an ongoing discussion on what kind of cinnamon to use, so a short wrap-up here:

Cinnamon is derived from a group of plants, which vary in their properties and compounds. Especially coumarin, a substance also found in tonka bean, woodruff and other plants, has been widely discussed for its toxicity and is regulated in the EU.

Cassia cinnamon has the highest content whereas
true / Ceylon / Sri Lanka cinnamon contains only traces.

From a culinary point, the cheaper cassia, which contains more bark and is usually sold ground or in pieces, is often considered inferior in taste to the true cinnamon, which often comes in sticks.

I will not venture a statement here, neither on health nor culinary claims.
I am sure every reader of this post is capable of making an informed decision.


Microwave cooking time with porcelain/stoneware container rather than plastic Would the cooking time change if I microwave some food in a porcelain or stoneware container rather than plastic?

More details (if you have time to waste)

I generally do not like to put plastic in the microwave. I had some accidents in the past where the plastic softened or even melted. In those cases I had to throw the food away because honestly the idea of accidentally ingesting plastic scares me. And this happened even when plastic containers were claimed to be microwave safe.

Therefore, recently I decided to move food from plastic "microwaveable" packages to my own microwaveable porcelain and stoneware containers (dishes or mugs with lids).

Would this mean that I have to cook the food for longer time or shorter time, compared to the cooking time suggested on the package?

Yes, it's likely to change the time. There is no way to predict how it will change it, though, since it is a combination of the material, mass and shape of the vessel. So you'll have to test it for each vessel you use.


Chicken wrapper torn, meat is a little dry I was thawing chicken thighs in the refrigerator and noticed the plastic wrap had torn some, probably when I dug it out of the deep freeze! Some of the chicken dried out. Is it still safe to fry?

Should be fine to eat, might be a little drier section of the meat if you go straight to cooking without like marinading.


Dairy free popping candy? I am looking to recreate a dairy free popping candy chocolate I have no issues creating the chocolate but I'm sure popping candy contains milk...

Is there such thing as a dairy free popping candy and if not is there any way I could make it?

Thank you

Unfortunately, I don't think so.

Milk sugars show up in the regular pop rocks ingredients list, and I also looked at the ingredients list for the culinary grade unflavored popping crystals, but those still contain milk sugars - it isn't just in the extra flavorings, but in the base material recipe.  And as far as I know, there's no real way to make this popping candy at home.

You can look up the homemade carbonated candy recipes that use citric acid and baking soda, but those tend to be fizzing, not popping, when activated.  It may be close enough for your purposes, and the recipe doesn't have milk in it, but names aside it is not the same candy.


Is lemonade better when made with simple syrup? On a hot summer day and with a basketful of lemons I often want a nice cold glass of lemonade. A lot of recipes suggest making lemonade with simple syrup, which requires cooking, whereas other recipes just have stirred-in sugar.

What exactly are the benefits of making lemonade (or limeade) with simple syrup versus just stirring in sugar?

Simple Syrup is sugar that is has been dissolved in water. Heating speeds the process, and also allows the water to "absorb" more sugar. I don't remember the chemistry of why the sugar doesn't crystallize at room temp, but it doesn't. It is typically made in a 1:1 mixture .. heat a cup of water to boiling, add a cup of sugar, stir until the sugar is dissolved, remove from heat, allow to cool.

It is used in cold drinks like lemonade and iced tea because granulated sugar does not dissolve easily in cold liquids. It requires a lot of mixing, and the saturation point is low, so people who like lots of sugar can't get enough to dissolve to get the taste they desire.

Note #1: this is why Southern-style Sweet Tea is sweetened while the tea is still hot.

Note #2: The sweetness of 1 tsp of sugar is not equivalent to the sweetness of 1 tsp of simple syrup.  You will have to find your particular taste point.

Note #3: It can be flavored with just about any flavor extract, such as lemon, orange, peppermint, vanilla, almond, and so on. As I understand it, this is typically how flavored iced teas are made.


Sous Vide danger zone for vegetables I know about the danger zone for Sous Vide cooking (Pasteurization etc.)
My question is - is it only relevant for meat / pork / poultry, or is it relevant for vegetables too ? (Both greens and root vegetables)

The issue with the "danger zone" has to do with bacteria that are on the food. There are 2 issues.

fresh food may have harmful bacteria on it. This is more likely by meat, but vegetables can have them too (this is why you wash off that apple before you eat it) Getting up to 140 degrees kills off everything.
any bacteria that there is on it or lands on it post cooking. If the food is kept warm but under 140 or ie;danger zone then these bacteria have a wonderful place to live and can quickly grow. This makes no difference between animal or vegetables.


how to cook orange lentils in the microwave? How to cook orange lentils in the microwave?

I once tried and it ended up as a watery mash. What time, power, amount of water (any other things to take into account), should I use to avoid them being mushy?

It sounds like you pretty clearly had too much water, and maybe cooked too long and too hot. As for what to actually do: using a microwave doesn't mean you can't be flexible. You can figure out how to cook them the same way you could figure out how to cook many things in the microwave.

Start just enough water to cover the lentils. Cook it on high until it's nearly boiling; then reduce the power until it can keep going without boiling much. (That depends completely on your microwave; on mine it'd probably be in the 20-50% range.) Every couple minutes, have a peek. Make sure there's still enough water; stir them and see if they're done.

If you keep track of the total time, and the amount of water you had to add as you went along, you should be able to do it without much trouble next time. (And if you like, leave out the initial heating on high; that just saves some time.)

Mushiness can be caused by cooking too long, obviously, but also by cooking too hot. A rapid boil can help disintegrate things. It's especially tricky to avoid boiling in a microwave, since reducing power just makes it go off and on. Pay attention to how much it's boiling while it's on; while it's off it'll still be plenty hot.


How does one alter a recipe that calls for one fruit with another fruit of differing water content? For example, I often make banana bread. I'd like to effectively keep the same recipe but use pumpkin instead. Bananas are ~72% water while pumpkins are ~90% water, and roughly a 20% increase in water content seems substantial. (I actually have a loaf of apple-bread in the oven; and apples are about 80% water—we'll see how it goes. :D)

I wouldn't be surprised if there were other things I'm not taking into consideration (e.g. - chemical composition of fruits) that affect any substitutions I make. This being said, is there some heuristic I can use when substituting fruits in baking? Or are the differences between fruits enough to warrant totally different approaches when going from fruit to fruit?

There's no trick, there's math. 100g of banana is about 75g of water (1g of water is 1ml, so easy to measure), 12g of sugar, and 13g of fiber and other stuff. A pumpkin is about 92g of water and 3 grams of sugar, leaving 5g of other stuff.

My banana bread recipe calls for 2 medium bananas, that's about 250g of banana. That's 188g of water and about 30g sugar. If you add 250g of pumpkin instead that's 230g of water and about 8g of sugar, so pumpkin would add 42g of water (42ml, a bit less than 1/4 cup), and take 22g of sugar. That's enough of a difference to really throw your recipe out, so you'd want to remove 42ml of water, milk or other liquid and add 22g of sugar (4g of sugar is about 1 tsp, so 22g is about 5.5 tsp, or just under 2 tbsp).


When a recipe calls for brown sugar, could I use white sugar instead? I don't really use brown sugar that often and I would like to know, if I am baking a recipe that calls for a cup of brown sugar, could I use white sugar instead? If not, why? Do they not "bake" the same?

Thank you!

Yes!

Brown sugar is nothing more than white granular sugar plus molasses. That's it!

1 Tbsp molasses per cup of granular sugar = light brown sugar and 2 Tbsp molasses for dark brown sugar. There is no need to waste your money buying either, or worse, both.

Omitting the molasses and just using plain white sugar in a recipe will however change the taste somewhat in the finished product. You'll need to experiment to determine if that flavor change is acceptable to you and those you cook for.


Fondue without Gruyere cheese Can you give me some good tips how to prepare Fondue without Gruyere/Raclete cheese? What are possible substitutes, and what should I pay attention to when substituting?

It's not a true Fondue but I've done something very similar by taking a white sauce base made with 50 / 50 wine and milk. You then melt in lots and lots of cheese and you get something very nice and similar to a fondue. You can pretty much use any reasonably melting cheese you like although a strong cheddar is very nice. For something really interesting add some Mozzerella and slowly melt it down and you get a wonderful stringy finish.


Which types of chilli work for homemade chilli oil? I have seen a restaurant that has chili pepper in the olive oil bottle, it gave the oil a delicious chilli taste. I am planning to do the same at home.

I wonder how to choose the chilli I will be using. What difference do the different types (jalapeno, red chilli, etc.) have on the finished product?
I am aware of the safety issues as discussed in this post, they are not part of the question.

You can use any type of chili depending on how spicy you want the oil to be.
You could use ghost peppers to burn the insides of your mouth, or perhaps use Jalapeno for a more milder heat.

You can use the Scolville Scale to decide which pepper to use. At the end of the day it comes down to your personal preference.


What is the best way to chip your butter when making biscuits? I love biscuits and have made many. The one thing that gets me is cutting the butter. I have used several different approaches with varying degrees of success. What works for you.

I love using a pastry cutter, something like this:

It does the best job cutting butter or shortening into flour. Every now and again while using it I use a fork or butter knife to remove the big blockages.


What factors lead to rich crema on espresso? I love espresso, especially when it has a rich crema (the head that forms on top of a well made shot). I notice that some cafes produce this consistently while others never have more than a wisp on top. Which of the many factors that go in to pulling good espresso shots specifically contribute to the crema?

Crema is a food foam.  For crema to form and survive long enough for us to enjoy the espresso, something needs to hold the bubbles of the foam together.  In most food foams proteins help hold up the bubbles, but in crema it is a mixture of proteins and oils. This makes it hard to predict what makes good crema.  From practice, good crema comes from:

Enough pressure and well timed extraction
Fresh grind with a good grain size distribution
Darker roasts

There are also tradeoffs between stability of the crema and the amount of crema produced. The two don't seem to go together.  The crema also should have bubbles that pop and sprinkle the coffee aromatics into the air and our noses (like champagne).  The higher pressure extraction helps extract and emulsify the oils (about 0.1g ends up in one shot).  The darker roasts help with the Maillard reaction which creates the still unknown molecules that give crema its color and volume.


How to catch culture out of yogurt? When I make yogurt, I freeze some of the yogurt for the next time. However, I concentrate the yogurt by pouring it into a cloth, and extracting the yogurt whey (I do not know if it is called whey like cheese).

Is the culture in the yogurt whey? Do I lose culture by concentrating the yogurt?
Is salt harmful for the culture? Do I necessarily need to store the culture before adding salt to yogurt?

The culture is everywhere in the yogurt, and you are not losing all of the whey anyway. If you'd managed to press out all of the moisture, you'd end up with yogurt powder.

Salt interferes with all kinds of microorganisms. It is much better to not add salt to culture.


Bacon fat producing solid white and gelatin state I save my bacon grease when cooking bacon and use it in several recipes.   When i render it and store in the refrig some becomes a white solid and some remains in a gelatin state.  Why?

If the white solid is on top, and the gelatin below, it's just an issue that it's not all fat -- you have meat juices in there, too, which can turn to jelly.

If you're trying to store it for a longer-term, you'll want to strain it, then let it cool.  Lift off the solid white portion, scrape any jelly stuck to the bottom, then heat back up the oil.

Bring it back up to the water boiling point, and it might start to bubble.  If it gets above 100°C, you're fine.  Otherwise, wait 'til the bubbles go away and it gets above 100°C, then hold it for a few minutes.
Let that cool some, then put it into a clean container and put it back in the fridge to cool completely.


Cracked Mexican/Spanish style rice I've been trying to reproduce my favorite kind of Mexican or Spanish style rice that I find in some restaurants.  It is dry and fluffy and seems to be cracked or split open.  I've gone through many different recipes and videos but the rice always seems to have more moisture than I'm looking for (intentional, for the recipes I'm following) and no split-ness.

I've tried both standard pan and a pressure cooker methods.

Anybody know what the style of rice is called, more specifically, by my description of "cracked/split" and perhaps the secret to making it?

Thanks!

You have to use the right type of rice - Spanish Rice, (such as Arborio Rice or Valencia Rice). This SA post may be helpful to you. You can buy Spanish Rice on amazon.

Don't use rice cooker or pressure cooker. You suppose to toast the rice in oil and fry it with ingredient. See this post for more information.

If you want to increase further the "crack-ness" of the rice, I suggest to soak it in water for few hours before rinsing it. Every time I left the rice forgotten in water they end up breaking apart after cook.


Is it advisable to freeze tomatoes? I have some tomatoes that might go bad soon. Do they freeze well? (E.g. taste, texture)

Tomatoes freeze well in terms of taste, but not in terms of texture.
After thawing them, you should use them in soup, stews, etc. rather than eating them raw.

It could be useful to remove their skins and dicing them up prior to freezing.


What is the guideline sourdough to flour to water ratio for 24-hour feeding? I have a batch of sourdough that I've been maintaining and feeding for months, and currently trying to save from spoiling after repetitive periods of laziness, where I left the batch unfed for more than two days. It leavens the bread dough just fine and the bread dough smells nice after 12 hours of fermenting, but the sourdough starter itself smells a little off, or I simply haven't liked its smell as of lately. I noticed that with regular feeding and care, though, that undesirable smell is weakening and it's starting to smell more acceptable as time goes by. My hope is that this is the good guys slowly overtaking any bad guys (the ones responsible for the off smell) as the weeks go by, and that sourdough starter can be saved after periods of irresponsibility toward the lovely pets. =)

Now, with that introduction out of the way, my question is: What is the sourdough to flour to water ratio that I should use if I only want to feed my sourdough once a day, or every 24 hours, instead of twice daily or every 12 hours, and still have it stay healthy?

For example, should I be adding 200 g fresh flour and 200 g water (for a total of 400 g) to 200 g of sourdough once a day? Or is it better to use a 2:2:1 ratio of 240 g fresh flour and 240 g water to 120 g of sourdough when one's feeding every 24 hours?

Thanks for any help or tips with this.

I am using as little as 10-20 % old starter, e.g. 100g flour, 100g water and a teaspoon old starter, which is somewhere around 15g, plus/minus. To be honest, I usually eyeball the ratios, aiming for the just-right consistency of the flour/water mix, then add the starter. A few percent deviation is ok.

Don’t forget that the growth in your starter is roughly exponential, so if you want to double the time to maturity, you need significantly less than half of what you would use otherwise. And the environment also plays a role, during summer heat or near the radiator a starter will grow and collapse way faster than on the counter on a cool spring or autumn day.

If you need longer phases between feeding, I suggest parking your sourdough in the fridge and feeding it only once a week.


What strength of brine will completely inhibit growth of lactobacillus (and friends)? As per the title. How strong does a brine have to be before it will completely inhibit growth of the bacteria that are traditionally employed to create pickled foods?

The backstory is that I decided to make some sauerkraut the other day. The recipe I looked at said to use a 3.5% w/w brine. I filled the jars with the sliced cabbage I had to see how much they would take, and the cabbage I had filled two jars. So I measured the volume of the jars, remove the cabbage into a large bowl and added the correct amount of salt for a 3.5% brine that completely filled both jars. However after an hour of contact with the salt, the cabbage had wilted enough that all of it fit in one jar, leaving me with effectively a 7% brine after adding enough water to cover the cabbage. It's been two days since I left the jars covered with some muslin to ferment, however they don't smell particularly lactic. I'm partly worried that I may have added too much salt and thus inhibited the growth of the lactobacillus, but I'm aware that fermentation can take time, especially in cold conditions.

Mostly I'm just curious for future reference as to how strong a brine is too strong to stop lacto-fermentation.

In brief, your question has no possible general answer for the kind of scenario you posit (where you add a certain amount of salt to a certain volume of food) or even a scenario where you add a brine of concentration X to a certain amount of food.

Most vegetable (and animal) sources for food contain significant amounts of water, and some of that water will be released when placed into a brine solution.  The amount of water that is released will alter the final brine concentration, often significantly.  Reputable recipes for food preservation and brining will take into account the average amount of water released to arrive at a final brine concentration that will ensure food safety (while not making the food unpalatable and perhaps allowing bacteria to grow if fermentation is desired).  The safety of such recipes is generally determined empirically through extensive testing to ensure the final products are stable.  There's no general formula you can use.

Now, if you actually have a way of determining the final brine concentration after the food has released all of its water, you can answer your question for various bacteria strains.  This paper has a summary of minimum levels of water activity (in Table 5) that will allow bacteria to grow.  For Lactobacillus, using Table 4 in the paper, you can see that the maximum salt concentration which will allow growth could be anywhere from 7% to 16.5%, depending on the particular strain of Lactobacillus.

However, note that these are absolute maximum salt concentrations that can allow any growth.  At high concentrations, the activity of Lactobacillus and other fermentation bacteria will slow significantly.  By the time you get above a 10% solution or so, you're going to see very slow fermentation, and it is possible that other bacteria, yeast, and mold that can survive such high salt concentrations might grow first.  (Lactic acid fermentation works by using both salt and resulting acidity as preservatives; if the lactic acid bacteria cannot grow fast enough, the lower acidity may allow other bad things to grow.)

Regarding your specific situation:

There are a number of things which are unclear here.  First, cabbage generally is not fermented with any significant amount of brine.  It is generally dry salted, and the water which comes out of the cabbage serves as the brine.  Brine is generally only added if needed to keep the cabbage submerged.  (In my experience, this is almost never necessary assuming firm packing of the cabbage.)

So, I'm a bit confused by the idea of a recipe which said to ferment cabbage with 3.5% brine by weight.  Most recipes will tell you an amount of salt to add per weight of cabbage.  As mentioned above, reputable recipes (tested for food safety in preservation) make assumptions about the amount of water that comes out of different fruits and vegetables when put in a salt solution.  I'm also not even sure how you calculated "the correct amount of salt for a 3.5% brine that completely filled both jars" -- do you mean that you calculated the amount of salt to add to a weight of water that filled both jars?

In any case, this is NOT the right way to determine salt concentration for fermentation.  Brine percentages should only be used when they are actually referring to brine.  You generally cannot take a brine percentage and apply it to a volume that will primarily be filled up with something else.  Yes, most fruits and vegetables are mostly water, but the amount of water that actually comes out of the food can significantly vary and will alter brine strength, which can change fermentation and safety.

Here's an example of a tested recipe put out by a reputable food preservation source.  It recommends 3 tablespoons of pickling salt per 5 pounds of cabbage.  That comes out to roughly 2.5% salt by weight of cabbage.  That's a pretty typical proportion for sauerkraut recipes.  As the link states near the top, recipes can vary from 2 to 3%, but 2.25-2.5% is most typical.  Anyhow, the recipe also states that if extra brine is needed to cover the cabbage, it should be produced by adding 1.5 tablespoons to a quart of water, which comes out to roughly 3% brine.

Bottom line: yes, assuming I understand what you did, lactic acid bacteria will probably still be able to grow in your mixture.  Whether they grow fast enough to ferment well and produce acid before other things grow -- that's harder to predict.  In the future, I'd suggest using a specific recipe from a food safety and preservation organization.  Unless you REALLY know what you're doing, you shouldn't be modifying recipes or performing your own calculations to do uncontrolled fermentations.


How are chemical leaveners affected by moisture and cool temperature? This is maybe a more precise way of asking, "what happens to left over batter in the fridge?" This question might have to approached per leavening agent.

Chemical leaveners all work the same way. You have a basic salt (like sodium bicarbonate) and an acid (incorporated in baking powder, like cream of tartar, or coming from the dough itself, like a baking soda leavened cake with yoghurt in the batter). You have probably seen the reaction at some point in science class, but if not, go mix a teaspoonfull of baking soda with a teaspoonfull of vinegar and watch.

In this reaction, the acid reacts with the base, creating new compounds. Some of these compounds are gaseous, so they make a foam in your baking soda - vinegar experiment. When baking, these bubbles of gas stay in the batter and get trapped there when the batter sets, resulting in a sponge-like structure.

To start the reaction, you need both the base and the acid. When using baking soda, you have no reaction before it is added to the acidic batter. Baking soda is a mix of baking powder and what I called an acidic salt, but in reality, the salt itself is not acidic. It forms acidic solutions with water. Remember, an acid is a proton donator. pH is a measure for the amount of protons swimming around free, waiting to react with something non-acidic. A salt has a firm structure, it is an ionic grid. No protons are swimming around in a salt, they stay at their places. Dissolve the salt, and they start swimming and become available for reactions. So with baking powder, too, the reaction starts once you mix the baking powder with the moist ingredients. This is the effect of moisture and the reason why batter goes flat.

The coolness in the fridge doesn't have much of an effect. If anything, it probably slows down the reaction somewhat, but not enough to stop it.

In a nutshell, what happens with the batter in the fridge is exactly the same thing that happens with the batter in the oven. Only as you are not baking it, the bubbles don't get trapped in the setting dough, but swim around until they reach the surface and leak into the air. This continues until the reactive compounds are exhausted. When you take the batter out later, the reaction is over, because there is nothing left to react, and it does not rise in the oven, because the rising is already over.


How can I grind teff? (without a grain mill) One of the international groceries near me stopped selling smaller (~2lb / 1kg) bags of teff flour**.  All that that they have now is 25lb bags.  All of the other ones that I frequent are latin or asian, and just don't carry teff.

Bob's Red Mill sells teff in small (24oz) packages, which I can get in some of the 'organic' type grocery stores, but it's whole.

I know that grain mills exist, but I'd prefer not to buy a new appliance just for a 'let me play around in the kitchen with a new recipe' type situation.  (in this case, injera)

As the grains are so tiny, would coffee grinders (blade or burr) even work for it?  Is there some other common kitchen appliance that would work?  Or would I have to spend some time with a mortar and pestle?

** as the bags were self-labeled like how they sell other bagged bulk foods, it's possible that they just had a damaged bag, and found a way to cut their losses, and it just took them a while to sell it all, as it was only a month or two from when I noticed it 'til it was gone.

I accidentally bought teff instead of teff flour and used my Nutribullet to grind it up.  Worked great! Quick, as well.


can maple syrup be refrigerated after it was out for a few days? I opened Adirondack pure maple syrup a few days ago.  It didn't say to refrigerate, so I didn't.  When I googled it, it said that it should be refrigerated.  Can I still do that?  If I may not use it for a while, should I freeze it?

Unless you left it open to the air it should be perfectly safe.  Maple sap is thickened into syrup via boiling so any bacteria/etc. originating in it will be killed off.

Thick sugary syrups also make it very hard for bacteria and mold to grow.  Despite the plentiful food source, the concentrated sugar is dessicative:

  OK, maple syrup is wet, but it’s also extremely high in sugar. All that sugar has the effect of pulling water out of cells, and the vast majority of fungi can’t grow in maple syrup at all [...] maple syrup typically has a water activity of about 0.87 to 0.88, pretty hostile to most molds.

Syrup doesn't have the other nice properties honey that make it virtually immune to nasties, though, so I wouldn't continue to leave it out.  If you are particularly concerned you can always boil it.

For anyone else wondering about "fake" table syrup:

  fake maple syrup resists molds through the miracle of chemical preservatives (usually sodium benzoate and sorbic acid)


Slow cooker lid gasket smell I bought a Hamilton Beach slow cooker a while ago. I never had success with it since all the stuff that I made didn't smell good. I finally figured out that it was the rubber gasket on the lid that smelled bad. I don't know if the smell was concentrated food aroma or burnt rubber. I soaked the lid in vinegar overnight and then rinsed it. The smell was gone. I then made some pinto beans in the slow cooker and the gasket again stinks, this time similar to a very very strong pinto bean smell. I am thinking of either giving up on slow cooking or buying a crock pot brand. My questions:

Is the extremely strong smell from the rubber gasket a common occurrence in slow cookers in general?
If not, I guess I should just go and buy a different brand/model and shouldn't have this problem.
If they are, are there any gasketless slow cookers or lids that would solve this problem?
Does overcooking tend to bring out different, or offensive smells from otherwise normal food and sauces?

Results: For those coming here with the same problem, I simply removed the gasket and everything was fine. Since the lid has a small hole to release pressure, there was no need for a gasket to make a seal in the first place.

Well first off, most slow cookers don't have a gasket.  So its not a problem for them.  Rubber can often times take on strong smell.
I would consider buying one without a gasket - I don't think its a majorly useful feature personally.  Or, consider buying the more versatile enameled Dutch oven (there are some very affordable, excellent ones) .
Yes, most don't have a rubber gasket.  And it would solve that problem.
Yes overcooking will lead to bad/different smells, even in good food otherwise.  It will often lead to bad tastes and textures as well.


Will my baked potatoes be ok cooked longer at a low temp? I am slow cooking a roast at 275 for 3 1/2 hours and want baked potatoes also. Will my potatoes be ok if I cook them at 275 for 2 or 3 hours? Maybe if I start them in the microwave for a few minutes and then 275 for a couple of hours?

They should be perfectly fine if cooked for that long. If you are still uncertain then you can try adding some liquid to the pan to help boil the potatoes.


How long is it safe to defrost frozen vacuum packed chicken in cold water Last night around 10:30pm, I put a frozen chicken thighs, vacuum packed in a pot of cold water to defrost. I intended to put the whole pot in the fridge before going up to bed. Unfortunately, I dozed off in front of the TV, forgot about the chicken & went up to bed. This morning I remembered as soon as I opened my eyes. I called my spouse who goes downstairs every morning around 3:35am, to ask if he noticed the pot w/the chicken, he said he did, & put the whole pot in the fridge. He said her checked, chicken was still ice cold & no odor. I went downstairs to check myself, he’s right, but I’m still nervous about using the chicken, it sat in water 4.5 hours. I feel I need to discard this pack & just defrost a new pack. Am I right, or just being wasteful.

It sounds like you weren't using running water, which guarantees that the water the chicken would be sitting in stays at a constant temperature. Since you had left it in a standing pot of cold water, the temperature of that water probably got up to 50 or 60 degrees, depending on how cool you keep your house, which is most definitely within the danger-zone. Your chicken was not thawed safely.

That does not necessarily mean that it was contaminated, but rather that it had the opportunity to become contaminated.

Personally, I think you'll be fine, because your husband caught it before it was out for too long, but 4.5 hours is certainly pushing it. As long as you cook it properly to at least 165 degrees, the chances of you getting food poisoning are pretty slim.

Also, for future reference, if you are going to quick defrost chicken in water, you should only be doing so when you plan on immediately cooking it, rather than throwing it back in the fridge. See here.


How to put mushrooms in soup/stew without creating foam? This is something that has happened to me twice now:

I like making boxed Japanese curry, so I tried adding some sliced (fresh) shiitake mushrooms, because I like them. Before you actually add the curry blocks, it’s basically just a pot of water, meat, and veggies. Like a bland soup. When I add mushrooms and leave it to boil, it froths and bubbles over. This never happens any other time, with any other ingredients. Just mushrooms.

I tried looking up solutions, but it seems like I’m the only one having this problem.
Any ideas?

You cannot avoid the foam, it's going to form but you can keep it from boiling over. A foamy pot boils over because the foam traps steam, acting like a lid sitting right on top of the water. Escaping steam takes heat away from the pot, preventing it causes the water to super heat and boil over. You can prevent it by simply stirring, and floating a wooden spoon on the top (actually works).

However, I would prevent this by reducing heat. You don't need to boil your food, a simmer will work just fine and is more gentle on your ingredients, less heat means even with foam it won't boil over. So turn it down and solve your problem.

As for why the foam forms with mushrooms I don't know. With pasta and rice it's the starches on the surface which come off and expand, but mushrooms aren't starchy. I suspect it's other particles on the outside of the mushrooms, or perhaps the spores under the cap. To reduce foaming you could try rinsing the shrooms, that's usually a no-no but as you're cooking them in water it's no big deal. You could saute them separately if you have the time, you'll get a different flavor which you may prefer, although you wouldn't get it that way in  a traditional Japanese curry.

Here's an article about foaming in pasta water which may be worth a read.


Can I substitute a top round beef roast with a beef rib eye roast? I have a recipe that calls for a 7 lb. top round beef roast with full fat cap. You salt the beef for 2 days and then set oven for 450 and roast for 20 min. Reduce to 225 and roast for 1 hr. 30 min. Can I use a beef rib eye boneless roast instead of the top round beef roast?

Yes. You may want to baste from time to time if there's little fat, and ribeye benefits from lower and slower cooking--which you pretty much seem to have here--but otherwise yes. You may wish to check out Ad Hoc at Home, by Thomas Keller, which discusses roasting a ribeye.


Why did butternut squash make my fingers dry and yellow? Last weekend I made butternut squash soup. In an experiment to get more of the squash browned I peeled two medium squash and cut them into 2 inch chunks, rather than just halving it, before roasting in the oven. (Result of the experiment was OK, but the extra exposed area also allows more moisture to escape, so I wouldn't recommend this method.)

Halfway through peeling the 2nd squash I noticed that the fingers on my left hand (I'm right-handed) were getting yellow and that the skin was drying, cracking, and tightening up. The yellow I can understand as transfer since I was using that hand to hold the squash while peeling. But I've peeled butternut plenty of times for various recipes and this hasn't happened before. Washing my hands didn't help. The problem went away after a couple of days.

Does anyone want to venture an explanation? Did my fingers O.D. on carotene or potassium?

It's definitely a very real reaction. I'm not sure exactly what in the squash it is that causes it, but since different people react differently - some people have strong reactions like you, some people have mild ones, and some have no problem at all - it seems to be some sort of mild allergic reaction. It's often called contact dermatitis, but that's a very generic term and doesn't really mean anything you don't already know. I'm not sure exactly what component of the squash it is that causes it, but I don't think it's carotene or potassium. It's likely some more complex molecule that tends to be present in various winter squashes.

Images from http://foodworld-eva.blogspot.com/2010/01/squash-reaction-on-skin.html.

You can avoid it by completely wearing gloves while working with the squash, or if you're lucky, you have someone else with you who can handle the squash without problems. For many purposes, like soup, you can also simply cut the squash in half, roast it, then scoop out the good stuff. But if you do really need to peel it and cut into chunks, your best hope is just to try to avoid touching it too much. You'll also want to wash your hands immediately after, or even a few times while you're cutting if it takes a while.

If you do end up with this despite your best efforts, cortisone cream can help relieve the reaction afterward.

(And as for your soup, there's nothing wrong with letting more moisture escape in exchange for browning. You can always just add more water or stock back into the soup. This can even be a good thing, since it lets you replace water with a more flavorful liquid.)


Giant meringue French pastry - what are these called? A few months ago we were visiting Paris, and in Montmartre, there were several pastry shoppes with large meringues. And by large, I mean the size of someone's head, or an American football. They were usually swirled with a pastel food coloring to give them a frosted look. But otherwise, they were just a gigantic meringue.

For the life of me, I can't find what these pastries are called. It came to a head this morning when I made a recipe which left me with 18 egg whites, and I'd love to try making them. So, does anyone have any idea what these large meringues are called??

They're just called meringues... Make sure to use a recipe for French meringue, not Italian meringue.

http://hipparis.com/2011/03/14/au-merveilleux-de-fred-a-meringue-bakery-in-paris/#more-16159


Can a 300W kitchen aid do meat grinding? I have a kitchen aid artisan with 300W and have read conflicting opinions on what it can and can't do. Many seem to have a hard time using meat grinder and food processor attachments, because of the low power.
Is this the case, or does it simply take longer or require more prep (precutting the meat into smaller pieces for example)? What kind of meat would it have problems with? Why would it have issues with a food processor, which only cuts relatively soft vegatables?

Kitchenaid mixers can grind meat, I know because I have one with the meat grinder attachment and I've used it do just that, as well as make sausages. The problem is one of expectation: it is not the biggest or the fastest meat grinder, if you are going to grind meat often and in large quantities a purpose built one is a better choice for you as it will be faster. However, if you don't need to grind often the kitchenaid one is a compact, effective and relatively cheap solution. It helps to cut the meat into manageable chunks that will fit down the throat.


How long do I have to submerge an egg in a specific temperature water to boil it? Living in a dorm, I am severely limited by my cooking options. I have a non-microwave safe bowl, which I'm using for the noodle soup (that will be accompanied by said egg), and a highball glass.

There's a water dispenser which pours out hot water of exactly 70 degree C. If I fill up the glass with that, then after putting the egg in that glass, how long do I need to keep it there to make sure it's hard-boiled? (Note that I have no way to heat the water, so once it's poured into the glass and placed on the counter it'll start losing heat)

If a hard boiled egg isn't possible, a soft boiled will do. (as long as the egg doesn't remain gross in the whites or get me sick, I'm good)

In theory you should be able to reach your goal, sort of, borrowing from the Japanese Onsen egg and the Sous Vide technique. Serious Eats has an article detailing the results of slow-cooking eggs at different temperatures just around your given 70 C for further reference. You should aim to keep the water around the egg as high as possible and do so for the better part of an hour.
But let’s be honest - even with constant re-filling of 70C water you won’t end up with a solid egg and every degree lower will give you more and more watery whites - which I suspect you mean when you write “gross”. So while you can safely eat the egg, it remains to be seen whether you want to. And it’s a huge hassle, just for a soft egg.

But let me suggest an alternative, using the microwave you mentioned. Eggs in a microwave are doable, if you take the egg out of the shell. If you are really limited to a glass - assuming it’s a plain and reasonably heatproof one, otherwise it shouldn’t be used in your original setup either - use the glass. Pour about half a cup of water into the glass (or small bowl, if you can find one, for a nicer shape), add a generous sprinkle of salt. Crack your egg into the water and microwave the whole thing for about a minute to the desired doneness - no need to actually boil the water, actually you want to rather avoid boiling, but it’s not the end of the world if you do get bubbles. This should give you a nice poached egg. Zapp it a bit longer for a solid yolk. Of course, each microwave is different, so a bit of experimentation is in order, but this method should get you closer to your goal than the water dispenser one you were considering.


Mold is growing on my cheese, what is common practice? I love cheese and I am always buying and trying new types. Because of this, my cheese stash starts to grow faster than I can eat all of it. Sometimes mold starts to grow around the outside before I get to it, particularly the cheddar.

I practice good storage techniques to no avail, still the mold eventually shows up.  So when this happens, I just trim the mold off and move on, but some of my friends think this is "so gross" and I should just throw it away.

What do you think?

I cut it off also. Don't tell your friends you do it. I have heard you can freeze some cheeses, but I think it looses flavor with freezing. flavor is after all why you buy and eat cheese. have more cheese tasting parties.