Why cook stewing meat low and slow? I know that you're supposed to cook cuts like beef chuck at a low temperature until they reach a high enough internal temp for the collagen to melt, which is why the same method wouldn't work for steak cuts that lack that collagen.

But why the low temp part? If the goal is to melt collagen, couldn't that be done just as easily at a higher temp?

Also: if there's something special about cooking the meat at a higher temp, regardless of the internal temp it ends up at, does that mean that you have to be careful when searing the meat before braising?

I had always thought that the toughness of a piece of meat depended on its internal temp, but it seems like a 200F braised chuck would taste different from a 200F skilled-fried overcooked chuck steak.

If the goal is to melt collagen, couldn't that be done just as easily at a higher temp?

No, it won't be.

The reaction which has to happen to the collagen doesn't go quicker when the temperature is higher. You have to get it to 68 Celsius and wait for it to happen. If it is at more than 68 Celsius, it won't happen quicker, or better, or anything. You have no advantages.

At the same time, if you have a higher temperature, you have more trouble. First, you are wasting a lot of energy to keep the stew hotter over many hours. Second, its liquid can boil off, getting the wrong consistency. Third, if the bottom of the pot becomes too hot, it will burn on. Fourth, anything non-meat in there can suffer from the heat - vegetables can overcook, starch can burn onto the bottom, anything planty (vegetables, herbs, spices) can get its taste destroyed).

All in all, if you can cook something on a high or a low temperature, choose the low one, it is generally better for everything. Only choose high for foods which have a narrow temperature range which is high.


How can I make the exterior of my croissants less hard and more flaky? My croissants look good and they taste fine but they have an extremely flaky/hard exterior, it is like a biscuit even though they are light in weight and have the bee caves inside as supposed. I would like to have the one that is really flaky but not toasted.

I use

2 cups of bread flour
2.5 tsp active dry yeast
2.5 tbsp sugar
1.5 tsp salt
1.5 tbsp of butter inside the dough
1/2 cup of milk
1/2 cup of water

I knead it long enough and then I leave it to chill overnight. The next day, I place butter slab, make 3 simple layers with 15 minutes freezing in between, and finally let them chill for the last time for 1 hour plus in refrigerator before I shape them and let them proof for 2 hours at room temperature. I bake them at 400F for 10 minutes and at 370F for another 10 minutes.

this is a technique that might help with the shell issue:

I suspect your croissants are losing humidity during proofing, possibly freezing the butter block, and possibly baking resulting in a harder shell.  If you have a humidity controlled proofer and oven, then those parts may not be your problem.  Otherwise, read on:

Peter Reinhart in The Bread Baker's Apprentice suggests pouring boiling water in a flat pan/container and placing in the bottom of the oven during the baking (of breads) in order to keep up the humidity.  This  Link has the recipe published with Peter's permission.  Notice how the freezer doesn't come into play (freezer is a dehydrator and pretty good at it, too) although some recipes call the freezing part a must.

Croissants are lighter than bread loafs so they may require a different humidity profile than breads during baking (as noted by commenters). However, for proofing humidity levels should be high and the temperature around 80F or 27C.

To achieve that, for the proofing period keep the dough in a turned-off-oven and turn on the oven light a long with a the boiling water method.  This usually prevents 'the skin' formation and a dried out crust.  It also helps with getting a better rise during baking.  The oven light bumps up the temperature but if you're room temperature is close, don't bother.

You may wish to read this piece on humidity and baking and generally the Maillard Reaction.  Here's an excerpt that might explain the problem:

"Under dry oven conditions, the dough will have rapid evaporation of the water from
the exposed surface. This will cause premature formation of a dry inelastic outer shell
on the bread surface"


secret of making maple candy (texture)? I make small quantities (<10L) of my own maple syrup, and have always wanted to make maple candy, but the two times I tried, it did not work out very well. The ideal consistency of the end product is much like brown sugar, with a grain & squishiness to it, and what I came up with was more like a maple popsicle that seized up quickly.

Is there a secret to doing it right?

I just looked it up. Maple syrup is almost pure sucrose-water syrup. (I know that the colour and flavour are very distinctive, but the molecules responsible for them are a very small percentage by weight). Which means that it behaves just like regular candy crystalization.

The bad news is that candy crystalization isn't easy. There are just too many factors which have an influence on the texture. The good news is that people have already created such recipes. Find such a recipe and follow it exactly to the letter! If it says "wooden spoon", don't use a metal spoon, etc. And don't even start without a thermometer, unless you have had years of experience to perfect your water test technique.

As I haven't ever made or seen this specific candy, I can't tell you which parameter values will give you the needed texture. But I can list the usual parameters which influence the final texture.

As for general understanding, what you have is a saturated sugar solution. When you heat it, water evaporates, making the solution more concentrated, but on the other hand, sugar is more solvable at higher temperatures, meaning that it doesn't get supersaturated when heated gently. When the concentrated syrup cools, it becomes supersaturated, because the concentration doesn't change, but the solvability does. If you give the sugar the smallest chance to form separate largish crystals during cooling, it will do it. For a consistent texture, you must watch following parameters extremely carefully.

the density of your sugar syrup. It is measured indirectly by measuring the boiling temperature of the syrup. The exact temperature at which you must stop boiling will be given in the recipe (don't forget to adjust for altitude, subtract 1°C for every 300 meters). If the recipe only tells you a syrup stage (something like "hardball"), use a chart. Allow leeway for carryover - when you remove a pan from the stove, it continues to heat its contents for a while, so remove two-three degrees early (or more, depending on the pot). You can immerse the pot immeidately in cold water if it has gotten too hot, but this isn't so good for the pot itself.
The speed of hardening. I have a vague memory that you can't use rapid cooling for a non-sandy candy texture, but don't remember it 100% correctly. Rely on your recipe, if it tells you to pour it on a marble slate, do it, or at least use a refrigerated thick metal pan or something similar which cools quickly.
Nucleation points. These are very hard to avoid, but if you need a sandy texture (what you seem to want), it is much easier. If you want to have no nucleation (for a smooth hard candy), you must do everything possible to have no sugar crystals and no impurities in your syrup and to not disturb the pot. This is the reason for most weird requirements in candy recipes, like washing and drying the termometer before each dip, or the abovementioned wooden spoon.
Stove temperature. It must be hotter than your goal temperature, but if too hot, the sugar will scorch on the bottom. Also, the evaporation rate is changed by temperature, which may contribute to supersaturation.
Chemical help. You may need to invert your sugar (use acid, cream of tartar is common - just follow the recipe) or add glucose and/or fructose. This prevents the creation of crystalization nuclei in your supersaturated syrup. You probably don't need that, because it is more important for the popsicle-style candies.
Breaking up crystals. For candies where multiple soft crystals are expected, you may need to manipulate the mass mechanically after the crystalization has started. Kneading and beating are common. They result in the breaking up and mixing the crystals, resulting in a soft mass (fondant, fudge) as opposed to big hard crystals (the ones daniel's method will create). The more you do that, the creamier your texture will get.

As you see, there are way too many variables to experiment with. You could do it, but you'll need lots of luck and patience to hit on the right combination. Pick a recipe, and follow it. If needed, adjust the result according to the guidelines I gave (e. g. kneading more for creaminess).

I just noticed, the site I linked for the chart has a page describing some maple syrup candy types, and lists the correct temperature and basic handling stages for them. Could be a good starting point. (Maple candy page)


How to buy eggs to avoid dark specks There have been many occasions when I've bought eggs and on breaking them, they have little specks of dark solids inside (sometimes a lot and sometimes too much). I generally, just remove them by a spoon if its not too much of it but when I see there's a lot of it, I end up throwing the egg and hate the wastage.

What are these dark solids? Is there a general rule of thumb for buying good quality eggs without those specks?

EDIT: I always buy free range eggs from one brand (unless not available) and they are brown eggs from Australian chickens.

The spots aren't anything to worry about.

From Egg Safety Center

  Eggs with blood spots and meat spots are fine to eat. Most eggs with blood or meat spots are detected by electronic spotters and never reach the market, but it’s impossible to catch them all. Blood or meat spots are caused by the rupture of a blood vessel on the yolk surface when it’s being formed or by a similar accident in the wall of the oviduct in the hen’s reproductive tract. Blood spots and meat spots do not pose a risk to human health when prepared properly.

In the US, eggs farmed commercially are "candled" to ensure that blood spots larger than 1/8 inch aren't sold, but sometimes spots are missed.

In brown eggs, the spots can slip through the cracks more easily because the shells are more opaque, and heavier breeds (the breeds that produce brown eggs) produce more eggs with spots.

  Blood spots are also more likely to occur in eggs from birds of “heavier breeds,” says Craig Coufal, associate professor and extension specialist at Texas A&M University Agriculture & Life Sciences Department of Poultry Science. “All brown egg breeds are heavier than a White Leghorn layer,” he told Quartz in an email, referring to the most common egg-laying hen breed in the US.

From Quartz

The same source goes on to say that free-range and organically raised chickens produce more eggs with spots than typical factory farmed eggs.

  For cost reasons, some organic egg producers rely more on small grains like oats and barley, which are less expensive than corn. A diet made up of a lot of small grains, says Bruce, can cause blood spots. Plus, hens laying organic eggs can range outside, and are therefore exposed to changing temperatures, says O’Sullivan. That “could potentially elevate the incidence of blood spots in these production systems.”

So, buy white, non-organic eggs to avoid blood spots, but don't let spots keep you up at night. Free-range chickens may have more blood spots in their eggs, but for my own personal ethical reasons, I am loath to recommend against buying free-range.


How should I add smoking wood when grilling on charcoal? Today I bought some apple wood to smoke some chicken wings. I was following an article on serious eats and it suggested to let the wood ignite for about 5 minutes before it produced smoke. I put the apple wood ontop of the already ashed charcoal and ignite it did. However, there wasn't much smoke to be had. It looked to me to be turning into charcoal. I instead put some more chunks on and closed the lid, causing the grill to bellow white smoke. The wings turned out much darker and appeared to me to have some semblance of a smoke ring, but I am unsure if I am doing the right thing.

My question is, how should I add a smoking wood to a charcoal grill? If it matters I am using a Weber kettle, not a smoker.

Adding wood and allowing it to ignite is the proper procedure. You can do this with the cover on your grill so that it doesn't burn up too fast.  You want the smoke to look bluish, rather than white, for the best flavor.  When you see white smoke, the wood is not hot enough and you will get more acrid, less desirable flavors. You also don't need to see a massive billow of smoke. Catching this at the right time is a matter of adjusting the air flow, and it takes some practice with any grill/smoker set up.  I will also point out that, in most cases, smoke has most of its impact during the first 30 minutes of cooking, so there really is no need to keep it going beyond that.  I will further point out that cooking with hardwood charcoal (rather than briquets) also contributes to the smoke flavor.


Why did my cod turn into a hockey puck I have a way of cooking cod loin which has never failed me before.  This time, large parts of each loin became so rubbery as to be unchewable.  I know several things that deviated from my usual recipe, but I'm wondering which thing was the culprit.
First, the recipe:  Cod is dipped in milk and egg and then rolled in panko mixed with Cajun spices.  A little olive oil is heated in a cast iron skillet.  Cod is fried for a couple minutes on each side.  Then the heat is turned to low and the lid is put on the skillet.  The fish "bakes" in the cast iron for about 11 minutes.  This has never failed to give me nice white flaky cod.
A couple things were different this time:

These were from a bag of frozen cod loins (maybe from Sam's Club or HEB.)  These were the last two, so they'd been in the freezer a while.
I had gotten these last two out a couple weeks ago, and then didn't make the fish, so they went back into the freezer.
Instead of 11 minutes, they got more like 20 minutes of "baking".

On the first piece of fish, I took a bite off the end and it was fine.  The next bite I couldn't cut with my fork.  It was almost exactly the texture of that triangular piece of cartilage one gets on a chicken breast: rubbery, tough, bleh.
I would think that if over-baking were the problem, then the fish would have been tough at the ends, but the ends were the only edible bits.    If it were that Sam's Club just stocks bad fish, then I'm incredibly unlucky/lucky in that out of a bag of 15 pieces, I chose two at a time over the months and only the last two were bad.  That leaves "refreezing."  Only these two pieces were thawed and then refrozen.   Could that have caused the puck-ness?

A partial answer, to narrow down the possibilities.
I am pretty sure it's not overbaked. I have had overbaked fish, and while it does get dry, it doesn't get tough and rubbery. Rather, it starts falling apart, and the overall texture is quite chalky.
The "puckness" you describe does sound like it lost moisture in some ways, "rubbery as to be unchewable" and the comparison to cartilage are quite like the leathery quality of dried out fish.
The first culprit I am thinking of is freezer burn. If you didn't wrap the pieces perfectly during rethawing, and maybe even if you did, you may have gotten them freezer burned, or in this case I guess you could call it freeze-dried (although intentional freeze-drying would have used different conditions and would result in a different texture). This can readily account for the observed effect. The one detail that doesn't fit the hypothesis is your statement that the ends were better off than the middle - normally, the thinner a piece of fish, the more likely that it will dry out into that leathery state.
The second would be the rethawing itself. Normally it shouldn't have such drastic effects, but maybe you just had some kind of bad combination of conditions, or simply bad luck. I still find it less likely than the freezer burn explanation - while rethawing does cause a kind of dryness, it also contributes to mushiness, which is the opposite of the glued-together state you describe. But maybe it was the combination of freezer burn and rethawing such that each made the other worse.


Are there differences when working with light-colored palm sugar versus dark? Depending where I get my palm sugar from, it's either light brown colored and quite hard (pictured left), or a very dark brown color and much softer (on the right).

Are these different types of palm sugar? I sometimes note the one on the right is called coconut palm sugar and comes from Singapore. The one on the left looks Vietnamese.

Are either suitable for recipes calling simply for palm sugar?

The pale-colored disks of palm sugar have a mild taste, and can be used for any recipe which calls for palm sugar, or for that matter light brown sugar.  It's that not strongly distinct from granulated sugar in flavor; personally, the only reason I use it is for texture.

The dark brown palm sugar has a distinct caramelized, even somewhat burnt flavor.  It adds considerable, distinct, flavor to a dish, even a heavily spiced one.  You should use it in dishes which are specifically supposed to have a palm sugar flavor, but should be careful using it in recipes which say things like "Palm sugar or granulated sugar".

It's really like brown sugar vs. molasses.  Sometimes you can substitute them, but not always.

There are probably also ethnic differences in which one you want to use for what, but I don't have enough experience of Southeast Asian cuisines to tell you that.


Did purple beans spoil my soup? I never worked with purple beans before this year.  I couldn't decide what to do with the bounty of veggies in my garden.  My family lives minestrone and vegetable beef. Problem solved. First I made 12 gallons of minestrone then 5 of the veggie beef. All spoiled over night. The only thing that I used in both that I never used before was the purple beans. Could they be the culprit?  I'm going crazy trying to figure it out

Purple beans just have slightly different pigments in them, and the purple actually goes away when you cook them.

There's nothing particular about that pigment that would cause your soup to go bad.  While it's possible that the beans, or some other ingredient, caused it to go bad, it's not the color, itself, at fault.

The "foaming" and sour taste you describe in your comments suggests fermenting or bacterial activity.  I'd guess something was off with dried beans that you soaked and cooked, since you see that kind of activity start if you let beans soak for way longer then needed just to re-hydrate them.  Did they get both soaked, and then fully cooked?

Anyway, that's a more likely candidate vs. the color of a fresh or frozen snap bean.

EDIT - I see that the OP commented that she gave some of the snap beans to a friend, who blanched them right away and said they went bad.  Sounds like the snap beans could be the culprit, though not because of their color, per se.


Should I bag hard candy or not? I just made a few candy canes...

If I'm going to transport them tomorrow, can I bag them up after they cool or should I keep them out as long as possible?  I'm worried about them getting sticky

If you can shrink wrap them, do that.  They will likely get sticky if they are just bagged.  Manufactures bag them air-tight to keep the humidity out.  Per @sourd'oh pertinent note:

  "sugars you've inverted by cooking the syrup will become very hygroscopic and absorb humidity from the air"

Burying them in a bag of rice might protect them from humidity as well as preventing from looking as chalky as they would with confectioners sugar or corn starch. Speculating on the type of rice? I'd say Sushi rice would be least chalky.

p.s.  Chef Hats off- they look awesome!


Getting dog meat to taste as close to steak as possible? After going on a business trip to Vietnam and tasting dog food there, my husband has begged me for the past 3 weeks to make him a dog steak.

I would like to know what is the secret to cooking dog meat to taste as close to a regular sirloin steak as possible?

It seems to me that steak is two things: a way of cutting meat, and a way of cooking it.

Recipes for cooking steak don't to my knowledge vary that much based on the cut of meat...the ideal temperature might vary, and the ideal cooking time certainly does (lean steaks are said to taste better rare, while fatty steaks are better medium rare), but the approach to cooking is the same: quickly brown the outside of the steak at high heat to cause a Maillard reaction, and then cook to the desired level of rareness.

So I think the question is more one of whether there exists an appropriate cut of dog meat to use as steak...the meat must start out tender, so that cooking it as a steak (leaving the inside rare or medium rare) results in something edible.

In cattle, some parts are sufficiently tender for steak, others are too tough, and are usually sold as roasts, so if dog meat is appropriate for steak, it might be important to get a cut from the right part of a dog. If you can find an against the grain cut of dog meat that seems sufficiently tender, there's a decent chance it will work well as steak.

Alternatively, a really good butcher might be able to identify for you whether (and what parts) of a dog carcass would make good steak and cut you one as a special request, but I think it would be hard to find a butcher who has experience cutting dog steak, since Europeans don't usually butcher dogs, and south-east Asians don't (at least traditionally) cook steak: Confucius taught that the use of knives at the dinner table was a form of violence ("The honorable and upright man keeps well away from both the slaughterhouse and the kitchen. And he allows no knives on his table." source), and as a result all meat dishes in the region involve cutting the meat into bite-size pieces before serving it, so that knives are not necessary at the dinner table (i.e. so that they can be eaten with chopsticks).


What's the most effective way to mix a jar of natural peanut butter? When you buy a jar of natural peanut butter, it typically has a layer of oil on top, which has separated:

Mixing it can be messy and time consuming.

Aside from slowly and patiently mixing it with a knife, are there any tips and tricks to make this job faster, and  without spilling?

I've done this with almond butter, and I imagine it would work for peanut butter as well. The secret is to buy it a month or so before you need it, and then store it upside down for a week, so the oil traverses all the way through the jar and its contents, then turn it right way up for another week, and repeat again in each direction. Each trip through the jar mixes the oil with the solids a little more, and it's fairly homogeneous after four turns.


What is the real risk of salmonella with modern food cleaning standards? I was always taught that chicken and eggs, if consumed raw, will lead to salmonella 100% of the time.  In my experience I have found this to be patently untrue (not surprisingly).  While I always strive for hygenic food preparation and adequate cooking times, sometimes I goof up and end up eating chicken which is less than fully cooked.  Additionally, I have never met someone who has contracted salmonella after eating raw cookie dough.

When buying chicken or eggs from a modern American grocery store, what is the real risk of contracting salmonella from under cooked products? (i.e. If I eat 1,000 raw chicken breasts, how many terrible nights will I have?)

If I eat 1,000 raw chicken breasts, how many terrible nights will I have?

Impossible to say. You will ingest many pathogenic bacteria, but nobody in the world can predict how many times they will cause an illness, and in how many of these times the symptoms will be noticeable, and how many nights each case will take until you heal.

What is easy to measure is the actual contamination rate of meat. Here is one study which was done in American food: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/02/the-high-cost-of-cheap-chicken/index.htm. They found that 13.6% of the chicken breasts were contaminated with salmonella (out of a sample of 300). So, if salmonella is the only thing you are worried about, expect to come in contact with pathogens 130 times out of 1000 raw chicken meals. Again, the "falling ill" rate in these cases won't be 100%.

On the other hand, being worried about salmonella exclusively is not wise. There are a ton of other pathogens on chicken. The same study found that

  Almost none of the brands was free of bacteria

and, even worse,

  About half of our samples (49.7 percent) tested positive for at least
  one multidrug-resistant bacterium.

So, while you will be exposed to salmonella from only 13.6% of your hypothetical raw chicken meals, you will be ingesting pathogens with each of them. You won't fall ill every time you do it, but it's highly unlikely that it will be zero times either.

This is just one article, but I have in the past read other studies which found similar numbers of contamination in other first world nations.

I also recommend reading the whole article I linked, it contains much more interesting information than simply numbers on contamination.

A side note on why I called your belief dangerous: We have very many food safety questions here, and I see all the time answers like "I ate it and nothing happened, so this practice must be safe". NO! Once you realize that unsafe food won't make you ill 100% of the time, and not even 10% of the time, you know not to mistakenly declare unsafe practices "safe" just because you got lucky a few times.


Can thawing meat too quickly affect its quality? Can thawing meat more quickly (e.g. warm water, microwave, warm oven) than normal (leaving out at room temperature) affect the taste / texture of the meat? Is there a particular maximum rate of temperature change for various types of meat (beef, pork, and chicken is what I'm most interested in)?

I'd be more concerned about the meat's safety than taste/texture. "Warm" thawing creates the perfect environment for bacteria growth.

That having been said, my experience mainly involves the use of a microwave to thaw meat. When microwaving meat to thaw, try to avoid the meat having corners or protrusions. This adversely affects taste/texture because they usually start to cook before the rest of the meat thaws.

Freeze ground meat, in a circular shape with a hole in the middle for quickest microwave thawing time. When thawing meat 'parts' place them in a circle, thickest side outward.

So long as no noticeable cooking has started, the taste/texture should be fine. Cook immediately.


Stopping water from bubbling over when cooking rice Every time I cook brown rice (in a traditional pot, or in my new rice cooker), large bubbles form and spill over the sides. How can I prevent this?

I found this question, but wasn't able to draw useful advice from the answers.

As a side note, I don't think I used too much water - the rice was cooked exactly how I like it in the rice cooker, and there was no water left over. Also, the brown rice was purchased in bulk from a health food store, and was not soaked or rinsed ahead of time.

You've stated that you're not washing the rice.  That's the reason this is happening.

Water boils over because of starch.  Many types of rice (brown rice included) can be very starchy, and this could conceivably cause the water to boil over depending on the amount of rice/water and the size of the pan (or rice cooker).

Washing the rice also helps to prevent the grains from sticking together, so you would want to do this anyway (unless you are actually trying to make sticky rice).

It's very simple to wash the rice; just keep adding and straining out cold water until the water runs clear.  You'll probably be surprised at how much starch actually washes off.  If you do this, your water should stop boiling over - regardless of temperature.


What's the minimal set of cookware for Chinese, Japanese foods on an electric induction cook-top? My grandparents fears food sticking to pans the most. They love, but never attended cooking school for, Chinese and Japanese cuisines.
For their current pan probably can't be seasoned or repaired, they went to the store to seek advice, but the salesperson kept promoting the 9-piece cookware set, proclaiming that they needed all 9 to sufficiently distinguish the use of different vessels for different foods, or else they'd ruin their cookware again.  Now they're suffering decision paralysis.

My grandparents live in a flat, and have little space. So which cookwares are essential?  Let's predicate that their budget is unlimited for now. They prefer buying 2 polytropic versatile excellent cooking vessels that last the longest, rather than 5 "single-minded" cheaper vessels.

They ruled out woks that don't behoove flat electric induction cooktops.
They're befuddled and overwhelmed by the overabundance and paradox of choice e.g. sauce pan, frying pan, and/or skillet. How does Le Creuset's Stir-Fry pan differ from their Deep Fry, Sauté pans? Do non-stick pans comprise a separate category?

For each cookware that you recommend, what surface coating? All-Clad Stainless Steel? Aluminum? Cast Iron again? Ceramic? Carbon steel? Forged iron? Stainless steel? PTFE?  Teflon?

You can cook with only one pan. Or, if you want to go absolutely minimalistic, you can get the cheapest stainless steel pot you want and both cook and fry in it - not very convenient, but doable. In that sense, the minimum amount of vessels to buy is one.

Of course, your grandparents might find that they don't want to deal with the inconvenience of having only one pan, but nobody can predict which number of pans is optimal for them personally, this is something they have to decide.

Frankly, in your situation, there is no pan in the world that meets your grandparents' expectations. If they don't want to care for a seasoned cast iron or carbon steel, then this is out. If they hate food sticking, all other technologies beside PTFE and ceramic are also out. PTFE and ceramic are not durable, they fail after some time - and the higher the heat you use, the sooner they fail.

The way I have seen most people in your grandparents' situation solve the problem is to use PTFE only and replace it when it gets ruined - about once or twice a year.


Salmon with green back I've just found some deep frozen salmon in my freezer but I'm unsure if it's still eatable though the package says it still should. The case is that the salmon is still pink as it should be but it's back where the back bone should be, it's green/grayish. Is the fish still alright?

If you bought your salmon frozen, and kept it frozen this entire time then it is safe to eat.

Foods actually remain safe indefinitely when stored below freezing. You should be aware that safe does not necessarily mean palatable. As food ages, even when frozen, it degrades in quality via oxidation and other chemical processes. This degradation in quality will definitely affect the taste, and even the nutritional value to a degree.

For salmon, it will taste best within 7 to 9 months.

Source: http://stilltasty.com/fooditems/index/18246


Cooking at, or below, the boil. Is there any impact that the actual boil has? When cooking in water, is there any difference between 98°C or 100°C ? In the second case water is boiling, and in the first it isn't.

The usual difference comes because there are foods which have to reach certain temperature to get done. For example, the collagen in beef needs to be held at above 68C to transform. But I don't know of any food for which the turning point occurs between 98 and 100 C. So, in theory, if a recipe calls for boiling food for a prolonged time, you could also cook it at 98 C and nothing too terrible will happen. You might have to wait a little longer.

In practice, it is quite difficult to hold water at exactly 98 C for a long period of time. So, unless you have a reason to use a temperature controler at this exact temperature, you will just use your stove at a temperature which brings the water to a boil.

You have to make a difference between boiling and blanching though. Some recipes will direct you to put a small amount of vegetables in a large amount of boiling water and hold them there for a minute or less, or just use the word "blanch". There, you want the vegetable heat-shocked. It will still work at a lower temperature, but you will get the best quality at a roiling boil. Some starches like pasta are also important to mention here, they also profit from a quick heating. In principle, you could change them to another, colder pot after the surface has gelatinized - even 85-ish C will do - but there is no point to such acrobatics, so people boil it until ready.

There are more cases where the other direction is important, usually because 100 C is too high a temperature. In these cases, you want to simmer your food at 90ish. The only case where the fact of boiling itself is important is in stock. Boiling distributes the protein scum from the meat into the stock, so people don't let it boil if they want a clear stock.


Why are my beets not fermenting? My first attempt (RAW BEETS) - large mason jars, 2 tbsp sea salt, water up to 1" below lid.  After a week I opened the lid to "burp" the gas out, but there was nothing, no fizz, just dead beets in room temperature water.  I got sketched out and threw them out.

2nd try (COOKED BEETS)- I tried using 2 tbsp whey which I rendered from yogurt plus a tbsp of sea salt, after 3 days, same thing, no gas or fizz just warm salty dead beets.

My house is always at 70 degrees.

I am very disappointed. I have had great success with carrots in the past.

any insight would be appreciated.

You do not give the ratio of salt to liquid or salt to weight of your veggies so with that missing info I may (but do not think so) be wrong.  The only way they would not be fermenting is that you used too much salt and they are salt preserved instead of fermented preserved.  Still edible but entirely different tast plus they will be soft if this is the case.

Your ratio of salt to vegtables ought to be in the neighborhood of 1 to 3 tablespoons salt per quart of water. Or if you are doing shredded vegtables do not add water, add 1 1/3 tablespoon salt per lb of vegetable.


Should cold turkey and roast beef be heated before putting on the gravy? I bought some good quality roast beef and turkey carvery style.  However they are both cold, so I want to add gravy.

I don't know if I should warm the meat before putting the gravy. Another possibility would be just putting over cold meat.

What would be the best to keep it succulent?

It would seem to me that the gravy could facilitate heating the meat without drying it out.

Pour the cold gravy over the cold meat, seal all with a cover or aluminum foil. Bake at 300F (150C) until the internal temperature of the beef is at least 140F (60C) and the turkey is at least 165F (74C). That's hot enough to satisfy the New York State Food Safety Division of the Department of Health. That's good enough for me even if the ultra-conservative FDA recommends 165F for the beef too (I'm finding conflicting information for pre-cooked commercial products).

I'm assuming your meat is safe to slice and eat chilled, but you are taking it through the "the danger zone", heating it up. So take all the way through to the other side (140F), and be aware of time. (2 hours in the danger zone, cumulative maximum).


Seasoning chicken in sous vide? Question: should chicken be pre-seasoned or post-seasoned when sous vide-ing?

See my results below, but please post your own preferences and results as well.

I have an answer for you, and then I will comment above about your post.  In terms of salt and sous vide, in general for shorter cooking times, say less then 2-4 hours, salting in advance is fine.  In longer cooks, salting in advance produces more of a "cured" result in terms of texture.  Some folks like this, others not so much.  In general, I salt after the sous vide step and before the finishing step. So my preference, based on lots of sous vide cooking, is no pre-seasoning.


Vanilla extract vs. Vanilla powder What is the difference among the vanilla extract and the powdered vanilla?

When I'm making a certain recipe if it required vanilla extract, is it ok to replace it with powder, and what is the proportion among them?

I am intending to use powdered vanilla in a buttercream recipe from Martha Stewart's recipes, is it recommended to substitute?

My best experience is that you should use 1/4 teaspoon of the vanillin powder for each teaspoon of vanilla extract.

I use it for bread dough, donut dough, but never for icing.


How to cook dried red beans faster? I bought some dried red beans from the supermarket. I learned that in order to cook them well, I need more time. I have to soak them in cold water for one night, then cook for another two or three hours.

Are there any tips or tricks to cook them faster?

If you want to reduce total preparation time, you can skip the soak. Then you can just boil for about 4-6 hours, instead of soaking overnight. This is not a tradeoff most cooks are willing to make, since it wastes quite a bit of energy, and reduces the taste qualities of the prepared beans somewhat.

If you want it even faster, as weets mentioned, pressure cooking is the way to go. Then you can get away with about 45-50 minutes for unsoaked and 25 minutes for soaked beans - that's the time spent at pressure, the total time will depend on the warming up time, which differs with pressure cooker type and total amount of beans you are cooking at once. The same preference for soaked beans applies with pressure cooking.

If these times don't work for you, you cannot reduce them, but you can switch to buying canned beans. The disadvantages there are the higher cost, higher storage volume, and the fact that some brands have off tastes.


Wrong cleaner on wooden cutting board After cleaning our wooden cutting board, we using wipe it with mineral oil to help preserve it. Today, we accidentalky sprayed Weiman Stainless Steel Cleaner and Lolish on it instead of the mineral oil. The bottles looked similar. We quickly washed it with hot water; then after checking the inernet washed it with sea salt and also put baking soda on it to hopefully absorb any of it. We are still not sure if that's enough to prevent any potential poisoning with a next use. Can you please advise if it's okay to use again? Do you have any further recommendations?

I am surprised at your extreme reaction here. This is a simple cleaning product, so even if you have no further information, the default assumption is that it is not especially toxic. OK, some cleaners are corrosive, but this means you shouldn't be touching them in concentrated form, they do nothing in trace amounts. Also, there is no reason for the sea salt to somehow make it cleaner, or for the baking soda to absorb it, these washes would have been useless if it were highly toxic.

For the specific product you mention, it was very easy to find the safety data sheet. Its main ingredients are ... mineral oil, and related petroleum derived products. So, if taken by bulk, it is practically the same stuff you wanted to apply to your board in the first place. Of course, this is not the complete list of ingredients, and in theory, something dangerous could be present in small amounts - but this being a data sheet, it also gives straight information on toxicity. The worst thing in the symptoms is that it "may" cause nausea and vomiting if swallowed, but not to forcefully try to bring it back if accidentally swallowed - this is similar to what one would expect of mineral oil. And then there are the toxicity numbers: you need 2 g per kg, or 140 g for an average human, to cause acute toxicity symptoms. That is, if you drink less than a teacup of it, you are unlikely to even notice it.

Based on that, I would suggest that you just continue using your board as normal.


Soaking pulses overnight: safety vs refrigeration When soaking pulses for long periods, is refrigeration required?

Specifically: I have a large volume of dried red kidney beans I will be cooking with tomorrow. The refrigerator is already filled with other ingredients (mostly meat). Is it safe to leave the beans out on the side to soak (ambient temperature +19C) or should I be looking more refrigerator space?

I eat a lot of beans. I typically boil them for a minute and just let them sit on the stove. That way they soak more evenly and don't sprout.
Ideal breeding conditions. I've noticed that in rare cases, when it is really hot (25 C), they start to ferment a bit after half a day or so and the water gets foamy. From my empirical evidence this happens about 1 out of 30 times and I just change the water and boil them again.

One point to keep in mind is that sprouts are a very common vector for food borne pathogens and have caused many deaths.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10511518
These cases were always caused by external contamination, and not by the product itself going bad.
Either the seeds got contaminated by nearby agriculture, or the water used in the sprouting process wasn't clean.

So you should not be concerned by your pulses going bad, they would sprout or ferment, but by bacteria from the nearby CAFO sticking to them. One more reason to boil them first.


The difference between beet sugar and cane sugar My initial guess was that refined sugar has to be the same no matter its provenance, but now I wonder if cane sugar has a different ratio of sucrose/glucose/fructose than beet sugar.  Is there any reason why packages of refined sugar advertise 100% cane sugar?

White beet sugar and white cane sugar are virtually identical in composition, but there may be very small differences (~0.05%) which some cooks find affects caramelization. Reportedly, cane sugar will caramelize better than beet sugar in many cases.

The bigger difference is when you look at brown sugars. In beet sugar, molasses is added after refining to make the brown sugar, as the molasses that comes from beet sugar is not fit for human consumption. Cane sugar is simply a less-refined product where the molasses has been left in the product. So when baking with beet brown sugar, often the molasses hasn't fully penetrated the sugar granules and "rubs off".


How to tell if stir fry lamb is done? I am following this recipe to make stir fry lamb.

However, I always end up overcooking the lamb out of fear of serving raw food, resulting in tough pieces of meat.

How do I tell when the slices of lamb is done when stir/pan frying?

When any meat is sliced thinly you know it is done when it is seared on the outside, that's really it. The 6 minutes in the recipe sounds like too long to me depending on how thinly you've sliced your lamb, I'd halve the time myself. 30 seconds with the lamb, then add the garlic, stir fry for 1 minute and thirty seconds, then add the herbs until wilted, then out.

That's assuming you've got a really hot burner which can do genuine wok cooking. If all you have is a wimpy medium-size burner then the 6 minutes is realistic. In that case I'd slice the lamb a bit thicker and add a bit of the reserved marinade and a bit of water to keep things moist after frying off the garlic for a minute.


How long should snails be cooked? I used to love the French snails, straight out of the oven in a heavy garlic sauce. Simple question: how long should they be in the oven and at what temperature?

Anybody know what's in the garlic sauce?

Traditionally, snails are removed from the shell and simmered for an hour or so in stock or bouillon. Then they are placed back in the shell with a little of the stock, and the shell is 'sealed' with butter, which is usually flavoured with garlic, parsley and shallots.

They are then roasted in a hot oven until the butter has just melted.


What are the benefits of making butter at home? I've recently realized how easy it is to make your own butter at home (thanks, SA!). Are there any significant benefits to this as opposed to buying butter in the grocery store?

I do not have access to dairy cows, so I would have to purchase cream. That seems like it would mitigate any potential cost savings.

How about culinary benefits? Does homemade butter taste better?

Related: How to make home-made butter?

One reason to make your own butter is that you get distinctly different flavours depending on the type of cream you use.

If you use fresh cream you get sweet butter which is popular in North America, Australia and Britain, but less easy to come by in continental Europe. If you use a cultured cream like Crème fraîche you get cultured butter, which is common throughout most of Europe.

Cultured butter is slightly soured by lactic acid. It has a fuller, more complex flavour than sweet butter. If you decide to make it, be sure that you don't use a cultured cream that includes artificial thickeners. The ingredient list should read something like "pasteurised cream, lactic-acid culture" (apologies if that's not accurate; I'm translating from Swedish).

I have a couple of other reasons why I personally want to make butter. First of all my four year old son has been asking how butter is made, and this would be a great way show him. The second reason is that I'm curious as to how real buttermilk tastes (the buttermilk in the supermarkets is fermented milk). And last of all, I noticed that my beurre noir sauce was working out much better when I lived in Australia, so I'd like to do some side-by-side comparisons with European butter.


Forties dinner buffet I'm serving food to 11 people in a dinner that is supposed to be set at the house of the Deputy Mayor of Casablanca in 1942. I can't seat that many people at table, so the food will have to be capable of being eaten from laps - I'm thinking of nibbles for a starter, followed by either a fork buffet or fork food such as a boeuf bourguignon.

How or where can I find out what food would have been served at one of these historical dinners?

The Los Angeles public library has a historical restaurant menu archive online, which will allow you to search restaurant menus for specific years.  It will give you an idea of what fashionable people were eating at that time.  The menu archive is a GREAT way to find ideas for period cuisine.

EDIT: I have a second historical menu archive for you! Collectiblemeals hosts a collection of menus for famous meals, including many presidential dinners.

Add in some Moroccan fare and a splash of French haute cuisine, and you should be able to build a historical and delicious menu.


Does commercial sour cream still contain live bacteria? Does commercial sour cream still contain live bacteria? A family member cannot consume them, so I am looking for a way to recognize sour cream without live cultures.

It's hard to get a straight answer online, unfortunately, as most sour cream manufacturers don't mention either way.  Daisy brand, for example (one of the mass-market brands that is relatively unprocessed) doesn't mention it on their website, nor do they on their containers, though some people have said they do contain live active cultures - but nothing reliable that I see indicates that.  Breakstone's mentions that their cottage cheese has prebiotics, but nothing about sour cream, leading me to think they probably don't.

A few brands pasteurize and then add back in the L. Acidophilus and Bifidus Regularis (or similar) cultures afterwards, presumably to improve taste as they continue to break down the lactose (similar to how some mass-market yogurts do so); for example, Organic Valley mentions on their website:

  Our sour cream is a cultured blend of nutrient-packed organic cream and skim milk. When the sour cream is pasteurized and homogenized, active cultures acidophilus and bifidus are added to boost the tangy flavor and create a consistently dense cream. The active cultures also serve as probiotics to improve the microbial balance of your digestive tract.

If you're looking for a brand that specifically does contain live active cultures, you should look for a mention on the label.  Any brand that does not mention it on the label may or may not contain them.  The indication of live and active cultures is not mandatory, as far as I can tell; the National Yogurt Association has a voluntary compliance process involving a seal that indicates live and active cultures, for example, but it is strictly voluntary.

However, searching for a brand that does not contain live active cultures, your best bet would be to contact the manufacturers directly.  I don't think there's a reliable way to prove they don't contain them.  Fat-free sour cream is also unlikely to contain live and active cultures (as it's not really sour cream, it's a flavored gelatin product more or less).  Alternatively, you can cook the sour cream yourself (or only use it in cooked applications) to ensure the bacteria are not live, though in this case you should talk to your doctor to find out in what applications this may be safe.


Oven vs pan for meat stews I have noticed that English-related cultures use an oven much more than say French or Spanish or German cultures. My question is specifically for stews. In English recipes you read often that putting the pan in the oven afters searing the meat on the hob "cooks the meat more evenly", if there is any explanation at all.

I dont understand that. Meat in a liquid just below 100 celsius is, well meat in a liquid, no matter where the heat comes from. I experimented and I personally did not taste any difference. But maybe I an wrong? Does anyone have an explanation why an oven is used to make stews for taste improvement?

The major difference between stove cooking and oven cooking is that on the stove you will have a hot spot on the bottom and a cooler spot on the top, and with an oven the heat comes from all sides equally.

When making a stew where the meat is in pieces submerged in liquid then you are absolutely right that there's no major difference in the flavor or texture of the end result as the circulation of the liquid due to heat imbalance and movement of the pieces within the liquid will cook things evenly. Where an oven gives a better result is when the ingredients do not have the opportunity to move around, for instance a big chunk of meat, where you will have one side hotter and one cooler for a long period of time as you will end up with one side more cooked than the other. In an oven you would get more even heat and more even cooking of the large piece of meat.

The only exception to the above is when you are going for a long slow cook. I have found that I don't get good heat and ingredient circulation on the stove when the temperature gets too low, I end up with overcooked ingredients on the bottom and undercooked on the top unless I stir often, which is why I will use the oven in these cases.

There are other advantages to oven cooking:

Better heat control: you can set the oven to a specific temperature and have it be consistent over long periods of time, with a stovetop it's much more guesswork
Frees your stove for other things: stews tend to be in big pots which take up a lot of space, cooking in your oven means more stovetop space

As for energy efficiency of stove versus oven there are many variables to account for: energy source, pan size and material, ambient temperature, etc. My instinct is that the oven would be more energy efficient as it contains the heat more while with a stove you lose lots of heat to your environment. I have no documentary evidence to support that.


Is it safe to store raw meat alongside pre-cooked produce (ie. ready-made pies) in the fridge? Simply, as the title says I’d like to know if it is safe to store raw meat alongside pre-cooked produce (ie. ready-made pies) in the fridge. Given the ready-made pies still need to be cooked to a high temperature – would this be considered safe?

Ideally, you'd store all meat tightly wrapped and/or in air-tight containers. Further, you'd store the meat on the bottom shelf of the fridge, and the ready-to-eat food above it—just in case the meat leaks juices out, it won't be able to drip onto the ready-to-eat foods. That's perfectly safe, and indeed is what's required in a commercial fridge.

The idea is to avoid any chance of cross-contamination. You don't want juice from the meat dripping or splashing (when you move it, for example) onto anything else.

You also want your pies tightly wrapped, to avoid them drying out or picking up off flavors.

Now, if cross-contamination were to occur, you'd want to use that pie quickly, and when reheating it, you need to make sure to bring its internal temperature—measured with a food thermometer in a few spots—up to 165°F/74°C (just like if you were cooking chicken). I suspect your normal pie reheating doesn't do that.


How can I improve my gluten-free pizza dough? I've been making pizza dough for years, and recently found that I have a gluten allergy, and can no longer eat wheat flour! Very sad news, indeed.

So... I bought Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Pizza dough mix, which has a bit of xantham gum in it, and serval kinds of flour (rice flour, tapioca, flour, corn flour, etc). The dough itself was difficult to work with, a bit crumbly, and not as stretchy as I would like. I know that the "stretch" I'm talking about truly come from gluten, but is there anything I can add, to help with the consistency? The flavor was perfect, and the calzones were wonderful, they were just really hard to form...

Thanks for your help!

It seems like a lot of recipes recomend gelatin, which could add to the stretchyness. I frequent serious eats and a while ago they posted this recipe and they claim that it is great and stretchy.

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/04/gluten-free-tuesday-easy-pizza-crust-recipe.html


Is onion good with leek? I have onions and leek and I want to sautee the two together. Can I use both?

Leeks and onions can be cooked together without any problems.


Paella and seafood casserole What is the difference between "seafood casserole" and "paella"?

Paella is a specific type of rice dish, cooked in a wide, flat pan.  Although sesfood is typical, it can also be made without seafood.  (I typically just do chicken and sausage)

Casseroles, however, are typically a higher sided earthware or similar dish, and baked.  They typically have starch, but it might be rice, noodles, or a biscuit top.  They might use a cream based sauce, or cheese, which would not be included in a paella.


How does Ball mason jar size affect canning processing time? I'm new to canning and food preserving and bought a basic starter kit including a water bath canner (I'll get into pressure canners later if I have success with this method).
One thing that is often cautioned is that the size of the container (pint or quart Ball mason jar) affects the cooking/processing (boiling) time, as well as the altitude!
Interestingly enough, in most recipes I see specific values given to adjust the processing time based on altitude (for example: if between 3000 and 6000 ft above sea level, add 5 mins to the processing time, etc.).
However, I have never seen anything that tells me how the jar size affects the processing time! Does anybody know if there is a rule of thumb here?

As pretty much always in canning, there are no rules of thumb for calculations/changes (the altitude thing is an exception, admittedly).
Each recipe has been developed and tested for a given jar size, and the institution which developed it should give you the size of jar you have to use. You cannot change the size to a larger one and add some number of minutes.
In general, you can change the recipe to a smaller jar size, but without reducing the time. This ensures that you don't run into problems with food safety, but you will likely end up with an overcooked product.
Bottom line, don't change jar sizes on your own, use the ones in the recipe.


Putting a wet pan on hot stove top Sometimes when I finish making a recipe, I wash it and want to straight away start making a new one. I usually take care to dry the inside of the pan to prevent oil from splattering once the pan is heated, but sometimes the bottom of the pan is still wet, leading to a loud hissing sound once I put it back on the hot stove top.

Is this damaging in any way? The sound by itself sounds harmful, but I'm not sure if it really is. (To the pan or the stove top).

This is not harmful to the pan; the sound is just steam escaping from between the element and the pan body.

Good pans can be heated up to deep frying temperatures and higher; a few seconds of having water evaporated to dry the bottom of the pan will not hurt it.


Why do hand held can openers stop working so quickly? Is there any way to fix or adjust a hand held can opener?  I keep buying new ones because
within a month or so of buying them, they won't roll correctly on the can lip.

Can openers do break.

But if they're breaking quickly, then I'd suggest you're buying very cheap can openers.

One of these should cost $10-20 and should last at least a year.


What are the advantages of a Santoku over a French Chef's Knife? When it comes to general cooking knives the santoku and french chef's are generally the ones most often mentioned. Is the style of use very different? The only real difference I'm aware of is that you can use a "rocking" motion with the french chef's but not with the santoku. What is the difference between them and when would you use a santoku over a french chef's assuming quality between both was on par?

Both the Santoku and French knives will work for the same types of things, so a lot of it comes down to preference. Santoku knives are lighter, so this can lead to less hand strain and quicker cutting. One thing that the Santoku are very good at is very thin slicing of vegetables, for two reasons: first, as you point out, you do not use a rocking motion, but rather chop down in one motion, which with practice can be quicker and more efficient. Second, Santoku knives usually have a much thinner blade angle (around 15 degrees vs 30-40 degrees on a French knife). This is because one side of a Santoku is flat, and the other side is beveled (like a chisel), so you only sharpen one side. To accommodate this thin blade the Santoku knives will be made with a harder steel, which helps maintain blade sharpness, but may increase the propensity for chipping if misused, and also makes them harder to sharpen.

Still, personal preference dictates which knife to use. Many people prefer the Gyuto style of knife, which (roughly speaking) combines features of both Santoku knifes and French knives. They are made of a hardened steel, are sharpened on both sides, but maintain edges around 22-26 degrees. The Gyutos, like the Santokus are fairly light. Gyutos also have a rounded belly but it is less pronounced than on a French knife.

There is much more to be said, but basically the thing to do is get your hands on some knives and start experimenting--see what you like!


How to make a cover for a molten cake? I recently visited a restaurant called Zuma, and they had this unbelievable chocolate molten cake.

As you can see they have a cover on top, like a sheet of chocolate. How would one make this? I am not particularly interested on they write the name(however that would be a bonus) but just the sheet to cover the top.

Thanks in advance.

It looks like that's a chocolate transfer sheet, which is just a very thin layer of chocolate with patterns printed onto it and then baked

Here's a link I found of someone doing this at home:

http://forums.egullet.org/topic/105238-demo-making-chocolate-transfer-sheets/


Are refrigerator section pickles (Clausen) safe if left unrefrigerated? I bought some Clausen Pickles, not knowing the jar said "always refrigerate'". I mean they were in the refrigerated section at Kroger. But They stayed up in my cabinet for about a week and a half, before I put them in the refrigerator. Then after about 2 days, to let them get good and cold, there was a film in the juice and some on the pickles. But it wiped right off of the pickles. But the film in still in the juice. Would you say they're okay to eat? I need some opinions. They still taste the same.. Maybe a little different.

I called Heinz (Kraft), the makers of Clausen Pickles. They told me that they can't recommend consuming their pickles labeled "always keep refrigerated" if the package has been unrefrigerated for as long as a week and a half. Even if the jar is still sealed, they won't assure us that it is still safe to eat the pickles.

That seems like very much a CYA statement, but it is from the horse's mouth.

So, consider yourself warned that the pickles may not be safe.

The old adage When in Doubt, Throw it Out seems to apply here.


Can Of Tomato Soup in England I’m using a recipe that includes a can of tomato soup but i don’t know how much to use. I can’t find cans of it because I use cardboard boxes for it.
How much is in a can of tomato soup in milliliters or cups?

I would expect a British recipe to specify whether the soup is condensed (usually Campbell's brand) or ready to eat (after heating), examples are Heinz, Baxter's or any of the many supermarket own brands. So you need to specify what the recipe calls for. If it's condensed, the tins contain 295ml of the concentrate. The other sort comes in several sizes, but if a British recipe calls for "a can" I'd say it's likely to be 400ml, unless otherwise specified.


Anyone for milk soaked minced beef? Rex Stout has a recipe for "Broiled Georgia Ham" where the ham is soaked in milk for an hour. Elsewhere I have read that you can soak chicken livers in milk before sautéing them.

Having read a little, it seems that this is done to tenderize the meat and I'm tempted to experiment by making meat loaf with milk soaked ground beef.

Before I set about ruining tomorrow's dinner I'd like to ask if anyone knows already what the outcome of this experiment might be.

It is quite common to make meat loaf with milk-soaked cubes of bread, but I've never heard of tenderising meat with it. Having said that, some kind of fat is common for marinades (yoghurt for example), so it might work. I'd try it with full cream milk, not half-and-half.

I think the reason for soaking liver in milk is to make the taste milder, as lamb, pork and cow liver can be quite strong tasting.


Yorkshire Pudding Wraps I saw a picture the other day of roast beef in a Yorkshire Pudding wrap and thought I'd give it a try sometime. The problem is that all advice I can find on how to make yorkshire puddings well points at making them rise and crisp, which probably wouldn't be great for making a wrap.

My thoughts are to make it with a slightly higher egg content by proportionally reducing the amount of milk but thought I'd pass it by this site to see what people think.

I saw the image here:

The way I found that works is:

make a normal Yorkshire pudding batter mix.
heat some oil (medium heat) in a large frying pan and turn on the grill to medium heat.
treat the Yorkshire mix as a pancake - pour it into the pan, and cook until lightly browned on each side.
once both sides are browned, pop the pan under the grill - this will cause the pudding pancake to start to rise and brown further. once one side is done, flip it and repeat.
when you remove the pan from the grill, the pudding will start to deflate - it is soft enough to use as a wrap !


Tips for grilling duck legs? I recently attempted to grill duck legs on my propane Webber. I was afraid of flare-ups due to the high fat content in the duck meat so I grilled with somewhat low and indirect heat. It took a long time, but I got them looking lovely and brown and not burned. The only problem was this: they were tough and didn't taste very good at all. Clearly I did something very wrong. Any advice?

I think grilling is probably a bad plan for duck legs; the fat content is a real danger like you said, and duck legs are tough enough you probably want to confit them or braise them.

If you absolutely have to grill them, I would suggest confiting them at 200 degrees for three or four hours first (you could use veggie oil in a pinch) and then resting them in the fridge for a day or so in oil.

As for finishing them on the grill, rinse them off gently, re-season if needed, cook flesh side down on a medium heat portion of the grill for a while until mostly heated through, then flip them over on a high heat portion of the grill to crisp up the skin, watching out for flares.


Bitter taste of rocket pesto I've gone overboard with sowing rocket (Eruca sativa, also known as arugula, eruca, rucola, roquette, etc.) in my vegetable garden... To use up the surplus I've made some fresh salad (recommended), filling some omelets, and also tried a pesto using these leaves instead of the more common basil. My question is about the latter. Basic ingredients I had at hand:

rocket leaves
lightly toasted sunflower seeds
some matured white cheddar
olive oil
salt, pepper, chilly flakes, balsamic vinegar

While I quite liked the peppery-tasting result on pasta, my first impression was that this was quite bitter. Not bitter enough for me to avoid in future, but I would be hesitant serving this to someone else.

I've been comparing with recipes on the internet, and those do not seem to differ much. Some add a twist of lemon zest, garlic, some basil leaves, and of course the more traditional pecorino or parmesan. But I don't think enough to dilute the bitter taste.

So I am wondering if other people that have made this sort of pesto have the same reaction of bitterness? If so, do you have any tricks for me to bring down the bitterness to acceptable levels - and would you consider this to be suitable for general consumption (e.g. guests that may be used to different fare than you)?

Rocket has an inherent bitterness and not much sweetness, so any pesto you make from it will have that quality. You can try and balance it with sweetness, acidity, etc but that will only go so far. Basically, if it's going to be too bitter for someone's taste you're better off making something else, or using the rocket's strong flavors in conjunction with something like coriander leaf, cilantro leaf or basil.


Any magic formulas for roasting a gammon joint? wondering if there is a magic formula (i.e weight/temp/time) in order to get a gammon just right?

Slow cooked, braise, to internal temperature of 160 F plus.  So, covered in the oven, with some liquid.  Treat it like a pork shoulder or a fresh picnic and you should be fine, since most ham recipes (which is what this is, really) assume a ham that is already cooked.


What are the major menu differences between Canadian and American Thanksgiving? We all know that Roast Turkey is the canonical dish in both countries.
Cornbread figures prominently in the Southern US.

What are the other significant differences?

From my experience, there are no major differences between Canadian and Northern American dishes. We have most of the normal Turkey (or Goose/Duck), yams, potatoes, stuffing/dressing, pies etc... There are probably more differences with in the United States itself (southern vs northern), for example the cornbread you mentioned.

In other words, when I watch American Thanksgiving food/cooking show specials, the large majority of the dishes are very familiar and relevant to my experiences up here.

I would suggest that most variations come from families' countries of origin/culture.. For example, my mom usually cooked some special Chinese dishes, but clearly that isn't a Canadian thing. (Also, Southern influence, coastal influence, Latin influence etc..)


Is it safe to cook with food grade mineral oil? There is a thing such as "food grade mineral oil". Does "food grade" means it is safe to cook with?

I know it is used widely for oiling cutting boards. Also, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) permits using mineral oil for food (with limitations).

Is it dangerous even in limited amounts? Or can it be used instead of or mixed with vegetable oil?

Well, food-grade means you can ingest some without poisoning yourself. It does not mean it’s a suitable replacement for cooking or baking. If you do use it, you will soon learn that it’s a laxative, which means you won’t get to enjoy the food in peace.

In hard times, people have used it and during World War II, the British government suggested using liquid paraffin in place of other, rationed, fats. The already mentioned side effects were also observed. You can find a sample recipe here.


I have two days to thaw a 16 pound turkey; Can I start thawing it in cold water, and do the rest in the fridge? The calculator here:

http://www.butterball.com/how-tos/thaw-a-turkey

says I need about four days of thawing, and I only have two. Can I cold water thaw it at the start, and let the rest thaw in the fridge?

It's fine to thaw for a few (or several) hours under cold water and then put it in the refrigerator. Just keep the water cold and refrigerate immediately upon removing the turkey from the water. The USDA and Butterball are being extremely overly conservative, most likely because a lot of people are really bad at following instructions. Cold water good - warm water not good

As a matter of fact, defrosting under slowly running cold water for several hours now, and refrigerating until time to cook is exactly what I would do.

I happen to live in a part of the world where I can be guilt-free about slowly running cold water for hours. There is no such thing as a water shortage here, the melting glaciers are extraordinarily huge. Thawing a turkey that way in some parts of the world (and even here in the US) would be an environmentally unsound way to do it. So in those parts of the world, be sure to buy frozen turkeys several days in advance so there is plenty of time to defrost in the refrigerator.


How can a dutch oven reach 400°C on an electrical stove? I have a pretty average stove and oven. The oven can't even make 300°C.

Yet today I measured the temperature of my dutch oven, heated on the stove and it read almost 400°C. How is this possible? Can the durch oven somehow accumulate energy and reach higher energy, than the heat source? If I remember school physics, this shouldn't be the case.

I checked my IR thermometer on the wall and it seemed to read the correct temperature, so I assume, that its working.

What is most likely the issue here?

The 300 Celsius you refer to are the air temperature inside the oven. The energy in your oven is quite sufficient to heat a piece of metal to much over 300 (in fact, judging from the color I have seen on my heating elements, they are probably in the 600-700 C range). But the air around them has quite bad thermal qualities, and doesn't heat up well. It also constantly loses heat to the oven walls and to the outside air. So, you cannot really get above 300, which is actually quite high for a domestic oven, most stop at 250.

Your Dutch oven has excellent thermal capacity and is in direct contact with a heat source. Even though it is not a great heat conductor (in comparison with other metals - it is still much better than air) it is not a problem to heat it to 400 Celsius with a 2 kW heating element. You can actually get higher - watch out for reaching the self-ignition point of cooking oils. This doesn't mean that the air above the pan, or the food in the pan, gets to these temperatures (neither does the food in your oven get to 300 inside).


What other vegetables can be used in cake/muffin baking? Vegetables have been commonly used in baking cakes and muffins. A common one is carrots to make one of my fave - carrot cake. Recently I also found out about adding zucchinis (or courgettes) to brownies and cakes. I also found some recipes advising using beetroot in chocolate cakes.

I am wondering what other vegetables can be used in baking? Is there anything I should watch out for? Does a certain vegetable pair well with another ingredient?

Ah, you missed the obvious: pumpkin!

This is biologically a fruit, actually, as is the zucchini.
Pumpkin loves same spices as carrot. Maybe even rum or butterscotch too.

Now, beetroot is a veg and colors cakes delectably; perhaps why it was originally added when going stingy on the cocoa.

How about parsnip next? Sweet and nutty, I think pistachios would complement it well in a recipe borrowed from zucchini bread.

more veg here:
http://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/articles/how-to-make-cakes-from-vegetables

p.s. if you haven't guessed Rabarber is rhubarb


Can I make my spaghetti sauce with puree instead of sauce? I have been making the same spaghetti sauce for about 50 years now.  It calls for 2 small cans tomato sauce, 1 can tomato paste and 1 large can of whole peeled tomatoes.  For the first time in all these years I purchased tomato puree instead of tomato sauce.  How can I adjust my recipe to use the puree or should I just bite the bullet and purcahse the sauce.  I'm not sure what I'd ever use the puree for.

I've been making sauce for even longer :-) and I think you'll be fine. If you, like me, always taste after all the ingredients are in, even before it has simmered, you'll know what you have to adjust. My proportions are generally one 28-ounce can pomodori pelati (Italian plum tomatoes), one 14.5-ounce can sauce or puree, and one 6-ounce can of tomato paste. If you find the puree thicker than the amount of canned sauce that you usually include, you can use slightly less or thin with a bit with water, but I don't think it will be necessary.


Smoking dried peppers? I have a load of dried jalepeno so wish I'd made into chipotle peppers instead - is it possible to rewind time?

I was thinking of soaking them then doing a low temp smoke on my grill. Will that get me close or is it just not worth it?

UPDATE 2017-09-26

A year in, I would not recommend this procedure. Certainly, if you have already dried peppers and want smoky flavor, go ahead, but I've found that the depth of flavor as a result of shorter smoking times is noticeable, and there is an acridity that is present in all but the richest of dishes. Smoke the peppers fresh, if at all possible.

EDIT

Did it. I just used an aluminum pan with lots of holes poked into it. I soaked the chips and the peppers, and I was glad I did. In my Weber charcoal grill I didn't have tons of temp control, and some of them got a little charred even with soaking. On the other hand, I also tried to smoke some fresh peppers, and they didn't dry completely before my coals (and daylight) ran out, so clearly the initial moisture level of the peppers makes a huge difference. I guess I could have stopped and re-soaked them half-way through.
I've made some hot sauce with the pre-dried peppers, and it seems like there isn't a ton of smoke coming through, so my final thoughts on this are:

If you have lots of dried peppers you want to smoke, do it, but you'll get better flavor if the peppers are fresh.

I've cool-smoked home-dried, home-grown chillies over oak. It worked well. My home made smoker uses external heat under a dish of wood shavings sticking out the bottom of the chamber. Chipotles are smoke-dried so you won't get that intense smoke flavour in already dried chillies.

They show every sign of keeping indefinitely in an air tight jar, and still hold their shape (though I've crumbled some into flakes).

I tend to use them in sauces that are cooked and then served hot (or frozen in between), often with home-smoked garlic as well.  Ideally the ratio of smoke flavour to heat would be a little higher next time. More time would help - I probably did a total of about 16-20 hours over two days (it went out overnight).


How long will uncooked chicken keep in the fridge? My wife is obsessed about not leaving uncooked meats in the fridge longer than a day (esp. Chicken). If we buy chicken breast and we're not going to use them the next day, she'll put them in the freezer. I always tell her it should be OK at least a week, but she thinks I'm crazy.  Can anyone give me some factual ammo I could use against her?

Sorry, USDA recommends 1-2 days of refrigerated storage (40°F). Beyond that and you're tempting fate a bit. You're gonna have to eat some humble pie for your wife on this one (just don't ask here for the recipe).

Source


Should I stir my sourdough starter before measuring? I'm new to using sourdough starter and some directions aren't very clear. I'm not sure if it needs to be stirred down before I measure for cooking and for feeding it. I've been stirring down the starter before measuring both when feeding and when cooking with it. Is that the right way?
Also, I've only been keeping 1/2 cup of starter to feed, adding 1/2 cup water and 1 cup flour. If I keep more, do I need to increase the amount of flour and water I add?

Rather than worrying about whether you 'stir down' the starter before measuring by volume, you should really be measuring by weight. Kitchen scales are cheap and incredibly helpful, especially for any kind of baking.
Regarding feeding: there are almost as many different feeding ratios as there are sourdough starters. None of these are set in stone. A common  ratio is 1:1:1 starter:flour:water, again by weight. Thus, if you keep more starter, you feed it more.


I have difficulty finding "ANGOSTURA" bitters, is there any substitute? My preferred pre-dinner drink is the Manathan, but I have difficulties finding ANGOSTURA bitters.

Is there anything else that I could use instead of it?

You could try Peychaud's Bitters (difficult to find), Fernet-Branca, orange bitters or other types of bitters.  Worcestershire sauce may also be used as a substitute but works well in savory dishes. I wouldn't recommend it for a Manhattan.

Or, if you're very ambitious you can try to make your own bitters, although the ingredient list is somewhat intimidating! Good luck!

http://spiritsandcocktails.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/how-to-make-bitters/


Can Wild Yam (dioscorea villosa) replace Yamaimo (d. japonica) in japanese cuisine? Yamaimo (dioscorea japonica) or Nagaimo (dioscorea polystachya) is used in many places in Japanese cuisine — be it topping for Zaru-Soba together with Negi, or the ubiquitous Okonomiyaki.

Where I live, both are unobtainable, be it powdered, canned or fresh. So I have to look for an alternative. As many genuine Yamaimo/Nagaimo powders are expensive, I looked for alternatives.

It seems only “Wild Yam”, dioscorea villosa, is available as powders. Origins seem to be Mexico, Ghana or Indonesia, most of the times.

The interesting question is: Are cooking properties, especially the “slimey” and viscous texture, similar enough to Yamaimo/Nagaimo, that it can be used as a emergency-substitute?

I would recommend against using Dioscorea villosa as a substitute for either yamaimo or nagaimo. I would also recommend against using any commercial product coming from Ghana, Mexico, or Indonesia which claims to be Dioscorea villosa.

The reason for my recommendation comes not from direct experience, but from my general knowledge of biology and taxonomy. Many members of the yam family are toxic to humans; or, if not harmful outright, may have medicinal properties (remember the rule that even good medicine is poison at the wrong dosage). There are also, of course, many edible yams; but each species is very different, and Dioscorea villosa has a reputation as a medicinal yam based both on tradition and on its diosgenin content, for which it was at times throughout history exploited for the biochemical production of steroid hormones (diosgenin can be chemically converted into steroid hormones). You should be VERY cautious before consuming culinary-quantities of a potentially-medicinal product.

Moreover, I am very skeptical of the idea that commercial products from Ghana, Indonesia, or Mexico truly are derived from the species Dioscorea villosa. They mention the diosgenin content quite prominently; many wild yams all around the world have been harvested (and over-harvested) for their diosgenin content. These wild yam powders are probably meant as medicine, possibly with extraction or filtration to increase diosgenin content.

Dioscorea villosa is native to the temperate regions of eastern North America. As a species I do not affirmatively know that it can even withstand the tropical climates of any of those countries. Wild yams native to the countries you name have indeed been used medicinally for thousands of years, but the particular Latin name "Dioscorea villosa" does not apply to all wild yams. It applies only to the particular North American species whose common name is "wild yam", other species whose common name is "wild yam" have other Latin names.

Thus, even if you were to buy one of these Dioscorea villosa powders, you would be wise to try to track down where the plants were harvested, so that you are more likely to know what species it actually comes from. If they weren't harvested in the Eastern US, or at barest minimum in a similar temperate climate, they probably weren't really Dioscorea villosa (there was probably a mistake in species-naming). It is typically unwise to put unknown substances into the body, and that's all the more true given the large differences between Dioscorea species.


Which bread keeps the longest? I want to buy the type of bread which last longest. It should be toastable, so no zwieback and other dry types. Which is the best bread for this purpose? Is the standard toast slices or loaf of bread better?

Much of it has to do with how you store it, and what the issues are in your area with that storage method in the given season (is it going to go stale before it goes moldy?)

I find that the bread that's least likely to go off before I get to the end of the loaf is sourdough ... but I get my sourdough from a place that uses a real starter, and isn't just mass produced with a sour flavor added.

... but there are also breads with additives & preservatives in them that they'll easily resist molding for more than a week ... but it doesn't make particularly good toast in my opinion.


What is this green, bulbous, leafy vegetable? I recently received a vegetable, looking like a big green beet with a thick skin. As I don't know what it is, I can't look for appropriate recipes on the internet. The Google reverse image search couldn't help either.

Here is the thing:

As was mentioned, this is a kohlrabi. I felt more explanation should be given based on the fascinating nature of this plant.

Kohlrabi is one of the handful of cultivars of brassica oleracea. Others include:

  cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, savoy, kohlrabi, and gai lan. Brassica Oleracea (Wikipedia)

Brassica oleracea has been cultivated in many different parts of the world to appear almost like entirely unique plants. However, each of the listed plants are, in fact, the same species with slightly varying traits. Kohlrabi, for example, has been bred to have lateral growth in the meristem while broccoli has been bred to have a large, flowering head.

Kohlrabi can be eaten either cooked or raw. It's often used in salads and slaws, and can be interchanged with collard greens or kale.


Baguette style bread with seeds Years ago in Denmark a friend used to bake bread in the French style but containing lots of mixed seeds. Something like a baguette but short and fat with a crusty top. Is there any reason why I shouldn't simply add seeds to my usual baguette  dough, change the shape but otherwise follow the usual baguette recipe?

I would not use a generous addition of seeds in an otherwise unchanged recipe because it would be throwing the hydration off. The seeds will absorb some of the liquid in the dough, which then is missing in the dough. It’s hard to give a good ratio of how much extra water the seeds would absorb, this will depend on the kind of seeds, but also on the rising time - in 48h they would absorb more than in just an hour or two. So some experimenting would be advisable.

Especially heavy or pointy seeds will influence the structure of the dough a bit, literally bursting bubbles, but again it’s hard to give a generic answer on how noticeable this will be.

I suggest you start with a small amount of seeds and gradually increase over various batches until you find your preferred balance.


does bread have alcohol in it? According to wikipedia, the byproducts of yeast fermenting (like done in baking it says) are carbon dioxide and alcohol (not necessarily ethanol -- the kind you can get drunk on).

If that's the case, then technically speaking does every form of raised bread have alcohol in it?

The majority of the alcohol evaporates during baking.

McGee's On Food and Cooking says (pg 532):

  In making beer and wine, the carbon dioxide escapes from the fermenting liquid, and alcohol accumulates. In making bread both carbon dioxide and alcohol are trapped by the dough, and both are expelled from the dough by the heat of baking.

I also found this report, which states that some alcohol (0.04 to 1.9%) may remain.

However, the report is from 1926, so
1. it may not be really representing modern day situation
2. the data, methodology etc. is not reported: it looks more like an informal news than a real research article, so I cannot critique on whether the results are realistic.


Are Shrimp Sizes codified? By this, I mean, are the names of the sizes regulated by an industry or government?

I found this from a seafood wholesaler:

Yet, my local supermarket has this ad, which appears to be 2 sizes off (not to mention the easily misleading 14 oz size bag)

My question, is this regulated, or do stores get to chose their own words, and we should simply look at number per pound to make a buying decision?

This was covered in one of the early episodes of Good Eats, Crustacean Nation.  From the transcript of the episode :

  As soon as they are off the boat, shrimp tails—called 'green shrimp' in the biz.—are sized or sorted into various weight counts. The higher the number, the smaller the shrimp. Sixties-seventies, for instance, have 60 to 70 tails per pound, which is pretty small. A pound of 26-30s contain at least 26 but not more than 30 tails. Twenty one-twenty fives are larger and 16-20s larger still. The biggest have a U in front of the number signifying that there are less than that number per pound. There are, for instance, 12 or less shrimp in a pound of U-12s.

  Now, there are still a lot of shops out there selling on adjectives like jumbo, medium, colossal. Not only are these terms not standardized or controlled, it's tough to even find 2 fishmongers who will agree on them. So, if your market doesn't sell by the weight count feel free to quote Mr. Big who told James Bond in Live and Let Die, "Names is for tombstones, baby."   Of course, I guess those are tombstones, aren't they?


Ginger drink question 7 ounces fresh ginger
    2 cups water
    3⁄4 cup granulated sugar
    lime wedge (to garnish)
    ice (garnish)
    sparkling water (to taste)

peel the ginger and cut into thin slices.
        boil the ginger slices in a pot with water and sugar and let boil for 10 minutes. stir every now and then. set the pot aside and let the mixture cool completely.
        strain the drink and dilute with mineral water to desired sweetness.
        serve with lime and ice.

My question is how do I make this recipe very low sugar?

Use a sugar substitute of your choice added after heating and cooling (all you need is for it to dissolve), in an amount meant to replace 3/4 cup of sugar, or just adjust it until it's as sweet as you'd like.


How to remove quinoa bitterness (with many restrictions) doing chapatis I am doing chapatis with quinoa flour. How can I remove or hide the bitterness of the quinoa?

There are several constraints for the solution: no egg, wheat, soy, dairy, corn, rice, meat.

You are unable to do anything about it. The bitterness in commercially prepared flour is from the fact that they don't thoroughly rinse the saponin from the outside of the seeds. Once it's milled in, there really isn't anything you can do about it, doubly so when making a bread that is basically flour and water.

So you have two ways to fix it. One is grind your own quinoa flour, which is not too hard, after you make sure that it is rinsed all the way off. The second is to use a different type of flour, like tapioca.


Why does the temperature of resting turkey increase for a while? I have seen many references to the temperature of turkey increasing for a while when resting.  This would seem to contradict the first law of thermodynamics.

Not at all.

If we measure the temperature of a “lump of meat” that’s to be roasted, we place the tip of the probe at the center or the thickest part of the roast. Oven temperature is usually way hotter than the temperature we are trying to reach at the core, which means the outside will be nice and crisp (see Maillard reaction).

Meat is a relatively bad conductor of heat, so you get a quite steep temperature gradient, or plainly said, the outside starts browning while the center is still cool. Part of the art of roasting meat is to achieve the balance between juicy and cooked interior and browned, but not burnt exterior.

But back to your question: When you pull your turkey from the oven, it will have the aforementioned temperature gradient. As we all know, this will tend to even out and for the coldest spot (where the probe is), it means getting warmer (while the outer areas get cooler, just as stipulated in the first law of thermodynamics). For a cook, it also means to factor in this so-called “carry-over cooking” and pull the bird slightly before the desired core temperature is reached. Note that in cooking and baking, temperatures of dishes are typically given for the coldest spot.


What is the difference between a turkey and a chicken in terms of taste,look and preparation? I am interested in sourcing a turkey and cooking it. Its not that easy to get a turkey from were I am. I am only wondering if it would be worth while to do so. Having never eaten a turkey, I cant help to be curios.

If there is not much of a difference between a turkey and chicken it would not be worth the trouble.

What are the differences between a chicken and a turkey in terms of:

taste
appearance
cooking

Essentially, it's like a giant chicken with a "deeper" and more distinctive flavor.  The main reason I like them (other than the flavor) is the sheer quantity of meat you can get from one roasting session.  One could roast multiple chickens for a similar effect, but with a turkey you only have one skeleton to pick meat off of, so it goes faster.  Leftovers can be frozen and/or reused in all sorts of ways (sandwiches, soups, casseroles, etc.).

taste

The breast meat of turkey is a little different from chicken, but they have a similar texture and both tend to be rather mild in flavor compared to game birds.  If you had access to a wild turkey, the meat will be gamier.  The dark meat of the turkey (particularly legs and wings) is generally much more flavorful than chicken, with a "deeper" flavor that some people love and others dislike.  (This may be the reason for the increasing popularity of whole turkey breasts sold by themselves in the U.S., which can be roasted like a whole bird, but don't have the "other parts" that are seen as less desirable by many.  The vast majority of people I know tend mostly to eat turkey breast meat, usually served with gravy and stuffing.)

I've seen turkey wings and legs sometimes offered at Southern U.S. BBQ joints; when slow-cooked, they are a bit of a "Southern delicacy."  On most farm-raised turkeys I've had recently, the thigh meat doesn't have as much of that "rich turkey" flavor that I seem to recall in the past, but it has a more distinctive flavor than the breast meat.  Internal organs ("giblets") also tend to have a stronger flavor than chickens, if you're into eating livers, gizzards, hearts, etc.

There's often more fat in various parts of the bird than in typical U.S. chickens, which adds to a richer flavor.  However, there's usually not as much fat as found in other common U.S. poultry (particularly duck and goose).

appearance

When prepared and ready to buy at a butcher, turkeys essentially look the same as any large poultry.  They are often much larger than chickens, easily going to 20 lbs. (10 kg) and more.  There are some differences in proportions and details that you'll see when cutting up or eating.  In particular, the legs and wings have a bit more connective tissue and bony/cartilage bits than a chicken, since it's a larger bird and needs more support.  This also tends to make the leg and wing meat a bit "stringy," which may be the reason for the slow-cooked versions I mentioned above, allowing time for the meat to break down more than when just roasting the whole bird.  The meat is also a bit darker in color than chickens, particularly noticeable in the "dark meat" sections.

cooking

If buying a whole bird, most people in the U.S. essentially prepare it as they would make a large chicken, which usually means roasting in the oven.  They are usually cooked at somewhat lower temperatures than chicken, to give time for the whole turkey to cook without drying out the exterior.  Given the long roasting time for such a large bird, there's been a bit of a trend recently to cut up the turkey so it lies flat ("butterfly" or "spatchcock"), which allows it to cook faster and potentially more evenly.

Other than that, one can often buy individual turkey parts and use them in similar ways to chicken parts, keeping in mind the longer cooking time required.  They can also be used (as with other poultry) for soup meat, etc.


Can the Cadbury Creme Egg's filling be bought independently? I want to buy the filling of Cadbury Creme Eggs to use it in another dessert. I remember that being available but I cannot come up with the keywords to search for it. Maybe something similar is sold by another company with another name?

The keyword you are looking for is "fondant".

Fondant is a soft candy characterized by a smooth texture that comes from small sugar crystals.

It can be as simple as sugar and water boiled to the right temperature and allowed to cool undisturbed. Kind of like fudge without the fat and chocolate.

The filling of Cadbury Creme eggs is called "poured fondant" vs the more solid "rolled fondant" that is often used to decorate cakes.

There are many recipes for fondant online and it can be purchased premade.

See this question:
What is Fondant?


Why proof a baguette seam side up Why do i need to proof the bread seam up if i pinch the fold? Most of the recipes say to do this on the couche and then roll over and slash .  I don't see any difference in the finished bread. As long as it's floured before slashing the loaf comes out looking great.

Leaving the loaf seam side up makes it easier for armatures like me, to roll the dough onto a baking stone or floured peel and reduce the chance of deflating your loaf.   Also, sometimes the dough can bulge/blow out during baking.  Baking the loaf with the seam side down helps support the structure of the bread while slashing the top gives the loaf room to expand while cooking and provide help to control the possibility of bulging/blow out.

The first pic shows expansion where it was slashed, while the second pic shows a blow out due to not enough slashes, deep enough or other reasons.  Imagine what it would look like if the seam side was up?  The loaf would look like it threw up.


What is the difference between connective tissue and suet/fat deposits? A google image on the term 'meat connective tissue' seems to show what I believe to be fat deposits/suet in the case of meat pictures.  So what then is the difference between fat deposits and connective tissue?

Suet is a particular fat from around the kidney area of cattle, it is not intramuscular.

I just learned from the other poster that adipose is considered a type of connective tissue, so from that perspective they are the same thing. However, I when chefs say it the fat would be something flavorful that you can render easily, and connective tissue would be a tough fibrous structural component that takes much longer to break down with heat. You can certainly feel the difference when you touch it, despite it not looking all that different in a photograph.

Here is a man separating connective tissue from suet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypRsO9KdxXk&t=190s


Why does dough and its ingredients need to be cold? Recipes keep repeating on how the ingredients you add (at least in pie crust dough) should be cold. A quote:

  If your dough gets too warm, send it back into the fridge to chill out. When you take it back out, it should roll more easily.

Why is temperature so important in making a dough more workable?

It's not drastically important in making it workable, it's more important in the texture of the finished result.

When you roll out pastry dough, you are created interleaving layers of fat and the flour/water mix. When you cook it, the fat melts, leaving pockets in the dough, causing it to form flaky layers. This results in a crisp, light pastry.

For this to happen, the fat must remain as solid as possible until cooking. If the fat melts and blends with the flour and water before cooking, you will have a dense, cardboard-like pastry. Also, warm pastry dough tends to become sticky and hard to work with.


What side dish goes well with Peanut Chicken? I am making dinner for my in-laws this weekend. I plan on making a Peanut chicken and pasta meal. The meal includes fettuccine, chicken strips, and pea pods in a peanut sauce. Do I need a side dish? If so, what would go along well with this meal?

You've got some nice crunch and texture profiles in there already, but I tend towards always making a side dish to try to cover my bases in terms of getting plenty of options for people who might not like (or feel like eating) the main dish. My go to is a nice crusty bread with an unusual spread, but since you are going Asian-inspired here I would recommend something like rice paper spring rolls or to like an Indian-style samosa with a complimentary flavored potato filling.