Knife sharpening equipment I'm a novice at best when it comes to cooking, but I'm open to learning how to sharpen my own knives. However, I'm a quite overwhelmed with where to start and how to get things going. I have a few questions:

What should I look for when purchasing a whetstone?
Should I buy a lower-end set of knives to practice on first?
Why would one opt to use an electric sharpener over a whetstone?

A stone is the hardest way to sharpen a knife. If you don't get the angle exactly right, you'll just be messing up your knife, not sharpening it. If you do want to go that way, yes, you'd definitely want to practice on something cheaper, because it's likely you will mess it up. This is why a lot of people just take their expensive knives to a professional to get sharpened. I've seen good knives sharpened into oblivion before - totally reshaped blades, and still not even really sharp.

Most electric sharpeners are designed to avoid all this - the good ones have a fixed angle sharpening surface, and something to hold the knife in the right orientation, so you can't mess it up. The one caveat is that Western style knives have 20° edges, while Japanese style ones have 15° edges, so for example in the US, the sharpeners you buy won't be good for Japanese style knives.

Additionally, you don't actually need to sharpen them very often at all. Periodically honing your knife will keep it pretty darn sharp, especially if it's a decent knife and you take good care of it otherwise. Give that a try, and you may not feel you need to sharpen it for a long while. At that point, since you won't be sharpening it all that many times in your life, it may not be worth learning to sharpen the hard way - a professional or an electric sharpener will be a lot easier.

But if you do want to get a stone and teach yourself, the thing to do is probably to start with a finer-grained one, so you can't destroy the knife as easily. You can practice getting the angle exactly right, doing finer sharpening. Hopefully that's all you'll need, but if you ever need to do more, once you've got some practice, you can move on to a coarser stone for really reshaping the blade. (Or... you can apparently save money and use sandpaper.)


How do you store cooked pasta without losing the bite? When I cook pasta I usually drain all the water and keep about a cup of pasta water so I could loosen up a sticky pasta or bulk up a sauce. But spaghettini or capellini is too thin so it breaks up into small pieces when I try to take some out of the colander with my tongs.

My solution was to pour all the pasta water into a pot with the capellini but after a while the pasta became too soaked and it lost it's el dente bite.

How do you both keep pasta in a non sticky, ready to serve state yet don't lose the bite?

The true aficionado would claim that you actually don't store cooked pasta, but for those cases where this isn't viable, you have a few options:

Pasta that will be cooled and re-heated later, e.g. left overs
Drain well, cool, refrigerate. The pasta will stick, but you can dump it in hot salted water foe a bit to re-heat where it will unstick again. Not perfectly al dente, but probably ok. (Slightly undercooking pasta can mitigate this a bit.)
Pasta that should stay warm, e.g. on a buffet
Add a bit of fat (olive oil, butter...) to coat your pasta. Keeps it from sticking. Critics claim that it also keeps the sauce from sticking to the pasta. Adding the sauce can have a similar effect, but you risk soggy pasta.
Pasta that should stay cold, e.g. pasta salad
The only case where rinsing pasta is kind of allowed. Side effect: cool pasta (well drained after rinsing) can be mixed even with heat-sensitive dressings right away, avoiding stickiness issues again.


how to make shiny figures for cake decoration? I am wondering how are the little figures on this cute cake are made? Whats the material and where can you buy molds and casts to shape them? and how are they so shiny?

These figures are probably made with fondant.

I think the figures are handshaped. There are plenty of tutorials. You can even look for tutorials working with modelling clay.
Basically you only need a rolling pin, a knife and tweezers. Cans, forks, any food-safe utensil that has an interesting pattern are useful. Of course there are special molds for fondant but I don't think that you need them unless you want to make fancy things like laces. You can buy molds online but also in some larger hardware stores, supermarktes, or gift shops. It depends on where you are located.

Fondant is quite matt. To make fondant shiny you can

hold the fondant over steam or
apply shortening,
egg whites,
corn syrup, or
alcohol on the surface


How to toughen cookies I have a problem with my cookies becoming crumbly as they hang-out in room/warm afternoon temperatures.

I bake cookies -- a lot for fundraisers. Normally these cookies are stored in display cases within main halls and sold by students. What happens whenever I test them in the middle of the day, is that they've lost their tender toughness, which is more akin to a freshly baked batch or one from the refrigerator.

Since the cookies won't be sold through a refrigerated display-case for the foreseeable future, I wonder what's a good ingredient to make the cookies tougher within warm ambient temperatures? I suppose grocery-store cookies have this certain ingredient to a higher extent.

Thanks for your help!

The recipe is as follows

(Makes 120-130 cookies)

Wet:

1 lb butter (2x 220g), caramelized/browned to 300 F -- cooled
10 oz granulated sugar + 4 eggs + 4 tsp vanilla extract
10 oz brown sugar

Dry:

20 oz APF
6g baking soda, 8g iodized salt
2 tbsp corn starch
16 oz dark chocolate chips*

*I should disclose this. I use couverture chocolate chips so they're slightly melty, but also because they're cheaper than bakeproof ones.

I'd imagine these are being stored in a simple glass / plastic display similar to what you'd see at a sari-sari store.

Shalryn's suggestion is good, but it compromises the quality of the cookie a bit. I'd look at using some sort of desiccant first, and a simple electric fan behind the display to move the air around in order to take advantage of it. Humidity and lack of air movement is definitely a big problem here, and if you can find a way to control that, you might not have to alter the recipe (which sounds positively delicious and I'm going to try it).

Some rice flour in a small shallow tin might just be enough to do it. You'd have to experiment a bit, and ultimately you might have to alter your recipe, but those cookies are surely a hit and I'd hate to see you have to make them harder for logistic's sake :)

If they're being sold in boxes, just add a silica gel pack and let folks know that they can't hit direct sunlight for too long. They are incredibly cheap (they run around 1.25 pesos from anywhere between 2-3 gram packets).


How much caffeine is in matcha powder? I would like to know how many milligrams of caffeine are there in a gram of dried matcha powder.

(google is your friend)
About 35 mg of caffeine in 1 gram of matcha.


Unsealed meat in freezer Below is my situation:

Is completely (vacuum) sealing leftover meat in the freezer absolutely necessary? I would always just use a plastic bag to cover the meat and fold it around couple of times so it's almost as good as sealed (usually grocery plastic bag is much bigger than the piece of meat) and have never had a problem with it last a decade or so I have been cooking.

But recently I got this new roommate who insists on me using special small plastic bags with sealers to use and he is being very paranoid, obsessive about it.

So my question is: Is he right?

If you are noticing freezer burn or foreign odors/flavors with your loosely-wrapped meat, then you need to do a better job of storing it.

Your roommate may be in this habit because he is used to storing things in the freezer for a longer period.  2-3 weeks is longer than I would store something loosely wrapped like that in order to maintain good quality.


Dry and Tough Rumproast Me and my friends have been cooking a 2kg=4.5 pounds piece of rumproast in a bbq smoker. We cooked it at about 250°F for about 3 hours. After that we, wrapped it in tin foil, raised the temperature to about 300°F and cooked it for an additional 3 hours. Our thinking here was that we can raise the temperature a bit, since the moisture can't escape anyway because it's wrapped in tin foil.

We were hoping for a juicy and tender roast, that "tears apart" easily with a fork. At the end it wasn't tender and it was so dry that we were afraid it would suck the moisture out of the air... When we unwrapped the tin foil there was a lot of liquid (juice), that should've probably stayed in the meat? Was the temperature too high or wasn't the cooking time right? Is this even an appropriate piece of beef for "low and slow" smoking?

The Maillard reaction occurs about 280 to 330 °F depending on the food. For meats this denaturing of the proteins also results in the release of water, so the meat gets hard and dry.

By cooking at a "low" temperature, you cook at temperatures below which the Maillard reaction occurs. Well done beef has a resting temperature of 155 to 160 °F. So cooking at 300 °F isn't low temperature cooking.

You can search for other sites but the site Barbecue Bible defines low and slow cooking and smoking to ideally be  between 225 and 250 °F.


How to make cappuccino coffee at home without a machine I do not have any form of a coffee machine. The closest is a kettle… I have tried to use strong/good quality instant coffee, filling half a cup then hot boiled milk in the other half. It just tasted like coffee.

So how do I make a cappuccino at home without all the fancy tools?

Do you have a French press? If so, you can make coffee that is quite strong in there and you can froth your milk.

For the coffee, grind it course. If it's too fine, too much will go through the mesh and your coffee will be murky and over extracted. Buy a very dark roast, but something that isn't too smoky. Italian roast is too smoky. Espresso beans typically have more of a caramelized flavor vs. smoky.

For the milk, warm it a little more than you want for your cappuccino. Put it in the clean press. Vigorously pump the plunger up and down. This will make luscious, dense foam. If there are too many large bubbles pump longer, or you can stir it a little.

I don't love specialized or expensive equipment either. French presses are inexpensive and useful for steeping many things. They are also small, and you can use them when you are away from electricity (camping/zombie apocalypse/etc).


How to make soft Gulab Jamuns? I use Gulab Jamun mix of the Gits company. http://www.gitsfood.com/gulabjamun/

The problem is that even on low fire the balls get brown from out side, but don't get cooked "properly" within.
When I try to cook it for a longer time, they tend to be hard.

What can I add to the mixture so that it cooks "properly" within and remains soft too?
Sodium bicarbonate? or something else can work too?

Add baking powder to the mixture, if needed, as it will cause them to puff up and lighten when cooked. Adding a little cream may also help.

I have a Gulab Jamun recipe from "Dance of Spices" by Laxmi Hiremath, pg 412, which lists the following for the dough:

0.5 cup (120 mL) unbleached all-purpose flour
2 cups (around 470 mL) powdered nonfat dry milk
1 tsp (5 mL) baking powder
1 cup (236 mL) heavy whipping cream (probably listed as "double cream" where you live, see question on cream types)
about 1 TBSP water (15 mL)

The dry ingredients are mixed, then the cream is gradually mixed in, and the water is added to make a smooth, pliable dough.


How to preserve cotton candy For this Christmas, we wanted to do a particular packaging for biscuits using cotton candy.
We have a machine to make it, and flavours to do different colors and flavourings.

Now, the problem is that it will shrink over time, in few hours, probably because of air humidity or other reasons.
We tried to make some cotton candy and place it in a closed box (one in paper and one in plastic), but it shrunk in few hours (less than 12).

Now, we need to find a way to preserve it from shrinking for at least 24 hours, but more would be better... And we should find a do-it-yourself solution which does not involve particular equipment or materials.

A way to preserve cotton candy is to freeze it, but obviously you have to eat it frozen, or it will melt.

We thought of two other ways:

Use hot hair to reduce the amount of water in the box, and then seal the box. I am not a supporter of this idea, because I believe that hot air will just melt the cotton candy (and I do not think that humidity will be reduced that much).
Use CO2, which can be easily and cheaply fabricated at home (vinegar + sodium bicarbonate). Since it should be heavier than air, one could produce it in a large container, then pour the CO2 in the box containing the cotton candy, and then seal it. I think that CO2 will replace air in the box and this will reduce the amount of humidity, allowing conservation of the food.

What do you think? Have you ever tried something similar? Have you any other idea?

It seems the best thing to do is to have a sealed container with little air in it.
CO2 has proven to be useful, but its presence is not as important as sealing.

So, if you want to preserve cotton candy, my experimental results show that a sealed container is preferred. I obtained a conservation of 24 hours, but probably it will least 48h or even more.

EDIT: Well, sealing seems to work pretty well, but I have to report a pair of failure...
2 out 5 packages did not preserve the cotton candy for more than 24 hours, while the remaining did. On the plus side, the first experimental sealed package preserved cotton candy for more than a week.


Season rice in Zojirushi I have a fancy new Zojirushi cooker and am trying to figure out the best way to make rice. I didn't see anything in the manual referring to salt, or any seasoning at all (except for the 'mixed' setting). Just rinse, add water to line, and go.

Am I supposed to add salt before it cooks? After? Leave it unsalted? What about other spices? Butter or oil?

Rice cookers excel at just making plain rice, and all you need is uncooked rice and water. If you go beyond that, though, there are possibilities galore. For instance, I like adding a couple tablespoons of olive oil to my rice cooker at the start of cooking; I find that it makes the rice softer and more interesting. Salt can be added as well, or you can substitute various liquids for some of the water.

So, if you just want plain rice, start with rice and water. If you want something else, then what you should start with depends completely on what the "something else" is. Experiment! The worst that can happen is that you waste some rice.


Using fresh compressed cake yeast in bread machine While using  compressed cake yeast in bread machine it rises well for the first rise but on the second rise it does not rise well and I get a deep concave surface , I typically add 3x the dry yeast recommended in the recipe as I had read that fresh yeast is 3x less concentrated then dry ones.

After reading some papers on this I experimented by adding the yeast 5 minutes before the kneading ends. This gave an acceptable loaf without any collapsing but did not even get a big convex bulge. The rationale behind this is that fresh yeast is already active and the 20 minutes of kneading already uses up its potential partially adding it later saves 15 minutes of activity for the other stages. So yes it is possible and cost effective too as dry yeast is costly compared to the fresh yeast even after weight conversion.


Get chocolate eggs out of silicone mold I bought some silicone easter egg molds, and I put 2 layers of chocolate in them. After they had set I tried to turn them out of the molds and they just cracked.

Is there any trick to turning the chocolate halves out of the molds without cracking the chocolate?

Thanks

Are you making sure that the chocolate is properly set? It's very important to ensure it's properly set or it will stick. Also, are you making the chocolate thick enough? It can be helpful to do two layers of chocolate in order that it isn't so thin it cracks easily.


My buns/bread don't brown from top? I have tried making buns and pizza muffins using all purpose flour (bleached/unbleached/bread flour are not available in my country)multiple times at 180-200C in the middle rack of my oven. They never brown from top. I have tried applying butter on top and even doing a milk wash.please suggest what to do?

Egg wash is an answer.

Source: http://www.dutchovendave.com/breadbasics.html

[For a shiny crust, brush the top of the bread with an equal solution of whole egg, water and milk. If desired, sprinkle with poppy, caraway or sesame seed or rolled oats.

For a softer, deep golden brown crust, brush with softened butter or margarine.

For a crisp crust, brush or spray lightly with water.

For a soft, tender crust, brush with milk.

After glazing (brushing with one of these ingredients), slash the top of the loaf with a sharp serrated knife, cutting about 1/4 inch deep, once down the center of the loaf or across the loaf a few times.]


What is tamur (ingredients)? My mate brought some sweets from UAE, it's something like Turkish delight, I think. It says it contains tamur, among other things. I believe tamur is the main thing it's made of, but I couldn't google out what it actually is. Does it contain gluten or milk (allergy)?

Also, is Tahina Tahini?

It's dates, تمر - see Google translate (click to have it spoken - and note the primary translation is wrong, but the right alternate translations are beneath). I do not speak Arabic, but MandoMando confirms this in the comments, and this would be consistent with desserts in that general category.

That said, it's also surprising - given the bright colors, I'd have expected there to be plenty of sugar-starch gel like in Turkish delight; it's hard for food coloring to cover up the darker color of dates if they're providing the bulk of the volume. Given that the food coloring isn't listed, it sounds like starch was left off the ingredient list; I would've guessed it'd be corn starch, but MandoMando suggests it may be something else - but still probably gluten-free. (Not a guarantee, of course.)

And tahina is tahini, yes - it's even mentioned as an alternate name on Wikipedia.


What gives a good bagel its crust? I'm practicing bagel baking, using the "mother dough" recipe from Milk Bar, by Tosi & Chang. The taste & texture are pretty good, but I want a nice, crisp, blistery crust, which has eluded me so far. My question is: what are the most important factors in crust production for bagels? Is it the poaching, the baking, or both? So far, here's what I've done:

following an Epicurious recipe, poached the bagels in water with baking soda, salt, & honey (technically it should be barley malt, but I didn't have any)
preheated oven to 500F and then lowered to 450F when the bagels go in (again, following a recommendation on Epicurious)
I have tried both a baking stone and a sheet pan; the sheet pan gives marginally better results

Should the oven be hotter? Should the poaching water be differently prepared? Something else?

The secret to a nice chewy crust on a bagel is to dip them in lye. Lye is sodium hydroxide, and quite caustic, so gloves and glasses are recommended when using it. There are plenty of instructions online of safely using lye with bagels and pretzels.


Help me find a chinese recipe from "Green Tea" restaurant in Beijing Some years ago I went to Beijing for a business trip. My chinese hosts took me out for dinner to a restaurant called Green Tea (it was exactly this restaurant at this location).

Amongst many delicious meals I ate there, there is this one I am trying to remember the name and looking for its recipe.

The main ingredient was chinese cabbage or something similar. I think it was quite smaller than chinese cabbage. There was also soy sauce involved, garlic and it was a little spicy. No meat at all. It was served in a wooden bamboo bowl I think.

I hope there is someone who can tell me the name of this meal and the exact recipe. I would like to cook it at home.

PS: I already tried contacting my chinese hosts but without success.

I'm afraid that it is neither of the above. According to what I know about this restaurant (a major restaurant chain in China, in fact), most of its dishes are Szechuanese-inspired. Thus, my guess that what you ate was dry pot cabbage (i.e. hand-teared cabbage).

There is usually some pork (usually belly) in this dish, but a large restaurant like Green Tea might totally leave out the meat (or use very little meat such that you didn't get any), in order to control costs. If you can't get pork belly easily, try bacon (IMO it works even better). The other ingredients are typical Szechuanese fare: dried chili peppers, garlic, ginger, and perhaps some Szechuan peppercorn (if you like it).

Now, here's how you make it (a bit oversimplified):

Chop the cabbage, thinly slice the pork belly (or chop the bacon). Chop the garlic, slice the ginger, and lightly crush the chili peppers.
Heat the oil (not too much if you use pork belly, more if you don't), add the pork belly and brown it. Then, add the chili peppers (and perhaps the Szechuan peppercorn), garlic and ginger, as well as some soy sauce (and perhaps some cooking rice wine/sake). Use the highest heat available on your stove.
After the spices are fragrant, add the cabbage and stir fry at high heat for a short while. Finally, season with salt and perhaps MSG (if you have no objections for using that).

...and you should be fine. But if your stove isn't hot enough, the dish would probably not taste as well as what you remember.


Why do cooked potatoes taste bland when they cool down a bit? Plain cooked potatoes have become one of my favorite go-to foods during the recent months. I just wash them, put them in a pot, cover them with water, put in a bit of salt, cook them until they are completely tender (about an hour for the average-sized ones) and eat them with the peel on, only adding salt and butter.
During eating, which probably takes me 10 minutes, the first potato always tastes much better than the last one. It's hard to describe the difference, but I'd say the first one is mellow, creamy and flowery, while the last one is more chewy, bland and boring.
What kind of effects could cause this (in my opinion, pretty significant) taste difference? And could something be done to lessen or avoid it? I suspect the 10 minute cooling time on the plate has something to do with it, although reheating an already-cooled potato doesn't seem to improve it at all. Any ideas?

I see multiple possible reasons for this. Here are some tests you can run. Be sure to run each test on a separate day, so you have a normal appetite for every test.
The first two tests are to determine if the change of temperature is actually the cause of the loss of flavor. The last two tests are to examine some other possible causes.
Test number one
Cook a potato as normal, put it on your plate and let it sit for 10 minutes, as though this is your second potato. Eat the cooled potato, and compare to how you remember your usual second potato tasting.

If the cooled potato seems just as bland/boring as the second potato normally is, you now know that temperature is a significant factor.
If you enjoy the cooled potato as much as you normally enjoy your first potato, you now know that the temperature is not what makes the difference.

Test number two
In this test, you eat two potatoes. The first potato is cool, and the second potato is hot. Start cooking a potato. After 20 minutes, start cooking another potato of the same size. When the first potato is cooked, take it out of the pot, put it on your plate, and let it cool for 10 minutes (just like in the first test). Eat the cooled potato. When you're done eating the cooled potato, the second potato should be finished cooking. Eat the second potato.

If you enjoy the second, hot potato more than you enjoy the first potato, you now know that temperature was the main issue.
The solution is to cook your two potatoes sequentially. Start cooking the second potato ten minutes after you start the first one. Eat each potato as soon as it's ready. That way you can eat both potatoes hot.
Or, use an insulating wrapper to keep the second potato warm while you eat the first potato. An oven mitt would probably work well for this purpose. However, as Kat suggested in the comments, it's possible that the second potato is actually getting over-cooked while it sits. If that's the problem, insulating the potato to keep it warm would make the problem worse. So you could do another test comparing the two methods (staggered cooking times vs same cooking time + insulating the second potato).

If you don't enjoy the second, hot potato as much as you enjoy the first, cold potato, you know that temperature is not the main issue. Proceed to the next few tests.

Test number three
I always find my mouth feels quite dry after eating a potato. Perhaps you're not drinking enough water with your meal.  After finishing your first potato, get a full glass of water. Drink the entire glass (at a reasonable speed, not gulping it). Let it settle. Then eat the second potato.
Test number four
Sometimes the tastebuds get tired of eating a single thing. One solution is to introduce a small amount of a strongly contrasting flavor. So, try eating a palate cleanser between the two potatoes. Since potato is a very mild taste, you will probably want a sharp flavor, either spicy, sour or bitter. Some options include: pickles, pickled ginger, a slice of apple, bitter herbs, a dab of horseradish sauce, sauerkraut, chutney, kimchi, a slice of lemon or lime (eat the fruit and the rind for a combination of sour and bitter).
The palate cleanser doesn't need to be major component of the meal, but rather a garnish of something that will startle, surprise or shock your tastebuds. After a bit of this surprising flavor, returning to the potato should seem safe and comforting. Like how a chilly breeze makes you enjoy snuggling into a warm sweater.

Potatoes are actually known to have a high satiety index compared to nutritionally similar foods like pasta and rice. That means they give you the "physiological and psychological experience of fullness." Because of this, some people actually recommend potatoes as a food to help you eat less.
If none of the above tests helps you find a solution, it might be that your body is telling you not to eat the second potato. Perhaps it's telling you you've already had enough calories. Or, maybe you still need more calories, but your body wants them in a different form (such as green vegetables, protein and/or fat). It might be worth comparing your usual daily food intake to a recommended balanced diet, just to make sure you're actually getting the nutrition you need.


Trouble making a crunchy dog treat I am very new to recipe development and I am trying to replicate a dog treat. The store bought treat is hard and crunchy. Using just the ingredient list, when I try to bake the same thing, it comes out looking similar yet when I go to pick it up it immediately crumbles.
I have done some research and I think the issue is around the fat to flour ratio. Basically, no gluten is forming. I have adjusted ratios 4 different times but still no luck. I am wondering if anyone has any ideas on how I can use the below ingredients to make a crunchy treat.
Ingredients to work with:
Wheat Flour, Wheat Bran, Peanut Butter, Peanuts, Ground Brown Rice, Oil
I’ve adjusted the amount of peanut butter and oil to various ratios but every time it comes out crumbling to the touch.
The last thing I tried was:

1 c wheat flour
2/3 c wheat bran
1/3 c ground brown rice
14 tbsp peanut butter
2 tbsp corn oil
1/4 c ground peanuts

baked for 20 minutes @ 350

I can pick it up and turn it into sand in my fingers...

Right, I'm not a hands-on baking expert, but some of the reasons your gluten may be having trouble are that

the gluten-containing flour makes up a quite small proportion of the overall mixture,

you have other ingredients (namely: the oil, the fat in the peanut butter, and the wheat bran) that act to minimise your gluten development and

there's very little moisture in your mixture

Not much flour
This one's pretty straightforward; the less of your dry mass of ingredients is wheat flour, the less glutenin and gliadin (the precursors to gluten) you have in the mix, so the less gluten can be formed. It's possible that the amount of flour you have now is sufficient though, if its gluten development is not further sabotaged by the other factors. If you want, you might replace some of the ground rice, wheat bran, and ground peanuts with more regular flour, though I'd probably try that after I tried some of my other suggestions.
Anti-gluten ingredients
Fat has the effect of both lubricating the components of gluten against one another, making them more likely to slip and not form the tough, elastic mesh we know and love from our breads, and also of isolating the gluten from water, which it needs to form properly; there's a reason gluten doesn't form in a bag of flour sitting in your pantry and that reason is there's no water to activate it. The fat can coat your glutenous proteins and make it harder for the water to get in there and do its thing. Wheat bran, separately, has a bit of fat in it, but also has a lot of 'sharp edges' on a small scale, which can slice through gluten strands as they form and inhibit, again, the protein mesh from forming. Cutting back on these ingredients might help the gluten develop somewhat, though I'd still try that after my third suggestion, namely:
Add some water
As I said, gluten needs water to develop; bread doughs regularly have flour-to-water mass ratios of 2:1 or even 3:2, which would correspond to baker's hydration percentages of 50% or roughly 70% respectively. I don't think this recipe needs that much water, but right now the only ingredient in your list that I can see is adding any  free water at all is the peanut butter, and even that isn't much. I imagine your dough for your past experiments has been very 'tender' and crumbly, barely held together by the fat content, more than the water and gluten. Try adding water, maybe a half cup at first, and probably more, until you have something you can vaguely knead. It won't be anywhere close to as stretchy as normal bread dough, due to all the non-flour ingredients, but there should be some amount of stretch to it.


Why did my Turkish Delight come out flavorless? Yesterday I made Turkish Delight, and today I cut it into squares and tasted it. This was the recipe:

330 ml liquid (apple juice, from freshly cold-pressed apples, strong flavor)
A small amount of ascorbic acid, to prevent apple juice from browning
330 grams of sugar
25g powdered gelatin
icing sugar

Steps:

Boil sugar and liquid until at 115 degrees celsius
Take off the heat
Add gelatin, soaked in a bit of the liquid
Let set in a cold environment
Cut into pieces
Dust with icing
Enjoy

It has set fine, it's pretty beautiful and hasn't bled yet (making icing soggy) but perhaps in a while.

The problem is that it is UTTERLY tasteless. Before cooking the sugar solution, it tasted great, and had a beautiful green color. After cooking, it was almost tasteless and almost completely clear.

Why did the juice lose the flavor, and what can I do to prevent it? It happened before adding gelatin.

A bonus question: It took a while to reach 115 degrees, about half an hour. It seems that cooking to 115 was mostly a matter of reducing the solution so that the boiling point increased. Does the extended boiling have any other beneficial effects, or can I simply increase the sugar amount from the start and bring it to a boil?

First, I don't know where you people all get these gelatin-filled Turkish delight recipes. Turkish delight is made with starch, not gelatin (at least the recipes used in Turkey are all with refined starch or rice flour). What you are making here is jell-o (if you use small amounts of gelatin) or gummi bears (if you use lots of gelatin).

Second, about the taste. It is normal that fresh apple juice loses its taste when it is cooked. The normal Turkish delight tastes of sugar. Its aroma comes from strong aromas added to the liquid (rose essence, or artificial aroma). You don't preserve natural fruit tastes in Turkish delight. Even if you wanted to, I don't think there is a way to do it with apple juice. Some stronger tasting fruits (cherries, raspberries) could give a syrup with more taste, but are not part of traditional lokum.

Third, about the temperature. Your observation is correct, you are just evaporating the liquid. In some cases, it might be desirable to start with more liquid and evaporate, so you get more concentrated aroma - for example, if you have started with pure rose water. But if you are making a recipe which requires concentrated sugar syrup, it is OK to start with a ratio which creates saturated syrup at room temperature (3 parts sugar to 2 parts water) and cook until the desired consistency is reached (this is recognizable from the boiling point).

For most recipes however, you don't want a concentrated syrup. The candy hardness is defined by the amount of starch used. In this case, you just mix everything and you are ready after it has bubbled, just like any pudding. The amount of sugar seems to be 1 part sugar to 2 parts water.


How can I make 'rich chocolate' flavor? I am in the process of making a DIY Soylent meal replacement. I've tried Hershey's cocoa powder and it tastes awful.
Commercial manufacturers of flavored protein powders, shake powders, etc. make such tasty drinks. What substances and flavorings do they use?
For reference, my recipe was:

Oat flour
Flaxseed powder
Barley powder
Whey protein isolate
Acacia gum
Hershey's cocoa powder
Sugar

Subsequently I also tried adding nutmeg powder and cinnamon as suggested by some recipes on CompleteFoods. It didn't help.
I've read that the commercially available powders contain isomaltulose, maltodextrin, and xanthan gum. Do these have anything to do with how the drink tastes?
'Rich chocolate' does not have anything to do with richness. It's just a common phrase shake/powder sellers use for their whey protein/shakes.
How can I do this?
Edit: Got a hold of the ingredient list of the desired end result. Which ingredients make for the creaminess and richness, as if I were drinking a milk shake?

Frankly, Hershey's cocoa powder is low quality. Buy a higher quality cocoa. One objective measure is the cocoa fat content.

This is from Harold McGee's Keys to Good Cooking, published by The Penguin Press, New York, 2010, p. 476:

  Higher-fat cocoas make richer dishes. To compare the fat contents of different brands, check their nutrition labels.


How long can I store open wine for cooking? I bought a bottle of wine larger than required for my recipe. How and how long can I keep the remainder, so I can use it in cooking again? (In other words, it needn't be drinkable.)

Wine has to be drinkable to be used in cooking, if it goes nasty you'll be adding the nasty flavors to your food! Don't cook with wine you wouldn't be happy to serve at your table.  Wine keeps for a long time in the refrigerator, so cap it back up as tight as you can and get it in there as soon as you can after using it.


steam oven vs conventional oven I am in a debate as to whether diced, marinated pork shoulder cooked in a vacuum bag in a regular conventional oven gives the same result as the same pork, cooked in a steam oven.
The bagged pork had a probe where upon reaching 180°F, the pork was removed and chilled down.  This took about 4-6 hours.  The bagged pork in the steam oven was cooked for 4-6 hrs. where it was also chilled down.
The pork in the steam oven was much more tender and in individual pieces.  The pork in the conventional oven was stuck together and chewy.
Does the steam help keep the pork more tender even though it is in a vacuum bag?

As you may already know, meat becomes tender when cooking because collagen (which is chewy) breaks down into gelatin (which isn't chewy), and the longer it cooks, the more collagen is broken down.

Having said that, if the bag in the conventional oven was in for closer to 4h and the bag in the steam oven was in for closer to 6h, it's kind of obvious why the steam oven meat was more tender (50% more time does make quite a bit of difference!).

If the bags were in the oven for the about the same time, the steam oven bag probably cooked longer anyway as steam transfers heat more effectively than dry air - by the time the meat in the conventional oven reached 180F, the meat in the steam oven had already been sitting at that temperature there for a while, and so, more collagen had time to break down. Steam should also provide a more even heat, with less fluctuations (having greater thermal capacity).

Lastly, it could just have been that the meats were a bit different - the tougher from an older animal, a different breed, or one of a thousand other reasons.


Why does the kneaded dough form a skin when exposed to air and what are the possible ways to prevent the skin formation? I knead the whole wheat flour with water and when I am done I keep it covered with a loose lid on the kitchen counter for a hour.

I have noticed that a brown coloured skin gets formed on the surface of the dough which faces upwards.

Q: What is the cause of that skin formation?
Q: Can it have bad health effects if I eat it?
Q: What are the ways to prevent it from occurring?

The skin forms because water evaporates from the surface of the dough. The middle doesn't dry out because the drier dough skin is less porous, and so the rate of moisture loss slows down as the skin forms.

It's perfectly okay to eat it, it's just the same dough but drier. Whether it is pleasant to eat is another matter of course. It won't become unsafe until it's been sitting around long enough for moulds and bacteria to grow on it to significant levels and that's not going to happen in an hour.

You can prevent it by preventing the moisture loss from the surface. You've got some options here. For my bread dough I cover the bowl with cling film, which provides a fairly good moisture seal. Moisture still evaporates from the dough, but reaches equilibrium with the air trapped inside the bowl and so doesn't continue to the point where a skin forms.

If cling film is likely to touch the dough itself, it's going to stick to it, so it or the dough need to be oiled to prevent that.

You could also cover it with a clean damp towel. The water in the towel helps create a moist environment around the dough surface, thus discouraging drying of the dough and the formation of the skin. This method is also commonly seen in bread recipes.


Omelet help.... gah why is it so hard? Possible Duplicate:
  How to succeed with making omelette

Omelets continue to elude me... It appears to be such a simple concept, but I always end up making scramble eggs with the mushrooms and cheese. Here's what I do

Mix egg and milk
Pour into skillet on low-med heat, and it fills the entire bottom
let it cook a little, then throw on the extras (mushroom, or meat and blackbean)

Then it goes awry... i see uncooked egg so I'm hesitant to fold it over, and if I leave it to cook i'm scared of burning the egg. I'll eventually fold it with runny egg, then i think to flip the whole thing to cook it some more and then i breaks apart. or i'll watch it then it gets really questionable in the area of over-cooked, so I mash it up into scrambled eggs..

What should I be doing? Any tricks or secrets to the basic task of making an omelet?

Cover it!

The secret to omelette not having a runny middle, and being able to handle it without it breaking is to use a loose fitting lid (or another pan, upside down) as a cover for most of, if not all of the initial cooking

This in effect steams the top of the egg, ensuring it is cooked before the bottom burns

This also increases the fluffiness of the egg :-)

You will then be able to fold or flip with ease


What is the best way to clean an electric fryer? I have a Rival RCF15 fryer. I lost the manual and can't find a copy online. It has a fixed metal reservoir for the oil. It has a removable basket. I remember the manual saying something about not exposing the heating element to water, so I've been cautious about cleaning it.

Fast forward a few years, the fryer is coated with a layer or brown oil...mostly on the inside, and some on the outside(which is made of plastic).  What would you guys recommend for cleaning this?

Should I just throw this away and get a better model that's easier to clean?

Restaurant supply stores carry degreaser, which will remove the brown baked on oil.  However, that oil isn't hurting your cooking at all.  It is the same thing that forms on cast iron skillets, but it isn't objectionable because you don't notice the color against the black of the cast iron.  If it works I'd continue to use it.

If you are thinking of changing, you might want to consider the cast iron Dutch Oven route.  They hold their heat better than consumer deep fryers and a Dutch oven can do more than just deep fry.  And they are easier to clean.


Oil temp goes up when turkey breast is added - why? Why does my oil temperature go up, from 350°F to 400° or 425°, when I add a bone-in turkey breast? It will remain there for about 20  minutes without the burner on.

I have done this twice now with same results. The turkey cooks fine but this puzzles me - any thoughts?

Where does the temperature readout come from?

I would be very curious indeed about the results of measuring the temperature with a thermometer directly in the oil.

As far as I know there is no exothermal chemical reaction between meat and oil, so adding a colder piece of meat to hot oil should ALWAYS reduce the temperature of the total volume (assuming that no extra heat is added from an external source)


How to make Jalapeno Jelly? A friend of mine got into a discussion about how awesome it would be to have really spicy Jelly for a number of things, or atleast just to try the taste.

It didn't seem like there was anything that would specifically make this impossible so I ask:

Is it possible to make Jalapeno jelly, and if so, what would I need to do to make it?

There's quite a few recipes online.

This one seems pretty simple.

It looks like in general, you:

Liquify your peppers
Cook the result with vinegar
Strain it
Cook the result with salt and sugar
Add some pectin
Add some whole jalepenos (probably optional)
Transfer to jars


Induction cooking pan bottom is concave - will this affect performance? I've just installed a convection cook top, I've researched it and am confident in my purchase. My question has to do with cookware. I've read reviews and bought a Cuisinart set that is "induction ready". I've cooked a few things with them and they work. I noticed that the bottom isn't truly flat though.

On a 12-inch skillet, the centre of the pan is 1/8 inch concave. I understand how an induction burner works (thanks to your site), and I want to take advantage of the efficiency of it. Is this a "flat bottom" or would a truly flat bottom pan be more efficient? Thanks for any insight to this, maybe I'm being picky, just want the best, thanks.

I don't think this should be an issue. The concave design is probably to reduce the amount of contact area between the cookware and the cook-top.

Having less contact area between the (hot) cookware and the cook-top keeps heat from flowing between the pan and the cook-top, resulting in:
- a cooler / safer cook top
- less wasted energy

For this very reason, those pans would not work well on a traditional electric stove where you want maximal heat flow (because the heat comes from the cook top, not the pan).


Can you eat red tomatoes' seeds that turned black? I bought bright red tomatoes from a supermarket that looked fresh, ripe, edible on the outside. I descry no evidence of Blossom End Rot; the tomatoes isn't blemished like pics below.

When I cut open the tomato, the flesh remains red and feels normal and fresh. But most seeds are black, rather than Goldenrod Yellow.

Why did these seeds turn black?
What, if anything, can be safely eaten? Just the flesh? Or even the seeds?

I forgot to photo-graph, but please edit this if anyone finds a picture of this snag.

This sounds like BER (blossom-end rot) which can occur with only the seeds being affected if the condition wasn't severe enough (or for enough time) to affect the flesh. If you remove the seeds (and any parts of the flesh the may have been affected) the rest is safe to eat.


How long before a dead chicken becomes inedible? Given that the chicken is not contaminated by poison, and it simply dies of heart failure or heat stroke and not anything that makes it immediately inedible, how long does it take before a dead chicken becomes inedible?

I will post as an answer as too long for comment, but would support closing as opinion based with no definitive answer.

When I raise meat chickens, my answer was zero.  Even if the cause was harmless, the meat would be low quality at best due to lack of ability to remove blood.  Even simple heart failure, besides the lack of ability to purge blood, could result in contamination from systemic issues related to poor circulation.  Note that consumption of down birds was blamed for spreading Avian Influenza in Asia.  The use of down animals was responsible for a widespread Mad Cow recall in US and Canada a few years ago.

At times, and in many cultures, using down animals, either dead or dying, has ranged from acceptable to taboo.  I personally side with the taboo argument.  I hate to waste an animal, but the risks are too high for me.


Roasted potatoes: should they be dry? I'm in the middle of roasting some sirloin in foil packets. It's surrounded by carrots and quartered red potatoes, and I'm roasting it for an hour at 400F, turned down to 350F after the first 30min.

When I took it out to check on it at the 30 minute mark, the potatoes seemed very dry to me. I feel like roasted potatoes I've had made by others are usually at least a tiny bit moist.

Am I insane? Should potatoes be bone dry when oven-roasted?

Baking them for that long will evaporate a lot of water. This is a good thing. If they were in enough liquid to not dry out at all then they wouldn't brown and you would miss out on a lot of delicious flavor. That would be braising.

These may have been dryer than potatoes in the past if the potatoes were cut into smaller pieces (more surface area) or if the cook time was longer.

If you want your veggies to be more moist then you can cook them for a shorter length of time or toss them with some fat which will give the illusion of moisture as well as prevent some internal moisture from escaping.


Why is my meat still tough after hours of cooking? I have been cooking this meat

in 200-250f for hours. But its still very tough. It doesnt stand the fork test.

Why? Could it be because the collagen needs lower temperatures to break down?

When you're cooking something like a steak, or a prime rib roast and aim for a cooking temperature of say 135ish, you want it to be medium rare. The goal isn't to break anything down. Collagen starts to break down slowly above 160F, and will melt much more rapidly closer to 180F.

Further more, iff you have any cut of meat that requires breakdown of collagen, measuring the temperature is an insufficient indicator of done-ness.

  . Collagen breakdown is a function of temperature and time. The lower the temperature, the longer it takes to break down, but it will still eventually break down. This is what makes tenderizing a brisket in a 155°F water bath possible, given enough time.
  Taken from this article on Serious Eats: The Food Lab

Taking a look at a random sampling of short rib recipes (I'm assuming that's what you have), at 300-350F, cooking times are in the 3-4 hour mark. At 200-250F, I'd expect much longer.


If espresso is by definition pressure-brewed coffee, is French press coffee a form of espresso? I wonder what the pressure difference is?

Espresso is brewed by passing high pressure water through the coffee at a temperature lower than 100°C (i.e. not boiling water).

Guidelines from the Istituto Nazionale Espresso Italiano state that the entry water pressure is 9 ± 1 bar and the entry water temperature is 88 ± 2°C (67 ± 3°C in the cup). The coffe is brewed for 25 ± 2.5 s.

French press coffee, instead, is brewed by leaving the coffee for 2-4 minutes at atmospheric pressure (no high pressure involved) in 90-95°C water. The press in the name has nothing to do with high pressure, is just describing the fact that you press down the coffee grounds with the piston once it is brewed.


How to keep fresh lemon juice for a week without a change in its taste? Are there any way to preserve the juice of lemon for, say, one week without a change in its taste?

Even deep-freezing it makes it little bit bitter!

I do not think that there is a better way they not to squeeze the lemon until you need them :D

Regardless, if you want to do testing and are concerned about the bitter notes that develop , I recommend  doing the research with grapefruit instead as it turns bitter is a matter of minutes and has a much stronger bitter flavor then the lemons do.
That way you at least have a shorter turn around time.


How to efficiently remove the food particles stuck in the scrubbing pad? Food bits get stuck in this. Simply washing it under tap doesn't help.
How to efficiently remove the stuck particles from this scrubbing pad?

Don't have a dishwasher.

I put the hot water tap on an extremely slow trickle to wet the pad.
Then squeeze dishwasher detergent + baking soda to work up a sud on the pad.
Then squeeze and "massage" the pad as best you could under the slow hot trickle.

My actual motivation has always been remove the stale stink from the pad. Somehow, the side effects are that the food particles are also dislodged from the pad by the suds.

This must be due to surface tension mitigation and anti-static effects of the suds (disengaging the attraction of food particles from the pad bristles) plus the washing action of the slow hot trickle. If the water is too hot, you might have to put on kitchen gloves.


Chopped onion storage I want to know how I can store chopped onions for 2 weeks?  I have a cook-out coming up and I need to get ahead of things.

How much onion?  It doesn't take much time to chop onion.  The only way to store chopped onion for 2 weeks is to freeze.  However, once thawed, the texture will not be good.  The best answer partly depends on what you are going to use them for.  I would say a day in  advance is the most you will probably want to do.  If they are going to be a raw condiment or part of a salad, you will want them freshly chopped.


What is the orange part on a scallop? I bought some scallops and they have an orange crescent part attached to them which I haven't seen before. Is this part meant to be discarded?

This is called the "roe".  More on wikipedia: Scallop

  Red roe is that of a female, and
  white, that of a male.

It's optional if you want to eat it, personally it don't like the taste.

More on (ahem) Yahoo Answers


over salted an uncooked steak I seasoned uncooked rib steaks yesterday (using a truffle sea salt). cooked 1 today and it was way too salty. How can I salvage the 2 remaining steaks. I cooked the 1st steak in the oven broiler.Thanks

You could try "reverse brining", using a low salt beef stock to eliminate or reduce the loss of flavour in the steaks.

(Stocks I make myself are very low salt so that I can reduce them as needed without them becoming too salty.)


Milk or water for fluffier scrambled eggs? I used to add milk to eggs when whipping them, but someone told me that water was better since it evaporated and made the eggs fluffier. I've tried it, and I'm not sure which one works better.
Does milk or water make eggs fluffier? Are there other factors changing the fluffiness?

If you want slops use the Ramsay method. If you want something with texture and taste try this

Turn the heat onto max and use a light weight pan for gas, or a medium weight pan for electric. Add a small drizzle of oil to the pan

In a strong deep bowl add a splash of milk or water and two eggs (say 20% liquid to 80% egg)

Beat like crazy for 20 seconds (use a whisk or a fork)

When the pan is sizzling pour in the egg mixture and use a medium spatula (a 5cm wide strip of wood is great) fold in the cooked parts as they appear. Work quickly

It will begin to form a loose lump in the pan. Keep folding the egg into the lump until all the liquid egg is gone

Optionally add a handful of coarse chopped broad leaf parsley or some thinly sliced cheese just before the final few folds

The cooking phase should have taken seconds, not minutes

Remove pan from heat

Let it rest for a while before moving so the egg has time to set

The texture is changed from smooth to rough by how often and hard you fold the egg


Culinary uses for hops Hop flowers are primarily used to preserve and flavor beer. Now that hops are starting to ripen in the northern hemisphere, I'm wondering: are there any other uses for them in the kitchen?

You can use them to flavor other foods. I've seen cakes and other sweets made with hop flowers. You will probably want a low alpha-acid variety(alpha acid makes the bitter flavor), but both could be interesting.

To use, you could dry the flowers and mill to a fine powder. This can then be incorporated directly into food. I think they could be used similarly to how matcha powder is incorporated into recipes once ground.

You can also use the 'sludge' left over from brewing (mix of hop flowers and yeast
and barley bits) as an ingredient in bread, which gives a very interesting flavor. Hops alone would probably add a similar flavor.


How does "That's It" makes fruit bars with no preservatives "That's It" is a company that makes fruit bars, stating:
"That’s it. fruit bars are made with literally two ingredients: fruit and fruit and that’s it! You can’t get any simpler than that!" The bars are also NonGMO.

How would it be possible to combine two fruits into a bar with no preservatives? The fruit bar itself is not entirely dry - it retains a degree of moisture. I'm just interested in how this process is possible.

A couple things - first, fruits that are dried for storage are not always dried hard - they can contain a fair bit of moisture, softness, flexibility while still being dry enough to be shelf-stable, especially if stored in a well sealed bag or container.

Also, the fruit puree or paste might have been heated in the processing, effectively pasteurizing it.  If it is also stored in airtight wrappings after this step, it can be treated as if it were canned - if the bacteria present were killed, and no more allowed in by an airtight seal, the food is effectively kept bacteria free.  This can be more effective if the food is stored in modified air packaging, as paparazzi's link suggests - stored without oxygen in the package, perhaps replaced with nitrogen or something stable and neutral.

If the fruit wasn't heated (there is a market for "raw" or uncooked food, and I'm not familiar with the limits to which a food can be heated before it is not longer considered raw, mild heat while dehydrating is often not considered a problem) - it still may have been sterilized by some other method before packaging - food irradiation or high pressure (pascalization).  Again, if stored in an airtight container, possibly with modified air packaging, the food would stay preserved longer because there are no bacteria that can reach the food to spoil it.


Quick breads in foil pans When cooking quick breads in foil pans should they be placed on a cookie sheet or set on oven rack?

There's no reason you have to put foil pans on a tray, they can be put directly on the rack if you like. There's no reason not to either, it's a matter of convenience. If you want a scientific answer a tray will interfere with air circulation a little, but not enough it makes a real difference to baking times or the end result.

Using a tray can be a good idea if the pans are too flexible to handle easily, and also if you are baking many of them at once putting many on one tray makes it faster to get them in and out.


How Do You Know What's In Your Pantry? I often times find myself making decisions about what I'm going to make for myself and my fiancee at work before I go home, and then stop at the store for any needed supplies on the way. Granted this is not always the most efficient way of doing it, but it does have a couple of advantages:

Our schedules are often times unpredictable, and its hard to plan meals more than a day in advance.
I can always ensure the freshness of ingredients.

That small thing aside, there are certain things that are fairly standard, which I can never remember if I currently have in the pantry or refrigerator.  Do I have enough fresh garlic in the house? Lemons? What spices do I have in the spice rack?

It would be really nice if I could look online somewhere to see what I have in my pantry right now. Does anyone know of a good internet site for managing your current pantry, that might also have a system for managing our favorite recipes?  I'm thinking it might be worth the effort to manage my pantry online for the ability to check on it at work for this reason.

Does anyone else face a similar problem, and what have you come up with to solve it?

We are not very high tech in our kitchen, but we cook a lot.  We keep a fairly standard inventory and when we use the last of an item - it goes on the "List".  We buy that item at the big shopping trip once a week.


Which meringue is safe to eat without baking? I recently got my meringue game down and though I wouldn’t eat French meringue without baking it, I’ve seen numerous videos where it’s said that Swiss meringue is delicious straight out of the double boiler. I’ve not seen the same about Italian, but I thought that is cooked in the bowl, too?
So which meringue is safe to eat direct from the bowl?

As you're in the UK, they're all safe.  Raw egg is safe according to the NHS

Because of improved food safety controls in recent years, infants, children, pregnant women and elderly people can now safely eat raw or lightly cooked hen eggs, or foods containing them, that are produced under the British Lion Code of Practice (regarding hygiene and especially salmonella).

This doesn't apply to all other countries, but it's worth checking in many EU countries, where dishes containing raw egg are traditional (such as chocolate mousse and tiramisu).  I've failed to find a single reliable source covering many countries, but Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway are essentially salmonella-free.   I read enough French to make sense of some sources, but can't find anything definitive more recent than 2013 in which products made from raw egg are advised against for high-risk groups, but generally acceptable; in particular recipes assume that pregnant women will be avoiding raw egg.


Can potato gnocchi dough be overworked or simply break? I made potato gnocchi today but while kneading the dough I noticed that within the 5th minute of kneading the dough suddenly starting excessively sticking to my hands and to my bamboo cutting board.

Is this a symptom of over kneading or breaking? Or could my hands have lost all the flour which escaped my notice.

As soon as it started doing that I start rolling it and cooked. It turned good(I think).

Your second suggestion sounds like the most likely option. As long as you had a sufficient layer of flour, it worked, but once it was wetted through, they started sticking and fell apart. This is usual for many wet and tender doughs.

Overkneading is practically unheard of in potato based doughs. In bread, you can get overkneading when you knead so much that the gluten breaks apart. It requires a well developed gluten network, which you then overstress mechanically. I have never heard of it happening during hand kneading, and even in a machine, you have to go really far to overknead. Potatoes don't contain gluten, and the wheat flour added is not sufficient for a gluten mesh to form, so there is none present to break apart.

If it happens again, you can try kneading and forming the gnocchi in a wide shallow bowl full of flour. It will make the dough a bit harder, but you won't experience sticking.


Saving sanding sugar I make sanding sugar cut out cookies often. I sometimes have excess sugar left on the cookie sheets after baking. Could this excess sugar be saved and reused for the next tray. I often dump the excess in the trash and feel like I am wasting it. Any answers would be appreciated :)

The main issue with reusing the sanding sugar is what else may have been mixed in to it:

There may be crumbs from the cookies, depending on how fastidious you are in policing your baking sheets, especially if you use the sheet for a second time in the oven
The sugar may get oil on it if you have been greasing your sheets

Within a single baking session, I would certainly reuse the sugar.

It would be a more significant issue if you are retaining the sugar between sessions, but still, unless there is dough with raw eggs mixed in with the recovered sugar (which would no doubt be a very tiny amount, and soon quite dried out), neither of these is a safety issue, although they may be an aesthetic issue.

I would ask, though.. how much extra sanding sugar are you loosing?  If you sprinkle each cookie (rather than casting sugar across the entire sheet) you should have very little excess sugar to recover.

Still:  reuse it if you want to, and you are not displeased by its performance when being reused.


Albacore or Yellow Fin I once heard that one type of canned tuna is prone to have less mercury (poison) based upon the size it is at harvest or the location where it is commonly found.  I buy Genova brand which has both kinds packed in olive oil.  They are both the same cost so getting the "safer" one is a no-brainer.  Can you shed some light on this subject?

The Environmental Defense Fund has made a few recommendations based on EPA guidance:

  Canned white, or albacore (0.32 parts per million of mercury). Children under six can eat up to one 3-ounce portion a month; children from 6–12, two 4.5-ounce portions a month. Adults, including pregnant women, can safely eat it up to three times a month (women, 6-ounce portions; men, 8-ounce portions).

  Canned light — the safer choice (0.12 parts per million of mercury). Children under six can eat up to three 3-ounce portions per month. Older children and adults can safely eat it once a week. But look out for "gourmet" or "tonno" labels. They are made with bigger yellowfin tuna and can contain mercury levels comparable to canned white.

  A better alternative is canned salmon (mostly sockeye or pink from Alaska), which is low in contaminants and high in heart-healthy omega-3s. It's also sustainably caught in Alaska and similarly priced, making it a great choice all around.

They may say "safer choice" but what it comes down to is that regardless of which type of tuna you eat, you're going to be getting a pretty high amount of mercury if you eat it frequently. Mercury accumulates in animals higher up in the food chain. I hate that I'm screenshotting an svg in order to post it but below is a helpful little diagram:

- via Wikipedia

I included the part regarding salmon from the EDF source because salmon is just a better choice to make environmentally and for your health. I know your question was albacore versus yellow fin, but the difference there is negligible. The light vs white is a matter of which cut of the fish you get and that does matter, but you're still getting a fair amount of mercury. Eat smaller fish, like salmon, herring, sardines, kippers, etc. if you are truly worried about mercury.


Why do my muffin tops lean? I'm getting close to (my idea of) muffin heaven with this recipe which after trying a few others I've found to work consistently and well.

One small thing I don't understand is why my muffin tops, which are rising nicely to a delicious crust, are "leaning" or I should say pointing in a direction other than straight up.

It's not a problem since the muffins have good texture, taste, and a home-made look I find appealing, but I cannot explain why they lean.

Any ideas?

Perhaps I'm stating the obvious, but is your oven rack perfectly level? Muffin mix initially has low enough viscosity that it can be influenced by gravity as it gradually rises. Even a small inclination of the tray/rack is likely to cause this.


How to Adjust Biscotti Recipe When Using Salted Pistachios I am making biscotti.  The recipe calls for the following:

2 C flour
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
3/4 C whole pistachios

The only shelled pistachios I could find were already salted, with sea salt.
Given these ratios, should I adjust the amount of salt I will add to the recipe?
EDIT:  Thank you for the responses.  Since there seemed to be no way to control the saltiness, I ended up seeking out an unsalted lot.  This recipe was sweet, by the way.  And it came out great.

The only thing you can do is not add any additional salt, although I think you might still end up with a result that's too salty. As a commenter mentioned, you could get an indication of the amount of salt from the nutritional information on the packaging, but my suspicion is that in 3/4 of a cup of nuts there will be more than half a teaspoon of salt.
There is a question elsewhere on the site about unsalting salted nuts, where the consensus was that it wouldn't easily be possible. Tap as much salt off the nuts as possible before you use them.
If the nuts are going to get wet anyway (because there are other wet ingredients in your recipe that you haven't mentioned) then you might as well try to wash the water off; do it quickly, and pat the nuts try with paper towel immediately so they absorb as little water as possible. Tasting a few of them should tell you whether you've washed most of the salt off (in which case add it back according to your recipe) or not (in which case don't add any additional salt).


Does ingredient order matter when making Yorkshire Puddings? With a mother-in-law who hails from the North of England I am well aware that when I make Yorkshire puddings my method is scrutinized.  Luckily I have been assured by the master of such delights that my method is correct.  First put in the flour, then the egg then the milk - any other way (as in putting the milk before the egg) just does not work!  OK, it may sound silly, but I would never consider doing it any other way.

Can other methods work, or is this the only one which will give good results?

People for decades have been convinced that there's one "right" way to make Yorkshire Puddings. The reality is that most if not all of these "tricks" are either unnecessary or outright hurt the outcome.

Kenji over at Serious Eats went a bit bonkers and tried out just about all of the different methods and has summarized it in an article which is paired with his "best Yorkshire puddings" recipe.

While testing the order of adding milk and eggs to flour actually wasn't one of the things he does, the first step of his recipe is to simply mix together the flour, eggs, and milk (plus a tablespoon of water and some salt) - all simultaneously.

  Combine eggs, flour, milk, water, and salt in a medium bowl and whisk until a smooth batter is formed. Let batter rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. Alternatively, for best results, transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate batter overnight or for up to 3 days. Remove from refrigerator while you preheat the oven.

If you're really interested in Yorkies, I strongly suggest you read his article and consider trying the recipe out for yourself. If you want a summary, I've created a shorter version of it in an answer on this previous question.


KitchenAid Pro mixer clicking noise I have a KitchenAid pro mixer that is making a slow clicking noise. It gets faster as I turn up the speed. I first noticed it after replacing a stripped worm follower gear. It sounds like it's coming from the motor. I have checked/cleaned/and re-greased all the other gears several times, and I am confident they are all working properly. Everything looks fine. As far as I can tell. It is not a huge clicking noise, but almost sounds like the fan is hitting something as it goes around. Is this something I should worry about? If I should worry about it, how do I fix it?

Does it only do it under higher load? Mine clicks a little bit when kneading dough, and I determined that it was actually the bowl moving a bit. I have a lift-bowl model, but it could be either that or the hinge on a tilt model.

If it is under load, try pushing on the bowl to eliminate movement. If it happens even when empty, this isn't it.


How can I get good spherification results with alcohol? I've been trying to make chocolatini (vodka, godiva liqueur, baileys) spheres, but I've had some issues with separation of the alcohols.  Also, I've been deciding whether the alginate solution should be placed into the mixture (vs. calcium lactate into the mixture)... and then placed into calcium lactate solution or alginate solutions respectively.  Anybody have any suggestions or recipes for something like this?

Reverse spherification

You need to first make a sodium alginate bath, mix with one-third of the water to begin with using a hand blender and then add this to the final full proportions. You need to let this bath sit for a while to ensure there are no bubbles left. (Standard practice).

Add your calcium lactate to the mixture you are trying to spherify. Apparently thickening the the alcohol with xanthan gum can help to form better shaped spheres.

further information:

http://blog.khymos.org/recipe-collection/ <-- fantastic recipe collection
http://www.molecularrecipes.com/spherification/reverse-spherification/


What is the advantage of a roux over a raw flour slurry, in sauce? My standard Bechamel sauce recipe used to be:

Stir together flour and oil into a paste
Fry for a short while
Add a small amount of milk
Heat and stir until incorporated
Repeat steps 3-4 with increasing amounts of milk, until the mixture is a thick liquid
Add rest of milk and boil until thickened

But recently I've got lazy and been doing it like this:

Whisk flour with enough cold milk to make a thin paste with no lumps.
Add to pan of cold milk and stir.
Bring to boil, stirring occasionally
Boil until thickened

The roux method requires a lot of care and attention. The second method just requires half an eye on the pan.

But roux is a mainstay of classical cooking. What is its advantage?

Roux Method

The advantages of the roux method:

It can be prepared in advance
The raw flour taste is cooked out when the roux is prepared, so the sauce is ready as soon as it is thickened; this also makes it easier to add more roux to adjust the thickness of the sauce.
It actually requires less supervision.  You are actually being overly fussy with your roux based sauce.  You could add all of the milk at once, although starting with one smaller batch just to dissolve the roux is a good idea.
The butter coats the flour particles, making lumping quite unlikely
Can be browned for additional flavor at the cost of thickening power

It also adds oil or butter to the recipe, which may or may not be an advantage.

Slurry Method

The advantages of the slurry method (which is what the second method is, although it is more typically done with water or stock than milk are):

It is fast and convenient, if you don't have roux prepared ahead
No oil or butter is required, so it doesn't have to be accounted for in the recipe.

Disadvantages:

It is easier to get lumping if you don't thoroughly whisk the slurry before heating
It must be brought to the boil for at least a couple of minutes to eliminate the raw flour taste, and harder to adjust thickness.
Harder to prepare ahead

Conclusion

Use whichever you are comfortable with.  For fine sauces, roux based may be superior (and certainly more buttery), but you can have excellent outcomes with a slurry.  For casual cooking , I tend to use a slurry, saving roux for more formal dinners and fancier dishes like Thanksgiving gravy.


using coffee filters to filter home pressed olive oil I have recently made some home pressed olive oil but it is quite cloudy and I wanted to filter it so it will keep longer and be a bit more pleasing to the palate and the eye.  I initially used a muslin (ham) bag in a steel colander over another steel bowl and weighted down with 70kg of gym weights to press.  I was wondering if it is effective to try running it through paper coffee filters to get rid of the fine particles?

I have picked and processed hundreds of kilos of olives for oil. I store the cloudy oil in plastic water bottles in a dark cupboard and wait.  The sediment will fall and then you just drain off the clear oil. The remaining oil with the sediment in it I use for tools, hinges etc and other DIY uses.


Storage of Butternut Squash I've just bought a butternut squash.  On the label it says "Keep at room temperature".  Why shouldn't I store it in the fridge?

Two factors affect the storage of butternut and other winter squash, temperature and humidity. From  Bonnie Plants :

  You’ll see best storage results when you stash squash in a cool, dry spot. For most winter squash, store at 50º to 55º F with relative humidity of 60 to 70 percent.

Obviously, the temperature in our refrigerators is much lower than 50°F - 55°F. And humidity levels can be all over the place, higher or lower than recommended.

To further answer why temperature makes so much difference: winter squash and pumpkins are still alive even after being harvested and continue to 'breathe'. From  NC State :

  Respiration rate of fruit is most effectively controlled by lowering the temperature. For each 10°C (18°F) reduction in fruit temperature, the respiration rate is reduced by approximately one-half. Chilling injury can occur, however, to some fruits at temperatures below 50°F.

Also:

  Whether in a home, garden or commercial planting, special care should be exercised to protect harvested fruit from excessively high (>95°F) and cold (<50°F) temperatures, asphyxiation, and mechanical injuries such as scratches, cuts or bruises. Not only are mechanical injuries unsightly, they also provide an easy entrance for various rot-producing organisms.


How can I get a more homogenous Bavarian cream? I recently made a pineapple Bavarian cream using this recipe:

  Put a soaked gelatin sheet in warm (60°C) 75 ml pineapple juice. Beat half a yolk and 20 g sugar together until creamy. Put in the juice while beating and add 2 slices of pineapple in small pieces. Let this cool down (25°C). Whip 50 g of cream with 17 g of powdered sugar until soft peaks. Add this to the cooled down mixture. Whip half of an egg white and fold it in. Put this in two ramekins and let set in the fridge until firm.

Everything went well, it was set. When eating, the top 3/4 of it was very airy, like a mousse. The bottom 1/4 reminded me more of a pudding. In the bottom part were also all the pineapple pieces. Bad picture where you can see the airiness and an even worse picture where you can see the separation.

Why was there this difference in texture? Did I not whip the whites and/or cream enough? Was it because the pineapple pieces are heavy and wet? Something else?

Is there also a way to get the pineapple pieces distributed evenly throughout the Bavarian cream? I guess this is quite hard to achieve, but I would like to know if there's something that might work.

Pinapple + gelatin should raise red flags.

Pineapple contains bromelain, a protease enzyme similar to papain in papayas. This enzyme when active will prevent gelatin from gelling. Heat will deactivate that enzyme. Canned pineapple is usually cooked enough that it isn't a problem.

If you are using fresh pineapple (or suspect your canned pineapple wasn't cooked enough) you should cook it to at least 65C to ensure that it doesn't eat your gelatin.

Protein-devouring-pineapples aside...

The gelatin mixture is going to be much denser than the whipped cream. The pineapples will be even denser than that. In order for the two liquids to stay mixed they will have to be well gelled. Make sure the gelatin mixture has cooled enough to be very viscous. When adding the whipped cream you should fold (even though the recipe doesn't say to).

To keep the pineapples from sinking you should cut them into smaller pieces. Additionally, you might let the mixture partially set before folding in the pineapple.


What is the best way to store fresh berries? I have been buying fresh berries from the store on the weekends, and am looking for the best way to make them last throughout the week for use as either a snack or as a component for salads.

The blueberries last the longest, and I can usually salvage enough by Thursday or even Friday, but the blackberries and raspberries seem to either get moldy, or turn to mush, before Wednesday is over.

I've been storing them in the refrigerator in the plastic vented clamshells they come in.

Is there a better way of storing them that will extend their shelf-life another 1-2 days or more?

Store them unwashed. Take out any "bad" ones. I've had decent luck adding some paper towels to wick away extra moisture that seems to speed up the spoilage. Martha Stewart suggest going even further and spreading them out on paper towels on a sheet pan. I have no idea who keeps a fridge empty enough that they can store full sheet pans in there, though.

I've never tried this, but someone suggests washing it lightly in vinegar/water. *shrug*

Then of course, wash and freeze them spread out on a sheet pan (to make it easier to separate later). I assume this isn't what you want to do, but it is very effective, depending on how you plan to use them.


For Pizza cooking at home. What is the best alternative to the pizza stone? For Pizza cooking at home. What is the best alternative to the pizza stone?

Unglazed quarry tile. Preferably 3/4" to 1" thick.


Where did the apples in Japanese Curry come from? Japanese curry (カレー, karē) is its own distinct style, made with a roux base, mild curry powder, and grated apples or apple puree.
It also has a well-documented origin, having been introduced by British/Indian sailors during the period of British-Japanese naval alliance.  This also includes an explanation for why Japanese curry uses a roux base (the navy wanted to add vitamin B1-bearing wheat to the sailor's diet).  What it doesn't include is an explanation for when, how, and why the apples became a key ingredient.
Per Chopstick Chronicles:

The ultimate Japanese curry rice secret ingredients “kakushi Aji”, which literally translates to “hidden taste”, are Apple and Honey. These are well-known Japanese curry rice ingredients among Japanese people so it’s not much of a secret anymore. Adding grated apple and honey gives the Japanese curry rice the signature sweeter flavour and is a staple for any Japanese mother’s home-cooked curry.

Apples are not used in Anglo-Indian curries that I've seen or been able to find online.  So this leads to several related questions:

Were apples added to standard Japanese curry when it was introduced to the 19th century navy?
If so, were they added for nutritional reasons?  Or were apples common in British curries of the time (the book "Curry" does not mention this, nor are apples mentioned in Mrs Beeton's)
If the apples were added later, how did that come about?  Was the Vermont Curry company responsible for it?

Thanks for any leads or ideas.

Curry and apples were both introduced to Japan in the late 19th century. Curry did not receive widespread popularity until the beginning of the 20th century and apples were not introduced to the curry rue until the 1960s (When the sweeter honey and apple curries increased their popularity with children). In 1963 House Foods Corp introduced House Vermont Curry made with honey and apples.
https://gogocurryfranchise.com/the-evolution-and-spread-of-japanese-curry-rice/


Can I buy cocoa butter squares for cooking? In the 70's, I used to be able to buy cocoa butter squares - like unsweetened chocolate - made by Hershey's.  They no longer make it.  I made white chocolate fudge with it.  Is there anything out there like that now?  I'd really like to make some of this fudge again for my daughter and grandchildren.

Yes, you can certainly buy cocoa butter, from many different brands. I have seen more chips than squares, but the shape doesn't matter.

We don't do shopping recommendation for brands here, and suggesting single stores is also not looked upon well, especially since most people reading this won't live in the same place as you. So I won't send you somewhere special, I'll just say, if you can't find it in a well sorted supermarket, try in a specialty store for confiserie, and if you can't find that one, try online.


Selecting [corn] for Pozole? I have between 7pm tonight and 5pm tomorrow to make a pozole. Specifically, it will be a red pozole styled chili, using a rubbed and smoked seitan 'meat' to sub for pork. The dish will be vegan.

What are the distinctions between different approaches I can take, and what will result in a better red pozole?

How should I select corn for the chili?
Do I have time to do an alkaline-soak and stew until popping the corn?
Is it just as well that I use hominy?

Pozole is traditionally made with nixtamalized corn, also known as nixtamal or hominy. So yes, of course you can use hominy - that's what you're supposed to use! Canned hominy/nixtamal is common. I believe that in some areas you can find dried whole nixtamal and possibly even fresh nixtamal - but I'm not sure I ever saw that in Texas, so I'm not sure how much luck you'll have.

As with everything, people say that fresher is better; I can't personally support that, though, not having managed to find it where I live. I have, however, made some pozole that I found to be quite good using canned hominy. Since you're planning on pozole rojo, you'll have a lot of other flavor, which I expect would make the difference between canned and fresh less noticeable.

I suppose if you want to try to nixtamalize your own corn for the sake of having the optimal pozole, you could, and you would have time. I've never tried it myself. From what I've read, cooking/soaking times vary depending on what you're going to do with the nixtamal. For pozole, you don't have to cook and soak the corn as long since it's going to be further cooked in the stew. I've seen varying instructions online. For example, this site says to cook for 15 minutes, soak for another 5-10, while this one says to cook for 40-50 minutes. After that you rinse it thoroughly to remove the lime and hulls (softened by the lime), before cooking it in your pozole. I imagine either of those cooking times would produce something satisfactory; with it of course being more tender with the longer time. Note also that the corn won't get that nice puffed shape if you don't remove the tip cap (one of those pages calls it a pedicel - not sure that's the right term).

So with a lot of effort and adventurousness, you could indeed make your own nixtamal (hominy), and it might well be better, but you can also make something extremely good with already-made hominy and not take a risk on something I suspect you're feeding to others.


Why do tomatoes get so hot? Ever noticed how certain foods seem to get a lot hotter than others?  I almost never burn my tongue or mouth... except on tomatoes;  Pizza sauce, tomatoes in panini sandwiches or spaghetti sauce.

Tomatoes always seem to get hotter and retain their heat longer than almost any other food I've encountered. And they are nearly always the culprit when I succeed in burning my mouth.

Why would that be? Is there something about their chemistry that causes them to have a higher heat capacity?  Do they hold their heat longer? Or is it simply a figment of my imagination and bad luck with hot tomatoes?

Another physics digression.

All cooked food gets hot, and everything in any given dish will have the same temperature {*}. The tomatoes don't get hotter than the other ingredients. But they do have a tendency to burn more than certain other substances, so the question is "Why?".

You get burned when a portion of your flesh reaches a high enough temperature{+}. The food warms your tongue, lips, etc. by heat conduction until either you move the food or your mouth parts and the food reach the same temperature (a condition known as thermal equilibrium). What that common temperature is depends on the amount of heat (i.e. thermal energy) in the system. Some of the factors that come into play are:

How much (mass of) food there is.
How much (mass of) your mouth is involved (see below).
The initial temperature of the food.
The "heat capacity" of both the food and your mouth parts, which is a property of each substance that appears as a coefficient in the thermal equilibrium equation. (Don't worry, I'm not going to make you read any math.) Water has a (very!) high heat capacity, so watery foods tend to drive high final temperature and thus to burn you more easily. There is an added complication for the extra heat needed to establish a phase change (i.e. melt solids or vaporize liquids) called the heat of fusion or heat of vaporization. Again water has a high value for both of these numbers.

How fast the common temperature is reached depends on

The area of contact between the food and the mouth.
Another coefficient called the thermal conductivity. This one is complicated, but liquids tend to have a high thermal conductivity and solids less so. This is where soups, sauces, and melted cheese really get you. Note that your mouth parts has a pretty low thermal conductivity, so you only get to count the surface layers in finding the equilibrium temperature. Sorry.

Some consequences of all this:

This is why you can peel the aluminum foil off of a pan that has just come out of a 400 degree (F) oven without trouble, but if you get your hand stuck in the steam plume (which is only around 212 degrees F) you get scalded: Aluminum has a low heat capacity, and steam has a (very, very!) high one.
Small bites help in two ways: less total heat means a lower common temperature, and may allow you to move the food around in your mouth, reducing the temperature of any one part.
Some foods are just dangerous this way. You know what they are from experience: steam, hot soups and sauces, melted cheese, etc.

{*} Well, sort of. But take that as true for any particular region of any particular dish.
{+} What temperature is that? Good question. Maybe there is a medical professional around, 'cause I don't know. I'd guess around 140--150 degrees F (call it 60--65 degrees C), but don't quote me.


Confused about cayenne pepper, chili powder and paprika What is the difference between cayenne pepper, chilli powder, and paprika powder? They seem pretty similar. Are they interchangeable in recipes? Will it be a big difference if I substitute one for another?

Cayenne pepper powder comes from the cayenne pepper.  It is hot/spicy, registering 30,000 to 50,000 Scoville units.
Chilli powder, depending where you live, can mean anything between pure powdered chilli pepper (location would determine the specific type of pepper) to a spice blend of chillies with cumin, oregano, and/or other spices.  Depending on the brand (or if you make it yourself) the heat and flavor can vary.
Paprika is the dried and ground pepper capsicum annuum, the species of pepper that includes a wide variety of shapes and sizes, such as sweet bell pepper, jalapeno, New Mexico chili and cayenne.  It appears that the tomato pepper is the most commonly used variety for the production of paprika.  Of course, there are also smoked varieties (sweet, bittersweet, and hot).

I would say that they are generally not interchangeable.  Just a little bit of cayenne, for example, will bring quite a bit of heat to your final dish.  Chili powder will bring more flavor/spices than paprika.

It really depends on the final result you are looking for, but simple substitutions will result in very different outcomes.


What effect do different slash patterns have on bread oven spring? Slashes in bread loaves are designed to promote oven spring but there are many different patterns.  Some running the length of a loaf, some in a checkered pattern.  I've been told this is to promote oven spring in different directions.

What patterns lend themselves to spring in what directions?  For example, I know a checkered pattern, promotes expansion upward.

Slashing the skin of a loaf creates a weak area. When the oven spring occurs the dough will expand through that weak spot. Expansion will be limited in the stronger, unslashed areas.

Conceptually this is fairly simple. Leave the skin unslashed in the direction you don't want the bread to expand. In the case of a checker slash on the surface of a boule- the edge stays stronger than the entire center so the expansion is forced upwards.

In practice, with different loaves, it may be difficult to predict exactly how the physics will occur. You can start with traditional slash patterns that you see on professionally produced bread.
For example, on long loaves, such as baguettes, the slashes are short, at a slight angle to the length, and overlapping to promote lengthening of the loaf. Whereas on wider, football-shaped loaves the slash may run parallel to the loaf to widen it a little.

As a demonstration I baked two loaves this weekend. They were identically formed as small football-shaped loaves (batards). One I slashed at an angle, the other parallel with the length.


Proper grease for a meat slicer blade I just found an old hand cranked meat slicer which I can use to slice homemade lunch meats. It was free, but it obviously hasn't been used awhile. Inside there are two gears, and a bearing on which the blade spins. I took off the blade to give the thing a through cleaning, and in the process removed all of the grease. I am now running it through the dish washer to give it yet another washing before we use it.

Can anyone suggest a proper grease to use to lubricate the blade? There is a small chance it could come in contact with food so I was thinking a few shots of silicon grease? Any help would be appreciated.

Food grade lubricants

Looks like there's quite a few food grade greases available online. Some of them are silicone based. Still, I'd get something that definitely says food grade, rather than whatever's on sale at Ace hardware.


Best vessel for frying I looking to do some basic oil frying in my house. I have a gas stove.

What is the best vessel to use and why? I am mainly worried about spilling oil all over the place.

I read an article from serious eats where they recommend using a basic 14 inch wok for the job since oil will not supposedly splatter.

Has anyone tried using a wok for deep frying with good results? What is you recommended vessel for the job?

My parents used a wok way back when to make spring rolls, but it depends on what you're using it for.

A cast iron skillet will work for a lot of things, but you don't really get a deep-fry from it.  It is great for quickly frying up chicken parts to finish in the oven or frying up cutlets/katsu/schnitzel.

A deep sauce pan or dutch oven works well if you are actually trying to deep-fry.  You can put 2-4 inches of oil in it and still only be a third of the way up the vessel.  This will allow you to submerge the items you are frying, and still not have the oil close to the top.

As for materials, you can go two ways.  A thinner material like aluminum or stainless will respond quickly to the heat you put on it.  This works both ways of course, since it means the oil will cool down more quickly if the heat gets too low.  Cast Iron is good in this regard (enameled or bare) because it retains the heat.  When you add items, it cools the oil, so to maintain the proper temperature and keep food from absorbing more of the grease, cast iron should work better in this regard.  Using a gas stove may make this less of an issue though.

As for spatter, you are going to get it regardless.  The spatter comes from moisture in the food being violently repelled by the oil.  It sinks into the hot oil, boils into steam, and then makes a mess of your stove.  A little spatter is to be expected; just make sure your food is as dry as possible before placing it in the oil.  Spatter-screens can also help.

EDIT: I found a link that talks about deep frying.  Most pertinent to your question is to use a deep-sided pan. This keeps the oil from spilling over when you add your fryables, and also helps to minimize splatter.  It will be there, but more will be 'caught' by the pan.

Six Steps for Deep Frying Without a Deep Fat Fryer


What is the ideal fake turkey substitute for a vegan Thanksgiving? While recently experimenting with a seitan based fake turkey, I was curious if I was even pursuing the right media for making a fake vegan turkey.

With respect to the following characteristics, what vegan meat substitute media (as in, can approximate turkey not necessarily in nutrition but rather taste) fits best? What preparation of the media is most suited to creating this profile? Why?

Has the defined texture of turkey meat
Has the defined texture of turkey skin, whether deep-fried or baked
Has the moisture level of either light or dark meat
Has the flavor compatibility to suit either a mushroom or vegan sausage stuffing
Has the flavor compatibility to suit either a rosemary or vegan sausage gravy
When made from scratch, does not exceed the cost of a relatively sized bird

Please note, I am not asking about pre-packaged or brands of media, but rather media and preparations themselves (i.e. not Field Roast or Tofurkey, but rather Seitan/Vital Wheat Gluten)

I always make a tofu turkey by blending tofu with herbs and flavorings and then draining over night in a colander dressed with a kitchen towel. The next day I shape the tofu info a turkey shape with stuffing inside, wrap it in a soaked yuba sheat and bake it in the oven, brushing with butter and marinade occasionally.

This "turkey" will not have the texture of turkey meat but it will be carvable.

The skin will have a texture similar to turkey skin.

The flavor of this "turkey" (I use a lot of sage, light miso and poultry seasoning) is very traditional and goes well together with above mentioned gravies and stuffings.

When brushed with enough marinade and butter it will be moist if a little crumbly.

I spent about 10 € on the tofu (6 blocks of 450 g each), 2.50 € on the skin and 5 € on the herbs. If you have buy seasoning, miso, etc, it will cost more.


Is it safe to refrigerate a 3-2-1 ratio pickle I mistakenly processed for canning? I followed a recipe based on 3-2-1 ratio of water-vinegar-sugar.  I boiled the water, added the vinegar and sugar, whisked until the sugar dissolved, let it cool a bit, and added seasonings.

I then poured the liquid over fresh vegetables (cucumbers, peppers, carrots, beets, radishes) in jars, sealed the jars, and processed them for 25 minutes in boiling water.

However, while they were in the bath, I did further research, and found that the 3-2-1 ratio was not considered safe (with some exceptions).  A minimum of 1:1 ratio of water to vinegar is now the recommendation.

I realize that I cannot treat these as canned.  Can I immediately put them in the refrigerator, and eat them out of the jar?  That was the intent of the original recipe: instead of processing the jars in boiling water, just put them in the refrigerator.  And it does seem that the ratio I used is okay so long as you put it in the refrigerator, instead of storing it at room temperature.

Did boiling the jars create any health risks?

No, boiling should not have created health risks.  If anything, you are likely to have killed off some microorganisms that could have led to gradual spoilage (over weeks or longer) in the refrigerator.  So, the only likely effect on safety is that you may have extended the expected shelf life of the pickles in the fridge.

Of course, boiling the vegetables will also have softened them and given them a more "cooked" texture/flavor, which may not have been intended in the original recipe.  But as long as they are kept refrigerated, they should be safe to eat.


What is the difference between caramelized onions and "crispy onions"? I've searched around for information on this, and seen "caramelized onions" in some places (simple enough to make), and then what can only be described as a VIOLENT reaction indicating that rather than caramelized onions, "crispy onions" are the proper accoutrement to Mujaddara.

What is the difference, and what do I need to know in order to make crispy onions for Mujaddara?

Both crispy and caramelized onions are cooked for a long time, and will be very brown.  However, they are cooked slightly differently.

Caramelized onions are usually cross-cut on the onion to release its moisture, and then cooked over very low heat in a crowded pan, stirring infrequently, so that they gradually release their sugars and liquid and it turns to caramel.  Depending on the onions and desired result, you may even cover them, an add a little liquid and/or sugar.  The end result is very soft and very sweet.

Arabic-style crispy onions are cut pole-to-pole in order to avoid rupturing cells in the onions.  They are then fried over medium heat in an uncrowded pan, stirring regularly.  This lets them dry out and become brown and crispy, even burning on thin ends.  These onions should be a mix of crispy and chewy, and more savory than sweet.