ratio of flour to liquid in bread I am new to baking bread, and I have a recipe that calls for 2 1/4 cups total liquid to 2 3/4 cup whole wheat flour and 2 3/4 cup unbleached flour. I have made this several times, and can never mix in all of the flour, which will cause the bread to fall when baking. I do not have a mixer or bread machine, and this recipe is not for a bread machine. Help! Thank you!

This works out to a ratio of 77% hydration (see this answer for an explanation of the term), which is a very good choice for this flour mixture and should not be dry at all. So the problem is most likely in your measurement. The best you can do is to use a scale, because volume is very unreliable. In  If you absolutely insist on measuring by volume, you will have to invest time in getting to do it properly - not packing, levelling well, etc.

Also, you should not be mixing the flour into the dough, you should bne kneading it. If by mixing you mean you are stirring it with a spoon, this is only an early step, you will have to continue kneading the soft dough in the bed of flour until the flour has been absorbed, and then continue for enough time to get a nice elastic dough (about 15 min of hand kneading). I am sorry if this sounds patronizing and you are already kneading properly, you did not describe it in detail so I am trying to exclude the possible culprits here.


How do I coat puffed rice with chocolate or cocoa? How do I apply a thin chocolate coating to puffed rice?  I want to make chocolate puffed rice cereal.

Considering a coating of milk chocolate vs dusting of cocoa powder, I prefer whichever method is least messy, easier for a novice cook and has a longer shelf life.

I want the end product to be dry and crispy, ideally with no oil or salt as I want to eat it with milk as cereal.

Is the process likely to remain the same (more or less) if I replace rice with other grains like wheat or bajara (Indian grain)?

Ok, so dusting with cocoa powder is easier to do, and has a longer shelf life, but its also messier and the results are more limited.  You would just toss some cocoa powder in a bag with the puffed rice (if you're puffing your own, best done before cooling), and shake it up.  The surface of the puffed rice would hold a thin layer of cocoa powder, and since both ingredients are shelf stable, they should last a long time.

Downsides are, while cocoa powder has an intense taste, it isn't sweet without diluting it with sugar, how much you can add is strictly limited by the surface texture of your puffed rice (and sugar will compete for space), and milk will lift it right off your rice (though puffed rice in chocolate milk could be nice, too).  A fine application of oil, water, or milk could help the powder adhere better, but at the sacrifice of some crispiness.

A thin chocolate coating, on the other hand, gives a more familiar product, is less messy, and more variable, but it also has a more limited shelf life (oil can go rancid, the chocolate can bloom, it is simply moister even if the moistness is cocoa butter) and is a bit harder to do.  You would gently melt your plain chocolate (with a double boiler, preferably), and mix into a reasonably large quantity of puffed rice, then keep mixing as it cools so that the rice will separate or at least make small clumps, then spread it out (say, on a cookie sheet) to finish cooling and drying.  Further dehydrating with heat, sunshine, or air circulation, can be done to preference.

Since chocolate is oil-based, your rice should remain fairly crisp, unlike water based sauces.  You may find it easier to make larger clumps with this method, depending on ratio of chocolate and amount of space to spread out and dry on, or make a solid block of chocolate and puffed rice and cut to cereal size, or to coat a batch quite heavily and mix it into a plain batch, or drizzle the chocolate into your cereal rather than try to mix to an even coating, to tweak your preferred ratio, texture, and appearance.

Another thing you might try, depending on your puffed rice product, is comfiting, or sugar-coating, your puffed rice.  You would want to create a fairly dry sugar syrup, since moisture will soften your rice, mix in some chocolate (cocoa powder would be best), and drizzle the hot mix into the puffed rice a little (tbs or less) at a time, mixing until dry to form a veerry thin layer, and periodically setting aside to cool and dry more before proceeding with more layers.  This method will give many, many thin coatings of chocolate syrup to your puffed rice, and a fair amount of control how thick the coating will be, though it takes a lot more time and patience.  Additionally, some extra time drying out and possibly other measures (fan, dehydrator, sunshine, warm oven) can be used to drive off any extra moisture once the rice is coated to your liking, to maximize crispiness and shelf life.

Or, you might try making a rice cereal, if you want - making a chocolate rice dough, probably chilling and grating to make right-sized pellets, and frying them to make your cereal.  I would suggest you find a more precise recipe, I can make a basic guess how such cereals are made but I haven't tried to make any.


Dividing Pizza dough to balls before baking I see in a lot of recipes for Pizza baking that you need to divide the whole mass into several balls before the first proofing or before you make the pizza. I find it more convenient to just have the whole mass together until I actually need to bake and then I just take a chunk and leave the rest in the container.
Anyone know why they recommend dividing it before? What's wrong with the method I mentioned?

Probably so that the gluten can relax before you go for the final forming.

By forming it into a ball you are starting it towards "pizza pie disk shape" from "formless mass of dough." If it rests for 10 minutes or more in that shape, proceeding to further shape it into a disk will go easier (and further, if desired), with less spring-back from the gluten network.

I use roughly the same process in making bagels or long strips for braiding. You can work it until it just won't go anymore, take a break, and come back to find it pliable and willing to stretch further.


Smart idea to buy the woks that Chinese restaurant chefs use, for my home's electric induction cook top? I need a non stick wok for my Frigidaire electric induction cook top. What do you think of the the copycat technique?  Why don't I just buy the type of wok used by Chinese restaurant chefs?

But what type of wok do Chinese restaurants use? Carbon steel? Cast iron?

How often do these chefs season their woks? But will this work for me at home?  I've never seasoned a wok before! I'm afraid I can't maintain and preserve these woks like these Cantonese restaurant chefs can. What if I don't have enough time to season?

You don't buy a wok like a Chinese restaurant uses because you can't use a round-bottom wok on an induction hob.
You can buy induction hobs specifically for woks, but they're a bit specialist, as are those colossal burners in the picture above.
Generally speaking, for a wok you want as much of it heated as possible. Induction [or any electric hob] will only ever heat the flat surface in contact with the ring. Domestic gas is better, & you can tilt the wok to aid ingredient distribution rather than having to leave it flat on the ring all the time.
Home-cooked Chinese-style food must necessarily adopt a different technique because you simply cannot generate the same amount of heat as a commercial kitchen.
If you don't have time/skill/patience to season a wok & keep it seasoned, then get a non-stick. Just don't get a cheap one, or it will peel off in three months.
My own wok is one of these - Masterclass - and has withstood everything I can throw at it for over two years, without showing any sign of scratching, burning, evaporating or anything else detrimental to the surface. I treat it with little respect, though I only use wooden or plastic utensils for all my pans, & wash it in regular washing-up liquid (dish soap) with the same brush I use for everything else. The outside is scuffed & scratched, but the inside still looks as new.
And it only cost 30 quid [bucks/euros].
When you're throwing food around in this, you will quickly realise why you don't want a cast iron one… the weight.


How to properly make maple foam? So I got this great sounding recipe, but it only contains the ingredients, not the method. I am lucky that I don't have any problems putting it together by myself, there is only one thing I can't get my hands on really: Maple foam.

The recipe says it consists of milk, maple syrup, gelatine and vanilla beans.

I got all the ingredients, but before I tried anything I Googled, thinking that there is maybe another recipe already out there for this. I found some things, like a guide where the foam turns into a rock hard candy. I don't think this is what I want, as my recipe is for ricotta pancakes.

I also found this recipe: http://400caloriesorless.com/?tag=maple-foam
But the maple foam in there does not contain any gelatin (and does not look really foamy to me).

Then I found this, which seams more right to me, but I don't own a NO2 dispenser: http://thebellyrulesthemind.blogspot.de/2007/08/foam.html

A bit discouraged I just tried to whip milk to get some kind of cream (yes yes I know about whipping cream ;-) ), add some maple syrup and gelatine. Of course this didn't work out really well.

Because the recipe also uses vanilla beans I thought about bringing the milk to the boil together with the vanilla beans, then adding maple syrup and adding gelatine and beating it until it's basically at room temperature. This also didn't really work, the problem is that it never gets really foamy. So I guess thats the problem an NO2 dispenser solves. But maybe there is another way of creating maple foam? Maybe I was even on the right track?

It's not exactly what people mean by culinary foam, but you can make maple whipped cream. (It seems kinda like the original recipe you found was trying to do this, except it forgot that you can't really make whipped milk.) There are a lot of recipes you can find for this online. They probably won't be as concentrated maple flavor as a more pure maple foam, so a couple thoughts:

You can always reduce the maple syrup, so that you can add more maple flavor without adding so much water that you destabilize the cream.
You could use manufacturing cream, which has even more fat than heavy cream, so it's more stable when whipped, and you'll be able to add more maple.


Improvising Self-rising cornmeal This is basically the cornmeal equivalent of making your own self rising flour.

I have a cornbread recipe here and I have non-self rising corn bread. Do I do the same ratio of baking powwderand salt to make it self rising?

yes. That is the basic different between self-rising cornmeal and regular cornmeal.

From Food.com:
http://www.food.com/library/cornmeal-59

Self-rising cornmeal is a white or yellow cornmeal with leavening agents and salt added.
Substitutions: 1 cup plain cornmeal + 1 1/2 tsp baking powder + 1/2 tsp salt = 1 cup self-rising cornmeal


Chicken bone broth, what is the brown stuff at the bottom of the pot? I often make chicken bone broth using a simple recipe of chicken backs, chicken feet, water, apple cider vinegar, parsley, salt.  Ingredients are organic.  The resulting broth tastes excellent.

My concern is the brown crud at the bottom of the pot.  Pictures below.  What is this?  Is it normal?

Could be a lot of things, depending on how clean the bones were, but assuming everything was clean, then my guess would be bone marrow. It's exactly that color and texture:

(Source: My Life As A Foodie)

It gets darker when cooked - refer to the link above for more photos. Don't worry about safety, bone marrow is nutritious and delicious.

You're more likely to end up with marrow in your broth if any of the bones were cut, cracked, or broken, either intentionally or during the cooking process.


How long can vegetable-based foods be stored at room temperature? New York City health department forces restaurants to sell prepared food such as babaghanoush on a bed of ice in freezing temperatures. I thought that this was not necessary and I posted a question here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3326872 but someone replied that it was necessary.

Would vegetable based food such as babaghanoush or humus or pasta salad spoil in 3 or 4 hours and become dangerous to eat if sold in room temperature?

This is not an argument you can win. Say your prepared food item is a raw carrot. Clearly carrots are safe at room temperature for weeks and months. They might get rubbery and unpleasant, but they aren't going to make you sick. You can probably even prove this. Now consider a bowl of chicken stock. Rich in both nutrients and water, bacteria are going to love growing in it and even an hour or two at room temperature might be dicy. And between those two things you have items like baba ganoush which, yeah, is probably ok for a few hours. But that's not the point.

Inspectors and rules can't do "spectrum" and they can't do "read the ingredient list" or "read the ingredient list and cooking instructions" (since raw beaten eggs would poison you way faster than a hardboiled egg would.) They need a simple rule that inspectors and vendors alike can understand and enforce. The actual facts of how that particular dish spoils do not and cannot come into it. Customers, vendors, and inspectors need to see at a glance "yes, this place is following the rules" not "well, that might be ok but I'll need to see whether or not they have icing sugar in this version".

It's not about what would be safe at home. It's not about the science of bacteria growth. It's about overall consistency and overall safety. A beautifully-optimized set of rules with 10 or 20 or 50 categories might feel fairer, but would confuse entry-level employees, require tons of signs, labels, written procedures etc, and a vendor would never be completely confident that an inspector wouldn't say "this isnt A-1B dip, it's clearly A-2B dip and I'm writing you up!"


Why does rinsing lentils create foam? Is this natural? I ran out of organic brown rice today, and I happened to have some lentils, but when I went to rinse them with the spray nozzle on my sink (set to warm) they started to create a bubbly foam. The lentils were in a bowl not a strainer. I'm not used to this, so I'm wondering if it's natural. But I'm also recalling how when I made homemade potato chips and when I rinsed thin slices of potatoes I got a similar foaminess.

What's causing this foam? Is it natural with lentils?

Yes, it's perfectly natural. Dust being rinsed off the outer surface of the lentils makes the water more viscous and helps to trap air in the form of small bubbles. In a strainer, the dust would be rinsed away, so you don't see the same effect; a spray nozzle especially adds a lot of turbulence, which causes more air to get trapped. You can get similar results when rinsing many processed, dried grains or pulses.

The effect from potatoes is similar, but it's caused by proteins in the potato being rinsed out into the soaking water. Neither has anything to do with the presence of arsenic, so don't worry.


Queso fresco / queso latino is raw food? In Spain, you can find "Queso latino" in the supermarkets (at least in DIA). It comes in sealed plastic bags as it contains a lot of water and quite soft. I understand that in other locations it's name might be "queso fresco". I've found here some photos of the product and it's varieties here.

My question is, if this variety cheese can be considered raw food.

I think that a good definition of raw food cheese is that it's made of unpasteurized milk and it's not heated above or 40°C

In order to separate the curd from the whey, the milk is heated to a boil, so no, I would not consider this a raw food based on the definition you have in parenthesis.

Edit: In response to the clarified definition of raw food cheese, I would still say queso fresco does not qualify since the milk is heated well above the 40 degrees Celsius in the process of making it. I believe you can use either pasteurized or unpasteurized milk to make it. It's very similar (almost identical) to Indian paneer.


Baking great chewy oatmeal cookies with Quaker Instant Oatmeal Fruit packs I recently bought a box of Quaker Instant Oatmeal Fruit and Cream Variety Pack, and I want to use a few of the packets for baking cookies.

Can these packets be used in a regular oatmeal cookie recipe to bake chewy oatmeal cookies?

You probably could, but it'd be a little difficult to get right.

You'd want a recipe that calls for instant oats, since that's what's in your packets. And they're also close to 1/3 sugar by weight, so you'd need to reduce the sugar in the recipe. Depending how much of the sugar that ends up being, that could cause additional problems, because creaming sugar and fat together is an important part of many cookie recipes. If most of the sugar isn't available to cream with the fat, you'll get a different texture than the recipe intended.

So I'd suggest searching for "instant oatmeal cookie recipes" or similar, to try to find recipes that are actually intended to be made with instant oatmeal packets. You'll probably have a harder time finding really good, reliable recipes than you , but I'm sure you can find something that's good enough.


Salmonella in eggs that been used in mousses and other desserts in their raw state The following text is from the FDA site:

  What is Salmonella? Salmonella, the name of a group of bacteria, is a
  common cause of food poisoning in the United States. Most people
  infected with Salmonella develop diarrhea, fever, abdominal cramps,
  and vomiting 12 to 72 hours after infection. Symptoms usually last 4
  to 7 days and most people get better without treatment. However, in
  some people, the diarrhea may be so severe that they need to be
  hospitalized. In these patients, the Salmonella infection may spread
  from the intestines to the blood stream, and then to other body sites
  and can cause death unless the person is treated quickly with
  antibiotics. Certain people are at greater risk for severe illness and
  include children, older adults, pregnant women, and people with
  weakened immune systems (such as transplant patients and individuals
  with HIV/AIDS, cancer, and diabetes).

Salmonella do really exists sometimes in raw eggs. And lots of chefs, use raw egg whites to make mousse au chocolat, and some chefs uses raw egg yolks to in the mousse or other pastries, where they just beat it with some sugar and add it.

How chefs re-insure that the eggs are salmonella free ?

One alternative is to use pasteurized eggs.


Combine skim milk and cream to substitute for whole? In what ratio would you combine skim milk and higher-fat dairy to reach an equivalent of e.g. whole milk? I ran out of whole the other day making bread, tried to add a splash of half-and-half to 2%, but it didn't come out that well - but it must be possible in the right ratio, yes?

If you want a fat fraction of f, starting from cream with a fat fraction c and milk with a fat fraction of m, then the fraction of cream to use is (f-m)/(c-m).

All you have to do is multiply that by the total volume to get how much cream to use, and then fill in the rest of the total with milk.

For example, if you want to approximate 1 cup of 3.25% whole milk using 36% heavy cream and 0% skim milk, you need (3.25-0)/(36-0) * 1 cup = 0.09 cups of cream, or 1.5 tablespoons. So take 1.5 tablespoons of cream, and add skim milk to reach 1 cup.

Or if you want two cups of 10.5% half and half using 33% whipping cream and 2% milk, you need (10.5-2)/(33-2) * 2 cup = 0.55 cups, or about 1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon of cream. So take 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon of cream, and add 2% milk to reach 2 cups.

Unfortunately it's hard to provide a really useful table of examples, because fat content of dairy products varies around from country to country, and even within countries. Probably the most useful single thing to know is that you can use Google, e.g. search for (10.5-2)/(33-2)*2 cups in tablespoons to do the calculation from the previous paragraph.

For example, in the US, I believe:

whole milk - usually 3.25%
half-and-half - usually 10.5% or maybe 12% (can be up to 18%)
light cream - usually 18% (can be up to 30%)
whipping cream - usually 33% (can be 30-36%)
heavy whipping cream - usually 36% (can be higher)

Resources for finding fat contents if not given:

Wikipedia on cream
US/UK conversions (the dairy section)

Derivation is pretty simple. If x is the fraction of cream, then the resulting fat fraction is:

f = x * c + (1-x) * m.

This is simply a weighted average of the component fat ratios: x is the fraction of cream, so 1-x is the fraction of milk. (If you really wanted to convince yourself of this, you could write out the amount of milk in each component and the total, and the volumes of everything, and divide to get this.)

Solving for x yields the formula given at the beginning of the answer.


Where to locate thermometer in my Weber charcoal grill I am about to purchase a Weber charcoal grill. For optimal cooking, I want to be able to monitor and control the temperature surrounding my meat by operating the vents.

What is the best way to do this? Where should I place my thermometer and what kind of thermometer do you recommend for this task?

Per Amazing Ribs Thermometer Buying Guide:

The best method is a probe thermometer.  Position  the tip of the probe  at the level where the food rests, about 1 inch above the grate or rack, and one inch from the food.  You don't want it closer because of the cooling effect of the food itself.

You can suspend the probe above the grate with a clip if it comes with one.  Otherwise, make a ball of aluminum foil, and simply poke the probe through it for an improvised offset stand.

Picture from Amazing ribs article linked above

Note:  the referenced article is very long, and a wealth of detailed information.  Search the page for the headline "I'll tell you where to stick it" (about half way down the page) and start reading there (okay, read the whole thing, but that is the section that is directly applicable to your question.)


Factory brine vs home brine I frequently make use of brining as a tool to help yield juicy (and well-seasoned) meat--especially on pork and poultry. I am usually pretty successful with this technique and get compliments from guests.

On the other hand, I have in the past purchased factory-brined poultry and found it nearly unpalatable. These will sometimes say things like "up to 12% retained water"--sometimes even 16% or 20%.

What is the difference here? My hypothesis is that one of more of these factors are a detriment to the factory-brined birds

Concentration (e.g. 5% vs 15%)
Chemicals (e.g. salt vs sodium phosphate)
Delivery method (soaking vs injecting)
Age (freshly brined vs sitting for who-knows-how-long)

It seems to me that something about the factory brine is irreparably damaging the muscle fibers. In part, I'm interested so I know what to avoid in my own brines (e.g., for #4--do I need to be sure to cook my beast promptly after brining), and in part I am just intrigued by the difference.

I think (as is so often the case with preprocessed meat) it will often depend on who you buy it from. I often buy kosher prepared birds (which are always pre-brined salted) and I've never had any complaints. The nice thing about kosher preparation, is that it is done according to very specific rules, under strict supervision. It's not a factory process.

On the other hand, I cannot abide the brined birds from major poultry companies. Their primary goal is to increase the weight of the bird, not the flavor.

Factory prep seeks to minimize time and cost. They will use cheap ingredients (largely just water and salt, with no added herbs) and they will use whatever process takes the least time, most likely injection, which has the added benefit that they can force more liquid (and therefore weight) into the meat than would normally come from absorption. They'll likely insta-freeze it, so wait time is probably not an issue, but freezing causes its own issues.

I would say, for best results, take your time. A nice leisurely soak, real salt, and no pressure on the meat. For best results (talking turkey here) look for "Natural" or "Minimally Processed": if it says that, you shouldn't have to worry about competing additives.


What kind of meats are good for quick or cook ahead preparation, and are reasonably priced? This year I plan to eat more meat, and fatty meat preferred. I'd like to know the general level of price per unit weight so I can judge if it's "worth it", compared to how much I like eating it. If it makes a difference, I probably will be eating the meat all by itself (just adding some leaf veggies on the side, and that will be my meal).  You will probably ascertain that I'm not experienced in culinary ways at all, but simply would like to get data in this area of food availability/suitability.

For instance, I believe that beef rib eye is great to eat, can be prepared very quickly, has a nice amount of fat, but is pretty expensive.  Pork back ribs take a long time to cook tenderly, can be cooked ahead and be tasty and fatty.  But because of the bones, I don't know where that falls (more expensive/less expensive) with respect to rib eye.  There's also fatty fish, like salmon to compare.  All the way to canned or those little bags of tuna.

Optimally, I'd like to find a list of meats (cuts of meat) that included a price range (per edible weight vs with bones), the range of fat typically found in the meat.  The list would include the whole range of source animals (not just beef, or not just fish, etc, but all available in the US).

Pork shoulder/butt is very fatty. You can get a small one, since there's only one of you, and make different things.
For example, you cook it once, and you can have pulled pork to add to salads, sandwiches, omelets, refried beans.

Roasts are pretty cheap, I'm thinking Chuck roast, Sirloin tip oven roast, boneless Center cut pork roast.
One small roast gives me 3-4 meals. So you can cook 3 roasts at once in the oven and you'll have meat for about 9 meals.

Chuck steak/beef stew meat, is very cheap, and you can make delicious stews to keep in the fridge or freezer in individual serving containers.

Bacon is expensive, but if you ask for bacon "ends and pieces", it's very, very cheap (and it's also very fatty).

A lot of my suggestions will make way too much meat, if you're the only one eating, but they freeze well in small containers.

Chicken leg quarters are very cheap and fatty. You can make so many things with them. Shred it for salads, soups, coconut milk curries, or have it whole by roasting in the oven.

Canned sardines (in water) are cheap, and you can add something spicy to them (e.g. chili paste or paprika) drizzle some olive oil, then broil in the oven.

If you need help in preparing these foods, leave a comment and I'll try to help.


How much difference does the placement of the shelf in the oven make to the final outcome of a cake? Unknowingly, I used to keep the cake on the center shelf in the oven, then I realized that the shelf can also be placed at the bottom of the oven.

Does this make a huge difference in the final outcome?

If I put the shelf on the bottom, and then stack the cakes on the top of each other in a 28lts oven, will that make sense?

Do any special care have to be taken in these situations?

http://www.bajajelectricals.com/Majesty-OTG-2800TMC-pc-391-66.aspx

Yes, it makes a difference. In a conventional oven (even one with a convectiono fan), anything placed on the bottom rack is going to absorb less radiation heat from the oven element. That means longer cooking times and possibly the need for a higher temperature setting.

If you're following a recipe then it's best to use whichever rack the recipe says. If the recipe doesn't specify, it's usually designed for the center rack.

Now, using a different rack is completely different from actually baking one thing on top of another thing, on a higher rack. That will have a significant effect on whatever is underneath, and if it is particularly sensitive to the time and temperature (many baked goods are) then it is very likely to fail entirely. I once tried to bake two layers of cream puffs and the ones on the bottom were still practically raw by the time the top was done. I doubt you'd find much better success with cakes.

A convection fan may help in this case, but I still don't think it's enough to compensate for the temperature gradient you'd create by "eclipsing" one dish underneath another in the same oven. You are literally blocking the heat from reaching the bottom dish.


what is the ingredient that makes my takeout lo mein smoky tasting? Have a great place for Chinese takeout.  Love their Lo Mein.  It has a great smoky taste.  Alas when reheating left overs, the smoky taste is gone.  Would like to replace/add to the Lo Mein, but not sure what the seasoning is.  Can it be toasted sesame or something else.  It really is a great enhancement to the dish.  When asked, the Chinese restaurant said they make their own Lo Mein sauce...no help to me.

If I'm understanding your question right, you might be referring to "wok hei," or the "breath of the wok." It's the flavor that restaurant food has because of the high heat of the woks in a professional cooking environment, and home stoves have a very hard time reproducing it. I found it covered in another Cooking Stack Exchange here:

What Is Wok Hai And How Do I Get It In My Food?


Should any liquid, or liquid-like ingredient, be included in the water proportion calculations for bread? So I am just beginning on my bread making adventures and have been studying the concept of water to flour proportions for baking bread.

My question is about experimenting with other types of ingredients (e.g. replacing water with milk, etc.) and how to determine if what I'm doing is scientifically correct.

Should any ingredient that I add that is liquidy (I think I made up a word there) be calculated into the water % target?

So, if I start with a basic bread recipe that calls for 65% hydration and I decide I want to use water, eggs and sour cream do I weigh the eggs and sour cream and deduct their weight from  what would have been the water weight at 65% hydration?

Starting recipe:

1kg of Flour
650ml water

New recipe with experimental ingredients substituting in as part of the hydration calculations:

1kg of flour
200g of egg
150g of sour cream
300ml water

Is this the correct approach when experimenting? Or, am I missing something key (e.g. sour cream's hydration is likely not equal to water's on a gram for gram basis, etc.). I'm looking for some guidance on how to best approach experimenting with recipes so that the experiments are at least based on sound bread making principles (rather than complete WAGs).

Thanks for any help or guidance!

It depends on how exact you feel you need to be.

Rough Approximation

As a general first order approximation, the following ingredients can all be treated essentially as water:

Milk, butter milk
Fruit juice
Fruit puree
Milk, cream, sour cream, creme fraiche and similar dairy products
Even eggs

This is not perfectly accurate, of course, but for many applications it is close enough.

If you want to get more detailed and more accurate, you would have to find out a reasonable approximation what percentage, by weight, is actually water.

Dairy

For dairy products, like cream, this is fairly simple to do, as a second order approximation.  Just deduct the percentage of fat and assume the rest is water. For example, whipping cream which is 36% fat (check the label) is going to be about 64% water.  This is still an approximation as it does not consider sugars and minerals, but it is probably close enough for almost any non-industrial culinary use.

According to the IDFA (International Dairy Foods Association), sour cream is about 18% milk fat, so an approximation of 80% water would be quite reasonable.

Eggs

The University of Illinois provides the following information about eggs:

Whole eggs—74% water
Whites—88% water
Yolks—48% water

Fruit

This PDF from the U. of Kentucky Extension provides composition information, including water percentage, for some common fruits.  Most, with the notable exception of bananas, are in the mid-80 to mid-90% range.  Bananas are about 75% water.

Other ingredients

For other ingredients, you would need to do some research to determine the typical percentage of water.

Example Calculation

Based on the following recipe (from your original question), using second order approximations, we conclude:

1kg of flour
200g of egg         --  74% water, so 148 g water
150g of sour cream  --  80% water, so 120 g water
300ml water         -- 100% water, so 300 g water
                                   --------------
                                      568 g water

So this version of the recipe has a bakers percentage of about 57% hydration.  This is a little lower than your original recipe.

In truth, this may not matter so much as a starting point, because you would adjust the dough by feel as well as hydration percentage.

Other effects

While hydration percentage is an important contributing factor to the quality of your loaves, remember, any time you add ingredients other than the basic four (flour, salt, water, yeast), the additional content of the ingredients are going to affect the structure, texture, crust, rise, and flavor of your final product.

Sugars, fats, and eggs will all significantly change the loaf, both by affecting the gluten development, and by influencing how the yeast grows.


Differences between canned and fresh tomatoes I read on the web (including here) that canned tomatoes are usually more suitable for tomato sauces (in particular pizza sauce) than fresh tomatoes.  It is unquestionable that both are really different, but What makes them so different ?  Canned tomatoes aren't supposed to be baked already, or are they ?

I'm thinking it may have to do with the maceration in tomato juice, in which case one should be able to achieve similar results by making jars of fresh tomatoes.  Another possible (partial) cause could be that tomatoes are much more mature than fresh tomatoes a normal human would pick.

Of course I'm assuming we are considering similar tomato varieties (e.g. Roma, I guess).

Canned tomatoes, compared to fresh, are:

Cooked.  As part of the canning process, they are fully cooked.
Peeled.  Most canned tomatoes are peeled
Acidic.  For safety reasons, canned tomatoes often have additional citric acid added to the can (this prevents botulism growth)
Ripe.  The tomatoes to be canned are often vine ripened to a more ideal ripeness than retail tomatoes, and then immediately harvested, processed and canned.

Most of these attributes are actually an advantage in creating a pizza sauce, and so starting with a quality canned tomato may be far more convenient and flavorful than starting with raw tomatoes.


Crystallization of sugar solution, and oddly crunchy candy with fudge-like texture after eating I've been trying to recreate the results from:
http://cookingsciencetradition.blogspot.com/2010/12/crystallization-of-sugar.html

to very little success.

My process:

1: Add 1 + 1/2 cups white refined sugar, and an arbitrary amount of water to a pot.

2: Add some heat, and stir until sugar fully dissolved

3: Allow sugar to boil (without stirring) on high heat until 240F is reached

4: Turn off heat, and allow to cool until 100F is reached

5: Pour into mixer, and beat.

What goes wrong:

While the sugar is cooling, it seems to crystallize on the surface.
Then, during the beating process, it beats without turning into crumble, going from a clear syrup to a white almost crystalline looking substance (with visible strands within the substance resembling the etching seen in ribbon candy), but after only 40 seconds of beating, it starts to give the electric mixer trouble -- first starting to spew strands of candy at the sides of the mixing bowl, and then turning to crumble (identical, visually, to the crumble which is shown in the link I gave above) if left mixing too long. If I stop the mixing right when it starts spewing strands of candy, then it quickly hardens into a strange mass, almost identical to a very hard icing -- Hard, and visibly rough, fragile and crumbling when pressure is applied (though not turning to dust!), quickly melting/dissolving in the mouth into a very smooth, creamy feeling substance (not dissimilar to what fudge does in the mouth!) when consumed.

To be honest, I have no idea what is going on, or why my candy is behaving this way. Is there something obvious here that I am doing wrong? Is it possible that what is happening is actually exactly what should be happening? The reason I doubt this, is that the website I linked shows a picture of the result when the sugar syrup is cooled and beaten properly -- though my product has exactly the same color, it does not have the glossy shine which is showcased in the link's photo.

Now, it is possible that my thermometer is not calibrated correctly -- for the sake of faster problem solving, let's assume that my thermometer is of godly quality (though, I am still open to human error being the cause -- IE, maybe I misread the temperature during the cool-down process, and this is why it turned to crumble?)

Miscellaneous facts:
I live at 96.343 m above sea level.
Indoor humidity is typically around 53%. Outdoor humidity can be as high as 70%-80%.
I use filtered water

Questions summarized:

Am I making any obvious mistakes?
Does the ratio of water to sugar matter? I would think not, since the ratio between sugar and water is dependent upon the boiling point, and hence temperature of the mixture.
Is my altitude screwing things up? Could that cause problems with my (momentarily ungodly) thermometer?
Does humidity have anything at all to do with this?
Is anything even going wrong to begin with -- could it be that I am crazy, and what I describe is exactly what ought to happen?

Thank you very much for your time, and potential answers! I hope I can eventually get this right.

It looks like you are trying to make sugar fondant.  I often make a batch to use as seed crystals in my holiday fudge preparation.

Sugar Fondant

Sugar fondant is a crystalline sugar confection where the crystals are microscopic and suspended in a saturated solution of sugar.  Its texture is very short, and the mouth-feel is creamy.

Creating sugar fondant is relatively easy. In brief, boil a syrup to softball stage and cool it undisturbed until around 50C followed by rapid agitation until the fondant is too difficult to work.

Now for some specifics.

Multiphase Solutions

One of the interesting features of boiling syrups is the temperature is intrinsically linked to the composition of the syrup.  Unlike how boiling water transitions to steam at a constant temperature of  100C, syrups boil at a range of 110C to well over 200C.  As water evaporates from the boiling syrup, the composition changes to contain a higher concentration of sugar and the boiling temperature rises.

Be warned.  You are boiling a super-saturated solution.  Any crystallized sugar introduced to the solution will not dissolve and it will seed crystallization during the cooling stages.

Avoid stirring once the sugar has fully dissolved prior to boiling.  Use a brush moistened with hot water to wipe away any crystallized sugar on the side of the pot during cooking.
If you are adding any glucose to the syrup, add it after the syrup has come to boil to ensure that the other sugars have fully dissolved.

Candy Stages

The desired properties of a candy are principally derived from the candy stage to which you cook your syrup.  The sugars remain mostly unchanged chemically (though disaccharides may break down into glucose and fructose) regardless of the candy stage or temperature.

When making sugar fondant, you are aiming for the softball stage which is 110C to 120C.  You can take a dollop of hot syrup and drop it into cold water to check the stage in absence of a good thermometer or if altitude / humidity are affecting your candy.  So long as you do not scorch the sugar, you can add water and lower the temperature to restore the syrup to the desired candy stage.

Crystallization

The most important part of a sugar fondant is the formation of microscopic crystals.  The syrup must cool to 50C before agitation to create the desired crystal size and distribution.

One difficulty that I have found is that I cannot let the syrup cool within the bowl of my stand mixer - the syrup cools unevenly which typically induces crystal growth.  This is especially difficult for fondant, as it must be worked for a significant amount of time to crystallize.

Depending on your desired purpose for the fondant, you may let the syrup cool to a lower temperature or agitate less to keep the texture longer or more pliable.  If you agitate at a higher temperature, the syrup will form crystals that grow tremendously during agitation and make the fondant grainy or crunchy.

But Why Is It Crunchy?

Chances are, you have undissolved sugar in the syrup.

Be sure all of the sugar dissolves before you add any glucose to your syrup.
Don't stir once it begins to boil.

Your syrup might be at a higher candy stage.  If you somehow managed to reach soft crack or hard crack, this might prevent the syrup from forming any crystals and resulting in an amorphous sugar glass.


Suppliers for plain flavoured pop rocks Does anyone know of suppliers that I can buy plain flavoured pop rocks. The grocery stores around here only sell the fruit flavoured variety. (From Vancouver BC)

ok, some kind of weird internet zeitgeist going on, but Instructables.com had a post up this morning on how to make your own: http://www.instructables.com/id/Pop-Rocks/

now you can make your own!


Is salt needed for a souffle to rise? I made a crab pudding/souffle (lots of egg whites) last night and it didn't rise at all.  I've made it before successfully, but this time I didn't put any salt in because I felt the result had been too salty before.  Could the lack of salt be the culprit?  Or do I just need to perfect my whipping & folding techniques???  Thanks!

No, salt actually destabilizes egg white foams. The small amount added to a souffle won't ruin the souffle, but the meringue will actually hold a bit better without it.

There are many reasons for a souffle to not rise (overbeaten whites, bad folding, wrong base consistency, wrong oven temperature, etc.) but salt is not one of them.


Effect of liquified hazelnuts on chocolate tempering? I would like to ask if roasted and liquified hazelnuts will negatively affect the tempering of milk chocolate?

I have hazelnuts that I have roasted and liquifed by using a high-quality blender. Subsequently, the hazelnuts were passed through a strainer to filter out large nuts.

During the high-temperature phase of chocolate tempering, I plan to add the liquified hazelnuts and the 1/4 unmelted chocolate (seeding method). Will my temper be negatively affected?

You are making Gianduja - and if you make chocolates out of it, they're Giandujotti - singular form Giandujotto; The name might help you find sources of information.

The tempering process will be basically the same (I've seen sources suggest 2°C below temperatures for white chocolate temperatures at all times), but keep in mind that it won't be as melt resistant and as such not particularly good for enrobing.


What can I use as a substitute for canned refrigerated biscuits in monkey bread? I'm making monkey bread and I need refrigerated biscuits. I don't have any, however, and I don't really want to go buy them. What could I use instead of refrigerated biscuits?

Using refrigerated biscuits for monkey bread is actually just a convenient shortcut - if you don't have pre-prepared biscuit dough at hand, you can simply make your own sweet yeast dough from scratch, that's the classic (pre-Pillsbury-can) recipe.

Either find a recipe that uses sweet yeast dough from scratch or substitute your favourite sweet yeast dough. (The Wikipedia page linked above has a link to a recipe, for example.)


What are the main differences between sugarcane jaggery, rapadura, and panela? Jaggery, rapadura and panela are very similar ingredients according to their Wikipedia articles. However, jaggery can be made from not only sugarcane but also palm sap.

Is there a difference between sugarcane jaggery, rapadura, and panela? The jaggery article implies they are the same thing, the rapadura article does not mention jaggery or panela, and the panela article implied that rapadura is the same as panela but not exactly the same as jaggery:

  Common Spanish names: chancaca, papelón, piloncillo, panocha, rapadura, atado dulce or empanizao. In India and Pakistan a similar product is made which is called gur or jaggery. In Brazil, it is known as rapadura.

I am most familiar with panela and have replaced it with Mexican piloncillo without noticing a big difference. I would like to know if I could easily use panela or piloncillo instead of jaggery in a recipe.

If your question is if we can, the answer is yes. Rapadura = brown sugar tablet. The brown sugar is very similar to panela and jaggery.

The difference is the source of raw material, and the origin of the country where it is processed obtain the sugar. Jaggery is in Asia, brown sugar and panela or rapadura in many Latin American countries.


What Cheese Culture is best to use in making Camembert cheese? I'm planning to make camembert cheese but I'm confused on what cultures to add. Any tips?

I can see why!  Let's do a round up:

Rikki Carroll recommends Flora Danica, Penicillium Candidum, and Geotrichum Candidum
Gavin Webber recommends Mesophilic direct set culture, plus Penicillium Candidum
Curd Nerd recommends Flora Danica and Penicillium Candidum
Country Brewer recommends "camebert cheese culture" which doesn't help at all
Food52 recommends either Flora Danica or Mesophilic culture, and Penicillium

Given the above, I'd tend to go with Flora Danica and Penicillium Candidum, at least for a first try.  At least the amounts seem to be consistent: 1/4 and 1/8 teaspoon, respectively.  According to Carroll, the Geotrichum helps give the Camembert a thick, fuzzy white rind, so use it too if you can get it.
Caveat: I haven't made this cheese myself, and my friends who have aren't available for questions this weekend.


What is the simple method to avoid the scab from hand after pealing colocasia roots.? I used simple knife for cutting  roots, while cutting them scab starts on my hands. I can used coconut oil on my hands before start cutting them but it was not effective tell me some methods to avoid this

The colocasia root (also known as the taro root) has calcium oxalate near the surface under its skin. This makes it toxic to eat uncooked and can irritate the skin.

Common methods to avoid skin irritation are oiling the hands (which isn't working for you), peeling them under running water, which rinses off the irritants quicker, and lastly is wearing gloves.

I would recommend getting a box of food grade latex gloves, that should keep your skin from coming into contact with the irritants. Doing it under running water also wouldn't hurt.

Source


Can a semisweet chocolate be substituted with a belgian chocolate? Can I use belgian chocolate as a substitute for semisweet chocolate for baking brownies?

The two labels are referring to entirely different aspects of the chocolate, and are completely unrelated.

Semi-sweet refers to the approximate amount of cacoa solids versus sugar in the chocolate.

Belgian refers to the location of the processing plant where the cocao beans were processed into chocolate.

The label for your chocolate should indicate a percentage of cocao solids, or a label like "semi-sweet" or "bitter-sweet" although these terms are not very tightly or uniformly regulated around the world.

Most brownie recipes are going to be very tolerant of the particular chocolate used, so the substitution should work well, especially if your Belgian chocolate happens to be in the approximately semi-sweet range.


Do you need to rinse vegetables that can be peeled? When using garlic or onions - is it redundant to rinse them in water, being that you take off multiple layers before preparation?

While I don't always practice what I preach, in the interest of food safety, I would recommend rinsing any vegetable or fruits before peeling.

The reason for this is that when you cut into an unwashed vegetable or fruit, any contaminants on the outer surface are transferred to the part of the item you are going to eat.

While it doesn't happen often, some foods have been contaminated by E. coli, salmonella, pesticides, fertilizer residue, etc., when not rinsed first. In the worst cases people have become ill from it.

Garlic may be the exception as the outer peel is usually removed by hand before doing anything to the individual cloves. (Except when roasting and the top is cut off.) Onions could also be an exception if you are able to remove all of the outer peeling so that your knife will not go through it when cutting the onion.


Can I make fried chicken without a deep frier? I've made southern style fried chick before and really enjoy it but found using all the oil to be quite expensive. Could I:

A) Pan fry it? (I know this one is a stretch but could it work if the chicken breast was precooked?)

B) Only make it so the oil covers half the chicken then rotate them half way through?

C) Could I add oil to the batter and bake them?

Would I have more success with these techniques if used thinly sliced raw chicken breasts and made them more like chicken fingers?

B is your best bet. In fact, that's the original (And IMO, best) way to do it!  Find a nice heavy cast iron skillet, fill it around halfway with oil, and then fry your chicken and rotate it in the pan as needed

Here are some links:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/deep-south-fried-chicken/

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/fried-chicken-recipe.html


"Frying" an egg in soy souce? What will happen if I fry an egg in soy sauce instead of oil? Has this been done before?

I am aware soy sauce is not a fat thus not ideal for this task, but I am interested to hear your thoughts..

As the comments note, this hasn't been done before because by definition, it's not frying.  Frying always involves cooking with a liquid fat.  This is a bit like asking what happens if you boil something in bacon grease.  You can do something similar, but technically it's not quite the same thing.

Terminology aside, you will probably want to use only a very small amount of soy sauce - too much, and you'll wind up tasting pure salt.  I think you might have trouble getting this evenly distributed with straight soy sauce, so consider diluting with 1-2 parts water as well before you add to the pan (which would make this a good candidate for Jolene's method).  You'll also probably still want to have some fat in the pan for the flavor it will add and to help reduce sticking.


Getting seasoning into a roast I'm getting into braising a lot of pork and beef roasts.  Standard routine: pick cuts with more connective tissue, sear on all sides, then into the oven with seasonings, herbs, veggies, and liquid (I use broth; can't use wine or beer, or add a bunch of fat or carbs, for dietary reasons), and cook for several hours at about 325F.

I'm getting good results texture-wise, but the inside of meat is always bland.  What techniques can I use to season the inside of the meat?  It seems like if I could just get some salt in there it would help.  With the pork, maybe brining is the way to go?  Not sure if you can even brine a beef roast, though.

I have only a partial answer that you may find interesting anyway.

In case of your beef recipes you might be able to use the chemical composition of the muscle fibers and they way they react to heating and cooling to your advantage. When you heat beef, the muscle fibers contract, pushing out some of the moisture. A phenomenon every cook will have encoutered.

A little used fact in kitchens is that this effect is reversible. Once let the meat cool back down to below the 60C temperature point the muscle fibers extend back out and "suck in" some of the stewing liquid that it is in contact with.

I use this effect very succesfully with lamb stews and espcially Rendang and other Indonesian stew dishes. It is often used as a partial explanation for why stews taste better the next day (Others provided here), but I have found that you can achieve similar results on the same day by rapidly force cooling the dish and then gently reheating before serving.

I must admit I'm not sure if you can use this effect to its full potential with larger cuts of meat, but I am quite sure it will help some with flavour penetration.


What's a good technique for cooking fresh corn in the microwave? What techniques for cooking fresh corn in the microwave give good results? Should I peel it, should I add water, salt, butter, etc.

I've done it in the husk, when it's fresh (ie, the husk isn't dried out), but I don't like the grassy flavors that the husk imparts.

My neighbor's clued me into a box of dry wax paper sheets to cover food for the microwave (so I can be lazy and not have to clean the microwave as often), so I wrap the corn in it after it's been husked and the silk removed.  I just roll in around the corn, twist the ends like the paper wrapping on taffy, then microwave it for a few seconds.

I haven't done it recently, so I can't remember exact times (and the wattage of microwaves differ, anyway) ... you just want to warm it through, though.  If you were going to try to get it hot, I'd consider dropping to medium power for a much longer time, so you don't overly cook the outside, as I vaguely recall having an incident once.


Is There A Better Way Than Straining To Clarify Lard and Tallow? The usual method to clarify lard or tallow is to strain out the larger particles and then  boil in water.

The fat rises to the top and when cold can be removed and is fairly pure.

But sometimes the fat is contaminated by particles that do not sink to the bottom of the pan when boiled in water and the resulting 'clarified' fat is a little discoloured and contains impurities.

Is there perhaps some additive can be used to clear these way or perhaps some different method of processing in order to get pure, pristine, white fat?

I've been asked to edit the question. Describe the whole process. Sorry I'm a bit late.

Well I cook with lard and it gets contaminated with food particles.  Fish. Potatoes.  Could be anything.  And I fry pork and collect the rendered lard from that.  And roasted pork too.

I put everything together in a pan with cold water and heat it up until boiling at a simmer and then let it simmer for a little while and then switch off, let it cool.

(If there are large lumps of contamination I'll strain them off now).

The fat rises to the top, the contaminants fall down.  Often the bottom of the fat has a layer of finer contaminants but I can scrape that layer off - the body of the fat is good.

What prompts this query is that I've now come across a situation where the contaminants are apparently so fine they don't separate out and fall down - the fat remains discoloured by their presence.

I am seeking a way to clear it completely.

When I have rendered lard, I have generally just heated the solids with just a little water at the bottom of the pan over low heat.  I never let it get to a boil, and this does take a long time.  When the fat is all liquid, I pour it through a strainer lined with cheesecloth into a second vessel, then pour the strained liquid into jars.  I have not had issues with impurities - my rendered lard is very clear and white.  I have found straining to be very effective.

You don't mention the amount of heat or exact process you are using, so I can't speculate as to what your exact situation is, but it's possible you are trying to do this over too high heat.


How to bake with self raising flour? Is it possible to use self raising flour instead of all purpose and letting it raise with yeast? Also, is it necessary to add baking soda to self raising flour?

Nope.. If you use self raising flour with yeast, the bread would come out like a cake..

Self raising flour already has baking powder added to it but if the recipe calls for self raising flour along with baking soda then add it...


Care Instructions for PTFE Nonstick Pan: Function of First Use 'Seasoning' After purchasing a PTFE nonstick pan, I noticed something in the Use & Care Instructions with the product for first use:

  Before using your cookware for the first time, hand-wash with warm, soapy water and dry thoroughly. Then season by lightly rubbing cooking oil onto the cooking surface and heating the cookware over medium heat for two to three minutes. When cool, hand-wash in warm, soapy water and rinse.

This seasoning process is of particular note since the IMPORTANT section restates (caps quoted):

  SEASON YOUR COOKWARE BEFORE ITS FIRST USE

For the nonstick usefulness of the PTFE coating, it's obvious that the goal is not develop a coating of oils as is standard practice with cast iron. The instructions make no reference to repeatedly applying oil as part of caring for the cookware. What functional use would this single-cycle of oil provide? Removing surface contaminants? Surely regularly frying in the pan would provide enough exposure to oil that would then be washed off.

Non-duplicate note for Should I season a Teflon-coated stainless steel frying pan: this question is not about trying to season the PTFE pan, but why applying oil is advised as a not-really-seasoning first task. Defeating the non-stick coating by making something stick is not the desired goal.

What functional use would this single-cycle of oil provide?

I'll be reckless enough to say: none at all. There is no reason to do it.

Stuff gets printed on labels for all kinds of reasons. My best guess is that they either reused the booklet from a pan type which needs seasoning, or a package designer who did not know enough about PTFE pans wrote down what he believed to be true of all pans, and no technical person checked it. Besides this, there is a number of other explanations why information can end up being wrong, including information provided by the manufacturer about their own product.

Trying to season a nonstick pan is actually harmful, as even a good coating will be worse than a nonstick. If you follow the halfhearted instructions given here, you are likely to end up with a bad beginning of a patchy coating, which is quite a pain. So, you would be risking your brand new pan for no reason.

Disregard, and do not season the pan.


Can I use yogurt cheese in cheesecake by substituting the cream cheese? It is very hard to find cream cheese or mascarpone where I live in India, so I just wanted to know whether I can make a cheesecake with yogurt cheese or not?

I hope I am not making a wrong assumption here. But German quark is a soft cheese with somewhat creamy consistency which is made from a yogurt variety (or at least a cultured milk variety) .

If "yoghurt cheese" is similar to quark in the way I think it is, you are probably better off not making a substitution, but use a recipe which was made for quark (or topfen, which is the Austrian word for the same cheese). They will probably give you a better result than a substitution. The search term to use would be Käsekuchen, this is the German version of cheesecake, and it is traditionally made with quark. If you cannot decipher a German recipe, I noticed that Google returns some results for "Käsekuchen recipe", you can specify results in English in the advanced search options if needed.


What should I use for old recipes that call for 'buttermilk'? Old-school buttermilk is the milk left after churning butter and is not today's 'cultured buttermilk'.

A recent answer to the question about what to use for 'sweet milk' mentions :

  Buttermilk was what was left after the soured milk had been churned and the butter removed. There were always small particles of butter left in it

For years I had assumed that skim milk was the best substitute (as it's milk with the fat removed), but this suggests that it's both soured and has a little bit of fat left (but not even close to homogenized).

Is there something roughly equivalent available today, or something that I can make to approximate old-school buttermilk without churning my own butter**?

** It also hints that today's 'sweet cream' butter is not the same as butter in the old days.  I don't know if 'cultured butter' might be closer, or a blend of cultured & sweet cream butters.

Clarification: I am not looking for a replacement for modern 'cultured buttermilk'.  I'm quite aware of the substitution for today's buttermilk when baking of using milk plus an acidic liquid, or of thinning yogurt.  It's possible that this is also a good substitute for historical buttermilk; if so, please acknowledge in your answer that you're aware that they're different.  If you've spent time on a dairy farm, please let us know if the dairy was using fresh or soured milk for their butter (because everything that I've found said that it was made with soured milk historically).

From The Settlement Cookbook (1945), in the discussion of dairy products (pp. 45-56):

  Cream is the fat that rises to the top of the milk if left standing.  For Whipping Cream, see page 498.
  Skim Milk is the milk left over after cream has been skimmed off.
  Buttermilk is the liquid left over after cream is churned into butter.
  ...
  Cultured Sour Cream and Buttermilk may be obtained from most milk dealers.

In this case, it doesn't specifically mention that soured milk is used, but I've seen other references from the late 1800s to early 1900s that said that butter was made from soured milk.  (and one of them would occasionally say 'new milk' instead of 'milk', suggesting that their use of 'milk' was sour milk or buttermilk.   I suspect that before refrigeration, it's quite possible that milk left to separate into cream would sour by the time it was finished.  They do mention in that same section:

  Sour Milk is valuable in cooking and may be obtained by keeping milk (preferably raw milk) undisturbed in a shallow covered pan at a temperature of 90° to 100°F. until it becomes thick and clabbered.  If it sours too slowly it becomes bitter.

Given the variabilities in "buttermilk" from place to place and time to time, you should get sufficiently equivalent results by substituting modern cultured buttermilk. That's the job it was designed to do.

Recipes from the early 19th century and before are notoriously vague. They were generally written more as reminders of something you already knew through experience, rather than detailed instructions for creating it from scratch. Quantities and temperatures were much harder to control, and so recipes basically assumed you'd recognize a dough with enough liquid or a sufficiently-roasted quail. (One of my favorite instructions from an 18th century cookbook: "Cook until it is enough".)

Given those wide margins, you should find that simply using cultured buttermilk will make the recipe work. It's true that it will lack the tiny bits of butter present in "true" buttermilk, but there isn't enough to have a radical effect on the result. The really important parts (dairy protein, water, acidity) are present, in about the same quantities they would be in true buttermilk.

You'd certainly notice the difference if you were to just drink it straight. If that's what you want, you're just going to have to find somebody who makes it, or do it yourself. I've found it's often available at the kinds of farmers markets that insist on local producers. Personally, I find it nasty, but YMMV.

So if you're trying to revive an old recipe, just start with commercial buttermilk. You're going to have to tweak it from there anyway. If it needs richness, add butter, but probably only a teaspoon per cup.


What water temperature should be used for instant coffee? I just put instant coffee in my cup and pour the water. My question is, what temperature should that water be?

You have quite a bit of leeway with Instant Coffee.  You can brew it using water of your desired temperature. I would recommend using water just below boiling point though, around 95-99 degrees Celsius.  You could use 85-95 degrees Celsius water as well; it won't make a big difference in terms of extraction of flavour, and here is why:

How instant coffee is prepared in the factory:

Coffee beans are roasted
They are ground very finely (0.5 mm - 1.1 mm in diameter)
The ground coffee is mixed with water in percolation columns which reaches 155 - 180 degrees Celsius.  This is the extraction process.
This mixture is then concentrated and/or dried using vacuum evaporation, freeze drying, or spray drying methods.

The result from this is what you get in the store.

Conclusion:

All of the very particular factors that one must consider when trying to make great coffee have already been decided for you.  You have no control over roast, grind, time from grind to extraction, extraction time and temperature, or time from extraction to consumption.  All of this been decided for you.

It is up to you.  Brew it at whatever temperature you like to drink your coffee at.

However, it may be slightly harder to dissolve the coffee and get good flavor at cold temperatures.  Keeping it on the hotter side may be better.  That's just chemistry though.

Sources:

I am a professional barista and coffee connoisseur.
Instant Coffee Wikipedia Article


Fruit flavour profile Does anyone know of where can I find the flavour profile of most known fruits?Something like blueberry is a sweet-tart fruit as well as raspberry,etc.

From  this .pdf on fona.com  about flavor profiles:

  Everyone working to create a new flavor needs to have a common understanding of the desired flavor profile and the flavors they taste during its creation. This can be difficult since everyone’s perception, expectations and experiences are different. That’s why using words called flavor descriptors is so important to the flavor development process.

Follow the link to the .pdf for a list of flavor descriptors for many fruits and related items.


How do I cook rice in a steamer? I'd like to cook rice in my steamer, if possible. It comes with instructions for a bunch of food types, but doesn't mention anything for rice.

The bottom of the steamer looks like this:

I also have two of these to put on top of the previous compartment:

I usually get boil-in-bag rice and cook the rice in a pot on the stove, so I'm not really sure how to cook the rice with a steamer.

It is probably best if you pre-soak the rice before cooking. How long you soak it for will depend strongly on the type of rice and your ambient temperature. Try an hour to begin with. Thai glutinous rice is traditionally steamed rather than boiled. Use a porous container for the rice so that excess water or condensates could drain out and not make the rice soggy. As a hack, you can wrap the pre-soak rice in a towel and put the bundle in the steamer, just be prepared to lose a fair amount to the towel deal with the sticky mess on it afterwards.


How can I brew a stronger cocoa drink? I read here and here that cocoa powder could be "brewed" like coffee for a cocoa-flavored coffee-like hot drink.  Today I bought some cocoa powder and a reusable coffee filter cup, and I tried it out myself with a single-cup coffee maker.  I got a drink that seems quite promising, but it brewed very weak and watery.  How can I get a stronger cocoa powder brew?

You don't brew cocoa like coffee, with filtering. You drink the cocoa powder together with the liquid.
Making breed cocoa is super easy, just take a small pot, mix gradually the cocoa powder with cold water, them let it cook up like Turkish coffee. Then drink without any sieving or filtering. You can add sugar if you like.
If it is still watery, add more cocoa powder next time.


How can I get breaded chicken to stop from sticking to the frying pan? Whenever I fry breaded chicken cutlets, the first side browns beautifully, but when I turn them over, the next side always sticks to the pan. Consequently, one side is beautifully breaded, and the other side is bare of coating. This happens to any kind of meat that I bread. I use olive oil for frying- Ideas?

You might also use a well-seasoned cast iron skillet. This will have the double benefit of a high thermal mass so the temperature won't be down, and a surface that discourages sticking.


Cooking pasta in water temperature range? I'd like to know what is the temperature range in which pasta can be cooked in water.
I'd be interested in this in order to waste less energy/heat as opposed to cooking it in rolling boiling water and then draining away water that's still over 90 C.

If say the temperature window is 60 C and upwards, and the cooking time (as per manufacturer) is 5 minutes at 100 C, would it be reasonable to consider 5 min x 100 C as a sum that needs to be achieved, and calculate at which temperature water has to be heated to, then drop pasta in, keep heating until reaching a temperature in which the remaining cooking time can be achieved just by letting water cool down to the bottom of cooking temperature range?

Thank you

Cooking pasta (i assume dried pasta here) has two stages:

hydration
starch gelatinization

The hydration can be done completely off the stove, earning you back come of the cooking time and energy. Just soak the pasta in water, it depends on the type of pasta and thickness, if your soaking time is more than 4 hours, i would refrigerate it to avoid food-borne illnesses.

The starch gelatinization is the part that actually the pasta becomes cooked. Most starches gelatinize at 80C. That would be a good starting point for temperature, and since your pasta is already soaked, you just need to keep your pasta until you get your desired texture (mine is al dente) and cook in minimal amount of water to gelatinize.


How to dry homemade pork sausages with proper humidity and temperature? I am new to this and am attempting to dry some pork sausages. I was told to add a quarter pound of salt for every ten pounds of pork meat, which I did (I used ordinary table salt). I have the sausages hanging in my storage cellar which now stands at 9° C and 48% humidity.

What temperature and humidity do I actually need?  Is there a "magic number" to get the best results?  And how can I add more humidity if needed?

I'm assuming you're wanting to make classic dried sausage such as the salamis and saucisson of Italy and France.

Common salt is certainly the key to the drying process and a quarter pound per 10 pounds of meat is a pretty commonly used ratio, but you must also use a curing salt which helps protect against some of the truly nasty food poisoning bugs such as Clostridium botulinum. This just loves the warm, oxygen-free centre of a curing sausage and produces the botulinum toxin which kills around 5% of people who contract the illness.

Sodium nitrite (often called pink salt) or sodium nitrate (Insta Cure #2 - which converts to nitrite over time in the sausage and the nitrite then does the actual curing) are two commonly available salts.

One-half ounce per 10 pounds of meat in addition to the regular salt is a commonly-used ratio. Don't use more and be sure to keep it away from kids and your regular salt - in quantity it is very dangerous.

Something else I always use in dried sausage (but not hams or bacon) is a live starter culture such as LS-25 or one of the various stains sold as Bactoferm. Added to your mix at  two ounces per 10 pounds of meat with say three ounces of dextrose sugar and they will feed on the sugar and excrete lactic acid (just like the bacteria that you add to milk to make yogurt). This lowers the pH of the sausage which makes it even harder for dangerous bacteria to grow. It also produces that delicious acid tang to fermented sausage. If you use this, you hang the sausage in a really moist warm place for the first 24 hours to give the bacteria you added a head start (I have a tall old box with a lightbulb in the bottom).

As far as temperature and humidity goes, 60F and 70 percent humidity are ideal. Humidity below 60 percent can dry out the casing and meat surface too fast which can then harden and prevent the centre from drying (which will then just rot). You could try hanging the sausage above a bowl of water to increase the general humidity in the room.

Your sausage is ready when it has lost at least 30 percent of its original weight. Dry white mould on the casing is good, fuzzy black and green is bad. If you see a little you can rub it off with a cloth dipped in strong brine. Any sign that it is more than just on the surface and you'll have to bin the sausage and start again.

So to recap. Chill your 10 pounds of meat and mince it to your taste. (at least 20% fat gives good texture and flavour). Dissolve the LS25 in a little water and then add it, a quarter pound of salt, a half ounce of Insta Cure #2, up to a couple of ounces of spice of your choice (ground chilli and paprika for chorizo or fennel for something more Italian) a half ounce of finally chopped garlic, a glass of red wine and mix it really well. Then stuff into soaked casings, pricking out any air bubbles with a pin. Hang in a warm place for a day to get the good bacteria you added going, and then hang them in a cool, dampish place until the sausages have lost at least 30% of their weight.

I hope I haven't put you off - it's really as simple as baking a cake and homemade dried sausage is a tremendous thing of joy and beauty - but you really must get the ratios of salt and curing salt right.

If you want to be safe and make fabulous cured sausage I can absolutely recommend Cooking by Hand by Paul Bertolli and Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn which are both available in the US and Europe from Amazon.

But please don't eat your current batch. Throwing it away won't hurt like paralysis that starts with the face and slowly descends to the rest of the body, bringing death by respiratory failure...


What caused smooth homemade nutella to become grainy in refrigerator? I blended toasted hazelnuts in a vitamix until they were a butter, added melted chocolate, then added coconut oil to increase smoothness. Here are the amounts:

450 grams hazelnuts (unsalted, raw or roasted)
160 grams chocolate
50 grams coconut oil

Once it was blended, the texture was very smooth and silky.

After a day or two in the refrigerator, the nutella had become grainy.

When you taste it the graininess subsides as it melts in your mouth. This leads me to believe that the graininess is caused by hardened bits of oil, probably the coconut oil.

How can I further emulsify the ingredients to avoid this?

You're right, it's the coconut oil. Notice how shiny the batch was fresh? That's the oil separating. It would need constant stirring while cooling to keep droplets from forming. Steady cooling  - I got that graininess in ice cream once by freezing too quickly from room temp.

Got an ice cream churner around to try with just fridge temp?


How many meats can make a meatball? So I want make a Swedish meatball style meatloaf. When I make Swedish meatballs I usually use veal and ground pork, but I've always wanted to throw in some ground lamb and buffalo.

So the specific question here is for a meatball how many of these meats can I get away with including in these balls
Of juicy meat?

And more generally, what are the guiding principles in combing meats from
Different animals like this? Hoping there's like a periodic table of savory sensations I can put on the kitchen wall, but any anecdotal suggestions will be sufficient.

You should be able to combine as many as you want.  Pay attention to the fat content in each meat, as that can make a big difference in the yield as well as the texture.  However, even if you make a fairly significant change (for example, from 20% fat to 10% fat), it still won't be wrong or inedible, just different.  (Although, I wouldn't recommend trying anything insane like 95% fat.  It's no longer a meatball/meatloaf at that point.)

The meatballs I regularly make were derived from a Swedish meatball recipe.  I use 100% ground beef instead of the other meats, and it works really well.  Also, instead of the traditional Swedish meatball sauce, I use marinara sauce.  It's delicious!


How can I reduce the pungent odor of split pea soup? I love the soup, but hate how it makes my house smell.

Bake bread to go with the soup as you make it.

The smell of bread baking (sourdough in particular!) is usually enough to cut the smell of lentil / split pea / chic pea / fish soups and stews while adding the right elements of savory aroma to make the combined smell almost, if not actually desirable and palatable.

Any good yeasty bread recipe should do the trick. Another thing you can do is bloom some saffron, which mixes delightfully with the smell of split pea soup.

In short, taste your soup as you smell other things. When you hit on winning combinations, they're aromatically complimentary and create a sensory affinity. Many bistros (and bakeries themselves) rely on this technique to lure passers-by.


Can I use pearl barley instead of rice in baked rice pudding? I want to make a baked rice pudding with plums. I was wondering since pearl barley is sometimes used for risotto if I could use it instead of rice here too. Will it bet the sticky, sort of slimy consistency rice gets when boiled in milk?

In case anyone else was wondering too, I tried it and it worked fine. It's not exactly the same consistency as when using rice but I still enjoyed it very much.


Homemade Tofu Firmness So I am really getting into eating Tofu, and I want to get into making my own (since organic soybeans are alot cheaper then organic tofu).

My question is, whenever I buy Tofu I always by the firmest possible so it has the best protein to fat ratio.  When making your own tofu, is this something you can control, and if so, how do you?  In other words, how can I make sure that any home made tofu I make has the highest amount of protein to carbs/fat?

The measure of firmness has to do with how much water is pressed out during processing. If you are making regular (non-silken) tofu, you will simply press the tofu longer to squeeze more water out of it. If you're also making the soymilk, I suppose you could make the milk thicker too to cut some of the pressing time.


Can I make idli without rice? I want to avoid rice due to my diabetes. So can I make idli only with urad dal? Currently, I am using rice rava and urad dal in the same proportion and the idli comes out nice. Thank you

You can also do it with Yellow/green Moong Dal or Millet. I used this recipe before - it's a mix pf Urad Dal and Millet https://masalachilli.com/proso-millet-idli-no-rice-idli-recipe/


Dishwasher safe bakeware? The few times I've placed a standard muffin pan (or other bakeware) in the dishwasher I've regretted it.  The pans end up with spots of rust remarkably quickly.

What kind of materials/finishes are susceptible to rust, and what's really safe?  I don't trust the vendors to be honest here: some of my rusty pans are non-stick 'dishwasher safe' models.

Materials you can put in the dishwasher

Glass, both traditional and borax
Glazed ceramic
Vitreous ceramic (Luminarc)
Silicone
Stainless steel, if you don't leave it in there for days either before or after running the dishwasher.

Materials you shouldn't put in the dishwasher

anything with a non-stick coating
aluminium and other reactive metals such as copper and cast iron. Not any kind of "tin" either, or black ?
wood
bamboo
unglazed ceramic like earthenware

Border cases
In general, you can put enameled metal in the dishwasher, but if you splurged on a LeCreuset and expect it to last for a lifetime, it is better to do it per hand too.
Another border case are plastics. There are some which will deform in the dishwasher and others which will be fine. Generally, the ones used in food vessels (such as tupperware food containers) and in utensils (such as high-melting-point nylon spatulas) are fine in the dishwasher.


Is lavender used to season food? In almost every kitchen herb garden (at least around here), there is lavender growing. Is there anything that uses lavender for flavoring?

For sure! As you might expect, it's really good for desserts, as a light, spring-time flavor for cakes, frostings, paired with berries, etc. — but I have also seen it used with salmon and other savory dishes. Check out this for some ideas:


Microwaved rice, it’s not fluffy In the student dorms I'm limited to a microwave. So I microwave the rice, put in a colander and drain it. But the rice is not fluffy, tried different rices but it just doesn't texture right.

What am I doing wrong?

People have a difficult time as it is, to make rice fully.  The microwave isn't going to make it easier.  A rice cooker is advised.

Here is what I would do (if I were stuck on a food-less island with only a microwave).  And no, I'm not going quote any chef-books.  Rice is one of those things you ask a grandmother or at best, an eastern cuisine chef.

Different types of rice will require changes to the timing below.  Basmati and wild types take longer.

Wash the rice in cold water to rinse out the starch.  You should start to see clear water in the bowl when you've rinsed enough times.  This will take some of the sticky out of the rice.
Soak the rice in cold water for about 1.5hrs.
Place the rice in a bowl and add enough cold water to cover the rice plus one inch.
Nuke until the water is boiling but not much longer this should be about half of the suggested cooking time.  The rice should still be somewhat uncooked and hard at this point.
Drain in a colander, rinse rice with cold water.
Put rise in a bowl and Cover with a cotton cloth. put in the microwave on low (say 10% power) and run for 5-10 minutes (or more if the instructions asked for long cooking time).  The cotton cloth will absorb the excess steam and low power should allow the rice to get fluffy.  The flatter the bowl (shallower rice) the easier to get fluffy rice.

You may have to experiment with timing a bit.  I feel confident if you rinse the starch out first and finish with steaming on low with the cloth at the end, you should see results that put a sneaky smile on your face.

P.S.  All bets are off if you're using something like minute-rice or uncle-ben's.  Try with honest and real rice grains.


Does waiting for bread to rise before baking change its nutrient composition? Does waiting for bread to rise before baking change the amount of standard macro- or micronutrients present? I imagine that baking would evaporate any alcohols produced by the yeast fermentation. So the final product would simply have less sugar. Is this correct? Or is there more to it?

No difference in nutritional properties. It is just the difference between bread and hardtack. The "fermentation" isn't to make ethanol, but rather to release carbon dioxide in the bread which creates "air" bubbles making the product soft.


Is it ok to use sour cream as substitute of sour yogurt? I've seen many recipes that use sour yogurt as a main ingredient, but I've been unable to find sour yogurt where I live, and I wonder if it's ok to use sour cream instead of sour yogurt.

I know they're pretty much the same thing, but I'm not sure if it's going to change the composition/texture of the food by making this substitution.

If it's not recommendable, what would be a good substitution? For example would it be better to use plain yogurt? Like the one sold at Walmart even though is a bit sweet.

Thanks

Depending on the specific application, you may (and probably will) get good results, but the flavor and texture will be may be slightly different when you substitute sour cream for unsweetened, unflavored yogurt.

Consider that both of these products are fermented dairy.  The main differences are going to be the level of fat (based on the specific dairy item from which the product was fermented), and the level of acid.

In many applications, because the characteristics are very similar, the outcomes will be very similar.

In some uncooked sauces like tzatziki, you will probably get a delicious result, but it will be different since sour cream tastes slightly different.

In cooked sauces like stroghanoff or some curries, again, the result will be similar but different.  The one specific issue you may face is whether the sauce breaks, which will be dependent on the level of dairy fat in the sour cream or yogurt, not which one is being used.  So you may wish to use a full-fat sour cream for cooked sauces.

The one place where they are nearly freely substitute is baking, especially quick breads, where they perform nearly identically.  The flavor differences are not dominant.


Sandwich wraps always getting way to crispy I sometimes make sandwich wraps using water, flour, salt and oil.

I mix salt, wheat flour and a tiny bit of olive oil and add hot water until I get a homogeneous sticky dough and let it rest for about 45 minutes. After that I roll it out down to about 1 mm. I heat up neutral oil in a pan and bake the flat round dough until bubbles show up, then turn it over.

But they always get so solid in their centers they can't be wrapped without braking them. They are more like flat, toasted noodles. This happens no matter what frying pan I use or temperature I use to bake them.

What am I doing wrong?

If you are using a "tiny bit of olive oil," I'm sure you are using too little.  I have only made tortillas using shortening and lard and when doing so, my fat weighed-in at nearly a quarter the weight of my flour.  I don't know how you measure-out your ingredients, but that would be roughly 1/3 cup lard or shortening for 2 cups of flour (with a little over 1/2 cup water and maybe a teaspoon or so of salt).  Also, I always used water that was cool to warm - never hot.

The fact that you are getting bubbles is a good sign.  If you increase the fat percentage in your dough and still have problems, try rolling-out your tortillas thinner.

To be clear - I have never made tortillas using oil, I have only made them with shortening or lard.  But having said that, the fat is certainly an important textural component of this unleavened bread.


For a baking beginner, what cake icing you recommend? I am a beginner in cooking/baking.
I have tried a couple of cake and muffin recipes, the simple ones turn into a hard crust after a while.

There are good ones that need temperature measurements and are complicated for me to make like  "Cake Decorating: How to Make Buttercream Icing" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9xIxBbocYI

Is there a simpler one that a novice can make, for general cake or muffin icing?

Buttercream is pretty simple, start with room temperature butter, beat it until it's white, slowly add icing sugar, add small amounts of milk as needed to keep the consistency right.

For each 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) of butter, use about 1 1/2 cups of icing sugar (sifted) and 3 Tbsp of milk.  You can do it in a mixer, a food processor, or just use a bowl and a whisk.  I used a whisk a few days ago when I realized my large stand mixer is overkill for the small amount of icing I wanted and I found that microwaving the icing for about 10 seconds helped me stir in the sugar when it was getting too thick.


Maillard in a Pressure Cooker I was reading about frying in On Food And Cooking this weekend and it mentions that frying works so much better than oven cooking because oil has a far higher specific heat than air so it is able to transfer that heat to the food being cooked much faster than an oven. It then went on to mention that oil has significantly less heat storage capacity than water - according to this specific heat table, it looks like water has around 2.5 times the heat capacity as most oils. This got me thinking about whether there’d be any way to “deep fry” something in water. What I mean by “deep fry” in water is - get the water up around the temperature you’d get in a deep fryer, and then drop some food in. This way you’d get the same temperature as the oil, and therefore hopefully you’d have the same Maillard reactions, but none of the oilyness from frying. I’d like to give this a try. but there are a few important hurdles I’d have to get over first and I’m wondering if anyone here has any guidance. around a few questions this raises:

I did some calculations and it looks like I’d have to get the pressure up to around 70 psi above atmospheric pressure in order to get the water up around 155C - Probably I’d want to go a bit higher than this in practice. It doesn’t seem to be out of the realm of possibility that a pressure cooker could exist that could handle this kind of pressure (bicycle tires go a lot higher than this), but I only see pressure cookers that go up to around 15psi. Do pressure cookers that handle this high of pressure exist? Otherwise, might there be other kitchen-sized industrial equipment that could achieve this high of pressure and temperature?
Can I expect a maillard reaction to occur at high pressure, or will the pressure make the reaction require relatively higher temperature and therefore preclude it from occuring?
Can I expect a maillard reaction to occur under water? Everythíng I read about the maillard reaction mentions that it will only happen after the water on the surface of the food evaporates specifically because water keeps the temperature too low. This makes sense at standard pressures, but will the water in and of itself make the maillard reaction difficult or impossible (since one of the outputs of maillard is more water), or is the water mentioned ONLY because it keeps the temperature so low.  All of the references I've found that say water deters the reaction specifically state that this is because of the temperature factor.
Is there any chance that I’d get any crisping through this process? I’m thinking that if I depressurize the food while the surface is superheated (obviously I’d have to figure out a way to get it out of the water bath first), I’d get some amount of the water in the surface boiled away as the pressure dropped, and thus some crisping.  Might this work?

Obviously I’d have to set up a pretty crazy rig inside the pressure cooker to get the water and food pressurized without significantly cooking the food in the process, then have a setup inside the pressure cooker that drops the food into the water at a given temperature, and then pulls it back out after a set time. I’m thinking that my first step would be to get a super-high-pressure pressure cooker and drop some chicken into it, get it up to 160C or so, cool it and see what I get. It’d be way way overcooked I’m sure, but I think I’d be able to tell if I could get any reasonable browning in water, and proceed from there if the results were favorable.

I'd really appreciate any insight, either from experience with pressure cooking of non-traditionally-pressure-cooked foods, or other experience, or possibly from understanding more about how maillard works and what I would expect at high pressure and submerged.

Unless you are prepared to build some industrial strength equipment of your own design and then move everyone in the neighborhood away while you experiment with this, I fear you are taking your life in your hands.

Normal pressure cookers add a maximum 15 PSI to achieve a water boiling point of 121 C or 250 F.  Autoclaves, used for surgical sterilization, go to 30 PSI.  You are talking about going more than twice that.

There is no reason, based on the science of Maillard reaction, to believe that it would not occur at a high enough temperature.  The presence of excess water would normally inhibit the process because of temperature reduction, but your "super duper pressure cooker" would keep the temperature at a high enough level to allow the chemical breakdown to occur.  You might, in fact, discover that it occurs a bit earlier, as water tends to facilitate many reactions.  Caramel making comes to mind as an indicator of what might be achieved, as sugar syrup (OK, most of the water is gone, but in principal) browns when you get in the above 330F-165C degree range.

As to crisping based on quick pressure reduction (perhaps when your device explodes?) That seems less likely as most crisping comes at the loss of water, and you are, in effect, keeping water in contact with your food both in liquid and superheated steam form.  It would, most likely, be similar to a braised food surface, than a fried one.

Interesting thought.  Please don't try this.


What's the best way to learn what each seasoning is? For example, Iike cayenne pepper is spicy and marjorum has a smoky flavor. I just want to learn the different flavors of each seasoning, so I can know exactly what seasonings to use for the different types of food. Trying to educate myself, I want to become a chef someday.

Spices can sometimes taste different when their context(other spices and foods) or preparation is altered.  Other than trying known recipes, I occasionally taste an unfamiliar spice in several states over a period of time:

raw in cheek for a little while
Infused (like tea).  Try some plain, some with salt, and some with sugar, (an acid like lemon juice or vinegar may be a third option).
Cooked and raw with a grain like brown rice. Try some plain, some with salt, and some with sugar.
Cooked and raw with meat.

Some spices have surprised me, such as turmeric, which was familiar to me with savory dishes, but which I had never previously tried with sugar.  Some spices taste about the same everywhere raw or cooked but you'll find new uses, like cinnamon in broth, while others will only be useful cooked or uncooked.


Why do burgers sometimes fall apart on the grill? Sometimes when cooking a burger I have had it completely fall apart for no apparent reason. Is this due to using a ground meat that is too lean? I don't add anything to the meat and don't spend too much time working the meat in forming the patty.

In addition to the fat content, making sure the meat is cold while forming can help.


Where to buy a Scandinavian birch twig whisk? Our old birch twig whisk (from Norway) is getting old, and has lost several twigs.

Any idea how we can acquire one mail order or in the UK?

I remember my mom used to have one, found this site: http://jas-townsend.com/birch-twig-whisk-p-1279.html


Do I have to defrost chicken before cooking? I'd much rather throw the chicken in the pan straight from the freezer but I worry about the tastiness and tenderness. Looking for seasoned advice on this one.

Not a great idea. The oven cooks from the outside in, so by the time your chicken is done on the outside, it'll still be uncooked on the inside. If you cook it longer so it cooks through, the outside will be as tough as shoe leather and the inside will be just lukewarm enough to encourage microorganisms (that may have survived the freezer) to fester, which could sicken you.

Put it in the pan the night before, cover it (or not, as Alton Brown sometimes suggests), and put the pan in the refrigerator. When you get home from work or whatever, preheat the oven to 450 F, season it, and bake until done. When is it done? It's done when:

  The chicken is done when an instant-read thermometer reads 165 degrees
  F when inserted into the thickest part of the thigh (the legs of the
  chicken should wiggle easily from the sockets too.) Remove the chicken
  to a platter and let stand for 10 minutes, so the juices settle back
  into the meat before carving.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/the-ultimate-roast-chicken-recipe/index.html

Note that some would say 165 F is over done, but safe is better than losing a kidney to E. coli or other nasty microbeasties.


Should I reheat my eggs before using in recipe? I premade scrambled eggs tonight for this recipe (very early tailgate party tomorrow, don’t judge): https://www.hgtv.com/design/make-and-celebrate/entertaining/ham-egg-and-cheese-croissant-wrap

My question is should I reheat the eggs first in the oven before adding them to the crescent rolls and baking them? Or will the 15-18 minutes the recipe calls for be enough to warm the eggs through?

The time in the oven should be plenty for heating the eggs.


How does tangzhong (water roux) make bread softer? As I understand it, tangzhong in relation to bread making is an Asian technique in which a portion of the flour in the recipe is pre-cooked with water to make a roux, before being cooled and added to the rest of the ingredients. It is supposed to make the resulting bread very soft, often for days longer than non-tangzhong breads. I thought maybe it works by binding the proteins so gluten development is restricted, but I'd have thought that would inhibit rise, which seems not to be an issue.

Disclaimer: I have not yet made a tangzhong bread, but I believe I have eaten a few... My first attempt is currently doing a bulk rise.

How does tangzhong work exactly? How does it actually change the dough to achieve the distinct softness for which it is so famous?

The tangzhong is composed mainly of gelated starches.  According to Harold McGee's  "On Food and Cooking"

  During the baking of bread and cakes, the starch granules absorb
  water, swell, and set to form the rigid bulk of the walls that
  surround the bubbles of carbon dioxide. At the same time their swollen
  rigidity stops the expansion of the bubbles and so forces the water
  vapor inside to pop the bubbles and escape, turning the foam of
  separate bubbles into a continuous spongy network of connected holes.
  If this didn’t happen, then at the end of baking the cool- ing water
  vapor would contract and cause the bread or cake to collapse.

In the Tangzhong, the starches are already swollen before mixing begins.  This means that they do not need to compete with the proteins to absorb water as the completed dough warms up in the oven. As you mix the ingredients the plump starches perforate the gluten-water sheets.  As McGee mentioned, these starch granules' rigidity accounts for the spongy, close structure of the tangzhong crumb, dough with less perforated gluten mesh forms larger bubbles and a more open crumb.

The gluten in the flour used in the tangzhong is denatured by the process before it can form into an extensive network.  However, since the tangzhong accounts for only a small portion of the total flour used, there is plenty of gluten left to maintain structure during rise and oven spring until the starch structure sets.

Other resources:

Tangzhong Water Roux Pain au Lait: Soft, Springy Sandwich Bread