How to barbecue an egg? I recently discovered that eggs are outstanding in front country hiking:

inexpensive
nutritious
richer flavour than boiled
cooks in 10 minutes
just add salt.

The only problem is that they explode!

One thing I tried is vary the heat. My conclusion is that directly putting the egg onto feeble embers works best. This probably corresponds to having strong embers under an elevated grill.

Another thing I tried is punch a hole into the top of the egg - to relieve the pressure. Sometimes is works correctly, with the catch that relieving the pressure is equivalent to significant portion of the egg white falling into the fire. Other times the whole solidifies and the egg explodes anyway.

Assume the lack of a closed top barbecue, but availability of aluminum foil and basic dishes.

From what I understand, the usual way to campfire-cook an egg (without pots'n'pans, I mean) is to pierce a little hole in it on one end, I think on the large end so the bubble of air leaks out before any egg does, and then partially bury it right next to the campfire so it bakes slowly-ish.  I've heard of burying in earth or in ashes, depending on one's setup.  You can cover the top with a leaf (just make sure you know what it is a leaf of) if you're worried about something dropping through the hole while it cooks.  it does take a while, like ten minutes or so, it is a tradeoff of a slower method of cooking for a higher chance of not blowing itself up.  I've seen it done, it works pretty well.

So I mentioned campfire cooking since you talk about hiking, and because it's the closest method I know of to what you're asking, but since you're talking about a barbecue setup... that will be a bit trickier, since there's no convenient heat-sink right there to leave the egg in to bake.

The solution would probably be the same, though, it needs to be buffered from the heat so it bakes slowly (suddenness of temperature shifts or physical expansion being very good for explosions).  Piercing might still be helpful, though, depending on how fast or how hot it is cooked.

Loosely wrapping in leaves or other, hm, disposable wrappings.  I've seen suggestions of using a hollowed potato or an orange peel, just anything thick, moist, slow-burning, and nonpoisonous you might have on hand.  Even foil might work, though it'd take quite a bit to get a proper loose thickness since it conducts heat much better.  This method will make the heating a bit slower, and slower is less likely to explode, etc.  Again, don't just grab any random leaf, make sure you know what kind it is, if it's going to be in contact with your food.  Maybe even a clay or mud coating (optional inner foil to keep the egg clean), I've heard of it being done for fish and the like.

If you can find or make somewhere conveniently nearby the heat where the egg can be left, that might work too (especially if it gets quite hot).  Some metal shelf or hanging container or even something tucked right up underneath might work quite well, though this solution might take a bit of rigging depending on your setup.

Third option would be, if you're eating anything else with your egg (like beans, or anything saucy) you can poach an egg right on top.  You can just crack it on and let it cook, it's a known technique (a recipe would be something like "eggs in purgatory" which uses a tomato based sauce though one can use anything wet or saucy).  If you're cooking something more solidish and not saucy, like chopped veggies, you may be able to plonk your egg in with them, in the shell, and just let them serve as a temperature buffer.


How long is too long to presoak grits? I presoaked 1 C of Quaker Old Fashioned grits last weekend, but didn't get a chance to cook them. They have been in the fridge all week in the same water. Is it possible that anything inimical has grown while they were sojourning in their cool bath?

Yes it is indeed possible.

The available starches that have dissolved in the water are a super convenient place for the bacteria that is naturally found on foods to grow.

I'd say for grits 2 days soak is the limit, they can start to fall apart after that.

The ultimate test is the smell test, if it smells sour then it has started to turn. This is how I determine if I have oversoaked legumes or grains (life happens!)

Adding a little vinegar to the water may help prevent this for a couple dozen extra hours, but as you likely realize, soaking for no more than 8-12 hours is the way to go.


To what temperature should you take candied citrus peels? I have been examining scores of recipes for candied citrus peels and I am unable to find an answer to this question. Most recipes indicate pretty standard candy making instructions; heat sugar/water solution to 230, add orange peels, cook for some amount of time or reduce by some amount.

But that's the part that I'm having a hard time with. Time makes a big difference with candy making. Wouldn't leaving them cook for, say, an hour, produce drastically different results than 30 minutes? Why does there seem to be no recipe out there that uses actual candy making terms for this recipe?

I just need some idea of what temperature to take the sugar solution up to. I'm going to guess firm or hard ball?

I don't think you are looking for a specific temp (i.e.; crack or soft ball stage) after adding the citrus since you have already "contaminated" the syrup.  My preferred recipe is from Epicurious.com (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Candied-Citrus-Peel-107434).  I have used it twice with great results and am going to be making again very soon for the holidays.


How can I substitute dutch chocolate cocoa for flour and maintain proper recipe PH in this cookie recipe? I have an old family recipe for Chocolate chip cookies

2 ¼ cups flour
1 cup white sugar
½ cup brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1 cup shortening
1 tsp vanilla
Chocolate Chips as desired.
Add dry ingredients then wet ingredients to a large bowl, mix until well incorporated, seperate into golf ball sized dough balls, bake at 375°F for 8m15s

I want to make it into a chocolate chocolate chip cookie. I've followed advice from several online sources and just replaced about 1/4 of the flour with cocoa (so it's 1.5 cups flour , .75 cups cocoa). I've tried with both regular cocoa and dutch process and I really like the darker look of cookies that come out with the dutch process, however their texture isn't right. I have used this recipe and the flavors seem good, but I also want to get the texture right; the original recipe is very chewy, soft and moist, but the chocolate modification wound up much drier than I wanted.
After some research I found that the basic issue is that I've screwed up the PH of the recipe. I believe the fix involves substituting some or all baking soda for baking powder, but can't find a clear rule for how much. My guess would be since I'm effectively removing 1/4 of the acidic ingredients (flour, ph 6-6.8) and swapping them for ph neutral ingredients (dutch process cocoa), I should replace 1/4 of the baking soda with baking powder as well, but can't really find any information on how to go about replacing baking soda with baking powder or what ratio.
Edit: Upon more research I've also found that instead of modifying the baking soda I could just add some volume of cream of tartar, but I'm still not sure how to calculate this cost.

I doubt this is an acidity issue. Most flour is pretty neutral, the reason your cookies seem dry is that they are dryer. Cocoa powder is about 7% moisture, source doc here, whereas flour is about 14% moisture, see this site for details. Add to that cocoa powder is very fine, and likely more absorbent than the flour, and the fact that the dutching process makes the powder more absorbent. So the cocoa you add is dryer, and absorbs more moisture from the rest of the ingredients and you will need to add some in to replace it.

Looking at the math .75 cups of flour is about 85 grams, 14% of 85g is 11.9, rounded up is 12g. Cocoa has about half the moisture, so you have lost about 6g of moisture in your recipe, which is just over a teaspoon, under ideal conditions. However, often when flour is stored it absorbs more moisture from the air as it is not kept airtight, so you could be losing more. A dry cookie dough will sometimes have trouble coming together, and be crumbly, which is something I would look for in your case. I would try adding a teaspoon of milk or water to your recipe and see if that creates the right consistency, and then add another if it still wants more.


Flammable gas emitted by sausage While cooking a kielbasa in a toaster oven today, I noticed that periodically there would be flashes near the heating element. At one point there was a very large, bright flash of light and pop as though a flammable gas was being detonated. Some of the ignitions I was able to see in detail. Next to the heating element a small round flame would illuminate and waver then go out. It was obvious that some lighter than air gas was rising up and upon reaching a high enough concentration, igniting.

What gas would the kielbasa be emitting? My first guess would be methane, but why would a cooked kielbasa be giving off methane?

Cured meat should not be emitting methane- or any other flammable gas. That would be an indicator of advanced spoilage and you would notice the smell.

A more likely culprit, in my opinion, would be fat.

Fat burns well, of course, and sausage is full of it. Tiny splatters of fat can become aerosolized and travel a good distance where they would ignite on the burner.


Can I further ferment store-bought kim-chi? I find that store bought kim-chi is not very fermented. Real kim-chi, as I understand it, is pickled and then buried in the ground for a year.

Can I just bury store bought kim-chi in my back yard for a year to improve it, or will that not work? (Note that I live in a place with a climate similar to Korea)

First, as noted in Sneffel's answer, "real" kimchi is eaten at a variety of fermentation levels.

It is possible the fermentation would resume in store-bought kimchi, but only if it is raw and unpasteurized.  A lot of store-bought kimchi is pasteurized (depending on where you buy it), which would kill off the bacteria that would typically be used for fermentation.  Kimchi that is not pasteurized would typically be sold in a refrigerated section and would perhaps have a container/lid that would allow for gases to be released as fermentation continues.  (The only real way to tell would be labeling or contacting a manufacturer.)

In general, I would not advise trying to resume fermentation on a store-bought product, as you don't really know the conditions it was made under or whether continued fermentation would proceed safely.  (Chances are that commercial kimchi would be processed in a way to ensure its safety, even if stored at low but not refrigerated temperatures, but again, this is difficult to know.)

Kimchi isn't that hard to make to begin with, so if you can't find what you like in the store, I'd suggest just making it yourself and letting it ferment to the stage you prefer.


How to get a brown/burned texture on cornbread? I am using the recipe here to make oven baked cornbread. The image in the recipe shows a nice brown/burned texture. I was wondering if I have to brush the top with butter or egg to get that texture?

What I ended up with is a pale yellow top layer with no browning or burned texture. Like the top layer of this one.

Most likely you just need to turn up the heat a bit. Moving the rack higher might help too.

It's a little hard to say without actually measuring your oven, but that kind of thing can happen if your oven's just a bit cooler than it claims to be. So it'll take a little longer than the recipe says to bake, but the lower temperature means it won't brown as nicely. Turning up the heat will get more browning done by the time the center's done.


Under-watered bread dough: specific effect? I would like to ask what would be the difference between a bread dough that had a sufficient water component, vs a bread dough that wasn't sufficiently moisturized, in terms of the end result baked product?

Would an under-moisturized bread become crumbly and dry on the inside? Or is this more of an effect of lack of humidity in the oven during baking?

Finally, what parts of a bread recipe or its baking process would yield soft, moist insides as opposed to a dry crumbly inside?

The question is tough to answer in general for all possible bread types.  For most of the answer, I'm going to assume we're talking at least about a yeasted wheat-based bread, formed into something resembling some standard European-style loaf type.

  What would be the difference between a bread dough that had a
  sufficient water component, vs a bread dough that wasn't sufficiently
  moisturized, in terms of the end result baked product?

It really depends a lot on type of bread.  Very generally speaking, bread dough with greater moisture will generally end up with larger interior holes and will often rise a bit more. Too much flour tends to create strong gluten networks which toughen and, combined with the extra weight of the flour, won't allow the dough to rise as well.

  Would an under-moisturized bread become crumbly and dry on the inside?

Dry?  Maybe.  Crumbly?  That doesn't generally happen with standard wheat breads until they are a bit stale.

Most standard wheat-based yeast breads should basically never be "crumbly" on the inside.  Bread doughs tend to have higher gluten, which makes for chewy and elastic interiors.  Even when very tender (usually due to a lot of enriching agents like butter/oil, eggs, milk, etc.), bread interiors are rarely crumbly.  "Crumbly" is more of a characteristic of underworked lower-gluten baked goods (cakes, pastries, some quickbreads), which also tend to have a lot more sugar and enriching agents than bread doughs.  The whole purpose of kneading is to create and stretch gluten bonds, which will avoid crumbly interiors.  "Crumbly" also can occur in breads that are based on non-wheat starches with little or no gluten, or in breads that are packed full with other ingredients that prevent large-scale gluten formation.

Anyhow, if you end up with a (wheat-based) bread that is crumbly on the inside, it was likely not mixed enough to incorporate and hydrate the flour completely.  If the dough was dry enough for this to happen even with a lot of mixing, you'd usually see raw flour that can't even be kneaded into the dough, and the dough would be so stiff as to be unworkable.

  Or is this more of an effect of lack of humidity in the oven during baking?

Lack of humidity during baking is a desirable characteristic for many types of breads, particularly after the first 10 minutes or so.  During the first 10 minutes, steam generally is beneficial to most breads, since it keeps the crust hydrated for longer and delays its hardening, which allows greater oven spring.  After the first portion of a bake, low humidity allows crust formation and colorization (which increases flavor).

That said, there are some breads that are steamed or baked completely covered (effectively steaming themselves).  For enriched breads this can sometimes be beneficial in maintaining interior moisture.  But for lean doughs (e.g., baguettes or crusty French bread), high humidity will prevent a good crust from forming and may even leave the interior a bit "gummy" even when fully baked.  A lot of what we associate with "done" textures in bread is partially based on allowing the interior to dehydrate a bit as it cooks.

  Finally, what parts of a bread recipe or its baking process would yield soft, moist insides as opposed to a dry crumbly inside?

Higher water content isn't usually about a moister interior for the final product.  I've baked moist, soft bread doughs with anything from 60% to 90% hydration.  (Terminological note: that's the ratio of water to flour by weight, e.g., a 60% hydration loaf has a 0.6:1 ratio of water to flour.  That range covers almost all standard bread types.)  As I mentioned above, higher water content tends to produce more irregular (and larger) holes in the final product, also often increasing loaf volume.  By increasing the loaf volume, you also decrease the water concentration/humidity of the dough (since there's more air surrounding the strands of dough interior).  That means higher moisture bread doughs don't necessarily produce a higher moisture final loaf: in fact, the higher hydration doughs are generally used to create a crusty bread whose interior may still be tender but whose moisture content is low enough not to soften the exterior crust prematurely as the bread ages after baking.

So, if you want a "moist" and tender interior -- as you might find in standard white sandwich bread -- the easiest way to achieve that is with enriching agents, as discussed above.  Butter/oil, eggs, milk, and sugars to some extent, will all result in a softer crumb.  They also tend to decrease final loaf volume somewhat, which will effectively result in a more moist final product (even if the amount of water initially is lower than in a lean dough).

There are other more subtle ways to keep the interior tender, if you have a specific style of bread in mind.  But generally enriching agents will have a greater importance in tenderness and perceived "moistness" than the water:flour ratio.

All of that said, for most styles of bread -- if you decrease the water from a "standard" recipe for that type of bread, you'll often end up with a tougher bread.  Beginning bakers often make this mistake by (unintentionally) incorporating too much flour during kneading or shaping.


Lemon cake has no flavor I have tried and tried numerous recipes for lemon pound cake.  None of them taste very lemony.  I tried adding extra lemons n lemon extract but no real difference.  The only thing to make it taste like lemon is the glaze. What am I doing wrong?

The 'lemony' flavour in a lemon cake is from the volatile oils which are present in the fruit's zest,(mainly nerol, limonene and citral). I would'nt advise adding actual lemon juice to the cake as it will disrupt the ratios in the cake recipe and ususally the tart, zingy flavour gets lost anyway after baking. To get a really lemony flavour whilst still using a pound cake recipe (using the creaming method) there are several things which would enhance the lemon flavour:

Adding finely grated lemon zest to the sugar, then blitzing  with a blender (to release the oils) and leaving to infuse. The sugar is simply a medium to infuse into
Melting the butter (using it as a 'quasi' solvent) and adding it to some more lemon zest to infuse. Then once cooled use it as per the recipe requires.
Add lemon extract too (we're trying to get as much flavour as possible into the cake!)

And if all else fails, you can always soak the cake in a lovely tangy lemon syrup and may be top it off with some lemony cream cheese frosting!


Cup measurements: shake or scrape? When you are measuring out your flour, sugar, etc with the measuring cups, is it better to

scoop and then shake the cup to get a leveled cup, or
scoop and then use a knife to scrape off the excess.

I have been using the first method but will it make a difference?

I suggest to measure by weight as you'll never go wrong.

Otherwise, I use your second method which is to scoop then use a knifed to rid of excess flour.

Flour is so fluffy and needs to be compacted (somewhat) to get a true cup, therefore measuring by weight always guarantees the same amount of flour.


What is the best way to clean a grater? A grater is a very useful instrument in the kitchen and it's fun to use. You can use it for a lot of food: cheese, citrus fruit peel, nutmeg, all kinds of vegetables, etc.

But cleaning a grater is a pain.

Anyone here knows an easy and effective way to clean a grater?

Clean it immediately, before anything has a chance to dry.

As soon as I'm done grating anything, I run the grater under water and wipe it with a sponge. Wipe with the direction of the blades, then run a little water inside it. Optional: put the grater in the dishwasher to clean fully.


Making simple light cake with yeast Normally, baking powder is preferred to yeast for making cake. I wanted to make simple light cake with yeast (using bread machine), but I face a problem that is not addressed in recipes (at least, I was unable to find).

Bread dough is much harder than cake, and yeast cannot rise such a soft dough. To make it capable of rising, I added extra flour to make the cake dough harder (but not as hard as bread dough). As a result, the dough did rise, but when I started to bake, the dough started to fall down.

My question is: How to adjust simple cake recipe to perfectly work with yeast instead of baking powder?

There a are a few recipes for baking cake in bread machine. However, I am interested to know how to adjust available recipes (which are numerous) to work with yeast.

And I wonder isn't it problematic to keep the cake dough at warm environment to make the yeast work? since it has milk, and this temperature can spoil the milk (can?).

This is not really an answer,

but rather a report on an experiment.

After the discussion here I got very curious and wanted to compare what I would call a "yeast cake" (even though this is against the traditional definition, but the texture is more or less that of a spongy cake/quick bread) to the "same" cake made with baking powder.

To perform the comparison I divided all ingredients in two and the only difference between them was the leavening.

I tried to keep it really simple, and threw together some ingredients that I had in the house (using a simple quick-bread/muffin method).

Just so you have the feeling of what the batter was like, I will add my experimental

materials:

For each cake I used:

2 ¼ cups soy milk
¾ cup baking margarine
3 cups all-purpose flour (type 550)
2 cups raw sugar
¼ cup cornstarch
½ tsp ground vanilla pods

Then for one (A) I added:

1 ½ tsp dry yeast
2 tbsp sugar

and for the other one (B) I used:

1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
2 tbsp cider vinegar

For both I warmed up the milk and margarine just enough that it melted and added the vanilla, then let it cool down.

For A I then added the extra 2 tbsp of sugar and the yeast, and let the yeast get activated and work for an hour - the soy milk curdled and completely separated. When I made B I added the vinegar to the milk mixture and mixed - the soy milk got thicker and curdled a little. The baking powder and baking soda I added to the dry ingredients.

After waiting for an hour for A to do its thing (of course B was ready to put in the oven instantly), I poured the milk mixture into the combined dry ingredients and gently stirred, just enough for the components to combine. I poured the batters into oiled and floured pans and baked each cake on its own in a preheated oven for 40 minutes (this is when both passed the skewer test) at 350 F.

Results:

Both cakes rose to 2.5 times the batter height/level. However, B rose more evenly, whereas A rose a bit less towards the edge of the pan. B smelled like a normal cake/quick-bread, but A filled the house with a "doughnuty" smell (the most scientific term that can be used here would probably be: super yummy). When cooled and cut, both had a really (equally) nice bouncy, fluffy, slightly crumbly spongy texture. A had a bit more and larger trapped bubbles, see figures 1 and 2.

One of my taste testers (or is it test tasters) is quite sensitive to baking powder, and said B tasted a bit too much like baking powder. Everyone agreed that A tested a bit more complex. Both cakes would probably have been better with some nuts or chocolate or fruit, but I avoided these in order to have less complex experimental conditions, to make the cakes easier to compare.

Fig. 1: Side-by-side comparison of the yeast leavened "cake" (left) and the baking powder leavened cake (right).

Fig. 2: Zoomed in image of the yeast leavened "cake" (left) and the baking powder leavened cake (right).

The experiment was performed using an electric oven as I don't have a bread machine. A comparison between this two would be interesting as well.


How can I prevent scum forming in the water when I poach eggs? When I poach eggs, an off-white foam/scum forms on the surface of the water and sometimes attaches itself to the egg. Does anybody know what causes it, and how I can avoid it?

EDIT: I use malt vinegar rather than white vinegar, which I think discolours the foam/scum and makes it look more unpleasant, so I think I'll change to white vinegar.

The scum is similar to that which forms on stock; it is made of proteins which have detached from the larger protein matrix in the egg, forming a secondary protein matrix on the surface of the water. I know of no way to avoid it, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. If your concern is cosmetic, I wouldn't worry; it largely disappears as the bubbles pop. If you really want to get rid of it, give your poached eggs a quick rinse under warm water before drying and plating.


Pumpkin Nitro Mousse? I want to make little pumpkin mousse brûlée deserts, and I also want to play with my new whipped cream dispenser. Do you think pumpkin purée would do bad things to my dispenser?
I swear I've seen TV chefs doing stuff like this, but they don't actually pay for any of their equipment so I doubt they care much if they ruin something to get a result. I don't have a production company buying my kitchen toys though, so thought I'd see if anyone has tried this and maybe I can learn from your mistakes/success.

Anything that you can put through a fine mesh strainer will likely not be too much of a problem in a whipper.  In fact, the ISI website has a recipe for pumpkin mousse. You should find lots of advice on the web, as this technique was quite popular for a few years.


Is it possible to brew good tea on a mountain? As I understand it, it is due to the relative atmospheric pressure that water boils at lower temperature further above sea level: 70C at the top of Mt Everest, for example.

Surely, then, the water could not get hot enough (and remain liquid) to brew a cup of tea? Or is that the water be boiling the important property, rather than temperature?

Tea brewed under different conditions will taste slightly differently. So no, on a high mountain, you cannot get absolutely the same taste as when brewing at sea level.

So no, it is not the boiling state of the water which determines the exact taste of the tea, it is the combination of all parameters, including temperature. And by the way, this is not simply a matter of altitude - if you use a different teapot or make a different amount of tea at the same altitude, you´ll also get temperature differences.

Of course, not that many people will notice the difference in taste when changing the brewing temperature slightly. And among the ones who notice, there is no telling whether they will like the 100 Celsius brewed tea more or less than the tea brewed at lower temperatures.

So, it is entirely possible to make good tea on a mountain, unless your personal definition is "there is exactly one type of good tea in the world, and it is the one brewed by my favorite process, and that process requires 100 degrees".


Am sprouting beans in machine is the color normal I have been sprouting my beans for three days now I am not sure if it is ready to harvest and is the color normal and what is the best way to store it? I've attached photos.
Thank you

I can't see anything wrong with your sprouts as far as colour. If you're referring to the blush of the beans, yours are a bit pinker than most I've seen but still normal. I've spen them ranging from an almost white tan to blush. Since I don't know whether you kept yours in utter darkness, so I can't say whether it's related to light levels. It's also possible that a number of different mung bean cultivars are used for sprouting (since the majority of food we eat has countless cultivars). If so, possibly different cultivars might show different variations in colour.

I'm surprised that your sprouts are only 3 days old though. They already have developed leaves and that doesn't usually happen that quickly. Perhaps a little warmer than usual? That might even account for colour variations too.

There's no harm eating them with developing leaves but they taste milder when the leaves just start peeking out for the two halves. I gave up sprouting mung beans as I never could figure a good way to get rid of most if the loose skins.


Does canned tuna contain (dead) parasites? While using canned tuna to make salad, I remembered a Youtube video about sushi-grade tuna. If I recall correctly, the main criterion was if it contains parasites and that it's rather hard to find a clean fish, which makes them so highly priced. Especially the tail was heavily infested when they sliced up an example.

Now, since I have nothing better to do while eating, I thought I could ask how likely it is, that I'm currently eating some cooked tuna parasites?

It is quite likely that it does contain them, yes.

A randomly chosen nonpaywalled study of Mediterannean tuna (DOI: 10.14411/fp.2014.011) says that

  Overall, 84% of the gills examined harboured metazoan parasites.

Now these are the gills, not the meat in the tin, but it is unlikely that there will be much information on the meat itself:

  The research on large tunas is hampered by the high value of fish; therefore, the studies on the use of parasites as tags consider mainly examination of gills, head and viscera, because of their limited (or null) commercial value

I don't know enough about fish parasite to tell you whether the 11 species found are all gill-only, but that sounds unlikely. Where there is an ecological niche, it will be filled. So, extrapolating from the gill parasite numbers to body parasite numbers doesn't sound too bad. And I am pretty certain that the people who prepare the fish don't have any method or reason to go remove the parasites from within the fish meat, just like apple sellers don't have a method to remove the worms from apples. So it sounds entirely believable that there are parasites in most cans of tuna, and if you eat enough of them, your chance of never eating a cooked parasite goes against zero.


Is marinating raw fish in sweet fortified wine safe? Is marinating raw fish in sweet fortified wine safe, or will the presence of sugar foster bacteria growth ?
The wine is 16.5% ABV and the whole thing is kept in a fridge.

Without knowing the wine and the sugar content as well as whether you are adding anything else to the marinade, we can't say much. I would hazard a guess that you should be fine (speaking as a microbiologist...), however it will depend on how fresh the fish is, how heavy a contamination you are likely to have in the first place, and the preparation conditions for the flesh.

Alcohol is moderately good at inhibiting some bacterial species, though not some yeasts (these are what produce the alcohol in the wine fermentation). However, studies have found that enteric bacteria, such as those that commonly cause food poisoning are not inhibited fully by the percentages found in wine, indeed - you would need more like 70% (commonly used in microbiology labs for sterilization of surfaces), or even higher % for bacteria found in the ice in drinks served in a bar to completely kill bacteria.

On the other hand, sugar is actually fairly good in its own right as an inhibitory substance, but you also need fairly high concentrations; in the area of 25% (in the upper range for sweet wines) before it inhibits most bacteria. Below this sort of range, many bacteria will metabolize the sugar and grow quite well.

The best factor you have here is the keeping it all in the fridge - cold is pretty good at inhibiting most bacterial species from growing.


How do I fix and prevent a baked custard from weeping? I made a rhubarb custard pie that turned out  nicely; the custard was flavored with orange zest and 2 tablespoons of orange juice and 1 teaspoon of orange flower water.

I wanted a baked custard made of the filling without the crust.

I doubled the recipe and baked it in a souffle dish, using a water bath under the souffle dish. I baked it at 325F. It took almost 2 hours for the knife inserted in the center to come clean.

The custard was a  good texture when removed from the oven and cooled, but when I scooped some out, clear sugar fluid accumulated  where I scooped.

The fluid tasted only of sugar, not the rhubarb or the orange flavors.

I tilted the souffle dish. Overnight approximately 2/3 cup of fluid accumulated in the space where I had scooped .

My question :

Why did this happen?

What could I do to avoid it happening in the future?

Why did this happen?

One possibility is that the outside of the custard became overcooked while you were waiting for the middle to set. As eggs cook longer they tighten up more and more, squeezing out liquids that were previously captured by the protein matrix. The cooking process continues for a while even after you remove the custard from the oven, so the overcooking might have happened later than you'd think.

  What could I do to avoid it happening in the future?

If the overcooking hypothesis is correct, then any of the following could help:

Reduce the cooking time. Most custard recipes that I can think of call for cooking times around an hour, depending on the size of the dish.
Use smaller baking dishes. With a smaller dish, you won't have to wait as long for the center to set.
Use a shallower baking dish. Same as above -- cooking the custard in a thinner layer should help the whole thing set more quickly.
Remove from oven before it's completely done. With some recipes, like cheesecake, you need to remove the item from the oven before it seems to be done. This prevents overcooking at the edges and cracking in the middle. The same idea could work for your custard.
Modify the matrix. Many custards contain ingredients like starch or gelatin, which can fortify the protein matrix that gives the custard body.


How to ensure quality control when cooking with or eating crickets? Eating crickets seems to be a growing trend in the USA. I am quite familiar with beef, chicken, fish and their internal temperatures when cooking. I also understand that you don't need to cook crickets to eat them; they are fine to eat raw.

I am curious though if there are other observations that can be made that will determine if a cricket is good to eat or not. Are they specific breeds of cricket that are more quality than others? Do some breeds have more issues than others?

Could a discoloration of a cricket indicate that is spoiled and should not be eaten?

As no one is answering, I can only give you anecdotal evidence from back when I was still working in Africa:

Insects were always fried live except for honey ants¹ and something the locals called  butterworms².

Frying makes sense as:

frying is done at a higher temperature than boiling
these critters are too small to be roasted
you're sure of the freshness
any and all diseases they might carry would be surely killed.

Note¹: These were "popped" like pop corn, but without any fat: just thrown in an earthenware jug that had been sitting in charcoal for a while before any ants were thrown in. (These were the only insects I ever actually liked)
Note²: These were beheaded by biting their head off and then their internals smeared over a piece of unleavened bread-like substance made from manioc. (Nope: didn't try those; too gross even for me)


How to decorate a cake so that the icing is smooth? I am a self taught baker love to make birthday cakes now I have been asked to make a wedding cake for september. Could you please help me to get the sides of my cakes nice and smooth before icing.  Do I start of with a big cake and cut smaller ?

There are a few things to look at here:

shape of cake before you start icing
What kind of icing to use, and the kind of effect that it has visually
Specific techniques to use with the cake and the icing

It looks like your original question has more to do with the cake itself before icing.  Good quality cake pans are the key to getting a cake that is a consistent shape, and to make sure you put enough batter in the pans to get the size and shape you want.  Make sure you have straight sided pans that bake your cake evenly.

http://www.amazon.com/Wilton-Aluminum-Performance-9-Inch-Round/dp/B00006G958/ref=sr_1_12?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1396099879&sr=1-12

This link is to an example of the kind of pans that have straight sides.  I have three inch deep pans, rather than two inch like the ones in the link.

I would avoid cutting a cake down to size, as you will likely have crumbs everywhere!

On to the icing parts:

Are you looking to use fondant, which is a separate kind of icing
layer that is rolled and placed on top of the cake?  This is what
usually gives a very smooth look. Fondant is a specific ingredient with its own set of skills required to get the look you want.
If you are not planning to use fondant, some of the result is
dependent on how you prep the cake with a "crumb coat" first, before the regular icing layer, to control the amount of crumbs in the final coat of icing. There are YouTube videos, and other web links on how to do this.  This step really does improve the quality of your icing.
Above all, with the tools you have, and the skills you need, PRACTICE will make all of this advice come together.  To get the look you want, you will need to practice a lot.


Vegetable lasagna a bit too wet. How to adjust baking temp/time? I’ve just assembled a vegetable lasagna, and the filling and sauce have both come out erring a bit on the watery side — not dreadfully so, but noticeably wetter than when I’ve previously made this recipe.
Usually I cook it 35–40mins at about 180ºC (in a fan oven). How should I adjust the cooking temperature and time to correct for the extra wetness — i.e. to cook off a bit more water, without affecting other aspects too much?  Slightly higher temperature?  Slightly longer time?
Edit: To be clear, I’m not asking “how do I avoid this problem next time?” (which I know well enough), I’m asking “when this sort of mistake happens, how should one adjust to compensate as far as possible?”

Mushrooms can throw off excess moisture.  I would suggest cooking them down a bit further and draining on paper towel before adding them to your lasagna.  You didn't mention how you baked your lasagna, but my process is to bake (and your temp is fine) covered for 40 to 50 minutes.  Then to uncover and return to the oven for about 10 to 15 minutes more.  I'll take a look, and often run it under the broiler to brown the top and crisp the edges.


Cooking rhubarb with soda On a different question on rhubarb, a link to the wikipedia-page was posted. It is stated there that cooking rhubarb leaves with soda can make them more poisonous.

Does the same hold true for cooking the rhubarb stem and adding soda? Up until know, I thought it was a nice and easy way to reduce the sour taste a bit.

The whole quote is

  Cooking the leaves with soda can make them more poisonous by producing soluble oxalates

I can't tell you if the claim as a whole is true. But if it is true for the leaves, it is true for the stems too.

Rhubarb contains oxalic acid and its salts which are created by the acid reacting with different metal ions such as calcium and magnesium. It's true that these salts have different solubility and bioavailability. And both the leaves and the stems contain oxalic acid and salts, just in different concentration.

So, if cooking the leaves in soda turns the insoluble oxalates in them to soluble ones, then the same will happen when cooking the stems. For the metal ions, it's irrelevant if they are reacting with an oxalate ion which used to "live" in the leaf or in the stem. Anything which makes the leaves worse will also make the stems worse.


How long should I slow roast a large (7.5lb/3.5kg) chicken for? This Moroccan Slow Roasted Chicken with Preserved Lemon and Olives
recipe suggests to cook a regular sized chicken for 3 hours at 325° F (160° C).

I have a largish chicken (7.5lb/3.5kg) that I want to cook. For how long should I (slow) roast this chicken for?

That's the largest chicken I've ever heard of.

That said, 3 to 3.5 hours at 325℉ should be sufficient. Unfortunately time doesn't really matter when cooking chicken, but temperature. You should definitely be using a meat thermometer and cooking long enough for the breasts to reach 160℉ and the thighs 170℉.

If you don't have a thermometer the next best thing would be to poke the thigh when you think it's done and confirm that the juices run clear. If they are not clear, then it needs to be cooked longer.


How important is RPM in a blender? I'm looking at getting a new blender, basically the main things I want to be able to do with it are make curry pastes, ultra smooth restaurant quality purees and soups and grind small amounts of spices (I'm talking 1-2 teaspoons). This leaves me with two choices (possibly three of which I'll get too): the Blentec or the Vitamix. The former goes to 27,000rpm and the latter goes to 37,000. I'm wondering is there much of a difference once you get up to crazy speeds like that.

The other option is a Thermomix, which from my reading only hits speeds of 11,000rpm. Unfortunately, given that many Thermomix owners also sell them, it's pretty hard to get unbiased information online so I'm wondering if a speed drop of nearly two thirds will make a difference to the smoothness of my purees. From demos I've seen it think the Thermomix will do a better job with curry pastes and spice grinding as the blades nearly touch the base of the container unlike the other two units: my thinking being that however high the rpm of the Vitamix/Blentec, if the teaspoon of spices can't come into contact with the blades, it's useless.

I read the What to look for when purchasing a blender? question and found no mention of rpm so maybe it's a parameter that isn't very useful, if so then it would be nice to know that at least.

I've used both a Vitamix 500 (not extensively) and a Thermomix TM31. I didn't know there was a difference in RPM, but I didn't notice too much difference in end-effect when both were turned up to full power. So I think it doesn't make much difference at those speeds anymore.

If you're having trouble milling spices though, it helps to heat them a while in the oven, to get rid of humidity and therefore make them more brittle.


Sheets of fresh pasta sticking together I make fresh pasta regularly and it usually works out well. There is one exception. If I make sheets of pasta for lasagna or cannelloni they tend to stick together during cooking so that I have difficulty separating them from each other and themselves. Does anyone have a suggestion? I have heard that adding oil to the water may help. Thanks.

You may just be cooking too much at once.  When I make lasagna or rolled pasta, like cannelloni, I cook 2 to 3 sheets at a time, building my lasagna (or filling the pasta) as I go.  I remove the cooked sheets to a clean kitchen towel.  Proceed with the construction when they are just cool enough to handle, then add more fresh pasta to the cooking pot.


How can I prevent the top layer of sauces from discolouring? We also make home made sauces especially chillie. And I noticed that the top of the sauce tend to turn a darker colour when it stands on the shelf too long. How can I stop the discolouring?

This discoloration is primarily oxidation. If you cover it with plastic wrap/cling-film such that the wrap is directly touching the top of the sauce (spread a piece over the bowl, then press down in the center and let the wrap rest on top of the sauce), the discoloration should be minimized. Just keep the plastic wrap on it until right before serving. (If you don't like plastic wrap, you can cut or fold a circle of parchment paper or waxed paper the size of the dish, but plastic wrap is easier.)

I'm not sure how long you're letting it sit on the shelf, or if that is a shelf inside or outside a refrigerator, but you may want to also consider food safety if you are leaving things at room temperature for an extended period.


Refrigerating after reheating? Yesterday, I got a calzone from a pizzeria, took it home and refrigerated it immediately.

This morning, I reheated it in the microwave and ate some. Then, I put it back in the fridge. Later today, I reheated it again in the microwave and ate the rest.

Now besides poor food quality (which it was), was this "okay" to do as far as health/bacteria is concerned?

I did a search for this but didn't find anything.

Same answer as always:  you don't want to eat any perishable food or food for which any part has spent more than about 4 hours cumulative over its lifetime in the danger zone (40 - 140 F, 4 - 60 C).

Do you know how the pizza place treated the calzones before you even received it?  It may have been sitting on a shelf at room temperature for an hour or two at the store before you ordered it, in addition to the transport time when you took it home, and all the times as you heated and cooled it when it was in the zone.

In general to reduce the quality degradation, and the amount of time food ends up moving through the danger zone, you normally only want to heat up the portion of food you intend to eat, and leave the rest refrigerated.

See also:  https://cooking.stackexchange.com/tags/food-safety/info


Will removing short rib bones after cooking dry the meat? i'm roasting lots of short rib this weekend in 2 batches and curious to know if removing the bones quickly (for stock) after the 1st batch is cooked and refrigerating the cooked meat while the 2nd batch cooks will dry the meat out at all? i.e. would it be better to leave bones in while it cools down or doesn't make a difference?

Thanks!

The bones will not make a difference in the moisture of your meat, but overcooking will dry your meat.  Make sure you cook and reheat correctly, and you can remove the bones with no problems. (Plenty of folks cook boneless short ribs that are moist!)


Safety of Calphalon pots and pans I hear so many thoughts on Calphalon hard anodized pots and pans.  Are these safe to use?

Yes, they are safe to use.

Even if you believe certain claims about metallic aluminum, the anodized coating is essentially aluminum oxide which is very, very hard and very, very non-reactive.  So it is unlikely to enter your food either chemically or physically, nor to react with your body even if it did.  It is essentially pre-reacted.

This is the same material that rubies and sapphires are made of (not counting the impurities that give them their color).

The government sponsored sources all indicate any level of aluminum consumed from cookware is dwarfed by the amount of aluminum naturally occurring in foods in any case.  Some sources, especially the Health Canada ones use a lot of soft language, but always say there is no known risk—any risk that does exist will be quite small.

See also:

Michigan State University Extension article on cookware
Health Canada, and 2nd Health Canada


What is the temperature of the massive pots of water at hotels for cooking 10 poached eggs at once? I love cooking poached eggs at home.

Assumption: This is all sea level (+/-15 metres).

I went to a hotel with glass walls to the kitchen and watched the way they prepared the morning cooked egg orders.

On one stove top, they had an enormous pot (felt like it would cover all four of my stove-tops at home), gently simmering away at some (unknown) temperature. (The water had almost zero egg-white scum floating in it).

The chefs would drop eggs from cups into it, set timers, and then pull the eggs out after the timer had gone off.

This seemed to be an amazingly polished perfection of the process of cooking poached eggs. There could easily have been 10 eggs in at once, with room for fifteen.

My question is: What is the temperature of the massive pots of water at hotels for cooking 10 poached eggs at once?

In scale operations, a large 'rondo' is usually used, and as the comments above indicate it is at 'simmer' which is essentially 212 F / 100 C. A small amount of vinegar is added to the water, which helps the loose parts of the egg white coagulate and gives a nicer shape to the poached egg.

Since the kitchen you describe has glass walls, they are taking extra care for the showmanship part of the operation, having eggs in individual cups to drop in the poaching vessel.

A large vessel is used to reduce the temperature rebound of adding the cold (maybe close to room temp) eggs. As each is added, it does not significantly reduce the temperature of the rest of the water in the large pot.

The fact that the water was clear means the station cooks are under directions to continually add vinegar and skim the water. After each egg, some bits come off that have to be cleared out. If the kitchen did not have glass walls, the water would not be that clear during a busy brunch !


How to take canned beans out of jar? Is there any method to take canned beans out of the jar without spoiling the beans, as they are kind of sticking on each other?

Even though this question seems a little trivial, I have had the same problem.

Usually the beans will come out with just gentle shaking. They won't budge at first but after the suction is broken they will descend and can be shaken out.

Occasionally I have had to use a spoon. You are right that if you just scoop them out you will mash many of them. If you just work the utensil along the side of the jar you can break the suction and they should shake free.

If you do mash them you can always finish the job and make refried beans out of them.


Can sour cherries be used in a semi-stable bar? I have recently learned that my carb intake is insufficient, leading to so-called "glycogen depletion" while cycling. I have possibly spent too much time around folks who boast of equating a healthy diet with a diet that is partially or fully deficient in carbs. I followed, not realizing the consequences.
Mid bike ride it turns out that a cyclist needs (immediate) simple sugar, in addition to some more complex carbs. At this time of the year sour cherries make their way to the market in vast quantities, but they spoil extremely quickly and must be frozen.
I've tried in the past freezing in zipper bags, intending to eventually learn how to make a proper pie (I never did). Now I'm thinking that there could be another pertinent use for them: cherry bars that are dry enough to carry along on a bike ride, and where the cherries have stabilized enough so that they do not spoil quite as rapidly as they normally do. The need for simple sugars would be satisfied by the cherries; the need for complex sugars by the crust.
My first experiment was to simply add them, in large quantities, to a standard brownie mix. That didn't fare so well. The mixture was too moist to cook uniformly—edges cooked, inside not so much—even after leaving for extra time in the oven. Worse, after a day in the fridge some of the cherries have turned color from the characteristic "still good" bright red to a dull "likely spoiled" crimson red.
Can sour cherries be used in a semi-stable bar? The idea is that I'd use the whole lot (5 kg!) and have ample supply in the freezer.
Related:

Hungarian-style apple pie (almás lepény)
General ideas for sour cherries

I will have to preface a bit with bad news about food safety, but bear with me, not all is lost :)
As per standard food safety: "semi-stable" does not exist, at all, for anything. You either have "shelf stable" or "needs refrigeration". And the idea of having baked cherries being shelf stable is impossible. We have a writeup on food safety for beginners, it will likely clear a lot of things up for you: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/tags/food-safety/info.
Your own answer starts going into the right direction, but is not completely there. You can turn the cherries into a jam, but to be shelf stable, you will have to use a 1:1 jam recipe (1 kg sugar per 1 kg cherries), the lower-sugar-ratio recipes preferred nowadays are only shelf stable after canning, and as soon as you open the jar, need refrigeration. Once you have made the jam, you will find out that it is not "solidified", it's smeary. To  prevent a mess during transportation, you will have to take a gasket-seal box along on your bike (are you willing to do glycogen-depleting tours with saddle bags?), and eating will require taking a break and doing cleanup.
The second recipe also produces "bars" in the "homemade baking" sense, not in the "convenience food" sense. They will not be shelf stable, and they will be prone to squishing and falling apart. You will need the same procedure as above to transport and eat them.
The only way I see this working is by drying the cherries - and by drying I don't mean such superficial measures as baking a bar twice, I mean using a proper dehydration technique. You have two options.

You start with whole, fresh cherries. You dry them (you can research recipes for this, don't just stick them in the oven and hope for the best) and the result is raisin-like, but intensely sour (if you want it sweet, choose a recipe with sufficient added sugar). Once you have the dry cherries, you can eat them on the bike one-by-one, or make granola bars with them, or bake them into some kind of scones/muffins/bars. Note that the third option requires you to use significanly more dough than cherries, else it will fall apart, so granola may be the way to go.

You make fruit leather. For this, you can start with the frozen cherries you have, or also use fresh ones. You have to juice them and dry the juice. When made properly (again, research recipes!) it is shelf stable and very bike-friendly. Also, it is very friendly to "using it up" projects, since a large amount of cherries produces a small volume of fruit leather. Here too, you may have to persevere through a few learning attempts when using an oven, but if all goes well and you decide to make it your go-to snack, an investment in a dehydrator would be advisable.


The secret to Pringles like potatoes Some context: I'm not a cook, hardly even a good amateur, this considered:

I would like to know if it is possible to, with everyday cooking accessories, make some home-made potatoes that are as similar to the Pringles potatoes.

The resemblance should be in the:

Consistency/hardness/texture *
Taste
Shape
(and in that order)

Of course any home-made recipe would be appreciated if it helps to prove the point (and useful for me) but I'm mainly interested in wether it is possible to imitate the potatoes without resorting to industrial accessories.

Thanks in advance!

* Sorry for the plain english (again, I'm not a cook) please feel free to edit or comment if something is confusing! (tags included)

Short answer is no.

If you were a cook/food scientist we could cover a lot of the ways you could combine potatoes and starches and then layer on forms, but really, most people would rather just make homemade potato chips with a potato, a mandolin slicer and some hot oil.

If you want Pringles, they are generally cheap and available.  No need to duplicate in the kitchen.

This description should give you an idea of how difficult it would be in the home

The relevant portion from the article...

For producing Pringles, new machinery and techniques were required involving mixing of rice flour, potato flakes, water and other ingredients. When smooth dough is made, it is cut in to thin round pieces, placed in baking trays are then fried very quickly in a machine. Seasoning is also quickly added before the chips are sent to a stacking machine that packs the chips in distinctive Pringles containers.


How to get a juicy and colored, crispy roast chicken at the same time? When I am roasting chicken I either do it with a high temperature (its got good color but the meat is tough and dry) or low temperature (succulent and juicy meat but skin is white and colorless).

What temperature, technique and prep stand behind the holy grail of roast chicken that is both juicy and colored?

I provided this answer a couple of years ago for a similar (but not a dup) question: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/25668/6279

Soak cheesecloth in melted butter and drape it over the bird prior to putting it in the oven to roast slowly. This will capture the juices making your chicken moist. 30 minutes (or so) prior to finishing remove the cheesecloth and return the bird to the oven to reach that golden color. The butter will help crisp up the skin as well.

I would recommend an oven temp of 275°F (135°C) until the internal temperature of the breast is @145°F (63°C) and allowing it to reach 165°F(74°C) after the cheesecloth has been removed. An important part of this is to use internal temperature as your gauge to when it is done. If you simply watch the clock you may get lucky, but your results won't be consistent.


How should I fry onions without burning them? Lots of recipes begin with something along the lines of "fry onions in oil until tender/soft/translucent".  When I do this I often find that the onions end up burning before they have softened.  What are the right things to do in order to fry them so they don't burn?

You may need to use a little more oil/butter, but the biggest things are to not get them too hot, and to stir them fairly often. Once they're sizzling that's hot enough. Some cookers will get keep getting hotter for quite a while, so you may need to turn them down preemptively. Heavy pans will do the same but overall tend to make gentle cooking easier. You can put a lid on with quite a gentle setting, opening the pan to stir. This makes for more even cooking, but you have to turn the heat down even lower than when not using the lid.

Recipes often imply that softening onions is quicker than is really the case, so be patient.


It's adequate to clean egg shell to cook with it? If I want to cook natural farm eggs with its shell at low temperature (65C-150F) for 20-30mins and they have some dirt at shell is better to clean it or not?
If it's better to clean it what's the better way?

Basic food safety dictates that you always start with a clean product, no matter what you are using or how you are cooking it.  For your eggs, simply rinse with clean water, or place in a bowl of water.  A soft cloth or gentle brush could be used to remove dirt.


My cookies are turning out like cakes This is the basic recipe I used (taken from http://www.yuppiechef.com/spatula/the-science-behind-chocolate-chip-cookies/):

8 oz (about 225g) unsalted butter
10 oz (about 1.5 cups) sugar
12 oz (about 2.75 cups) flour
2 large eggs – these will soften the cookies and help make them nice and ‘puffy’
1 tsp baking soda – to help the cookies rise, and also to brown
1 tsp salt – to bring out the flavour

To clarify I definitely used bicarb (the UK version of baking soda). The butter was softened and I used everyday plain flour. I substituted half of the sugar with soft dark brown sugar, so about 5oz brown sugar and 5oz caster sugar. Instead of using chocolate chips, I used about 3 teaspoons of vanilla extract and about a dessert spoon of ground cinnamon for the flavour.

I followed the mixing and refrigeration instructions to a T and the dough was left in the fridge overnight. It came out of the fridge lovely and stiff and I was able to form balls of dough without any mess left on my hands.

I tested 2 balls of cookie dough, and they've come out nicely browned but they're flat cakes (spread out with a small hump in the middle), not cookies! The texture is that of a sponge that hasn't risen. The oven had been preheated to 160 degrees Celsius because it's old and a bit temperamental. If I'd had it at 180 degrees, they would've burned for sure.

I was hoping these would come out moist and chewy. Where did I go wrong?

The original author is in error adding baking soda (bicarbonate), and indicating it will help rise.  For leavening, you require acid for the sodium bicarbonate to react with.  The original base recipe has no significant acid ingredients; even the modified version you used has only a trivial amount of acid from the molasses in the brown sugar.

Therefore, the only effect of the baking soda is to increase the pH of the dough, which will encourage browning.  However, as the cookies are full of sugar, encouraging browning is not generally a problem.

The creaming method creates bubbles in the solid phase butter, and encourages rising and a more cake-like result, especially when paired with an effective leavening agent.

Resting the dough also hydrates the flour, and allows the butter to re-solidify, both of which inhibit spread and contribute to a higher cookie.

For a chewier result, do not use the creaming method.  Melt the butter instead, and then combine your ingredients.

You may also choose to reduce the baking soda to reduce the metallic taste it brings without anything to react with.

If the cookies are now too dense, you might try adding (starting with smaller amounts) 1/2 tsp  to 1 tsp or so of baking powder which has its own acid to react with, to help leaven the cookies.

See also:

What is the purpose of baking soda in chocolate-chip cookies?
How can I get chewy chocolate chip cookies?
How do I get my chocolate chip cookies to turn out thick and soft?


cooking with cherimoya Cherimoya is an amazing delicacy that I highly recommend; however, I haven't found much culinary use for it other than eating it raw.

What's your experience on cooking with this fruit?

and on a side note, it sucks that I can't find it here in Canada :(

There are some recipes available on a rare fruit website, it also offers a link to an organic cherimoya orchard in California where you can order the fruit.

http://www.rain.org/~sals/eat.html


What sticks sausage stuffing together? I tried making sausages for the first time today, and when I cooked them, the inside was more like a paste than a solid meat. Does anyone know why/how this can happen? How can I get a better texture for my sausages?

Update: I was hoping there was an obvious "oh if that happens it's always because of x", but for more details, here's the recipe I followed:

http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/33512/homemade-pork-and-bramley-apple-sausages.aspx

I did the ingredients exactly, but the timing was different. After I made the stuffing, I left that overnight. After putting the stuffing into the casings, They only rested ~20 mins before cooking. Could that be it?

In sausage, meat is "stuck together" by a network of cross-linked myosin, a rather "sticky" protein present in meat.1 This network of proteins can be developed by kneading, much like the gluten in bread. However, myosin only develops properly given enough salt. Thus I see two mistakes you could have made:

Insufficient salt. You need about 2% of the weight of the sausage in salt. Your recipe measured salt by volume. This can be problematic as different salt products are more or less dense. If you have a scale, try using weight the next time around.
Insufficient kneading. You say in your comment that you mixed the meat by hand. However, you need a lot more than mixing. Give it a good knead, either in a mixer or food processor, or by hand, until it becomes tacky, sticky, and slightly more homogeneous.

In addition to these factors, I am a bit concerned by your recipe. Breadcrumbs, apples, and cider won't really help make sausage: these fillers will only disrupt your myosin network. Try a more basic recipe of meat, salt, and any herbs and spices you like. After you master that, you can try to introduce larger mix-ins like apple pieces. But whatever recipe you follow, remember salt and kneading. Without them, your "sausage" will be nothing more than seasoned mince.


Right way to defrost roux I like preparing a large quantity of Roux and pouring them in ice trays to keep them in the freezer. However, I'm always confused about the right way of defrosting them for use.

The typical use of it is to make white sauce for mac n cheese/pasta. The way i've been using them till now is to take the require amount of milk in a pan, add the cubes and then let it be for 5 minutes or so THEN start the heating. But I'm not convinced this is the best way.

You don't need to defrost it, you can add cold roux directly to a boiling liquid.  To avoid lumps from the roux, most cooks suggest you either add cold roux to a hot sauce, or cold liquid to hot roux.

If you heat the roux gradually with the liquid you may get lumps, and don't get a good impression of how much thickening is going on until it heats fully.


Too much cardamom in apple butter I put too much cardamom in the applesauce that I'm cooking down to make apple butter. Will the cardamom flavor mellow as the sauce cooks down or should I add more applesauce to dilute it?

Cardamon gets MORE pronounced as a sauce cooks down. Definitely add more applesauce.


Why is wine not a common ingredient in (meat) stock? My inclination is to think that red wine would go well in a beef stock and white wine in the making of a chicken stock but I rarely, if ever, see it as an ingredient. Is there a common reason why wine shouldn't be used to help add to the flavor and acid of the final stock?

I can think of more than a few reasons...

Wine is (relatively) expensive. Stock is normally supposed to be very inexpensive to make, using ingredients that you'd normally just throw out (bones, necks, etc.) Frugality is not the only reason to make a stock, but it seems like a waste of perfectly good wine.
Stock gets to simmer for many, many hours. A lot of the wine and almost all of the alcohol will have evaporated by the time it's done. You can try to very precisely control the temperature to prevent any evaporation, but in my experience, even on the best of days, I have to keep topping it off with liquid. Again, waste of perfectly good wine.
Finished stock generally doesn't get used all at once, it will sit in a refrigerator for days or in a freezer for months. You can freeze wine, but it will leave sediment and crystals and, depending on the type of wine, might still develop off-flavours. It will definitely start developing off-flavours shortly after it's been thawed. On the whole, it seems like a great way to turn something that's almost impossible to screw up (stock) into something finicky and unreliable.
Adding wine directly to the stock is sort of like adding a lot of salt directly to the stock in the sense that it limits your future options. While I'm sure you could make a great velouté with wine-based stock, I think it would make a pretty lousy base for chicken noodle soup.
Wine and stock are both already liquids. Adding wine to the stock isn't really going to accomplish much that wouldn't be simpler and more efficient to do by mixing them together after the stock is made. And the two are pretty much interchangeable in any recipe calling for a "flavoured liquid" - in virtually any recipe calling for a cup of stock, you can substitute it for a cup of wine, or half a cup, or whatever. You're not eating the stock by itself; if you like the taste of wine in your stew or risotto or whatever it is that you're making, then just add wine!

The whole idea reminds me of garlic salt - pretty pointless thing to have, you can do exactly the same things and a lot more with just plain garlic powder and salt. Same thing here, I'd rather have good clear stock and a good bottle of wine separately than having both in the same container.


How does removing the germ of garlic help with breath/digestion? I have recently heard from a friend who is a chef, that removing the germ in a garlic clove helps with reducing the garlic breath and also avoids digestive problems some people have when eating garlic. This was also mentioned here (e.g. https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/30853)

He could not remember where he read it, but he said it has something to do with an enzyme that is only contained in the germ, hence you should remove it.

Is this true and does anybody have some evidence or further reading on this matter?

According to this blog it makes a difference when the garlic isn't cooked (but less so if it is cooked)
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/should-you-remove-the-green-germ-from-garlic/


Any suggestions on caps for Bakers and Chefs plastic squeeze bottles? I purchased some Bakers and Chefs clear plastic squeeze bottles, which do not come with caps; however, there is a ridge about 1/3" down on the bottle, suggesting that they're intended to work with a cap.

Some of the reviewers on Amazon mentioned using foil, as well as some plastic cap they found in hardware store. I'm hoping to find something that fits well and ideally can be ordered online.

Anyone have any suggestions?

The product you link has the cap in the picture.

The idea is that you cut off the tip on the apex of the cap to the point where it is the width of your desired opening.

You could use an uncut cap, or just cover the tip with foil if you need to refrigerate for some time.  The kind of things put into a squeeze bottles are rarely highly perishable, so simply placing them in refrigerator (for a reasonable period of time) is a normal practice.

Squeeze bottles are not meant for long term storage. I certainly would not go to the trouble of special ordering caps.


Can I use a deep fryer instead of a pot with oil? I got a deep fryer for Christmas, and that made me think of all the donut recipes I have seen floating about, like this one for crullers or this one for chocolate dipped donuts.

These are just two examples, but I noticed they all call for a pot filled with about 2 inches of oil heated to a certain temperature. My deep fryer does have adjustable temperature settings, so that would be fine, but I am not sure if using the deep fryer instead of the pot of oil would work.

Is a deep fryer an okay substitute? I really want to get some good use out of it, and this sounded somewhat plausible. Am I completely off-track?

You can definitely cook donuts in a deep fryer.  Most, if not all, donuts shops cook them in that manner.  Just make sure your temperature is good and use something like chopsticks to flip them.


I ran out of flour halfway through my recipe. Can I add more after refrigeration? I started out making shortbread using a 1, 2, 3 recipe method:

one cup icing sugar
two cups butter
4 cups flour

Halfway through I realised I'm going to make just about 3 cups of flour. I continued, but the dough seems too soft and buttery. I refrigerated it.

Can I add another cup of flour tomorrow?

Sure you can, shortbread dough can be refrigerated or frozen without any issues, there's no reason you can't add the flour a day later. Coming from the fridge it will be a bit stiff but nothing you can't work with.


Did extra insulation cause ice crystals in frozen mac & cheese? I prepared two 9x13" casserole dishes worth of macaroni & cheese (roux based). In terms of the quantity of pasta, I used three pounds. After combining sauce and pasta I baked to try to eliminate moisture in the pasta and to give it that chewy texture.

Then after allowing to cool to below room temperature (I covered it and put it outside in the cold), I proceeded to bag portions. The process was to fill one sandwich-size ziploc bag, wrap the ziploc in saran wrap (squeezing out air in both steps), then wrap in foil, name & date, and put 4-5 units in a 1 gallon freezer bag. Place freezer bag in freezer.

From the very first pull, not four days later, I already had ice crystals. Where did I go wrong? The ice crystals didn't affect the flavor much if at all, is it possible that it's an aesthetic problem, not actually chemical? Could it be the foil usage (for which I received some questions when I explained the storage/packing method)?

Properly wrapped, the extra insulation would not have been the cause of higher than normal ice formation (freezer burn).

What I suspect might have happened here is that putting it outside in the cold caused all of the steam to condense on the surface of your mac & cheese, resulting in you bagging damper than usual mac & cheese.


Is it safe to use a new microwave if I dropped it on the back corner? I dropped my brand new microwave transferring right out of the box and before use. It landed on the back right corner. The frame is bent, but it doesn't look like anything else is wrong. I don't know if I can still use it; is it safe to just try it?

I'm not sure whether or not this question is really on-topic here.  But the basic answer is that microwaves generally have a lot of safeguards built in to avoid radiation leakage, if that's what you're worried about.  The FDA states:

  There is little cause for concern about excess microwaves leaking from
  ovens unless the door hinges, latch, or seals are damaged. In FDA's
  experience, most ovens tested show little or no detectable microwave
  leakage. If there is some problem and you believe your oven might be
  leaking excessive microwaves, contact the oven manufacturer, a
  microwave oven service organization, your state health department, or
  the nearest FDA office.

So, if only very minor exterior damage was done, and there was no damage to the door or seals, it seems unlikely there would be a problem.

On the other hand, WHO recommends:

  The design of microwave ovens ensures that the microwaves are
  contained within the oven and can only be present when the oven is
  switched on and the door is shut. Leakage around and through the glass
  door is limited by design to a level well below that recommended by
  international standards. However, microwave leakage could still occur
  around damaged, dirty or modified microwave ovens. It is therefore
  important that the oven is maintained in good condition. Users should
  check that the door closes properly and that the safety interlock
  devices, fitted to the door to prevent microwaves from being generated
  while it is open, work correctly. The door seals should be kept clean
  and there should be no visible signs of damage to the seals or the
  outer casing of the oven. If any faults are found or parts of the oven
  are damaged, it should not be used until it has been repaired by an
  appropriately qualified service engineer.

Basically, I can't know how much damage and/or what type of damage you did by dropping it.  (And no one else here could know for certain either.)  Microwaves are generally designed in such a way to prevent radiation exposure except in cases of severe damage or deliberate disassembling, but I have no idea what may have happened internally to your device by dropping it.

If you're concerned about other safety issues (electrical shorts, etc.), it would be even more speculative to try to address whether or not they could happen with these few details.


Hamilton Beach 5 qt Slow Cooker Bad taste and smell I have purchased a Hamilton Beach 5 qt slow cooker.  Made Wild Rice Chicken Soup in it for 7 hrs on low and after 4 hours I checked it and tasted. Delicious. 3 hours later I shredded the chicken and shut it off. It smelled and tasted delicious. Left it on warm and when I opened the lid 2 hours later, the smell was so disgusting that I gagged. The smell was a cross between melted plastic and something rotting. My hubby thought I had gotten sick in the kitchen. The smell lifted somewhat to just smelling like plastic.  We couldn't eat it though because it still smelled and tasted like melted plastic.  I had no problem with it the first time I used it. I could find no burnt or melted plastic anywhere on the cooker.  What would have caused this. Would any ingredients do this.  Wild rice, balsamic rice and normal soup stuff. I am returning the cooker but don't want to have this problem with another one.Made

It sounds like the cooker malfunctioned. An electrical fault inside the unit may have caused a short that caused some component to burn. Various electrical parts can give off strong acrid odors when this occurs. It's possible that the nature of the fault was such that its circuit only came into play when you switched the unit to "warm".

However, assuming it's a typical slow cooker with a ceramic bowl and glass cover, I don't know how the taste would be transferred inside to your cooked food. Perhaps the odor was so strong and held in the air such that it affected your taste buds.

In any case, you are wise to return the unit. Whatever happened to yours is likely an unusual occurrence. Hopefully it won't happen again to its replacement.


Sugar/salt frosted around the top of a cup/mug Recently I managed to accidentally get a bunch of raw sugar crystals stuck to the rim of a mug of tea.  Drinking the tea over the sugar, being able to balance out the tartness and the sweetness as I liked was pretty amazing.  Is there an easy way to repeatedly 'stick' a bunch of sugar to the rim of a mug or glass?  I know that people do this with margaritas and the like, so I assume there must be an easy technique for doing it quickly, but I don't know one.

What is the quickest/best way to do it a lot of times fast?

Place the sugar (or salt) in a bowl or plate large enough to hold the glass (upside down)

Rub the rim of the glass with lemon (or lime, or use simple syrup) the rim should be wet and sticky.

Roll/Dip the rim of the glass in the bowl full of sugar.

In my experience, you need to leave the glass to dry for a few minutes to let the sugar or salt settle and dry properly; or long enough to prepare your drinks (or tea).

There are numerous video on the internets showing this.


The side of my microwave set on fire I was microwaving a potato cake, which definitely has no metal inside it (or any which would cause a fire), it was in the middle of the platter when suddenly the side of the microwave caught on fire, there's a small piece of what looks like metal built into the device, but I fail to see why it wouldn't have caught fire the hundreds of other times I used it.

Should I be replacing this microwave or is it a one off?

If anything that is actually part of the microwave caught fire, of course you should replace it.
(Theoretically you could have it repaired by someone knowledgeable, but repairing a microwave is not cost effective.)

Continuing to use damaged electrical equipment is asking for a fire or damage to your electrical systems.

There is no such thing as a 'one off' fire that you can neglect.


Why would you pinch egg whites when making sunny side up eggs? At a restaurant with a window into the kitchen I saw a chef cracking eggs and pinching the top of the egg whites near the yolk before applying heat. We saw him crack many eggs and he did this every time. Why would he do this?

My best guess is that maybe it helps separate the whites from the yolk but I couldn't find any reference to this technique online.

Please see the full answer to  this SA question , excerpt below:

  When you break the eggs into the pan, you will notice that the yolks are surrounded by a higher rounded portion of whites. The secret is to take your fingers and pinch this pile of whites gently until it breaks and the whites in this membrane will redistribute evenly in the pan.

From your description, the chef most likely cracked the eggs into a bowl rather than directly into the pan, but that shouldn't make any difference.


Why'd Cantonese restaurants desire 40,000 BTU for soup? Out of curiosity, I was reading about this Metallic Mold Blower Wok Range (1 Burner 1 Soup Pot). Here's another.

Did I pin-point the Soup Burner correctly?
Residential gas stoves range  from 400 to 18,000 BTUs. Why the necessity for 40,000 BTU? Ceteris paribus, how does it affect the soup?

For a domestic kitchen a few thousand BTU is plenty as you will rarely need to heat more than a few liters of liquid.

In a professional kitchen you might be asked to prepare a 30-litre portion of soup or broth or make 5 kilos of dry pasta at once.

Doing that on a domestic range would take ages and that is not something you want in a kitchen. And with the pasta example it might not even work, you'd never get the water back to boiling within the cooking time, leading to soggy pasta.

Once you switch to simmering you simply dial back the burner, these ranges are usually good at finetuning. Or you could transfer the pan to a quieter area on a smaller burner if you have that in your kitchen.


Why does olives with the pit left always taste better than pitted ones When you buy or eat olives it seems that the high quality ones always have the pit left in them. If you buy cheaper, not so good olives, they will most likely be pitted.

What is the reason behind this? Does the pit have an effect on the olive once it's in the brine or is it something else, perhaps tradition, that makes it seem "low quality" or "bad" to pit the olives before they are put in a jar?

Just like the US dollar, olives suffer from dilution.

When an olive is picked and brined, the olive skin provides a barrier between the tasty fruit and the liquid medium.

When the fruit is pierced to remove the seed, the unprotected pulp of the fruit is in constant, direct contact with the brine liquid.

This direct contact allows the natural juices, which are protected by the olive skin in regular, unpitted, olives, to leach out into the brine liquid, reducing the flavor proportionally.

Pitted olives have their place, in stews, soups, salads etc.  For full flavor though, always go for the unpitted olives.

Have worked in many olive producing areas in the world, and the best olives are always unpitted.

You could even do an experiment to prove or disprove this:

Buy some decent unpitted olives, fairly large.  Buy a hand held cherry pitter and remove the pits of half the olives, put both the pitted and unpitted olives back in the brine and leave them on the counter for a week or so, then try them.  There will be a difference.


What effect does rinsing have on blueberries? If I rinse fresh blueberries before I eat them, does that wash off the antioxidants?  Why would washing blueberries before freezing them cause tougher-skinned berries?

The antioxidants in blueberries lie in the berries themselves, not in the pesticides residing on their skin.

Washing them before freezing means that water freezes on the outside. The water crystals puncture the skins of the berries, changing the texture.


Why does chocolate go grainy when I melt it? I was melting chocolate and it turned into a thick, grainy mess. What happened and what can I do about it? I followed this common method to melt chocolate:
I used a double boiler i.e. I put a heat proof or glass bowl in the mouth of the pot having water, making sure the water doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl. Stirring chocolate occasionally as it softens.

When your chocolate goes grainy it's called "seizing". There are two main reasons for it to seize:

Water: water getting into the bowl of the double boiler, either because it wasn't dry in the first place, or because of condensation.
Overheating (burning).

Unfortunately, once chocolate has seized there aren't reliable ways to re-temper that particular batch.  Use it for baking or turn it into chocolate sauce, or something.


What are the official names for slicing an onion from pole-to-pole or cross-pole? There must exist some french (or other culinary) term for the various ways to describe the different directions to slice an onion.

I'm looking for two terms:

Slicing across the grain, perpendicular to the poles, parallel to the equator, along the latitude.

rings?

Slicing with the grain, in the direction of pole-to-pole, along the longitude.

wedges?

What is the shortest, most concise way to describe these techniques?

I don't think there's an "official" answer, and using obscure French terms is a good way not to be understood, but for reasonably knowledgeable readers, the most concise terms are definitely slicing latitudinally and longitudinally.

("first, assume a spherical onion...")


What are the impacts of common pizza dough errors? I'm diving into the world of making pizzas from scratch, and I'd like to take a systematic approach to the possible mistakes I could make with regards to the dough.

What impact do each of the following errors have on the final taste/texture of the pizza crust?

Using old yeast or too much/too little yeast (I assume that using old yeast is the same as using too little yeast?)
Too high or too low of a water to flour ratio
Overworking or underworking the dough
Too much or too little resting time of dough

I don't see anything in the question that is peculiar to pizza dough. Anything I answer will apply to any kind of yeast-risen, glutenous dough.

The goal with any such dough is a well hydrated protein matrix that has been arranged in sheets that will trap the gas produced by yeast.

If the yeast is dead it won't be able to produce gas and your bread will be somewhere between a cracker and shoe leather- depending on how thick you roll it out.
Using too little yeast is not the same as dead yeast. If you use too little yeast (within reason) they will take a long time to reproduce, eat, and blow up your stretchy proteins. They will be producing a lot of flavor during this period. This will generally taste good.
If you use too much yeast (within reason) the yeast will act very quickly. This is nice for speed but it will result in a much less developed flavor. Neither is a problem so you can choose for yourself.
Using too little water will result in not enough gluten development and a dry, or crumbly dough. The dough won't hold gases and there will also not be enough steam when baking so the dough will be more dense.
Too much water and you have a batter that can't be worked with.
Over working a dough isn't so much of a concern. It is possible to over knead but it is hard to do. See: Possible to over-knead dough?.
Under working the dough will result in less gluten development and very similar results as using too little water- basically you will have unleavened biscuit dough. The exception is if you are following a "no-knead" recipe. In this case the dough is allowed to rest for days which lets the protein sheets form on their own.
Resting the dough is necessary both to relax the protein mesh that you created as well as to allow the yeast a chance to blow it up with some CO2. Not long enough and you won't be able to roll out the dough because it will be too tight and it won't be risen because the yeast haven't eaten. Too long and the bubbles will coalesce into large open cavities. A good rule of thumb is "doubled in volume". Usually about an hour but this is highly dependent on how much yeast you use, how much water, and the ambient temperature.

The end result is that you don't need to worry about most of these things.
The biggest mistakes I see people make is making a dough too dry or simply not kneading enough. It is easier to add flour than water so put in less than the full amount of flour, knead for a while, if the dough stays too sticky then add a bit more flour and knead in.

As answers to other questions have said- you want a dough that is "smooth and elastic" it isn't sticky and looks homogeneous. After just a couple tries you will get a feel for how wet that means and you'll be an expert.

For pizza dough in particular- almost as important as the dough construction is the baking temperature. You want to cook it as hot as you can. 500F in an oven or on a grill. It will only take 5-10 minutes. The fast hot cooking will do a lot for your crust texture. It makes the difference between a crispy, chewy pizza crust and a soft, bready (and soggy under the toppings) crust.


I removed some of the black metallic covering of my pan, is it still safe to use? I have a Seagull "4 star" "Marathon" "non-stick cookware" pan.
I have decoated much of the black metallic coating of that pan with a stainless metallic scotch brite.

I made the above decoating the above after a few months in which the pan had some matt black carbonated stain with some scratches in it, which kept staying there insistently and no liquid soa[ liquid-soap marination with gentle cloth scotch brite wiping helped.

My problem

First, I am not sure it is still safe to use and second, after removal, one might be able to see a new, even bigger such black "carbonated" stain, appearing around the newly exposed metal.

My question

I removed some of the black metallic covering the pan (and now one part of the metal is exposed and another became blacker → matt black), is it still safe to use?

Update

I tried to pour some well refined sunflower oil and heat it, then most of the uncovered metallic part became yellow (I have no idea how to explain it); this yellowishness didn't come down with a napkin → why wouldn't it?

Looking at the close-up, I'd say that the 'black stain' is where the actual non-stick Teflon coating has already been scratched off.
The bare metal is where you finished the job & also removed the substrate, which was probably used to get the Teflon to stick to the aluminium.

I think you've reached the point where it's simpler to just throw it in the recycle & buy a new one.
Treat it more gently next time - never use metal utensils or scourers on Teflon. Non-Stick tends to only be good for a couple of years at best, so you need to weigh up how much you're willing to spend on one… every couple of years.


What is the criss-cross pattern on top of peanut butter cookies used for? I've been making peanut butter cookies, but skipping the step of pressing the top of the cookie down with a fork.   What does this step do for the cookies?

Peanut butter cookies don't spread as they cook, so you have to flatten them before hand. This ensures that the middle will cook through before the outside burns.

As for the pattern created, it actually creates slightly more surface area, so you'll get more browning at the extra edges that you create. Think of it like a meringue, or the top of a shepherd's pie -- if it's too smooth, you won't get the little bits of browned crispy bits that you'd get if you rough up the surface.


Can I substitute yeast with baking soda/powder for my bread dough? I have all the ingredients to make a dough except for the yeast, can I use baking soda or powder instead of using a yeast for making a bread dough (high gluten)?

Yes, it is possible to make bread using baking powder or baking soda.  However, I would strongly recommend that you find a recipe using those ingredients rather than trying to convert a recipe that is supposed to use yeast.

Soda bread made with baking soda, for example, is a very traditional type of bread.  Baking soda requires an acid ingredient to react with, though, so typically soda bread includes ingredients like buttermilk.  Sometimes soured milk or milk soured for vinegar or lemon juice is used instead.  I've occasionally seen recipes that even dispense with the milk altogether and just use lemon juice or another acid to react and allow the soda bread to rise, but typically milk of some sort is used to soften the crumb and give flavor.

Plain bread recipes using only baking powder are a bit more rare; that's more typically the domain of so-called "quick breads" that tend to be more flavorful and cakelike (often with higher sugar content).  But a quick internet search will pull up many recipes for plain bread made with baking powder too.  Again, I would encourage the use of some sort of enriching agent (milk, butter, eggs, etc.) to avoid a dry, bland, crumbly bread.

Bread made with baking soda or baking powder also needs a completely different procedure.  Most importantly, it will need to be baked as soon as mixed, without time for a "rise."  (Delaying putting it in the oven will actually result in a flat, dense product.)  It will also generally have a much more crumbly texture, without the gluten development one obtains with longer fermentation.

In sum, it is possible to make bread with only baking powder or baking soda, but it's best to use recipes that have instructions specifically intended for those ingredients.

If you insist on making the substitution yourself:

Use baking powder, unless you already have an acidic ingredient in your recipe to react with baking soda or are prepared to modify your recipe to add acid.
The amount of baking powder needed will vary, but a good place to start might be about 3/4 tsp. per cup of flour.  Some bread recipes may need a bit more, but using too much baking powder can risk giving the final product an odd flavor.
You don't mention anything about your recipe except that it is "high gluten."  Typically, high gluten breads are chewy and elastic in texture (like bagels or pizza dough), and they also can have a high rise.  Be prepared for the fact that your bread will now likely be crumbly and more dense instead.
Depending on your recipe, you may need to add more liquid to get a satisfactory result.  Baking powder/soda breads often work best with a relatively high hydration level (i.e., ratio of water to flour by weight).  Aiming for a somewhat sticky dough is probably best; less liquid than that, and the final result may be quite dry.
Modify your mixing procedure to mix in baking powder with most of the dry ingredients toward the end.  Kneading for a long time is not necessary (and may actually be counterproductive, as baking powder typically releases a lot of gas when first mixed with the dough, so heavy handling can actually deflate the dough and lead to a denser product).  Instead, mixing (and gentle kneading) only until all the dry ingredients are absorbed is best.  Then form into a rough loaf or put in pans.  Detailed and extended shaping of this sort of bread will generally not be helpful.
Get the bread into the oven as quickly as you can after shaping.
You may need to modify baking temperature and time.  Unlike some lean yeasted breads that are baked at high temperatures (450F or above), baking powder breads are probably best baked at somewhere between 325F and 400F to allow time for the reactions in the dough to create lift before the crust hardens too much.


Is it safe to lower the gas on a dual ring burner so that only the inner ring is lit? My burners have an inner ring and an outer ring of fire. When I turn the knob to reduce the heat, the outer ring eventually goes out and only the inner ring remains lit. Is it safe to use the burner with only the inner ring on? A concern that I have is that the outer ring may still be "leaking" gas even if it's not lit.
Thanks for your time!

This is almost certainly normal and how the ring is supposed to work, and it should be perfectly safe to use it this way as the gas is cut off when you turn the ring down. I have these types of ring myself, there can occasionally be a whiff of unburned gas when you turn it down past the single ring threshold and the outer ring cuts off, it's just a hint for a second and then it disappears.
The best way to tell if it is safe is to use your nose, mercaptan is added to natural gas to make it smell offensive, and your nose can detect trace amounts of it. If you don't smell any gas with the outer ring off then there isn't any unburned gas.


What would cause dough not to rise while making no-knead bread? I have made both the classic and the speedy version of the no-knead bread recipe provided by Mark Bittman in the New York Times. The one change I make is that I use active dry yeast rather than instant, simply because I don't typically have the latter at hand. I measure out the amount of water the recipe calls for, take out a quarter cup or so, heat it for a few seconds in the microwave so that it is warm (but not hot), dissolve the yeast in the warmed water, then add the dissolved yeast and the rest of the water to the flour to make the dough.

In the video that accompanies the speedy bread recipe, Jim Lahey suggests using hot water and adding a couple drops of red wine vinegar. The last couple of times I tried the recipe, I tried those suggestions. I separated out the water for dissolving the yeast and heated the rest beyond merely warming as needed for the yeast. I warmed the water for the yeast as usual. I added the hot water and a couple drops vinegar to the flour and gave it a couple of stirs first before adding the yeast water, as I thought the yeast would die if it came in contact with the hot water.

Both times, the bread was disastrous. The dough simply failed to rise sufficiently. Instead of more than doubling in size in four hours, it looked as though it had gotten to perhaps 1.5 times the original size, and it was quite smooth, like kneaded dough, instead of bubbly and stringy as the no-knead dough is supposed to be.

The first time, I thought I had made a mistake and added too little yeast, so I didn't think too much about it. The second time, though, I know I measured out the right amount of yeast and I was pretty careful in following the procedure. So I'm trying to account for the lack of rising. A little research suggested that perhaps the vinegar didn't help the yeast to rise, as it ordinarily would, but overwhelmed and killed the yeast.

I used a stainless steel bowl for mixing dough and letting it rise. I know that using stainless steel is generally fine, but perhaps it's a bad idea to add vinegar to the dough if I'm using stainless steel? Would this account for the lack of rise in the dough?

What other reasons might there be for the failure of the dough to rise? I tested my yeast with sugar dissolved in water and it's fine. Thanks!

First and foremost, the classic recipes states quite clearly, "Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles." Expecting microorganisms to do their work in precisely the same amount of time, every time, requires a good bit of precision on your part.

Why the slow rise? Almost definitely a yeast problem. The question is, which kind of yeast problem? Acid can kill yeast, heat can kill yeast, salt can kill yeast, sitting in a package forever can kill them, and there are other, less likely scenarios too.

Are you using jarred active dry yeast or individual packets? You mention testing it, but what technique did you use, a little water and sugar, watch for bubbles? You can (and probably should) do this at the beginning of the recipe, so that your yeast is kickstarted into alertness.

Stainless steel is not the problem. It's non-reactive.

Vinegar is likely to slow the growth, so you probably just need to give it more time. The best way to judge readiness is by the dough, not by the clock.

Another factor is that a few degrees difference can make a difference in the rate of yeast growth and CO2 production:
"With glucose as growth-limiting substrate in the chemostat and aerobic conditions in the respirometer, the carbon dioxide output was found to be higher as temperature at which the organisms were cultured increased from 25 to 39" --Journal of Microbiosology

Hope these help, but I think there's not just one answer here.