Can I make baccala (Italian salted cod) at home relatively easily? I would like to make some Italian baccalà dishes. However, I am unable to get my hands on baccalà. Also I have a box of frozen cod fillets sitting in the freezer that I don't want to waste. Can I make baccalà at home? Any easy way to do so? All I can find on Google with "baccala" are recipes that call for baccala, not how to make this important ingredient.

Yes, you can.  Instructions from the book The Cuisines of Spain:

Get several cod filets, preferably skin-on
Cover the bottom of a large non-reactive pan or dish with coarse salt (such as kosher salt)
Put the filets side-by-side on the salt.
Cover them with coarse salt.  They should be completely covered, with no fish showing.
Place the pan, uncovered, in the refrigerator for 48 hours.
Every 12 hours, pour off any accumulated liquids.  This will wash away some of the salt, so add salt as needed to re-cover the fish.
Lift the fish out of the salt and wipe it down with damp towels to remove the outer salt.
Use or freeze within a couple of weeks.


In Chinese cuisine, are the black beans fermented in Black Bean sauce? I was wondering what type of flavour the black beans add to black bean sauce.  Can they be switched for pinto beans or kidney beans?  Is there a process such as fermentation that the beans undergo before adding to sauce.

I ask because UK supermarket black bean sauces seem poor.  I was thinking that that the main source of flavour is soy, fish or oyster sauces.  I was also beginning to think that all the beans did was to add bulk and to thicken (because soy is watery).

Are they are cheats/substitutes to achieve the same effect as fermentation?  Links welcome.

I'd say a resounding no.
ermm... or yes, depending on whether I'm answering your topic title, or the question in the question ;)

You cannot use substitute beans, because the key ingredient for black bean sauce is fermented black beans. Everything else is an aromatic additive; easily substitutable depending on recipe & intended result.

Leave out the Szechuan pepper, sure; more garlic, why not; different vinegar, yup: different soy, whichever you prefer...
leave out the black beans... it's no longer black bean sauce.

You can, if you're lucky, get fermented black beans in "the West".
I'd recommend a trip to eBay, Amazon, local Asian Supermarkets, etc, if you want to make your own.
Once you have those, recipes for home made black bean sauce are easily available on the web.

I'm not sure I'd tackle the fermentation myself - I'd leave that to the experts.

On a 'shopping' note - if you're in the UK look for makes like Lee Kum Kee which have a London distributor but are as 'authentically Chinese' as you can get. I have no idea whether they are comparatively good bad or indifferent to a Chinese person, but they at least have a definite origin on the labelling.
[no affiliation, just what I can find a lot of in my local Asda & it tases alright to me.]
As a rule I avoid the 'foreign food for Brits' aisles* when shopping for foreign food - but your local market forces will dictate how much footage a supermarket will devote to 'real' vs 'friendly English substitutes' stock.

*Apologies if this may be considered 'inverse-racism' against my own culture - no prejudice intended except in flavour terms - but I prefer imported to 'made in Milton Keynes' when shopping for foods from other areas of the world.


Is it safe to eat the clam that didn't open? I am steaming clams today and I recall my friend warning me under no circumstances should I eat any of clams that remain unopened after steaming. He told me to throw those stubborn clams out, but I wonder why. Is there a problem with opening and eating the last holdout closed clams after all of them are steamed?

Before steaming the clams, they should all be closed. If any of your clams are open, give them a tap and if they stay open, then it is bad and you should take it out of your batch to prevent it from ruining the other clams.

After you have steamed the clams, most of them should be open. The few clams that stay closed doesn't necessarily mean they are bad. Take a thin knife and pry it apart. It's very easy to tell if the clam is bad just by smell.

Edit: After being called out on my fallacy to believe certain kitchen myths without further research, I learned that indeed it is a myth that clam/mussel that refuse to open after being cooked is unsafe to eat.

A clam/mussel has a shell with two halves. These shells have elastic ligaments that naturally want to be open. To keep the shells closed, they have adductor muscles to hold the shells together. Most of the time the heat will denature the proteins in the adductor muscles causing it to release the shells. But sometimes it can cause the muscle to "seize" and hold firm.

This article gives a background of how this kitchen myth started: Mussel Myth

Clam or Mussels that refuse to open after they have been cooked IS NOT an indicator that they are bad. Pry them open and it can easily be determined whether they are bad by the smell.


Thawing uncooked chicken I have been thawing my uncooked chicken in my sink for years, and my family never got sick from eating it. Why can't you thaw uncooked chicken or any type of meat in your sink or on your countertop?

If you thaw raw meat at room temperature (> 5 celcius) you may get bacterial development.
With chicken, not only can you get bacteria to develop, there is also a risk of propagating salmonella onto the surface which you are thawing the meat of and it's likely to contaminate other food too. I always recommend to let the meat thaw in the fridge, where the temperature is less likely to allow bacteria development, on a plate covered with plastic wrap, just make sure that no meat juice can espace and that the meat does not comes into contact with anything else than the plate itself and the plastic wrap, do this with all of your frozen meat.

Of course, wash your hands and working surfaces after working with raw meat.


How to eliminate rubbery texture in pan fried veggie burgers made with vital wheat gluten I like making veggie burgers, and one recipe that I use relies on vital wheat gluten (as well as egg replacer) to have a coherent burger. Here are the ingredients for one particular burger:

  1 cup TVP
  ¾ cup Vegetable broth
  2 tbsp. Tamari
  2 tbsp. Teriyaki Sauce
  1 egg Egg replacer
  1 cup Crushed pineapple
  2 tbsp. Brown sugar
  ½ cup Vital wheat gluten
  ½ cup Whole wheat flour

They are mixed together by hand and refrigerated to thicken up. Then the burgers are pan fried.

What I find is that the outer portion of the burger that makes contact with the pan on either side has an excellent texture, but the inside of the burger is very rubbery, being that it's practically raw and the gluten has that rubbery texture to it. If I pan fry the burgers much longer, they turn brown and get too crispy before the interior is fully cooked, even when I have the burner turned low. Is there a solution to this texture issue?

The rubbery texture can be from over-kneading when combining the burgers. For some recipes, I have pre-baked at a low temperature then grilled to get the right texture on the outside. This would work with a recipe with a resting period as well as one that just dries.

Also, if the egg replacer is not binding correctly (I am assuming you are using Ener-G), try using a chia or flax egg (1 tbsp of either milled, then combined with 3 tbsp water and set to congeal). This will raise the moisture in your patty, which likely already has a good amount based on your recipe, so you can use other wet ingredients instead of adding water.


What to look for in a kitchen scale I'm thinking of buying a modern, probably electronic kitchen scale, to replace my really ancient mechanical one. I'm located in Bombay, India.

I'm wondering what considerations should inform my decision. Possible points include:

Should the scale be waterproof? Is that a useful feature?
On a related note, what considerations should one give to being easy to clean?
Apparently if the tare button is on the weighing surface, it can distort/bias the weight measurement by a few grams. It's not necessarily clear for a given item whether that will be a problem or not. It's presumably only an issue if the weighing is very fast.
Should there be a platform for weighing, which is separate from the main machine? See the previous point. Also, if it's the same platform, then whatever you want to weight may block the display. Though some units, like the Soehnle Page Profi (see below) have a hold button to deal with that.

I'm currently considering Soehnle, specifically
Soehnle KSD Page Digital Kitchen Scale and
Soehnle KSD Fiesta Digital Kitchen Scale. Though the former appears to actually be the Page Profi. "KSD Page" has no hits elsewhere.

America's Test Kitchen did a segment on digital kitchen scales. Their judging criteria were:

Accuracy: Does the scale display the correct weight?
Button usability: Are the buttons in an accessible location? Can they be pressed without too much force?
Display visibility: Can you see the display when a large bowl is on the scale? Are the numbers large enough to read clearly?
Easy to clean
Stability: When you push the buttons, does the scale move?

To answer your specific questions:

None of the 10 scales they tested were waterproof - it seems like that may be a rare feature.
If you can detach the weighing platform from the rest of the scale, it will be easy to clean.
They did not have problems with the tare button biasing the weight.
A weighing platform separate from the main machine makes it easier to see the display and press the buttons, even when a large bowl is on the scale.


Why did my hollandaise sauce break when adding spices? I just made my very first attempt at a hollandaise sauce, which of course broke.
The funny thing is, the sauce was perfect, and was finished. However, it was really, REALLY bland. So, to add some flavor as I've seen several other chefs demonstrate, I attempted to stir in spices (a little salt, a little chili powder, a little black pepper). As soon as the spices hit the sauce it instantly broke.

Sadly I am now out of eggs and butter, so there's no way I can salvage it. Down the sink it went.

So, what happened? What did I do wrong? Any help would be appreciated - it has to be something with those spices. Perhaps the salt??

I refuse to give this up, I need to learn these mother sauces!

Adding salt and pepper should usually not lead to a clotted sauce hollandaise.

It happens if the whole thing starts getting to hot.
The next time you do it you can try the following:
Put some ice water aside as you start. If you determine the sauce starts separating beat in a tiny amount of ice water. If you are lucky you can form the emulsion again by that. If it doesn't work you have to start over again.


Can I store raw gnocchi dough in the fridge? I made gnocchi dough earlier this evening. It was my first time, so I took a bit of dough and made myself some dinner with it. It was great.

But I still have some dough left over. Since it's quite late: can I store it in the fridge and continue making gnocchi tomorrow?

Yes, gnocchi store well in the fridge for a day or so, or in the freezer for longer term storage. It's best to try and keep the gnocchi separate (placing on a baking sheet or tray is best) so they don't stick together, and very well covered so that they don't absorb any odours in your fridge.

If freezing, freeze on the tray until reasonably hard, and you can then transfer them to a tub or bag.


Packaged fish in lots of liquid - is it safe I was unable to get to fish mongers, and so bought 2 sealed packs of cod from the chilled section in a local supermarket (each pack had 2 loins, a total of 280g per pack). They were not purchased frozen.

I can't find the actual picture, but the packaging looks very similar to this (I've removed the make/producer)

The use by date is today and when I removed them from the fridge, I noticed a lot of liquid despite them being "sealed".

When I opened the package, each cod loin was in liquid.

I'm not a professional chef, but my understanding is that anything sitting in liquid is basically breeding ground for bacteria (hence why the advice is to defrost under running water).

I can't smell anything wrong with the fish - there is no fishy smell and the loins are white as one would expect.

Is there any way to tell if the food is spoiled or not before eating it?

As an additional question - does the fact there was so much liquid in each 280g pack of 2 loins (I would guess each pack had around 3 table spoons of liquid) suggest the fish was frozen?

Fish is tricky because the smell does not come from bacteria but from degrading enzymes. Cod tends to smell fairly early while being perfectly good to eat.

More generally for food to spoil you need water, warmth, a nutrient and oxygen (in most situations),so in the case of your fish it is likely to be good to eat, being vacuum packed and chilled.

The water in the pack can come from thawing or from 'weak flesh' (eg farmed fish). When this happens to me, I pat it dry with a paper towel and then salt it lightly on all sides as this will firm up the flesh after 10 minutes or so.

Obviously nothing replaces buying a whole fish you've looked at 'in the eyes' and butcher it yourself but we all have to deal with packed fish every now and then...


Which salsa ingredient makes it taste like dirt? I suppose it could also be considered "earthy".

There is an ingredient that is often added to "authentic" salsas that often ends up making it taste too "earthy".

Which ingredient is it?
Is it cilantro?

My partner has a very sensitive "dirt-flavor" sense... One of the ingredients that may be found in salsa that often triggers it for her is cumin.


What do you get when you reheat and cool clotted cream? I made clotted cream and tried to heat it for serving. It immediately disintegrated so I tried to salvage it by freezing it. It solidified into something yellowish and left some liquid at the bottom, just like when I made the clotted cream. Is the solid part still clotted cream or is it something else?

From your description and re-reading the instructions for your version: yes, what you had on top was still clotted cream.

They liquid on the bottom should be whey, which gets separated from the rest during the clotting-process. Re-heating did start the same process you used originally, and left-over whey separated again.


Tool for making small balls of sticky food There are several kinds of sticky food balls that I'd like to make, but the usual process consists in rolling them in your hand one by one. This process is tedious and time-consuming. I'd really like it to scale better. Such food usually tastes better when the balls are smaller, but this means even more time preparing it.

Examples of the kind of food I'm talking about: rice balls, meat balls, rum balls, ladoo, caramel balls, chocolate truffles,  etc.

What they have in common (at least most of them):

The material is sticky, so this requires rubbing butter on the hand, or something similar, with periodic repeats to ensure non-stickiness;
The material is not very hard, which compounded with the stickiness, makes it hard to improvise with similar tools, such as spoons: it will stick a bit and deform easily;
After the ball is done, it is often rolled in some other material (sugar, chocolate, bread crumbs, etc) which coats it.

After looking for several related words ("food baller", "ball scoop", etc.), I only managed to find a few tools that might be useful:

These ice cream scoops have a mechanism to help release the material. I'm not entirely convinced this would work, since the food I'm talking about is usually stickier and less solid than ice cream, but still; the main issue is that the smallest one I found is about 3.5 cm in diameter, and I'd need them to be more like 1.5-2 cm.

Melon ballers have the appropriate size, but they are less "round" (as in, less than half a sphere) and designed for hard, non-sticky melon insides. Also, they do not have a release mechanism.

Non-stick, thin gloves might help speed up the rolling, but if they are cumbersome silicon gloves, they will prevent me from being able to properly ball the food. I did not find any thin, non-stick, food-grade gloves either.

Did I just miss something? Otherwise, how do professional chefs manage to produce these kinds of balled food at scale?

In most professional kitchens, people use the ice cream-type scoop (your first picture), as they come in many different sizes.  In general, the scoop would be used to portion the product (sizing consistently).  Depending on what the final product was to look like, generally hands are quickly used for final shaping. While latex-type gloves are common, often dipping hands in water is enough to prevent sticking.


What temperature is a rolling boil? At what temperature is water called at a “rolling boil”?
How long does it take until water is at rolling boil?

The scientists tell us the temperature of plain water when it is boiling is 212 degrees F, or 100 degrees C at standard pressure. So it will be very close to that unless you are on a super-high mountain or someplace else where the air pressure isn't what we are used to at sea level.

"Rolling boil" is an expression I have usually seen applied to very vigorous boiling of things other than plain water (like for example when you are making jam, you are boiling water with fruit and lots of sugar in it). However, plain water at a very vigorous boil will still be the same temperature as gently boiling plain water. The difference would be the intensity of the heat source you are cooking it with. If you add heat to your boiling water at a very fast rate, it will boil very vigorously. Gentler heating will make for gentler boiling, but same temperature once boiling starts.

As far as the time it takes to get to that boiling state, that also would depend on your heat source. A little portable camping stove sometimes takes a very long time to boil your pot of water, but a very hot roaring campfire will get it boiling right away. At home, your big burner would be faster than your small burner. So we can't really say how long it will take to come to any type of boil.


How long before steak is at room temperature? I've got a piece (of about 300 grams) dry-aged rib-eye in the fridge, at around 6 degrees Celsius. I want to let it "get to room temperature" (which technically is about 21 degrees Celsius for me) before I cook it up to about 55 degrees Celsius core temperature.

Is there any good rule of thumb to determine how much time I should minimally / optimally let it sit outside the fridge before slapping it into the pan?

According to Serious Eats, a 210 gram steak in sitting in a 21° C room managed to go from 3° C to 10° C... in 2 hours. For a larger steak going up all the way to 21 degrees, it would take longer. The take-away from that article is that it's not worth it and does not affect the resulting steak.


How much salt can I safely add to bread dough? I recently made ciabatta, which turned out very well, with a good crust and nice open crumb. However, I felt it could use more salt to give extra flavour. I'm aware that salt and yeast do not make good bedfellows (or should that be breadfellows?), so how much salt can I safely add to the recipe without compromising it?

FYI, the recipe in question uses 3.25 cups polish, 3 cups of flour, and 0.75 cups of water to 1.75 teaspoons of salt (I use table salt to avoid lumps of undissolved salt in the bread).

Based on experience and experimentation alone (I bake bread several times a week), I'd say to be consistently safe you probably want to max out around 3% in baker's percentages.  2-2.5% is much more common, but I've done as much as 3%.  After 3%, things got very inconsistent.  Sometimes it would work if the structure was just right, but mostly I got loaves that didn't rise well.

If I did my math and conversions to weight right, it looks like you're probably in the 2% range, so you should be able to add about 50% more salt.

EDIT:  It must be higher, but I'm not sure how high.  Bread Baker's Apprentice as a 4.2% Poolish Focaccia and other others in that range.  BBA seems to max out in the low 4's.


Halva smells like play-dough? a common ingredient? I tried a Halva (gound sesame and sugar kind of sesame marzipan) of a kind I didn't try before, and I find it smells like Play-dough. My wife says that when she makes Play-dough from flour it also has the 'Play-dough' smell. Could there be a common ingredient to the two? Maybe cream of tartar? Thanks!

Are you sure it was a sesame based Halva? Halva generally falls in to two wide varieties, one flour based and the other nut based. I would assume that the smell of play-dough comes from the flour. So it's possible you had a flour based one.

BTW, it's wikipedia that's defining Tahini as being nut based, I'm not so sure about that classification myself.


Uncovered Raw Meat or Milk in Fridge I believe the harm in leaving raw meat uncovered in the fridge is that more bacteria will enter, more oxygen will enter (causing faster bacteria multiplication), and more water will escape (causing dryness which probably slows bacteria multiplication, but toughens the meat, so let's consider dryness to be bad; I'm not making beef jerky).  Please ignore the stinky odors that escape; just consider the quality of that one uncovered piece of meat after we eventually cook it.

How much faster will the food spoil (percentage, compared to the same meat wrapped in plastic wrap)?  I imagine that meat with skin, like a whole chicken, is not effected as much as meat without skin, like a bare chicken breast, and that ground meat would be effected the most.  I wish I had some data to convince my roommate to cover his meat; is there any research on this?  Feel free to answer this for milk instead if there is more research for it.

There is no practical difference in spoilage time for wrapped versus unwrapped.  Spoilage is a factor pretty much of temperature, since in practice, all foods have pathogens present which can breed.

Assuming your refrigerator is free of insects, dogs and similar macro-fauna, wrapping is to prevent odors from going from one food to another, drying, or cross-contamination of one food by another through drips or splashing.  Now, outside of a refrigerator, where ants, flies, and so on are abundant, wrapping also provides a physical barrier to prevent infestation, but the body of the refrigerator already does that.

In fact, in some rare occasions, you may wish to specifically refrigerate your meat unwrapped:  for example, after brining a turkey, refrigerating it for 24 hours unwrapped will permit the skin to dry out, and permit a more crispy result.


Shall I use xanthan, guar, both? I have guar, lbg and xanthan in the pantry.
I would like to do 2 things :

thicken whole milk to make "creamy" sauces (would like to try a chicken champagne recipe I found but replace the 30pct fat cream with thickened milk)
give a more traditional "pate" (or rillettes) texture to a "silken tofu + mushroom pate" (texture is more like yogurt...).  Shall I use xanthan only or a combo of 2 or 3 Thickeners?
More generally speaking: when does one mixes xanthan + guar?

Thanks a bunch!

For making sauces and dressings XG, GG and LBG have different qualities. Especially in lower concencrations my go-to thickener would be XG however as you start using more of it the texture becomes “snotty”.
GG on the other hand, gets more sticky as it gets more concencrated. To balance each other out you can mix it to get better thickening results in lower concencrations something like  (0.5% GG + 0.35% XG). I think this answers your 1st application and 3rd question.

LBG and XG works much not only as a thickener (lower concentrations), but also as a gelling agent when used in slightly higher concentrations (0.8% LBG + 0.2% XG). You can try using this syneresis to achieve a texture for your second application.


Can pork and beef be thawed in water together? I just went downstairs and noticed my girlfriend thawing pork chops and beef together in a bowl of cold water, is this okay?

The water is bloody red and im worried that the porkchop juices mixing with beef juices is a bad thing

Appreciate any insight

This can be safe; mixing isn't fundamentally dangerous. The things to keep in mind are:

The overall thawing method needs to be safe. Ideally that means running water, but the key is that it's fast enough to avoid spending too long in the danger zone. A bowl of water is likely too slow, though it can be fast enough if the water is agitated and changed periodically to simulate running water. See also What are the acceptable methods to thaw food items?
They'll need to be cooked to the higher required temperature of the two. For example, if the beef were ground, it needs to go to 160F, so even though pork chops only need 145F, you'd probably want to cook them to 160F anyway.

The mixing doesn't really change anything, any more than adding raw beef and pork to the same pan does. You just end up with a combination of the unsafe things from both, and then you cook them both to render them safe. Safety is essentially just about cooking to a high enough temperature, and not staying in the danger zone (40-140F) too long.

I don't think this is a particularly good thawing method, though. Ideally anything you've frozen is in an airtight, watertight package of some sort, so you could just keep both packaged during thawing. Or if you plan ahead, you can thaw in the fridge.


How to combat odor from pickled radishes inside refrigerator? I know the question is related to How to get rid of the smell from the fridge?. At the same time, I am curious about possible additives as part of the pickling that may help reduce the odor. So I didn't use a recipe, but rather finished the jar of pickles found in the Costco chilled section. I thought rather than dumping the remaining solution, I could use the same brine to pickle something. I brought home radishes on sale and just rinsed and cut the tops.

After about 4 days, there was a strong odor which I didn't expect because the original pickles didn't have a smell. I'm assuming it's the radishes that are out of "balance" for this brine solution. Is there something to add to the pickling solution that counteracts radishes?

Since you didn't heat the glass after adding the newly chopped radishes, any bacteria on the radishes weren't killed. The solution (sour and salty) should reduce growth of bacteria, but
in this case this wasn't enough. Next time remember to heat the picles according to standard pickling instructions.


Butter cake creaming method I am living in Asia and it's summer here for all year long.
I realised that my butter tends to melts very fast when I am doing creaming method. Will the melted butter affect the texture of my cake?

I have dealt with the same situation - very warm in the kitchen and the butter gets super soft, sometimes with a very slight bit of melting. This has never negatively affected the outcome of my cake.

But, anytime you think it may be too warm in your kitchen, you can put a mixing bowl in the fridge or freezer and let it get cold while the butter softens. Then, when ready to start creaming the butter and sugar together, transfer the butter to the cold bowl. This ensures that the butter will not continue to get warmer during the creaming process.


How Long Before an Egg Starts to Stink? I know this sounds odd, but my kids want to know what rotten eggs smell like. (We were learning about volcanos and the smell of sulfur in the air, and it was described as smelling like rotten eggs.) I took an egg out of the refrigerator and am keeping it on the counter. How long should I wait before cracking it open? I want a horrible, strong smell. :)

Years ago there was a related question, How long can eggs be unrefrigerated before becoming unsafe to eat? .  In that one, we're looking at how long are they safe (which means a very low probability of them being spoiled).  But one of the answers links to an experiment from the 1970s by Mother Earth News.

In the article, they mention that they abandoned the unrefridgerated eggs (both store-bought and fresh laid) were still edible (but not great) at 90 days.  But another month in:

  By June (120 days after the experiment was begun) all the supermarket and all the homestead control eggs had gone completely rotten.

But not to worry, you don't have to wait 4 months:

  Our experiment was set up on February 4, 1977 and was designed to run for a full year of regular monthly "look, sniff, taste, and texture" tests. It very quickly became apparent, however, that some of the "preservation" methods we were trying were worse than no attempts at preservation at all. The eggs (both fertile and unfertile) buried in both the wet sand and sawdust looked bad, smelled bad, had lost their taste, and had runny textures just one month after being "preserved". Even the control groups — eggs which were just allowed to lay out at room temperature with nothing done to them — were better than that. Conclusion after only four weeks: Trying to store eggs in either wet sand or dry sawdust is counterproductive. Forget it. Anything else — even nothing at all works better.

30 days might not be enough to get that really horrible smell.  I'd probably go for 45 to 60 days in wet sand or sawdust.  I have no idea if playground sand would be better than sharp sand for this, but I suspect that if you're doing this at a colder time of the year, you might want to give it a couple of weeks past that, just to be safe.

You can also pack up a dozen eggs, and then after 30 days (not weeks), check one.  Then again every week or two until you get what you're looking for.


Is it possible to cook bacon without melting as much fat? I love Bacon, but I prefer fattier pieces of meat. However, I cannot seem to find a way to cook the bacon without melting most of the fat off.

What I've tried so far:

Searing at high temperature - Maybe the best results?
Baking the bacon at 200*F(takes way too long, still melts)
Also baking at 300 & 400*F.

In the end, it may just not be possible to retain more fat. I just hate having so much bacon fat left over, and I cook enough that It would make no sense to save it all.

I'm not sure this is really a sensible answer… but it's one way…

Deep-fry it.
Should take about 15 - 30s.

That way it will come out even fattier than it went in. Any fat that comes off will be added to the next batch, though probably at an overall loss to the fryer, so you'll have to periodically top back with oil.

Late edit:
I forget the US likes their bacon crispy. My timings were for UK bacon to keep the fat soft but get the meat technically cooked, as the OP asked for 'more fat'.
Crispy I guess will take longer. I've never made crispy bacon in my life & have to assume it's cured differently to be able to make it cook like that.


Why doesn't acacia honey crystallize? Acacia honey is made from the flowers of the acacia (aka locust) tree. It is very light colored, and it is reputed to never crystallize. Certainly none of the acacia honey I've had in the house has crystallized, but I don't know about the "never" part, because we tend to consume it before eternity sets in. :)

My question is, is this due to some property of acacia nectar (if so, what?), or is "acacia honey" a code name for some highly-processed honey-flavored concoction, or ...?

The crystallising of honey depends on the amount of glucose (sugar) you have in the honey. Crystallisation occurs in solutions that are (like honey) oversaturated with sugars. Less saturation means less likelihood for crystallisation while water presence affects the distribution and size of crystals.

In terms of moisture you have two types of crystallisation:

If moisture exceeds ~14% large crystals form at the bottom of the container and the honey seems otherwise OK. That is indicative of moisture excess in the honey which is considered of inferior quality.
If moisture is less than that, the honey crystallises uniformly. That is a normal phenomenon.

Now aside from the way it crystallises, depending on the glucose content you have faster or slower times for its crystallisation. The lengths I quote refer to Mediterranean (Greek) climates. In Scotland, every honey I've ever brought from Greece apart from fir honey has crystallised within weeks. So in terms of glucose:

A high glycose content of ~40% would have the honey crystallise within 2 months from harvest
A moderately high glucose content of ~35% would take 6 months to a year to crystallise
A honey with normal glucose content of ~30% would take a couple of years, and
A honey with low glucose content <30% would not have enough sugars to crystallise (that's my fir honey and my honey of choice)

My reference is a website about honey (in Greek) cross-referenced with the answer I got from a producer when I had the same question.

So to answer your question, your honey doesn't have enough sugar to crystallise.

But even if it does, worry not. Bain-Marie (don't microwave!) it for 1/2 an hour and the sugar will melt its way back into its uniform honey goodness.


Old stone mortar and pestle cleaning My roommate has an old mortar made from stone that had been outdoors for quite some time. She rinsed it thoroughly,put it in a big pot, and boiled it to kill any bacteria that could be crawling in there.

The mortar has great sentimental value for her, and I'm unsure about what products use for cleaning, if at all, since the stone might absorb the chemicals and render it unusable.

This related question seems to indicate that soap is not to be used with porous materials, such as stone.
Why are stone ware and dutch oven items exempt from bacteria?

Before using it for food preparation, is there anything else we should do to avoid health issues? Can we use it already after boiling it?

What type of stone, lava, marble, granite? Bleach makes for a nice general purpose disinfectant, as it degrades on its own over time. Let the thing soak in bleach (1 part bleach 9 part water) for a few days then boil again, and you should be good to go; once you find a pestle that fits.


What is the best way to convert recipes to gluten free, and how much xanthan gum is needed? I am in the process of converting my boyfriend and myself to a gluten free regimen.  I have had a lot of success with gluten free recipes, but I am now wanting to convert my previous recipes to gluten free ones.

My questions are:

For the flour portion, is it cup for cup?  (one cup of regular flour for one cup of gluten free flour)
How much xanthan gum should be added per cup of gluten free flour?

This depends of course on what you are using for gluten-free flour, but according to Khymos' Data (PDF warning) and corroborated by my own experience, 1.5% is about the maximum concentration of xanthan you would ever use, beyond which food starts to get really slimy.

The recommended amount for flour is going to depend on exactly what kind of "gluten free flour" you are using.  For example, you'll see at least two recipes in the link above, one using equal parts soy and rice/potato/corn starch and the other using rice flour and corn starch in approximately a 3:1 ratio (with tapioca starch added for what I presume to be heat stability).

However, xanthan gum is pretty forgiving, so you can experiment a little with the quantities and not have to worry too much.  Personally, I would recommend starting with 1% as a baseline (that's approximately 1/2 tsp per cup) as well as 0.5% guar gum (1/4 tsp per cup).  Guar gum has viscosity synergy with xanthan gum and will give you much more stabilizing bang for your buck.

If that's not stable enough, add up to 50% more (keeping the xanthan:guar in a 2:1 ratio).  If it's too sticky/slimy, lower the quantity.  Most recipes I've seen use close to a 1% ratio so that should be the best starting point.


Do leeks need to be softened? I'm making a potato leek soup and I'd like to just throw all the ingredients into a slow cooker and go about my business, pureeing the whole batch and adding cream later.

Does this sound reasonable or do I need to first "sweat" the leeks in butter as I would onions?

When cooking in a slow cooker, you do not have to precook the leeks.  I made a potato leek soup not too long ago that called for throwing everything in the pot and it came out great.  The only thing I cooked before hand was the bacon, rendering out much of the fat and giving the nice golden brown and crispy bits to sprinkle on top.

You CAN precook anything to help reduce the cook time and I always sear meat, but unless you are going to caramelize the leeks, you will not notice any difference in flavor or texture.

As for the pureeing part, you want to be careful pureeing potatoes as they can turn into a nasty gluey mess.  Just keep it to a minimum or use a food mill and you should be fine.  I typically just use a potato masher and leave my soup a little on the chunky side.


Why is it that drinks but not food can have 0 calories? As someone who has been counting calories and trying to minimize caloric and fat intake for several months I have to ask this question.

Why is it that drinks but not food can have 0 calories?

Drinks are mostly water. If besides that it's just flavorings and artificial sweeteners, there's nothing with calories in it. So zero-calorie drinks are a really obvious thing to make: just take some existing drink, replace any sugar with artificial sweeteners, replace any actual food content (e.g. fruit puree) with flavorings, and it'll be zero calorie.

To make zero-calorie food, you'd need a solid edible zero-calorie thing to provide the bulk, and there's not an obvious choice for that, certainly not something common like water. On top of that, if you want it to be anything like the food it's based on, it has to be a very specific substance.

That said, it's not impossible. There are indigestible carbohydrates (fiber, generally), and some foods like shirataki noodles made basically completely out of that so they end up low- or zero-calorie.

I'm sure with enough modern industrial food science, we could make a lot more things in that vein. But it's definitely not nearly so easy as with drinks. And you wouldn't want to eat massive quantities; the water that makes up virtually all of a zero-calorie drink is easy to get out of your body, but giant amounts of indigestible solids won't be as pleasant.


What is wok hai and how do I get it in my food? There is something special about food cooked in a wok called wok hai? What is it and how do I get my food to have it?

Wok Hei is the "essense" imparted by the wok when stir-frying over very high heat.  The characteristic flavor is due to the the Maillard reactions and the charring of the ingredients.

Practically speaking, most home stoves do not have sufficient BTU output to achieve Wok Hei. If you have a gas stove with sufficient output, consider yourself fortunate.  Get the wok really hot before adding the oil and ingredients... and stir vigorously.  You should also make sure to crank up your hood fan/ventilation, since there will be quite a bit of smoke generated.

For those without a high BTU stove (myself included), a suggestion was made
here regarding a burner that could be hooked up to a propane tank.


Does there exist a conversion between a sourdough and preferments recipes? I tried asking a similar question: From regular fresh yeast to sourdough
and didn't exactly get real answers, so here I am asking something easier.

Is there a formula to convert a sourdough recipe to a preferment recipe using either biga or poolish and vice versa?

I would say no, because to me, it doesn't make sense for such a conversion to exist. You get conversion formulas when you can achieve the same result with different ingredients. Since you have no well-defined "same" here, you can't give a conversion either.

One function of sourdough is to leaven. You don't leaven with a preferment, so here you cannot have a conversion. Instead, you have to use yeast in the proper amount for your amount of flour and rising process. It doesn't matter that some of your flour will arrive as dry flour and some of it will be included in a preferment.

The other function of sourdough is to give you a specific taste (I am combining both flavor and texture in that word). For that, there is no specific amount of sourdough you have to add to the recipe - you can use more or less of it, depending on your taste (at least within a wide range, until you run into structural problems with the loaf). There is also no specific amount of preferment you have to add - you use as much or as little as you like, again such that you get a dough and not a glutenless paste or slurry.

You could say that you want an amount of preferment that makes your bread taste exactly the way it tasted with X percent sourdough, but that's not practicable. There are differences between one sourdough and the next, and between one preferment and the next, and if you are very exact, you can't achieve the same taste with a preferment that you can achieve with a sourdough anyway. Even for achieving something "similar", the variability is too high and you have to recreate the recipe for every specific case, there is no simple "plug it in" formula.

If all you want is a rough starting point, you can simply use the same baker's percentage of preferment as you used of sourdough and see how you like the result. I am suggesting this as a rule of thumb because it is the easiest to deal with, not because it is likely to produce the same taste though.


Adding tomatoes to pizza dough I want to try this pizza recipe and it calls for putters beets to be added to the dough to make it red. Currently, I have so many tomatoes. Would replacing the beets with tomatoes affect the crust at all? The recipe is here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/tasty.co/recipe/rainbow-sheet-pan-pizza

I would guess that (a) the water content of tomatoes would be higher, for which you would have to compensate, and (b) they won't color your dough as dramatically as beetroot, but they might impact the flavor more.


Salting garlic at the start of a recipe You commonly see recipes that call for sautéing onions before adding the rest of the ingredients. It’s not uncommon for me to sprinkle salt on the onions. However, if a recipe calls for starting with garlic in the pan I never think to salt the garlic. Would salting the  garlic bring out different flavors or change the texture (or help slow the browning so as to prevent inadvertent burning.

I would generally advise against salting garlic before sautéing, but it depends on your use and style of cooking. Salting garlic is a French technique. It draws out moisture and makes it more difficult to brown (which may be what you're after).

Garlic is difficult to get right as people often over-cook it causing it to be bitter. If you're cooking garlic by itself, start with it in the cold oil and heat them together. If you are sweating the garlic and don't intend to brown it, then salting is fine and may help.

I sometimes use kosher salt when puréeing garlic with a chef's knife as this helps pulverize the garlic. A lot of your technique will depend on the recipe and how pungent you want the garlic. The more you cut, mince, or grind it (before cooking), the more caustic flavor you will get as more allicin is created. Cooking the garlic destroys the alliinase enzyme so no further allicin will be created once cooked.


What causes lemons to be bitter when cooked and how to avoid it? I know that the bitter taste in lemons is due to the rind (the white part), but I don't understand why there are recipes where it's ok and others where the taste is just terrible.

I recently experimented by mixing curry with limes and lemons. I cut the lemons and placed the slices over chicken thighs that I cooked in the oven. At one point I tasted it and the flavour was good but the meat was slightly uncooked. I left it for another 30 min and when I took it out it was really bitter, so much that there was just a hint of curry.

So, is it time dependant then? Does the cooking method (direct heat, wet heat) have any influence? Can it be avoided by taking out the lemons at a determined point? I love the "citrusy" flavour, specially with chicken and fish, but never seem to get it right. Thanks for any help.

You can try a few things.

Use just the zest from the peel, and then slice and remove the pith and use just the inside.
Pre-boil the lemon peels, then add them to your main dish.
Remove the lemons before the bitterness gets too strong (i.e. when you tasted the dish the first time) but while there's still a strong taste.

This works because the citrus oils (which are a major primary flavor contributor) are just in the top layer of the peels, while the acid is in the inside. The pith is just plain bitter.


What compound can make crunchy biscuits? I want to make Belvita like biscuits. What ingredients do I need to put or not to obtain a crunchy texture (but not a really hard like biscotti). Is "height of the biscuit a important factor ?

Here is my actual recipe, if needed :

1 cup of wholeheat flour
1/2 cup of butter
1/3 cup of sugar
3 eggs
1 tbsp of honey

I've seen on other sites that it can be a good idea to put the butter melted to avoid aeration. Right now they are a little too soft. Thanks for your replies

Your comment update suggests that you might be melting the butter ... don't.  Melted butter will make for a softer, chewy cookie..
I don't know if there are episodes of Good Eats available legally online, but there are transcripts of them ... you want episode 'Three Chips for Sister Martha' in which he discusses how some slight changes to a cookie recipe will make for dramatically different cookies:

Back to butter. But this time we're going to melt it.
...
The water from the melted butter will combine during agitation with the higher protein of the bread flour therefore producing gluten ... which is chewy.

You likely want to look at what he did for 'The Thin' variant, which is the only crispy variant in the episode ... but that's not to say that you can't make thick crunchy cookies.  (one of my favorites is LU's Bastogne cookies;  speculaas also comes out crunchy even when fairly thick)  Unfortunately, the recipe from that episode focused on thin (with the side-effect of crispy/crunchy), rather than mentioning what could be done to make it crunchy without making it thin.


Measurement for 3 sheets of crushed graham cracker My receipe calls for 3 sheets of crushed graham cracker. I bought pre-crushed graham cracker. What is the cup measurement for 3 crushed sheets?

Jefromi answered this related question How much is a cup of graham cracker crumbs in crackers and weight? with the information that there are 7 or 8 crushed crackers in a cup. So, 3 crackers would be about .4 cup crushed.


White cloudy areas on bottom of new stainless steel skillet I just bought my first few pot and pans "Calaphon" stainless steel trip-ply

I used my new 10" skillet tonight, and cooked pork chops. I heated the pan first, added olive oil, let it heat, then added chops. After I was done, cleaned it immediately under water, and noticed white cloud looking areas on the bottom of the skillet. They won’t wash or rub off

Do I need to return these? I did buy them for the look as well.

Sprinkle the 'cleaned' dry pan with coarse salt - add any kind of inexpensive vinegar, just enough to wet the salt to a wet paste, scrub the pan with this paste with a paper towel for 30 seconds or so, using the salt as a mild "abrasive", while the vinegar dissolves the cloudiness.  Rinse with water and dry.  Voilá.

This is simpler and cheaper than using any kind of kitchen cleanser, and no toxic residue.


How can I add meat into a completed tomato sauce? Yesterday I was cooking for someone and was planning on making a bolognese sauce, but when it came to start cooking (ie. after doing my mise en place), she asked if I could leave the meat out of it, so instead I ended up with a meat-less tomato sauce with various veggies in it (onion, garlic, green pepper and carrot; I'm not sure if there's a "proper" name for this sort of sauce) -- essentially, my bolognese recipe minus the meat. I mixed my pasta into the sauce a couple minutes before serving.

Today I have plenty of leftovers (that have been sitting in the fridge for about 24 hours), and would like to add my meat (ground beef) into it. I realize that instead I could do something like make meatballs, but I'm not looking to do something like that.

Would just browning the meat now and mixing it in work well? Is there something I should add to my meat to better incorporate it into my sauce? Also, I'm not sure if putting the sauce back on heat will be the greatest idea because the pasta unfortunately got cooked more than I wanted (to the point where it's okay as-is, but further cooking will probably push it to overdone).

As the others have mentioned, it won't quite be the same ... however, it can be done, it just won't quite have the same flavor as there isn't a chance for the meat juices to transfer into the sauce, and some issues regarding mixing it back in with the cold pasta.

If I were going to try it, I'd brown the meat, remove some of the fat if it's a really fatty grind, then add some extra sauce (or even other liquid ... maybe dairy, for a classic bolognese) to let it simmer for a bit ... then toss the pasta in with it to reheat.

The extra sauce is the key, otherwise, the meat isn't going to blend in with sauce on the pasta,  If you reheat the pasta in the fresh sauce, it should hopefully mix together more completely.

... but if I were to do it, and wanted to add a meat to an already cooked pasta, I'd probably not choose ground beef as a first choice; I'd probably cook up some sausages, cut it down to an appropriate size for the pasta you're dealing with, and mix that in, possibly adding some extra liquid when reheating the pasta.


What is the optimal steep time for cold-brewed coffee? When cold-brewing coffee (such as a Toddy) at room temperature, what is the best steep time. Would a 1 or 2-hour steep time yield a decent cup of coffee?

Does anyone have any research on caffeine extraction efficiency in water at room temperature?

I've been using a Toddy for about two years now.  I have found that you can get a plenty strong concentrate with only 1/2 pound of freshly ground coffee steeped in filtered water (like in a Brita) for just short of 18 hours.  Beyond 18 hours the grounds become waterlogged and the same elements that produce the bitterness found in hot brewed coffee start to come out.  12 hours, though, is barely enough to get the flavor out.  At only one or two hours, I can't imagine that there would be much flavor at all.  If you use a Toddy, you will find that using a finer ground will result a very cumbersome, frustrating draining process and/or sediment in your concentrate.    As to the caffeine, I believe you will find that the matter is undecided.  Someone needs to conduct an experiment with well defined parameters to really figure it out.


Dusty water, different taste if water has been sitting? If I leave a glass of water out over night, I notice that it seems to taste different the next day.

Is this because dust is falling into the water?

There is an easy experiment to see if your water is picking up dust. Simply cover a glass of water with a saucer and see if it tastes the same as a glass left uncovered.

You don't say where your water is coming from. Is this from a public water supply or from a well?

Either way it is possible that either the water is either absorbing gasses or releasing them.

Outgassing

In years gone by in southern Michigan there was hydrogen sulfide in the water which gave the water a rotten egg smell and taste. The hydrogen sulfide would outgas over time.

Water can be naturally carbonated so that carbon dioxide will outgas.

Absorption

It is also possible to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.


Is there something about black pepper that changes while frying? I made yellow rice after a long while, I didn't remember the recipe exactly but it was simple enough so I just winged it. Here's what I did:

4 tablespoons of olive oil
200g of frozen vegetable mix (peas, carrots, beans, cauliflower)
fry them a little while until all vegetables have thawed
100g of white rice
half tsp of salt
half tsp of ground black pepper
1 tsp of ground tumeric
fry a few more minutes
2-3 cups of water
boil/fry until all the water has either been absorbed or evaporated

It came out funky as hell, had this weird sour-bitter taste all over, especially concentrated into pieces of cauliflower

Then I decided to try eliminating the tumeric, pepper and olive oil one by one and made the dish again.

First up was pepper and I didn't have to try the others because that was it. No pepper, no funky bitterness. I played around some more and found that if I add the pepper at any point after adding the water then there is no problem.

So I'm guessing that its frying with pepper thats somehow the problem, does anyone know why?

@Megha's suspicion of too-high heat is spot on.
The primary flavor oil in black pepper is piperine and its melting point of 130°C is below that of the Maillard reaction of 140°C to 165°C. You were likely frying the vegetables until they were nicely golden on the outside, which happens via the Maillard reaction. By adding ground pepper during that frying phase, the piperine is breaking down and adding a bitter flavor to your dish.
Potential solutions are:

Grind the pepper more coarsely. With less surface area, the pepper will break down more slowly and you'll get more pepper flavor remaining and less bitter.
Learn to enjoy the bitter.
Wait until your veggies are all nicely browned and turn down the heat. Then add your pepper (and turmeric). You want some heat to melt the oils in the pepper so they migrate into your food but not enough to break them down. The piperine will start decomposing at boiling point. To retain the pepper flavor, don't boil your dish very long.
Add pepper at the very end, after your water has been absorbed and the heat is reduced.

A fun and satisfying way to experience this is with a potato. Dice up the potato and divide into 3 parts. Add the pepper at the beginning of frying with the first portion of the potato. Add the pepper during the final minute of frying with the second portion. Finally, cook the last portion of potato to completion and then add pepper while the potato is in the warm pan. To compare, warm all three portions of the potato and compare the flavor. I don't mind bitter so I add pepper willy nilly for myself. My kids feel differently.


What can I do to thicken the mixture in a meat "cup?" I've got a pound of ground beef in the refrigerator that I need to use by tonight, and have been eating pasta and hamburgers in unusual abundance lately so my usual standbys of ragù and patties are pretty much off the table.

While searching for recipe ideas I happened upon these barbecue beef cups - a bit heavy on the store-bought ingredients, but very convenient and looks palatable.  However, one of the reviewers pointed out that, even with various savoury additions, the final product came out more or less like a sloppy joe, and I'd prefer to have something less... sloppy.

In other words I'd like to make one of these so that the filling holds its shape and doesn't start leaking after the first bite.  On the other hand, I also don't want it to come out like a fruit tart with the consistency of jelly.  I keep thinking of those Jamaican beef patties you buy in stores and the consistency of the filling; it's relatively moist, but dry/solid enough to stay in the patty.

Can I accomplish this, preferably without the aid of exotic hydrocolloids?  I was thinking of mixing in an egg, but I'm not sure how well that would work or if it would be better to use the whole egg or just the yolk.  Tomato paste is another "thickener" that would seem to work well with this type of recipe, but might not get it thick enough before ruining the taste.  And of course I have various starches and baking ingredients but I worry that too much of those will just turn it into jelly.

Any tips/suggestions?

A little cornstarch should, if you add it with the bbq sauce, make it just thick enough to cling together a little better.

I'd say make a slurry of say 1/2c water, 1/4c bbq sauce, 1tsp cornstarch and add it to your ground beef. Let it cook down (I'm basically thinking how taco packets work here) until it's close to where you want it; continued heat in the oven should finish binding.

Or skip the bbq sauce, use dry herbs and spices mostly with just a tiny dab to bind it together.

Also you just made me want a patty, you awful man.


Why does roasting add a flavour to the peanuts? I roast the peanuts on a tawa and gas stove, after taking them out of their shells.

Have noticed that after roasting, peanuts taste great as compared to when they are raw.

Why is that so?

That great taste comes from the compounds produced by the Maillard reaction.  It not one reaction but many that occur when the building blocks of proteins and sugars react as food is heated.  Many new compounds are produced giving the cooked food a richer range of flavors.  The pyrazines produced by the Maillard reaction give roasted peanuts their characteristic aroma, in particular cyclohexapyrazine.

To produce pyrazines, you need to heat your peanuts above 70C, with 110C to 170C (230F - 340F) suggested by most cookbooks.  For unshelled peanuts at 110C it can take up to ten minutes for the amount of pyrazines produced to reach its peak.  If the peanuts are not dry, you may need to add up to 20 minutes of oven time (longer on a tawa) at a lower temperature to dry them.   Color will be your guide.  The flavor of the pyrazines will be masked by oxidizing oils in the peanuts, so keeping them in an airtight container helps preserve that nutty-cracker-peanut flavor.


Dense and gluey centered cake problem I tried baking a cake for the first time. The brief procedure I followed was:

Mashed 4 eggs. Added to it 1 cup sugar, 200g butter. Mixed it using an electric mixer.
Then added to it 1.5 cup of all purpose flour. Mixed it thoroughly again using electric mixer.
Baked it at 180 degree celsius for half an hour.

But the end product was not light and fluffy at all.

It looked something like this:

My question is:

What actually went wrong with this cake? What can I do so that I do not end up making a cake like this in future?

I want to make a normal cake which is significantly light and fluffy.

Thanks.

You didn't have any leavening agent, simple as that. Add about 5-7 g baking powder to this amount of flour and you'll get a normal cake.


Trick to keeping guacamole from turning brown Is there anything you can add to a guacamole recipe to prevent it from going brown so quickly?  Or a specific way to package it for very short-term storage (usually only about two days).  I tend to make large batches when I do make it, and by the next day its already looking pretty sad.  I usually just mix it up again and it doesn't look as bad, but I figured someone may know a trick to prevent it all together

Thanks!

Guacamole seems to go brown with exposure to air, as does avocado. While it will not solve the issue entirely, covering with cling wrap directly on the surface helps maintain color for an extended period. Rather than pulling the wrap tight across the top of a bowl / container, place the wrap directly on top of the guacamole. Use your hand to smooth out the top so that no air is between the cling wrap and guacamole. This requires a bit extra cling wrap, as you need to get it up the insides of your bowl, but it makes a significant difference.


Killed Enzymes in Yogurt We are big dairy eaters in our home, so I successfully make about a gallon of Greek yogurt every few weeks. Today I started my process as usual, but with so many things happening at once (just had my 2nd baby, so things are hectic), I failed to remember to let the milk cool before adding in my enzymes: I stirred them in right at 180 degrees. So having killed my enzymes (sigh), what can I do with all of this milk/yogurt mix aside from throwing it down the sink? Pardon my stupidity and lack of knowledge on the subject, but would the heating process alter at all the calories/nutrients in the milk/yogurt in any way (aside from the obvious death of the innocent enzymes)? Will my milk curdle or something? Thank you!

Why not just add more enzymes after the stuff cooled sufficiently?

Enzymes you add to food are generally not toxic. If you denature them by getting them too hot, they don't usually renature spontaneously when the food cools down. They'll just act like a gram, or whatever amount, of protein added to your yogurt mix.
Adding fresh enzymes once the milk is cool enough won't hurt anything. Those new, happy enzymes will just do their enzymatic thing, and give you the yogurt you want.


How to ensure fat stays in meat/fish? I'm looking for a cooking method which retains fat and oil.  When I grill, boil, simmer etc I notice most of the oil leaves the meat.

Which method is best to ensure fats and oils are retained during cooking?

I heard that if you marinade in olive oil before grilling that will prevent fat from coming out.  Is it true?

Can I grill or bake at lower temperatures to get desired result?  will the meat still be cooked to the safe temperature if done this way?

Fat will melt at high temperature (temperature depends on the type of fat); there is not real way to get away from that.

If you pan fry a steak, the fat will melt into the pan; that is why most people suggest a good "marbling" of fat in the meat so not all of it will melt away.

One cooking method, that I think will help keep most of the fat in the meat is low temperature vacuum cooking.

Put the meat in vacuum sealed bag and cook at low temperature (check instructions) in a water bath; after a while, the meat will be cooked and the fat will not have melt away; just finish in a pan to sear the outside.

See:
https://www.thekitchn.com/sous-vide-cooking-this-is-the-best-steak-ive-ever-had-197056


Acmella oleracea (Szechuan buttons) - active chemical for mouth sensation? I am looking to begin growing Acmella oleracea (Szechuan buttons). I would like to use them directly, and also make extracts specifically to maximize the taste/oral stimulation effect. Apparently there are a ton of different active chemicals.

So does anyone know what chemical(s) causes the licking a 9volt battery/buzzing teeth/foaming mouth sensations?

From the Wiki on Acmella oleracea, I get Spilanthol as the major compound in Jambu, an extract of the plant used culinarily for exactly the sensation you describe.


Is there a papaya substitute in salads? Is there a substitute for green papayas in green papaya salad?

The papayas in U.S. supermarket are not the same, even if you use them green.

The "key property" of the papaya and the reason why it is used is its texture: crunchyness. I think you can use anything else that is crunchy and has a quite neutral taste, like cucumber peel, cabbage, kohlrabi, carrots, young lotus stalks (like the ones in this receipe, not these), or unripe mango. I had them in salads similar to the green papaya salad and found that these ingedients are quite neutral in taste.

After all, replacing the papaya makes the salad to not be a green papaya salad anymore. ;) You could try other gỏi -- vietnamese salad -- receipes.


Simmering, rather than caramelizing, onions (plus garlic and ginger) I can caramelize onions, garlic, and ginger over 30 minutes, stir frying.
But this requires me to stand in front of the stove for 30 minutes. Instead, I prefer to spend 90 minutes, adding a bit of water and a touch of oil, then letting them simmer, with the onions taking half the time alone before the others are added. I can then do something else during that time.

Does this process have a name? Does it still qualify as caramelization? Would a self-respecting chef do this once a week with larger quantities and freeze small containers with the mixture for use throughout the week?
Update
I say the following only half in jest. Since Tetsujin slapped the entirely derogatory "fairgrounds" term on boiled-down onions, I'm wondering whether I can elevate this method ever so slightly by giving it another term, and a French one at that.
Isn't boiling down onions exactly how you make French onion soup?
Update 2
Correction to self: as pointed out by Preston in the comments, French onion soup is caramelized onions plus (beef, usually) stock. The description above is my past-years attempt at reducing the time I spend preparing F.O.S., and it stuck in my mind as a correct method.
Well, now I know why I complained about onion soup tasting with overwhelming onions. It's because I multiplied the quantity of onions in an attempt to avoid the caramelization step.

Without the water, I'd call it 'sweating'.
With the water & lid, they're going to come out a bit like like fairground hotdog onions… not really like caramelised.
Fine for Spanish Tortilla (or hot dogs), not so great if you need that Maillard-like reaction.
If you don't use the water, or the lid, you can slowly caramelise onions with little supervision, but not none.
Check them every 10-15 mins at 'too slow to burn' pan temperatures, with plenty of oil. This is another one of those "work it out by repetition based on your stove heat & your pan thickness" things that might take you a few tries to get just right.
After that you can do it every time.
You can also cheat a bit (it's a fake & doesn't taste quite the same…)
Sweat at minimal heat, like for tortilla, for half an hour, then push up the heat a fair bit once you're there to supervise & quickly brown the already soft onions by keeping them moving constantly.
That's still a bit 'fairground' but a reasonable cheat.


why does my beer batter seem to hold too much oil? Please can you help find out why when i deep fry my cod in beer batter it even when drained on paper is still full of cooking oil please.
I use same measure of flour to beer and add lemon juice and saffron for colour .

I've found that when my oil is not hot enough to seal what I'm cooking immediately, the batter picks up a lot of oil. The same thing happens if I batter something frozen and then let it sit for a minute or two before it goes into the fryer.


Do I need to let ravioli made with fresh dough dry? I'm discovering the universe of fresh pasta, and I saw that many people let the pasta dry. Does that apply to raviolis too?

Counter-question: Do you think it’s a safe practice to let a filling that may contain raw meat or dairy hang around at room temperature or possibly even warmer for hours?
So no, you shouldn’t let homemade ravioli dry. Attempting to, even if you used a filling that is safe at room temperature, takes way longer than plain (and thin!) regular pasta. Commercial ravioli products are either quick-dried and sealed to make them shelf stable, or sold in the refrigerated section of your supermarket.
If you can’t cook and serve your ravioli immediately, either refrigerate them for short-term storage or freeze them.
And there’s no need to let plain pasta dry before cooking, one of the special charms of making fresh pasta is that it’s fresh, i.e. not dried. Drying is done for long-term storage. It allows working with larger batches (messing up the kitchen only once...) and having the pasta at hand without kneading, resting and rolling.


How to keep celery crisp? I like celery, but it seems to go limp very quickly when I buy it.

What's the best way to store it to keep it crisper longer?

Trim the root end, then set the stalks upright in a tall glass, add a few inches of water, then stash in the fridge.

You'll want to change out the water every couple of days, or can get strange on you.

You can also cut it into shorter lengths, and store it completely submerged in water; this may be necessary to do with part of the stalks anyway, as most people don't have their fridge shelving adjusted to handle the full height of a bunch of celery.


How do I best grill an artichoke? I have always boiled artichokes. Lately I've heard people talking about how good grilled artichokes are. There's some variation in recipes: some say to boil, some say to steam; some say to cut in half before that and some say after. I don't need a recipe for dipping sauce or anything like that. I'm simply looking for the basic technique on how to grill them. What is the best way to do it? Is there anything else I need to know to make sure they come out well?

I trim the stem and remove the outer leaves till they snap to get to the fresh inner core and steam them the night or morning before grilling so they are cold and moist. I prefer steaming because I want all of the nutrients to remain in the artichoke. I cut them in half for the grill, remove the choke and brush them with grapeseed oil where they come into contact with the grill. First, facing down grill them till they feel hot on top then; flip them over to keep the yummy inner side tender. fill the cavity with garlic butter and... lemon if you wish. I prefer the brown color to the lemon flavor. I cook them till the butter melts. I like mine barely smokey because artichokes take on the smoke too easily and will taste burned. You can't taste the flavor of the artichoke if it gets too smokey.


How to choose fresh, ripe (hot) jalapeños? When shopping at a supermarket or a farmers market, how can I tell which jalapeños to take home? I want them hot and ready rock that very day. Do they get hotter off the vine? Is a ripe jalapeño a hot jalapeño? Does shape affect hotness (or the other way around)?

First, Jalapenos do not ripen once picked.  No pepper does.

Red jalapenos are actually ripe and have more flavor, although they are not, in my experience, any hotter than the standard green, slightly-less-than-ripe, jalapenos.

There is no relationship between shape and capsaicin content that I know of.  So, mostly you're just trying to get jalapenos which are as freshly-picked as possible: no bruised spots, no spots or mold, stems not shriveled, etc.

Also, note that the seeds and membrane inside the jalapeno contain most of its capsaicin, so if you're looking for hot, do not remove those.


Which type of UK supermarket rice is closest to Philippine rice? I have visted the Philippines twice and had many delicious dishes served with the most amazing slightly-sticky rice.

Which type/variety of rice, which is readily available in UK supermarkets, is closest is terms of grain size, texture and fragrance? I have tried authentic Thai Jasmine rice which is delicious but much more fragrant. Long grain rice is nothing like it.

I've looked online and haven't been able to find any varieties that I recognise. I accept that I probably won't be able to find exactly the same variety so I'm looking for the closest match. There aren't any asian food markets/stores near me but it could be an option if nothing else is similar.

Any ideas? Thanks!

If your goal is slightly sticky rice, you can mix glutinous(sweet) rice with plain rice in different ratios to get the right blend of stickiness you are looking for.

Short grain rice also tends to be more sticky, chewy, and denser. So go with short grain rice if you remember the rice being more dense and chewy.


Cake not rising - too many wet ingredients? I've tried making this three layer cake twice in the past two days. I think the issue is too many wet ingredients. It’s from a cookbook I trust for the most part, but after two failures, I’m not sure what else to change.
If the issue is too many wet ingredients, how do I substitute or alter the recipe to remedy this?
For reference, it calls for:

2.5c AP flour (12.5oz)
2t baking powder
1/2t salt
3/4c room temp unsalted butter
1.75c sugar (12.25oz)
1/3c maple sugar
1/3c canola oil
1t vanilla
2 egg yolks
4 eggs
1c milk room temp
Approx 1/2c “burnt sugar” syrup (mixed in with room temp milk

I started typing this last night and have now discovered that my pans are also an inch too wide, but I’m almost positive that additional batter will still be somewhat too dense. Is that the issue or do we think it’s the high proportion of liquid to dry?
Attaching photos for reference:
The flat cake from my second attempt (first picture), and then what the cookbook says it should look like (second picture)

I would suggest viewing it a different way: the recipe did not fail. It is most likely performing exactly as expected by its author.
First, there is the matter of the different pan. You might intuitively think that 1 inch is not much of a difference, but you have to remember that the height of the cake will vary proportionally to the pan area, not to the pan diameter, which means a quadratic relationship. At typical cake sizes (if you went from 8 to 9, or from 9 to 10) you will have ~25% more height if you use the smaller pan. The exact area numbers from 8 to 11 inches are: 50/63/78/95 square inches.
Second, you are correct that a cake of this type, with milk and oil, and additional egg yolks, is going to rise less than other cake types. This doesn't mean that the cake is rising improperly, it means that you have chosen a cake which doesn't fit your needs (assuming you have a reason for creating a high cake). This doesn't mean that there is a simple way to get this cake recipe to rise more though; the amount of work you would have to invest is the same as in creating a new recipe from scratch. And if you succeed, the taste and texture will not be the same as the cake from which you started. So, the typical thing to do is to choose a recipe which produces higher cakes, and stick with it.


How to get flavours to infuse into rice When I try cooking some asian rice dishes, Nasi Lemak, or Hainanese Chicken rice, I always add the "active ingredient" straight into the water used for boiling the rice (Coconut milk and sesame oil respectively in these cases) When cooking they smell really good, however when the rice is done and I taste it tastes bland like normal white rice. How can I make the flavours "go into" the rice?

Nasi lemak means fat rice. The fat is from the coconut milk, which is up to 20% fat depending on how you make it. The fat will change the flavour and mouth feel of the rice but it is not particularly going to give a strong flavour .
The nasi lemak needs aromatics in the rice. These would be lemongrass, ginger and pandan leaf. Pandan leaf is particularly important. The lemongrass and pandan are whole and don't disappear in cooking so will continue to impart aroma to the surrounding rice even after it is cooked.
Nasi lemak is mainly about the condiments so the rice is not supposed to be too strong since you have fried fish, sambal, etc. But with the herbs you will get a good aroma in the rice.
You could also try adding shallots lightly fried before cooking (in addition to the aromatics)
Rice is not really boiled but steamed in SE Asian cooking. Just use a rice cooker. The other ingredients are optional, but coconut milk and pandan leaf are the only 100% essentials.
If making Hainan rice then you should start by frying ginger/garlic paste, then add star anise, cinnamon, cardamom (I am not sure all of these are required), then coat the rice in that. The rice should not be cooked in water but in chicken stock from poaching the chicken. Sesame oil is not for cooking, it is a garnish, so always add it at the end of whatever you are cooking. Again you need pandan leaf in the rice cooker, and lemongrass is unlikely to be a bad idea either. You can add sesame oil when serving.


How prevalent was foodborne botulism before stricter food safety guidelines? Nowadays, foodborne botulism seems to be quite rare, even from potentially high-risk things like home canned goods. (The CDC Botulism Surveillance reports indicate on the scale of tens of confirmed cases per year in the US.)

But I can only assume that the strict guidelines we have today were motivated by a significantly larger issue in the past. What's the history here? When did those guidelines come about, and how big a deal was botulism before then?

This isn't a pure historical curiosity question, of course. Sometimes the low prevalence of botulism is used as evidence of low risk and thus low importance of following food safety rules, but it's unclear what the actual level of risk would be without most people doing things "right" already.

Summary:

It's impossible to give a good statistical answer to this question, since historically botulism was associated with only certain foods, and diagnosis was mostly based on symptoms occurring after consumption of those foods.  Thus, old statistics include a small subset of actual cases.  Actual medical testing for botulism in an ambiguous case was not common until at least the mid-20th century (after most modern food-safety protocols to prevent it came into effect).

In any case, the reason why protocols came into effect was likely due to the seriousness of the illness.  Between 1900 and 1950, the U.S. fatality rate from confirmed cases of botulism was greater than 60%.  So, even if the incidence of this type of food poisoning was very small, there was great interest in prevention.  The two main botulism prevention techniques (nitrate/nitrite curing of meats and pressure-canning) were understood by the 1920s and widely implemented commercially.

More details (including more than you ever wanted to know about the history of sausage illnesses) below.

Part 1: Why We Cure Meat

I should start out by noting that this is a very hard question to answer.  The specific botulism bacteria was not identified until 1895, so we cannot know the exact cause of illnesses before then.  Historically, botulism illness was also associated with certain foods, so cases caused by other foods were not considered to be "botulism."  Foodborne illness in general was probably quite common in the past, but it's hard to come up with exact numbers for the same reason that we tend to have arguments and questions periodically here about people saying, "I've been doing this all my life in this way, and the food never caused me a problem!"  Even if a particular illness is frequently associated with food, it's hard to identify the cause without a lab test.  And if illness is delayed by hours or even a day or more, people may not make any association with food that was previously eaten.

Botulism is one of the few foodborne illnesses that was identified earlier (back in the 1700s) only because its death rate was so high.

Historically, it was likely a significant cause of illness, particularly in processed meats.  The word botulism comes from Latin botulus, meaning "sausage," because it was originally associated with sausage-making.  Botulism was clearly identified in the first couple decades of the 1800s.  Due to the efforts of Justinus Kerner, the Kingdom of Württemberg (now a part of Germany) passed laws requiring the reporting of all incidents of sausage poisoning.  Within a 35-year span, there were 234 reported cases, with 110 fatalities.  Keep in mind these are deaths from one type of food (and most of them specifically from blood sausage) in a population of only a few hundred thousand.  (For comparison, there were a bit over 1000 cases of foodborne botulism from all foods in the entire U.S. from 1950-2000, in a population nearly a thousand times bigger.)  And these estimates from Württemberg are still low, since more and more cases were identified over that period as people became more familiar with the symptoms and likely cause.

Of course, we cannot confirm that all cases from Württemberg were actually botulism, since no bacteria test could be done; some were undoubtedly early cases of trichinosis or other diseases.  But Kerner identified many of the symptoms, as well as realizing the necessity of the absence of air.  (Sausages which were not stuffed fully didn't seem to cause the illness.)  So it's likely many if not most were actual cases of botulism.  Even after the cause was discovered and more sanitary methods encouraged, sausage botulism was still a major problem in Germany until the early 20th century (with about 800 cases and 200 fatalities occurring between 1886 and 1913).

Once the bacteria had been identified, new protocols could be put in place, and these numbers declined dramatically.  The use of nitrates and nitrates as a curing agent for meats (which dates back centuries) became standard practice in the 1920s, since nitrate/nitrite was shown to prevent botulism bacteria growth.  Although they are criticized by some today, nitrates or nitrites are absolutely essential to guaranteeing the safety of meat stored for long periods.  (It should be noted that most "uncured" meats advertised today actually contain adequate amounts of added nitrate/nitrite to prevent botulism growth; these chemicals are just added in "natural" sources like celery powder/juice.  Thus, they're still "cured," just with a different source for nitrate/nitrite.)  Uncured meats continue to be a problem, for example, in Alaska, where native food processing practices result in a botulism rate many times the rest of the U.S.  (The CDC reports that Alaska accounts for around 15% of botulism cases, despite having only about 0.2% of the U.S. population.)

In an era where more people are becoming interested in homemade charcuterie, it's important to keep in mind the etymological root of the word botulism and why it's absolutely necessary to cure meat if not consistently refrigerated.  Ground or chopped meats are a particular hazard.

Part 2: The Canned Vegetable Conundrum

We don't tend to hear about botulism in relation to meat since curing solved that problem.  (And, despite recent trends, home curing of meat is uncommon, so related incidents are relatively rare.)  Instead, botulism is probably more associated with home canning these days, often of vegetables or fruits.

Keep in mind that botulism bacteria require anaerobic conditions to grow, along with moisture, the lack of an acidic environment, and storage above refrigeration temperatures.  Traditional preservation methods before the mid-1800s tended to involve fermentation (which tends to produce an acidic environment), large quantities of sugar, and/or drying, all usually open to air, all of which will prevent botulism.  It was only with the advent of canning low-acid foods that botulism could become a new foodborne hazard.

The canning of low-acid food was basically solved by trial-and-error.  While canning was first invented in the early 1800s, it wasn't until the 1860s that the cause of preservation (i.e., destruction and exclusion of bacteria) was understood.  And soon after, pressure canning methods were invented for commercial canning, which sped up the sterilization process and could also kill botulism bacteria.  However, this mechanism was not understood and universally implemented until the 1920s.

And here we find another problem in answering the question.  Botulism, until around 1900, was thought to be a sausage-related illness only.  So, we have no way of documenting the statistics of botulism caused by other foods before then.  Starting around 1900, it was recognized to be a problem in preserved meats in general, but it was not immediately associated with other foods, like canned low-acid fruits or vegetables.  Therefore, if there were cases of botulism from canned foods, they perhaps were not recognized as such until the link was clearly shown in the 1920s.  (Before this, canning recommendations claimed that adequate processing was achieved by extremely long processing  or by periodic reboiling and processing over a period of days.)  While sporadic cases of botulism in canned goods were identified starting in 1904 with a case related to German canned white beans, the evidence was mostly anecdotal and cases were likely only occasionally identified and reported.

That all changed after an incident in 1919, when botulism from canned California olives resulted in 19 deaths, followed by around 20 deaths in 1920-21 from canned spinach.  Within a couple years, the risk of botulism from canning was thoroughly investigated and recognized.  At first, only home-canning was implicated, but once people started looking, many cases associated with commercial canning were also found.

The CDC notes 477 outbreaks of botulism with 1281 cases of botulism in 1899-1949 in the U.S.  Many of these cases involved canning before the necessity of pressure canning standards were understood in the 1920s.  But it was probably significantly underreported.  There were only a few decades between the time when home canning became widespread and when pressure-canning was recognized as essential, and for most of this period botulism caused by plant-based foods was unlikely to be associated with the traditional "sausage illness."  The main evidence I was able to find that anyone recognized low-acid foods as being a problem in canning is the divergent recommendations in early canning recipes.  Low-acid fruits and vegetables (along with meat) required significantly longer processing times or periodic reboiling (Tyndallization) even in the late 1800s, long before the botulism danger for plant-based foods was understood.  Clearly, they recognized the greater spoilage patterns (and perhaps illnesses) and tried to prevent them.  (For some examples: This 1890 canning book recommends 3 hours for processing corn and similar vegetables, after giving processing times of only a few minutes for many fruits. Another 1892 book has similar advice and notes if you see a bulging lid or froth, you may boil and use fruit immediately -- probably assuming fermentation due to inadequate seal or processing -- but "vegetables must, of course, be thrown away" if they display similar symptoms.  Other sources recommend extra care, e.g., in sterilization of equipment, when canning vegetables.)

From that perspective, the question is really unanswerable.  Obviously people knew something was wrong with low-acid canned foods before anyone would have even suspected a connection with the "sausage illness."  And they were already taking rather extreme measures to try to prevent it (like very long processing times, which were probably at least somewhat effective in decreasing the incidence of botulism, even if not preventing it entirely).  Also, if you start poking around in sources from the late 1800s, you'll see a lot of references to illnesses caused by commercial canned goods.  Mostly the illnesses are blamed on acute metal poisoning (which was possible back then), but there apparently were many incidents of people contracting serious illnesses in a short time and even dying, including symptoms like paralysis.  In 1887, the Journal of the American Medical Association was even led to report on such "acute poisoning from canned goods" symptoms (many of which sound to me like botulism symptoms according to what we know today).

For decades up until 1920, canning businesses circulated articles assuring consumers that their products were safe, but all the while other articles were appearing about mysterious illnesses.  Immediately after testing in earnest was started for botulism in canned goods, the toxin was found -- both in homemade and commercial goods.  And within a few years, canning processing was altered to prevent the problem.

We just don't know how many prior illnesses may have actually been botulism.

Part 3: Recent Trends and New Botulism Types

The CDC statistics for 1950-1996 list 444 outbreaks of botulism with 1087 cases, which (apparently) changed little in annual incidence from the first half of the 20th century.  But in this period, it's likely the data is more complete. Moreover, the vast majority of recent cases are due to errors in home preservation procedures, such as canning, whereas outbreaks in the early 1900s were also likely to be associated with commercial processing.

These statistics are also misleading in other ways.  For example, before 1960, only type A and B botulism toxins were tracked.  Since then type E botulism was recognized as a hazard and connected to consumption of marine products (fish and marine mammals), which added 67 cases out of the 444 reported in 1950-1996.

This again shows the problem of evaluating historical statistics.  Type E botulism may have been a significant problem earlier, but it wasn't identified and tracked specifically until 1963 when a major outbreak occurred involving various kinds of seafood (especially smoked fish, where one incident resulted in 17 illnesses and 5 deaths).  This follows the general pattern of botulism over the centuries -- first it was related to blood sausage, then sausage in general, then preserved meats, then low-acid canned foods (first meats, then fruits and vegetables), etc.  As the incidence from one cause went down due to new standards for prevention, another type or cause would be identified, which would lead to an increase in reported cases when doctors made the association with new foods and ran more tests.  And botulism concerns have since expanded further, with the identification of infant botulism in the 1970s (now by far the leading cause of botulism in U.S. statistics, accounting for roughly 100 cases annually).  Thankfully, incidence of botulism in general in many countries in recent decades is quite low.

We'll probably never really know how many people may have died from botulism during the "experimental" era of food canning before 1920, but we do know that large numbers of people likely died from botulism in meat before modern curing was understood.  And the thing with botulism is -- even when treated with modern medicine, there's still a high fatality rate (5% or so).  If not recognized and treated immediately, the fatality rate may be 50% or more.  To me, that's justification enough for being extra cautious no matter how rare it is.


Is this coffee ratio calculation correct? On the Folgers website, it has a calculator.  Place the number of 'cups' of coffee you desire and it tells you how much coffee to use and how much water to use.  I put 8 cups, and it gives the following. 'For 8 servings of coffee use 8 tablespoons of ground coffee and 6 cups of water.'  What?!?!?!  is this 6 eight ounce cups for 8 six ounce cups of coffee?

Yes. Strangely, a standard "cup" of coffee (at least in the US) is 6 ounces (177ml). That's especially weird since most of us drink huge mugs. Go figure. So according to Folgers, to make 8 "servings" (48 ounces, 1.4 liters) you should use 8 tablespoons of coffee (42 grams) and 6 cups (48 ounces, 1.4 liters) of water. See also: Is a "cup" on a coffee maker always 6 oz? Is this a standard in the US?


Questions about making hard kefir cheese I am attempting to make hard kefir cheese in a cheese press.  Unfortunately the cheese press I purchased did not come with specific instructions.  I was able to find an article (http://www.culturesforhealth.com/hard-kefir-cheese-recipe/) but it is vague in certain respects.  Therefore I have two questions about the process.

How much PSI should be outputted onto the kefir to make hard cheese?

By the time the milk has been turned into kefir, it has already been sitting out for perhaps 24-48 hours.  Is it necessary to refrigerate the kefir while draining it and while pressing it into cheese, or can it sit at room temperature during this process?

Welcome! According to  this site , you should refrigerate the kefir while draining and pressing. (See excerpt below.)

While I can't find a specific reference to an exact PSI for the draining and pressing  process, everything I read says to start with a plate on top and add more weight every few hours for the length of the process.

  Place the colander and bowl in the refrigerator for 48 hours to allow all of the whey to drain. Set a plate on top of your cheese and allow it to sit for a few hours. Continue to add more weight every few hours by putting another plate on top of your cheese to press out the remaining whey.


How do I bring out the garlic flavor in an oil base? I make a lot of Indian food, so the preparation begins with a base made of onions, ginger, and garlic. I start by frying the onions in oil and then adding ginger and garlic as the onions begin to brown. Then I cook both until the onions are thoroughly browned and the citrus smell of the ginger fades.

I can't taste the garlic in my food though. I am careful not to burn the garlic... is there anything else I should look out for?

Yes. Pre sautéed the garlic or add whole cloves to the cooking oil, crush down the cloves to release flavor and then remove. Proceed as usual. P.S. NEVER store garlic submerged in oil. It can produce botulism toxin introduced from the growing soil. Botulism bacteria are anaerobic meaning they survive without air as is the case when covered in oil.


Does placement of ingredients and condiments on a sandwich change the taste? When making a cold deli meat sandwich or a burger, does layering the solid ingredients and condiments in a different order change the taste or mouth-feel? If so, how and why? Are there reasons to prefer one order to another?

Yes, it can change the taste quite significantly.

Here's an easy experiment that you can do:

Make a sandwich, but spread mustard on only one of the pieces of bread.
Take a bite of the sandwich, mustard-side up.
Take a bite of the sandwich, mustard-side down.

Mouth feel is affected as well, but not quite as dramatically.


Why did my poached egg sink? I tried boiling some water and dropping an egg in, as said in a guide I was watching. But my issue is it immediately sank to the bottom instead? How can I keep the eggs floating at the surface the whole time?

Thanks!

I cooked thousands of poached eggs during my culinary career, and have never seen one float. And it really does not need to anyway. What is the point? If you want to keep all the whites together, try adding a tsp of so of vinegar and using the freshest eggs you can buy. To keep them from sticking to the bottom of the pas, I use a rubber spatula and lift them off the bottom after a minute of cooking. As with all egg cooking, keep the temperature low. For poached eggs this means just a few tiny bubbles in the water.


White pepper vs. black pepper Other than color, what is the difference between white pepper and black pepper? I thought it was purely a color thing so that black pepper wouldn't ruin the color of, say, a white sauce. We tried white pepper in a few dishes and in all cases, they were wretched. (FWIW: one recipe was Alfredo sauce.) The only things I can come up with are:

There is a substantial difference between the 2 and we apparently do not like white pepper
There is not a substantial difference but we got a bad batch of white pepper
There may or may not be a difference, but the recipes we tried should not have included this spice

Which is correct?

They don't taste identical at all, and even more important, they don't smell the same. White pepper has a distinct "barnyard" odor. People do indeed use them when black flecks might be unpleasant, but in most cases I'd rather go pepperless or just live with the color.


What is the significant difference between pastas? Possible Duplicate:
  Why are there so many different pasta shapes?
  What makes a pasta shape pair with a sauce?

When getting ingredients for a soup recipe, I couldn't find the type of pasta the recipe called, so I just bought a spiral type pasta. It seemed to work fine in the recipe, but it got me thinking about pasta. Forgive my ignorance, but it seems like most pastas taste the same.

The only thing that seems to make them unique is there size and shape;

Is there any reason I should use one pasta over another if it is relatively the same size as the type of pasta a recipe calls for?
Do certain pastas cook better in soups, and others require to be drained from liquid?

I realize I am asking a bunch of questions, but they are mostly to support expanding answers to my main question: What is the significant difference between pastas?

Pasta as you know is a simple egg and flour mixture.  You can add flavouring to it to give it a different spin or even a colour but at it's root it's just an egg dough.

The different type of shapes are "meant" for different types of sauces in a traditional sense.  I don't want to imply that you MUST use one type of pasta with one type of sauce.  What I'm saying is that a particular style of noodle shape just lends itself better to certain suace types.  I.E. penne, rigatoni, macaroni work really well with a sauce that needs a place to sit and hide so that each mouth full gives you the right amount of sauce to noodle ratio.  Mac & Cheese is a great example of this.

In a soup or salad the type of pasta you choose is probably going to reflect the need of the guest and how you plan to serve the dish.

With a soup you want to have a spoon that will carry the right proportions of broth, vegetables, pasta in each bite.  Because of that you select a small pasta shape like orzo.  However, as cooking is all about using what you have on hand, if you don't have orzo but you have fetticini then use that but break it up first so it will work the same way.

Hope that helps.


Why are my cinnamon rolls turning into toffee? I'm following a recipe and following it exactly, and when I finish, instead of being gooey-delicious, the cinnamon-sugar in my cinnamon rolls comes out like 'stick to your teeth' tacky goo.  It's delicious, but the wrong consistency. What could be causing that?

Without seeing the recipe, I would have to guess that your fat to sugar ratio is off on the cinnamon sugar.

Sounds like your sugar is caramalizing... Try uping the amount of fat you are using in your sugar mix.