Pickled/preserved lemons/limes - grams of salt per kilogram of fruit? [
I think this question here was originally too unclear.
because I was still researching and figuring out exactly what I wanted to ask when I posted it.
I edited it a few times,
but I think my editing has changed the question enough that it's no longer clearly the same question as when I first posted it,
so I decided I should probably post a new, separate one.
]

I make sauerkraut with 20 grams of salt per kilogram of cabbage.

Is the proportion different for pickling lemons/limes?
I would guess maybe lower because of the citric acid already there...?
I found one site saying 5~10% for "North-African style",
which is what I think I'm going for.
(I used to get them at Morrocan stores,
but the city I live in now doesn't have any.)

But if that "5~10%" is really by weight in the same way,
then that's a lot more than the 2% for sauerkraut,
which is surprising and confusing.

Also, I don't add any water to my sauerkraut,
but maybe that's necessary for lemons/limes?
In which case I would just salt the water at the same salt/water ratio as the salt/fruit, I assume?

The ones I used to get, I'm not sure, but I think they used nigella.

I have experience with Indian lemon pickle, not north African.

The recipes I use don't give exact ratios for the salt. Salt is added to taste. A couple tablespoons per quart of packed lemon is normal.
Lemon pickle is very salty which besides regulating the fermentation also helps with the bitterness from the peels.

You don't need to really worry about the exact ratio. It is so acidic and salty there is little that can grow. I've not yet had a batch spoil- even after months in the fridge.

Don't add water. The lemons need to be covered, of course, but use the juice from a couple extra fruit instead. No sense in diluting the flavor and acid.


Making Bacon Spirals I would like to make a garnish of bacon spirals. Spirals like cinnamon rolls, not like curly fries, nor like Gemelli pasta.

My plan is to bake loosely rolled bacon held in place with a toothpick.

I fear that the rolls will crumble while removing the toothpick.  Is there anything I can do to ensure they retain the spiral shape after removing the toothpick?

Is there a better method?

Roll the bacon into its spiral and set it on end in a muffin tin to bake. You can use the toothpicks as "spacers" to keep the edges apart, and then easily pull them out the side once everything is baked. (Depending on how tight and broad you want the spiral to be, you may need to use a mini-muffin pan instead.)

You may also want to add a light coating of brown sugar before shaping the spiral to help the bacon hold its shape. It should caramelize while cooking and help achieve a crispy and stiff shape. Plus, it's yummy!


Bottom of my charcoal grill keeps falling out I got a small charcoal kettle grill from Craigslist recently. I can't seem to get the little dish on the botton that holds the charcoal(?) to stay attached to it. It tends to just fall out when I put it in.

Not sure if this metal piece is supposed to do something? I've been googling but no luck so far. It's the ProLight 14-inch grill from Meijer... I've never grilled before, is this normal? Am I supposed to glue it in or something?

Push & twist, very similar mechanism to a bayonet-fitting light bulb.

Three hooks go over three pins, then you turn it to lock.

I cannot tell from the photos whether the pins are in situ.

Just in case it's not entirely clear from that brief description, you lift the 'bucket' up underneath, it should fit outside the flange on the main structure. Then you slot it over the three pins & twist slightly so it drops into the little locks.


How can I cook with worcestershire sauce in a pan without leaving an impossible to remove char on the pan? When I cook hamburgers inside, I do it in a pan on stove top. I usually use worcestershire sauce, but it seems that when I do it gets cooked onto the bottom of the pan. No amount of soaking makes it easier to clean off, I usually just have to use a copper wire pad and it's still rather difficult.

This is in an aluminum pan -- I think. It's not cast iron or non-stick.

Worcestershire sauce is fairly sweet, it's the sugar that's blackening. There's nothing you can do about it - if you add it to your pan it's going to char.

The solution is not to put it in the pan, but put it on afterwards or mix it in with the meat before making patties. You'll get a better result that way as well, you're destroying the flavor of the worcestershire sauce by charring it in the pan like that.


goat cheese or feta as substitute for guyere cheese in yogurt bechamel sauce I have a mousakka recipe that uses a bechamel made with yogurt and olive oil (instead of heavy cream and lots of butter)that calls for guyere cheese. Can I use feta or goat cheese instead in a becahmel for a mousakka?

Yes, you could use either. A soft goat cheese can be mashed and mixed easily into your yogurt/olive bechamel sauce.

If you use feta, I would suggest that you melt it first. Crumble the feta into small pieces, add a bit of milk, and heat over a double boiler (or bowl set over pot of water), stirring, until it softens and becomes sauce-like.

In both cases, the substitutes may affect the consistency of the bechamel, and you may need to adjust your thickening agent.


Are there any reasonable substitutions for lemon juice? In the past I cooked myself into a corner when I realized mid-recipe that I didn't have any lemons or lemon juice available. Nor did I have any limes.

I can't remember the exact recipe, but I believe it was some baked fish dish. What are some possible substitutes for lemon juice in this application? I ended up using a dash of apple cider vinegar. It didn't turn out bad, it just was distinctly not lemon.

When you find cheap lemons, buy a lot.  Squeeze half a lemon in each of the cavities of an ice tray.  Freeze.  Within a day, remove the frozen slivers from the tray to a ziploc bag in the freezer. You now have measured units of fresh lemon juice you may use for cooking and will keep for months.  The frozen lemons are a bit less acid than fresh juice, but full of flavor.  You can do the same with limes.


Can I make bread/pizza dough with only cricket flour and no wheat flour I want to make bread and pizza dough, but all recipes I find online include other types of flours than the one I am interested in. Is it possible to make with only cricket flour? Acceptable ingredients are cricket flour, eggs, yeast, water, salt and baking powder.

I think you will be disappointed.

While a fantastic protein source, cricket flour does not contain the gluten proteins that make bread what it is. Therefore, bread made with cricket flour must get its structure somewhere else. The majority of recipes I can find are quickbreads which get their structure from added eggs blown up with baking soda. Dense and tender, not light and chewy.

Some recipes for things like cookie dough or standard bread use cricket flour as a protein enhancer but not a complete substitute for wheat flour.

If you are determined to make bread dough without wheat gluten then you will have to employ tricks from standard gluten-free recipes. Making your "bread" more like a cracker or adding gums of various types. Keep in mind that no gluten-free bread will come close to real bread and especially high protein pizza dough. They just can't get the light, crispy, chewy texture.


English term to describe "kompot", an Eastern European beverage made from berries I am trying to find an English word for a special drink. This is the recipe:

5 liters of water

1 cup of sugar

500 grams of berries

Mix sugar and water, bring mixture to a boil. Add berries, bring to a boil one more time, boil for 5 minutes, remove from heat.

This drink is typically served in Eastern Europe and it is called "kompot". I hope to find the right word in English.

What would you call this thing? I already asked on various cooking discussion boards, and everybody seems to have a different opinion, so I am not sure what answer is the right one.

Here's a picture to illustrate that it is extremely watery, because most people thought it would be some kind of thick concoction.

Imagine the same drink with a bunch of berries floating at the bottom, not at the top. Not raspberries, but mixed berries such as blackcurrant, strawberry, dried apple slices, etc.

At this point, I am not even looking for a specific term, I just want to know what would most people call this thing if they didn't know what it was? How would you call it?

Among our ideas were: berry tea, berry drink, berry punch, berry juice, berry infusion, berry cocktail, berry aide.

UK English would call it a cordial. Though typically strained as below:

Place 300g mixed fresh or frozen berries, 1½ cups white sugar and ¼ cup lemon juice in a heatproof bowl. Add 1 cup boiling water. Stir until sugar has dissolved. Strain cordial through a sieve, pressing down with the back of a spoon, into a large heatproof jug.
Mixed Berry Cordial Recipe | Woolworths
https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/recipedetail/4123/mixed-berry-cordial


Prime rib weight on a restaurant menu - raw or cooked? When a restaurant menu lists a weight for a steak, I know it's raw weight. But when it lists the weight for prime rib, is it raw weight or cooked weight?

I don't think there is consistent rule - I have seen restaurants sell meat in 100g portions, where they literally weigh it as they carve it off a large roast joint, and also restaurants where the raw weight is listed, then they roast a piece of meat of that weight (often for two or more to share).

The best policy is to ask each time!


Why using ammonia bicarbonate and baking powder for deep fried bakery product? This is my main bakery product:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtiao

I have been importing the raising agents. But now I can't import anymore...

From my experience, the recipe used 2 kinds of raising agent:

ammonia bicarbonate
baking powder (they only write down sodium bicarbonate and doesn't write the leavening agent)

And the sodium bicarbonate, I think it is a slow raising agent that only activates by heat. Because when I mix the baking powder with normal temperature water. There are no effects. But when I pour with hot water and stir with boiling water, lots of bubbles coming out, and rise up.

So my question is:

1.why they use 2 types of raising agent? Ammonia and slow acting baking powder (we deep fry the product in 200°c)

2.the dough, have a quite a few small holes after we rest 6-8 hours on freezer, is it because of the slow raising agent baking powder?

3.how to make the baking powder? I'm planning to combine sodium bicarbonate and sodium acid pyrophosphate... how much is the ratio?

1) the various ionic interactions with proteins in the batter can determine its characteristics.

Some information are at https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/leavening-agent

I can't judge if a model can be really draw out of it but using different mixtures of salts in baking powder formulation reasonably leads to difference.

This is already a comment to your other recent question.

2) Both ammonium and sodium bicarbonate are the leaving agents. Different to yeast in which gas and volatile compound are results of the little organisms metabolism, using the above salts is based on their thermal decomposition. The leaving effect is due to carbon dioxide and ammonia released at the high temperature concomitant with frying/baking. There is no need to wait for raising a dough, with chemical leaving agents.

Unless you need a very special formulation, you should be able to reproduce the previous results without importing anything. Just experiment with the ratio of the two and it should be fixed.


Do you have to refrigerate leftover grilled corn-on-the-cob? I'm not familiar with any method for this. Usually it's all gone!  When grilling the other night, I made way too much food and had lots of leftovers.  Do I need to refrigerate the ears of corn that are already grilled?  Before I put them on the grill I put butter on them, if that makes a difference.

Yes, you should.  It does loose a little bit in reheating (we frequently use a microwave the second time around, if it's still on the cob), but it's fine for a few days in the fridge.

If you made excessive amounts, you might also consider removing it from the cob, bagging it, and freezing the kernels 'til you need them.  You can throw it into soups, salsa, pot pies, etc.

You can also freeze the stripped cobs to save for the next time you're making stock.


What are the 'natural flavors' in a fruit drink that contains no juice? When a fruit (flavored) beverage says it contains all natural flavors but no juice, where is the flavor coming from? Is it possible there are man-made additives being thrown in that can be technically considered "natural"?

Ok... I'm going to ruin your day with this.  In orange juice for instance, the process of homaginization and storage kills the flavor of orange juice, so the industry has enlisted the help of the perfume industry to help them.  Each orange juice company has basically a perfume of orange flavors that it uses from the peels and rinds and biproducts that it uses to try to recreate the taste of real orange juice... It's why every orange juice brand tastes slightly different even though they are all "fresh squeezed" (btw, they are technically fresh squeezed, they're just then stored :))

If you google "orange juice flavor packs" you can see what this is talking about.  The flavor packs are incidentally made out of parts of the orange, so the fda has no problem with them (sadly).

http://consumerist.com/2011/07/oj-flavor-packs.html

So to directly answer your question, you can flavor something with fruit derived perfume and call it "natural flavors"

Here's a quote from the site:

  Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein, to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh. Flavor packs aren't listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil. Yet those in the industry will tell you that the flavor packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange juice, resemble nothing found in nature. The packs added to juice earmarked for the North American market tend to contain high amounts of ethyl butyrate, a chemical in the fragrance of fresh squeezed orange juice that, juice companies have discovered, Americans favor.


What is the most efficient way to squeeze water out of cooked spinach? I'm cooking a bunch of spinach for making a spinach and ricotta filling. I need to get as much water as possible out of the spinach, and I'd prefer not to make a big mess in the process. In the past, I've wrapped a few handfuls at a time in a towel and squeezed out the liquid. This leaves me with a messy, green stained towel and requires a lot of twisting that doesn't seem maximally effective.

Use a potato ricer. Just fill it up with a big handful of spinach, and give it a good squeeze in the sink, or over a bowl if you like to drink spinach water. It extracts a ton of liquid quickly, and is a breeze to clean up when you are done.


What is the point of a salt mill? Salt mills and pepper mills often come in pairs.  I understand the purpose of the pepper mill: It breaks open the pepper corn and releases the aroma.  But there is, to my knowledge, no such thing as a salt corn, at least on the macroscopic level

So what do I gain by grinding the salt at the table or at the stove instead of just buying the smaller version to begin with?

I understand that there are different kinds of salt, but it seems they ought to be independent of the size of the bits.

Trying to get to the bottom of the issue, I decided to take a few pictures of a few different types of salt. The pictures shown below were taken by me and are all proportional (the camera was the same distance away from each type of salt, so you are getting an accurate size comparison).

The picture illustrates my suspicions, which is the difference is the surface area (ignoring of course mineral content and different types of grinding salt). Standard table salt is a compact little cube, effective when it’s to be dissolved in a liquid, but not so much when it comes to direct contact with the taste buds. Place one cube on your tongue and you get 1/6th of the surface area in contact, meaning, a lot of salt without much saltiness.  Sea salt, with a more rectangular shape is closer to 1/4th the surface area touching your tongue. Ground salt is more like shards of glass, so nearly half of the exposed area could be in contact making things taste that much more salty. Also with a much finer texture, you are left with many more particles in a wider area, meaning, a saltier taste with less salt.

It’s a good way of finishing a dish when the salt is going to be lightly dusted on top or mixed with an oil where it will not dissolve at all. When you are dissolving it in a liquid, it really makes little difference which type you use. When it comes down to it, it’s all about how picky you want to be with it.


What pickled yellow-green vegetable is this, in Chiu Chow Garden's appetizer? From top to bottom: Top 1. 2.

I loved this appetizer of tofu cubes, peanuts, pickled radish and beans

3. 4. 5.
Is the  yellow-green vegetable  truly radish? What kind of radish? These pictures were taken at Chiu Chow Garden restaurant in Hong Kong that serves this appetizer.

I think that is daikon, which has many names including several that include the word "radish".


Preparing minced garlic the night before using them Is it okay to prepare minced garlic the night before I use them? I'll be cooking really early in the morning and i want to prepare the minced garlic ahead. Is it safe and will it affect the look of my garlic? I'm trying to make butter garlic shrimp.

It's safe to chop your garlic the night before. It will change color slightly due to oxidation, probably not enough to affect the look of the dish. It will lose flavor overnight though, so I wouldn't chop it until I'm ready to use it.

Generally the big pain with garlic is not the chopping but the peeling, you could peel it the night before and then chop it just before using without impacting the color or flavor. That's the way I'd go.


Why pre-mix baking soda into 2 tsp of milk? I am not much of a cook, but about this time every year, I pull out a favorite family recipe for cookies.  My grandmother made these cookies for me when I was a child, and when I got older she wrote their recipe down for me.

There is one aspect of the recipe that I have never understood:  it has me mix 2 tsp of baking soda into 2 tsp of milk.

All the other dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, etc.) get mixed together separate from the wet stuff.  But the baking soda?  No:  it has to be added to the milk to form a tiny little bit of wet paste, and then somehow I'm supposed to alternate between adding the flour mixture and this tiny little bit of soda+milk paste into the wet mixture.  I cannot understand how such a tiny little bit of wet paste could possibly get evenly distributed throughout the batter mixture, using this method.

My usual approach is to ignore that part of the recipe, and just mix the baking soda with the dry components, and the milk with the wet components. [EDIT: or sometimes, I make the paste as described, then add that to the wet.] There doesn't seem to be any negative results from violating this instruction, and yet I am haunted every year by this non-understood detail of the recipe.

Can I buy a clue?  My grandmother is no longer around to ask.  :(

[EDIT] After reading the answers so far, I'm reasonably convinced that the purpose of pre-mixing the baking soda (base) into milk (very slightly acid) is to increase the amount of leavening that occurs.  These cookies are nearly cake-like in texture, intentionally.   But the reasoning behind the alternating is still a bit of a mystery.

Mixing it with milk (or liquid in general) is probably just to remove clumps. It clumps easily, especially when things aren't perfectly airtight (probably more common in your grandmother's time), and mixing in a small amount of liquid is an easy way to make sure it all breaks up.

I'm less sure about the alternating. It is pretty common to alternate wet and dry as a way of getting things evenly mixed and avoiding lumps, so it's possible it's a variation on that. The paste might be too thick to easily mix into the wet, but also wet enough that it'd tend to stay as a lump if you mix it straight into the dry, so alternating wet-dry-paste might get you more even mixing? But if you're able to mix the paste smoothly into the wet, it's completely fine to just do that.


Is kimchi a suitable addition to a noodle soup? I have just returned from having purchased a can of kimchi. I have no idea what the contents are, since they are written in Korean, but thought that mixing it into the broth at the last minute might increase the soup's flavour.

Is there a flaw in my reasoning?

Kimchi are not preferred to be added directly to soup. Usually you would fry the Kimchi (ideally in Sesame oil) to slightly transparent or having minor brown on the edges, before adding into the soup, and boil for . That is not only applicable to KimChi JiGae- but also other varieties of KimChi broth (e.g. hotpot, Kimchi ramen/noodles (BuDae JiGae) etc.)

Adding Kimchi directly to soup/broth and boil is more a Northern Chinese way of cooking (where Kimchi is not called kimchi but literally called "Spicy Pickled Cabbage").

Frying beforehand and adding directly to soup/water can taste very, very different.


What to do with too-dry sun dried tomatoes? I bought a huge bunch of sun-dried tomatoes with the intent of pickling them in olive oil. So I started with a small batch, but still after weeks in the oil, they are still hard. So I guess they are just way too dry.

Is there any way to use these bad boys, or should I just toss them?

Firstly, you should be extremely careful preserving anything like tomatoes or garlic in olive oil, because you are asking for botulism that way.

Secondly, if something is too dry, you should add water. Try steeping the tomatoes in hot water for 20-30 minutes.


Is it true cooked food cannot be left in room temperature for longer than 4 hours? I have only recently discovered that cooked food shouldn't be left in room temperature for longer than 2/4 hours.

I lived in a tropical country which is warm and humid and I have been growing up eating left over cooked food(meat, rice, bread, dairy products and left in 30C for longer than 6 hours) with no issues. In fact it's very normal to the people in my country.

So my question is the 2/4 hours only a strict guide for commercial food seller? How come people in my country do not have issues with leftover food? Is this habit a silence killer which only breaks out when we grow old?

The food safety guidelines are based on scientific & mathematical calculations along the lines of:

Given an initial bacteria count of X they will under the given conditions mulitply to a number of Y amd have produced Z [unit] of toxins.

Now what to do with these values?

We use them like seat belts or helmets. Not wearing a seat belt will not automatically kill you, only if you are involved in an accident you are much more likely to suffer severe injury or death without it. Still, nobody could responsibly recommend ignoring a seatbelt, knowing that accidents do happen. But with food safety, many are willing to skip their seat belt, so to speak.

One very common misconception is that contaminated food can be detected by smell, looks or taste. Yes, some kind of spoilage is obvious, but many, especially the more dangerous ones, are not "visible". One very prominent example is Salmonella. Note that many toxins are not destroyed by cooking, more details in our canonical post.

I can guarantee that people in your country have issues with cases of foodborne illnesses - all countries do. You need to keep in mind that

Foodborne illnesses need not become apparent immediately or shortly after a meal. The symptoms of Salmonellae, for example, might start as late as 72 hours after infection. It is likely that the connection between a sudden bout of sickness and a meal eaten three days prior is simply overlooked.
In healthy adults infections may pass unnoticed or cause only mild sympotms like indigestion. The human body can handle a certain amount of bacteria or toxins, the individual levels of tolerance vary, though. So children, elderly people or those with a compromised imune system are more likely to suffer and have a higher chance of severe complications or death. The given safety guidelines are calculated to protect these groups as well. Also note that often the side-effects are as dangerous as the pathogens themselves, diarrhea being a classic example.
There is no way of determining the amount of bacteria present in a specific dish, piece of meat or other food prone to spoiling - unless you get a lab involved. The values used to calculate safe thesholds contain a certain safety margin. Your dish could contain fewer bacteria to start with or if any were present, they might not have multiplied that much. (But they might as well have, we can't safely know.) The two/four hours rule simply means that the food will remain in the safe range, not that it will be spoiled afterwards.

So what now?

It is entirely up to you to whether you choose to drive with or without seatbelt or helmet. Make an informed devision and consider the welfare of those weaker than you. What you as a healthy adult can stomach (pun intended), might be fatal to a young child or weak elderly person.

Only a few days ago the WHO published a news release on foodborne diseases:

  First ever estimates of the global burden of foodborne diseases show almost 1 in 10 people fall ill every year from eating contaminated food and 420 000 die as a result
  Children under 5 years of age are at particularly high risk, with 125 000 children dying from foodborne diseases every year
  WHO African and South-East Asia Regions have the highest burden of foodborne diseases

(Source)


Why shouldn't I bake on scratched silicone mats? My Silpat baking mat came with very clear instructions to throw out the mat as soon as it becomes scratched. It now has a few very light surface scratches that don't seem to have penetrated the first layer of material.

What is the reason it's unsafe (or otherwise undesirable) to use scratched silicone baking mats? Does this vary between different types of silicone cookware?

Silpats and Exopats have a glass fibers (regionally called fiberglass or glass wool, but not candy floss) embedded in them for strength.

The warning not to use them when scratched is because fiber glass does nothing good for a person when ingested, and a scratch may expose it.

Some types of silicone based cookware do not have the fiberglass reinforcement, and so do not have the same issue.  These are mostly the flexible baking dishes or muffin cups, but you should read the label information for the product you have.


Prime Rib versus New York Strip Roast i recently cooked a bone-in, 6 lb Prime Rib roast using the "5 minute per lb @ 500F then closed oven for 2 hours" method and it came out absolutely PERFECT!  mediuam rare and delicious.

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/221958/chef-johns-perfect-prime-rib/

i have a boneless, 11 pound New York strip roast and was wondering if the same method and calculations can be used to create the same medium rare perfection?  i dont want to take any chances on overcooking this expensive roast!

thank you for your help

I know many people say the same thing over and over for questions like this, but: Probe thermometer.  They aren't expensive.  You can set them for a temperature so that you pull your roast at exactly the doneness you want.  (Well, generally pull it a few degrees below that, and let it coast upward while it rests.)

Heat transfer to roasts does not mathematically work out very well for "time per pound" formulas -- generally these only seem to "work" for a certain range of weights, but they don't work in general.  Adding in an uncontrolled "leave oven shut" (presumably turned off?) makes the method even more prone to imprecision.

Bottom line: Use a probe thermometer.  It makes no sense to risk screwing up a $100+ cut of beef rather than buy a $20 thermometer which you can reuse every time and always be certain of results.


Are there disadvantages to storing bread in a vacuum box? I love fresh bread, and when I buy it I store it at home in a plastic bag. After 2-3 days it has probably lost about 60% of its overall quality. I've been using some vacuum storage bags and found that the bread can be great up to a week later!

This made me think about how I'd love to have a box or chamber on the counter that I can just dump my bread in and vacuum most of the air out. It would be stationary and much more practical than bags, which require cutting and subsequent disposal.

What are some of the primary barriers to this being a practical tool? I'd imagine many households would want this!

Bread gets dried out and stale through retrogradation which requires moisture.  Your vacuum bags are not keeping the bread fresh because of the vacuum, they are keeping it fresh by providing a very tight seal that prevents the bread from absorbing moisture from the atmosphere.  A larger vacuum box would provide the same protection from moisture but it might dry the bread out since the moisture in the bread would easily evaporate at the lower pressure.  Also keep in mind that neither a vacuum bag nor a vacuum box will prevent mold from eventually growing on the bread.

The biggest competition to a vacuum bread box is the freezer that most people already have in their kitchen.  Frozen bread can go for many weeks or even months without going stale and without any mold growing on it.  The only real risk to the bread is freezer burn if it is not sealed tightly.  Use vacuum bags to seal your bread tight and it can last a very long time in your freezer.


A substitute for jaggery What can I use to substitute for jaggery in curries or dals? I've tried white and brown sugar, raw and polished, but there's still some vital taste component missing.

Is there a way to simulate that distinctive flavor profile with other ingredients?

Traditional white sugar is pure sucrose...Molasses, which is the difference between brown and white sugar is also pretty much pure sucrose (at least the sugar part is). But according to your link, there is a significant amount of inverted sugars and water in jaggery...That sounds more like honey to me, and it'd be a pretty significant change in the chemical behaviour.

I don't think you're going to get a direct substitution, but I think a combination of some strong honey, white sugar, and blackstrap molasses might get you a bit closer...Blackstrap molasses is the most strongly flavoured molasses, so use sparingly, but I think some of it's odd flavours might add to the complexity of your sugar mix.


Why does the inside of fried chicken sometimes turn brown? Tonight I cooked fried chicken on the stove. However, I have seen chicken with brown ligaments or bones, after cooking before. Not just from frying the chicken either. Is it due to the age of the chicken, or an incorrect temperature or overcooking?
I hate seeing that when I eat chicken and if I knew what was causing it, I could avoid it, and enjoy my chicken more.

The darkening is harmless.  It is more likely to occur in younger birds, since their bones are immature, soft, and porous.  It is also exacerbated by deep chilling or freezing, since microscopic ice crystallization will allow various colored substances (e.g., marrow) to coalesce around the bones.  When the meat is cooked, these substances will usually turn brown.

Therefore, interior browning can be avoided by using older chickens and avoiding meat that has ever been frozen.  Given that most commercial chickens in large countries like the USA are slaughtered very young (less than seven weeks old), it may be difficult, but not impossible, to find an older chicken.


How to make creamy hot chocolate I am trying to make thick hot chocolate. At first I used cocoa powder and cornstarch as the thickener, bringing the milk + cocoa powder + sugar mixture to a boil. It worked but it always tasted burnt (not sure if that was the milk or cocoa) and the cocoa seemed to clump up.

Now I'm using bars of unsweetened chocolate. I melt them over a double-boiler and then add the milk. When I do this the melted chocolate instantly becomes granular and the drink has a sandy, gritty texture. The flavor is excellent (very dark compared to the bland cocoa powder) but I want the drink to be smooth and thick.

Any ideas?

PS A scientific explanation of this would be much appreciated. I like understanding what is happening in my cooking.

Your chocolate is seizing. There's a nice discussion of exactly what's happening at the molecular level here:
What happened to my melted couverture?

The usual fix for seizing is to add more liquid, but I think you've got so much liquid in there that you can't agitate it well enough to break up the clumps. So you get lumps of seized chocolate swimming in liquid.

A better solution is to dissolve your chocolate in a small amount of boiling water, over medium temperature rather than in a double boiler. Since there is no milk in it at that point, you don't have to worry about overcooking the milk proteins. Then you can add the dairy to the hot chocolate syrup, then heat through. Because the chocolate is already dissolved, it will distribute evenly through the milk.

It shouldn't need any thickening agent. The chocolate is starchy enough on its own to thicken the dairy. (If you do like it with the starchy mouthfeel, you can add a small amount of cornstarch with the cold milk.)

The recipe I use runs something like this:

Put 1 ounce of bittersweet chocolate, 1 tbsp sugar, and a quarter cup of water in a small pot
Cook over medium heat, stirring until it becomes a thickened syrup
Add 8 ounces milk
Heat through, stirring
Add 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

I like to whip it with a stick blender. You can also use half-and-half for a richer result. You may want more sugar; you can add that at the table.

Similar recipes are also made in a double boiler, e.g. www.food.com/recipe/angelina-s-hot-chocolate-334398. I don't think the double boiler is necessary.

Note: it's better to use eating chocolate rather than unsweetened. Unsweetened chocolate isn't as thoroughly "conched", since it's usually used for cakes, where that doesn't matter as much. In a drink it'll be slightly gritty. (I'm also told that they use lower-quality beans, but I haven't done a taste test.)


How can I improve the texture of my whole grain pancakes? I've been experimenting for a while with whole grain pancake recipes that I can make in a blender.  This is the best variation I've come up with so far:

½ cup hard white wheat
1 cup rolled oats
1 ½ cups milk
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt

Put all ingredients in a blender. Blend on high speed for 6 minutes. Cook on a 325° griddle.

I like the pancakes, but some of my kids complain about the texture.  What can I do to make them lighter and fluffier?  I don't want to significantly increase the fat or sugar.  I don't want to significantly decrease the fiber or protein.  Are there any good options within these parameters?

Debbie's right about the gluten - overmixing is a reliable way to get tough pancakes.

I'm not sure what the best solution is within your process. By far the easiest thing would be simply to use wholegrain wheat flour, letting someone else do the grinding for you.

Failing that, I think you want to grind the grains up dry, and then it really won't take much mixing at all to eliminate clumps. That's going to require something other than a blender, though.


How to remove mutton smell while cooking? Some people do not like specific smell of mutton in curry. What I do to remove the smell of mutton while cooking?

I am one of those people who really doesn't like the smell of mutton/lamb for at least the first couple of hours if I'm making any type of curry.

Whilst cooking from raw, I'm not sure you can do more than cook in a well-ventilated area.

However, for your final dish, there's a 'cheat' I use, which started as being borrowed from an Indian Restaurant trick known as the 3-pot method. [Oddly, this trick, which I've known for 30 years, seems to have not a single Google hit]

If you really want the smell to be gone, do this the day before...
Cook the mutton separately in a thin 'curry broth' using minimal ingredients, maybe just a little onion & oil to fry your bhoona/bhogar spices in at the start, then add some generic curry powder & simmer gently for a minimum of 45 mins, though I prefer 3 or 4 hours so any fat really renders down.
Strain off the meat & you can then either discard that 'broth', or use it to make further masala gravy/sauce base, & allow the meat to cool separately. Save in a sealed container in the fridge overnight, then the next day add the meat to your actual dish.


How do I  maintain a portable induction cooker? Most portable induction cooker have a cooling system (a fan below it). Do you open up the induction cooker to clean the fan? As for the rest of the parts, do you just use a cloth to wipe clean? or do you apply some cleaning agent to wash the outer surface?

The upper surface is glass, so I clean it like a normal Ceran stove: A special ceran cleaner when a cloth isn't enough, a sharp blade for specks, a gentle abrasive (like Cif) for stubborn spots which won't get away. The sides of mine are alu, but I don't bother getting out a different cleaning agent for that, just continue wiping with whatever I used on the glass.

I have never opened mine to clean the fan, and suspect that it will void the warranty. But if needed, I would handle it like a PC fan: open the case, use compressed air to blow it clean. Trying to wipe the fan could decenter it. It won't make the blades perfectly smooth, as the humid kitchen air tends to turn dust to clingy grime, but it should remove the bulk if the fan is too full to work efficiently.


Deep frying - beer batter vs. bread crumbs @Joe thank you for answering my earlier question!  After an epic fail trying to deep fry beer battered zucchini (ended up with a beer battered pancake-like blob with some zucchini slices on top) I have a follow up question:

When deep frying vegetables that are beer battered instead of just covered with an egg/milk and breadcrumb mixture, should you put them in to the deep fryer with the basket already submerged in the oil?  Will this prevent the aforementioned "beer battered pancake" at the bottom of the basket?  Also, does this method make any significant difference if used deep frying vegetables in an egg/milk and breadcrumb mixture (let me know if clarification is needed - sounds weird)?

As SAJ14SAJ mentioned, when doing a batter coating, you need to hold it in the oil for a second before letting it drop, so that it'll crust up before it touches the basket.

However, you also mentioned 'with some zucchini slices on top', I suspect that the batter came off entirely.

Breading for frying is a bit strange, as you need to make sure that you don't put something wet on top of something else wet (or dry on dry), and no layer too thick.

So, in the case of the zucchini, you need to make sure that the pieces are very dry before putting them in the batter ... if they're freshly sliced, they'll extrude liquid, and so you may need to coat them in flour or starch, shake them off, and then put them in the batter.


Sous Vide temperature accuracy I'm starting a Sous Vide project and I didn't find any information about Temperature Accuracy. I really would like to know how accurate must be the temperature sensor in Sous Vide.
 I found some DIY Sous Vide that uses DS18B20 with 0.5ºC accuracy, will it be enough or Sous Vide must require better accuracy such as we can find on commercial products.

Most home kitchen immersion circulators advertise that they are accurate in the .1 to .3 degree F range.  Practically speaking, if you were considering a home-made device, you can easily get away with less accuracy than that.  So, .5 would be just fine.  In a pinch, I've used a pot of water and a thermometer, turning the gas on an off.  Not very convenient, not very accurate, but it can work with close monitoring.  By the way, I do sometime set my circulator to .5 degree increments, but, honestly, that's probably more obsessiveness than is required.


Rule of the thumb for judging the leavening? I have done a focaccia and a small piece of dough to see if I can make bread with the same recipe I'm using for the focaccia .

Both dough have almost doubled in size in about 9 hours, and I have used about a 1/3 in sourdough starter and 2/3 in flour ( plus liquids ).

I'm not sure if I should risk spending more hours to try to get more leavening and maybe a more fluffy growth or just be happy with a 2x growth .

There is a rule I can use, maybe related to protein, hours, ingredients, etc etc ... to estimate the right amount of leavening for my recipe ?

I think there's lots of things at play in your situation. Bread has many variables ("degrees of freedom"), and this is part of the reason that bread is so fun and so diverse (and so fun)! Experimentation is warranted here, I think. There's many sourdough enthusiasts around here, so you'll probably get many different opinions. Take the suggestions you like and fiddle around with them!

First to your first question about being happy with 2x growth: A volume increase of 1.5x-2x is about all that I would expect/want from any ferment/proof stage of dough. How much are you expecting or wanting? Does that amount of time work well for you? Are you happy with the result from 2x rise after 9 hours? What happens when you ferment for 25% less time?  25% more time?  Try it out! Make a big batch and divide into 3 chunks, then ferment/shape/proof and bake them individually, staggered in time: short, medium, long fermentation time.  See which you like best!

Nine hours seems like a fairly long fermentation time already, especially with so much starter and a high-hydration bread like focaccia. In my kitchen with my starter, for example, those ingredients would be very sloppy, very sour, and essentially impossible to work after 9 hours.  When I'm building my (~100% hydration) pre-ferment from my starter, it will double or triple in 6-9 hours at its point of peak activity; after 9 hours it's starting to peter-out. If I'm using fermentation times in the 9-24 hour range (San Francisco-style or so) I'll use a small amount of starter (~50mL / a few Tablespoons) and perhaps further retard the fermentation in the refrigerator.

Fermenting or proofing for too long could cause your dough to lose it structure -- either before baking or during baking.  This could yield uneven crumb and difficulty baking. In the case of focaccia, you might get a big air pocket in the middle or a collapsed bit of dense dough.  Sourdough will tend to aggravate this situation, because the acid produced by the bacteria will tend to cause the bread structure to break down over a longer period of time.  To me, sourdough is a delicate balance of quantity of starter and time.

Here are "rules of thumb" for fermentation time, hydration, and quantity of starter that I find to be the case; note that all of these are interrelated:

More starter will result in faster fermentation (shorter time) since there's more active yeast.
For higher hydration breads, use more starter to encourage faster fermentation, and/or stronger (higher-protein) flour, both help to maintain structure.
More assertive sour flavor results from longer fermentation time (and you'll need to use less starter).

Other ingredients will impact fermentation.  More salt will tend to retard (slow) fermentation.  Fat/oils can yield a finer crumb, but can have other effects depending on quantity and other factors.  More water (higher hydration) generally yields a chewier (more custardy) and larger crumb and can help the yeast act more quickly.  I don't know if protein content impacts fermentation time, but it will change the consistency of gluten development.  Whole grain and non-gluten (or less-gluten) flours (e.g., rye) will tend to impede gluten formation.

I don't know how long you've been sourdough'ing, but for anyone reading this who is new to the process, here's a couple of "primer" links.  For me, it was helpful to understand a little of the "science" and biochemistry at work while I was exploring the more "artful" topics of actual sourdough baking.

King Arthur sourdough primer
Sourdough Home sourdough primer

Look through the "Related" articles and in the sourdough tag for some other musings on the topic.

I'm interested to hear others' opinions of the nature of the universe, also.  Good luck!


Making Pickles - Confirming Sanitization Procedure I'm about to make a batch of dill pickles. The recipe it pretty straightforward:

A batch of firm baby cucumbers
1 cup of water
1 cup of vinegar
1 heaping tablespoon of salt
4 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 pinch of red pepper flakes

The instructions are also pretty straightforward. Sterilize the canning equipment (jars, lids, seals) in boiling water for at least five minutes. Add the washed cucumbers to the jars, boil the water, vinegar, and everything else, and add it to the jar as well. Seal the jars, and then process them in a large pot of boiling water for five minutes. All to cool over 24 hours, and they're good for a year.

Does this sound about right? I don't want them to spoil.

Thank you in advance!

References

How to Make Pickles, Accessed 2014-04-02, <http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-dill-pickles-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-193350>

It sounds reasonable:  the large quantity of vinegar will acidify the pickles, preventing the growth of botulism.

The processing step is mostly to seal the jars; the vinegar is the real preservation agent.

Still, I would feel better if The Kitchn had cited the source of the recipe, as you only want to use recipes that come from a trusted and qualified source.


Can you put polystyrene in the microwave oven I want to know for sure if you can use polystyrene trays (such as those that meat comes in) in the microwave oven?

I have read some fairly official looking reports and articles that say there's not danger, but there is some anecdotal evidence that they can melt, which while apparently harmless, is not ideal.

Well, I can tell you with absolute authority that polystyrene melts in the microwave.

Here's a chunk of polystyrene cut from a foam shipping container. I double checked with the website (Propak), and the stuff is polystyrene.

I placed a random chunk of chicken on the cube, and microwaved on high for 1 minute.

So yeah, it melts. Is it toxic if it melts into your food a few times? Probably not. Should you do it? Probably not.


How was the usage of yeast for bread discovered? From where did people get the yeast for their bread??

The first yeast was "just there" - in the environment, everywhere. People discovered very early on that leaving the dough (or just a flour-water slurry) out would lead to it getting "sour" and "bubbly", thus leavening the bread: What we today call sourdough is in fact a mixture of yeasts and bacteria (lactobacillae).

The origins of bread-making are so ancient that everything said about them must be pure speculation. (M.G. Gaenzle: Encyclopedia of Food Microbiology)

Early sources are the Bible (-> the explicit demand for of "unleavened" or "unsoured" bread during Passover suggesting that otherwise was the norm) and sources from Ancient Egypt.
The "modern" yeast that was explicitly added was mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis historia as a foam skimmed from beer:

In Gaul and Spain, where they make a drink by steeping corn in the way
that has been already described - they employ the foam which
thickens upon the surface as a leaven: hence it is that the bread in
those countries is lighter than that made elsewhere.
Source: The Natural History, Chapter 12: Wheat. Pliny the Elder.
John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and
Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.

Sources from the 18th century describe how the yeast from the brewing process (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) was used for baking, leading to the "specialized strains" of bakers' yeast cultivated separately when the brewers switched to bottom-fermenting yeast (S. pastorianus) in the 19th century, which preferred cooler temperatures and was not as easy to harvest as the top-fermenting types.
The use of separately cultivated yeast allowed to bake "milder" breads than the sourdough types with their typical acidic undertones but is restricted to certain flour types.


Microwave friendly utensils, what qualifies as Any easy ways to identify microwave friendly utensils? I know some basic guidelines like, "no metallic items", but am confused about certain kind of glass dishes, bowls. Are all kind of ceramic containers allowed?

All I am looking for is basically a set of guidelines/thumbrules that I can follow.

Here is a set of guidelines I found from a major manufacturer: http://www.geappliances.com/search/fast/infobase/10001216.htm

As you mention, any metal items or items with embedded metal are not appropriate.  Thinner and bendable plastics are probably not a great idea either since they can melt.  Most ceramics and glass should be okay.

When in doubt, check to see whether the item is labelled as microwave-safe, and if you can't tell, test it first using the method described in the linked guidelines.


Clarified butter: what happens if the foam isn't skimmed off? I know that most recipes for making clarified butter discard this foam. But I've also seen some recipes, like this one for ghee, which do not skim the foam.

  The butter will form a foam which will disappear. Ghee is done when a second foam forms on top of butter

Instead, the butter is left to simmer until the foam goes away. In my experience this happens around the same time the solids in the bottom begin to brown, which I'm guessing coincides with most of the water having boiled off.

Apparently, this foam is whey protein. Where does this protein go and what happens to it when the foam subsides after extended simmering? I've heard it suggested that it makes the resulting clarified butter grainy. Is that true?

The recipe you linked says that you have to strain the ghee. The solids will be left behind in the cloth. Ghee is a bit more cooked than other forms of clarified butter, I'm not sure if you could use this method without browning the milk solids.


Microwave oven grill heating element not glowing Recently I have purchased a sharp branded convection microwave oven. When I tried to make grill, I found that the heating element for grill which placed at ceiling was not glowing. So I was confused that is that grilling part working or not. So I made a call to the shop from where I purchased and they said it glows only for electronic oven, not in microwave oven. But I am still confused that is that true or not.

I remember having one of these in a kitchen I worked in. I too was confused by it.

When using the oven as a microwave the element stays off. When grilling, the element used to cycle on and off as the internal temp rises and falls. It also went off if the door was opened. It used to glow a dark orangey-red, only for a moment. It was difficult to see with the internal cabinet light on. However, it generated heat most of the time without an obvious visible glow. You can't just turn the grill on. You need to set a time as you would in microwave mode. There was no easy way to pre-heat the grill function.

In my opinion the unit was a waste of time and I only used it as a microwave. Sorry probably not what you wanted to hear.


Can you substitute butter in a box cake recipe that calls for oil? Possible Duplicate:
  Conversion rule: how to switch oil and butter?

Most box cake mixes call for adding oil and water. What would be the effect of using butter instead of oil, and what ratio should be used to substitute butter for the oil? 1:1?

I would do a 1:1 ratio with the following caveats -

First make sure you are using unsalted butter (if you use salted it will change the flavor and the texture of the cake, usually not in a good way)

Second, I would clarify the butter (i.e. melt it skim off the foamy/cloudy bits that float at the top)

After that I would use an equal ratio. Be warned that the clarification process will reduce your butter a bit (8 tablespoons averages about 6 tablespoons after clarification), so make sure you measure after clarifying.


How to create a gummy candy cake? I want to give my gf a present for Valentine's day that consists on a board with glued gummy candy, marshmallows... all that lovely sweet stuff. When put all together it will be like a romantic painting but with glued gummy candy instead.

However, I don't know what to use as a frame to stick the candy and also what to glue them with!

Is there anyway to make/(buy) some kind of edible frame? I'm ok with plastic or glass but if it could be edible it would turn out awesome! :)  Furthermore, do you have any ideas on what to glue the candy?

Final Result:

This is what I ended up doing. The base is a sponge flan cake, which I bought in the supermarket. Regarding the glue, I was presented with the options of a pure glucose syrup and a shinning glucose gel. I chose the latter, since I was told it was commonly used to stick crystallised fruits in cakes and that sort of stuff :)

Thank you all for the tips and the inspiration. She loved it ;)

For the frame, I would suggest baking a cake, brownies, gingerbread or even cookie dough in a baking sheet (so it's one big, quite thin piece). But put the temperature of the oven lower than if you would use a regular baking mold. You could also use a piece of styrofoam/polystyrene*, covered with tin foil. Then you can use tooth picks to hold everything in place. To cover the tin foil, use sour strips, marshmallows...

As glue you can use chocolate or caramel if it should sit quite steady. You can also use edible glue (this is often used to glue pieces of fondant to cupcakes). If you present it horizontally, you can use a lot (syrup, honey, jello, icing, even a thick pudding...). I think you could even melt some candy and use it as glue. I have no idea however how strong this would be.

*) I'm not sure this is the correct English term. To be clear, I mean this.


How to minimise exposure to systemic pesticides while eating non-organic fruits and vegetables? For those who cannot afford organic produce, what foods would you suggest limiting the consumption of in order to minimise the amount of systemic pesticides being consumed?

I ask this specifically about systemic pesticides, as non-systemic pesticides can be avoided by washing the exteriors of fruits and vegetables.

You reduce your chances of consuming pesticides by looking at the country of origin. For example, EU countries frequently have tighter standards than Asian countries, and even within the EU, there are differences in which pesticides are allowed, and at which levels. You would have to find out whose regulation you trust most, and then follow the relevant magazines about potential contamination/limit excess reveals.

This is usually in direct contradiction to your desire to spend less on produce, since the norms tend to be better in countries with higher labor costs, conformity is better in countries with low corruption, which also have a correlation with labor costs, and in general, it is impossible to keep low produce production costs without generous amounts of strong pesticides, because the farmer then has to absorb the losses from ruined crops. So if you can only afford the cheapest tier of produce, such as Spanish strawberries, there may be nothing you can do but eat it with whatever pesticides it contains.

What can also help is eating seasonal produce. Out-of-season produce is frequently delivered by mass producing, purely profit-oriented corporations who trim their production to efficiency. Smaller, traditional, more idealistic farmers tend to grow in-season, and even if they don't get an organic certification, some of them would reduce their pesticide use based on personal beliefs what farming is about. So on average, you will have a somewhat lower pesticide exposure, even though the actual levels will vary wildly per batch.


Is there a way to keep chilled cookie dough from flattening while cutting it? Whether using a serrated or straight knife, this seems to be a problem. I end up reshaping them by hand on the cookie sheet so they are round instead of oval.

Is there a way to slice the dough to prevent this flattening?

PS: I should clarify that the chilled dough is in a roll shape.

Use a length of plain dental floss instead of a knife to slice: Wrap the floss around the roll, cross the ends of the floss over each other, and then pull the ends down and out to the sides to slice through the log.


What qualities to look for in a cut of beef destined for "well done"? The major cooking advice is to buy a certain cut (sirloin, etc..) and cook it to rare-degrees.
However, my guests don't like beef that has any pink inside or "blood" (I know it isn't blood) oozing out. I don't assume the same cuts still produce the tastiest steak?

What are the properties of raw beef that result in a great well-done steak and which cuts normally present these properties?

I'm rather surprised by the judgmental tone in some of the answers here.  A well-done steak is a culinary preference; just because you don't share that preference is no reason to be rude about it.  Some people like caviar; others don't, despite the fact that it is expensive and lauded by many "people in the know."  Some people appreciate an espresso made lovingly with freshly ground coffee in the "right" kind of grinder; others find it too strong or bitter and would prefer an "American style" of coffee with cream and sugar. Taste is subjective.

I'll admit something personal -- for the first quarter-century or so of my life, I only ate well-done or medium-well steak.  It's how my father always cooked it at home on the grill.  He didn't actually prefer steak well-done: when we'd go out to the restaurants, he'd generally order medium-rare.  But even though he'd time steaks, adjust heat on the grill, etc., the vast majority of the time, they were well-done.  I was used to it.  I liked it, because it was what I knew.  The few times I encountered less-done meat, I found the texture odd or even slightly off-putting.

Then, at some point, I was convinced to try more rare steak, and I soon accepted it.  I now almost always order steaks medium-rare, and I do prefer them that way.  But I also spent a lot of time ordering steaks more well-done (at restaurants, I'd almost always order medium-well), and to those of you who claim you can't tell the difference when a steak is that done, you don't know what you're talking about, because it's not your common way of eating and perhaps you've never had a well-done steak that was prepared in a reasonable fashion.

Anyhow, to answer the question: as some others have hinted at, choose a cut that has a "looser" texture with fat running through it if possible.  Also, consider using a cut that you'd often tend to slice thinly when serving anyway, like skirt, flank, bavette, etc.  You can also use more expensive somewhat fatty cuts (like ribeye), though the meat will toughen, so you won't get the benefit of the tenderness in such expensive cuts.  Plus some of the cheaper cuts (or at least less expensive) have superior flavor.

Quality is actually more important in cooking well-done steaks, because older or worse quality meat with more connective tissue will become even chewier and tough when cooked longer. A somewhat high-quality ribeye cooked well-done can be a somewhat chewy but very pleasant caramelized experience with melt-in-your-mouth browned crispy fat interspersed.  A poor-quality steak with poor-quality fat will just become tough and have its bad qualities exaggerated.

What you want to avoid -- unless your guests insist on them -- are lean cuts, which will end up tough AND dry.  Filet mignon is a very poor choice (which will end up tasteless and tough), as is sirloin, as would be other lean tough cuts (like round).  Also avoid cuts with a lot of connective tissue (but sometimes are sold as steaks to be cooked fast and rare), like chuck.

Marinating will help if you allow enough time for brine to soak in a bit (thereby adding not only flavor, but more moisture).

As for cooking, keep in mind many types of meat are cooked to "well-done" temperatures and still can remain juicy with proper technique (e.g., chicken).  There's absolutely no reason to serve a tough, dry well-done steak unless you're incompetent.  A "loose" textured steak as mentioned above that's sliced thin before serving will be chewy but won't necessarily seem "tough" if marinated and cooked properly.

How to cook properly?  Do NOT do what most people do when cooking steak and just flip once.  You'll end up drying out both sides of the steak by the time cooking is finished.  Butterflying (which restaurants will sometimes offer to do for you when you request a medium-well or well-done steak) can be counterproductive for some cuts and can also dry things out more.  (Restaurants do it mostly for their own convenience; it speeds cooking.)  Unless you have a very loose-textured steak, which might benefit from additional browning reactions with greater surface area while not getting tough, you probably don't want to decrease thickness deliberately.  Instead, keep moisture in with a somewhat thicker cut.

And flip often during cooking.  It's more work because cooking to well-done takes longer, but it's the best way to keep juices moving around inside rather than boiling out the top while the bottom gets dry and burnt.  (Think of what a rotisserie does; you're doing the same by flipping steak often.)  Flipping frequently also can help soften fat and begin to break it down, which can add flavor and a "moist" aspect (if done right with high-quality meat, the fat might even be almost "melt-in-your-mouth").  Frequent flipping also aids in more browning reactions, which develop more flavor, and well-done steak does at least get that advantage of extra browning flavor (perhaps even crisped brown outer layers of fat).  Obviously control heat; overall you'll need to cook at a slightly lower heat to avoid burning the outside before interior is well-done.

Then pull steak off while slightly less than well-done, and let it rest to creep up to well-done.

To summarize:

Loose or well-marbled cut, cheapest are those you'd generally slice even if serving rare
Marinate for at least a few hours; salt will help with moisture, acid can help at least keep the outer layer less tough
Relatively high-heat sear on both sides
Then move to lower heat, and flip frequently
Check internal temperature with an instant-read thermometer to pull it off precisely as the pink is about to go away in middle (this may take some practice to find the right temp based on your cooking technique, how thick the steaks are, etc.)
Let rest to "coast" to well-done

I've accidentally overcooked skirt steak this way a couple times, and it was just as tasty (if not more so), basically as juicy, and almost as tender as if I cooked it to medium rare.  (Skirt is always chewy anyway; well-done steaks will always be chewy, but they don't have to be excessively tough.)

Cooking steak to medium-rare and getting passable results is relatively easy with a thermometer.  Cooking a decent well-done steak takes a lot more skill.

EDIT: A couple comments have noted that there are better ways to cook steaks.  I absolutely agree.  The OP didn't ask about preparation technique, so I was assuming a somewhat "standard" cooking technique for steaks (grilling, pan-frying, broiling, etc.), which my advice applies to.  Personally, I'd recommend things like reverse searing or finishing in the oven, etc. too for better results, but I wasn't trying to turn this answer into "how to cook a steak" in general.


Apple pie making...how to add the crumble crust on top of the mound of raw apples? We made two apple pies for Thanksgiving. Both recipes called for adding a mixture on top of your apples to create a crumbly top crust for the pie.

Mixture one involved butter, flour, and sugar. (I cut the dry ingredients into the butter)
Mixture two involved melted butter, crushed graham crackers, crushed walnuts, and sugar

There was about 2 cups of each mixture.

Mixture one was stickier and had larger chunks due to the solid butter that we were working with. It was easier to add to the top of the mound of apples.

However, we found that it was almost impossible to pour mixture two on top of one of the pies. We couldn't contain all of that on top of the mound of apples. We essentially just mixed most of it into the apples and then poured the remaining on top for the crust.

Are there any suggestions for making crumple crust for apple pies? I guess one idea could be  to add the crumble crust after the apples has reduced down a bit during baking.

According to the crumb recipe on the Epicurious Website, the crumb mixture should be the texture of wet sand and then packed down on the mound of filling:

  1 cup all purpose flour

  1/2 cup sugar

  1/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar

  1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

  1/2 teaspoon salt

  6 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

  Blend first 5 ingredients in processor. Add chilled butter cubes;
  using on/off turns, cut in until mixture resembles wet sand.

  (After mounding the filling in the crust, pack topping over and around apples. Bake pie on baking
  sheet in pre-heated 400-degree oven, until topping is golden, about 40 minutes (cover top with foil
  if browning too quickly). Reduce oven temperature to 350°F. Bake until
  apples in center are tender when pierced and filling is bubbling
  thickly at edges, about 45 minutes longer. Cool until warm, about 1
  hour. Serve with ice cream.


Reproduce Korean BBQ Pork Jerky Costco sells a Korean BBQ Pork Jerky with the brand name Golden Island

It's delicious- it's soft but chewy, smokey, sesame-ey, moist with the sugars but obviously also dried enough to not need refrigeration.

I've tried making it myself with mixed results. The marinade is easy: ginger, sesame, brown sugar, etc. The flavor is good but my texture isn't quite right. I tried my normal jerky method which is to marinate and dehydrate. As you would expect, the sugars didn't caramelize correctly and the meat didn't take on the soft, chewy, candied texture that I crave.

The labeling and the texture imply that the meat is cooked. A Chinese pork "jerky" that I learned about from this question is only cooked. I want the meat to also be preserved so only roasting/grilling is insufficient.

There are several questions here:

Does this product represent a dish in Korean cuisine or is it a fusion variation? If I could find a name I could find a recipe.

How could I both cook and preserve my pork?
The options that come to mind are:

Smoking until dehydrated (requires much more effort as I think it would have to be a cool smoking over a long period of time)
Grilling briefly for flavor and then dehydrating until done. (does partially cooked meat still dehydrate?)

Is there some other method that I haven't thought of?

Does this product represent a dish in Korean cuisine or is it a fusion variation? If I could find a name I could find a recipe.

It does not appear to be a korean dish, rather a version of the chinese pork jerky, which has been seasoned with a korean bbq style.

  How could I both cook and preserve my pork?

If you are trying to replicate the product, it doesn't appear to be a cooked and dried product.  Unless you are trying to extend shelf life of your cooked meat.

  The options that come to mind are:

Smoking until dehydrated (requires much more effort as I think it would have to be a cool smoking over a long period of time)
Grilling briefly for flavor and then dehydrating until done. (does partially cooked meat still dehydrate?)

You could hot smoke the meat to be completely/partially cooked, before considering a preserving process.
Similarly grilling/broiling/roasting, before preserving.  Of course you can dry/dehydrate most things that have water content.

  Is there some other method that I haven't thought of?

If following the chinese jerky process I have seen, either:

Raw meat is cooked, then brined/marinated in a meat tumbler
Raw meat is brined/marinated, then cooked

You also need to consider whether you wish to have mince & reform the meat, or slice the meat thinly (eg meat slicer).


What can I use as a replacement for Curry Powder? I do not like the taste of curry powder.  I have a recipe that calls for the use of this spice. What do you suggest that I can use in place of the curry powder?

Curry powder is a blend of spices to some recipe or merchant's taste, as a convenience.   More traditionally, a particular blend of spices would be created for each individual dish, tailored to that dishes idiosyncrasies.

You can research one of many current powder recipes on available, and simply make your own blend without whichever spice or spices it is that you do not enjoy.


Why is bread dough recovery important? Im trying to learn all about bread making as im currently doing my svq as a craft baker. One question im having trouble answering is about dought recovory and why it is important. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks

Not clear what you mean, terminology is non-standard.

I'm going to guess you mean what the rest of us call resting or relaxing the dough when working/forming it.

If you overwork dough, the gluten strands that hold it together will tear and break. If you stretch and work the dough until it's springing back, but has not torn, and then let it rest for 5-10 minutes, the gluten strands rearrange themselves such that you can stretch or work the dough further, without it tearing.


How can I preserve mushrooms for a long time? Whenever I freeze mushrooms their color gets blackish, and their taste is altered. How can I preserve mushrooms for a long time while minimizing or eliminating this kind of changes?

You cannot preserve them without a change in taste and color. Freezing is the best you will get, and the changes you desecribe are normal. You can also dehydrate or pressure can them, but they will be even more different than fresh mushrooms then.


Packaged mozzarella wet I bought some mozzarella sealed in plastic and noticed that there is a bit of liquid in the package with a few tiny bubbles. Is this normal? And safe to eat? It's not bulging at all. It has 48% moisture I think and is low fat. Maybe this is more traditional mozzarella?

There's 2 types of mozzarella, fresh and hard (also called low moisture). Fresh mozzarella is soft and packaged with whey or brine, it tears easily and can be squished between your fingers. It has a relatively short shelf life, usually within a couple of weeks of purchase. If you have this cheese then this sounds normal to me, even a couple of bubbles, if it smells fine and tastes fine I'd think it's safe to eat.

Hard mozzarella has been allowed to dry partially, and is generally sold in vacuum packaged blocks, with no liquid. It's very firm and shred-able with a grater. If you've bought this and you have liquid and bubbles in the package then I would get rid of it.


Turn Passata Into Tomato Paste? I have an American recipe that calls for 12oz Hunts Tomato paste and 1.5 cups of water.  The nearest thing I have is Passata.

I don't know much about cooking, but they both seem to be made from tomatoes...is there any way I can use the passata I have in place of the tomato paste?  I'm assuming I would reduce the water or completely skip the water - is there a general guideline here?

My instinct is to just throw it in a pot and, if it seems to watery, simmer until it thickens...but I figured I should ask people who know.

Passata is crushed tomato.  Tomato paste is a concentrate of tomato produced by cooking for a long time, removing seeds and skin, and cooking further.  They are different products that are going to produce different results, both flavor-wise and in terms of texture.  If I were you, I would not add extra water at all, if you are going to use the Passata.  I am sure it will be good...it will just be different from the intent of the recipe.


How do you cook quinoa? How do you cook quinoa? I mean what equipment do you use (electric cooker, pressure cooker, stove top)? Do you add spices or vegetables to it while cooking it?

Quinoa naturally contains a bitter compound on the outside of the seed.  Usually you have to rinse the quinoa to remove the bitterness but most commercial quinoa seems to have already been rinsed.  So, I no longer rinse my quinoa.  If you have time, it's nice to heat a pan and add the quinoa and toast it a little (for a nutty flavor and fluffier texture), then add water and salt.  I typically bring the water to a boil (2 cups water to 1 cup quinoa plus 1/4 tsp salt), cover and reduce the heat to a simmer for 10-20 minutes (or until the little tails release).  Lately I've found that using a rice cooker is a no-fuss way to prepare quinoa.  I usually just do quinoa, water and sea salt but you can add spices while cooking it if you want to enhance the flavor.  I would add vegetables afterwards. Quinoa is so quick-cooking I wouldn't see the need for a pressure cooker.


What is the shelf-life of store-bought commercially-produced jam? My question is similar to this one, but about store-bought jam.

What is the shelf-life of store-bought jam – i.e. commercially prepared major brands – if not opened?

Are the processes or ingredients for preservation of mass-produced jam superior to at-home sterilization of home-made jam?

Quite simply: I have an unopened jar of jam purchased 18 months ago.  Good to eat now, or not?

Jam and jelly have VERY long shelf lives both in the cupboard, unopened as well as in the refrigerator. The acidic environment and concentration of sugar make it an inhospitable environment for bacterial growth.

Typically the only changes you'll see are darkening of color (unopened in the cupboard) and possible "sugaring" in the refrigerator (development of sugar crystals).  Flavor can diminish over time too.  There's very little need to be concerned about it being safe for consumption....mainly palatability will be affected with age.


How can I train myself to identify flavors better? I'd love to be able to cook well and I think a part of that is identifying flavors.

We all have different palates, but there are probably some basic techniques that can be used to figure out what the meal is made out of.

For example, there is a spicy Indian dish at a restaurant nearby that I love and it's pretty simple (chicken and rice), but I can't identify the contents of the marinade, and the owner wont tell me what it is.

So, outside of trying every spice there is, what are some tips to identify flavors?

One thing that my mother suggested to me when I first started getting interested in learning to cook beyond blindly following a recipe was that I try making scrambled eggs with one single spice in them to see how that flavor affects the taste of something I know well. It's actually a pretty good way to train your tastebuds to understand what flavor a particular spice imparts. You could then move on to combinations of spices.

For Indian food, however, they're probably using a combination of lots of spices. Garam Masala can be up to 12 different spices, not counting aromatics such as onions and garlic. So you may be better off trying to compare different recipes for that particular dish and seeing what the difference is with those particular spice mixtures.

In general, I'm a big fan of trying different things and seeing if you like them. For example, I can't stand the flavor of black licorice, and so I avoid anise and all variants. However, I wanted to try making a chicken pho which called for star anise. I tried it, and found that in very small amounts, I actually like it. So go and experiment. Try different recipes for the same things, and try modifying your own recipes a bit at a time. Sometimes it may not work, but even then you'll be learning a lot.


What is the enzyme that makes apples's pectin heat resistant? And can it be added to other fruits to achieve similar results? In some recipes for apple and cherry pie, it is suggested to pre-cook the filling at low temperature in order to make pectin heat resistant and so preserve the shape and structure of the fruit.
This is explained in McGee's "On Food and Cooking" at page 283 as:

  Firm-able vegetables and fruits have an enzyme in their cell walls that becomes activated at around 120F/ 50C (and inactivated above 160F/70C), and alters the cell-wall pectins so that they’re more easily cross-linked by calcium ions

Now my question is, what is this enzyme? Is this enzyme available for purchase? And if so, if I were to add it to a, say, strawberry pie filling, would it help maintain its structure?

I don't know for sure if it is the same enzyme naturally that naturally occurs in apples, but there is a commercial product called NovoShape that serves this purpose. It is a pectin esterase. You can find it in small quantities at Modernist Pantry: http://www.modernistpantry.com/novoshape.html


Meatballs in tomato sauce using a rice cooker I have a package of frozen precooked Italian meatballs. I got a can of tomato sauce. I would like to cook the meatballs in a tomato sauce. I don't have a pot right now. I only have a 4-cup rice cooker with tow modes: 'cook' and 'warm'. How can I use it? For how long?

What's the unit's usual cycle time for white rice? 20-30 min? That should get the sauce boiling, and the meatballs hot (70°C, plus) all the way through. I'd not trust a rice-cooker's 'warm' setting to eliminate bacteria in even pre-cooked meat.


Conflicting instructions from different sources: roasting chicken Thomas Keller recommends bringing a chicken to room temperature before roasting. Peter Meehan and the Lucky Peach gang recommend chilling a chicken before roasting, as a fan describes here. Either they're going for two different results, or one of them is wrong. What's going on here?

One is pointless, and the other is very specific.

Keller's approach - bringing the chicken out of the fridge 45 minutes before - is pointless, because there's no way in hell any significant proportion of a chicken is going to get from fridge-cold to room temperature in 45 minutes, or any other time that still allows it to be safe to eat. Point 1 in this article from the Food Lab is about steak, but that only reinforces my point. If a steak barely warms up after 1.5 hours, a chicken will do no better.

The Lucky Peach approach seems to be using the fridge mainly to dry out the skin in order to give a crispy result for that particular 'lacquered' recipe. That approach may well work for a chicken without all the lacquer as well.

Personally, I go more or less straight from the fridge and use a digital probe thermometer to ensure I don't overcook the bird, and have generally very satisfactory results.


Seedless blueberry jam - consistency I was trying to customise blueberry jam for a friend who did not like the jam with the entire fruit in it. So I had to filter out the seeds and skin. But the consistency is always a bit runny.

I use Frozen blueberry and for 650 grams of blueberry I used 150 grams honey. 1/2 a lemon's juice.
Thawed berries and heated a bit, filtered the pulp and juice. Then added the honey and lemon juice . Brought it to 96°C (205°F because if I boiled more than 98°C it became too hard) and cooled down before packing.

Blueberries are generally low-pectin fruits, so many jam recipes and jam making guides specifically call for adding pectin. That said, some do not - but these use the whole pureed fruit. When you filter out the seeds and skin, you remove much of what pectin there is in blueberries naturally, leaving you with runny jam.

The solution, then, is to add pectin or some other fruit that contains some.

As a note, unripe fruit, including blueberries, often has more pectin than ripe, but if you're using frozen blueberries, they're likely to be picked at their peak and rather low in pectin.


What is this small green fruit called? I want to know what is this fruit called in English

I believe what you have there are almonds...or "the fruit of the almond tree".


Quantity for over night oats I cook Quaker Oats overnight and love it but sometimes the pre-measured packets make too too little food. I am interested in making my own servings using cups, but do not know what proportions I should use. For example, I heard on YouTube that 2 cups of oats per 1 cup of milk/water.

What is the best ratio of oats to liquid to prepare oats overnight?

Weigh the contents of one packet.
Check the packet instructions to see how much liquid to add.

That's your ratio, very precisely.

You can then apply that ratio to any measurement.


Are there any dishes that utilize burnt garlic? I was reading a question and in it, burnt garlic was a topic in which the answerer said that burnt (very brown, not black) garlic is bitter. They went on further to say that any dish with burnt garlic is ruined, and you should throw it out and begin anew. I was first curious if there was any way to save the dish (a couple sources said no), but I was then curious as to dishes that utilize that burnt flavor.

I know a lot of dishes like to capitalize on the most bitter aspect (I know a few with bitter gourds), so I'd like to see if this is something that can be capitalized on.

Do dishes exist that capitalize on the "burnt" flavor (very brown, not actually blackened burnt) of overcooked garlic?

Note: I wasn't sure about the closability of this. If it's off-topic, please let me know and I'll delete it.

I've seen a handful of different recipes that utilize burnt garlic as a main flavor ingredient.

One that seems particularly interesting is "Burnt Garlic-Sesame-Chili Oil", which can be used as a condiment in ramen noodle soups. I haven't tried making it, but I'm pretty sure I have eaten something like this before. It has a spicy and smokey flavor.  I'm not sure if I should paste the whole recipe here, but here is the link:
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/09/burnt-garlic-sesame-chili-oil-for-ramen-recipe.html

Enjoy!


Any secondary uses for taffy? My sister got married recently and had a candy buffet at the wedding.  Their colors were yellow and gray, and we now have a lot of leftover banana taffy.  We're never going to eat it all at the rate that we're going, and Halloween is still a long way off.  Are there any secondary uses for taffy?  I've searched for recipes containing taffy (as an ingredient) but haven't been able to find any.  Are there any candies that have a taffy-like stage on the way to something else?

This is going to sound odd, but taffy is actually a great ingredient in sweeter coffee drinks like mochas.  It melts into the drink adding sugar and flavor.  I'm a fan of banana for this purpose.

In a similar vein, you could also use the taffy as a chip in cookies.  Chop it up and use it wherever you think banana flavor would taste good.  I could imagine the banana taffy going well in with macadamia nuts.  You might want to consider the taffy as a substitute for butterscotch or white chocolate chips in recipes requiring them.


How can I make this cool chocolate shape? I've fallen in love with this picture.

I am wondering how I can make the white chocolate layer.

My guesses are:

option A: use a bottle and "pour" melted white chocolate above it
-- downside: ? the chocolate wouldn't get nice and smooth as in the picture.
option B: use a 2 pieces plastic moulder(like when making Eastern eggs) and "pour" white chocolate above it. Once poured use a different but smaller plastic shell and place it in the moulder in order to flat the chocolate.

Any suggestions?

I think it is more likely that the pastry chef employed a piece of food grade acetate (the link is a sample vendor).

They would have piped the pattern of tempered white chocolate onto the acetate sheet, then rolled it into a cylinder (chocolate on the inside) taping or clamping it shut to set.  Once thoroughly chilled, they would have very, very carefully peeled the sheet from the chocolate.

This is a very advanced technique, especially with white chocolate, which is persnickety and tough to temper, and often not as solid as dark chocolate.  Good luck.


Are Gem Squash Edible After the Green Rind Turns Yellow/Orange? We've had these squash for a while.

I've cut them open and they appear to be OK, but I want to be sure.

Generally, aging/ripening squash does not pose any food safety problems. You can eat all members of the family. You just have to make sure that they are only overripe and not rotten. Rotten squash will have areas which are much softer than the rest, and usually somewhat slimy.

It is a different matter if you want to eat overripe squash. Both the taste and texture will change, becoming mealy, or soft, or spongy, and the taste can get bland. You can try cooking it the same way as young squash. If this doesn't work, you can also try some recipe which masks the taste and texture change, for example something involving a puree or a coulis, and adds spices.


can I freeze chicken defrost it and eat cold for lunch? Recently, I have started to eat healthy and got into bodybuilding. I see a lot of videos of people cooking in bulk for the week online; this would save time for me as I'm very busy in college and work. I was just wondering if I could freeze meats such as steak and chicken then take them out of the freezer and eat them cold when defrosted? I would like to have them to eat on the go.

That's perfectly fine, assuming the meats were cooked properly originally. If you look up people doing bento lunches, they use freezer staples a lot; often, if the item is small enough, it can be packed in a lunch still frozen and be defrosted by lunchtime. However, if you're talking about a whole steak or chicken breast, you'll want to stick it in the fridge overnight to let it defrost first.


Which machine/ product would be best for melting then maintaining sugar mixture at constant temperature? I use a sugar and glucose syrup mixture and use it to form candies in demonstrations in front of people. When I use it it is between 80 and 90°C. This mixture is prepared ahead and then transferred to a rice cooker until hardened.
Whenever I need it, it takes about 1.5 hours to melt it back completely (rice cooker has to reach 100°C several times) and then I have to wait until it cools down around 80 - 90°C. Around one or two hours later I have to launch it again as it cools down to 70°C (the normal maintaining temperature of a rice cooker). Then I launch it again to heat it up, it gets up quickly to 100°C, and then I have to wait again until it cools down to 80 - 90°C to use it. And the cycle goes again and again.
The fluctuation of 30°C is too big so I am trying to find a different type of container that would allow me to melt down the hardened sugar mixture, then maintain it between 80 and 90°C.
As it is used for demonstrations, I need something that won't take too much space (I had a sort of electric/induction burner with temperature control, with a pot on top, but it takes some space and is too loud)
What I was thinking: Electric soup kettle, I believe the product is similar to a rice cooker, but for some there is a temperature controller (I was thinking of this one https://www.bartscher.com/en/Products/Snack/Soup-pots/Soup-kettle-54L/p/100062, you can find technical details on "downloads"). The only thing is that it is clearly said to be used for soup to be heated up, so would it change so much?
If you have any suggestions, you are very welcome to say so ! :)

If you need to maintain a certain temperature over time, this is the domain of sous vide cookers. They are typically made for proteins, so if you cannot find one that goes to 90 C, you can use a homemade setup instead (controller + drop-in heater + small pump). It will serve you much better than any purpose-made device, unless you can find something exactly for your use case. If you go with sous vide, don't immerse the heater or pump into the syrup, use a second container (a simple pot will work).
I would be somewhat worried about the long holding though. This is simmering temperature, and you will be losing moisture all the time, changing the ratios in your recipe. Also, I assume you are not making standard hard candy, as the temperature is too low for that. If you have other ingredients, they may not take well to being kept heated constantly, for example if you are making gummy candy, gelatin will not work well (or at all) after being kept for several hours at 90 C.


Using sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) for salting fish Has ammonium chloride have ever been used in any culture/cuisine instead of regular salt for salting fish, or for curing meat in general? How about pickled vegetables or any other food?

If no, why not?

I was wondering because I like the taste of salty liquorice, and the sal ammoniac itself tastes a lot like regular salt. Could it then be used in place of regular salt?

A cursory internet and pubmed search did not yield any historical/traditional/cultural food-ties to this quaternary ammonium salt compound for me.  Personally, I would not feel comfortable using this in a home setting because it can be toxic in small quantities.

To my knowledge, ammoniac is used in agriculture (with pesticides and as an industrial equipment "cleaner") in salt form, it can be also be seen as a gas.  Please remember, the industrial applications for NH4Cl are implemented in conjunction with other stringent  regulations. The end consumer contact level of NH4Cl cannot exceed 48ppm in the US.

Being able to test the end product for NH4Cl residues requires lab equipment and an understanding of how to run liquid chromatography-tandem mass spec, or other specialized tests.

NH4Cl is also administered as part of medical treatments for metabolic alkalosis(acid-base balance issues), and is primarily absorbed in the GI tract.  Patients undergoing treatments using NH4Cl are very closely supervised in the hospital because of the potent effect is has on the human system.   Check out the pubchem site on this chemical.  Look at the side effects of overdoses, they are NOT FUN. It really takes less than you think.  http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/summary/summary.cgi?cid=25517#x332

I fear that if you used this to cure meat or in a way that leaves more than 48ppm in the final product, that you may begin to experience serious health complications.

You also mention in your question that you like the taste of salty licorice/liquorice?, and the wiki source does say that it is used as a flavoring agent in liquorice...but there is no mention of the final concentration of this compound in the candy.  If the anstringency/tounge numbing is what you are after, USE SOMETHING ELSE. Honestly, I would tell anyone I care about to NOT USE QUATERNARY AMMONIUM SALTS AT HOME, IN FOOD PRODUCTS.

Perhaps incorporating karela (bitter melon) in a brine?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_chloride


Par boil roast potatoes I tend to par boil potatoes before roasting them; however, a common error that I make is to over par boil (or as it is otherwise know: boil).  Unfortunately, I'm unlikely to ever get this right.

So my question is this: is there anything I can do "after the fact" to the potatoes to stop them falling to pieces in the oven?

Once the potatoes are overcooked, there is little you can do to give them structure again.

Your best bet would be to re-purpose the dish, making them into potato pancakes, a home fry, or some other type of dish, depending on how much structure is left.

In the future, you can minimize the chances of mushy breakdown by:

Use a waxy potato (such as the US varieties Red Bliss or fingerling).  These hold their structure better than starchy potatoes like Russets.
Start the par-cook in cold water, and remove the potatoes as soon as it is comes to the boil.  This will still shorten your roasting time, but minimize the likelihood of severely overcooking.
Add a small amount of vinegar to the par-cooking liquid, which will help the pectin retain structure.
Depending on the variety of potato you are cooking, don't cut them up into small chunks.   It is much easier to overcook small chunks than larger ones.
Don't par-cook.  You will require longer for roasting, but it is slower and more controlled, and less likely to overcook.


What qualifies as butterscotch I am working on a creation: probably will end up being a Butterscotch Blondie Cheesecake.

Here is where the butterscotch debate comes in:

1) Some claim butterscotch is only "pure" when it is simply butter and dark brown sugar (melted correctly into a sauce, of course).

2) Others think it still counts if there is vanilla and sea salt

3) Others think as long as you start with butterscotch base, you're dealing with butterscotch- and add bourbon or scotch (despite the name, probably didn't originally include scotch...the things you learn when researching), or other flavoring notes.

According to  this article from Wikipedia , your debate points 1 & 2 could both be correct.

  Butterscotch is a type of confectionery whose primary ingredients are brown sugar and butter, although other ingredients such as corn syrup, cream, vanilla, and salt are part of some recipes. According to "Housewife's Corner" in an 1848 newspaper, the real recipe for "making Doncaster butterscotch is one pound of butter, one pound of sugar and a quarter of a pound of treacle, boiled together."

While I have never seen any recipe or reference that included adding liquor to butterscotch, and I wouldn't personally consider it essential, it's not too much of a stretch to think that someone has done it.


How long can I marinade/brine a tenderloin? I have read various recipes for brining (or marinading) meat and they say everything from 2 hours to 2 days. For a pork tenderloint 2.5" in diameter, how long can I let it soak in to maximize penetration? Does it help to let it sit for longer, or does it just stop soaking in at a certain point?

I have read that I can gash the meat to increase penetration, but I do not want to do that for appearance reasons.

There is a difference between brining and marinating.  Brines are salt based solutions that work to make meat jucier.  It works by osmosis.  First water leaves the meat, then returns with the salt from the brine.  Because the meat cells now contain more salt, water remains during cooking.  Brining means juicy meat, but it is also salted.  This impacts flavor and texture.  In my experience some folks like this, other don't.  Marinades can add flavor.  Some marinades break down proteins and impact texture (depending on ingredients).  Marinades don't add moisture.  Marinades (as opposed to brines) only impact the surface (or slightly below...maybe 1/4 inch).

Proteins can be brined for hours to days depending on the process and desired impact.

Marinades are usually recommended for 1 - 12 hours.

So, to fully answer your question you would need to specify the impact you are looking for, but in general, given the short cooking time, pork tenderloin is not brined.  You probably want to marinate, and I would suggest a maximum of overnight.  Because there is little penetration, longer is not better.


How can I check if a watermelon is sweet or not when buying? I buy watermelon from the market, sometimes they are sweet and sometimes they are not. How can I check if a watermelon is sweet or not?

From a farmer who was in love with his watermelons.

There are 2 things you want to check for when eating a watermelon A)ripeness B)sugar concentration

To tell if a watermelon is ripe check the pale spot on it’s belly. It should be yellow/white not green at all.

To test for sugar concentration tap on the watermelon, a dryer sweeter one will make a hollow sound while a wetter, watered down one will not make much of a sound.

That being said you don’t want a bone dry one as that means it’s probably old.


Cooking lamb that falls off the bone I'd like to cook my mother a nice lamb shoulder roast (cooked in the oven), I've cooked lamb before but always with mixed results. I want Lamb that's juicy, tender, flavourful and falls off the bone. How do I achieve this?

My questions:

What temperature should I cook it at?
How long should I cook it for?
How do I make sure the shoulder retains it's moisture and doesn't become dry? I hear a lot about low and slow, would this help me achieve my goals?
Do I tent the lamb in foil at the beginning, middle, end? Or at all?
Do I have to put any liquid in the roasting pan along with the lamb so it doesn't dry out?
Any other suggestions would be welcome.
Thanks!

Brown the lamb on the stove top, or high temp oven. Then, braise rather than roasting. That means 2/3-3/4 of the pan is filled with liquid after you put the lamb in first. For flavorful liquids, consider beef, chicken or veg stock. In Malaysia I see a lot of grape juice substitutions for wine in traditional Italian recipes that call for braising. But I would dilute it, so it's not overly sweet. Perhaps some tomato juice would work as well.


Is golden syrup gluten-free? In Europe, the very large majority of glucose syrups are actually derived from wheat and thus not gluten-free, while corn syrup is gluten-free (as far as I understand). From this question, I learnt that golden syrup is actually a good substitute for corn syrup, and thus, I am wondering: is golden syrup gluten-free? Does it depend on the source of sugar used, i.e. cane vs. beet?

Golden syrup is indeed gluten free, as neither sugar cane or beet contains gluten. In fact, beet fibre is used in many gluten-free products. See the Tate & Lyle site for more information:

http://www.lylesgoldensyrup.com/healthandnutrition.php