roasting potatoes at low temperature Has anyone successfully roasted potatoes at the same time as slow-roasting meat? I usually par-cook my potatoes then roast them for an hour at 180 degrees C to finish/crisp, but when I'm slow roasting meat at 150 degrees C I'm never sure how to do the potatoes.  Any suggestions that would allow me to finish the meal at the same time?

Actually did this last night while roasting a chicken, made some schmaltz from the fat I trimmed off the quarters, large diced them and coated them with the clarified chicken fat, S&P on hot cast iron and into the oven @ 375 with the chicken about 20 minutes before the chicken was done. Raised the temp to 475 and took the chicken out to rest. Raised the rack to the top for another 15 mins+/- finished under the broiler. Nice and crispy outside and fluffy but not mushy i.e., over cooked. Very similar to cooking FF or Pommes Frites 2x in 2 different temps of oil


How do I make prepared seitan (gluten) more tender? The 'chicken' Twinkie-sized logs from Chinese grocer are roughly the texture of firm silicone.

I sliced them thinly and braised for 1 hour. Not noticeably softer.

How do I tenderize them? Would meat tenderizer work? I'm assuming no but I reckon I will get some other good tips!

Some meat tenderizers will very likely work since they are proteases, some of which work on plant based proteins too. Try on a small piece and compare.

Frying and simmering will both cook it to an even more firm state (maybe it would eventually cook to mush if you cooked it for days... but one way to MAKE it involves a 3-4 hour simmer :).

I am assuming it is not actually rubbery due to being undercooked - in that case your 1 hour braise should have improved it.


How can I improve the 2:1:1 margarita recipe? I bought my wife that Margaritaville Frozen Concoction Maker, and it is awesome.  We make a lot of margaritas, but always with pre-made mixes.  I tried one recipe to make one from scratch, and it was HORRIBLE.

I tried using the 2:1:1 ratio described below - 2 parts tequila, 1 part triple sec, 1 part lime juice.  It tasted just like a shot of tequila with a little lime.

What are some alternatives I can try to make it taste better?

You probably are used to having a lot of sugar in your mixes. Use lime-ade instead of lime juice, or add some simple syrup. Adding orange juice also helps. Of course, this isn't "traditional", but you'll probably like it better.

If you're looking for a ratio, I would try something like 2 parts tequila, 1 part triple sec, 2 parts lime-ade, 2 parts orange juice. Adjust the lime-ade and orange juice until it tastes good to you.


How to truss a chicken? I have seen many videos online and by chefs on tv, showing how to truss a chicken. What is your way of trussing a chicken? They all seem to have a different technique, and I am interested in a possible easier method.

Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc Cookbook (one of the best cookbooks I've seen) recommends the following:

Place the chicken with the legs towards you.  Tuck the wing tips under the bird.  Cut a piece of chicken twine about 3 feet long and center it under the neck of the breast.  Pull the twine up over the breast towards you.
Knot the twine, pulling it tight to plump the breast.
Bring the ends of the twine around the ends of the drumsticks and straight up.
Tie as before to pull the ends of the drumsticks together and form a compatct bird.  Then tie again to secure the knot.


How to make big, fluffy "Mexican-style" flour tortillas (without using any special machinery)? Flour tortillas are so bloody expensive (and rare!) outside of the U.S. so I'd like to make my own. A friend taught me how to make some ages ago, but I stopped because they were always weird and I could never get them to taste, feel or smell like the ones I got in the store (never-mind from Mexican restaurants in California!), not to mention they were always little tiny baby tortillas only intended for children with very small fingers.

The recipe was basically this (disclaimer: haven't tried in about a year):

Add flour, oil, salt and warm water into a bowl and make a dough.
Knead until you can't anymore.
Break off small pieces and squish/roll out into thin tortillas.
Throw into a frying pan with some butter.
Occasionally flip and wait until dark spots appear on both sides.

It worked out but the results weren't spectacular, often too crispy, too thin, etc. maybe I just need to practice at it more?

How do you make big, fluffy "Mexican-style" flour tortillas (without using any special machinery) ?

Authentic flour tortillas use lard.  For an authentic taste, use that, or consider using shortening or butter since they are solid at room temperature like lard.  You also might want to consider increasing the fat in your recipe.  Fat will coat the proteins of your flour and keep the gluten network from forming so easily.

I was also taught when making tortillas to let the dough rest for an hour after kneading and before rolling/pressing.  This helps everything relax.

After cooking each tortilla, put them in a pile with a clean towel over them.  The tortillas will sweat liquid, helping them to soften up.  You can also put them all in a heat-safe bag (paper or microwave safe plastic) for sweating.  When storing your tortillas, make sure to store them in a bag and not in the open air.

If your tortillas are too small, you should be able to roll out a larger piece of dough.

Part of the texture issues might actually be from you rolling them too thin.  If you are used to working with dough your ideas of thin might be different from the overstated ones found in recipes.  Try rolling to various thicknesses.


Shan Tofu not jelly-like but rather crumbly I tried making Shan tofu. Unfortunately, my version does not have the slight jelly-like consistency and texture that Shan tofu in Myanmar had. It is firm, but a bit on the crumbly side.

This was my 3rd attempt, but it finally came up respectable. The first two attempts used locally-sourced "chickpea flour". It ended up tasting like unflavored humus. This time I used "besan flour" and the results were more along the lines I was expecting.

I used the recipe from http://www.marystestkitchen.com/burmese-tofu-the-easy-vegan-soy-free-tofu/. I compared this to other recipes, and there is not much difference.

Can you suggest things to try to make it more jelly-like?

If it is crumbly you are probably using not only a little too much flour, but also have a problem with hard water, which means lots of calcium dissolved in the water. One way I remove calcium is to boil the water for about 5 minutes, let it cool down for an hour and then pass through a coffee filter. Otherwise try cooking with a non-fortified artesian spring water.

I will probably get a lot of hate for the following recommendation, but in extreme cases, I sometimes use distilled water in cooking. It probably isn’t healthy to drink pure every day, but it’s really magic when you are making sauces or pressure cooking vegetables.

You could also add agar agar to gel it up.


Is it advisable to season a chicken with salt after having brined it? I've used a standard 5% salt and water solution to brine a chicken, after having brined it is it advisable for me to season the chicken with salt before cooking it? I'm worried that if I do so that the chicken may become too salty; am I wrong in thinking this?

If it is the case that the chicken CAN be salted after brining; what concentrate of brine would be needed so that salting is not necessary after brining? 7%, 10%?

I agree with @rumtscho that you should not need to salt after brining. However, I totally disagree with the accepted answer. There are simply too many reputable sources that say otherwise, not to mention my own experience.

First, please see  the accepted answer to this question   which is from Cook's Illustrated.

Secondly,  this article from Stella Culinary  gives a very detailed description of what brining is and how it works. Please see excerpts below.

  What Is A Brine and Why Should I Use It?

  In its simplest form, brine is a salt and water solution that food products, most commonly meats, are soaked in for a given period of time to improve the product’s overall quality.

  When food is brined correctly, the process yields three major benefits:

  Textural improvement, especially when brining proteins.
  Brines can and will enhance overall flavor. Not only does the salt contained within a brine help to season the food product (assuming the brine is applied correctly), but brines also commonly contain secondary flavor profiles such as herbs, spices and aromatics, that are chosen specifically to enhance the overall flavor of the food product being brined.
  By far the biggest reason food is brined, and that’s moisture retention. Especially when it comes to cooking lean proteins such as chicken breast, pork tenderloin and even fish, brining allows proteins to retain more moisture throughout the cooking process resulting in a moister finished product.

  How Do Brines Work?

  The most conventional explanation of how brining works describes the movement of salt and water into proteins through a process called osmosis. This however is incorrect. Brining actually works through diffusion, not osmosis, and it’s important to make that distinction if we are to truly understand how a brine works.

This is a very good article and gives an in-depth look at brining. I personally use a gradient brine (5%) or dry rub and I can personally attest that the salt does get into the meat.


Need advice re chance of damage to a stainless steel tray in a very hot oven I need to heat a clean stainless steel tray to the temperature of boiling water. Would the self-cleaning cycle of the oven damage my tray in any way?

The temperature of boiling water is 100° Celsius or 212° Fahrenheit. This is considerably colder than the self-cleaning cycle in your oven. It would be perfectly sufficient to set the oven temperature to about 120°C/240°F to heat the tray. It would not take long to reach the desired temperature for the tray at those lower temperatures since metals conduct heat well.


Milk instead of water in bread I was looking at mantou recipes (mantou is a fluffy Chinese bun), and the recipes were remarkably similar to bread except less proofing and using milk instead of water. If I were to make regular bread with milk instead of water, what would happen?

Milk in bread dough is an enriching agent.  Other typical enriching agents for bread include things like eggs, fats (butter, oil, etc.), and different types of sugar/sweetener.  They are used to add either fat or sugar or both.

Bread made without enriching agents is known as a lean dough, typically containing only flour, water, salt, and yeast.  Lean doughs are used to produce a lot of traditional European and American crusty breads, including everything from baguettes and crusty French bread to ciabatta.  Typically, they have a firm crust, along with an elastic, springy interior that often (though not always) can have large and irregular holes.

Substituting milk for water in bread will usually add both fat (from milkfat) and sugar (lactose).  Several changes can happen, including:

The crust will typically be softer
The crust will brown more quickly (due to sugar) and can darken more evenly before burning
The interior will be softer and usually less springy/elastic
The flavor will be richer (due to fat) and somewhat sweeter (due to sugar), though bread with milk but no added sugar will still not be noticeably sweet; nevertheless, the lactose will add a different flavor component
Enriching agents will disrupt larger gluten networks a bit, making it less likely to develop large holes in the interior
The added weight of the sugars and fats will decrease final loaf volume and oven spring a bit
Enriching agents often cause the bread to take longer before it begins to develop a "stale" flavor/texture


What ingredients can I add to food or gum recipes to add grittiness without any carbs? I have a sugar free gum recipe that I'd like to add some grittiness to so that it scrubs teeth while it's being chewed. I need help finding an ingredient to add this grit, meeting the following specs:

Won't dissolve in water/saliva
Ingestible (generally regarded as safe)
Contains no sugars so that the product stays sugar free. Tooth-safe sugar replacements would be OK

I've been looking for an ingestible replacement to the microbeads that used to be used in exfoliating cleansers, but haven't found something that would meet the specs.

Baking soda is commonly used as a mild abrasive in toothpaste, and is a food ingredient.

Liquorice root is like a tasty chewy twig, and is chewed to clean teeth in some countries. Maybe you could chop some of that up if you can get it. Assuming the flavour is acceptable of course.

Otherwise you might be looking for seed husks of some sort, dried and ground. Cardamom perhaps? It's cooked in pilau rice and while you might choose to eat round it, accidentally biting into/swallowing a whole pod is normal. You'd have to experiment with how much of the flavour you can handle, and indeed with his much is in the husk.

Have you looked for traditional toothpaste recipes for ideas?


Is my pan too hot for brown sauce / gravy? I've tried to make the following sauce the last couple of days. The same pan is used for everything.

Fry steak. Put steak on plate.
Sauté onions.
Melt butter and mix with flour.
Add stock.
Season.
Let simmer for a couple of minutes

The taste and texture of the end result are fine. However, the high temperature of the pan (I like cancer with my meat) means that:

The butter gets burnt. It's brown and half-molten long before I've time to add flour. Does this result in any undesired reactions?
When the butter/flour mix is stable, the pan seems to be much hotter than 100 degrees. Adding the stock results in violent boiling. Could this damage my (teflon or cast iron) pan or affect the dish?

If the above poses problems, how should I solve them? (I imagine that) I like the taste imparted from the recently used pan.

The solution is very simple.

Fry steak
Saute onions
Remove from stove, wait a minute or two
Melt butter, add flour
Season with heat insensitive stuff (e.g. salt)
Add stock
Return to stove
Let simmer for a couple of minutes
Season with heat sensitive stuff (e.g. fresh tarragon)

Assuming that you are frying your steak below the carb charring temp of ~190°C, the minutes spent away from the heat and the heat spent to warm the butter and the flour will change the mixture's temperature to something much more maneageble, below the smoking point of butter (roughly 150°C). It will still stay above 100°C, but the steam building won't be too terrible. It is normal to prepare roux at above 100°C.

As for the damage, I don't think that we know it. I asked about it once, but no answer was complete enough to accept. See How does thermal shock affect pans made of different materials? for details. Still, I don't use coated pans (PTFE or this "diamond" stuff) for deglazing. The 400° proof ceramic coated ones could be safer, but I still find steel better for this application.


How many green onions are in a bunch? I have a lot of green onions but my recipe calls for a small bunch. Roughly how many green onions would I find in any of the following?

Small bunch
Normal bunch
Large bunch

Well, I can at least show you what ALDI in Germany considers a bunch:

It weighs about 200g and if I wrap my hand around it, my finger touches the middle joint of my thumb, which according to JBergen's comment, makes it a medium bunch.

And in this bunch are....

Seven onions!

But the exact number is probably not really important. Cooking can be a pretty exact science occasionally, but most of the time, a bit more or less won't make or break a recipe. So use common sense and the 7 onions / 200g per medium bunch as a guideline. If your onions are especially pungent, you might want to cut back, if they are mild or you want a bit of a punch, be more generous.


How to keep thick puréed sauces from separating into solids and liquids? Today I was making a version of spaghetti alla puttanesca and while the result of the dish itself was delicious the sauce didn't seem like a sauce; it was rather disjointed or unconnected. It seems like there are two separate components: solid "stuff" and watery liquid, unlike the sauces you'd buy already made.

For this particular sauce I used olive oil, garlic, capers, anchovies, parsley, olives and a can of tomato puree; but I've experienced this with many other sauces I tried to make, specially with tomato based ones but not limited to those.

So how do I get the ingredients to somehow link or bind, so that the liquid and solids don't separate? Does cooking time influence that?

SAJ14SAJ has mentioned starch, but I wouldn't add any additional -- I'd just finish the pasta in the sauce.

Pull your pasta a minute or two early, let drain but do not rinse it, and add it to your sauce.  The pasta will finish cooking in the sauce, absorbing some of the liquid.  It will also release some of its starch into the liquid, helping to bind it.

If you can, reserve some of the pasta water to thin back out the sauce in case thickens too far.  (A pyrex measuring cup works well for this, as you can just dip it into the hot water before you drain your pasta)


Wooden cooking layout I am a PhD student and I intend to cook in my dorm room. There is a wooden enclosure, I am not sure if it is meant for cooking but I intend to cook there.

Please take a look at the space. Although the clutter is annoying, but I intend to attract your attention to the closed like wooden space. I plan to make rice, sauted vegetables, grilled chicken on a regular basis and boiling water for eggs, coffee and the like. I don't intend to make any gravy/sauce based dishes. I am worried that cooking for the next 3-4 years there could damage the wood.

If I were to cover the wood with aluminum foil, would it take care of the issue and is it safe to do that?

Edit: I plan to use an electric induction stove.

The steam released by cooking the foods you mentioned, and boiling water outright, would probably damage the wood. Foil might prevent that, if you seal it completely (using some sort of moisture/heat resistant tape). However, that wouldn't eliminate the fire hazard from cooking in an enclosed wooden box--nothing short of adding a layer of fire-retardant insulation would.

Your best bet is to cook on the floor in the middle of your room (open a window if it gets steamy) and then store your cleaned and cooled implements in the wooden enclosure, provided that your floor is not carpeted. If it is, then I would recommend finding someplace else to cook that isn't a tinderbox.


Water vs. milk/cream (or nothing) in traditional (French) omelets Previous questions here have addressed the reasons why water or milk is added to scrambled egg mixtures in cooking.  However, the two questions I've linked seem to parallel a distinction I've noticed sometimes in recipes or in instructions given by chefs and often repeated on cooking forums: one can add milk or cream to scrambled eggs, while only water is appropriate for omelets, particularly traditional "French" omelet styles.

Some chefs claim that using milk in traditional omelets will make them "tough" (or even "watery"), so they recommend only a small amount of water.  (Some traditionalists, of course, also discourage any additions to the eggs before cooking for a French omelet, even leaving any seasonings or herbs until the very end.)  On the other hand, I have seen other well-known chefs encourage the addition of milk or even cream to omelets to increase richness.

In my own cooking, I have found that adding any type of liquid can increase the lightness and "fluffiness" of the final omelet, and for that reason it's often worth the extra few seconds it adds in cooking time (which can risk toughness).  But I've never noticed a significant difference in toughness when adding milk compared to water, nor have I noticed a significant increase in richness (which I find is often determined more by the amount of butter I put in the pan).  In fact, the prohibition against cream seems a bit odd to me, given that many chefs also advocate a rather large amount of butter for omelets which often ends up being stirred into the eggs while in the pan.

So -- my question: is there actually any science behind the claim that one should only add water to a French omelet, since milk (and possibly cream as well) could toughen it?  Or is this just another culinary myth?  Also, is there any other scientific reason to withhold water or milk from a traditional omelet, other than very slightly increasing the richness of the egg flavor?  (Keep in mind that the amount of liquid I'm talking about here is very small, usually no more than a tablespoon for 2-3 eggs.)

(Just to be clear, a French omelet is generally cooked quite fast in a hot pan, often stirred and/or shaken rapidly during cooking to raise the egg temperatures as fast as possible, and then folded and unloaded from the pan while the outside is pale to golden yellow -- never brown -- and left creamy ("underdone") inside.  I've occasionally seen chefs advocate a slower approach, but the final product is always the same: barely colored on the outside, creamy to slightly runny on the inside, and the overall goal is to maintain maximum tenderness, often with little or no filling at all.  This is opposed to a more "American" or "country" style omelet which can be tougher and perhaps somewhat browned to create a more durable shell used to hold a large amount of heavy fillings.)

Americas test kitchen has tested this in a prior issue.  I cannot put my hands on the issue right now which explained their process and the results.  It also contained a good deal of explanation about the science of the process. They tried all sorts of liquids in their omelette and scrambled eggs recipe. They found that water did make the eggs slightly fluffy but did not slow the coagulation process. This led to a tougher scramble than milk. They wanted the same result for an omelette with a denser texture.  The end result being that butter was better for an omelet.

However, some of the result was later reported in a Smithsonian Magazine Article.  It is a much more compact summary but fairly on the nose for your question.

Their answer was as follows:

  Add milk to scrambled eggs, frozen butter to omelets: If you want
  scrambled eggs, most of us know to throw in a bit of milk or butter
  while scrambling. That’s because the lipids in the dairy coat the
  proteins in the egg (11 percent in the whites and 16 percent in the
  yolks) and slow down the process of coagulation, a.k.a. when the
  proteins are denatured and unfurl, releasing much of the water in the
  mixture. Adding fat helps keep some moisture in and fluff up the final
  product. But the same does not go for omelets. “While scrambled eggs
  should be fluffy, an omelet is more compact,” the authors write.
  While milk works for scrambled eggs, it can add to much moisture to an
  omelet. The chefs recommend frozen bits of butter instead, which melt
  more slowly and disperse more evenly. And it turns out you can go
  ahead and salt the eggs before you even cook them up. Because salt
  affects the electrical charge on the proteins, it weakens the bonds
  between them, preventing overcoagulation. Bring that up at your next
  brunch.

The Science of Good Cooking: Tips From America’s Test Kitchen


Is canned or jarred minced garlic substantially different from fresh garlic? I am always in favor of fresh ingredients when possible. I recently discovered that minced (and crushed and chopped) garlic is available in very inexpensive jars in the produce section of the grocery store. I've always bought garlic and chopped it for a given meal, but I wonder if such jars of prepared garlic are worthwhile.

Would purchasing prepared garlic in a jar be a time saver in some situations, or is the quality reduced such that it is not recommended?

As a side question, does minced garlic in a jar keep for very long once opened?

Yes, it is different. Does it matter? It depends.

If you're going to use garlic in a stew or anything else that would 'dissolve' the regular garlic anyway, it doesn't really matter all that much in my opinion.

If you want to preserve the texture and/or create a more 'urgent' garlic flavour in short-cooked food, I'd go with fresh.

Sidenote: most of the prepared garlic comes with additives, consider if you want to have those as a part of your diet.

As for keeping time once opened: no worries really - bacteria really don't like garlic all that much, so refrigerated you should have no problems hitting 6+ months.


How can I recognize peaches with split pits? Split pits in stone fruit can be a real problem for farmers, because fruit that are seriously affected can’t be sold. However, if the damage isn’t obvious from the outside, the fruit are going to the stores just as usual.

For me as a consumer and cook, split pit peaches and nectarines are in the best case a nuisance because they need a bit more work than normal fruit, in the worst case, there will be mold on the inside of the pit that also infects the flesh.

Is there a way to recognize peaches or nectarines with a split pit before cutting them open? Preferably at the store?

This problem is made by flies, they lay eggs inside fruit. The end where the stem is you can see a scab with long puckering, avoid these. Go to a different seller, or tell farmer to put out fake red apples with sticky stuff on them when the flowers are out this will attract the flies and catch them and save their fruit from damage


Does the point at which salt is added to a dish affect how the flavor is changed? If I'm preparing a dish for myself and someone on a low-sodium diet, I will withhold adding salt while cooking.  Instead, I'll season my plate after serving.  However, I can't seem to get the same flavor from adding salt after-the-fact as I do when I'm salting while preparing the dish.

Is this all in my head or is there actually a difference in how the flavors are affected depending on when the salt is added?

Yes, the flavor is definitely affected.

First, there is the point of solubility. Salt doesn't dissolve all that easily in water, and unlike many other crystals, its solubility doesn't improve with heat. So you have to either stir a lot, or let the dish to sit for a longer time after the salt is added, or both. Else you end up with uneven salting in liquid dishes like soups. Thicker things like sauces are very marginal, and if you add salt to cooked dry stuff (steaks, casseroles and whatnot), you're guaranteed to end up with clumps.

But even if you succeed in getting your salt evenly distributed, the flavor is different. The liquid components may be OK, but anything solid (pasta, meat, vegetables, whatever) will not be penetrated by the salt. So if you salt your dish to the point where the liquid tastes normal, you get bland pieces swimming in an OK sauce or broth. At that point, most people just automatically think that it is still bland, and continue to salt, resulting in oversalted broth/sauce with bland veggies, which in my opinion is even worse.

Third, the salt isn't used only to add taste. A saline solution's chemical properties are quite different from those of pure (or tap) water. Marinading with salt (with or without liquid) changes the texture of steaks (but does so rather slowly). Vegetables cook firmer in salty water, instead of getting mushy. And then there are all the amazing things it does to grains (because it affects both starches and gluten). In short, don't bake a yeast dough without a pinch of salt.

Sadly, all this means that there is no way for both of you to eat what you want/should. My advice is that you should definitely salt the food even for the low-sodium eater at the proper cooking time, you just should use a much smaller amount - even a gram of salt per liter of water can be useful for the chemical changes you want, and shouldn't add too much of a sodium load to a normal sized portion. As for bringing your portion to your own taste, you will have to put up with the worse saltening. Just take care not to oversalt as a reaction, it doesn't really help.


Sourdough dough collapsed, not rising again... Need help! A few days back I started a bread following a Youtube recipe, it had 400gms of flour and 350 gms of water. I had never made such high hydration bread before. I did 1 hour of autolyse followed by 4 round of 5 min kneading by hand. Still it was rising slowly, so I left it on the counter overnight (22-24°C).

Next morning it had doubled. But when I started lightly it folding for final proofing, it just collapsed into a sticky mass. I waited for 2-3 hours and when it didn't rise I added another 150 gms of flour hoping that it would rise again. But I'm waiting for almost 30 hours but there is no gluten development or rise!! Even the no knead sourdough dough rises much faster!

Could anyone explain what's going on and if there'a chance to revive it?

PS: I have been making 2-3 sourdough bread every week since the lock down due to COVID19 started. Some of them were no-knead bread, some were kneaded bread and most of them turned out pretty good. I just mentioned it to let you know that, although I'm an amateur, I'm not a complete novice for sourdough bread and my starter is good!

This sounds very much like overproofed bread. You should have baked it much sooner, or retarded it in the fridge, not left it on the counter.

You cannot "rescue" overproofed bread in the sense that the loaf will never have good texture. If you really want to save the ingredients, you can reuse them as a preferment in a new bread. But it is not necessarily worth it, since the overproofing process creates very sharp off-flavors.


What are the advantages of a long knife? A while back, I had a conversation with a purveyor of knives. I asked her to recommend two knives; a general purpose knife and something to use to carve a turkey, steak etc. Both her recommendations surprised me; one was a 175 mm Santoku, the other was a 150 mm universal knife (this one: http://shop.skjerp-deg.no/index.php?route=product/product&path=59_60_80&product_id=100)

The reason I was surprised at the second, was that I was expecting her to recommend something at least 180 mm long.

So, to my question: what are the relative advantages of using a long carving knife, as opposed to a short one?

A very long blade is only useful in specialty situations, such as cutting very thin slices from wide cuts like an entire top round, or a full sized ham where there is no bone to be negotiated around (in the ham, the slice is only down through half, until the bone is reached).

Otherwise, for more typical home carving purposes, extra length just gets in the way, especially for oddly shaped meats like an actual turkey.  I find that a traditional chef's knife or my santuko are the best tools for most home carving jobs—and they are also useful for many other purposes.

I have a 10 inch (25 cm) granton ham slicer, but I never use it for carving:  it is reserved for slicing layer cakes in half horizontally in one pass.


Why do people put oil/butter in pan when frying ground beef? I have always wondered why people put oil or butter in a pan before browning ground beef. It doesn't make sense since you end up having to drain the grease in the end anyways. What is the purpose of the oil or butter? Is it used for pans that are not non-stick? Flavor?

Transfer of heat. First you need a hot pan (sprinkle some drops of water on the pan, it should sizzle). Then you add a drop of oil and swirl it around. When the oil forms a striated pattern, it's hot. Then you put the meat in.

The hot oil helps to transfer heat from the bottom of the pan to the meat. You only need a spoonful of oil.


Cooking raw chicken beside heating quesadillas In a kitchen that has only a flat top to cook with, is it safe to cook raw chicken on it and at the same time heat a quesadillas on the same surface but on opposite side of the flat top?

Of course you can.  The question is whether it is a good idea or not in terms of food safety.

What you don't want to have happen is for raw chicken juices to splatter onto the quesadilla, especially after it has been flipped so that the side where the juices splatter will not be cooked again.

In actual practice, you have to assess the risks:

How much juice will splatter, and how far?
Will the quesadilla still be hot enough (or be turned) to kill any pathogens anyway?
Will enough settle on the quesadilla to have any significant chance of being a real risk?   (The risk of infection increases with the quantity of pathogens present.)

In practice, unless you are serving at-risk populations like the immune-compromised, elderly, or very young children, the risk is probably quite low as long as the foods are far enough apart that the juice is not flowing from the chicken to the quesadilla.

In a professional food service environment, you probably should not do this; at home, you must assess your own tolerance for risk.


Why clean a pot (used to cook rice) with cold water? Some people have told me that it's better to clean a dirty pot (used to cook rice) with cold water, rather than the hot water I use for all the other dishes.  What would be the purpose of this?

Residual starches swell up and get sticky in hot water.  This doesn't happen with cold water -- In the time it takes to wash a pot.


Incorporating capsicum oil into a chicken breading How can I incorporate capsicum oil into chicken breading?

Breading chicken usually involves three stages:

Dip the chicken in flour to provide a uniform surface for egg to stick to
Dip it in an egg mixture
Dip it into bread crumbs or some other coarse, dry coating that will be the final texture.

Obviously the oil would not work in stages 1 or 3 because it could not be well distributed and would clump.

It is easy enough to add wet flavoring agents to the egg mixture. You should beat it well enough to partially emulsify the oil into the eggs so it doesn't all separate out on the first piece.

As Joe commented above, this seems like more trouble than it's worth. Mixing any kind of dried, ground or crushed peppers into the 3rd stage is much simpler. I use dried, crushed chipotles for this purpose.


If Soy Milk gets congealed at the bottom, is this a sign that it's going bad? It happens a lot with vanilla flavored soy milk - the congealed portions sit at the bottom of the container and looks like whip cream - does this mean that it's going bad?

That sounds like the settling of the soy solids at the bottom of the carton; shaking the milk before pouring it should solve that issue.


What's the difference between Greek and Bulgarian Feta Cheese I went to buy some feta cheese today and noticed that there was both Greek and Bulgarian feta. I was wondering what the differences are between the two and can they be suitably substituted for each other?

Having worked for some time as a cheesemonger, I found that Bulgarian Feta was generally saltier and more assertive than many Greek fetas.  I also found the texture to be a bit grainier with the Bulgarian feta and a bit more dense.  However, my experiences are limited in that while I sold five different Greek fetas, I only sold one Bulgarian Feta.  I'll also point out that while Feta is historically made with goat milk, it can also be made with sheep milk or cow milk as well, so one has to take the milk source into consideration also (for a quick overview, cow feta will generally be mellow and creamy, while sheep, and particularly goat feta will be more acidic.  But even then, the brine can completely counteract these generalizations!).


What is the best material for a cooking spoon? We use standard wooden spoons, but they soon pick up stains from the various dishes. What are the pros and cons of the various woods, e.g. olive, Cilio Toscana Olivewood, beechwood, maple, bamboo, etc? Is there a 'best', or is it just a matter of style or personal preference?

Personally, I've switched almost entirely to heat resistant silicone for all types of stirring and scraping spoons. They don't stain, they are fine up to quite high temperatures, they clean up easily and can go in the dishwasher. They are also won't scratch the surface of non-stick cookware.

It is true that they don't feel quite so nice as a good wooden spoon, but the convenience is outstanding. (On the other hand, I stick with metal for the type of spatula one uses to flip a fritter, because silicone can't have a thin enough leading edge, it is too flexible.)


Name for a master "cook plan" that describes how you prepare and serve all courses of a meal I'm writing some software and could use some help (from some experts!) naming something. In cooking, culinary arts, etc. I have to imagine that there exists a concept where you, the chef, have a master "cook plan" for how you will execute a particular course, meal, set of servings, etc.

Meaning, you know what you want to cook for a particular meal: you know the ingredients, the recipes for each component of the meal, the timing of when you need to start prepping, cooking and plating each component, etc. A master plan. A "cook plan" for the entire theatre of operations so to speak.

This cannot simply just be a "recipe", as to me, a "recipe" is a sub-component of this plan as it takes ingredients in as input, processes those ingredients and produces (as output) just one component of a meal.

I'm talking one step above an individual recipe: a plan that covers everything you will do to produce all the courses of a large meal.

Is there a word for this in the culinary world?

Recipes or formulas lead to a prep plan or a daily prep system in a restaurant or commercial kitchen.  This plan is used to delegate work, ensure ingredients for individual recipes and dishes are prepared in an efficient manner, and to minimize waste.


Air bubble on surface of chocolate How can I get rid of the air bubbles in the melted chocolate after I have blended with a mixer? I knocked the tray on the table so hard and the air bubble began to surface but it doesn't pop out. Any suggestion to this problem?

I'm making a ganache and have been told to use mixer for a smoother ganache. Other than vibrating the tray, any method I should try? If it's impossible then i will just need to enrobed/powder it instead of making a fudge ganache which were supposed to be served chilled.

If you're trying to salvage it, I think about all you can do is heat it until it's well melted and let it settle, stirring gently now and then. Hopefully the air bubbles will eventually all come out. I suspect it won't be perfect, and may take a while.

And in the future, just don't use a mixer. Everything should melt and meld just fine with gentle heat and stirring.


steam vs. bake a sugar pumpkin Which is the best way to cook a sugar pumpkin for pumpkin puree?  I've read that you can either steam or bake it, but which way yields the best taste and texture for a pie or other pumpkin treats?

The best method, for flavor development and low labor, is probably to simply roast the pumpkin.

Derobert has written a blog entry describing this in great detail.  With pictures!

Cut the pumpkin in half, scoop out the seeds and guts, and then roast (cut side down) on an oiled sheet pan at about 425 F for about an hour (optionally turning face up to brown slightly at the end).  Let cool enough to handle, then scoop out the flesh and puree in a food processor.  Derobert then recommends a second roast, spread out in a sheet pan at 350 F to reduce the water content--it is done when it darkens slightly or shows cracks.


Is it advisable to sous vide in "steam fresh" bags? Is it advisable to sous vide in steam fresh bags, the type where one cooks the veggies in the microwave for 4 minutes?

No, those bags are not completely sealed. They are designed to let steam escape, therefore they are not watertight, if you put them in your sous vide machine they'd get waterlogged.


Is there a drink that's analogous to coffee but made with cocoa beans? Is there a drink out there that is made identically to coffee except with cocoa beans?

I would be interested in finding either a drink with the exact roasting process or a drink brewed with ground cocoa beans. I've heard of something called "choffee" - how does that fit in?

You certainly could brew a drink from pure cocoa powder. It'll be pretty bitter, though; if you don't like unsweetened chocolate you might not like it much, though. So you'll most likely end up adding dairy and sugar, and ending up with hot cocoa.

It won't ever be exactly the same process though. In both cases there's a lot of processing of the beans, and the details differ. But most importantly, while with coffee you can buy and use whole beans, you wouldn't do that with cacao. Cacao beans contain a large amount of fat, so if you want cocoa powder, part of the processing is separating out cocoa solids (which can become cocoa powder) and cocoa butter. If you don't separate them, you end up with a thick paste called chocolate liquor. So you're never going to see whole roasted cacao beans.

But if you're willing to set aside all those differences, I suppose hot cocoa is analogous to coffee, if that means anything.


How to dispense thick, intense hot sauce without getting residue on the bottle? I have a bottle of Dave's Insanity Sauce. I enjoy putting it on my food in small quantities and have no trouble handling the heat... in my mouth. The problem is that the outside of the bottle seems to have some capsaicin residue on it. Even when I wash my hands after handling it, I later experience pain if I touch my eyes or my nose or, um, other body parts.

I suspect the problem is that it's a thick, viscous sauce and I'm not able to dispense just a drop or two without getting some on the lip of the bottle (where the threads for the cap are), and from there it seems to spread. Is there a good way to 1) dispense sauces like this cleanly, or 2) make the bottle less hazardous?

Washing the bottle with dish detergent may have helped temporarily, but it would be great to not have to do this every time I use the sauce.

Unless you want to go through the faff I do every time I use gravy browning (notorious lid-glue!) - wipe the top of the bottle; rinse the lid under the tap; seal top of bottle with thumb & rinse screw-thread - then why not just thin it down a bit so it's less sticky?

Water or vinegar ought to do it, assuming you at least use boiled water.


When is the best time to use my sourdough starter? When I feed my sourdough starter and leave it out to make bread, it reaches max size in about 6 or 7 hours, then it begins to fall back.  Is this the point at which I should make bread in order to get the maximum rise from my starter?

From my experience, using the starter when it is at it's peak activity will help your dough rise faster but not necessarily higher.  There are a lot of factors that contribute to how much dough expands when baked including, but by no means limited to: loaf shape, docking pattern, oven temperature, and oven humidity.

Be aware that there can also be a point at which dough has risen too much and the structure and texture suffers.


Can I use unpasteurized store bought miso to make more miso? I have some leftover chickpeas and red beans that I was thinking of making into a miso paste, but I don't have any koji and don't want to go searching multiple stores in the middle of a pandemic. Can I use store bought miso as the starter for making more miso? It says unpasteurized so I imagine that it is just dormant and can become active again. Has anyone done this before?

Maintaining a Koji culture is considered difficult, even commercial operations rarely do this. Meredith Leigh talks about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X-96_FFLyI&t=11m35s
I think I may have read somewhere that the new Koji Alchemy book has good info on culture maintenance.
Most of my books on Koji don't even mention culture maintenance, although The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz does. It seems to be important to make sure there are plenty of nutrients. In Japan they add ash for this.

"When rice has cooled to body temperature, before inoculating, mix in sifted hardwood ashes, about 1.5 percent by weight of the quantity of dry rice you cooked. The ash provides potassium, magnesium, and other trace elements that promote healthy mold growth and sporulation."

Don't use white rice and do cook your substrate until it's quite soft.

Good luck!


Are there any techniques to "cheat" at cooking a risotto? Cooking a risotto takes a fair amount of attention and work, adding stock a ladle at a time with almost constant stirring. The chemical process behind this makes sense to me. Are there any ways to short cut this process though? I'd like to be able to make a risotto with a little less attention. I'm wondering if some hybrid technique of early attention and later just adding liquid and letting it boil (or maybe the reverse) might provide a similar result with less work.

Actually I've found that constant stirring has little to no affect on the final product. You can simply stir rigorously at the last minute and achieve similar results. Don't believe me? Try it for yourself and you'll see.

Another trick is pre-cooking your rice. Just follow a standard risotto recipe but stop cooking the rice about half way through the process (about 10 minutes in or just before aldente). Strain the stock from the rice and pour it out onto a baking sheet to cool quickly. You can refrigerate it for up to a day. To finish it, just pick up where you left off and - presto - you've just cut out half the cooking time.

Cheers!


When should one knead dough in a food processor vs. a stand mixer? Every now and then I come across a bread recipe that calls for a food processor to mix and knead the dough. I know it's very quick, but is it actually the right tool for the job? This recipe calls for a food processor, and every time I make it I'm worried I'm going to destroy the machine: the thing shakes and wobbles alarmingly, so that I have to hold it steady the entire time, and I'm always worried about burning out the motor. And this is a sturdy, 14 C (3.3 L) Cuisinart machine.
So: is it actually preferable to knead dough in a food processor? It just doesn't seem like it's built for that job.
(I'm assuming here that there's an answer beyond "individual preference," but maybe I'm wrong.)

It's not preferable to use a food processor over a mixer with a hook, it's just a bit faster - food processors spin very rapidly and put a lot of energy into the dough quickly. A dough hook does the same thing, it just takes more time. A lot of it is personal preference, in my case I don't like either and prefer to knead by hand as I enjoy the process, if I am going to use a machine it's going to be my mixer with a hook as I can see the dough develop. With a food processor I'm constantly concerned it will self-destruct and take me with it in an explosion of polycarbonate shards, plus it turn dough rubbery very quickly if you leave it on too long.
So, use your hands, mixer or food processor, they will all get you there in the end.


Digital meat thermometer that does not cause juice losses Sometimes when I'm trying a new cooking method that uses different cooking temperatures compared to what I use normally, I find it difficult to estimate when my roast/meat is done.

Digital meat thermometers that make a noise when the internal temperature reaches a certain value are therefore attractive to me. However, when I have used meat thermometers (I have not used one of those digital thermometers where you leave the probe inside the meat during cooking) and penetrate the meat with the probe, juices start to leak out when I then remove the probe and the meat will start to dry out.

How do you usually deal with this? How do you use meat thermometers and prevent juice losses?

Another note:
Is there an information sheet somewhere that tells you, approximately, how long you have to cook different kinds of meat products on a lbs basis to meet target internal temperatures or meat texture (e.g. rare, medium, well done, etc.)?

While I heartily recommend a remote probe thermometer that you can leave in your meat and have a readout outside of the oven, it is only for convenience. Piercing the meat with a thermometer (or fork, etc) isn't going to cause any significant loss of juice. You may rupture a couple of cells right where the thermometer went in, but that's it. Your meat isn't just a water-balloon of juices waiting to be popped, so you needn't worry.

Myth: Never use a fork to turn meat

Is it ok to probe my meat?


Are spores an issue in sauteed pepper storage when you add garlic? Typical food-storage for leftover sauteed or roasted peppers in oil, non-canned, seem to vary from one to two weeks when referencing online sources. However, if I make Hungarian peppers in oil with garlic, sauteeing until lightly browned, then left in the oven with a lid to soften, will the storage lifetime reflect standard peppers in oil, or will the issue of botulism spores shorten the timing due to inclusion of fresh garlic? In particular, once the leftover food is refrigerated, on what factors should I calculate storage lifetime?

Does cooking until the peppers brown lightly, then braising help eliminate the issue of botulism carried by the garlic?
Does the pH of the peppers carry enough weight to consider the result acidulated? (If so, how would I compare the acidity of a given pepper as it contributes to the pH of the final product?)
What is a reasonable storage lifetime?
Are there any finishing steps I could take to better preserve the peppers in oil when not made in the context of a canning/pressure-cooking operation?

It seems that temperatures in excess of 250°F for an extended period of time will destroy a significant percentage of the botulism spores but I cannot find a definitive, science based answer on botulism spore death.
Acidifying garlic can take three days to one week when stored in vinegar, so I would assume the pH will not carry enough weight.
As long as it's in the refrigerator, you've got a few days, at least.
How much are you making at one time? You can freeze garlic in oil and keep it for months that way. Googling suggests that freezing peppers in oil is a common technique, too, so you should be able to store the entire thing in the freezer for months. You could make a large batch and freeze them in ready-to-use portions and be confident that your food is safe.


Logic behind a good minestrone I’m aware that something as rigid as a minestrone recipe is already a contradiction, since the ingredients and exact steps vary widely according to season, household, and simply taste. Nevertheless, I do have a loose recipe that can be adapted to use different ingredients, and attempts to encapsulate what most classic minestrone recipes have in common. Given the lack of explicit guidance, however, it’s important for me to understand how and why each step is taken. Here’s a sample recipe outline that I might use in the summer:

Sauté onions, carrots, celery, and leek in olive oil until translucent / softened. (Aka: Sofrito + leek)
Briefly cook some tomato paste and a couple cloves of minced garlic.
Add dry herbs (basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme), a bay leaf, chili flakes, canned tomatoes, vegetable stock, and seasoning. Let it simmer for a few minutes.
Add zucchini first (longer cooking vegetables), then some baby spinach leaves (shorter cooking vegetables). Simmer for anywhere between 45 min to 2 hrs. Refrigerate, if needed.
A few minutes before serving, warm up an appropriate amount of soup on the stovetop and add pasta, cooked cannellini beans, fresh herbs (I use basil), and seasoning. Simmer until pasta is ready.
Top with parmesan.

Questions:

Can the beans be added in the beginning along with the stock? Aren’t they supposed to thicken the soup that way? What would happen over time as a result?
Cannellini beans can sometimes be hard to find. They’re more expensive too. Can I substitute them with white beans? What effect would such a substitution have?
I’ve heard of people using parsley as a fresh herb, but I don’t know if it would compete with or complement the basil.
I used to add cabbage, but for some reason, I didn’t like how it tasted. Now, the recipe seems sparse. Is there any other summer vegetable that would go well with this (namely, leeks, zucchini and spinach)?
Is there any point in sautéing the longer cooking vegetables (leeks and zucchini) along with the sofrito?
What else could be done to improve the recipe?

Thanks for the help!

Minestrone is a soup made with whatever you have on hand; there is no set recipe even if the base of the soup is more or less the same everywhere.

If you put beans early, they will break and make the soup "mushy".
You can substitute with other kind of beans,
Parsley can be added early (especially the stems) and removed later on; imo, it does not taste good; add basil as the very end (or at serving time).
Don't know, you can use whatever you want and whatever you have on hand.
Sauteeing vegetables, and adding "color" to them will improve some of the flavor and increase some of the sweetness of the vegetbles.
Impossible to answer that one


My mechanical meat thermometer is taking an average of the meat and air temperature I have two "good cook" brand mechanical instant read meat thermometers.  I use my small oven broiler to cook steak to medium rare.  However, after cooking for a while, taking the meat out and measuring it with both thermometers, the temperature never reaches above 120.  In the end, the meat is quite dry and obviously ruined.

I did a test with a boiling cup of water.  If I only dip the probe tip into the water, the thermometer doesn't read 100 C but rather something much lower (consistent reading on both thermometers).  If I immerse the entire probe in the boiling water, it would read close to 100C.

I suspect that these probes actually average the temperature over the entire length of the probe.  But this would mean that I cannot really rely on these thermometers to diagnose welldone-ness.  Had anyone else ran into this issue?

I suppose I could re-calibrate the temperature reading at which my steak is considered rare, most likely a reading of around 100 F on these thermos.

You are right that mechanical probes sense temperature along the length of the probe, so they are only accurate if they are almost completely embedded in the food. Electric probes on the other hand have a thermocouple at the tip of the probe, so they are much more accurate. I suggest you get a digital probe instead.


Which alternative fats, not butter or avocado, are good to make chocolate frosting This (Allrecipes Chocolate Avocado Pudding) is a great recipe for Chocolate Avocado pudding, which I use as a frosting for cakes. So, sticking away from normal basics for frostings such as butter, what could I substitute for the avocado in this recipe?

  Ingredients

  2 large avocados - peeled, pitted, and cubed
  1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  1/2 cup brown sugar

  1/3 cup coconut milk
  2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  1 pinch ground cinnamon

  Directions

  Blend avocados, cocoa powder, brown sugar, coconut milk, vanilla extract, and cinnamon in a blender until smooth. Refrigerate pudding until chilled, about 30 minutes.

Pretty much any solid fat will work here. Since you're replacing something that's not just fat, you might prefer to whip the fat to lighten it up a bit, no matter which you choose.

Since your recipe already has coconut milk, coconut oil seems like a really obvious choice - it's common in recipes like this, especially vegan/paleo ones that want to avoid butter. Beyond that, you've excluded butter/margarine, but that still leaves shortening and palm oil. Shortening is one of the standard ways to make frosting (so maybe that means you're not interested?), but palm oil is pretty common too. (Some people may not like palm oil flavor-wise, though.)

There's also cream cheese, which again adds some flavor, but people like it in frostings, and you can find plenty of actual recipes using it, rather than trying to substitute in this one.

Cocoa butter, as Fabby suggested, is also an option, though along with having to add oil to get it soft enough, it's also pretty expensive. It's also maybe not worth it: you'll be adding cocoa powder and sugar to it, so why not just use actual chocolate? You can always use a combination of regular and white chocolate, if you don't want too much chocolate, and again you can find plenty of recipes for this kind of thing. But if you do want to try cocoa butter despite that, note that you'll want to try to test it at a reasonable temperature: just barely melt it so that you can add oil and mix well, then take a bit and cool it to see if it's soft but solid at room temperature. Borrowing a trick from jam-making, putting a small amount on a cold plate is an easy way to test.

The other main common solid fats are animal fats - lard, (beef) tallow, and so on. They'd work too, if you liked the flavor.

I could see peanut butter (or other nut butter) also working, if you like the flavor. For the firm, processed kind, you could probably use it directly, but for the softer kinds, you might have to combine with a more solid fat to keep your frosting from getting too runny.

Also, since your recipe already has coconut milk, increasing or decreasing the amount is another good way to adjust the texture, just as with basic frosting recipes you often add milk until it's right.

In that same vein, you could probably use pureed/mashed fruit to adjust, and even provide a little bulk if your fat is firm enough. Banana might be an obvious choice, since it mashes smoothly and easily.

Finally, if you really want to avoid "normal" solid fats, you might want to look away from normal fat-based frosting and toward things like bavarian cream, thickened with gelatin instead of just fat. That's more of a different recipe than a substitution, though.


How do you know when mussels are done? I bought 1/2 pound of mussels and cooked them in a cast iron skillet with a little white wine and some shrimp stock on boiling heat.

Almost all of them opened after about 15 minutes, some did not. The ones that opened were done perfectly, and those were the ones I served.

Still, in the future - should I just throw away the rest, or would a few more minutes in the skillet be in order?

You should throw them out. Mussels that don't open were quite possibly dead and decomposing for an unknown period of time prior to cooking. You don't want to take a chance here.

Just in case future readers don't know, mussels, clams, and other in-shell shellfish are still alive when you buy them, and they should be still alive when you cook them.


T function in OTG oven What does T stand for in OTG oven? If it is for Toasting then can an OTG oven be used in place of a toaster to toast a bread or it serves some different functionality in OTG oven?

OTG means Oven Toaster Grill

Such ovens have a top and bottom electric heating element. The top element serves broil and to toast. Depending on size you might be able to toast on both sides at once with only the wire grate.


Marinara sauce with too much oregano and tomato paste What could be used to de-oreganate a sauce with too much oregano and tomato paste? I used a store bought sauce to increase the volume of the sauce that I had started with onions, garlic, home grown tomatoes, sugar, wine.

I think your best bet will be to simply increase the volume of the sauce by adding more whole tomatoes... for ease a can of tomatoes of some sort, either whole (peeled), diced, or crushed; or if you prefer, use fresh tomatoes, which will require some more work. Either way, you may want to strain out the seeds if you don't like them.

You may have to increase some of the other flavors, too, but I think the only way you'll balance the oregano/tomato paste flavors is to simply make more of the sauce. You can always freeze it if you don't think you'll be able to use it all.

How much you need will really depend on how much sauce you already have. If it's a single jar of prepared sauce, you'll probably be fine with a small amount like a 14.5 oz can or if you have more, you may need to go with two of them.


How should I prepare meat to be ground? I am having trouble at the moment with my new mincer because bits of connective tissue keep getting caught in the works and clogging it up, stopping the mince coming out. However I'm not quite sure how to prevent it. I try to take obvious bits off, but a lot of it is in very thin sheets which are challenging to remove, especially when the meat is cubed.

My husband and I regularly grind our own meat. What we do is trim the meat before cubing. If any connective tissue / silver-skin is on the outside of the meat or running through the meat we are getting it off of a larger piece of meat, which is much easier because you can get a better hold on it.

We also use a filet knife for trimming the tough tissue. It allows you to trim much closer and with much more control, minimizing any waste.

And last but not least, chilling the meat helps also. While you don't want it frozen, firm is easier to handle.


How does halving a bread recipe impact rising time? I'd like to try an English Muffin Bread recipe, which makes two loaves, but I only have one pan. I assume that I can simply cut the ingredients in half, but the one thing I'm unsure of is rising time. The instructions read:

  Grease two 8½ by 4½-inch loaf pans and dust with cornmeal. Combine
  flour, yeast, sugar, salt, and baking soda in large bowl. Stir in hot
  milk until combined, about 1 minute. Cover dough with greased plastic
  wrap and let rise in warm place for 30 minutes, or until dough is
  bubbly and has doubled.

If I cut the recipe in half, do I need to modify the 30m rising time?

Thanks!

What to do

A dough should be generally risen by size anyway, not by time. But it is also very forgiving, so it will probably still give you decent edible bread if you do it by time.

The best way is to wait until it has doubled, no matter what the clock shows. But you insist on going by the clock, don't change the time, wait the 30 minutes. It may be underproofed (with such a short time given by the recipe, there is virtually no chance of overproofing it), but the same would have happened if you were using the original amounts and going by the clock.

Dough proofing and time

The rising time for dough at room temperature is not affected by recipe scaling, the time it takes a specific dough to double will be the same regardless of the size of your batch. If the temperature in your proofing container is significantly different from the dough temperature, you will see some effect on rising times with different batch sizes and dough shapes, as the center of the dough will need some time to get to the same temperature as the proofing container, and warmer dough rises quicker than cold dough. This is unlikely to have a measurable effect at dough amounts used by home bakers, especially considering that the possible proofing temperature window is rather narrow.


How do you steam vegetables? Assuming you don't have a "vegetable steamer" that you received as a wedding gift, how do you steam vegetables?

If you  have a metal strainer then I

Fill a large pot with water. Just enough so it almost comes up to the bottom of the strainer when you place it on top.
Insert the strainer so it is balanced above the water.
Fill strainer with vegetables and cover with a lid
Boil
Take off when the vegetables are steamed to your specifications
Enjoy


How do I clean a moldy rice cooker heating element? There's a pretty large patch of white and green mold on the heating element of my rice cooker, near the magnet. Is there a way to remove it? It's grown to the point of bumpy.

It seems that my brother forgot to properly clean the underside of the inner pot this whole time

I would start with a moist rag with just dish washing soap. Then a moist rag with bleach.  Then let it air dry for a day.


Can you rehydrate phyllo dough? I like eating food with phyllo dough and I like preparing such food. However, phyllo dough is not easily available where I live. The only packages I can find are rather large. I usually use how much I need, then cover it as best as I can and store it air-tight in the freezer for later use. If I thaw and refreeze and rethaw some sheets, they tend to get dry.

Even just working with non-frozen phyllo dough, can make your sheets dry out if you don't work quickly an/or with a wet towel.

I was wondering if you could do anything to reverse this process. Is there a way to rehydrate phyllo sheets?

I think rehydrating evenly is going to be very dicey. Instead, when you first open a large pack, immediately separate it into smaller batches, wrapping each tightly in wax paper and then a zip-loc removing as much air as possible, and re-freezing those smaller packs. Now you won't have to thaw and refreeze any sheets more than once - just grab the number of smaller packs you need. This should keep them in better condition.


Re-use rice for multiple batches of horchata? After a making a batch of horchata, I always feel wasteful throwing away all of the uncooked rice.  Can it be re-used for another batch, or has it given up its good flavors?  If not, are there any other uses for it?

I just made horchata for the first time. It turned out great! The leftover ball of rice/almond goo looked perfect for a baked treat. I added a bit of flour, an egg and some baking powder and mixed it all together. I thought I was making cookies, but the texture was more like a bread dough. So, I buttered a baking sheet and spread the dough out. Turned out great! (I baked it at 325 for fifteen minutes). Now I think I'll spread something over the top and roll it up, or perhaps just cut it like a cookie bar. Anyway, it tastes great and the texture is so yummy!


Non-uniformly shaped cake methods I was wondering about the methods used to produce non-uniformly (i.e., not a box or cylinder) shaped cakes. Let's say, I want a t-rex shaped cake (I went to engineering school long enough to know how to compute the balance as long as the batter is even, so I don't think design is the issue here)

I was wondering if using a mold would help. Maybe I can make a mold for a shaped cake, but how much of the cake would have to be exposed to air in the oven?

A lot of those nicely shaped cakes are made from a rectangular or round cake. You just cut the required sizes and shapes so you end up with something T-rex looking. You put a bit of frosting between each pair of pieces, so that they stick together and the cake does not fall apart. Usually the whole thing is covered with fondant, so you cannot see the separate pieces.

This is a youtube example using this method for a dinosaur cake.

Using a mold is also a possibility, but very likely that you'd end up with pieces of cake that are over- or undercooked, because you have smaller and larger parts in your dinosaur. You should also be very confident that the cake would slide easily out of the mold, because an odd shape is more fragile than a rectangle or a circle.


What is the theory of a meat marinade? The most common types of recipes I see for meat marinades are to combine 1/4 to 1/2 cup of vinegar with salt and spices. Then put this in a bag with the pork tenderloin (or whatever the meat is) for a day or two. Then the meat is rotisserie grilled or steam cooked.

However, a different style seems to be to mix the spices with oil and just baste the meat with the infused oil. Can that really be considered a marinade?

Both of these methods seem to conflict with the traditional idea of a marinade, which according to my education is 3 parts vinegar, to 1 part oil.

As far as the seasoning is concerned, the most common pattern seems to be garlic, pepper and parsley. However, some traditional marinades also include vegetables. Is the choice of spices completely open ended or are there known combinations that go well with pork?

First, there are two terms for 'soaking a piece of meat in liquid' and they are often used interchangeably and/or in error:

Marinate: A surface treatment of meat in which the meat becomes coated with a flavorful liquid called a marinade (the sauce is the 'marinade', the soaking is 'to marinate', though marinade is often used as the verb).
Brine: A deep penetrating treatment of meat in which meat is submerged in a saline (salt) solution
(related topics would include rubs and glazes)

Chemically these are two very different actions but colloquially they are often confused. The maximum effect of a marinade can be achieved in a matter of hours and is strictly a 'surface treatment'. A brine is always salt based and takes anywhere from hours to days to reach maximum effect. The first description you provide is actually for a brine, as evidenced by the salt content and duration of the soak. The 'different style' you present is an actual marinade. For a more in depth discussion of this see:

The Secrets And Myths Of Marinades, Brinerades, And How Gashing Can Make Them Work Better

Recipes for either are varied and wide ranging, and I will reemphasize, commonly mislabeled (I'm not trying to be a grammar nazi here, but any discussion of the 'theory' requires a proper distinction)

As for that 'theory'...there are many opinions on this subject and I'll try to remain agnostic for this answer. Marinades usually breakdown into three components: fat, acid, and spice/seasoning the exact ratio is the subject of great debate but a good starting point is 3:1 fat-to-acid and season 'to taste'. Your fats can be one or more (melted butter and olive oil is a personal fave) as can the acids vinegar, buttermilk, citrus juice, beer, wine... (for marinades alcohol serves as an acid). Beyond that season as you please. Chili powder, red pepper, paprika to get a 'spicy' marinade. Rosemary, dill, garlic, provide rich flavors. So too sugars(white/brown/honey/molasses) will add depth to the flavors and will caramelize and enhance the maillard effect.

As for pork, in particular, using apple juice (or hard cider) as the acid is nice start, honey (or other sweets) are a good compliment. I personally like clove as a spice for pork tenderloin.

From here, let your imagination and your palate be your guide. Here are a few useful links to look a little deeper if you please:

Anatomy of a Marinade
How to make any Marinade
A Complete Guide to Marinates Meat

Beyond this...Google is your friend.


Can you pickle avocados? I wanted to see if anyone has tried to pickle avocados?

Mostly I am interested to use only vinegar, and/or salt.

I've never heard of it being done and I can't imagine why you'd want to try. An avocado is 70-80% water and 15% fat. That means you would basically be making pickled fat.

Compare to cucumbers and peppers which are both in the range of 0.1 to 0.2% fat, and much firmer than even an unripe avocado when raw.

I'm sure that it would be safe as long as it's done properly and the pH is under 4.6, and the acidity would kill or slow down the enzymes enough to prevent it from turning black. But I don't think it would be edible, even if you added oil to the mix. We are biologically hardwired to perceive sour fat as being rancid, and unlike certain pickled meats, there's no umami in there to compete with that sensation.

If you feel you must try this, at least start with an unripe avocado and see what it's like after a few days. A ripe avocado would almost certainly disintegrate in a pickling brine.


Can I substitute a stainless steel pot for the traditional iron dutch oven? I have very limited options in my kitchen, and while the dutch oven is the preferred method for getting an 'oven spring' while baking sourdough, I do not have a cast iron pot to do it.

IF stainless steel is a good substitute, should I consider extra precautions?

Cast iron is ideal, but any pot that can take the heat and has a tight lid will work. Like @talon8 said in his comment, it doesn't even have to be metal.

This article from Around the World in 80 Bakes specifically uses terracotta for sourdough, not cast iron.

Just as an FYI, this related question deals with preheating (for no-knead bread, not sourdough), and the differing answers are interesting. To me it just goes to show that bread-making doesn't always have to follow super-strict rules. Preheat the Dutch oven (and the oven itself) for No-Knead Bread? (experiment results)


Is it safe to "salt bake" using ice cream rock salt? Salt baking requires a lot of salt. I want to use ice cream rock salt for salt baking because it normally comes in bulk size. But I've been told that the rock salt used for ice cream is not fit for consumption. However, is it safe to use it to salt bake other foods? I.e. Shrimp. The salt isn't being consumed on the shrimp, so I'm curious whether this is safe or not.

There are some kinds of rock salt that are meant for consumption ("food-grade"), and recipes like that salt-baked shrimp intend you to use that sort. While you're not directly eating the salt, it does come into contact with the shrimp, and there's water there to spread things around, so really, you are eating a bit of it. Even if there's not a safety issue (some things could conceivably be toxic) it might well taste bad, and some of the flavor does get into your food. You wouldn't be able to count on this being reliably the same from box to box, either; if it's not food grade, there could be plenty of variety in what the extra minerals are. Sometimes it might be fine, and sometimes it might taste awful.

It can be hard to find food-grade rock salt, though, so if that's an issue, you might consider switching to other salt-crusted recipes that use kosher salt. Especially with shrimp, this should be manageable, because it'll be on the outside of the shells, so though the salt will dissolve more easily, once you peel them it shouldn't be horribly salty.


Chips/Fries Bake Identification Not sure if this belongs here but I've a family recipe that is effectively a pasta bake but instead of pasta you use skinny chips (UK) / french fries (USA).

It came from an Aunt who lived in Canada who came home to the UK. The recipe is as follows:

Chips/Fries,
Onion (fried),
Condensed chicken soup,
Peas,
Sweetcorn,
Cheese,
Cheese and Onion crisps (Chips in the US to add to the confusion),

Basically you mix it all together, add cheese as a topping then the crisps/chips on top and throw it in the oven for 45mins at 170 celcius.

It has been bugging me forever if this is an established recipe, it's great comfort food but I've not been able to find anything online about a "chip/fries oven bake".

This looks like a variation of a tater tot casserole, of which there are many variations.


Letting Chicken thaw in fridge? So here's the scenario: Bought chicken and put immediately in the freezer like 3-4 weeks ago.

I pulled the chicken out yesterday afternoon and put it in the fridge to let it thaw to let it cook for dinner. Ended up not using it so I put it back in the freezer this morning.

Is this safe to do? The chicken was still somewhat frozen-ish when I put it back in the freezer, although the Chickens expired date was 10 days ago, but it has been in the freezer since.

Yes, you can defrost and refreeze as long as the total time in the "danger zone" of 40-140 F / 4 - 60 C does not exceed 2 hours. This may not be great from a quality point of view, but it is safe.


Why do store-bought dips have such a limited shelf life? Why do store-bought dips (guacamole, sour cream and chive, salsa...) typically say "Keep refrigerated and consume within 24 [or 48] hours of opening"?

Before opening they typically have a "use by" date of a few days to a week away from when I buy them.

Is it related to the stuff that ends up being transferred into the dip by the nachos / crudites / whatever is being dipped? In other words, if I transferred part of the dip out into a separate container using a clean spoon, would I get a longer life (more than 24 / 48 hours) out of the remaining pot of dip?

Examples:
24 hours: Guacamole
48 hours: Salsa, Sour cream dip, Cheese and chive dip

I would assume that it's for safety reasons.
Not yours only, but the manufacturers' as well.

At the plant the manufacturer can control the environment and make sure that the product leaves in a condition that should last for a certain time under specific conditions ( e.g. when refrigerated). Subtract a bit for safety and you have the manufacturers best-before-date.

Once the consumer opens the sealed package, all bets are off:
There is no way to know what may be introduced into the product. This may be as simple as getting oxygen to food that was sealed with packaging gas, introducing new (and ever-present) bacteria, yeasts or mold spores in a previously pasteurized pack or simply scooping with a not entirely clean spoon. Leaving bread crumbs or double-dipping is simply a very extreme example. In other words, one never knows what might start to grow after opening.

But if the product is refrigerated promtly and consumed within X hours, it may be assumed that even if something risky was introduced, the time/temperature is too short for it to multiply into a critical amount leading to foodbourne illness.

If you work very cleanly, I assume that you could extend this time frame quite a bit, but obviously won't tell you to do so - lest you or some other reader comes back complaining that I told you to and made you sick.


Is there anything wrong with soft shrimp? Once in a while when I'm thawing and prepping frozen shrimp, I'll come across one that's quite a bit softer than the others. The flesh is a bit floppy and not firm like the others, and even the shell seems thinner and flexible. Other things like size, color, and smell are all fine. Is there anything wrong with these shrimp? Maybe they were sick or malnourished in life? They seem to be fine after cooking, indistinguishable from the rest.

If the shell is thinner that could indicate that the shrimp is younger, which would also explain the softer meat.


How do they get caffeine out in decaffeinated coffee? Coffee beans naturally contain caffeine. At the store or in a restaurant, you can choose "decaffeinated coffee".

Is really all the caffeine gone or is there just a smaller amount?
How do they remove the caffeine from the beans?

The most commonly used method is the Swiss Water Process:

A batch of unroasted beans is soaked in hot water.  Caffeine is water soluble, so it's extracted from the beans.  However, some of the other substances that give coffee its flavour ("coffee solids") are also water-soluble and are also extracted.
The first batch of beans is discarded and the caffeine is filtered out of the water/caffeine/coffee solids mixture by a carbon filter.
Another batch of unroasted beans is added to the hot water/coffee solids mixture.  The water is already saturated with coffee solids, so only the caffeine is extracted from this batch of beans.
The now-decaffeinated beans are removed, the water/caffeine/coffee solids mixture is filtered again to remove the caffeine and the process can be repeated with another batch of beans or the same batch to remove even more caffeine.

There's no universal definition of "Decaf," but it generally means beans that have had at least 97% of the caffeine (by weight) removed.


I'm pretty sure these aren't scones, but what are they? We've made a type of deep fried bread in my family for years, which we've called "scones". I'm fairly certain these aren't actually scones, and have no idea what their name would properly be.

The recipe is very free-form, and uses whatever bread dough happens to be on hand. The last time I made it I used bread-machine pizza dough, previous times I've used dough from sourdough bread, no-kneed artisan  bread, and baguettes.

The dough is pulled into thin disks, whose shape and thickness are generally close to, but not quite, uniform.

The dough is then deep fried, cooled on a rack over paper towels for the oil, and is ready to be eaten.

The end result looks like this:

The valleys are generally filled with jam, butter, honey, or honey butter.

So my question is: does this have a name?

This is a staple of Balkan cuisine. You will see it named Lángos (and derivatives) in Hungary and Mekitza (and derivatives) in Slavic languages. Either of these words is used in Western Europe, depending on which group popularized it there.

I am not sure this wording has spread outside of Europe, and cannot say if it was imported in the USA or developed there independently, but it is certainly the same end result.


How can I make caramel that will hold its shape, without using refined sugar? I am making my own ice cream pops. One flavor I'm developing is Peach Cobbler. I've been trying to include some caramel in the bars, yet I can't seem to make a type caramel using coconut sugar, that will harden enough to stay in "pop form."

My results are delicious so far, but the caramel in the pops doesn't harden enough and the pops fall apart where it is.

How can I make a "freezable caramel" that doesn't involve refined (white) sugars?

you could try the vegan raw version of "caramel". It is date caramel. It is done by processing fresher soft medjool dates into a vitamix blender(works best really),pinch of salt, coconut butter and water to slightly thin out. The outcome will look very similar to caramel. Using a vitamix will result in a smoother creamy texture. This should freeze well too. Best of luck


Frozen pizza kept at room temp (23 C) for 48 hours - safe to use? I bought a salami pizza and a Hawaii pizza (ham & pineapple) the night before yesterday, but forgot to put them in the freezer.

This is the latter, soggy part removed:

Normally they should cook for 16 minutes, but they are completely thawed. Will cooking them at 190 degrees Celsius for 11 minutes make them safe to eat?

Opinions are divided, with 66% in favor of cooking, but i'd like some expert advice.

Any perishable food (in this case I would be concerned about the ham more than anything) left at room temperature for more than 2 hours should be considered unsafe, even after cooking. Considering we're talking about a frozen pizza and not a full beef fillet, why take the risk? If it's been in the fridge, however, you may be ok.


Does freezing butter or margarine change the properties? I have a lot of butter & margarine and looking for ways to keep it for longer time.

Will freezing them change melting point, flavor, or anything that could be undesirable when cooking?

Update:
We are now freezing our butter and margarine. It is a perfect solution!

Butter and margarine freeze perfectly.  I generally stock up during sales and thaw it as needed. You just have to make sure it's wrapped tightly in the foil, to prevent oxidation.  It'll keep at least 6 months, probably more if you don't have a self-defrosting freezer.

Thawing butter does take quite a while, however.  I usually give a package a few days to thaw fully. If you need butter in a hurry, you can always put it in a Ziploc bag and fast thaw it a bowl under running running water.  Or, just soften it in the microwave.


What's the best way to store rice long-term? I have purchased a rather large bag of long-grain white rice (25 lbs.) and need to know the best way for storing it long-term. This rice will be used as both a food-storage food source and as my everyday source of rice for cooking, so the storage solution should (hopefully) be resealable, rather than once-it's-open-it's-open. I eat rice maybe three times a month, so it isn't really "everyday" but it will be my go-to when I have it.

If you are only using it three times a month then this 25lbs bag may last a very long time indeed.

The problem is that even white rice can eventually develop off flavors when exposed to light and air. Additionally- even if pests don't have access to the rice, it is not unlikely that the rice has some eggs on it that can hatch and spoil the whole bag.

The solutions to these problems all make it difficult to use the rice in the short term. For long-term food storage dry foods are typically sealed in either #10 cans or mylar bags. An oxygen absorbing packet is also included. This will prevent spoilage and pest growth. Mylar bags are less expensive and you can open one bag at a time for short term use.

Alternatively- if you can freeze the rice to ensure there are no pests then the rice can be stored, sealed, in a cool, dry place as others have described.

Given how cheap rice is- it might be acceptable to you to just take your chances and replace it if it spoils after some months.


How can I prevent pear juice from soaking into pastry dough? I'm baking a cheesecake with pieces of pears, using rich shortcrust pastry. The problem is that, during the baking, the pear juice is soaking the pastry. How could I avoid that?

Whenever you're worried about something crisp being made soggy by something moist, the answer is usually fat. Brush the crust with butter or oil before you add the pears, and the oil will slow the absorption of water.

Alternately, dry out your pears. Cook them a bit. Roll them in sugar to dry them out some.

I'm surprised the pear juice is making it through the cheesecake batter. Usually that stuff keeps the liquids locked up tight. Maybe try a drier cheesecake, or one with a bit more egg?


Should I purchase and use a grease or oil splash screen? I use a sauce pan often for grilling chicken or frying bacon, and a lot of grease tends to splash out. There are fine mesh screens available with a handle designed to cover the pan without creating a seal.

Are these a worthwhile investment, or do they just wind up being one more item to clean?

They are one more item to clean, but they are a lot easier to clean than the walls and stove.

I have several in different sizes - very worthwhile in my opinion.


Can alcohol bottles (especially liquor) be stored on their side? I have a fairly well-stocked mini-bar, but not a lot of space.  I've considered storing the bottles in a drawer, but I've heard that you should store certain alcohol upright. Is this true?  If so, why?  If it's only true for certain types of alcohol, which ones?

Beer bottles should be stored upright.  This is to minimize contact (and hence oxidization) between the beer and bottle cap, and (for unfiltered beers) to keep any sludge on the bottom of the bottles.  (How To Store Beer)

Wine should be stored (mostly) on its side.  This keeps the cork moist; and a dry cork can shrink and allow too much air into the wine bottle.  (Storage of wine)  But note that:

  Champagne and other sparkling wines tend to age better if they are kept upright.

The rules for liquor aren't as defined, but it should generally be stored upright.  (Taming Your Liquor Cabinet).  It's stored that way at the factory, and it's shipped and displayed that way.  Also for many "fancy" bottle types, the bottle won't even sit properly on its side.  Also, alcohol in liquor can leak through - or even break down - whatever material is used for the cap.  But it's generally safe to store liquor bottles horizontally in the freezer for a time.  It depends a lot on the specific bottle and cap in use.


How to reuse badly cooked chicken I marinated chicken breast cubes in teriyaki sauce for aboutt 1 hour. I then cooked it together with the sauce it was marinating with for about 15 min on medium heat.

The result was gummy (probably overcooked), hard to swallow chicken that tasted pretty bad.

I don’t want to just throw it out, but I can’t eat it thr way it is either. Is there a way I can treat it (say even in soup) to make it edible?

Finely chopped or even shredded you could add it to fried rice or noodles (you could use a food processor). The other thing that sometimes works with overcooked chicken is to have it cold, sliced fairly thinly in a sandwich or chopped in a salad, but that may be awkward starting from cubes (unless you like it mixed with mayonnaise).


How much juice can you get from an orange? I wanted to make fresh orange juice using a squeezer and wanted to know how many oranges it takes to make an 8oz glass of juice?

you know better than I do, it depends on the orange and type of orange. My mom, an executive chef, used to say that you'd allow 1-2 lb of oranges for 1 drinkable cup of orange juice.

I really think, that it's highly dependent on the type of orange. I know naval and blood oranges are the juiciest compared to other varieties.


Why does my sauce split? I made chicken in peanut butter sauce. Similar to this question, it split.

I used chicken stock, peanut butter, honey and soy sauce, and cooked the chicken in it.

Shortening cooking time isn't an option, since the chicken needs to be done. Honey present in the sauce, as the answer to the other question suggested to improve emulsification.

My mother makes the same recipe regularly, with no problem. The only difference is she uses Skippy, whereas I used pure peanut butter. Would that be the culprit? How can I compensate for that, if that is indeed the culprit, if I want to avoid the innumerable strange additives present in Skippy?

To address the part where you asked for the difference between your mother's sauce and yours: yes, the kind of peanut butter may well be responsible for the difference. The Internet gives the ingredients as

  ROASTED PEANUTS, SUGAR, HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OILS (COTTONSEED, SOYBEAN AND RAPESEED) TO PREVENT SEPARATION, SALT

or, for a low-fat version

  INGREDIENTS: ROASTED PEANUTS, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, SUGAR, SOY PROTEIN, SALT, HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OILS (COTTONSEED, SOYBEAN AND RAPESEED) TO PREVENT SEPARATION, MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, MINERALS (MAGNESIUM OXIDE, ZINC OXIDE, FERRIC ORTHOPHOSPHATE, COPPER SULFATE), VITAMINS (NIACINAMIDE, PYRIDOXIDE HYDROCHLORIDE, FOLIC ADIC).

Your mother is using a product which has been specifically engineered to prevent separation. Especially the low-fat version also includes mono- and diglycerides, which are also a good emulsifier. You are using some product whose selling point is probably the low degree of processing. I suspect that it is not only the ingredient difference, but also the microstructure of the fat particles that play a role (the two may have been milled differently).

So, one option would be to use Skippy too. It would likely get you the result your mother gets.


Does the thickness of a cake affect the baking time? I am very new to baking, so this may be a bit of an obvious question, but:
My daughter wants an airplane shaped chocolate cake for her birthday. I have seen various ideas where you bake a cake, then cut it into pieces and assemble them.
But I was thinking, could I make an airplane-shaped mold, put the mixture in, and bake it whole?
Would I have a problem with the thin parts like the tail & wings being overdone while the middle of the fuselage is still uncooked?
Would there be any other issues I need to be aware of?
Cheers!

Yes, you would have a problem whereby thinner parts would cook quicker than thicker ones. You are much better off cooking uniform cakes (sheet cakes are ideal) and cutting them to shape.


Reason(s) for poor bread results This past weekend I was fortunate enough to be gifted a standing mixer.
My first project was James Beard's white bread.  The end characteristics that I wish to improve on were:

When attempting to de-loaf the bread to tap the bottom, the top crust was hermetically sealed onto the loaf pan
It smelled yeasty instead of a nice baked smell.  It didn't necessarily taste as yeasty as it smelled
It was very, very dense

Some thoughts on why it had these issues:

I was advised to mix for 5-10 minutes.  I mixed for a solid 10 minutes
For the 2nd proofing, I was advised to go 40-60 minutes.  I barely went 40
During mixing, toward the start, I didn't feel I had the best we/dry mixture.  I played around a bit with the water and flour.  When I took it out to place it in the bowl for the 1st proofing, the dough was very sticky

Any suggestions to make better bread?

It appears to me that all you need is to give the dough more proofing time. Also, make sure that your pan is generously dusted with flour before placing the dough in and baking.
For the yeasty smell, the fix is quite simple; use less yeast.
This may seem like an ignorant piece of advice, but I'm serious. I used to follow pizza dough recipes that end up smelling way to yeasty. I didn't want to reduce the yeast amount, as I thought "that's what's written in the recipe, any less and the dough won't be as good", but over time, I've come to realize that a smaller amount of yeast can accomplish the same level of proofing (with more proofing time).


What is kimchi "brine"? So I made kimchi for the first time a couple of days ago, and most of the recipes that I looked at were fairly similar. In this regard, all of them mentioned something that I'm not 100% sure on what it means.

So I followed the standard steps: I rubbed the cabbage leaves with salt until they started to wilt, soaked it in salted water for a few hours, drained and rinsed the cabbage, squeezed out most of the water from the leaves, and then combined them with the rest of the ingredients and chilli paste before putting it all into a fermentation jar.

However, every recipe that I saw said that once the mixture was in the jar, I needed to push it down until the brine was covering the vegetables. I pushed it down but, other than getting rid of the air-pockets, it didn't seem that there was any "brine" that was covering the vegetables.

Worrying that I had squeezed too much liquid out of the cabbage leaves and this was the "brine" that it was referring to, I added a little more water back in until it was just about covering everything.

The recipe also stated that I should check the kimchi daily to make sure that the vegetables were still beneath the brine. However when I went back to check, there was a large amount of liquid above the vegetables. Now I'm worried that adding more water to the mixture was a huge mistake.

Did I mess up? And if so, can I just drain off the excess liquid and fix the issue? Or is it fine that there is a lot of water covering the vegetables?

This is not simply about water or liquid covering the veg, but brine (salted liquid) covering the veg.  The brine is necessary for fermentation and safety. I would worry that your rinse and soak steps washed away too much salt. There is no way to know for sure from your description.  When I make kimchi, I salt the cabbage, and leave in a colander overnight for excess moisture to drain.  Then without rinsing, I proceed with the rest of the ingredients. I pack into a container.  There is typically enough brine to keep the ingredients in liquid for the fermentation to proceed safely.  If you have kept yours refrigerated, eat it. If it has been at room temp, with low to no salt, I would be concerned.


'Sweet milk' substitute in an old recipe I have an old pancake recipe (circa 1930) that I would like to try. However it includes as an ingredient "sweet milk." Having never seen such a thing in stores I'm trying to find the best substitute for this ingredient.

Given that the "milk" readily available in the 1930s was probably much fresher and full fat (and perhaps unpasteurized), I'm thinking that the best modern substitute would probably be whole milk or perhaps half-and-half. Would this be the correct ingredient substitution to make? And would a 1:1 ratio be acceptable?

It's normal whole milk.

'sweet' was used to distinguish it from buttermilk in older cookbooks.


Marinating Chicken before stewing it. Will there be a significant difference in the flavour? I plan to cook some curry chicken and some Jamaican style brown stewed chicken. The chicken is cut up into small pieces. Normally I would season the chicken have it sit for a couple of hours in the fridge and proceed. I've recently become interested in marinating meats - both for flavour and for tenderizing. I've noticed that some people cook stews without even seasoning the meat. So I'm wondering if marinating really makes sense. Or will the stewing process pull all the flavour out anyway?

Marinating meat is typically for fast-cooking methods like grilling.

Typically when stewing, the chicken will stew for more than an hour, so any flavour from the marinade will be MOSTLY lost.  If you use a very strong marinade, like balsamic vinegar, you might retain a small bit of flavour in the chicken.  But keep in mind, the flavour will undoubtedly seep into the rest of the stew.

Overall there is usually not much point in marinating stewing meat, simply because you can impart all the flavour you want in the surrounding sauce, and tenderizing is done by the long cooking process.


How can I remove the greasiness from my ice cream? I am using 35% whole cream and 3.25% whole milk to make my home made ice cream and it leaves a greasy aftertaste. How can I improve this?

glucose de 46,
skim milk powder
modified cornstarch
sugar
cream cheese
35% cream
3.25 milk

I'd find a recipe without cream cheese.

You can make ice cream with all the other ingredients without it being greasy, assuming "glucose de 46" is just glucose. Cream cheese can be greasy, though, so it's almost certainly the culprit. (I suppose you should also check that you're using the right kind, i.e. not using full-fat when the recipe calls for low-fat.)

There's not really a lot of point trying to modify the existing recipe to remove it; you'd have to look at other recipes to get the right ratios anyway, so you might as well just make one of those other recipes.


How do I use whole fresh tamarind? On a whim I bought some tamarind at the grocery store this week. I'm most familiar with it from the dish Pad Thai. My idea at the time was that I would "do something" with it and a pork chop. Pork chops being my canvas of choice for much experimentation.

However I'm now stumped as to what I actually do with this thing. I cracked the flimsy shell/skin to expose the sticky fruit inside. I licked it; it tastes good. I'm not sure what to do next though.

I've looked at some recipes online, but they all work with tamarind paste. I'm assuming I need to process the meat somehow to turn it into a paste.

Questions

Do I have to turn this into paste?
How do I clean/prepare it? (besides obviously throwing the skin away)
Do I need to add oil, water, or other ingredients to make it a paste?
Are there seeds? Do they need to be removed?

1- Remove the hard shell,

2- simmer them in a little liquid until the meat can be easily removed from the seeds.

Tamarind is very sweet and very sour. Tamarind chutneys are delicious for a starting point. You can find recipes but not many other ingredients are required.

You asked if you have to make it into a paste- I suppose not but cooking them is required to get the seeds out and cooking turns the meat into a paste.

Carmi is correct that you can add them directly to liquid but you need to be able to get the large, hard seeds out.