How to make hazelnut oil I want to ask the best way to make hazelnut oil using an oven, a blender, and...cheesecloth?

(At this point no online article seems helpful).

My plan is to bake hazelnuts at 300 F for 8-15 minutes until surface has an oily sheen and is fragrant. Afterwards, put into a blender and pulverize until oil is extracted. Filter through cheesecloth.

Is this a sound methodology?

My goal is to mix the fragrant oil into my chocolate sauce recipe (which already has salt, vanilla, brown sugar).

I doubt you'll get much of a yield. You will probably even have a difficulty creating a hazelnut paste in the blender. Ideally, you would pulverize and then separate with a centrifuge, to extract the oil. Unfortunately, I don't think your options are the right tools for the job.


Accidentally beat sugar and butter together I was doing a pound cake and instead of gradually adding the sugar to the butter, I mixed both together. I continued with the recipe because I was too afraid of telling my mom. Will my cake come out good? Or it does not affect anything?

It shouldn't make any difference.

Here are some recipes that don't mention adding the sugar bit by bit:

Vanilla Pound Cake
Traditional Pound Cake
Pound Cake

If you beat the butter and sugar to a fluffy consistency everything should be all right.

(As far as I know) The worst that could happen is that your pound cake will be slightly denser than usual.


Coagulants for Tofu or else I'm new when it comes to vegan cooking and until recently began experimenting and researching with regards to the commonly used or appropiate coagulants whether acid or salt based to best make my own crafted tofu.

So I've got the following questions:

Is calcium sulfate dihydrate the same as the regular calcium sulfate, also known as Gypsum used for food processing?

On the other hand, are all of the following coagulants safe to be used for culinary purposes per se, meaning as simply getting the chemical with the stablished name from a supplier without it having any additional variations such as the "dihydrate" form explained above, or do they require to have a "Food grade" stamp or "for culinary use" tag necessarily?

-Calcium Sulfate.

-Magnesium Sulfate "Epsom Salt".

-Magnesium Chloride (In this case if it also needs to be branded as "Nigari/Bittern").

-Calcium Chloride.

And finally if you could please please clear out which are animal sourced and which are plant derived or if they are all synthetic. That would be really helpfull.

Thankyou deeply.

To add to @moscafj's answer:

There is a saying "There's no such thing as poison, there's only dose". If you take too much of anything, it can be hazardous to your health or wellbeing. Your body needs both calcium and magnesium to function properly, but taking too much can cause you issues as well.

Calcium chloride and magnesium chloride can cause burns if ingested as a solid,or if touched with wet hands while in the powder form, as well as "gastric distress, and vomiting". These mostly taste like ordinary table salt (sodium chloride), and calcium chloride is often used to replace the sodium in "low sodium" foods. These salts are hygroscopic and will absorb water from the air rapidly unless kept tightly sealed.

Magnesium sulfate is used to treat a range of health problems, including constipation, but too much can also result in hypocalcaemia (low blood calcium) and resulting depression of heart function. MgSO4 is also bitter and unpalatable, but that doesn't stop people drinking it.

The chemical forms of these various compounds don't matter at all unless you happen to be into chemistry and are working out something quantitative in terms of molecular amounts or Moles as they are known. If you see a term containing the word hydrate, this means water of crystallization, which is a chemistry term for the naturally occurring amount of water that is found in the crystalline form. The exact number of water molecules associated with each molecule of the chemical is indicated by the prefix, which might be mono (1), di (2), or a number of other prefixes and varies according to the chemical and which forms it can take. For cooking purposes the hydrate form is the same as anhydrous (without water), though the anhydrous is often more expensive and will usually absorb water from the air rapidly to form the hydrate.


Can I utilise a baking stone to make crepes? If I will heat the stone in the oven, will it retain heat long sufficiently once out of the oven to make a few crepes? Will the dough not stick to the stone and will it distribute uniformly or it will form patches?

I think it's a bad idea...

Crepes are made with a batter (as opposed to a dough) spread thin over a hot metal plate (seasoned or oiled).

A baking stone has a porous surface and I suppose the batter would just get stuck to your stone. It doesn't happen with a dough because it has enough structure to not fill every pore of the stone on contact.

On the other hand, if you had a baking steel instead... that might work, they usually have enough mass to hold heat for some time (and they don't crack).

(disclaimer: I'm not associated with the brand, but I do have one of these and it's awesome)

Pre-heat it, brush oil over it and spread your batter. I'm not sure how many crepes you can do before having to send the steel back to the oven, and then it will take a while to have it hot again, so it might not be practical.


What is the shelf life of unopened jarred hollandaise? I have a jar of unopened Trader Joe's Hollandaise sauce that I forgot about in the back of a cupboard. It's definitely been there for over a year. There's no expiry date on it. Is it still safe to use?

So, it's in a glass jar? So it's pretty much mayonnaise made with butter instead of oil. As long as the vacuum seal is good, and the lid pops when you open it, you should be good. Modern shelf-stable products should last years in proper storage. The worst thing that could happen is the fat could become rancid, which is an aesthetic problem, not a safety problem. Taste it, and if you think it tastes good, go ahead and use it.

If the lid doesn't pop from releasing the vacuum, or it's pressurized and hisses like a bottle of soda, or there's discoloration/mold, or it smells weird, then discard it.


Where did my fennel go? I made tomato soup based on Adam Ragusea's recent video. It's a simple reciple:

Chop a medium-large onion, shave a bulb of fennel and toss both into a stick of butter with some freshly ground black pepper (he adds celery seeds, I added two stalks of celery chopped).

Add two large cans of quality tomatoes, with the juice and a glass of water or some white wine.

Bring to a simmer and wait until mostly ready, you can use a potato masher to break the tomatoes and speed the process (so it's about 45 minutes).

Puree with a stick blender, then add salt, water and pepper to preference. Straining optional. Sugar is optional if the tomatoes are too acidic.

I did exactly that and got what I thought was a pretty basic and decent tomato soup. But while the onion was very pronounced (and not very cooked, to be honest, so I'd brown the onions a bit before adding the rest), there is no hint of the fennel.
Other than using two bulbs of fennel, what could possibly be the reason, and how do I make it more flavorsome?

Fennel is a fairly delicate flavor.  I can see how caramelized onion and tomato would easily over power it.  The bulb actually provide the most delicate flavor of fennel.  If you want a more pronounced flavor, I would suggest fennel seed.  I would further suggest you toast them first.  They can then be used whole, or, if you want an even stronger flavor, grind the seeds.  You could also garnish with the frond, but still that is rather delicate compared to using seeds.


What are some of the best ways to shell an egg? Possible Duplicate:
  How to peel hard boiled eggs easily?

I just came back from the kitchen where I was preparing a dozen hard boiled eggs for a recipe.  Part of this preparation is removing each of the egg's shell. The best tip I've heard yet is to shock the eggs in ice water directly after pulling them off a boil, cracking each end and pealing across the hemisphere. This works about 50/50 for me. That's to say half of my eggs are unpresentable. I've been told also only to hard/soft-boil old eggs, which for obvious reasons isn't always practical.

What's the best way to shell a hard/soft-boil chicken egg?

This is what we do where I work: dump them into a bucket full of cold water with the tap still running. We crack the side of the shell against the side of the sink & roll it til it's cracked all around, then peel. I am sure there are other ways though.
I think shocking them helps them shell easily, but also cools them down for foodsafe reasons.


Can you\why don't some restuarants marinade without chicken skin? I bought some grilled chicken from a restuarant and it came with marinade on the skin.

I asked the seller if they can provide grilled skinless with marinade on flesh.  He said we don't do it like that because the marinade doesn't go well on the chicken flesh.  I also notice other shops dont marinade without skin.

However I have previously bought lamb chops from the same restuarant and it has been well marinated.

My thinking is, if you can marinade and oven grill lamb chops then you can grill chicken too with marinade to a similar effect?

What did he mean, is there a reason why restaurants may marinade meat but not skinless chicken meat?

There's an overlap, and a difference, between a marinade and a glaze. If a mixture contains a fair amount of sugar, then it's probably intended more as a glaze, and the cooking method will usually be grilling, or roasting, (rather than pan frying). There's no reason not to glaze poultry flesh directly (teriyaki, for example) but the bigger the piece, the longer the  exposure to fierce heat will have to be to cook it to the middle. It's not easy to grill a whole skinless chicken breast without drying the outside before the middle is cooked. The combination of the fat from the skin and a glaze will protect and baste the flesh. The surface will be crisp, juicy, and caramelized, rather than parched and leathery.


Why does water color go red when you boil maizes or lentils? Is it bad? I was boiling two maizes in a pot. After about twenty minutes the water inside the pot became red-colored. Also, some days before that, I was boiling lentils and the same happened.
Why did this happen and is this water safe to drink besides eating the maize and/or lentils?

This is probably due to anthocyanins present in the maize and lentils. Despite the possibly worrying sounding 'cyanin', anthocyanins are antioxidants and if anything, beneficial to one's diet. Anyway the amount of anthocyanins present in maize is far far less than in say red cabbage (see the table in the Wikipedia article), so I think you have nothing to worry about.


Does oven size affect baking? My bread sometimes burn and I've checked my thermometer and it works fine. Does the oven size affect the baking?

First off, try and check the temperature more carefully. By far the most common reason people have trouble with their oven is that the temperature isn't what they think it is, and burning is a really good sign of that. It's very likely that when you set your oven to 350°F, it's actually hotter than that.

Ideally, you should check the temperature the bread is actually experiencing: put your oven thermometer next to bread while baking it (or an empty bread pan in that same position). The pan can disrupt the air flow, so the temperature the bread experiences might not be quite the same as the temperature in an empty oven set to the same temperature. You should also check more than once, in case it's just unreliable.

And yes, smaller ovens can exacerbate this. Baking sheets/pans will take up more of the oven, so they'll disrupt air flow more. The other thing that can happen in small ovens is getting too close to the top or bottom of the oven, so that the edges burn even if the temperature in the middle is okay.

If none of that is an issue, then I'd look elsewhere:

You might've changed something in the recipe. For example, a different pan size will result in a different baking time.
The recipes might be bad, suggesting too long a baking time, because the author's oven was too cool. Try more recipes!
You might be relying too much on time. Even if you've followed everything carefully and the recipe is good, maybe your pan is a different material that tends to bake a little faster. Be sure to check periodically for doneness.


Higher temp and lower rack for thicker crust in brownies? I would like to thicken the crust of my brownies. Will I be able to achieve this by setting the pan at a lower level on the oven racks and increasing the temperature? Or do I maintain the same temperature and increase the time? My oven uses a large heating element attached from the top -- that's also where the thermometer hangs.

Presently, the brownies I have are nicely done through and through, but it seems to need a thicker crust. Is this achievable? Or does having a thick crust sacrifice internal doneness due to non-penetration of overhead heat?

Recipe is as follows:

80-g (3/4 cup) pecan halves, roasted and chopped

88g (3 oz) unsweetened chocolate

1 tsp salt

220g (~1/2 lb) unsalted butter

150g (3/4 cup) granulated sugar

100g (1/2 cup) brown sugar

2 large eggs (~110g)

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

140g (3/4 cup) All-purpose flour

18 g (1/8 cup) cocoa powder

Deposited in 12-slot pan made for circular cupcakes. 30 mins in a 350F oven with the thermometer hanging directly on the heating element.

Use your normal recipe and then leave the brownies in the oven with the heat turned off!
Start with 10 minutes and next time increase the time until you've reached the crust thickness you desire.
Why?
Leaving them in the oven with the heat turned off will keep on drying the crust (thus thickening it) until the oven cools down completely. (Don't leave them that long or you'll have a brick instead of brownies)
;-)


Tea water: heat to 80 °C or boil to 100 °C and let it cool down to 80 °C? Boiling water is too hot for some teas. Today I heard that it's better to boil water to 100 °C and let it cool down to 80 °C rather than heat water to 80 °C. Is this true? Does it really affect properties of the water, other than killing bacteria?

It's actually the opposite, you shouldn't boil water for tea unless you want it boiling. Water has dissolved oxygen in it, the more you have the nicer your tea will taste. This has been covered in this question.

The hotter your water gets, the faster it loses dissolved oxygen, so you'll get better tea (for most people's palates) if you raise your water to 80°C and use it right away. If you boil it and then let it cool you will lose much more O2.

FYI, 80°C is pretty low for most black teas, I experimented with this some years ago and found that most black teas brewed at 80°C came out pretty awful, green tea seemed to be the exception to this. I found 90–95°C to be more of the sweet spot.

Other than boiling to kill pathogens the one thing I can think of would be to purge chlorine from the water, which boiling does. However, you'd need to boil it for 15 minutes to get rid of all of it, not just raise it to boiling. Also, boiling doesn't get rid of chlorinates, which are used to purify water more often these days. See this question for more details on that.


Could I possibly tell imitation lobster from real lobster? There's a shop in my neighborhood that sells lobster rolls.

Every time that I order one, it's packed with "lobster" meat and a little bit of mayo.  At $15, I feel that I am getting a great deal.

But my gut feeling has always told me that this shop uses imitation lobster -- and that it couldn't possibly give that generous of a portion of lobster and still make a profit. I asked them, and they looked at each other, hesitated, and then said, "no, it's not imitation." I figure I need another way of verifying.

Is there some way that I could check the meat to see whether it's real lobster or fake?

I'm curious to know even if it tastes the same, at least for purposes of truth in advertising.

If it is high quality imitation lobster and you are not amongst the highest skilled tasters (few of us are), you won't be able to tell the difference by yourself.

Imitation seafood is made from surimi, which is made from various whitefishes (most often Alaskan Pollock). The surimi is mechanically formed, colored and flavored to look like whatever species they are trying to duplicate. Sometimes the results are amazing. Behind the curtain, this is for crab, but I'm sure lobster is similar:

  Handbook of Food Science, Vol 4: For the production of crabmeat analogs the Surimi paste containing the desired additives (with the exception of red colorants) is sheeted in a thin layer and then heat set. After this first heat set, the sheet is scored with the device that looks like a large comb. the sheet is not cut completely through. The scoring forms a long thin strips that resemble crab muscle fibers. Several of these strips are rolled together to form "muscle fiber bundles." These are set and then a portion of the outside surface is colored red with a blend of Surimi and food coloring. The ropes are then cut into logs (approximately 4 inches in length) or into small cylinders or diagonal cut product for salad chunks.

And if the cook lightly shreds the immitation crab, it's extremely hard to tell the difference.

I googled "detecting surimi" and learned that it is not an easy thing to do. There are people trying to do it with mass spectrometry and other complicated lab methods.

I'd say the lobster roll meat is one of:

it's real (guessing from their reaction to your inquiry, unlikely)
it's a high quality immitation lobster
it's canned real lobster (I never tried it)

If you like the sandwich, consider keeping it in your routine.

(a timely question, a surplus of pollock/surimi is on the market, we'll see more of these surimi analogs)


Utensil materials - plastic, metal or wooden? I'm just starting to cook for myself in college, and I'm curious what the best material of cooking tools are for pasta in a metal pan and stir fry in a non-stick wok. To make this question more general, when should you use plastic, metal or wooden cooking tools?

Are there reasons not to use a certain type sometimes? For example, is it unsafe to use wooden tools with raw meat in stir fry?

Metal
Advantages: durable, no risk of absorbing flavours
Disadvantages: may scratch certain cookware

Wood
Advantages: doesn't scratch, looks nice
Disadvantages: can wear down over time, can sometimes absorb flavours

Plastic
Doesn't find a place in my kitchen other than a rubber spatula for baking.

Silicone
You didn't mention this, but I like it, because it works like rubber but can withstand high temps (brushes, spatulas)

I think the answer really depends on what you cook. A good basic set might consist of a wooden spoon, a spatula that can handle heat, a good ladle, and maybe a set of tongs or chopsticks. You'll quickly learn what you wish you had to make it a little easier.


How to make apple pie stay intact I made an apple pie just the other day, and everything came out fine. The only problem was that the filling didn't stick to the crust (home made butter crust if it makes a difference). Is there anything I can do in order to make the filling stick to the crust?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by having the filling 'stick' to the crust, but if you mean that the filling slides out, then you probably haven't added enough thickener (usually flour or cornstarch) to your apples, so the juices that leak out during cooking are too thin.

Different brands and batches of flour/cornstarch, and different apples, will have different levels of liquidity - a bit of practice and experience is necessary to get consistent results.


Incorporating fruits in creme brulee Does anyone have any idea on what precautions to take while combining fruit puree with custard for creme brulees? I added strawberry puree ( which I added some lemon juice to) to my custard and it split the custard while baking. I'm guessing the lemon was the culprit but can strawberries split cream/custard too? If I wanted a strong strawberry flavor through my creme brulee how could I go about achieving that?

This is a tough question. Fresh fruit puree is very unsuitable for incorporating in custards if you want a strong flavor. It contains tons of water, and dilutes your creme brulee a lot, and also brings the pH balance out of whack, interfering with the setting. You can only incorporate small amounts for color and a hint of flavor. Don't forget to add sugar to the puree when you are doing this, it strengthens the fruit flavor perception and reduces the negative effects on texture.

If you want a strong flavor, here are your options when having access to normal kitchen equipment, in order of closeness to the ideal of getting real strawberry flavor into otherwise typically-textured creme brulee:

Purchase strawberry aroma and use it. Don't forget to color the creme brulee, either with food coloring or with small amounts of puree.
Use freeze dried strawberry powder. You might have difficulty finding the real thing (pure strawberry juice freeze-dried) as opposed to maltodextrin-based powders, read the description carefully. An alternative is to grind strawberries which you have dehydrated yourself, but that will give you inferior results.
Cook down your own strawberry simple syrup and use that. This works with any fruit. Start with pressing juice of an amount roughly equal to your dairy base - if your recipe uses 350 ml of cream and 150 ml of milk, you need 500 ml of strawberry juice. Depending on your juicer, this will need 1.5 - 2 kg of strawberries. Make the juice, then add sugar at 1:3 ratio (so 165 g sugar for 500 g of juice). Cook on a low flame until a candy thermometer shows 104 Celsius. Let it cool to room temperature before using in the creme brulee. Quick alternative with somewhat worse taste: use a store bought jam, preferably a smooth spread without chunks.
Use liqueur. This is usually done with other fruits where there are traditional brands of liqueur, such as cassis, grand marnier or frangelico. But if you can find a good strawberry liqueur, try that. Alcohol is a great flavor carrier and will give you aromas you can't get from cooked down or dehydrated fruit. For best results, combine the alcohol with one of the other solutions here.
Instead of putting the flavor agent within the custard, go the traditional route and pour a fruit sauce over it. You can use the reduction from the previous point for that, or make it in some other way.
Again, instead of flavoring the custard itself, pour it over whole strawberries in the mold. This works better with poured custards or puddings rather than creme brulee, since the strawberries won't take kindly to baking.
Instead of making creme brulee, make a strawberry sabayon, using fruit puree or fruit juice as the liquid to be thickened by the yolks. This dessert has a strong fruity flavor, but a very different texture, and it also brings out the egginess of the egg yolks.

As an aside, these methods are useful beyond creme brulee, you have the same options for all creamy desserts (including panna cotas, starch puddings, cheese based cremes) and many types of cake icing, especially buttercreams.


In Halwa, Milk tea, cake, Indian sweets, and Custard can white sugar be replaced with Jaggery? Out of

Halwa (Gajar ka halwa, gajrela, a sweet dessert pudding from grated carrot, water, milk and sugar),
Indian Barfi (barfee, burfi, a dense milk based sweet confectionery from the Indian Subcontinent),
Custard (a cooked mixture of milk and/or cream and egg yolk; or made from readymade custard powder),
Milk tea, Cake, ...

in which items can white sugar be replaced with Jaggery (traditional non-centrifugal cane sugar)?

Of course you can use jaggery in all of these recipes or in any recipe in lieu of sugar, but like all substitutions, they may not be perfect or one to one.  The outcome and flavor profile will be slightly different.

Consider what jaggery is made of (per the infamous wikipedia):

Up to 50% sucrose
up to 20% invert sugars
moisture content of up to 20%
remainder made up of other insoluble matter such as wood ash, proteins and bagasse fibers

The parts that are not sucrose are the parts that are interesting.  How will they affect your recipe?  What adjustments should you make?

Invert sugars taste sweet, but are even more hydrophyllic than sucrose, and interfere with crystal formation of the sucrose.   This may be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on the recipe.   Candies dependant on sugar crystalization will be trickiest to manage.
Moisture means water, you might have to reduce longer or reduce water content elsewhere in the recipe, or it could be a non-issue.
Other content will lead to the unique flavor profile, which may be why you want to use it in the first place

In regards to the specific foods you have mentioned:

Gajar ka halwa -- You would have to adjust the ratios, but no reason it would not work based on how this dessert is described in the wikipedia article
Barfi -- I don't have any personal experience with barfi to know how much it depends on crystalization versus denaturing of the milk proteins for its texture--you would have to experiment.  The descriptions I have read sound like it is more about the milk.
Ready made custard powder -- I don't know what ingredients are in the "ready made custard powder"--the result would certainly be safe.  Assuming the custard powder contains proteins and starch which thicken the custard when you add it to milk or water, then I see no reason why the jaggery should not work, although the result may be somewhat less thickened.
Milk tea - no issues other than the flavor profile
Cake -- with appropriate adjustments (mostly for the water content) it should work fine, except possibly those made by the creaming method

Note that everything I have written is based on the science, and internet descriptions of local food items I am not familiar with.  You should also consult local recipe books, and find variations which use jaggery--or the lack thereof.  That should give you some idea what is common, and how recipes using jaggery vary from those that don't for the same item.


Gritty White Chocolate I'm making white chocolate following this recipe and it had a couple issues:

The sugar didn't fully dissolve, so some of it tasted overly sweet at the bottom of the mold, rest was basically cocoa butter
It had an extremely strong and awful alcohol-y after taste. I used Bourbon Vanilla extract and Liquid almond extract

I tried again later with using granulated sugar and it also didn't dissolve, remaining quite gritty. Is there some secret (or obvious) step I'm missing to help the sugar dissolve?

Also, is using alcohol based extracts in chocolate a no-go? Cause that after taste was positively awful. Multiple recipes online don't seem to say anything against using alcohol extracts though.

Couple final notes:

I used both a double boiler and microwave melting for chocolate
I used the vegan version of the recipe (soy milk powder)

1/3c Sugar is never going to dissolve in the ~one tsp liquid from the extracts, and sugar simply does not dissolve in fats - so your cocoa butter won't dissolve it either.

This is a known problem in chocolate making, both white and not... commercially sugar and/or milk powder is mixed in by a process known as conching, where the sugar is mixed into the chocolate by grinding, often for days, to the result is smooth to the tongue.  Many "homemade" confections either start with premade chocolate, or add liquid to dissolve the sugar... which ends up making a fudgelike confection (you have to add other ingredients to prevent the chocolate from seizing, and end with the confection not only softer but with other flavors), some try using butter for its water content.

If the cocoa butter is just melted to or cooled to sludgy, before adding the sugar, the powdered sugar might be folded rather than mixed in and the result cool quickly enough not to settle.  It still may have texture issues, though.

As for the alcohol-based aftertaste, it may be the extracts were too much for the amount of chocolate, or that your particular extracts had a heavier alcoholic taste.  I believe extracts intended for candy making are different from those intended for baking, for this reason among others - they have less liquid, they are rated to higher temperatures, they balanced differently since they are less likely to be mixed into larger volumes to dilute tastes.

Many recipes start with chocolate melting discs, etc, for this reason.  If you really want to make your own, or you want a flavor profile with a higher % cocoa butter and/or less sugar, you might have some success with adding cocoa butter, milk powder, and flavorings to lesser amounts of white chocolate (essentially, you'd just be using it for the amt sugar needed for the larger batch, the cocoa butter and milk powder already there would be "extras").


I get black flecks on my butter when I grease my pan I recently bought a Teflon-coated pan and have been using it without cause for concern, but while greasing it tonight I found the butter stick I used came away with grey flecks / residue.

I typically handwash it, but I have also used steel wool in the past to get burnt food out quickly. Have I somehow removed the coating? Is it safe to use this pan?

Never use steel wool on teflon-coated pans!!!

You surely have scratched and damaged the teflon and some of it came off the pan.

I'd throw it away.


Separate cutting boards: Cooked vs Uncooked meat I know it is common knowledge that one should using different cutting boards for meat and vegetables (cross contamination), but should you also use a different cutting board for raw/cooked meat? Or at least clean the raw meat cutting board first? My roommate thinks the different meat/vegetable cutting board is absolute, so as long as you cut meat on one board you are safe. But I'm pretty sure a surface where raw meat was on can't be safe can it? Thanks.

You can use the same board (I often do), but you must wash it in hot, soapy water in-between. Usually there is plenty of time to do this while the meat is cooking.  Because bacteria grows exponentially, I'd recommend washing the board soon, even if you aren't going to reuse it, to prevent accidental cross-contamination.

If you're using one meat board, you should also wash it between different kinds of meat.  For example, pork and chicken typically have different bacteria risks and different cooking temperatures because of those bacteria.  If you cross contaminate, then safely cooked pork may still have a risk of salmonella.

And, of course, you should wash your knives, spatulas, tongs, etc between handling uncooked and cooked meats.


best dairy-free yogurt for meat marinade (Biriyani) I am cooking biriani for a party and one of the guest is dairy-intolerant. In biriani, marinading the meat with yogurt+spices is an essential step, and I dont have experience with non-dairy yogurt.
What non-dairy yogurt will be best for this purpose?

In a marinade it is the enzymes and acids in yoghurt which are the important factor so a non-dairy substitute may not work well.

Probably the best approach would be to use an oil and spice marinade. As biryani is a fairly dry dish the yogurt is probably less essential in contributing to a thick sauce as it might be in other recipes.

Much will also depend on the cut of meat that you are using, yoghurt is especially good at tenderising cuts which can be tough or dry so you might consider using a more tender or fatty cut that usual, for example use chicken thigh instead of breast for moisture and adjust the marinate to suit eg add an acid (lemon juice, vinegar or tomato paste) for tougher cuts and a fat or oil for dryer ones.


Accidentally used high heat on Teflon pan! I accidentally left a Teflon pan on high heat to the point where oil was smoking a lot. Is the Teflon pan still good to use? I'm afraid I destroyed the protective coating. I visually inspected the coating and it seems to be intact and in good shape.

Smoking oil generally isn't hot enough to damage teflon.  Generally, Teflon gets damaged at 260C/500F, which is above the smoke point of most cooking oils (though not all of them).  So as long as you didn't let it go to the point where you burned most of the oil off, it should be OK.


Prevent sticky residue from oiling seasoned pan before storage I have a variety of carbon steel pans and after I use them I dry them using a paper towel and then warm them up to make sure they are completely dry. Once I'm sure the pan is dry I spread a little bit of sun flower oil over the pan to make sure it does not rust. Sometimes the pan is hot, warm and sometimes cooled back down when I put the oil.
When I go to use the pan again (about 1 week later) sometimes the oil has become this gummy, rubbery residue.
Getting rid of it through cleaning is very difficult without damaging the seasoning. My best experience is by either heating it to the point where the residue melts and can be wiped off, or put it in the oven to bake at 250°C and basically create a layer of seasoning with it.
Why is this happening and how can I prevent this?

You really have to combine all those stages in one.
If you have to wet it at all, rather than just wipe it out after use, then dry it on the heat, wipe round some oil [the smallest amount you can manage] then heat it until it smokes off.
Cool & store.
The only way to truly avoid gummy oil is not to have any oil left, only seasoning.


Cooking pizza in tiny gas oven with pizza stone I currently have a tiny gas oven to cook with this summer and I like to cook a lot of pizzas, but I have always cooked them in standard electric home ovens.

I have been doing some reading here and here, but I don't think I have enough information yet.

Typically, I cook the pizzas on a 15" stone with store bought fresh dough and follow these steps:

Preheat oven with stone for at least 30 min at 425 F
Put dough in for about 2 min by itself
Layer on toppings
Push back into oven for 10-15 minutes (depends on the oven)

My current oven will fit my 13" pizza stone, has a single flame rod (whatever that's called) on the bottom that starts in the back and extends towards the front. I cannot see into the oven as I normally would to watch the browning of the crust.

So a couple questions:

How long will the pizza take to cook at some temperature? (<= 500 F)
Do I need to let the dough sit by itself in the oven?

Concerns:

Opening the door too much to check the pizza (I know gas fluctuates more)
Burning (one the SO references said 90 seconds to cook)

I realize this is an old question, but here goes. FWIW, I used to bake pizza w/gas, but for the last 15 yrs, it's been electric. Lots of variables, such as thickness of dough and baking stone, etc. but experiment with some of these tips:

Make sure baking stone is hot enough (I use an inexpensive laser remote thermometer).
Place stone on top rack. Heat rises and the roof of the oven will then emit enough heat to thoroughly cook the sauce and cheese. This will emulate a pizza oven. (And no need to par-bake crust.)
I usually crank up the temperature to 550F.
Slide the prepared pizza from a peel onto the stone (I use rice flour or parchment paper to prevent sticking). A peel could be an upside down cookie sheet, thin plywood, or even cardboard if you don't have a real peel.
Baking time should be around 5 min., and a little char on the bottom adds taste.
The above is based on NY-style pizza, but thicker crusts may need longer times--possibly at a lower temperature.
Good luck. The doorbell may be me. I'll bring the beer or wine.


Colored cake without food coloring? I'm wanting to make a layer cake for a birthday WITHOUT food coloring. Specifically, I'm wanting to make red and blue. Could I add raspberry juice or puree to a basic white cake recipe or would that turn out pink? For the blue, would blueberry work? How would the recipe need to be adjusted to accommodate the extra liquid?

As a note I'm answering this question based on avoiding artificial food dyes (Red #40, Yellow #5, etc) rather than all food coloring.

Raspberry puree will produce a pink result, and I have sucessfully done a very dark pink with ground freeze dried raspberries. Achieving the depth of color needed to provide a true red or blue would require not only several food sources to blend the color correctly but a large quantity of, for example reducing juice to make it more concentrated since what you are going for is a color concentrate.

Another option is to let someone else do the blending and extracting for you. Chocolate Craft Colors and a few other companies make plant derived food colorings, and I like the chocolate craft ones since they disclose all of the plant sources (cabbage in the blue, and beets with carrots for the red) and they sell liquid, paste, and powder so you can achieve the color you want without throwing off the balance of the recipe.


How to eat/serve take no tsuyu (たけの露)? A friend brought me some take no tsuyu (たけの露) from Kyoto.
It looks like this:

I'm having trouble understanding instructions on how to eat it.

It's served with some hot water, then crushed, then more water is added until it becomes sort of a soup?

Place one of the take no tsuyu in a bowl then you pour boiling water over.  The rice cake outer layer will soften and come apart as you stir it with your chopsticks and the red bean soup powder inside will hydrate and create a flavorful broth.


Red potatoes-partial cooking, freezing to bake at a later date I am trying to par cook shredded red potatoes with the skins on and then freeze them until baking at a later date. My concern is keeping the potatoes from turning brown until cooked.

They're not going to brown in the freezer. All you have to do is make sure they're not browned before you put them in, and that you cook them reasonably promptly when you take them out.

So if you're shredding a lot, hold them in water til you're ready to cook them. After cooking, rinse to cool them, drain them well and pat them dry before freezing.


How to clean a clogged Misto oil sprayer/spritzer? I use a Misto oil spritzer. You fill it up with oil and pump it up and spray a pan with it.

It's gotten clogged up so that it just squirts a steady stream of oil (not a spray).

Any ideas how to clean it and keep it from clogging again?

I've tried:

Soaking it on wine
Soaking it in boiling water

I'm going to try filling the bottle with vinegar and water.  I've also heard that you should use regular (not extra virgin) olive oil. (Extra Virgin is apparently thicker).

I generally clear my clogged misters / spray nozzles by unscrewing the spray part from the bottle and then submerging the uptake tube in very hot (but certainly not boiling!) water and then pumping as long as it takes to clear the clog out and start spraying a mist / spray pattern again. The hot water should be enough to break up the clogs, and the pump action should force the clog out.


Using I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and salt in a recipe that calls for unsalted butter There's a cookie recipe I'm going to make that calls for 3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted and 1/2 teaspoon salt. We use I Can't Believe It's Not Butter as a substitute for butter, however that contains some Sodium already. So to figure out how much I should reduce the salt by I did the following:

ICBINB contains 55mg of Sodium per 2 tsp
That means for 3/4 cups = 36 tsp = 2*18 tsp, there is 0.055*18 mg
or about 1 gram of Sodium in ICBINB
This next step I am not sure about. Using Google, it tells me 1/2
tsp of salt (or 2.5 grams of salt) contains 1000 mg of Sodium. Is
this correct?

If the above is correct, that means 3/4 cup of ICBINB contains 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and since the recipe calls for 1/2 tsp salt with 3/4 cup of unsalted butter, does this mean I put no salt in the recipe since ICBIB already contains the necessary salt? Or should I put a tiny pinch of salt anyway just in case?

Your math and numbers look about right. I found 1/2 tsp. table salt is 3 grams, so about 1125 mg sodium. I would not add any additional salt in this recipe.


How to preserve homemade fresh cream for about a week in a freezer? I get the full cream milk, boil it, and then let it cool down. I collect the thick layer of cream that gathers on its top and put it in the freezer in a vessel.

Next day if I get more milk I again follow the same process and put the new cream in the already stored cream vessel in the freezer.

What should I do to extend the lives of these creams such that they last for about a week?

Assuming the milk is pasteurised, frozen cream made with it should last for months in a clean, sealed container in the freezer. I would put each batch in a separate container though rather than putting room temperature cream in with already frozen.


What's the point of using sugar in savory dishes? I never get why people add a sweet substance to a savory dish. Especially in something like a a curry or noodles. People say it balances out the flavors. But which flavor is it actually balancing out?

Hot Sour Salty Sweet

Sugar balances both salty and sour flavors in dishes.  Adding just a little sugar makes salty things taste less salty and sour things taste less sour, without actually reducing the amount of salt or acid in the recipe.

For example, the liquid base of the Pad Thai recipe I follow contains chili powder, fish sauce, tamarind, and light palm sugar.  The palm sugar balances out the sour from the tamarind and the salt from the fish sauce.  Without it, the noodles would come out too sour and too salty.

I don't know the physiological reasons for this.  Would be interesting to hear them if someone knew ...


How to cook tarhonya in a pressure cooker or rice cooker Is it possible to cook tarhonya (Hungarian egg barley) in a pressure cooker, such as an Instant Pot, to cut down on cooking time?  The only pressure cooker recipe I've found neglects to mention the cooking time, and also doesn't mention sautéeing it first, which I find strange.

If pressure cooking after the sautée isn't a good idea, can I instead use a rice cooker (or the rice-cooker function of my multi-cooker)?  Or is cooking tarhonya fundamentally different from cooking rice?

I'm not sure on pressure cooker, since tarhonya (as rice) doesn't take that much time to cook and I usually use pressure cooker on food that needs quite a long time (beef, pork, goulash, ...) when I need to cut this time.

So, how I prepare it, is quite simple - and I must admit I really like tarhonya. You need to have the tarhonya:water ratio 2:3. You need to dry roast tarhonya in hot pot until it gets nice brown (it's pasta really, so when raw it should be very fair beige yellow-y) - just be patient and stir ocassionaly. When the colour is nice brown, add oil (i'd use as many tablespoons of oil as I used cups or tarhonya) and salt, then add the water and put the lid on. When the water boils, lower the temperature and let it cook for about 10-15 mins. You should clearly see little cavities on the surface of tarhonya, that's where the water evaporated through. Take the pot off of the stove, put in on or wrap it in a kitchen towel and let sit for another 20 minutes (without opening the lid).

You should by now have beautiful, brown-y, moist side dish to meat or vegetables or anything, really.

So you can see that use of pressure cooker would be really unncessary and maybe even impossible - but if you discover some way, let me know!


Is it OK to reheat my spaghetti sauce over & over? My spaghetti sauce is made with fresh tomatoes, ketchup, garlic, some vinegar, and some basic seasoning. I've been told it's not good to reheat the sauce over & over, but I'm making this for myself, 4 servings at a time, so the most reheats 1 batch would get is 3, and each batch lasts at most 2 days. I've been told to put the sauce in separate containers & only reheat 1 serving when ready to eat. I find it a pain to dirty extra containers and have had no problem reheating my sauce.
Is there some real problem with reheating my spaghetti sauce over & over, or is my family just too careful/concerned about it?

Food safety wise, you want to minimise the amount of time the uneaten sauce spends in the "danger zone", 4-60 degrees Celsius. When you repeatedly reheat and chill food, every time it chills it spends some time (depending on how you chill it and the container you store it in, but usually at least an hour) in the danger zone adding to the risk you will get sick from eating it. A typical recommendation is that food should not spend more than 2 cumulative hours in the danger zone to be considered safe to eat. Why not just scoop out the amount you need for the day onto the plate you will eat from and reheat that? Or, if you're adding it to freshly cooked pasta, dump it directly on the pasta from the fridge and let it stand on a warm burner with the lid on for a few minutes to warm up?


When soaking chickpeas (garbanzo beans), do I discard floaters? When I put my dried chickpeas in water to soak, some of them float. Should I throw these ones away, or are they okay?

Boy is THAT ever controversial. It seems that everybody has a theory as to why some beans float while most do not. The most common answer is that the "floaters" are older, and less hydrated to begin with. Some people insist that some beans float because worms have gotten into them. Hogwash, ignore those comments. The bottom line is that "floaters" are perfectly safe, and there is nothing "icky" about them, although they may take longer to fully cook. So, it becomes a matter of personal choice. If it's important to you that all of your chickpeas cook to exactly the same degree of tenderness, throw them out. If you don't mind a slightly (and I do mean slightly) chewier bean here and there, keep them. Personally, I keep them.

Welcome to Seasoned Advice by the way, great first question!


What is the difference between doughnut and krapfen? I have been in a shop where you were able to see how they made doughnuts. The first thing I thought was that they were krapfen.

Are there any differences between krapfen, and doughnut? Does one use different ingredients?

There doesn't appear to be any difference. Wikipedia says "In English-speaking countries, Berliners are usually called doughnuts and are usually filled with jam, jelly, custard or whipped cream", and this page says "The English translation of krapfen is cruller or doughnut". There are so many variations of filling, topping, shape and so forth that it is hard to establish a single identity anyhow.


Can I substitute bread flour for AP flour in banana bread recipe? I have bread flour (King Arthur) at home all the time, but I don't usually have all-purpose flour, as bread is pretty much the only thing I bake from scratch. I want to make basic banana bread following this recipe. I have never made banana bread before.

Can I substitute bread flour for the all-purpose flour? I also have stone-ground whole-wheat flour that I use for chapatis. Would some mixture of whole-wheat and bread flour be a better substitute? The reviews for the banana bread recipe say that it results in a dense loaf, so would using bread flour make it even more dense and thereby unappetizing?

I don't particularly want to keep all-purpose flour on hand in addition to bread flour and whole wheat flour, as my pantry has tons of flours already; ten at last count. I searched online and on this site but the questions typically seem to be about subbing AP flour for bread flour, or using some other flour instead of wheat flour. I was unable to find anything specifically about using bread flour instead of AP flour.

Update I decided to risk replacing 1/3 cup of the bread flour with rice flour. I thought that since rice flour is lighter and has no gluten, it would offset the increased denseness caused by using a high-gluten flour. The banana bread turned out fine.

I have posted a follow-up question about using maida in combination with bread flour to create an all-purpose flour substitute.

With some precautions in your mixing method, you could substitute Bread Flour for AP Flour in Banana Bread. Mind you, it may make a stronger, more dense, more chewy banana bread than people expect--but it would still be pallatable, some may even prefer it.

As discussion here points out: the main concern in the substitution is the higher gluten of bread flour.

I checked the King Arthur website, found that this bread flour is 12.7% protein (gluten). According to this chart from Cooking for Geeks (I am not affiliated with the book) indicates, this is low-to-average for gluten in bread flours:

Not over-mixing is critical in this situation, since mixing forms gluten. I can't describe better than @Sam Ley did here. Sam makes a great point: you should be comfortable leaving some dry clumps in the batter.

Also, if tempted to sift the flour, I would hesitate. sifting the flour will increase powder surface area, which would facilitate more gluten formation.


How Long to Bake Frozen Artichoke Hearts? I'm a novice cook, but was intrigued by Megan McArdle's simple-enough-even-for-me recipe for frozen artichoke hearts:

  I'm also an enormous fan of frozen artichoke hearts, which when roasted at 500 degrees with a little spritz of olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt, make a delicious, inexpensive, low calorie and high fiber dinner or side dish.  We always have them in our freezer, and after eating same at our house, some friends have started stocking up as well.  Are they quite as good as fresh grown, local artichokes would be?  No.  But local artichokes aren't available for very long in Washington, DC, and I tend to get discouraged by the task of cutting down twelve artichokes to extract the heart.

OK, I have all the ingredients, but a question remains: how long should I bake the hearts at 500°?

It depends on the artichoke's size.  The Birds Eye brand common in the US will take  about half an hour at 475°F (I have never timed them, so it's a guess).  I just watch them until they start getting brown spots.  If they are big, lower the temperature.


Glass bowl safe in pressure cooker? I have this Anchor Hocking glass bowl that I am thinking of using in my pressure cooker, curious if its safe or not? I used it in the microwave no issues.

I plan to throw some chicken in it with no water in the bowl, but outside the pressure cooker. I want to absorb any juices

Is this safe?

Assuming that you are talking about a tempered glass bowl that is marketed as microwave, dishwasher and oven safe, there should be no problem in the pressure cooker. For glass vessels, the most critical uses are rapid temperature changes and uneven heating, the surrounding pressure isn’t an issue.

I recommend the following safety measures:

Before every use, independent of cooking method, check for (hidden) cracks with a quick visual inspection and by lightly tapping it with your knuckle or fingernail. You can hear hidden cracks. Don’t use a damaged bowl for anything involving heat, cold or temperature swings, ideally discard it entirely.
Don’t place the glass directly on the pot’s bottom, use a wire trivet, steamer insert or other support.
Don’t seal the container, if you want to cover it (e.g. to prevent condensation from the water in the cooker), use a loose lid (not the plastic lids that come with the oven-to-fridge storage containers), a plate, or tent with foil.


Drying fatty meat in food dehydrator - is it okay for short time consumption? Well, I bought a food dehydrator. Every site told me to dry only lean meat, and so I did until now. However I was thinking of drying some ham in larger chunks to hopefully get sort of prosciutto substitute. I know that the fat can go rancid which is why I intend to eat it within a month and store it in a fridge and I know it won't taste as good as the original. Do you think it's safe?

Yes. It may be fine for immediate consumption.

The problem is the air flow from the drying itself can also accelerate the oxidation of the fat.

When I have dried fatty meat the fat already tasted a bit off.

This is a matter of quality, not safety. If the fat isn't objectionable to you after drying then it is fine. As you said, you should expect the fat to go off and eat it soon.


How to counteract sage (in a pumpkin soup)? I prepared a pumpkin soup with the secondary ingredients being onions, ginger, garlic, cream, chilli, nutmeg, pumpkin seed oil, and sage.
I accidentally added too much of the latter.
I wish to neutralise this.

I found and tried the following so far:

General counteracting advice like diluting and adding more of (almost) everything else, both of which I do not wish to do.
Physically removing the sage, which are not applicable in my case since the sage was ground.
Adding sugar (or sweet ingredients).
I did this to some extent, but perceived no effect.
While the sweetness hasn’t spoiled the soup yet, I am afraid that adding more of it might.
This site recommends to add potatoes, which are claimed to soak up excess spices (in general).
I am skeptical about this claim since I cannot find any other source corroborating this.
Said source uses a very distancing language in this section.
Moreover, if potatoes really suck up flavours in general, they may be of little use for me due to sucking up everything else.
By chance, I found that adding salt (or salty ingredients) reduces the effect, but only to a certain extent.
Also, this comes with the downside of the soup being overly salty.

Are there any other ways or reasons to assume that my assessment of the above options is too pessimistic?

You are not overly pessimistic, there is no such thing as you are trying to do. Smells are not counteractable.

The most you can do is to reduce the effect, and you have already come across the possible solutions and they don't work for you.

As we get this type of question all the time, I wrote up a much longer explanation which covers overseasoned food in general, not just soup with sage: I overseasoned my food, what can I do to remove the strong smell?. Please refer to that for a longer explanation of why you can't magically counteract smell.


How to make a small DIY bain marie? I live alone and almost always cook just for myself. With most recipes, I can just cook a smaller amount than given in the recipe, and I have optimized most of my cooking gear for small quantities. But I have a problem with some dishes which are both too rich to eat more than one, maximum two portions in a day, and too perishable to store for longer. Some of those, like the egg foams (zabaglione, hollandaise) and some sweet dishes involving melted chocolate, require a bain marie.

I don't have the storage space for single-purpose gear. When I need bain marie, I use a regular pot and a Pyrex bowl whose upper diameter is somewhat bigger than the pot's. My smallest pot is 16 cm, and a bowl which fits on it is too big for one or two yolks. When I try beating them, they smear themselves on the walls and cook there before they've flowed to the bottom. Also, the heating is somewhat quick, because the whole mass is only 1 cm thick or less. Making 40 g ganache is no easier.

I prefer beating such small amounts in a tea cup or mug or in a 6 cm bowl, inserting a single beater into the mixer. But I cannot do it when I need a bain marie, because I have no pot where they'd stay on top. And even if I could find a small replacement for the pot (like a steel mug or a djezwe), it won't heat on my induction hob - even if the "pot" was ferromagnetic, the hob  has a built-in protection and only switches on if it detects a cooking vessel at least 12 cm wide.

Do you have any ideas for an easily built bain marie setup which is small, uses common utensils (not necessary kitchen ones, but preferably something I already have), and quickly dismantled when not in use? Maybe there is some way to suspend the tea cup into the big pot and hold it firm despite the mixer's force?

Can you repurpose a stovetop coffee pot/percolator?  I prefer the glass ones (do an image search for 'coffee percolator glass', so you can keep an eye on progress throughout.  If you were to replace the drip container at the top (that usually holds the coffee) with a small stainless steel bowl (your standard IKEA type mixing bowl), the rim will be held stable by the coffee pot.

Plus it already has a handle built in so you don't burn yourself in search of the perfect chocolate ganache!

ps: I'm in Germany too - I saw some at Tchibo last week.


Why is my pastry blistering in the microwave? I am trying to make my own shortcrust pastry, but don't have a blender or food mixer. I also don't have a gas or electric oven and am using the convection bake function of a microwave.

I mix 1 1/4 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of butter (grated with a cheese grater then back in the fridge before finally mixing into the flour), 1/4 tsp sugar & 1/4 tsp salt, and about 5 tbs of ice water. Then I convection-bake it in the microwave.

Somehow I just can't get it right. I tried blind baking and my pastry ended up looking like a very pimply kid with blisters all over. It was also sweating butter or something a fair bit when it was baking. It tastes okay, but a bit crunchy like a cookie, and impossible to cut without breaking apart.

What am I doing wrong? Is it the temperature (190 degree Celsius/375 F)? Is it because I grated my butter? Too much water? The way I roll my pastry? Any advice is really appreciated as I'm a total newbie to baking and don't understand a whole lot about it yet.

This is because you are using a microwave. In theory, if you could turn off the microwaves in the microwave oven, you could use the convection function to bake things. In practice, we have had several questions which indicate that this is not how convection microwaves work. They keep nuking your dough, making it inedible. In your case, they are cooking all the moisture locally, resulting in mini-steam-explosions which create blisters, and a dried out, hard and crispy dough.

I am sorry, but there is no way you can bake with a microwave, not short pastry, and not other things. One exception might be quickly eaten "microwave cupcakes" which don't have much flour to start with and are baked for a very short time. I have seen people claim that they work, but never actually tried them.

For baking, you need a non-microwaving oven. The cheapest solution is a toaster oven with a 30x30 cm inner size, they are somewhat trickier to use than a big oven, but good enough for a small budget.


How to prepare tiny salted squid for cooking? So, I have a bag of tiny salted squid. I love squid, but I've never cooked them and have no idea what to do with this. They're whole, and the bag says that they've been steamed, but I don't know if that means they're ready to eat as is or if they need further cooking.

At the moment, my best guess is to look up the squid cleaning instructions in Hazan's Classic Pasta Cookbook or in Time-Life Pasta and hope they apply as well to tiny squid as they do to the larger squid pictured in those books, and then use them in some sort of pasta dish, and hope the fact that they're tiny and already steamed doesn't interfere.

So -- can I clean them in the same way as full size squid? How does the steaming affect their preparation? And what can I do with them? I realize the last question is pretty broad, so I'm mostly interested in answers to the first two, but I'm also open to suggestions for what one can use a bunch of tiny salted squid for.

Those are meant to eat with rice, though you can it on your own. They aren't really salted, they were steamed with some salt, then frozen.


What is the difference between Orbit Gum and Orbit for Kids If this is not the right forum for this question, please let me know where to post it.

I don't know of any reason to say it can't be asked here. Orbit for Kids is available in "kid friendly" flavors (Bubble Gum and Strawberry Banana). I see nothing at all different in the formulation beyond the flavor. For the most part it is a marketing gimmick. The "for kids" flavors have xylitol as the second ingredient. The adult flavors have it as a 3rd or 4th ingredient. That probably just means that the kid's version is somewhat sweeter.


How can you prevent the lettuce from wilting if covered with something hot? If I want to make a shrimp salad, I put the lettuce and other raw vegetables on the plate, cook the shrimps and put them on the veggies. However, after a minute or so, the lettuce becomes soft, like it's wilting, probably because of the heat.

Is there a way to slow this process down? It's not easy to make a simple salad for multiple persons that looks nice when you deliver it.

I'm pretty sure this also applies to other vegetables and other cooked food. If not, please mention so in your answer.

Wilting in greens is triggered by temperature, pH, and salt content.  To reduce wilting, you can cool the vegetables or shrimp, make the vegetables more acidic*, or decrease their salt content.

My suggestion would be to cool the shrimp with an ice water bath or cold running water.  This is the most traditional approach for shrimp salad.  Alternately, you could apply an acidic dressing before topping, but wait to salt it until the shrimp have cooled to 140F.

Alternately, wilting of vegetables adds a rather interesting variation in flavor or texture to a salad.  This technique has been desirable and in vogue at various times.

Why does this all happen?

Plant cells wilt when cooking breaks apart the cellulose-based cell walls, and allows water to escape, causing them to soften.  To quote On Food and Cooking (pp 282):

  When the tissue reaches 140F/60C, the cell membranes are damaged, the
  cells lose water and deflate, and the tissue as a whole goes from firm
  and crisp to limp and flabby.

Acids will impede wilting, because the cell walls are held together with hemicellulose, and it is "not very soluble in an acid environment" (pp 282). Table salt is a problem, because "its sodium ions displace the calcium ions that cross-link and anchor the cement molecules in the fruits and vegetable walls, thus breaking the cross-links and helping dissolve the hemicelluloses" (pp 283).  Calcium has the opposite affect, so if you can use hard water or add calcium salts, do so.

*Acidic solutions will reduce green colors(On Food and Cooking, pp 280-281), but preserve texture (282).


Why does my chicken go dry when I boil it? This may seem a silly question, but it has always stricken me as odd that chicken should dry out when I boil it in water. Intuitively it just seems weird, but thinking about this a bit while cooking just now, it also makes little sense to me from a basic physics point of view. I googled this first of course, but I can't seem to find an answer as to why this could be.

Assuming I don't put any salt in the water in which I boil it, the concentration gradient caused by ions and other molecules in the meat should cause the water to diffuse/osmose into the chicken. Furthermore any minor temperature gradient should also be pushing water into the chicken. The most plausible explanation I came up with is that the chicken is over-saturated with water to begin with -either naturally or introduced during processing of the meat- and boiling it then somehow reduces the capacity of the tissue to retain the liquid.

I may be wrong but I'll give it a shot.

When you heat chicken (or any other muscle for that matter) it tenses up. As it tenses up it is essentially squeezing juices out, because all the fibres are closer together.  Just think what happens when you slice a rare steak without letting it rest, there will be blood everywhere.

In general I believe boiling anything is bad practice. A slow simmer maximum is required to retain all the desired qualities. Hence the saying "low and slow" which I take quite literally band apply to just about everything culinary wise. From cooking stew to proving bread, the longer the better.

Edit:

I wrote that then went in the shower and remembered pasta & potatoes, so maybe low and slow unless it's a starchy carbohydrate. Or if you are searing, but often a blazing hot seat is accompanied by a nice rest.


What is the difference between shawarma and gyros? I see both of these terms used in restaurants that seem to specialize in meat on a vertical rotisserie served in a pita sandwich. I'm not clear on whether there is a difference between the two or if they are just colloquial names for the same thing.

They're rather different.

Gyros are Greek in origin. They are simply meat, tomatoes, onion, and tzatziki sauce on pita. In Greece the meat is typically pork (never had one). In America, specifically here in Chicago (their local origin), the meat is a combination of beef & lamb.

Shwawarma is Middle Eastern in origin. The possible toppings are much more diverse, and can include: tahini, tabouli, fattoush, cucumber, and hummus. Tzatziki isn't typically used, at least not in America. The meat is also never pork, it can be lamb, beef or chicken.

They owe their similarities to their common Turkish ancestor the doner kebab.

See also:

Doner kebab
Gyros
Shawarma


Soaking beef in water I've begun cooking Asian food in the past year or so, and in many Korean and Chinese beef recipes, I see instructions to soak beef in water. Just plain water, not salt water or anything. And every recipe seems to have a different  time - from 5 minutes to like, multiple hours.

I inquired about this and was given various reasons for this step, including "to remove the blood (because it is simply undesirable", "To remove the blood, because it gives the meat a bad taste" or "To soften the beef".

I'm wondering:

Does soaking meat in water really remove that much blood?
How much of a flavor component is blood and why would it give it a bad taste (especially since i've never soaked beef before and I've like the taste just fine)?
What is the action of solute-free water on a piece of beef immersed in it? Can it really tenderise it to any degree, or is there any osmosis occurring or other such physical/chemical action?

Unless you are getting your beef directly from a farm or butcher's truck, most blood will long have vacated the muscle. As the muscle enters rigor mortis and is (this is true for America and Europe, traditions and techniques are different in some parts of Asia and Africa) hung for the prescribed seven to ten days it loses almost all of its capillary blood.

Dry aged (not as common) beef has this effect even more, if you purchased a supermarket filet with a "sanitary pad" in the bottom, the moisture you see there is juices, water and some protein, from collapsing cells, not blood. The same is true for any beef not cooked to shoe-leather consistency, the reddish "juice" is intra-cellular and not from blood vessels.

As far as flavors go, soaking your meat for any period of time below, let's say, two days, has very little effect. It was traditionally done to apply some osmotic power to the cut in order to dilute and remove salt left over from the drying process (this was before cooling was widely available, still done in many countries outside of Europe and America), but isn't usually necessary for meat you get in the meat aisle or from your local butcher.

As far as tenderizing goes, no. Enzymatic tenderizing (that is the stuff that happens when you age beef) goes on, of course, but you won't be able to tell much of a difference between the time you bought the muscle and the time you consume it. Water itself does not tenderize. Minutes to hours do nothing.


Temperature of Heavy whipping cream in NY cheesecake? I don't know if this question has been asked earlier, but tomorrow I am going to attempt making a New York style baked cheesecake for the first time. The recipe I am planning to use uses a combination of heavy whipping cream and sour cream (I will substitute it with plain Greek yogurt), and every post on the internet advises to have all ingredients at room temperature. I was wondering if whipping cream and Greek yogurt also have to be at room temperature?

I am sorry if it is a silly question but I am really intimidated by the thought of making a cheesecake. Thanks for your help. :)

I've made NY baked cheesecake on a number of occasions and have never brought the ingredients to room temperature before mixing, (mine has cream cheese, soured cream and flour in it). That said, it does take me a good ten minutes to mix everything together (including the vanilla seeds) but I still don't think the mix is room temp when I put it in the oven.

One thing I do do, is when it's a minute off being ready, I turn off the oven, open the oven door and leave the cheesecake in the oven to cool slowly, this usually prevents the top from cracking.


Braised short ribs differ in texture when on stove top vs in oven I've made braised beef short ribs several times previously and I've found that when they're braised on a low flame in a cast iron pot over the stove, they ended up being more tender compared to those I left in the oven in the same cast iron pot.

In both cases, the pot was covered with a lid, the braising liquid was essentially the same in composition and volume, the cooking times were the same (four hours) and the ribs were from the same butcher. The temperature of the braise seemed to be the same as they were at a very mild simmer in both cases.

I understand that a pot on a stove would receive heat primarily from the base of the pot while a pot in an oven would be exposed to heat from all directions. However, seeing as how in both cases the ribs were completely submerged in liquid, I figured that the direction of the heat source should not matter enough to cause differences in the texture of the meat.

Does anyone have any idea what else might be causing the difference in texture?

"For the same time" seems to be your problem here. An oven will warm a pot much more slowly than a stovetop, especially a heavy iron stew pot. You'll need to monitor your temperature, and only count the time after it reaches 68 Celsius. The warming up phase can be easily close to an hour in the stove, eating away a lot of the actual cooking time.


Lavender subsitute for Grilled Eggplant Nicoise Is it okay to tear open some lavender tulsi herbal tea bags?

You can certainly try it. I don't know if the tulsi flavor will be what you want or not, though.

I also don't think I've ever heard of eggplant niçoise with lavender (and couldn't find a recipe with it) so it's probably also fine without it if you don't think the flavor's going to be what you want.


Does a liquid need to cool under pressure in a whipped cream charger prior to serving or just be cold? I have an iSi whipped cream charger. The directions for recipes almost universally call for you to put your liquid in the charger, charge with nitrous, and then let chill for 1 - 12 hours (depending on the recipe). I am interested in using the charger for a large amount of plates, and it won't be big enough for the full service.

Is the charge and then cool order important? Can I cool the liquid for the necessary time, put it in the cannister, charge, and then serve immediately? Does this change based on the type of foam you're making (i.e. whipped cream vs savory foam vs gelatin based foam)?

It depends on the preparation.

I have the Creative Whip which comes with a little recipe book and not all of the recipes demand that you chill after charging.  For example the "instant chocolate mousse" is really instant.  The only liquid ingredient is the cream itself which is already chilled, and the gas expansion inside the canister chills it even further, so it's ready right away.

On the other hand, if you're making something with gelatin, carrageenan, or any other gelling agent which needs to set, then you'll obviously need to fill the canister while it's still a liquid (otherwise it's going to be rather hard to whip, not to mention hard to get into the canister itself!) and then chill to set it.

Basically it's simply a question of how cold your liquid is before it goes into the canister vs. how cold you want it to be when you serve it.  If you can chill it to the correct temperature beforehand, and that won't prevent you from whipping it (as it would with an actual gel), then by all means chill first.

In the specific case when you're using creams and/or cheeses to make a mousse or espuma, you almost never need to chill it in the whipper itself - although it won't hurt either.

By the way, if you're making a gel or anything else that needs to set, it's best to chill it gradually in an ice water bath and shake it frequently as it chills, in order to keep the gas dispersed.  If you just charge it and stick it in the fridge, you may find it very hard to dispense afterward.


Achieve butter-like aroma in a vegan recipe I am planning to cook a French bœuf bourguignon, but a vegan version. Apart from the wine and the herbs, I recall that the butter had quite an impact on the vegetarian version that I previously made.

When reading about vegan butters online the goal is usually to aim for a certain consistency, for baking etc. Is there a way to add butter flavor to this vegan recipe?

Many of the modern "vegan butter-like spreads for cooking" have a passable butter flavor, not like the margarines of yore. You do want to get one that mentions it can be used in cooking/baking, rather than the "light" versions that are nearly half water. That's a fairly simple substitution. I'm knee-jerking away from suggesting a specific brand, both to be not spamming and because there are several options.


What makes the 'Cat poo' coffee (Kopi Luwak) flavour worth drinking? I'm actually on the hunt for this coffee in Melbourne, being it's such a coffee-oriented city:
Where can I buy a cup of 'cat poo' coffee (Kopi Luwak) in Melbourne?, but while discussing it in the travel.SE chat room, we were wondering what it is that makes it worth drinking?

From Wiki and other sources there's some talk about cherries with some beans cause certain enzymes to be produced, but they seem to insist that this wouldn't happen with the same ingredients in another beast? So is it the beans + food, or the animal itself, and what is the resultant flavour - more bitter / sweet than regular coffee, or what?

I've never drunk it (can't stand coffee myself), but the general theory is:

A wet ferment.  Some coffee producers have attempted to duplicate some of the processes with enzymes, as you've mentioned.
More likely to be picked closer to peak ripeness.  The animals have the advantage that they're picking berries to eat, and will pass over unripe ones to eat later -- unlike human processing which might just look to strip the whole bush.

In talking to one of my co-workers (also not a coffee drinker), and she said that she's had coffee right after it's been processed, and it was dramatically different from the stuff that was available in Europe or North America ... which leads me think that freshness might be a more important quality than some of the other aspects of the highly expensive coffee.  (unless you're talking about psychological effects)


Pulled Pork Jackfruit When cooking jackfruit for “pulled pork” from canned young green jackfruit, do you cut off the core from the rest of it or just braise it till tender?

I use two forks to shred the jackfruit - core and all. The core pieces have a bit more firm texture so it's a nice mix with the rest of it.


What is causing my butter toffee to separate? Each year at this time, I make 4-6 batches of Butter Toffee (2c sugar, 2 c butter, 2 tsp vanilla, 6 tbsp water), but only about half usually turn out ok. About half way through the heating process, the unsuccessful batch starts to separate. Once, I saved it by doing something magical to the temperature and stirring vigorously, but I don't know what I did. Every other time, Once it starts separating, it is a lost cause.

I use the same pan, same stove, same wooden spoon to stir, and I think I am either using heat that is too high, or too low and too long. Help!

If you are using an electric stove you might have heat fluctuations enough to make it separate.


Why do garlic pots have holes? If garlic pots didn't have holes, why would the garlic in it get soggy (which as I understand it means moist). After all, garlic as bought at the store is dry, and to my knowledge doesn't have much water in it. Do the holes I the garlic pot allow moisture to leave the garlic and pass through the holes and diffuse itself in the air?

NOTE: I have heard of garlic pots but never seen one. If someone could post a picture it would be appreciated.

Thank you for your clarifications.

Actually, it isn't really to allow the garlic to dry, it's the opposite (to help prevent it from drying out too much).

  Most models of the garlic pot are relatively small and usually round. Often, the garlic pot is constructed of some sort of porous material, such as fired ceramics or terra cotta. Both types of the garlic pot will feature a lid that is loose fitting, allowing for quick retrieval of the garlic clove from the container. In addition, the garlic pot will have a series of air holes on the backside of the body of the container. These holes supply the garlic bulb with proper circulation and help to prevent the garlic from drying out. Coupled with the lid, the garlic pot also protects the garlic from direct contact with light, which could hasten the process of mould appearing on the garlic.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-garlic-pot.htm

  A garlic keeper is a small garlic pot which is designed to stay cool and which has holes to allow air to circulate

http://www.garlic-central.com/keeper.html


My pre soy milk preparation curdled on cooking I had soaked some soybeans and kept them in the fridge for two to three days after removing the water. Today, I kept the mixture after blending with water for 3 hours. However, when I kept it on a high flame it curdled.
The recipe was-
1)Take a cup of soaked soybeans.
2)Add three and a half times the water and blend for 3 minutes.
4)Cook the mixture after boiling for 15 minutes.
5)Strain the okara using a cheesecloth

Will this thing be edible after cooking? What caused this curdling?

There are two potential causes here - either positive ions or bacterial activity.
Soy curdles easily in the presence of positive ions, that's the basic principle behind making tofu. I don't see many potential sources in your recipe, so if this is the case, my guess would be that there was some combination of hard water, possibly high-ish magnesium levels in the soy itself, and maybe some other deviations in the soy chemistry (not every cultivar or every batch of the same plant is equal chemically, and if you hit the right - or in this case wrong - combination of compound levels, curdling occurs easier).
The other possibility is that you had enough bacterial activity that it produced acid which curdled the soy proteins. While 3 days in the fridge and 3 hours on the counter are considered safe, there can be one-off cases where you get spoilage going on. This is much more typical for animal milks though (that's how you get buttermilk), I'm not sure how likely it is to happen for soy since I have never observed firsthand how it ferments.
You should be able to make the distinction. If you have off-smells, sour or acrid taste, or other signs of fermentation, this is likely bacterial activity. If the whole thing is bland and firm-ish and reminds you of tofu, it is likely a chemical curdling.


Why would heating left-overs in a ring heat them more evenly? I just saw this tip on Reddit to heat leftovers in a ring.

Why would this only work with left overs?
How does this ring cause the heating to be more even?

I believe the unspecified context of this question is cooking in an oven or microwave.  No matter what your cooking method, the heat is introduced at the outside of the food:

Microwaves only penetrate a short distance; the rest of the cooking through to the center is by conduction (or convection, if the food is liquid)
Conduction/convection in an oven only interact with the surface of the food
Radiant heat (infrared essentially), one of the main cooking modes in an oven, again only affects the surface

By creating a ring shape, if it is practical, you create more surface for the heating modality to interact with the food.

This is the reason for an angel food cake pan or bundt pan having a tube at the center--it allows more surface area to be involved in the cooking process.

Also, with the metal pan, the metal has a higher conductivity of heat than does air.  This is why parts of the cake in contact with the pan (or a non-insulated metal cookie sheet, or whatever) generally brown more than the parts exposed to the air.

However, in practice except for things cooked in tube pans, I wouldn't really worry about this affect.  If you can stir occasionally, it becomes close to moot.

Note that in pan frying or sauteing or or griddling or stir frying (depending on the term used in context), the main surface area that is relevant is the bottom of the food, that which is contact with the pan.  A ring doesn't help much here, compared to spreading the food out.

I looked at the first part of that thread.  It does not seem to be a hot bed of science and knowledge of cookery.


How can I improve the shape/appearance of this bread? I've been making bread from this recipe:

550g flour
370 water
12g kosher salt
4g yeast

Knead in the stand mixer, shape into an ovoid bâtard kind of deal,
slash diagonally, and bake 45 min. at 450F/230C.

Taste & texture are good, but instead of a nice-looking loaf with open slash marks, I get the misshapen broken-backed loaf in the photos below. How can I produce a more normal-looking loaf?

EDIT: I've made this recipe a bunch of times and the results are very consistent.

Before we start on what might have gone wrong, let me assure you that you obviously are doing a lot of things right:

You have surface tension in your loaf and good oven spring, meaning you got the shaping right and seem to put your bread in the oven at a good time during the final rise - my guess would be "slightly underproofed", which is exactly what you want for a wheat bread like this one.

With your slashes I suggest that you dump the X-acto, because the blade is too short. The classic lamé is one possible route (and can be easily substituted by an oldfashioned razor blade on a chopstick), but you probably need a few more loaves to get the hang of using it - you need to work fast and the bent blade and thin handle is different from what you are used from kitchen knives. A serrated knife is a viable alternative, provided it is quite sharp. Whatever you use, you don't want to use a "sawing" or "zig-zaging" motion, but just one quick swiping movement per slash.

The higher the hydration the more likely is your slash to seal itself again, simply by the weight of the dough. Therefore an almost horizontal slash is recommended. The idea is to create a "flap", not a "valley". The thin flap will become the "ear" as the two overlapping parts drift apart due to oven spring. For a loaf like yours, I personally aim for a cut of almost an inch. This is no hard and fast rule, every dough and bread type is different. Once you get the basic technique right, you can experiment.

Note that the bread will expand perpendicular to the cut, so diagonal cuts should be always oriented mostly along the long axis and multiple cuts should be running parallel for quite a bit. More crosswise cuts will create the "bulge" that can be seen on your loaf, almost as if the loaf "arches its back".

Good steaming will keep the crust pliable, so that oven spring can open the slashes well.


Identify a round kitchen tool with perforated and hinged metal leaves My old roommate left this in my kitchen before moving out.  I can't remember what it is or used for.  Is this part of a grill?  Does it go in my sink to trap things that shouldn't go down the drain?  What is it used for?

It's a steamer basket.

If you pull the leaves apart it will look like this:

Then you put it into a saucepan like this:

You put water into the saucepan (the legs at the bottom keep the bottom of the basket clear of the water). Then you can use it for steaming vegetables, dumplings, etc. You put a lid onto the saucepan to keep the steam in.


Do I finish a day-ahead sauce before or after refrigerating? I am making a lamb-based pinot noir sauce a day ahead of time. The sauce is finished with butter.

Should I finish it when I take it off the stove? or when I reheat it the next day?

Sometimes finishing is referred to as enriching, and from what I've seen, the finishing ingredient tends to be something that breaks down or otherwise changes in cooking, like walnut oil or cognac. The purpose is to keep the flavour of the ingredient without cooking it; finish it when you reheat it.


how to make crystallized ginger powder I make chocolate bonbons and in my new recipe I am trying to make a ginger ganache topped with dark chocolate. (This is the easy part).

The hard part is when you think about a new shape for it. So what I want is to put on top of each bonbon, little of crystallized ginger, where they look like sea salt flakes.

I don't know how to do it, but I saw it in a chocolate shop, long time ago where they sprinkle it on some bonbon.

I finely grated the ginger but now the weird part of how should I crystallize them. Do I just add sugar on, and leave them a few hours ?

The normal way of making crystallised ginger is to boil 1-cm cubes or slices of ginger briefly in water a couple of times to get rid of the bitterness, then simmer it for a long time in syrup. Once it's nice and soft, you drain off as much of the syrup as possible, then coat the pieces in granulated sugar.

If you have already grated it, I guess you could still use the same method, but you wouldn't need to simmer it in syrup for so long, and draining the syrup off might be a challenge. If you add enough sugar, it will eventually absorb the remaining syrup, and I am sure that the surplus (gingery) sugar won't go to waste!


How do I cut and serve my ribs? I slow-cooked spare ribs on my grill yesterday:

I'm not sure if that picture does it justice, but they were very tasty.

The problem I had was cutting and serving them to my family.  Is there a particular knife I should use to cut these ribs?

Also, is there a particular way I should cut them?  I'm trying to reduce the mess.

I'd personally go with a standard carving set: Very sharp non serrated long carving knife and a carving fork to help hold the meat steady without getting in-there with your hands.

Assuming you're right handed I'd start on the right with the with the ribs running up away from you, maybe slightly pointing to the left. Then cut along the bone, close to the bone so all the meat is on one side the finished cut. You should be able to get your fork one rib along the rack from where you're cutting but work out what feels best


Fenugreek Sprouts - How am I doing? Am I done? 12 hours ago

Now

They're definitely slowing down. They're pleasant as is, I could throw them into a salad or sandwich right now and they would be a nice addition. I'd like them even better if they would grow longer, fatter tails (heads?), but I don't want to go too far and wake up to dead stuff. Should I keep going or quit while I'm ahead? I think I first soaked them 4.5 days ago.

According to Sprout People. sprouting fenugreek should require about 2-3 days, which you are already passed.

They show pictures of the various stages; yours look quite similar to their "ready to harvest" picture:

The sample ones show a sprout length of about 2.5 - 3 times the length of the initial seed; the ones you show are close to 3-4 times as long.  This would suggest they are quite ready.

Note that in some sense, sprouting is a zero-sum game.   They are not rooted in soil, and so cannot absorb any nutrients.  Any growth of the sprout is paid for by consuming the calories and nutrition in the initial seed.  Waiting too long will just cause them to die.


What is a proper Manhattan? I've ordered these a few times, and had wildly varying results - hardly surprising, given the general lack of training among bartenders around these parts, but confusing none the less!

So now I'm curious: what should a Manhattan be composed of?

A traditional Manhattan is two shots of rye or bourbon, one shot of sweet vermouth, a dash of bitters and a cherry, shaken and strained into a martini glass. I prefer on the rocks in a rocks glass, myself.

A perfect Manhattan is similar, but uses a half shot each of sweet and dry vermouth. They tend to be more interesting when paired with a higher quality whiskey.

I'm also a big fan of white whiskey (aka, high quality moonshine) in Manhattans.


How should I adjust oven temperature/time to have two dishes ready at the same time? I want to cook two vegetable dishes at one time for a dinner party.

The first, a vegetable loaf, has to be cooked at 325° F for 1 hour
The other, a casserole, requires 350° F for 30 min.

How can I adjust temperatures or time to have these two ready at one time?

25ºF isn't such a big difference, so I'd just split the temperature in the middle: 335-340F.

Instead of 60', aim at 50' and check for doneness by sticking a pin in the loaf. If it comes out clean, it's done.

I'd leave the casserole at 30' and then check. If it's done, it's done. If not, you can keep the oven going some time more.


What to do with leftover almond peel? I always soak almonds at night and peel them the next morning. I'm just wondering if I can do anything with the leftover almond skin. Any suggestions?

I made bacon  Mixed together 2 tablespoons oil,  3 tbs soy sauce or tamari, 2 tbs nutritional yeast, 1 tbs woostershire, 1/2 tbs maple syrup, 3/4 tbs hot paprika in a bowl.  Mix in 3 cups loose Almond skins.  Bake 375 for approx 20 minutes on non stick surface until crispy.  BLT waiting to happen.  Or use as bacon bits on salad...


Are there uses for sodium citrate other than with cheese? I bought a tub of sodium citrate to use for this recipe. It's been in the cupboard a while and I've since discovered a mild allergy to dairy which means I won't be making it again any time soon.

Are there other things you can do with sodium citrate or am I better off giving it away?

Sodium citrate is sometimes used in "spherification", a rather unnecessary "molecular gastronomy" technique. Beyond that, it's generally used with dairy, so not much help to you. Also, if you don't have any on hand, it can be produced pretty easily by combining lemon juice and baking soda in the proper ratio. If I were you, I'd give away the tub.


Chest Freezer TOO full? I have a medium size chest freezer. I've been having an ongoing debate with a friend of mine. I believe that you shouldn't stuff your freezer to the top and he says otherwise. I have no internal fan in the freezing compartment.

My refrigerator freezer has a visible fan so I know that foods cannot be stuffed tightly in the compartment because the air needs to circulate. It is a self-defrosting refrigerator/freezer whereas the chest freezer is NOT.

Thank you to anyone that knows the correct answer.

Your friend is correct. The only way your chest freezer is too full is if the lid does not close properly. I imagine you could construct a way to fill the freezer such that some sectors of the freezer may not reach the correct temperature, but that would be a real challenge on most modern chest freezers.

There are even some advantages to keeping your freezer full (see this question):

  if you need to survive intermittent power outages, having a lot of ice or food in the fridge will keep it cool longer
  a larger amount of food in the fridge/freezer will make it easier to chill or freeze new food more rapidly, which may sometimes aid in
  food safety/preservation
  similarly, having more food may help to minimize small temperature fluctuations when opening the door frequently, again perhaps aiding in
  food safety/quality in some cases

There are some disadvantages to having a full freezer, like it may take longer to find what you are looking for or if you are like me it may be hard to even know what is in your freezer. That can lead to losing track and having some food stuffs that could be years old stuck at the bottom of the freezer. But in general, there's nothing wrong with a full freezer.


What sort of kebab is used with Chellow Kebab? I came across the following picture

in wikipedia the entire serving was being called Chellow Kebab without separately naming the Kebab Variety.

I would like to know the name of the Kebab as displayed in the picture and the recipe to make it

Chelo (or Chellow) kebab refers to the entire dish which consists of the kebabs (usually 2), rice, and usually grilled tomatoes. Sometimes other accompaniments are included as well.

The most common types of kebabs used for this dish are koobideh (ground beef) and barg (ground lamb). It is sometimes served with one of each. There are exceptions and, though not as common, other types of kebab may be used.

If you perform a Google search for Chelo kebab recipe you will get tons of results. Most of the recipes include both the rice and the kebab.


How much cake batter to make two 6"x2" cakes? I have two 6"x2" cake pans, and am wondering how many cups of a box cake mix batter I need to put into each pan?  Thank you!!

It depends upon how thick you want it. A 6"x2" rectangular pan, filled 1" deep will obviously contain 12 cubic inches of batter. 12 cubic inches = .83 US cup. So, to fill both pans to a depth of 1 inch, you would need 1.66 cups. To fill both pans to a thickness of 1.5 inches, you would need 2.49 cups. To fill both pans to a depth of 2 inches, you would need 3.32 cups of batter.

That's a 6X2 inch rectangle, of indeterminate depth, which is how I interpreted your question. A round pan with a diameter of 6 inches would hold 28.3 cubic inches of batter for each inch of depth. 28.3 cubic inches equals 1.98 cups.

Here's a conversion site for cubic inches to cups.

A 6"x2" rectangle is an odd shape and size, so I included an answer to another possible interpretation of your question. Please comment, especially if you don't feel that I've fully answered your question.


How to tell when broccoli has gone bad? I often get big jumbo bags of pre-cut Broccoli from Costco with a sell by date that is usually about a week out from my date of purchase. The florets seem perfectly fine on the sell by date, and I've cooked and eaten them as much as a week later.

What signs should I look for suggesting that it's time to throw the rest out?

As many people here have noted, these "sell by" and "best by" dates are not very consistent, accurate or well defined. If your broccoli looks fine and smells fine, chances are it's fine.

Signs of spoilage to look for are: sliminess on the surface, mushy areas in the broccoli flesh, small dark areas dotting the "canopy" or the tops of the florets, or furry moldy areas anywhere on the broccoli.

In addition, there was a recent question here  I bought a bag of Brussels sprouts that looked fine but smelled exceptionally bad, even for sprouts    where the vegetables looked great but smelled horrible. I have never experienced that myself, but certainly if your broccoli begins to stink, toss it.

If it starts to look limp and wilted but fine otherwise, it's still ok to cook.


Convert chocolate chip cookie recipe to chocolate chocolate chip cookie I have a really good chocolate chip cookie recipe. I'd like to convert this recipe to have a chocolate dough (ie make chocolate chocolate chip cookies). How can I convert it without losing the texture of chocolate chip cookies?

Here is the recipe, if that helps

2 1/2 cups flour
¾   cup sugar
¾   cup brown sugar
Tbs vanilla
tsp baking soda
pinch salt
2   eggs
1stick of margarine (more can be added for better taste)
½   cup chips (chocolate/vanilla)

Mix all ingredients except chocolate chips.
Add chips to dough
Make balls of EQUAL SIZE
Bake at 350 for about 12 minutes (or until they begin browning)
Let cool before eating

Replace 1-2 tbsp of the flour with cocoa powder, depending on how chocolatey you like your cookies.


How do I thicken my Japanese curry after the fact? I made a lamb based Japanese curry in a slow cooker and unlike my previous efforts (using many of the same ingredients, though in different proportions), it turned out runny and underwhelming.

What techniques exist to "beef up" a curry after the fact? Would putting it back in the slow cooker with more veggies for another half-day help? Would adding another portion of curry mix help?

Several options, depending on the type of curry and the ingredients already present.
Japanese Style Curries
Using a commercial, packaged Japanese-style roux:
Add another brick or two from the package. This type dissolves nicely generally with minimal clumping.
Using a homemade, Japanese style roux:
You can prepare additional roux by melting fat (butter, beef fat, etc) in a saucier, foaming it if needed (as with butter), and whisking in flour (we usually use a 1:1 ratio). Allow the flour to brown to the desired level, keeping in mind that the thickening power decreases the darker it gets. If you prefer not to use flour, potato starch/katakuriko is a reasonable alternative. When suitably dark, take some of the liquid from your existing curry and mix in to the roux, whisking vigorously to minimize the risk of clumping. Add more of the existing curry liquid if you think there's a risk of clumping, then reintegrate it back into the main pot. (if you were starting this roux from scratch you'd also integrate fat-cooked spices into the roux, but your problem does not appear to be flavor).
Avoiding fussiness:
Mix cornstarch or potato starch (katakuriko) in cold water. Once reasonably dissolved, add it to the curry pot. This type of thickener can create a slightly odd texture in a Japanese curry, as the browned roux creates a more velvety texture, but that doesn't mean I haven't done it before in a pinch. The liquid will thicken as it boils.
Indian Style Curries
For more Indian-style curries, there are other options.
If your curry contains lentils, chickpeas or potatoes:
Smash some of them in a small bowl, or just against the edge of the pan. Allow the pot to boil a bit.
If you have almonds, cashews or similar nuts available:
Grind a small quantity of nuts in a coffee/spice mill, and incorporate them into the curry. These need to boil more gently, and I usually do this sauce more intentionally by making them the focal point (dum ki ghom, for example, which has mushrooms and tomato puree in a nut sauce) but can rescue an existing curry too.