Can chicken be partially deep fried to fully fry later? I own a small food truck serving fried chicken wings, fries and fish and tenders. Serving food fast is the key.  I want to give customers a hot meal but, made to order is time consuming. Can I partially deep fry the meat and then finish as the orders come in?

Stephie's answer covers the main issues.  I would add that you should probably check with any government regulations about food handling.  I don't know where you are located, but many states have guidelines about how commercial cooking operations must handle "partially cooked" foods, often requiring documentation of your process, temperature and time monitoring records, labeling of all partially cooked containers (and separation from other raw or cooked food), etc.  In the U.S., these are often closely related to the FDA Food Code.  (Partial cooking regulations are generally a little more complex than any "2-hour" or "4-hour" rule which is often brought up here.)

Particularly if you plan to try Stephie's 3rd method of partial cooking followed by cooling to refrigerate or freeze, there are generally very specific practices about the amount of time spent during partial cooking and the amount of time spent cooling (sometimes in specific temperature ranges).  Usually this method is best for bulk batches prepared in advance, so you have time and attention to monitor the process.  That's why most fast-food restaurants that use this method tend to do this as a large-scale industrial process in advance, then ship out the partially cooked frozen or refrigerated food to be simply heated and served.

And if you are going to try to implement Stephie's 2nd method (holding for short times without temperature control), you'll want to have logbooks to keep track of holding time and label every container of partially cooked food.  You'll also need to be absolutely certain to keep various batches separate to avoid cross-contamination between partially cooked food, particularly if some of the food may not have reached 140F before holding.

In general, the safest and easiest thing to do is generally to bring food to at least 135F and hold it there.  (I should note that the 2013 revisions of the Food Code say 135F minimum for holding, instead of 140F; this change has not yet been implement in most FDA consumer guidelines, but it's now the standard for commercial cooking.)  Trying anything else requires a lot more attention to detail to prevent potentially dangerous bacterial growth.  That's the reason behind the complex Food Code regulations covering partially cooked foods; there's a much greater likelihood of making people sick if you're not careful.


How does vacuum sealing something in a mason jar help? I use a vacuum sealer for sous vide cooking, and also have a lot of mason jars I use for juice glasses, storing leftovers, etc. I noticed a mason jar attachment for my vacuum sealer, but I'm a little confused as to the science and benefit behind it.

Obviously after you use the attachment and seal the container, there's still air left in the container. How is this better than just screwing something in the jar?

Would I see benefit using this method for storing items that might not be practical to vacuum seal in a bag, such as stews?

The idea is to remove oxygen and moisture and get a good seal on the jar. The vacuum pulls the lid against the jar, forcing the gasket more tightly against the rim. Note that the seal won't be as good as with actual canning, though, where the gasket is also softened by heat, so it molds better to the rim.
That may or may not actually help you out, though: not all food suffers terribly from oxygen and moisture exposure, and not all food safety issues are mitigated simply by vacuum seals.
Notably, vacuum sealing is not canning. (I've heard of people using vacuum sealers in that context, and that may be part of why your sealer came with that attachment, but it's not generally a safe usage.) What really matters here is what the food is, not what the storage vessel is. If it's something that'd benefit from vacuum storage in a bag, it'll also benefit in a jar. Everything still has to be stored the same way it would be without the vacuum seal.
The National Center for Home Food Preservation has a great article: Should I Vacuum Package Food at Home? The key point:

These machines may extend the storage time of refrigerated foods, dried foods and frozen foods. However, vacuum packaging is not a substitution for the heat processing of home canned foods.
Vacuum packaging is also not a substitution for the refrigerator or freezer storage of foods that would otherwise require it. In fact, vacuum packaging can add to the concerns associated with storing of these perishable foods (which are foods not stable at room temperature and requiring cold storage).

By far the biggest food safety concern here is botulism, because you're creating an anaerobic environment where C. botulinum will happily grow. Anything with any possibility of bacterial growth will need to be refrigerated or frozen to stay safe.
Probably the most common case where this is useful and clearly safe is non-perishable dry goods. That article gives nuts and crackers as examples. Removing the oxygen makes the oil in nuts go rancid more slowly, and removing the water vapor makes crackers go stale more slowly. Anything else with substantial oil content or crisp cooked starch (like chips) would benefit similarly. Mason jars might be a slightly better choice for some of these things since a flexible bag would be more prone to crushing them, but otherwise, the jar isn't the important part, the vacuum seal is.


How did I strip the patina off my wok? I do not have much experience or knowledge of cooking, but I've slowly been learning.

Today I followed this recipe: Beef Stir-Fry. Besides some vegetable substitutions, I had a bit more meat and doubled the sauce ingredients. For the acid, I used lime juice for the first half (2 tablespoons), but ran out, so I used rice vinegar for the other two tablespoons.

After the meat had been cooked, I removed it and reduced the sauce. Around that time I noticed that the patina in the direct middle of the wok had been stripped.

The seasoning on this wok was pretty good (as you can see around the edges of the center), and just this week I had made another stir-fry in it that had rice vinegar in the sauce. Since I had no issues with that, I figured it'd be OK to use lime juice and rice vinegar in this recipe.

The two main differences between what I did earlier and just now was A) earlier I used canola oil instead of olive oil and B) earlier I added the sauce last instead of first.

My gut is telling me that when I reduced the sauce, the acid stripped away the seasoning, which didn't happen before because of either temperature or length of time. However, I just am not certain.

I'm mostly interested in how I can avoid this in the future, and what to do now with the wok. Should I scrape off the rest of the patina and start over? Or just continue to cook with it normally (and more carefully) to rebuild it?

I am pretty sure the acidic sauce reduction attacked the seasoning. Short cooking time of acidic elements does not have much effect, but longer cooking times are usually harsh for the seasoning.
It's not a real problem though. It will come back easily. Just continue cooking as usual.
To avoid this, usually Chinese cooking adds the sauce at the end, and uses some starch instead of reducing in stir-fry dishes.

On a side note, I think that your "patina" looks more like burned oil/whatever than seasoning, but it may be because of the quality of the picture. Is it smooth ?


Does 1 tea spoon correspond to half table spoon? I don't have a measuring glass. I just have a tablespoon (15 ml). Can 1 tea spoon be considered half of 1 table spoon?

One tablespoon is three teaspoons, so no, it can't be considered half a tablespoon because it's one-third instead :)

You can use three teaspoons to measure out one tablespoon, but it might be tricky to measure the other way: as Rumstacio said below, the 1/3 is by volume, and it can be difficult to eyeball the volume of a semi-sphere (1.3 the height of the spoon is not 1/3 the volume because it's wider at the top).


What is this oddly shaped hinged device with indentations? What is this device? It's about 8cm long when closed, and has little indentations on the top piece and raised lines on the bottom. Possibly it could be used to crush garlic etc.?

It's a lemon/lime wedge juice squeezer.
Only place I've ever really seen them used is in British Indian restaurants.
Pop a wedge in the gap, squeeze the handles, juice can be poured with reasonable accuracy from any of the fluted edges. No messy fingers.

Image from Amazon


Making a natural gravy? We generally do a roast on the weekend and we end up with a load of really nice juices in the roasting tray.

What is the best method of turning this into a nice natural gravy?

My technique:

1 tbsp Fat (from pan, or use butter)
1 tbsp Flour
Pan Juice
Stock (total liquid about 2 cups - omit if you have enough pan juice)

Step 1: Make Roux

Melt fat in medium high saute pan
Whisk in flour, getting out all the lumps.  (This is called a roux)
Continue to heat until smooth, and the roux is just starting to darken.
Remove pan from heat.

Step 2: Prepare Liquids

Remove solids from roasting pan. (let meat stand... etc.)
Whisk, scrape, deglaze the roasting pan.  If it's brown, you want it, and want it dissolved
Strain juices. skim off excess fat.

Step 3: Assemble

Return roux to heat, and keep whisking.
While whisking, slowly pour in the pan juices.
Once blended, reduce heat and let it thicken.  Salt to taste.


What is the term for 'sunny side up' omelette? I have a technique when cooking omlettes where you only cook them on one side, and gather up the edges - but let the cheese accumulate in the soft centre.

Friends have suggested several names for this:

scramelette
sunny side up omelette
soft-centred omelette

The thought occurs that there must be a canonical name - which I'd like to know so I can order it at a restaurant.

My question is: What is the term for 'sunny side up' omelette?

I believe that is called a classic french omelette.
"Sunnyside" comes from frying unbroken eggs, where the yolk resembles the sun, and by not flipping the egg over makes it "Sunnyside up".


Best way to clean a countertop if you are preparing food on it Just had my kitchen remodeled and this is the first time I've had a kitchen with enough counter space that it's big enough to roll dough etc on. Plus it's the first time it's not a tile countertop so clean up is much easier.

I've been cleaning the counter tops using soft scrub with bleach - and I'm guessing any residue from that will not taste good, or be good for your health :)

What would be the best solution for cleaning a countertop that will come into direct contact with food? Just dish soap and water?

There is a difference between cleaning and sanitizing.

Cleaning

If you have something greasy on the counter then you need some sort
of detergent to solubilize the grease. (You might want to then use a vinegar solution to be sure and get all the detergent off the counter.)
If you were doing something like kneading bread, then you need
something a bit more abrasive to scrub the countertop to get off
stuck bits of dried out dough.

Sanitizing

A diluted bleach solution works well. (Say if you leaked some juice from raw meat on the counter.)


Are shallots less gas-producing than yellow onion? I realise the answer's probably subjective and might vary among individuals but in your experience, have you found cooking with shallots to be less 'gassy' than using yellow onions?

I'm not allergic to alliums but I become very gassy from them. Even a small amount of onion powder will give me very malodorous gas - fine if I'm alone for the next 24-36 hours. I cook Asian dishes and use a small amount of green onion. While I still have gas, it's less than regular onion.

Please don't suggest asafoetida as I've used it before and didn't think it made a good substitute. It also wouldn't suit the soups and stews I normally use onion in.

This is pretty subjective but I find shallots are right up there with onions (particularly red onions). Of course, not all shallots are created equal, e.g. banana shallots tend to be stronger in both flavour and 'gaseous effect'.

(If you haven't already) I'd suggest trying:

Leeks
Scapes
Wild garlic (if you are in an area where it can be foraged)
Even fennel when cooked long enough (it loses the anise flavour) has been known as a decent substitute


Butter cream icing substitutions for covering the cake with fondant Is it Okay to have whipped cream icing before covering the cake with fondant? I don't have enough time to make butter cream so I would know other alternatives that could be used in this case. I have heard that whipped cream might make the fondant melt, is it true?

Butter cream consists mostly of almost water-free fat (butter or shortening) and sugar. Whipped cream has about 30% fat, the remaining part is solids and mostly water.

Everything that has significant amount of water will dissolve fondant since fondant consists of sugar. For example, cream, yoghurt, cream cheese, mascarpone and pudding (custard) are out. You have to use an icing with a very high fat content.

I am assuming that your buttercream is a meringue-based buttercream or custard-based buttercream (because you stated that you don't have much time to do a time-consuming cream). You could make a simple buttercream (also known as American buttercream) which basically consists of just almost water-free fat (butter or shortening), sugar, some flavour (e.g. vanilla extract) and a tiny bit water/milk. Making this buttercream is (almost) as fast as whipping cream.

A website (sorry, in German) says that you can use ganache, some cream creese icings with a high butter/shortening content (and white chocolate to increase the fat content), or warm jam (not cold jam due to possible condensation!). I don't know how high a "high butter/shortening content" has to be, so I would stick to the simple buttercream.


Pizza dough keeps breaking through plastic When storing freshly made pizza dough in the fridge, I use your everyday plastic wrap, two sheets, to wrap around the dough. Sometimes, when the dough expands, it breaks through the plastic and the bit exposed outside the plastic dries up. Not the end of the world, but annoying. Anyone know a better, more foolproof way to store dough in the fridge? Thanks.

Use a 'big enough' baggie or 'big enough' rigid container. Most dough recipes call for the dough proofs (rising of the dough) to be double in size.

Use a baggie or container 2-1/2 to 3 times the pre-rise size of the dough ball

Many recipes call for an oiled/grease vessel covered with cling film (plastic wrap), kitchen towel or damp kitchen towel to allow for the dough to proof/rise.

I have never encountered a yeast dough recipe or anyone's recommendation to 'wrap it in plastic' film


My food doesn't have too much taste / taste allways the same? I "cook" everyday for myself and my girlfriend and I enjoy doing so. So this year I decided to really learn how to cook.
I am doing at least a new dish every month in order to try new things, but I often feel that my dishes taste the same (that means: no taste at all).

I will try to be more specific:

I buy almost everything in supermarket, I try to choose good ones and prefer to get loose onions than bag ones. I also invested a little bit and got some "mixed" pepper. Until now I have always tried to use the "real" ingredient (tomato instead of canned tomato) to get a better taste, but I just learned this is not the case.

While preparing I usually cut everything, 2 onions like this, 2 garlics like this and 1 tomato. I added the onion, than tomato, 500g meat, salt and pepper, garlic and then nutmeg. After everything I added 2 fine cut hard-boiled egg.

I used high heat during the whole process when preparing.

No, this recipe is not coming from a cook book. I am doing from what I've seen/eaten.

Is it possible that I chose the wrong tomato / onion to use?
Am I just using "basic" seasoning?
Do the order that I add the ingredients influence on the taste?

Sorry for the broad question before, I had no idea what could help and what could be just "noise". I hope the more detailed info helps, if there is more I can add, please let me know :)

I don't know where you are living or the quality of the food you can get your hands on, but these are (obvious) generalities that should be true:

Ingredient quality plays a lot, for example most tomatoes sold in supermarket are just reddish water bags without any taste. You can remedy this either by looking for better quality ones or by adding tomato paste or some kind of tomato concentration. Ground meat, depending on the fat concentration, freshness, etc., can range from fast food leather to deliciousness.
Preparation is something really complicated. Just for the onions there are more than a couple of options for the preparation, did you make your onion sweat? Did you sauté them? When you did add the tomatoes, did you let them reduce and form a sauce? Did add garlic at the very end - the garlic flavor is destroyed really quickly by heat - or if not, did you put enough for it to survive the whole cooking process?
It might just be that you are preparing things in the same "style", hence the impression things are more bland than they might be. Try truly different ones. It might help.
To get really tasty meals, salting is preponderant. However most people underestimate the quantity. By a factor ten or so. Salting at the end of the cooking in the plate is really not ideal too in most meals. You should taste and adjust salt at every step of the preparation. A rule of thumb I heard in kitchen is 10g of salt per kilogram (Measure it in a scale; that's a lot more than what you might think).
Or it is the reverse and it might just be cultural apparatus, used to eat meals heavy on sugar or salt you need time to adapt to the normal taste of things.

As you said the question is really broad, hence the answers are too. Try to understand where the issue comes from by following recipes and then experiment with each factor until you get it right.


Removing Salsa flavor from vegetable soup I was making homemade vegetable soup. I had used 2 pint jars of home-canned tomatoes then accidentally added a jar of home made salsa. My daughter hates salsa so what can I do to take away some of the salsa taste. I don't like how it tastes right now either and it also has too much salt. Any idea what I can do now to fix my mistake?

First off, you may want to consider starting over. You have 2 big problems, and you could end up spending a great deal of time (and ingredients) trying to fix it and end up with something twice as big and just as unpalatable.

If you really want to do it the salsa part is easy: cook it. What many people don't like about salsa is raw flavors, they will mellow quite a bit with the application of heat. If you don't tell your daughter then chances are she won't even know!

The real problem is the salt, once you add it there's no sure-fire way to get it out. If something is very salty the only thing you can do is add ingredients that aren't salty in order to even out the salty flavor. You could make another vegetable soup with no salt and then mix the two, or add some water to your soup and see if that fixes it.

If it isn't too salty I have had some success using potato to absorb some of the salt. Potatoes are good at soaking up salt flavors, you can add some cup up potatoes in and once they are cooked take them out and some of the salt comes with them. Or if you find that the combination works leave them in.

So what I would do is if it's not too far gone would be to add some unsalted stock or water, and then some cut up potatoes. Cook it until the potatoes are tender, then taste. If it's acceptable then serve it with a smile, if not throw it away and chalk it up to experience.


Best approach to making a loaf of bread stale I have a recipe that calls for a loaf of "stale country bread".  Instead of waiting for the bread to stale, I'd like to engineer it.
I plan to take the loaf and place it in a paper bag.  But for how long?  Is this the right approach?

Don't use a paper bag, it actually helps the bread keep somewhat longer.
Your best approach is to put it in the fridge. This is the temperature at which the starch crystalizes at the highest speed.
Update, shamelessly stealing from Tristan: If you cut it up first, you will speed up the process too. The more surface you have exposed to airflow, the better.
You'll still need to give it time, but it's maybe half the time it needs at room temperature.


Are there culinary uses for the water left from peeling almonds? Is there a possible use for the water used for peeling almonds?

(Throw the almonds in boiling water and let them soak for a couple of mins before peeling them: the water left is yellowish and almond scented)

Generally, there is no reason not to use it. However, I'm hard pressed to think of a good place, generally because good cooking prefers other, stronger flavored liquids instead of water.

An application where you can have the flavor on its own would be making ayran or a lassi. I think it would be an improvement over plain-water-ayran.

For other uses, just substitute plain water to get a slight nutty hint. I like to pair rice with nuts, so you could use it instead of pure water to cook rice. Or add it to a pot of stock you are making - with a complex stock of a meat and several vegetables, it will be too subtle a taste to register consciously, but will enrich the flavor as a whole. For a simpler stock (e.g. just chicken with classic mirepoix) the taste of almonds can get too strong, depending on the quantity you use.


Turning home made chicken stock into broth I made chicken stock and froze it in an ice cube tray. I now want to use it to make chicken broth for a recipe. The recipe calls for 2 cans of broth (around 4 cups of broth total) so how many 'cubes' of stock should I use?

If you are just going to season your stock (according to the formula "broth = seasoned stock"), simple math will suffice:  4 cups = 32 * 1/8 cups -> 32 of your cubes.
But if you are planning on using the stock and re-boil it wit fresh meat and vegs you should consider using more stock, because you will have to calculate for evaporation. Depending on your habits (do you cover your pot, how long are you boiling it) I'm guesstimating between 10% and 20% extra. If you end up with too little, you should be fine with a dash or two of water without compromising the results.


Preparing/Seasoning/Using a Carbon Steel Pot I am looking for a large (approx 2' x 4' x 1.5') vessel in which to warm maple syrup for production. My first thought is to use a "pot" of some sort but I am not sure how to prepare it to both be 'non-stick' and so that flavors will not be transferred from the pot to the syrup. Is there a way to treat a large pot to do this?

I have looked at stainless steel pots in this size range, but they are more expensive than I care to invest in this project.

Are there any other alternatives accomplish the same goal?

You can't do it. Cooking vessels are divided into reactive and non-reactive. Practically all uncoated metal pots (except for stainless steel) are reactive. This means that they will leach an off taste into the food. There is no way around it, and seasoning won't help either. It is effective for frying, but not boiling.

If you want to have no metal leached into your food, you need to buy a nonreactive pot.


How to know when food grade plastic has melted? I just received a super hot delivery of soup in a polypropylene container (the plastic symbol on the bottom is a 5). I noticed the lid was very pliable in comparison to the rest of the container to the point I could easily bend it and cause the surface to warp by poking it with my finger. After lifting my finger it would bounce back somewhat, but retain some of that warping. As it cools it's returning to it's original shape and becoming harder to manipulate.

I'm wondering if this implies melting/leeching has occurred and if I should just return the soup to be safe.

Plastic is an amorphous solid. This means that it doesn't have a sharp melting point like water, but it goes through a state where it is softer and softer, until it turns liquid.

So yes, the plastic was in this state when you touched it. If you want to call this transitional state "melted", then it was melted. Unless you prefer to call it "softened". Everyday language is blurry enough to permit both.

If you are worried about melted plastic actually mixing throughout the soup, like vinegar would mix if you were to add it, that's not what happened.

As to "leeching", this is not well defined and not usually covered by food safety rules. Plastics do tend to have overheating restrictions over which they char, but as for "leeching", the only regulated one I know of would be melamine, and I'm pretty sure that's not what your box was made of. So throwing it out or not depends on your personal feelings about leeching.


Recreating New York street vendors' "halal chicken over rice" New York City is filled with carts selling all sorts of food, but the most common ones are the halal carts. They each have their own recipes, but all have the same basic signature dishes: chicken or lamb, over rice or in a pita, with optional "white sauce" and "hot sauce." The lamb is generally gyro meat, but the chicken is something unique... chunks of white and dark meat marinated in a rich, flavorful blend of generically middle eastern spices, sauteed and chopped up. The rice is usually either a bright yellow or an even brighter orange.

I'm wondering how I might make this at home: what spices might I put on the chicken? What's the white sauce? What's the hot sauce? What's in the rice? I'm usually good at figuring out spices, so I'd expect to find the flavor of cumin, cinnamon, coriander, and the like, but I can't make out a single distinct flavor in the delicious blends used at most of these carts! The only hint I have is the whole cardamom pods I've occasionally bitten into.

(I've tried asking, but the vendors invariably lose their understanding of the english language at precisely this moment :)

My guess is that the chicken is a variation on chicken kebabs. These are often made by marinating the chicken in yogurt with garlic and turmeric. The same technique can be used for chicken on the bone.

I'm not sure for the rice -- maybe someone else can help out?

The hot sauce is most likely harissa. This is a generic term for a number of spicy sauces used in the middle east and northern Africa. The basic recipe is dried chilies, other spices, and olive oil. Here are some variations.

There is also a Yemenite hot sauce known as skhug or zhug. (It may also be known in Israel by the generic name Harif, which means spicy or sharp. Note the same root as Harissa.) This can be green or red or even brown, depending on ingredients. Green zhug is often made with cilantro, while the brown one includes tomatoes. The red one includes red peppers.

The white sauce is probably a variant on yogurt sauce, such as labneh. This is often combined with garlic and a green herb such as parsley.


Why throw salt over a barbecue before cooking? At a recent barbecue in Chile, I watched the chef throw large handfuls of salt over the charcoal a few minutes before placing on the meat.

What would be the reason for this?

Salt is a good means to control/suppress flames and flareups without having a cooling effect on the coals.


How long does it take to pasteurize something at 60C? Take for example a custard. I recall reading somewhere, probably on the internet, that heating it to 70C will kill all the bacteria in it for sure. I also recall reading that holding it for 5 minutes at 60C will do the same thing.

I’m having trouble finding a proper reference for this. Is what I said actually true? It must have been studied in food science, so is there a proper source for this?

According to J.D. Schuman, info that I found in Douglas Baldwin's guide for sous-vide:

  Place egg in a 135°F (57°C) water bath for at least 1 hour and 15 minutes (Schuman et al., 1997).

J. D. Schuman, B. W. Sheldon, J. M. Vandepopuliere, and H. R. Ball, Jr. Immersion heat treatments for inactivation of Salmonella enteritidis with intact eggs. Journal of Applied Microbiology, 83:438–444, 1997.

This is for whole eggs in the shell, so for your custard the time should vary according to the volume (as it will take longer for the temperature to reach the  center).

Here is a time table for Salmonella reduction from The Modernist Cuisine (by Nathan Myrvold):


Can vegetable juices stop bread from rising? I used vegetables juice for the additional liquid ingredients in milk bread, and it didn't rise. I think there is something in vegetables juice that killed the fermentation of dough.

This is a study, a food experiment. I used radish, mustard green, ginger, onion, garlic, beans, tomato, squash, eggplant, winged beans, winter melon, bitter melon, mexican turnip, and sponge gourd juice. The first step that we did was, we mixed first the yeast, milk and the juice. After mixing all the ingredients the dough become sticky, and it didn't rise.

In our first trial, we have done it right by using the extract of vegetables. And in our 2nd trial, we used the process of juicing, we actually use a juicer to get all the juice. and after all, the juice had an effect in our dough.

I wish that I knew whether you are trying to make a hokkaido milk bread, or an Ayurvedic-bread-bomb with a basic white bread recipe...like this :http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/white-bread-easy-white-bread/

I am going to answer this like you're making a more nutrient-dense plain white bread.

There are probably a combination of things going on in your veggie-slurry with respect to either pH or bioactive compound inhibition, and possibly with stability of bubbles formed(if any) in the dough.
 It would be useful to know if the dough or slurry exhibited any yeast activity...small bubbles...something? I am also assuming that you are using Saccharomyces cerevisiae for yeast.

A pH less than 4 can inhibit activity in bread yeast strains.  Get a pH reading of your veggie maceration prior to adding it to the yeast. ** consider using a sourdough starter yeast mix, if for no other reason than variety...yay bacillus!
Some of the bioactive compounds in your veggies could be impacting the yeasts function.
Evans et al notes in their research that linoleic acid hydroperoxide, a result of the linoleic acid in the plant fats undergoing free-radical oxidation (happens when exposed to light or heat) is toxic to Saccharomyces cerevisiae even in small amounts

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC106912/

Cauo et al found that in EtOH fermentation, carbonyl compounds like pyrogallol aldehyde and o-phthaldehyde inhibited the glucose to ethanol conversion activity.  My personal feeling is that some inhibition is occuring due to a larger presence of those active compounds from the veggies.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24401115

On that phenolic note...Marjorie Murphy Cowan in her review of plants as anti-microbial agents mentions that hydroxylated phenols are toxic to microbes(more hydroxylated the phenol is, the more toxic it is to microbes) through non-specific protein interactions and oxidized phenolic reactions with sulfhydryl groups.
http://cmr.asm.org/content/12/4/564.full
 All that said, look up phenolic compound distributions for each of the extra tasty veggies you used and see how many are hydroxylated and to what extent. Pubmed is your friend.
Sideline, the catechol and some of other hydroxylated phenols are thought to act as quarum sensing molecules which are detected by the yeast when there are peroxides being generated(like an overcrowding signal that the yeast use to "talk" to one another).  Because of that, I also wonder whether a huge load of those phenols might stop or "fake out" the yeast before they got going.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3716134/

Lastly, your dough may not be holding bubbles formed by the yeast.  If any of the little bugs are up and working, is there perchance an ungodly amount of fat in it to block their effective action?
Try treating your veggie slurry with some GS transglutaminase to see if the enzyme action will help with the bubble stability.  The enzyme is inhibited at low pH's, so watch out for that.


Can I store a soup in my cast-iron in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours in the cast-iron pot? Can I store a soup in my cast-iron pot for up to 24 hours in the refrigerator?

Perhaps there are some types of soup that would be ok, but many foods can easily pick up a metallic taste from cast iron if left in the pot overnight. Examples are tofu fried in a cast iron frying pan, egg omelet (egg sometimes even becomes gray), and anything tomatoey. I'm sure there are others, especially mildly flavored foods, and acidic ones.

So in general, rather than find out the hard way with your particular type of soup, I recommend changing containers for storage in the refrigerator.


Botulism risk with refrigerated items Is there any risk of botulism from refrigerator pickling or brining? (referring to both meat and slices of vegetables/fruit)

I've read about the subject a fair bit, and know the inherent risks with garlic in oil or items vacuum packed in the fridge for a long time.

However, I recently read about the use of nitrite salt in refrigerator brines for cured ham (a week-long process), which the author claimed was used to maintain the colour of the meat (which darkens without the nitrites) and also prevent botulism growth. But if all the ingredients were at 4°C before going into the fridge, what botulism growth could there be, especially in one week?

Is there something I'm not aware of, or this person uninformed?

Botulism thrives in high-moisture, low-acidity, low-salinity, anaerobic environments at between 50 and 130 degrees.

In your refridgerator pickles, you're:

keeping cold
adding acid
adding salt

All of which should at least prevent the botulism from reproducing in great enough numbers to be toxic, if not outright killing it.

That's not to say nothing nasty can grow in refrigerator pickles — you're likely safe from botulism, however.


Can any KitchenAid stand mixer attachments be used to make peanut butter? Can I use any of the various attachments for my Kitchenaid stand mixer to make peanut butter? I was thinking one of the different grinding attachments might work, insofar as the machine at my local merchant looks like a hopper full of peanuts and a grinder.

The only one that could feasibly handle it would be the grinder. However, in the manual http://www.kitchenaid.com/assets/pdfs/product/ZUSECARE/FGA_Use%20and%20Care_EN.pdf on page 5 it states "Note: Very hard, dense foods such as totally dried homemade bread should not be ground in the Food Grinder. Homemade bread should be ground fresh and then oven or air-dried." If dried, dense bread is too much for the grinder then peanuts would definitely be to much as well. My recommendation is to use a food processor.


Will storing salted steak overnight ruin the meat? I've salted the steaks, but I can't get the grill going. If I store them in the fridge and cook them tomorrow, will the fact they are salted already ruin the meat?

It's quite possible that meat might even be improved.  From an article at Serious Eats :

  Indeed, the absolute best steak I had was one that I had salted on both sides then allowed to rest on a rack overnight in the refrigerator uncovered. It appears to dry out slightly, but it's only superficial—the amount of drying that occurs from an overnight rest (about 5% moisture loss) is negligible compared to the amount of moisture driven off during cooking anyway (upwards of 20%, even more in the hard-seared edges). As the salt makes its way back into the meat, you'll probably also notice that it becomes a deeper color. That's because the dissolved proteins scatter light differently than they did when they were still whole.

The 'uncovered' is important in the discussion of 'dry brining', as you want the surface to dry out without needing to blot it (which would remove salt with it) ... it doesn't have to be completely uncovered, but whatever cover it has should allow sufficient air flow for it to dry out.


How to keep a green smoothie from getting 'frothy'? I've been making a lot of green smoothies (using a Vitamix), and they have a tendency to end up with about 2 inches of undrinkable froth/foam at the top.  It seems a higher percentage of veggies vs fruit makes it worse, and spinach is particularly bad.

2 questions:

What causes this?  (my wife suspects it has to do with the fiber not breaking down -- which seems plausible, but it's just a guess)

And what can we do to prevent it?  Is there anything we can add to get them to more fully integrate?

A sample recipe, if it helps:

1-2 handfuls spinach
1 apple
1" piece ginger
1 persian cucumber
1 stalk celery
juice of 1 lemon

As Catohound already mentioned, it's a symptom of using a high speed blender.  You may find this technique useful.

  Tcrn the blender to its lowest setting and then slowly ramp it up until the top of the liquid just starts to circulate (usually around speed 4 or 5 on a Vitamix). As you run it at this low speed, you will see bubbles coming out in the center.

My wife and I do this with our Vitamix and it generally gives good results.


Is there a sweet emulsion to put on oatmeal? I've made a ton of mayo now with egg + lemon juice or vinegar + spices + oil and it got me thinking about sweet emulsions
I've been putting my savory mayo with various spices on rice and its quite nice so I'm thinking about trying to make a sweet emulsion of egg and butter with a sweet juice and maybe some sugar or other sweetener and trying it out on oatmeal!
Butter which is commonly used when you need something oily to go with sweet + eggs + a sweet fruit juice or something else sugary and sweet, maple syrup, agave, whatever you can think of, I can't find anything about this while googling. I tried "sweet mayo" and it comes up with sweeter types of mayo but not stuff I'd want to put on oatmeal.
The closest thing I can find is hollandaise sauce but that is traditionally savory as far as I can tell?
I found a newspaper from 1964 with "grape hollandaise" during my research, it's intended to be more savory though, still neat.
Are there any established sweet emulsions to put on foods that like sweet sauces? If not then what emulsions I can make to put on oatmeal or other foods that enjoy sweet sauces, pancakes, waffles, etc?

The only thing that comes to mind right now is Zabaione.
Or you could try making some sort of more liquid custard or curd


Is cheesecake a cake or a pie? Is cheesecake technically a pie or a cake?

I'm curious as to why. Are there solid definitions of what makes a dessert a cake or a pie?

Alton Brown and an Elvis impersonator called it a custard pie.


Can adding too much sauce and ingredients to fried rice make it too salty? I was cooking fried rice. I added sriracha sauce, hoisin sauce, chili garlic sauce, 4 huge sausages, egg, and a bunch of okra. The fried rice was too salty.

Would all of these sauces and ingredients really make my fried rice too salty? What can I do next time to make it less salty.

Yes, absolutely! Sauces can have loads of salt, it all depends on how much you added. You have to look at your ingredients to find the source of the salt in your dish, and then reduce one or more of them:

Rice: often rice is cooked with salt, if your rice is salty to begin with then adding other salty ingredients could make it too salty. If you plan to add salty ingredients you can reduce the salt in your rice to compensate
Sriracha: looking at the ingredients on my bottle it has .7 grams salt per 25 grams of sauce. That's almost 3% salt, which may not sound like much but is actually very salty
Hoisin sauce: again looking in my fridge I see that hoisin sauce has 1.6% salt, which is also very salty
chili garlic sauce: this varies but they can be pretty salty

Sausages could be heavily salted, but they wouldn't make the rest of the food salty, and okra isn't a factor.

So it sounds like you added a lot of salty sauces to the rice, next time cook the rice with less salt, reduce the amount of these sauces you use, buy reduces salt versions, or use different spices or sauces.


Is picante sauce a type of salsa? My dad asked for picante sauce at the store. I never heard the phrase, and asked if he meant salsa. He told me no, he meant picante sauce. He wanted Pace's picante sauce:

This was opposed to Pace's salsa:

Now I thought the first one was a "salsa", just a special type of salsa. However "salsa" doesn't appear anywhere on the jar. Furthermore on www.pacefoods.com, there is a distinction between salsa and picante sauce. This led me to believe that "picante sauce" is NOT a type of "salsa".

If translated literally to Spanish, "picante sauce" just means "spicy sauce" and "salsa" just means "sauce".

So technically speaking; ketchup, barbecue sauce, A1, ranch dressing and Tobasco are ALL salsas. However if you ask me to buy some salsa you obviously don't mean A1.

According to http://www.ehow.com/facts_5770035_difference-between-salsa-picante-sauce_.html:

  While the two terms are commonly used interchangeably in English, they are not synonymous, because picante sauce is a specific type of salsa.

So picante sauce IS salsa according to this website, however there is a contradiction because it says:

  Picante sauce, on the other hand, has one distinguishing characteristic that sets its apart -- its intense heat.

Pace (who apparently was the inventor of picante sauce) sells mild, medium and spicy picante sauces along with salsas.

I know the stuff inside the jar that says "picante sauce" has a different texture and tastes different than the stuff inside the jar that says "salsa", so I'm not really asking what the actual culinary differences are. I know those. I'm asking about a definition.

  Are "picante sauces" a subset of "salsas"? Does a tomato based sauce have to be spicy to be "picante"?

There's not really a definition as precise as you're looking for. Picante sauce refers to either Pace or something similar, depending on the person. So yes, picante sauce is a somewhat ill-defined type of salsa - nothing that people call picante is not a salsa. As you point out, it does not actually mean intense heat; the regular/medium is not particularly hot and even the "hot" isn't all that hot, and people will refer to any variety of Pace Picante (or similar) as picante.

Pace's distinction between the two is more of a branding/marketing issue than anything else. They have to keep making picante, without changing the recipe too much and certainly without changing the name. They also want to make other things, and salsa is a pretty natural name. That doesn't mean their Picante isn't a kind of salsa, just that they're choosing not to market it as one. But as long as you consider basic mass-produced jarred salsa to still be salsa, Pace Picante is definitely an example of it.

The reason there's no satisfying answer or precise definition is that all usage of the term like this stems from Pace Picante sauce. It's just the name someone chose for their sauce in 1947, and since that sauce eventually became widespread in stores across the US - stores that likely didn't have a lot of other salsa - people ended up using the term in a more casual, generic way.


Sanitizing fridge and freezer after days of no power Coming back from 10-day vacation, we found that our fridge was off the whole time. Fruit and packaged ham in the fridge, veggies fruit and meat in the freezer. Oops.

Obviously everything has thawed and became really smelly. Even tbough the meat was in bags, some of the "juice" may have still leaked. There was quite some liquid in the freezer drawers, though most of it probably from fruit/veggie.

What nasty things could have grown in there? How do I clean up this mess without throwing away the fridge?

We've already applied both the steam cleaner and boiling hot water (the latter only to plastic drawers and glass shelves). What else should we do? What chemicals?

I'm concerned that something may have gotten into all the platics or air circulation. In case it matters, the fridge is a 2-year fairly expensive bosch - probably not the most vulnerable thing, but not all glass and stainless steel either.

you don't have to throw out the fridge, you just need to clean it. Forget steam and boiling water, just get a bottle of spray surface cleaner and a bunch of rags, or a tub of soapy water (use dishwashing liquid). Take out the shelves and drawers and clean them separately, then clean the inside thoroughly with your spray cleaner and/or soap. If you've used soap then rinse with clean water and let it dry. Air it out for a few hours.

There's nothing you can do about the air circulation, but you probably don't have to. It's not as if you actually put food in there, the worst that could happen are maybe some mold/fungus spores and they won't like the dry and cold environment of the fridge. You may have some residual smells in the air ducts, those should work themselves out fairly quickly, a plate of baking soda will help absorb these although there are purpose made fridge deodorizers which are better.


Why did my pavlova not bake properly? My pavlova turned out too soft , sticky and "gooey".  Yellowish liquid was seeping out of it during and continued after baking,

Gooey is how they are meant to be on the inside, with a thin, crisp, and lightly browned shell, otherwise it's a meringue

Weeping is a common small problem, it shouldn't affect it too much, and can be corrected

Check out my post of how to make them What is the best way to making a great pavlova base?


Does food at room temperature spoil faster if refridgerated beforehand? I've been told (with anecdotal evidence, by family) that if I put food in the fridge then leave it out at room temperature, even if unopened, the food would spoil faster than if it was never put in the fridge in the first place. I would usually put my milk in the fridge right after getting home, but according to the claim, I should just leave it out at room temperature until use in case the fridge goes down or something.
Is there any truth to this? Should I not put my boxed ingredients in the fridge until use?

The short answer is no, that is a myth. Food spoils because of chemical breakdown and microorganism activity, both of these are slowed considerably by refrigeration. When you take food out of the refrigerator and it warms up these chemical and microbial processes speed up again, but they don't work faster because the food was previously refrigerated.
Some foods shouldn't be refrigerated, like bananas and avocados, but that's a different question.


Water + Sugar Solution Preserves Bread? I've heard that by coating bread with a solution of water and sugar can preserve it from mold. Is this true? If not, then my Science Fair Project will be a bust.

I'm fairly certain the prolonging effect of glazes on baked goods is simply due to the glaze forming a barrier between the pastry and the atmosphere, in effect "sealing" it and preventing the goods from going stale. Thus, the appropriate characteristics would be a glaze that coats the product evenly and thickly enough to prevent moisture loss and oxygenation.


What do the base ingredients in pancakes do? So here are the ingredients for "Dutch" pancakes (which are much like French crepes, quite flat):

Flour
Milk
Eggs
Pinch of salt

And for more "American" style I guess you also need:

Baking powder

All the various ingredients contribute differently to the end result: fluffyness, texture, flavour, baking time, etc. I'm trying to find out how they contribute, and I've tried to do so through experimenting, but my experiments are not "controlled" enough probably to find out.

Any tips for what these base ingredients do for the end result? I want to vary with quantities, knowing what I could expect when changing the relative quantities.

The range of possibilities with a basic pancake recipe is not very broad. There are additional things you can add of course, but the basic recipe is really basic.

Eggs are mostly protein. When you cook an egg, it goes from liquid (basically) to solid. The egg blended into the pancake batter will do the same. Pancakes are generally cooked pretty quickly over a fairly hot fire, and that quick heating makes the egg proteins lock up and stiffen. Think of the difference between making a fried egg and scrambled eggs: fried eggs should cook fast, while scrambled eggs cook slowly to keep the eggs from being rubbery. (The other pancake ingredients counter that rubbery toughness of fast-cooked eggs.)

Flour is mostly starch. Starch absorbs moisture (from the egg and the liquid). People started making things like pancakes because flour is relatively cheap and keeps well, and one egg can make a lot of flour-based pancakes and feed a lot more people than the egg alone.

The liquid (milk in your recipe, but other stuff works) is necessary to thin out the batter; we're still stretching that egg out. Without a liquid addition, you'd have a lump of thick dough. By keeping the pancake batter thin, you ensure that the batter poured onto the hot griddle will remain loose enough to spread out into the familiar flat disc, providing a large surface area for the egg protein to solidify.

The salt is there so that the pancake doesn't taste bland. That's an easy one to test. Most American pancake recipes also include some sugar or another sweetener.

American pancakes without some additional fat — melted butter or vegetable oil, usually — would not be liked by most Americans. The added fat makes the pancakes softer and richer. Using table cream or something instead of plain milk can work too, as would adding an extra egg yolk.

Baking powder is a mix of dry sodium bicarbonate and one or more acidic salts. The blend is (usually) designed so that some amount of gas is produced as soon as the powder is mixed with liquid, and more produced when the batter is heated.

Finally, besides the bill of ingredients, the process used to combine the ingredients is also important. Wheat flour has gluten in it, and too much mixing in liquid will form gigantic protein mega-molecules in your batter and result in disturbingly chewy pancakes. You want gluten development for bread, but not pancakes, muffins, and other "fluffy" baked goods.

Generally, dry ingredients (except granulated sugar) are pre-mixed separately from wet ingredients. The two are combined as the last step before cooking.

You also want some air in the pancakes (for American pancakes at least), and that's of course what the baking powder does. You can get even more air in by separating the eggs, using the yolks as a "wet" ingredient, and then whipping the egg whites into a soft foam. The foamed whites are then blended in when the wet and dry ingredients are combined. (Note that you don't want air in crepes, and that's the purpose of letting the batter sit for a few hours before cooking: it lets bubbles escape, bubbles formed in the blender or via the whisk used to prepare the batter.)


How can I make sauerkraut to best preserve the probiotic elements? I know that making Sauerkraut is basically putting layers of cabbage and salt in a jar and then filling with water. However, I have been told that doing this at home can allow generation of good bacteria (probiotics) in the sauerkraut. How can I promote this growth while keeping the sauerkraut edible and tasty?

The ingredients of sauerkraut are very basic--its basically just cabbage and salt (the water is drawn out of the cabbage).  Given this, you will produce the most nutritious kraut using high-quality cabbage and salt with natural minerals.  A high quality sea salt will contain additional minerals that processed kosher and table salts lack (also, it is typically advised not to use salt with iodine--as it apparently prevents the growth of the desired bacteria).  Additional ingredients such as spices will add their relative nutritional value to the mix.

Obviously this doesn't necessary maximize or preserve any "probiotic" aspect in particular, but as commenters have mentioned these claims are dubious as best.

Also, by the way, you only need to add water if the cabbage fails to produce enough brine to cover it after being salted.  If you do add water you'll want to add additional salt so as to preserve the salinity--typically I've used 1Tbsp of salt per quart of water.


Should I remove the foam when cooking chickpeas? Whenever I boil chickpeas aka garbanzo beans, I usually scoop up and discard the foam that rises to the top of the pot. Is there any reason other than for aesthetics to remove the foam?

As a secondary question, has anyone tried using this foam as an ingredient? It seems like it contains a lot of protein because the bubbles are stiff and resistant to popping. The flavor is pleasant, and the texture is unique.

According to a quick search it appears that your notion about it being protein-based is correct.  Most of the recipes I've seen say to skim it; the above-linked site says that adding a little oil will keep the foam down.

I personally wouldn't do anything with it as an ingredient unless I had a truly massive amount of it to experiment with--I don't know enough about the properties to make anything other than wild guesses about how it would work.  The only similar material I can think of would be beaten egg whites, but unless you were desperate for a vegan alternative and were already boiling up vats full of chickpeas I'd just use the eggwhites.


When making french press coffee, what is the purpose of blooming the grounds? When making french press coffee, you are often instructed to "bloom" the grounds by adding a small quantity of boiling water, stirring the grounds into a slurry, and then adding the rest of the water.

What I don't understand is... Why?

For clarification, most other situations where you are instructed to bloom something it makes sense to me - cornstarch being added to soup needs to fully hydrate before it hits the hot water to not get clumpy, "active dry" baking yeast needs to dissolve the pellets and start releasing nutrients to the yeast before being diluted in the dough, and gelatin needs to hydrate fully being integrated with other ingredients without clumping. The coffee case seems mysterious to me.

I found a quote from this article

  One thing you may not want to do with a press pot, especially a larger model, is use beans roasted less than 2 or 3 days before. What, am I crazy? Nope. There's a problem with ultra fresh beans and it is called "bloom". When beans are only a day or two off the roast, they contain heaps of Co2. Heaps of it, I tell you. That Co2 will translate into a massive bloom of brown suds on top of your press pot, possibly overflowing, but also making it easier for big particulate matter (your ground coffee) to hop and skip over the top of the filter portion when you first apply it. Bloom looks cool, but can make using a press pot more difficult.

The poor filtering part sounds questionable to me, so I googled it and found a few bloom-related comments on this blog post.  It seems like some people start timing their soak time only after they see bloom.

This seems like the real reason to me.  I know for sure that the air content in ground substances can vary significantly:  one cup of flour can contain double the volume of another if one is loosely sifted and the other is compacted.  The above quote is accurate about that in my opinion.

Apply this logic to coffee and in order to produce an accurate, general recipe for how long some compounds take to come out of coffee grounds, you need to factor out a variable between coffee grounds: how much air is in the grindings.  Maybe the first small pour will saturate with coffee compounds, or drop in temperature quickly, reducing how much it can extract from the grounds.  Once it squeezes out all the air, the rest of the water is poured in to do the real extraction work.


Using acidity to brighten simple sides like purees I made a simple carrot puree last night doing the following:

Sweat off some carrots, onions, garlic and a bit of peeled apple
Added a small amount of apple cider vinegar
Added a bit of an alcoholic cider along with some water as a "stock" and simmered until soft. The alcoholic cider was a bit of an experiment.

Once blended, I noticed the puree was quite sweet (cider added a lot of sweetness along with the carrots), so I added a touch more apple cider vinegar to try balance and brighten things, especially considering the puree was a side to quite a rich protein.

The result was OK but not really what I wanted...I found the vinegar acidity did balance and lift the dish a bit, but I also found myself tasting the vinegar a bit too much. I wanted the acidity & brightness without actually tasting the apple cider vinegar.

I was left wondering if I should've rather added more cider vinegar earlier and let it cook through, or maybe just use less..or even just use a different type of vinegar?

So I guess my question more generally is: for this type of food, what is the best way to add some acidity to simply brighten things up without actually over-powering it? Any suggestions on other types of vinegars I could've used?

For anything of this kind, I would use lemon juice. It is acidic while not being overpowering like a vinegar can be. It performs the same job in, for example, fruit pies - a little lemon juice enhances the fruitiness and flavour of whatever the main fruit is.


Are capers a substitute for pickles in a tartar sauce? Would capers work in place of the usual pickles in tartar sauce? I'm mostly curious and it might help other people who want to try this as well! I figure that it would add a tangy kind of aftertaste.

I love capers and add them to different foods when I think it suits it. I'd much rather eat tartar (not tarter) sauce with capers than pickles in it. But them I'm not a fan of tartar sauce (maybe because of the pickles).  If you add capers, rinse them first to remove excess salt,  pat water off between a paper towel  and chop finely. I think a tiny bit of finely grated raw garlic would suit it nicely. Let the flavours meld together in the fridge for a few hours too.


How to get cheese sauce to stick to meatballs I want to serve meatballs that have been dipped in a melted white sauce or. fondue cheese... but would like to do it in a way that the cheese doesn't just slide off the meatballs but clings to it or begins to harden bit once it coats the meatball...any ideas suggestions?
thanks

A very hot sauce that is thin and runny will thicken as it cools down.  That's why one makes a sauce thinner in the pot than one wants it on the plate.  A solution to your problem might be as simple as serving the sauce at a lower temperature.  If you're serving the sauce on a heat source, lower it.

If you can't alter the serving temperature for some reason, an alternative is to increase the thickening agent, whatever it is.  Increasing something like flour (starting with more roux) or cornstarch wouldn't affect the flavor. Or possibly a different thickener would be better for your recipe. Arrowroot might be a better alternative if it's an acidic environment, for example.  There are lots of choices.

A thicker cheese sauce is easier to scorch, though, so that's something to look out for.


What's the purpose of adding water to an egg wash? Many recipes I've seen call for beating a tablespoon or so of water in with the egg for an egg wash.

What is the effect of adding the water to the egg wash when baking?

The proteins in a fresh egg are too viscous, even when thoroughly beaten, to wash a baked good.

The water thins the proteins so you get a nice glaze instead of a layer of scrambled egg.

Older eggs have sometimes degraded enough that they don't need the water but it is easier to always add water than to make a subjective judgement on the state of your egg proteins.


What is the difference in method between French and Italian macarons? According to this question, there are two different forms of macarons, "French" and "Italian". What is the difference between the French and Italian macaron method - and where does the name originate?

I'm guessing it has something to do with how the meringue is made as I've seen some recipes that use the Italian meringue method (hot sugar syrup) as opposed to a method that uses solid sugar.

Are both methods really still "French" regardless of the name? I ask because a book I'm reading is very obviously written by a French man (apparently the "king of French pastry" but he uses the method with the Italian meringue and doesn't call his macarons "Italian macarons". In fact, I'm pretty sure he refers to them as "French macarons".

As a note, I don't believe this to be a duplicate of the linked question as that is asking for differences in the results. I'm asking about differences in the actual method itself.

As a macaron fanatic, eating that is, and collector of recipes and cookbooks, I referred to Les Petits Macarons by Kathryn Gordon and Anne E. McBride and to Pierre Hermé Macaron and, you are correct, the difference is the meringue, itself: French, Italian, or Swiss.

The French method produces the correct texture and taste,light and delicate, for the French macaron.

Italian meringue is more stable, using hot sugar syrup instead of dry sugar, but the macaron is much sweeter, some feel too sweet, and it's more difficult to get the macaron to bake properly.

Macaron can also be made with Swiss meringue, whipping the sugar and egg white over a double boiler, then off heat, although this method is less commonly used.


What is the safest, most effective way to cleave through thick bone? While I was preparing bones for chicken stock today, I was rudely alerted to the fact that my cleaving technique was inadequate for bone-cutting when I nearly chopped off my left thumb.  Fortunately my reflexes were quick enough such that I got away with only a cracked thumbnail and what felt like two simultaneous heart attacks.

I know that it's a supremely bad idea to have a hand anywhere near the cutting area when "hacking" with a cleaver.  However, my work area is small, and the chicken does not really have a flat surface to rest on, and attempting to just hack one-handed would (and did) result in flying chicken shrapnel.

Is there a technique I can use for cutting through bone that is safe and precise?

(Related: How to cut a cooked chicken, including the bones, with a cleaver?  That question, however, deals with cutting an entire chicken, which, unlike my scenario, doesn't require chopping through some of the thickest parts of the bone; most of it can even be done with a kitchen scissors.)

(Note - I did manage to solve this one myself after doing some digging, and will post my own answer, but I welcome other suggestions/techniques as well.)

The most reliable technique I found was the following:

Hold the cleaver in your left hand (assuming you are right-handed);
Press the cleaver from the top with your right hand to make a slight indentation into the bone, in order to maintain a stable hold for the next step;
Use a wooden mallet to pound the flat (top) end of the cleaver, again with your right hand.

This is completely safe and doesn't require precise aim.  Usually even the thickest bones can be cleaved through completely with 2 or 3 hard whacks from the mallet.


Glazing pastry - Egg white or Milk? What are the benefits of using egg white vs milk when glazing different kinds of pastry? - For example what should you use for Puff Pastry and Plain Pastry?

Does using either glaze give a different effect / taste?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Milk contains several components, most notably fat, sugar, and protein.  These all add to the browning effect when cooked at high temperature (proteins cooked together with either sugars or fats undergo the "Maillard reaction").  The browned bits do have significant extra flavor, but it does not taste like milk.

Egg white, by itself, is pure protein.  It is typically used in pre-baked ("blind baked") pie shells because the dense protein creates a water-resistant coating when it cooks, so that the crust won't get too soggy when a liquid filling is added later on.  Quiche is a great example of this application.  Like milk, the egg white will add no flavor of its own, just the flavor associated with browning.  Egg white is also used in low-cholesterol cooking.

Egg whites will brown some, but not as much as milk unless the pastry itself provides extra fats and sugars for the proteins to react with.  Egg wash -- beaten whole eggs, usually mixed with a little water -- is more typically used to get pastries to brown.


Fried Chicken Thigh skin always ending up soggy? Why? I am making Japanese style fried chicken, so I'm using chicken thigh with skin on, bone out. My problem is the chicken skin on the fried chicken is always ending up soggy. I've searched the web for some info, and some says it is because the oil is not hot enough. Or could it be that my cooking time is not enough, making the skin soggy?

My chicken thigh are as follows:

Sliced into 2 inches cubes.
Not battered, just starched with sweet potato starch (unsifted)  after marinated for 30 minutes to 1 hour. Marinade used is salty, 2 tablespoon soysauce and 1 teaspoon salt.
Is at room temperature (not coming from the fridge) when fried.
My usual method involves frying 4-6 pieces at a time on 330F for 1-2 minutes placing them on a cooling rack to settle down. Afterwhich, I fry again a second time on 356F for a minute or so until it's golden brown placing them back on a cooling rack. Cooking time is suggested in one of the recipes I found online.

I tried experimenting with 350F initially for 1-2 minutes, and second fry at 360-370F at a minute or so. Somehow this improved the crispness but still not quite as expected and somehow the outer layer tastes like burnt starch but not really burned (outer color is dark golden brown). Any deep frying expert here can shed some light? I'm at my wit's end.

Tried making another batch today and here's what happened:

First Test: I used potato starch (was finally able to get hold of the starch), and used that instead of sweet potato starch, true enough the result was perfectly crisp and crunchy similar to that of potato chips!

Second Test: Used the same old starch (sweet potato starch) and skin turned out soggy like before.

Third Test: Mixed potato starch and sweet potato starch, it improved the crunch but still skin is soggy due to sweet potato starch.

Conclusion: The starch and not the marinade is causing the chicken skin to become soggy.


Help first time making cookies I went to the supermarket to buy the sugar cookie dough already in sheet form but didn't find it can we use pie crust to make cookies

Yes, you can use pie crust to make cookies. You will have to roll it out and cut out cookies from it. The result is called "shortbread cookies". Its taste and texture is quite different from a "standard" American cookie.

If you use unsweetened pie crust, you will probably want to add something sweet on top of your shortbread cookies. The simplest thing is to dust them with lots of icing sugar the moment they come out of the oven.

If you want a "standard" cookie, you'll have to use real cookie dough, storebought or made from scratch.


Is there a rule of thumb when replacing flour with whipped egg whites in a cake/muffin recipe? I was trying to use up some old bananas yesterday and decided to make banana muffins. I find that my (improvised) recipe that I pulled from the Internet is a bit dense.

I have a sponge cake recipe that calls for 10 whipped egg whites. This makes up the majority of the cake. It's light and moist and fluffy.

So I thought that perhaps I can replace some of the flour in my normal banana muffin recipe with whipped egg whites. My thinking was that the reduction in flour will be off-set by my whipped egg whites, it would hold it's shape and I wouldn't get a sloppy mess.

I went from

  2 cups flour + 2 eggs + wet ingredients + sugar

to

  Slightly less than 1.5 cups + 4 yolks + 4 whipped egg whites + wet ingredients + sugar

For the most part this seems to have worked but it clearly needs adjustment. Have I stumbled upon an actual technique? If so, is there a guide on what the correct substitution of flour to whipped egg whites is?

While I suppose this is technically possible, I would never consider trying to make this substitution.

Muffins are are form of quick bread.  Their structure is based on gelatinized starch from the flour, leavened by chemical leavers such as baking powder or baking soda.

In chiffon cakes, sponge cakes, and angel food cakes, the whipped egg whites or meringue form the primary basis of the structure as a foam with mechanically beaten in air.  These batters are much much thinner than quick bread batters, generally, so that the other ingredients can be folded with the egg whites while maintaining the foam.

Instead, I suggest you take a different approach:

Find a better quick bread recipe--there are many, many good banana muffin recipes easily searchable.  If you don't find a muffin recipe you like, you can always use any banana bread recipe for muffins as well, since quick breads and muffins are the same thing, just baked in different shapes.
Find a recipe for a banana sponge cake or banana chiffon cake.  You can always bake these recipes in cupcake form if you like.

Finding a good coherent recipe will almost certainly by easier than trying to adapt a muffin recipe you are not happy with into something else.

If you are really wanting to transform recipes more generally, you need to learn the basis on which they work.  You might want to read Michael Ruhlman's Ratio, as a starting point--however, the ratios of ingredients are only part of the story.  The other part of the story is the method or technique by which they are prepared.

In the world of cakes and muffins and quick breads, these include the muffin method, the creaming method, the reverse creaming method from Rose Levy Berenbaum, and--I don't know a general name for this method--but the whipped egg whites folded with other ingredients technique.

Each of these methods works optimally with different ratios of ingredients, but also achieves different outcomes with the same ingredients.

So you would have to analyze the individual recipe, adjust the ratio of ingredients, and possibly modify the method by which the ingredients are prepared or combined.

Frankly, to lighten a muffin recipe, I would first ask:  are you measuring correctly?   Too much flour is going to lead to a dense outcome, and flour is very easy to mismeasure.  I would suggest always baking by weight, not volume when you can.   Reputable recipe sites for baked goods will tell you the weight of flour in addition to the volume measurement, or at least tell you what the standard weight of a cup of flour is.  If no such guide is provided, I find that using a 4.5 oz (US) standard cup for flour is pretty generally successful.

My second approach would be to very, very slightly increase the amount of baking powder, maybe by 1/4 tsp increments in two different trials.

If that fails, you might try reducing the flour by 25% or 50%, but not increasing the number of eggs; instead, change your method from the muffin method to the whipped egg white method, separating the eggs, whipping the egg whites, and then folding them into the other wet ingredients, then gently folding in the dry ingredients.

Still, when you do these kinds of changes, you need to test your recipes, keep careful notes, and so on.  I still would start by researching already tested recipes that achieve the outcome you desire.


Why condiments expiry date is rounded? Many condiments such as katchup, mayonnaise and mustard (where I live at least) seem to love rounding all of their expiry dates to "60 days after opened".

Thing is, I never see any difference after the date, at least with mustard. It's easy to consume katchup or mayo under a couple of months, but I only like mustard for very few things, so I have some black mustard from ~3-4 months that tastes just as good.

What is weird to me is that they round the expiry dates. Are they just lazy and think "nah, nobody takes more than two months and it should last that long"?

Food quality isn't binary; it doesn't go from perfectly good to perfectly bad in an instant. Even if it did, the time it would take depends on the storage temperature. And for non-liquid foods, it's possible that only a part went bad (how well does it mix?).

So, you don't get a precise date, but a rough interval at which time the decay starts to set in. As a result, the manufacturer will just pick a rounded date from that interval.

Example: the engineers might calculate that under reasonable circumstances, the product may start to noticably deteriorate after 52-75 days, and become dangerous after 81-112 days. They manufacturer could then say that the expiry date would be 60 days.

(The other answers explain why you'd use the first interval, but not why they're actually intervals.)

:edit:

The likely reason why they're all the same 60 days is probably also engineering. How much preservative do they use? As noted in the comments, the primary preservatives are the acids, but you need quite some sugar to compensate. It seems 60 days is a commonly accepted balance.


How does meat nutritional profile change in freezing? My teacher said that you cannot stop fats going bad with freezing. So fatty meat is not good idea to freeze over a long time. Are there other factors to consider in freezing meat?

There is some truth to this. Fats go rancid, and in particular you're worried about rancidity due to oxidation here.  Freezers do not stop oxidation, but they do slow it down a lot.

The main factors in oxidation are light, heat, and metal. Storing meat in a sealed freezer-safe (plastic) container or bag and using the smallest container possible will make the meat last a very long time - usually up to a year - before there is any noticeable rancidity.

Obviously, lean meats such as chicken breasts will last longer than fatty meats such as pork, since the fat is what oxidizes.  Also, vacuum-sealing and/or the addition of antioxidants will practically prevent any significant oxidation - the former because oxidation needs oxygen, and the latter because the free radicals get absorbed before they can contribute to rancidity.

Another concern is freezer burn, which is also due to oxidation (along with dehydration). This is almost always caused by improper storage. It's only ever happened once in my freezer, and that was when I ran out of freezer bags and used a sandwich bag instead (so don't do that).

Practically, for meat, oxidation in the freezer isn't really isn't a big concern if the food is properly stored, because very few people freeze meat for that long.  Plant products are different because they contain enzymes which give off ethylene gas, so exposure to anaerobic conditions (e.g. freezer storage) can lead to off colours and flavours. That's why pre-frozen fruits and vegetables have generally been blanched to kill the enzymes.

Anyway, back to meat - freezing doesn't change any "nutritional profile" other than the supposed food safety issues associated with rancidity.  Just cook/eat it within a reasonable time and it's practically the same as fresh.


What is the difference between regular (vege. oil) and butter recipe cake mixes? Many commercial cake mixes use vegetable oil, but I have seen some (usually 10% or less of what the store carries) that are "Butter Recipe".

These use butter instead of vegetable oil. What is the difference in these? And is the reason you do not find many in stores is because it is not popular, or costs more, or something else?

Butter gives more flavor, but oil provides longevity.

Butter is about 20% water. That water will evaporate during baking and continue to do so even after they are out of the oven causing your cakes to stale quicker. Also the the fat in butter remains solid at room temperature. Once your cake has cooled the fat, now dispersed in your cake solidifies once again and makes for a bit firmer of a crumb.

Vegetable oil, however, is pure fat containing no water and remains liquid at room temperature. The moisture provided by oil will not evaporate during cooking and even after the product is cooled to room temp, the liquid fat remain and provide a moist crumb. Since there is no water to evaporate this product will last much longer on the shelf than one made with butter.


Why did my chocolate chip banana bread split? Usually, I mix the butter and sugar first, then add the banana mashed with a little milk, and I put dry ingredients in last. But this time I put the baking powder with the butter and sugar and egg mixture, and my bread split in half while baking. That had never happened before! Did putting the baking powder with the wet ingredients first mess it up?

Two thoughts:

First, baking powders are typically double-acting leaveners, where gas is created in two phases: (1) when mixed with wet ingredients, and (2) when heated. By you mixing the baking powder early, it had more time during this first phase, thus giving your bread more rise before it went in the oven.

Second, as @Joe described, the cracking results from the crust setting before the leavening is done. Since your bread had extra leavening on this batch, the amount of rise may not have been able to keep up with the timing of the crust setting.

If you decided that you want to continue mixing the baking powder early, you could try either: (1) covering the bread dish with foil for part of the baking time, which might help slow down the crust setting (since moisture released from the surface would be trapped and keep the crust soft), thus making it more forgiving to the extra leavening; or (2) you could reduce the amount of baking powder or just finish mixing it all very quickly.


Plastic containers exposed to heat while cooking I was making soup, and it involved removing some of it to reintroduce after pureeing. Not thinking, I just tossed the cooked mushrooms back into the plastic container they came in raw. After finishing everything in the pot, I tossed the mushrooms back into the soup, and noticed that the bottom of the plastic container they were sitting in was slightly warped. It is a #1 plastic (PET), and the mushrooms went into around 3L of soup. Do I need to just throw out the whole batch?

You should be perfectly fine.  PET plastics do leach antimony, and the rate of leaching does increase with temperature, but it would take a much longer exposure time to be of any real concern.  You would be putting yourself more at risk by drinking water out of a plastic bottle that had been left in the sun.

Here's a relevant study about water bottles:
Antimony Leaching from PET

The abstract adequately addresses concerns to do with high temperatures and PET.

That said, safety is always the highest priority, and if you notice anything unusual about your soup, it's best to err on the side of caution.


A recipe instructs to boil a whole head of cabbage, can I boil individual leaves instead? In Madhur Jaffrey's An Invitation to Indian Cooking, her recipe for Cabbage leaves stuffed with potatoes instructs you to boil the cabbage leaves by submerging the entire head of cabbage in a large pot of boiling water.

This sounds like an accident waiting to happen to me, and I was wondering if this method affects the flavor, or will it be just the same to remove the leaves and boil individually.

The goal of the boiling step is to make it easy to remove the leaves. Removing whole individual cabbage leaves on a raw head of cabbage is tricky; they tend to tear.

If you want to put forth the effort, it should be just fine. They're cooked just long enough to soften them and make it possible to wrap them around the filling. I will happen much faster without a whole head of cabbage in there.


Is there a close substitution for shallots? I can't really find shallots and i'm short on time.

Are there any close substitutions for shallots?

Depends on what you're doing with them.  Shallots have very fine layers (allowing them to blend into sauces and dressings), and have a flavor between garlic and onions.

If you're mincing them fine and sauteeing them or whisking them in as the foundation for a sauce, I'd suggest substituting pearl (boiling) onions or the white parts of green onions and maybe half a clove of minced garlic.

If you're slicing and frying them, regular onions should do, although I'd look for smaller ones and slice thin.  Red onions have a flavor more like shallots than yellow or white ones, but may add an undesireable color to the dish.

If you're chopping them, or cooking them peeled and whole for Southeast Asian cuisine, again pearl onions are probably the way to go.


Gratin without a broiler I've been wondering, is there a way to gratin food (as in cheese gratin) in a gas oven without a broiler?

I'm used to cook using my parents' big electric oven, which had coils in the upper and lower part, so I was able to heat from below as well as gratin from the top.

Now I only have access to a gas oven without a broiler, but I still want to get those nice gratin crisp cheese on lasagnas and escondidinhos (a traditional dish from the north of Brazil).

Okay, as mentioned in the comments, the easiest way is to use a broiler, but if your gas oven doesn't have one.....

When following the instructions for thin crust pizza from Cooks Illustrated (on a pizza stone in my oven), one thing they suggested to help the cheese melt and crisp a bit was to NOT put the pizza on the lower rack.

They figured the oven temperature was going to be high enough to cook the food, so no need to put it closer to the heat source that was below.  However, by putting it on the closest rack to the top that would still fit the food, there was some additional heat radiated back to the top of the pizza that was absorbed by the metal roof of the oven.

Whether that works well enough for your purposes or not, I don't know, but it seems to be a similar concept.


How to interpret "an ounce of ground coffee" I am going to attempt to replicate a product.  The product is a cold brew packet system.  Contained in the package are two sachets, each with 2.15 oz of ground coffee.

My question is, should I interpret this number to be a volume or a mass?

A follow-up question, if it is a mass, what is a good household method to measure this small amount?  (I don't own a triple beam).

It's a weight.

It'd say fluid ounces if it meant fluid ounces, and fluid ounces are pretty much only used for liquid or liquid-ish things. Your package doesn't, and it's a solid, so seems pretty clear. Sometimes people are lazy about this in casual speech when it's clear it's a liquid, e.g. they'll say "a 20-ounce soda bottle", but even then the package will say fluid ounces, and in any case this isn't a liquid.

A kitchen scale is the best measurement method, and they're not that expensive and are useful for other things too. If you don't have one, I guess you could try to rig up a balance, and either use an existing 2.15 oz sachet or try to measure that much of something with a known density (e.g. water) by volume, but it's not going to be all that accurate. Measuring by volume is going to be hard for ground coffee, because the way it's ground affects the density a lot.


Is the un-moldy part of tomato paste still safe to eat? Today when I was making Bolognese sauce, I removed the moldy part of the tomato paste and use the non-moldy part in the sauce. After searching on the internet, I found out that I can get sick from it. But I already added the tomato paste in my sauce, and it's a huge waste to throw the sauce away. Because the sauce has to cook for about an hour, is it possible to destroy the mold effects under high temperature?

I would take caution before consuming the sauce. It is possible that you may have killed mold however there could still be toxins. There are a lot of variables in these types of situations, such as whether or not those who are consuming the sauce have an allergy to mold. That is why a typical response is when in doubt, throw it out. I would say if you insist on keeping it taking a very small taste and give it about 30 minutes and see if you start developing a rash, throat starts feeling itchy / funny. But this can be extremely unsafe and I would advise against it.


Shaping baguettes using three folds vs. rolling it up? What's the idea behind the standard French technique of three folds to shape a baguette where you fold it in from top and bottom and then the whole thing over, sealing it with the heel of the hand? The standard Mexican and Vietnamese method is to simply roll the dough up and seems to work just as well for making bolillos or banh mi. I have also seen artisan bakers using the roll-up method to shape batards and probably baguettes as well. Which makes me wonder, if the roll-up method works just fine, why did the French come up with this 3-fold method? What advantage could it have, theoretical or practical?

One of the key skills in dough making is forming a decent crumb and light texture. While the action of the yeast will go a long way to doing this, by folding the dough in such a way, more air is trapped within the pocket. It is the same way when making pizza, you should not press on the outer crust (or use a roller) on the pie itself, as this expels air or CO2 and could lead to a heavier and less bubbly texture.
While it is not essential, it is generally considered good form to have a light touch when finally shaping bread or pizza. By giving the bread this final forming, the baker is giving their dough every possible chance to achieve decent oven spring when baked.


What kind of mixture(colloid) is a roux? One of my coworkers had a curious question the other day: what kind of mixture or colloid is a roux? For example, whipped cream is a foam, mayonnaise is an emulsion, and gelatin is a gel.

I know part of creating a roux is the gelatinization of the starch in the flour, but does that make a roux a gel? Or is it something else?

I would suggest that a roux is a hydrocolloid.


Used sesame oil instead of soy sauce - can I rescue marinade? I am making panko chicken, for which I marinate the chicken in low sodium soy sauce and lemon. I ran out of the soy sauce and needed an additional 2 tbsp of it. I remembered I had bought a small bottle of it but it was a different brand. I accidentally poured sesame oil. Now I don't know what to do. Can I make something else from the mixture, and what other ingredients should I then put in?

You don't need to rescue the marinade, sesame oil isn't going to ruin it, just add more soy sauce to get the saltiness you need. Sesame oil isn't going to impart much flavor to the meat in the marinade However, if you plan to use the marinade as a sauce then keep in mind that

Sesame oil is not going to add much flavor to the meat while it is marinaded, however is will add a lot of flavor to the cooked result, perhaps too much
That much oil could make your end result a bit greasy in texture
Sesame oil has a low smoke point and will burn and produce off flavors if added to the bottom of a hot pan, I recommend adding it to liquid

I would suggest if you plan to use the marinade as a sauce just add a little bit of it and add soy separately to the dish to make up for it.


How to get rids of flies and ants after you put cooked meals on the table? From my understanding, I tried using vinegar and draw a loop around my meals to prevent attracting the ants. As to prevent the flies, I use another plate to cover my meals. This can be a hard time for cleaning because of the need to clean the plates (that is used to cover the meals) and also the table with the vinegar.

Are there better ways?

Another option for covering plates to keep flies away is a mesh net: here's one example I found by using Google to search for flycover food. This won't come into contact with the food, unlike the plate you currently use or the newspaper @AnishaKaul suggests.


Does roasted garlic leave no aftertaste and smell I saw in a recipe book by the Grill company Weber where they claimed that if you roast a garlic over medium heat in the grill, until it becomes pulp, and then slather it on your baguette and eat it, it will not leave bad taste/smell afterwards.

Is this true? I love garlic but it leaves strong smell, so I avoid it.

Roasting garlic tends to make it sweeter and milder in flavour yes. It will not be completely undetectable, but it is certainly less strong than sautéed garlic.


taking a tart out of a glass dish I'm looking to make a tart like this or like this
 but I don't have those tart pans that have the removable bottom, I've only got a glass dish.

I'm wanting to take the tart out of the dish and put it on a plate once it's done but I'm not sure how I'll be able to do that. Can I line the glass dish with some baking paper or something so I can pull it out of the dish once it's done, or something?

thanks

You can line a typical pie pan with parchment paper.

Cut a precise circle to cover the bottom, than a precise rectagle or trapezoid to fit the side. You can use a tiny bit of butter or shortening to stick the parchment paper to the pan and keep it in place.

Once it is cooked, you can work a knife then a spatula or two under the paper and lift it all out in one go.

This is the technique I use making a tartine or even when using a springform pan, because it makes keeping the dish intact relatively much easier.


Agar Agar - trials and tribulations! I am not one to waste anything, and happen to have a load of agar agar, but a lot of time I only want to use a small amount, and seem incapable of making such an amount - is there anyone out there who knows some great tricks here?

I'm not sure what your problem is exactly. Just get a precision scale with 0.1g accuracy?


Do I need to rip the leaves off mint? I enjoy putting a bunch of mint leaves into my salads, but I'm lazy and I get bored tearing the leaves off the stems to put into my salad.  I am tempted to take the entire bunch of mint and chop it up, stalks and all.

Can I get away with this shortcut? Is this a bad idea?  Will the stems be too "woody" or bitter and mess up the taste or texture?

You probably don't need to remove the stalks from the leaves, especially for young plants. However, the older and stronger the stalk becomes, the less appetizing it will be, in my opinion.

To rip the leaves off easily, especially with thicker/sturdier stalks, just start at the top of the stalk and firmly pinch it. Then, run your fingers down the stalk, while pulling the stalk in the opposite direction with your other hand. The leaves should usually come off with minimal resistance. Once you have only the leaves, you can discard the stalk.


Is there much of a difference between organic vs. regular olive oil? I have this idea that if I buy high quality olive oil from non-industrial producers then it doesn't need an "organic" label because olives are pretty resistant and don't require that much pesticide.

Is this correct?

Olive oil degrades over time so freshness is important.  Some of the higher priced olive oils sit on shelves for a very long time and by time they are sold they can be of lower quality than some mass produced olive oils.

I'd say you're in the right frame of mind and would recommend finding a brand with a local representative who can trust and know the source and timing of the oil.

Many smaller olive oil producers don't bother with organic certification because of cost, but they have same or better standards.  Therefore there is a sweet-spot where you can get quality olive oil similar to organics at decent prices.

Keep in mind good olive oil is produced in many places, including Greece, Spain, and Lebanon.  Not just Italy.


How to fake salmon roe using jello A couple of days ago I made a first attempt at dessert sushi. Everything went reasonably well except for the salmon roe which I'd planned to make from orange jello. I made my own mould from plasticine covered in plastic wrap and imprinted all over using a small plastic sphere. This didn't work out; the wrap burst in several places; the jello clung to the wrap too well and the few jello 'eggs' that came out in one piece were only half spheres.

Granted that some of these problems are surmountable, the last problem of producing a perfect sphere is, for me, a conundrum. Does any one have any better ideas?

What you are looking for is spherification. You need to use a different hydrocoloid than gelatin. There are a couple of techniques you can use.

If you want solid spheres, you can mix your liquid with agar agar, which is readily available in the asain section of the grocery store, bring it to a simmer, and then use an eye dropper to drop the liquid in to a very cold olive oil bath (put it in the freezer). The dropping action will give you spheres.

You can also use a mixture of sodium alginate and calcium chloride, but those are harder to find and will need to be ordered online. The advantage is that you can make a sphere with a liquid center that "pops" just like real caviar. You mix the alginate in to your liquid and then mix the calcium in to a bath. You use the same eye dropper technique to get spheres. When the alginate and calcium touch, they instantly form a gel. This holds the sphere together. Leaving it for a couple seconds makes it thick enough to hold up.

All the info you need is available in this free recipe guide from Khymos.

I've actually done exactly this dessert before. You can see some of my lessons and issues in another question here. I did it a second time and opted to use a gelled peach (using agar agar) in the center for more of a maki presentation. Enjoy.


Selling mini crème brûlées This may be a difficult question to answer but if you have any recommendations, I would greatly appreciate it.

I’m going to be opening up a small a home owned desert business and I would like to sell mini crème brûlée. It’s hard to keep the top crunchy and if you pre-torch it and leave it in the fridge the topping will be ruined.
I was thinking of torching them right before the customer picks an order up, but if they decide to put it in the fridge, when they go back to it and bite into it it’ll be really soggy. Or if they order a dozen of them for a party the next day, the next day the topping will be super soggy.

I was just wondering if there was a way to keep the crunchy sugar top crunchy for long-ish periods of time especially because the dessert itself needs to be refrigerated and can’t really be outside the fridge for too long. Please help!

The question you are asking has no technological solution - you cannot put caramel on something wet and preventing from becoming wet. So you are looking at logistical solutions, and you have basically listed them already.

For eating on premises, you keep the custard in the fridge and add the sugar and torch just before serving, as you mentioned. This is so well-suited and common, that I don't think anybody has had the need to develop any alternatives.

For eating later at home, there are two options. One is as you said - you caramelize when selling, and the buyer has to live with the choice between eating it soon or eating it later without a snappy crust. The second is the one used by supermarkets and mentioned in comments - you package coarse dry brown sugar separately, and the customer has the choice between producing a good caramel crust at home (which is time-consuming and not everybody has the needed tools) or eating a custard with sprinkled brown sugar that has not been actually caramelized into a crust.

A variation of the "package the sugar" along option is to package caramel along, either as a whole disc or ground into sugar-sized crystals. It doesn't require the customer to caramelize at home (so the tool and time drawbacks are eliminated), but it is clearly separate from the custard, making it less like real creme brulee.

All two (or three) solutions fall short of the ideal, but as far as I am aware, you can't do better than that. You can just choose which negative is the most acceptable for you and your customers.


How to make chocolate cups with swirls? Can someone please help me with tips to make chocolate cups with swirly designs. Something like this. I've tried painting the inside of a cup with white chocolate first and letting it set. Once set, I tried painting it with dark chocolate. But somehow, they end up getting mixed and it just comes up as a normal dark chocolate cup.

You can try to make chocolate cups in general by "painting" a small dish/cup with chocolate, and letting it set in the fridge. If you want tempered chocolate, there are techniques for that.

But in any case, you've got to consider that different chocolates have different heating/cooling rates, so mixing chocolates with different fat contents (like milk vs dark), or from different manufacturers will (pardon the pun) fudge your calculations a bit as far as how hot/cool the chocolate needs to be. And white chocolate is an entirely different beast, so it has its own melting/setting points to consider as well.


Can I bake my bread in a loaf pan instead of baking sheet? I have found a lot of recipes that says to bake your bread on a cookie sheet. I was wondering if I can use a loaf pan instead? Do you have to adjust time or any thing else? My family like sandwich style bread better than French style. Most of the recipes are sourdough some are French bread.

Just use a thermometer and bake to an internal temperature of 190F (88C) ...or 200F (93C) if the dough is enriched with butter, eggs or milk.


What is the cocoa solids percentage of Hershey's semi-sweet chips? What is the percentage of cocoa solids in Hershey's semi-sweet chocolate chips?  Need to use it for a recipe that calls for 70-72% Cocoa solids.

I don't believe any chocolate chips are going to have that high a percentage of cacao solids. According to Cook's Illustrated the percentage of cacao solids in Hershey's semi-sweet chips is 42%. Hershey's Special Dark chips came in at 45%. Of all the bitter-sweet and semi-sweet chips they tested 60% was the highest amount listed (in Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Chips).