Are modifications to a recipe needed to use frozen scallops instead of fresh? I'm looking to try this recipe: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/11/french-in-a-flash-broiled-scallops-provencale-recipe.html. I have frozen scallops, and though it doesn't specify, I suspect the recipe is for fresh scallops. Should I thaw the scallops ahead of time? Should I cook them at low temperature for awhile before broiling? If it makes a difference, these are the scallops I'm using: http://www.schwans.com/products/productDetail.aspx?id=52122&c1=10429

Since the original recipe does not say explicitly that the scallops should be cooked from a frozen state, you should thaw them in the refrigerator before making the dish.  Do not precook them—just thaw them, and cook them as per the recipe.

You will also want to pat them dry with a paper towel or lint free towel, so that they are as dry as reasonably possible.


Chocolate flavour without the sediment? Is there a chocolate flavour liquid without the sediment and no milk in it?

LorAnn makes a consumer-grade chocolate flavoring:

http://www.lorannoils.com/1-dram-size/chocolate-flavor-0170-dram

You'd use it in a fashion similar to vanilla extract, though it's more concentrated. It's available at candy supply stores, and online. It has a very strong color, so be careful about adding it to things that you want to be white.

I use creme de cacao (basically, chocolate liqueur) for making frosting. It's quite sweet and is much less concentrated than the chocolate flavoring. (It's also a nice addition to milk, kind of a grown-up chocolate milk.) It's available at any liquor store.


Advice on meat cuts for German rouladen I've been trying to figure out the best cut of beef to use for a German rouladen recipe. From the butcher and Google searches I've seen advice ranging from slicing flank steak (how would that work?) to pounding out a top round steak. (The final slice needs to be about 1/4 of an inch thick and 3+ by 6+ inches long and wide.)

Could someone suggest a cut of meat and a process for arriving at right kind of slice? (I would like to avoid pounding/tenderizing if possible.)

The meat for rouladen is cut from the upper part of the hind legs of the cow, or Oberschale.

You definitely don't pound rouladen; pounded meat tends to re-contract somewhat under heat, and this unacceptable in this case. I don't know how to cut it that way at home. In Germany, the butcher sells the meat pre-cut to the correct size. I guess that he "peels" it from the cut with a sharp knife. As far as I remember, it isn't cut across the grain like steaks. And it has to be very thin, from memory I would say that 1/7 inch thickness is normal. On this site, you can see some close-ups of the raw meat, maybe the butcher can recognize how to cut it from that. (Don't worry about the text, the recipe is far from traditional. I only gave it as a good illustration of the raw cuts).

Also, rouladen are supposed to be tender. If possible, get veal. If not, young bull's meat is better than the normal beef used for steaks.


Preparing dried mushrooms for risotto I plan to cook a basic mushroom risotto. However, the supermarket near us did not have shitake or any other uncanned mushrooms, they only had dried ones.  My question is, do I just remove the stem and place it straight into the risotto as the risotto finishes cooking?

I've seen and watched tutorials on how to cook a mushroom risotto. There are those who cook the mushroom (take out the stem and cut coarsely) by sautéing them in oil and onion. When the mushrooms sweat out, they put it in the risotto. However, there are those who cook out the mushroom and then add the rice in the same pot and cook the risotto. The point is that sweating out the mushrooms concentrate the flavor.

Since my mushrooms are already dry, do I have to do anything else aside from taking out the stem and cutting them coarsely? Is it acceptable if I sauté them or if I let them sit in hot water?

EDIT:

I found this recipe that adjusted the risotto recipe for what's available in our country. It mentioned that I should soak the dried mushrooms in hot water, strain that water, and if I got it correctly, add the liquid to my stock. Can I skip this process? What's the advantages of soaking the mushrooms in warm water?

I just made mushroom/truffle risotto for lunch! No joke!!

Here's what to do with the dried. First, rinse thoroughly, they're infamous for grit. Now soak them for one half an hour in a little bowl of the broth (hot) you intend to use for the risotto. No need to remove stems, just chop them up with the rest.

After one half an hour, wring them out, using your hands. Save the broth. Using a very fine sieve, or some cheesecloth, or even a coffee filter...pour the broth back into the broth you will use to make your risotto. If nothing else, just allow the little bowl of mushroom broth to sit for a bit, and pour carefully, most of the grit will sink.

Chop up the shrooms. If you can mix them with some diced up fresh, great.

BTW consider aged Gouda instead of Parmesan. Yummy!

Served with a sunny-side-up egg and buttered toast?? Fit for a queen.

The water that hydrates the mushrooms is very flavorful. It shouldn't be wasted.


Is there supposed to be a difference between General Tso's and Sesame Chicken besides the seeds? There are three very similar dishes I see on Chinese restaurant menus:

Orange Chicken
Sesame Chicken
General Tso's Chicken

I know Orange Chicken is at least a little bit different (it's typically spicier, I can see the orange rind pieces, I can taste a difference), but with General Tso's and Sesame, it's not so clear.

Anecdotally, a while back I ordered Sesame Chicken from my local place, and when I got there they were still making it. She asked me "General Tso's?" and I said, "No, sesame" and she proceeded to just sprinkle some sesame seeds on it.

More recently, I ordered Sesame Chicken, but upon opening it at home, it had no seeds, and I assume I got General Tso's instead. I kind of feel like it had a slightly different color and flavor, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

So I guess I'm asking a few things:

Is there supposed to be a difference between General Tso's and Sesame besides just adding sesame seeds on top?
If yes, what is the difference?
If yes, is it standard procedure to just use General Tso's and add Sesame seeds for simplicity/laziness/cost reasons?

These recipes aren't very standardized. Your mileage will vary greatly from one restaurant to another.

That said, generally these are three distinct dishes.

Orange chicken is... Orangey.
Sesame Chicken is typically salty with a hint of sweetness, served with sesame seeds.
General Tsos is typically sweeter with a little more heat and served with broccoli and carrots. The sauce is usually more red in color than the brown sauce served with sesame chicken.

I would say it is not widely accepted practice to sprinkle sesame seeds on General Tso's to create sesame chicken.


How to know whether the teflon coated pan's life has reached end? I use oil for cooking in the Teflon coated pan.  I put the pan on a very low fire. (Simmer) Lately I have found that the onions get stuck to the bottom of the pan.

How to know whether the teflon coated pan's life has reached end? Does it change colour or something else?

Not sure if Teflon looks any different when its worn out, but if it does its not much different. Exempting, of course, things like scratched & peeling Teflon.

If your pan is no longer giving you the nonstick performance you want, and you've tried basic stuff like giving it a good scrub (using a non-scratching sponge, of course), then it seems like you've answered your own question: if its worn to the point it no longer meets your requirements, then its at its end of (useful) life, at least for you.

(There may be ways to adjust what you're doing in the pan to get more life out of it; after all, a lot of us sauté our onions in stainless. But that'd be a different question, I suppose.)


Test if two foods are the same I'm Italian, now living in the US for some months.
As you may know we like pasta. I tried Barilla here, our best known pasta brand. Well.. the taste seems a little bit different to me.
It is actually produced here and not imported, so it could be different.
Looking at the Italian/US versions of the package there doesn't seem to be a big difference, except for the fact that the US version is enriched with vitamins (which shouldn't change the taste).
To dig deeper into the question and avoid any other factor (cooking water, sauce, subjectivity) I want to bring a box back to Italy and run a test with a panel (10 friends basically).

I would cook the same quantity of the same pasta shape of Barilla (ITA/USA) in the same pan (keeping them separated of course), so same water and same salt amount. Then same sauce (same quantity) for both.
Suppose A is the Italian pasta and B is the US pasta.

Now.. how should I give it to the participants? Same amount of A and B in a blind test and ask whether they are different or not? Maybe give to some participants A-A or B-B (always blind test). Or maybe give A first (which they already know, so not blind) and then give someone (blind this time) A or B again and ask which one they think it is..

Looking for suggestions. I want to be as scientific as possible.
I also contacted Barilla, who claim the pasta is exactly the same.
Thanks

The best approach is to use a triangle test. This would be the standard used in sensory sciences. It is easy, and it will be a fun thing to do with friends.  Basically, each friend (panelist) is provided with three blind samples.  Two are the same, and one is different.  The objective is for them to tell you which one is different.  The validity is enhanced if you randomize the possible combinations across your participants.  The linked site provides all the necessary information, but the practice is quite common and further detail can be found from multiple sources.  I would be curious to hear the results!


How long will a whole turkey keep in a refrigerator? My daughter bought a fresh, organic, kosher turkey from Trader Joe's last night (her first turkey!), 8 days before she will start cooking it.

The company customer service representative as well as the store manager all reassure us that their turkeys are fine to refrigerate in the coldest part of the refrigerator for as long as 10 days.
The turkey's sell-by date is Nov. 28 - two days after Thanksgiving.  The information on their own food storage guide as well as some other info I have read say that 1 - 2 days is the proper amount of time to store a fresh turkey.
TJ's says that the manner in which they transport their turkeys - at a nearly, but not quite frozen, state extends that time.

As long as she stores it unopened in the coldest, bottom part of her fridge (and turns the temperature down as well), will the turkey survive until Thanksgiving? She plans to brine the turkey a day or two ahead of cooking it also.

Not all turkeys are the same, and personally, I would not risk letting an entire turkey go rancid in the refrigerator.  There is so much you don't know about this turkey:

How was it butchered?  In particular, how long was it sitting on the block and was it packed immediately afterward or left sitting out for a long time?
How quickly was it cooled down to "transporting" temperature after butchering?
Was it transported immediately, or was it stored for a while before transport, and if so, what were those storage conditions?
How specifically was it transported?  What were the environmental conditions, aside from temperature?  Was it exposed to air?  Could it have picked up any other contaminants?
Just how cold was the refrigerator at Trader Joe's?  Are you sure that it's consistently that cold?
What if the turkey was shifted around?  For example, what if some other customer picked it up, tossed it in a shopping cart, then after an hour of shopping decided to put it back?
How did she transport it?  I'm guessing in a non-temperature-controlled trunk?  How long was it in that condition/environment before finally making it into the fridge?
Was the temperature in the fridge turned down as far as it can go long before putting the turkey in there?  If not, how long might it have taken to get down to the desired temperature, especially with a massive slightly-warmed-up turkey in there?
How cold does her refrigerator get?  Is it a new refrigerator?  Are you both certain that it gets as cold as the rep at TJ's is assuming?  Have you actually stuck a thermometer in there to measure the environmental temperature around where the turkey would be stored?

I'm not expecting you to answer any of these; my point is just that there are so many variables, so many things that can go wrong, and the quoted 10-day storage period (as well as the sell-by date) is for storage under ideal conditions.

I've seen turkeys go rancid in the fridge after just 2 days.  I've seen others take longer, but still far less than 10 days to go rancid.  It's an incredibly frustrating and completely avoidable experience.  Just put it in the freezer!  She just needs to make sure she gives it a couple of days to thaw in the fridge, due to the size of the bird.  A half-frozen turkey on Thanksgiving day is almost as useless as a rancid one.


Creating a home "anti-griddle"? I watched a restaurant documentary last night (Spinning Plates; pretty good!) which featured a modernist chef demonstrating their kitchen's anti-griddle: essentially a large metal plate chilled down to somewhere around -40 degrees (both F and C, oddly enough).  It's used to chill and freeze foods that can't be frozen at normal freezer temperatures like olive oil, a bit like dipping or dropping into liquid nitrogen.  I've never been much of a fan of molecular gastronomy, but I was absolutely fascinated by this idea, as I'd never seen anything like it before.  I'm compelled to give it a try.

The official, professional version of this machine runs about $1200 USD, so that's completely out.  These guys created one using a cast-iron skillet submerged in liquid nitrogen, but I'm not buying a massive container of that either.  This site suggests that similar results can be had at home by placing a sheet pan on top of a block of dry ice, which sounds more reasonable, at least from a financial perspective.  I obtained an estimate for a 10-inch x 10-inch x 2-inch slab of dry ice (about 10 lbs) for $15 USD.  EDIT: Responses to date also suggest using a bed of dry ice chips.  I'm checking to see if there's a significant price difference, as I'll probably be trying the cheapest method for my first go.

However, before I embark on what sounds like a chemistry lab demonstration in my kitchen, I thought it best to seek some advice.  Specifically:

Has anyone actually tried this at home with any success?  You'll get automatic bonus points for being braver than I.
Are there particular hazards that I need to be aware of during this exercise in applied insanity?  Let's assume that I can guess at some obvious ones like "Don't touch the dry ice with your hands" and "Let the frozen items warm up a little before you eat them".
Would a slab the size of the one described above last long enough to let me experiment a bit, or would it simply sublimate down to a useless size within a matter of minutes?
If anyone's actually worked with a professional-grade anti-griddle before, would a home hack like this produce similar results, or am I just fooling myself?

I look forward to any input that I can get, because I'm really excited by the novelty of this idea!  Feel free to completely dash my hopes.

EDIT: Great suggestions so far, thanks all!  I'm keeping this open for now since I haven't seen any definitive answers based on experience with this method, and I'll add my own answer once I can give it a try.

You can get better cooling with less dry ice by using a cooling bath.
Chunks of dry ice mixed with isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol, isopropanol) will give you a liquid with a temperature of -77°C (-106.6 °F). The liquid will transfer heat to the botton of a metal dish far more efficiently than solid or granulated dry ice.


Cooking custard for crème brûlée macarons I'm planning to make crème brûlée-flavored French macaroons, which will consist of vanilla-flavored macaroons, topped with caramelized sugar for the shatter-y effect, and a vanilla bean custard filling. However, I'm unsure of the best way to cook the custard filling, since I'm not after the same consistency as the custard in real crème brûlée; I'd like something a bit softer and more spreadable. I doubt that cooking the custard the same way for a shorter period of time would work, but I also don't have much experience cooking crème brûlée, so any ideas would be appreciated!

I think your flavor ideas seem fine, I'd advise against a custard filling for two reasons. First, custard is squishy, even if you make it harder it's going to squish out when the macaron is bitten into, which isn't the result you want. Second, the excess moisture in the custard could make the macarons soggy, also not the result you want.
Almost all the macaron fillings I know of use chocolate ganache or butter cream fillings because they have the right combination of spreadibility and resilience, and their low moisture content will keep the macarons from getting soggy. I would suggest you change your approach to use one of these two options. You could try making a vanilla butter cream with toasted white sugar to get a caramel flavor, it's an extra step but makes a big difference flavor-wise.
If you want to try a custard then a cornstarch (aka cornflour depending on where you are) thickened custard is likely the way to go as you can get a thicker set than an egg yolk custard, and it's easier to modify through experimentation to find out how much you will need to get the consistency you want when cooled. You will also want to give the inside of each half a thin layer of white chocolate to prevent them from absorbing moisture from the custard.


Hot liquids in Ninja blenders Are there health reasons for not using hot liquids in Ninja blenders, such as leeching of chemicals from the plastics?

I suggest you avoid putting hot liquids in any of the Ninja blenders that do not allow air to leave the blending vessel. Models like Nutra Ninja Pro, for example. When you blend a hot liquid in a closed system, it creates a lot of pressure and you can easily make a mess or injure yourself with flying hot liquids.

We are not health experts, so I cannot comment on leeching chemicals beyond pointing you to fact that Ninja claims their products are BPA free. For details beyond that, I suggest contacting the manufacturer and asking for their recommendations in regards to hot liquids.


Approximating dried mushroom texture without For yet another variation on using dried/fresh mushrooms, I would like to know how to approximate the texture of dried mushrooms using fresh.

My intent is to make a leek-miso soup and I would like to add dried shiitake for their texture (flavor too, sure, but it is already a flavorful soup). Unfortunately, the market near me only has fresh mushrooms (portabella, baby bella, snow cap, and other normals). But alas, I also do not have a food dehydrator.

How can I manipulate the mushrooms to approximate the same chewy texture? My thought is that long, slow baking at a very low temp would dry them out. Is this intuition right? Should I prep the mushrooms before hand in anyway?

I have accidentally gotten that texture by putting leftover stir-fried sliced shitake in the fridge uncovered. Leather.


Can semifreddo be used in fried ice cream recipe? As the title says, can I use semifreddo instead of ice cream in a fried ice cream recipe?

Well, yes and no. A lot of recipes for semifreddo aren't truly semifreddo because they are hard frozen. Recipes like that can be fried just like ice cream. The key to fried ice cream is to hard freeze the scoops of ice cream. By definition, that isn't semifreddo, but definitions don't seem to matter much to writers of recipes. So, if the "stuff" is hard frozen, it can be coated and fried like fried ice cream. Perhaps after being deep fried, the name "semifreddo" is more apropos.


why is my bread too tough? trying to get the hang of making good artisan bread, and my last loaf tasted great. But it stayed flatter than previous efforts, and was very tough.

I am doing my best to understand the science as clearly as possible, so I want to know what part of my process I should look at tweaking to get the results I want?

Magnus Nordlander's answer was good.  I would add one more thing:

You can also get a lot of extra toughness if you over knead a dough.  If you are using an established recipe that works for other people, I would cut back on the mixing and kneading and see what kind of results you get.  If you don't knead enough, you won't get the airy texture of the crumb because the gluten won't be developed enough.

If you bake a lot, make changes to your kneading time and take notes about how it affects your final result.


What are the natural and artificial sugars? I try to be careful to avoid hydrogenation and artificial sugars when I buy food products.  Hydrogenation seems easy - if it mentions hydrogenation in the ingredients list, I avoid it.  I feel more confused by sugars.

So, for example, sugar and honey I feel comfortable with.  Corn syrup I feel comfortable with.  High fructose corn syrup and aspartame I avoid.

The problem is that there are so many sugars that I have trouble keeping them straight.  Sucrose, glucose, maltodextrine - those are chemical names, to be sure, but to my knowledge they are "natural" in the sense that they are naturally derived.  I think.

Can someone post a list of the various sugars that we see in ingredient lists - or that we have the option to use as ingredients in the foods we make - with an explanation of whether they are natural or not?  Or to what degree they are not natural?

Now, I understand that "natural" means different things to different people, so I expect some qualification will be needed for at least some ingredients.  Also, to narrow the focus of the question and the resulting answers, let's keep this focused on the list and short description of the various sugars as opposed to the broader discussion concerning whether artificial sweeteners are bad for you or not.

Update

I guess this isn't a very popular question.  Perhaps people who care about this as I do generally understand the ingredient lists better?

So today I ran into an example of what I'm describing above. I noticed polydextrose in an ingredient list.  What I would have liked to do is come back to this question and look at an answer to this post that has that ingredient as artificial or natural with a brief description of it.  However, this isn't in the incomplete list of artificial sweeteners posted in the answer by TFD (I don't mean for this to be offensive - at least you answered with something, which I appreciate).  Not being a dietician, I looked it up and it looks pretty artificial to me.

Is there someone out there who is passionate about this stuff who could post such a list for the rest of us?

Sugar, as in common table sugar from sugar cane, is sucrose, which is a chemically weak linked combination of glucose and fructose. Your stomach acids will split sucrose very fast. So the difference in using natural cane sugar and factory split glucose may only be a matter of minutes once you eat the stuff

Same goes for almost all the sugars other than the "artificial sweeteners" which are generally not sugars at all, they just taste very sweet

Some artificial sweeteners are very natural in the general scheme of things when compared to processed sugar etc.

Nearly everything that comes in a packet with a barcode is not "natural". White table sugar is not natural. Buy some sugar cane stem, and crush and boil it, then you can see the difference

I would rather use the white table sugar though, as it is more likely to be clean and tested as being non-contaminated

Sugar Substitutes

There is a great list of sugar substitutes including artificial sweeteners on Wikipedia. Many of which would be better for you if sugar levels was of a concern in your diet (it is for some people). Many are useless in baking

The list of "artificial sweeteners" is thus:

Acesulfame Potassium (Celanese, Nutrinova, Sunett)
Advantame
Alitame
Aspartame (Equal, Neotame, NutraSweet)
Aspartame-Acesulfame Salt (Twinsweet)
Dulcin
Glucin
Neohesperidin Dihydrochalcone
P-4000
Saccharin (Sweet'N Low)
Sodium Cyclamate
Sucralose (Splenda)

And the sugar alcohol's, which are also a form of "artificial sweeteners"

Erythritol
Glycerol
Hydrogenated starch hydrolysates (HSH) (long sub list)
Isomalt
Lactitol
Maltitol
Mannitol
Sorbitol
Xylitol

Nice info-graphic from Washington Post


Parchment vs baking paper Is parchment paper different from baking paper? If so, how?

Parchment paper and baking paper are the same thing. The terms are used interchangeably. It may sometimes also be called bakery paper.
Regardless of the name used, it can be either brown or white. Uses are the same - usually to line pans when baking or to cook foods en papillote.
From  MetsaTissue , which is headquartered in Finland and sells primarily to European countries:

Grease proof papers are highly hygienic and heat resistant papers which enable a wide variety of uses.
Baking paper – also known as bakery paper or parchment paper, as it is often called especially in the US – is grease proof paper that is used in baking and cooking as it provides a heat-resistant, non-stick surface to bake on.


Tips for roasting sweet potato Does anyone have any tips for roasting sweet potatoes? Since - seems to me - they cook and break down much faster than normal potatoes I skipped the parboiling stage and just stuck them (peeled) in the oven to roast for 45-60 minutes.

However they still came out a somewhat soft and squidgy result. Roast for shorter time or some other methodology?

I suppose I am looking for a crisp texture something like a normal roast potato but keeping the orange colour and distinctive sweet taste of the sweet potato itself.

Are you oiling them before roasting?  Also, you mention peeling, but not cutting it up vs. roasting it whole.

I cut mine into chunks (maybe 1"/2.5cm), a toss in oil, and roast in a fairly hot oven (375 to 425F / 190 to 220C) to try to get the outside to get some browning.


Making fruit syrup less viscous while retaining flavor I'm making snow cones from real fruit syrup that I'm making myself - the problem is that the fruit syrup comes out too viscous and it tends to set on top of the snow cone ice.  Is there anyway to make sure the flavoring is just as sweet, but less viscous?  The fruit I'm having the most trouble with right now is strawberry.

And related to this (especially strawberry) is there a good way to strain out small particles.  I wish I could shove the strawberry syrup through a coffee filter, but I don't know how this can be done.

To thin your syrup, add more water to your syrup; it will become thinner without reducing sweetness that much.  Then add a touch of artificial sweetener to restore any lost sweetness.

To strain your syrup, you can use multiple layers of cheesecloth, a fine chinois, or a coffee filter in the bottom of a strainer or small colander.  Use a spatula, spoon, or ladle to help press the syrup through the filter. Using heated syrup will allow it to flow more readily through the filter, while still removing particles.


Baked Stuffing and cooking the turkey I need to roast my thanksgiving turkey in the oven.  I also want to make stuffing but not in the bird.  Every recipe I've looked at requires an hour of cooking.  I'm not sure how to make that work.  I have made some microwave stuffing in the past, but you don't get the nice crusty top.

Any ideas?

I can think of a couple options I would consider.

Pre-cook the stuffing in a casserole dish the night before, then heat it in the oven towards the end of the bird's cooking time.  Covered, you could probably leave it in the entire time the bird is cooking, but I don't think it would be necessary to reheat for that long.
Cook the stuffing most of the way in the microwave, then put it in a casserole dish or cast iron skillet under the broiler (while the bird sits to rest after it's done cooking) in order to get the crust you want.
Make stovetop stuffing in a large cast iron skillet with a lid over low heat.  I would think you would get some kind of crust on the bottom, but I would finish it under the broiler regardless.

A recipe similar to this one for stovetop stuffing seems to be the way to go.  This also has make-ahead and reheating times to give you a guide.


Sorbet tastes less sweet when frozen? I made some strawberry sorbet. I cut up the strawberries and macerated in lime juice and raw sugar, then cooked them to make them soft so I could use my hand blender to make the puree. I used enough sugar to make it sweet in the non frozen state but after freezing the mixture its not as sweet.

Why does freezing change the perceived sweetness of sorbet? It's obvious next time I will make it sweeter I'm just wondering if there is a rule of thumb when making sorbet so that it turns out sweet.

Cold temperatures make you perceive flavors less in general. You can notice this quite directly when well-frozen eating sorbet or ice cream: you'll taste the flavor much more strongly initially than later on. And it's not just you getting used to the flavor. If you switch to something else, you'll still have a dulled perception of its flavor. I believe this is all primarily because your tongue and palate are numbed a bit. Your sense of touch doesn't work as well if your hands are freezing either! The lower temperature also reduces volatility, so aromatic things won't be as readily available to perceive.

As for sweetness, there's not exactly a rule of thumb per se for sorbet. I guess it's common to be somewhere in the ballpark of 1/2 to 2/3 a cup of sugar for 2-3 cups of fruit, but that's often more about adding enough sugar to keep it soft than anything else. In many cases, you end up adding lemon juice or something else to cut the sweetness back down, or perhaps using less sugar but adding alcohol to soften it.

In any case, you can certainly develop a sense of how sweet your sorbet will be before freezing, but it's hard to really convey in words. It's just a lot sweeter than you want it to taste in the end. Tasting a known good recipe might help train you more quickly, or perhaps tasting melted sorbet - but in that case, if you've just eaten a bunch of it, your perception is probably a bit skewed.


How can I remove oil spots from kitchen floor? Sometimes during cooking oil drops falls in floor, and look ugly. How can I remove these types of oil spots from floor?

If you are worried about stains a degreaser will help. There are many soaps on the market that will work in this context. It is important to clean it quick so the stain doesn't have time to get worse. Bleach can help with stains after the fact but can also leave splotching so may not work for you.

If on the other hand, if you are referring to the slipperiness that comes with grease on the floor, salt works well. Pour salt on the grease then sweep it up with a broom. Degreaser also works again in this situation. Just add a little to your mop water.


using vital wheat gluten instead of flour? I want to make Naan, but I am on the Keto diet and traditional wheat flour has too many carbohydrates. Can I make it with vital wheat gluten instead of flour? Do I have to add anything else?

"High" gluten flour has, at most 15% gluten. "Indian" white flour, or maida has 7.5%.
If you manage to pull it off, you basically end up with what's essentially a pan fried slab of mock meat, rather than a bread - basically seitan.
You typically add gluten to flour to modify its characteristics - the only way you're going to be able to make naan that approximates a real naan in any way is, well, adding flour.


Techniques to toast mate tea leaves The most common way of drinking mate (iles paraguariensis) tea is infusing its green leaves with hot water in a special way (chimarrão).

However, there is also the option to drink the toasted leaves tea. This is specially common in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

I want to know the best (and perhaps alternative ways) to toast the mate leaves at home in a way similar to the commercial ones, like "Mate Leão".

Please note that this process is different from the "sapeco" which is a very brief exposure of the green fresh leaves to fire in order to conserve its color characteristics.

There are green teas in China that have a 'toasty' flavour and that is usually achieved through pan frying. I would suggest to try that in a pan at home yourself (without oil). Make sure the leaves are continuously stirred, or they will burn.

Check for instance this video (at 25 sec) for a demonstration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmKkVLadXKQ


Does adding vinegar to soup make it spoil faster? I have heard that if vinegar is added to the pot of soup, it will spoil after 2-3 days even in a fridge. Is there any truth to that?

I think it makes no difference as the vinegar does not contain bacterial spores. If so much vinegar that makes the soup significantly more sour then it can eventually go wrong even later as bacteria don't prefer the acidic environment.

To add a concrete quantitative example: while cooking 3 pieces of beetroots I added 5 tsp 6% acetic acid balsamic vinegar. 7 days later kept in fridge (~4C) is still good. I am quite sure it's because the acidity as meals used to go wrong much sooner than 7 days.


How do I control the quality of a kombucha SCOBY? I'm starting to make my own Kombucha and have seen scoby with many different colors, shapes, textures, etc.

My goal is to have a scoby that produces good probiotics and a taste that is acceptable to the average bud.

There are many elements that could alter the quality of the scolby, for example:
Direct Sunlight, Altitude, Humidity, Temperature, Type of Tea(or other liquids), Sugar, etc.

I want to understand the role of each element that contributes to the qualities that make up high quality kombucha.

If you know any links, research documentation, or anything that reinforces your suggestions please post them.

If you want your Kombucha be strong, consistent, and to taste like a commercial one, then you need to use the same SCOBY contained in a commercial kombucha. Remember, making Kombucha, just like brewing wine, mead, or beer, is nothing more than glorified yeast herding. You give the SCOBY what it wants to eat, and it does the rest. It's really that simple. You just need the same starter as a commercial company.

Now, many companies spend years perfecting their strains of yeast/bacteria, and trying to raise your own or getting a starter from "some guy" often just won't compare because it is either weak, or it hasn't been fed properly, it contains too much acetalbacter, etc.

So, how do you do it? You use the SCOBY that commercial kombucha makers provide you in the bottle and propagate it. In homebrewing we use a similar procedure called "washing yeast," where you take a commercial beer, drink the majority, and then use the  dregs of yeast at the bottom to ferment your own beer.

Start with an unpasteurized, raw commercial bottle of Kombucha that you like that has not been sorbated or sulfited. Check the bottle for wisps of sediment in the bottle, indicating that it contains some mother, the more the better.

Then, you prepare food (black tea and sugar), and mix the two. Cover with some cloth, store in a warm (I would guess at 65-70 degrees F based on my experience brewing wine/beer and alsoo purposely making vinegar) and dark place, and let the mother start to grow. It'll take 2-3 feedings before you have a strong mother, but it should form. If it doesn't? Grab another bottle of kombucha and try again.

This link explains the process in better detail.

http://grist.org/food/mother-load-the-secret-to-diy-kombucha/

Once you have the mother, just continue feeding and do whatever you can not to break the cycle of feedings so it doesn't get stressed. You are dealing with living things, and so they will have a tendency to fall into cycles. If you break the cycles, they'll get stressed.


Can I leave my cinnamon bars unbaked in the fridge for a few hours? I'm making a cinnamon bars recipe in a 9x13 pan. (Recipe something similar to this.) I'd like to assemble it a few hours in advance and then leave it in the fridge a few hours before baking. Will this affect the taste at all? Should I let it return to room temperature before baking?

It will probably not affect taste, however, it will affect texture.  The reason is that the flour will react to the moisture in the batter and start to convert to gluten.  This will produce at best a chewier bar (which may actually be desirable) or, at worst, a rock hard bar.

If you are willing to take this textural risk, then I would recommend putting the pan directly into the oven from the refrigerator.  This is because the bars will be so thin (and thereby have relatively large surface area) that they will come up to temperature in the oven quite quickly.  You may have to cook them slightly longer; just make sure to test them with a toothpick or, better yet, a thermometer before removing.  The internal temperature should be a little over 200°F or a little under 100°C.

If you want to minimize the risk of chewiness/hardness, do as little initial mixing of the flour with the batter as possible.  It is okay to have some small lumps of flour since they will absorb the batter during the resting time in the refrigerator.  This suggestion is due to the fact that gluten is formed both by moisture and mechanical agitation (mixing).

Another option, for which there is no potential harm, would be to mix the wet ingredients in advance and refrigerate them, also mix the dry ingredients in advance and leave them at room temperature, and then mix the wet with the dry just before putting everything into the oven.


How do you make guava juice? I have three very productive guava trees in my yard and end up throwing away 25-50 guavas each day, as I can't go through them all fast enough. I'd like to make juice from some of this excess, but I'm not sure how to go about this.

Do I do my best to peel them and then put them in the blender? Or do I just throw them in whole into a blender? Do I peel and then boil? Or just boil? Or do I just break down and buy a juicer?

FWIW, the guavas are about golf ball-size, a little bigger, and vary in tenderness from very squishy to a bit firm.

Thanks

The peel is certainly edible, it's up to you whether you use it or not. If you choose to not peel them, try using large, juicy guavas.
The seeds are edible as well, but perhaps a bit annoying in juice. So perhaps you could put it through a sieve after it's juiced (when using a juicer). If you don't find them annoying, there is no problem in leaving them in.
Some varieties of guava have a strong odour. If you dislike this, you can boil them first, to reduce this.

As for the blender, I've never tried it myself, I've found this website that gives a good how-to.
It says to chop up the guavas, put them in the blender with some extra water (the amount needed will depend on how juicy your guavas are, so don't put too much with them in the beginning), blend, put everything in a clean towel or a cheese cloth and try to press out the juice, so the pulp and the seeds stay behind. There is nothing wrong with the pulp, you can let it in if you don't want to do the towel-step. But your juice will be more like a smoothie.

A juicer would be less work, but it's more expensive. Perhaps try making juice with a blender, and if you really really like it, you can always buy a juicer if you know you like it.

And just a side note: you surely can can or freeze the guavas, so that you don't have to throw them away.


Are there any drawbacks to cooking with limp celery? Crisp celery is important for salads and other recipes calling for raw celery, but what about when the celery is to be cooked, such as in a soup or stew? Celery loses its crispness when cooked so it doesn't seem to matter, but would I be missing something if I cook with limp celery?

I'm aware of how to revive limp celery to crispness from this question (How to keep celery crisp?) but it takes a few hours, and that question only addresses how to crispify it for raw uses, not whether it's necessary for cooking.

There's limp and then there's limp. As the celery ages, it will get more and more limp (and more bitter), and eventually neither delicious nor safe. If you're sweating the celery and it's a little less than crudité crisp it should be fine. Just sample it first to make sure it's not too bitter.


Simple recipe that when combined in a different order yields different food? I'm trying to organize a science demo, and one of the lessons I'd like to get across is that information and order matters when ingredients are combined! Mixing together a pile of raw chemical elements, of the same amount that is in a human, won't produce a human.

Is there an easy, simple recipe in which, when the ingredients are combined differently, you get two "different" foods (or foods which people perceive as being different)?

EDIT: I'm hoping to find something that's not just "a cooked/baked thing" and "the same cooked/baked thing thats all mashed up" if possible

Developing upon a previous idea from @mroll, eggs + fat (oil or butter) has some interesting science to explore.

Slowly adding oil to the yolk while whisking will create an emulsion of the fat drops in the water: mayonnaise. This phase is not favorable energetically, and this is why you need to provide energy to the system to create it. The process consists of breaking water-water hydrogen bonds and forming oil-water ones. You can actually calculate with numbers the amount of energy needed! More detail here.
By whisking the egg white, you incorporate air into the liquid phase and form a foam. The science behind is that of protein denaturation. More here. A lot of recipes rely on the stability of this foam to create a 'light' texture. The simplest examples is a soufflé. You carefully mix the yolk back without breaking the foam and place the mix in a ramekin. In the oven, the air will heat up and tend to scape upwards (hot air go up). Meanwhile, the denaturated proteins will coagulate due to the heat and get stiff. The interplay between the air pushing the foam up and the proteins coagulating is the reason why the temperature in the oven (not too hot, not too col) is crucial in preparing soufflé.
The proteins in the yolk and white coagulate at different temperatures. If you simply mix all together and put in a very hot fire, you simply coagulate the whole ensemble of proteins and get a dry scrambled egg / omelette. However, you can play with this difference of temperature to create new interesting textures. Get a bowl with your yolk+white mix and put on the top of a pan with boiling water (heat bath or bain marie). Whisk the mixture continuously, so that you get a better control of temperature changes. You will notice that at some point the texture will start to thicken, while still liquid. At this point remove from the heat: you got a cream! If you salt it and add some fat, you get a hollandaise-like sauce. If you add sugar, you got a custard.

Of course the above is only for the sake of science. To get flavourful dishes should add other ingredients such as salt to the mayonnaise, cheese to your soufflé, etc.


What's the crud in the pan with potatoes and oil? Sometimes I make sautéed potatoes. I dice the potatoes into little cubes about 1cm or less to a side, then cook them in a pan with about 1-2Tbsp of hot oil. The result is sort of like little french fries. In spite of the oil, the pieces have always stuck to the pan.

I hypothesized that the potatoes were absorbing the oil and that must be the culprit, so I tried it once with about double the oil. The potatoes still stuck, but this resulted in a layer of dark-brown oily crust forming in the bottom of the pan (that was a pain to remove, too).

It seems like the best option is to use little oil, and just deal with the potatoes sticking for the first few minutes (once they get cooked on the outside, they don't stick anymore). But I'm curious: what is it that is mixing with the oil and forming this crust? And is there any better way to cook the potatoes without having them stick to the pan?

The coating you are talking about is potato starch that is browning on the bottom of the pan, similar to what happens to roux when it is prepared. If you deglaze the pan using alcohol, it will come right off without any effort (water works too, though more is needed).

As for how to get the potatoes not to stick, it's important that the pan and the oil are quite hot when the potatoes are added to the pan. As described at Newton Ask a Scientist, the hot oil encourages a steam barrier to appear between the potatoes and the pan, temporarily protecting the potatoes from sticking and encouraging the formation of a crust that will permanently keep them from sticking. Depending on the amount of potato being cooked, the amount of oil added to the pan will have to be adjusted for thermal mass, since the addition of uncooked potatoes will cause the oil to cool down very quickly.


Are there gas ovens that come with a thermometer? Is it possible to buy a household gas cooker with a built in thermometer. All of the ones i have seen so far don't have these so there is no way of knowing what temperature the oven has reached.

I can see that i can buy a separate thermometer to hang in the cooker but i was wondering if any manufacturers have produced a cooker that has a built in one with an indicator when the temperature has been reached?

UPDATE

I am based in the UK

Many ovens in the US have such a feature.

However, ovens lie.  Even if thermostats and thermocouples in ovens were scientifically accurate (they are not), they are positioned on the outside walls of the oven, not the center of the oven where you are actually doing the cooking.  This might not be an issue if you are baking a frozen pizza (if this is the level of cooking you are intending on doing, go for it, and use such an oven), but would be a problem if you attempt any sort of finicky baking.

Don't trust the knob or readout on your oven, it isn't telling you the whole story.  If you need precision, use a bulb style thermometer on the center rack of the oven.  And unless you have very basic oven needs, don't let the presence or lack of a thermometer be a prime purchasing decision.


How can I minimize "stringing" of cheddar cheese I like to add cheddar cheese to my chili.
However, when I eat it, it always has strings.
Which sticks to my whiskers.
Is there a way to minimize that?
Thanks.

Use more mature cheese.
Cheddar runs the gamut from very young, mild, melts like mozzarella in strings, right up to so mature it has salt crystals in it & is crunchy, which barely melts at all.
Most supermarkets [at least in the UK] carry mild, medium, mature, extra mature & vintage. Specialist cheddars then run even further, to 'crunchy', or 'crackly'.
Try at least one if not two categories older. Vintage is probably too mature for a chilli & would be a tad grainy if you try to melt it.
In the UK - I don't know about anywhere else - there is a rough guide to cheese maturity marked on the pack. This is a simple & quite broad numbering system, from 1 being the mildest to 5 being the strongest. It is not necessarily directly related to the age of the cheese, but there is a reasonable correlation between the two.
From comments:
In the US aged cheddar is called 'sharp', the more aged it gets the more superlatives they add to the name, like super sharp, super extra sharp, etc
and… as we're getting some rather preposterous claims in comments about cheese ages, let me point out that cheese is not wine or whisky. You don't generally mature it for years unless you want something very specialist [& not coincidentally very expensive.]
UK Cheddar ages, approximately.
Mild is typically about 3 months of age, medium matured is 5 to 6 months old, mature is around 9 months, Extra Mature around 15 months and Vintage is usually 18 months or more.
Anything older than that is getting into specialist territory.


What's the secret to soft cookies? Possible Duplicate:
  How can I get chewy chocolate chip cookies?

I've become basically addicted to these cookies at work; I believe they're Otis Spunkmeyer, based on the branded bags we're given to put them in. They're chocolate chip cookies with candy-coated chocolate (ala MnMs), but they're soft and have that "slightly underbaked cookie" taste to them despite having been stored at room temperature for god knows how long. Even the chocolate is still soft and gooey! What causes that? Is this quality replicable for the home cook?

There are a few ways to achieve this technique.

1) Make the dough by creaming the fat (I always use butter for flavour) with the sugar then mixing in flour, not rubbing the flour into the fat which creates a crisp with a short texture. This is because when you rubbing the flour into the fat it traps the flour and coats the gluten preventing a tough texture, when you cream the fat and sugar this does not a occur and a softer texture results. Additionally adding more fat creates a softer dough although chill the dough first to prevent the cookies spreading too much.

2) This sounds a bit obvious but just bake the cookies less. Try baking them until only the outside is golden brown, leaving the centre soft. If you do want them to be golden all over before they bake give them an egg wash (an egg beaten with some milk) or milk and sugar wash if that's preferable. Remember don't over bake!

3) After you've made the cookies, put them in an airtight container with a slice of bread. The moisture from the bread keeps the cookies moist although change the bread every few days to prevent mould.

4) Finally if all else fails warm the cookies up in the ovens for a few minutes or even, if they're really tough, sprinkle a few drops of water on the cookies before warming up.

On a side note don't increase the proportion of sugar as this creates a crisp cookie. Have a look at this website for cookie troubleshooting: http://baking911.com/learn/baked-goods/cookies/problems-and-solutions.


Over mixing, when do I have to be aware of it? (Baking cookies) I'm struggle with making my cookies spread out so I can have thin and chewy cookies. I've tried almost every possible solution but one thing that I can't get my head around is when mixing ingredient together.

I've often heard of the term "don't over mix your dough" but when exactly do I have to be aware of it?

mixing butter and sugar: in this case I used melted butter
beat egg with butter + sugar
mixing dry and wet ingredients.

According to this video, butter and sugar should be mixed roughly. But when I try it, my cookie dough come out all greasy, shiny and has a really dark brown color. You can even hand pick and roll it into a ball (not sticky at all)! What would happened if I over mix in each of those steps above?

I don't think that your problem has anything to do with overmixing.

With melted butter, it doesn't really matter once it looks reasonably homogenous. With soft (22-ish Celsius) butter, longer mixing is even better.
You cannot overbeat an egg for cookies, as long as you are using whole eggs. it is possible to overbeat egg whites only, or omelette mixture, etc., but those are different cases.
This is the step about which you hear warnings for cookie making. Beating dough is similar to kneading it, because the wet flour starts forming gluten, which makes the dough more bread-like. So, should you pay attention here? Generally yes, it is a good idea. But in practice, it is pretty hard to overbeat cookie dough at this stage. Bread dough needs several minutes in a strong mixer before starting to exhibit significant gluten creation. The butter in cookie dough inhibits gluten formation, so you could expect to have to beat it even more before you get gluten. Your ingredients usually come together after maybe one minute of beating; you would have to continue beating for at least 3-4 minutes longer before something happens, so beat it 5 times longer than necessary.

And even if you overbeat it, the result is that you get gluten, which makes the dough tough and chewy. So, while this is generally a good advice for most kinds of cookies, a little gluten production will probably not give you much trouble, because you want a chewy cookie anyway. So, altogether, you have a pretty large margin of error. And if you indeed happen to overbeat a little bit, it won't be so tragic. It makes the difference between good cookies and great cookies; it doesn't make the difference between just-edible and good cookies.

As for why your dough is different than the one in the video, I have two suspicions.

First, you may have overheated your butter. You should just melt it on a low flame. If you leave it on the heat for too long, or use too high a heat, you will get browned butter, which is darker in color, and has much less water (the normally present water evaporates). This may account for both the color and the non-stickiness of the dough.

Second, I don't know how you measured. Around here, the US system is practically unknown, and whoever reads a US recipe with cups, usually starts measuring with the first best drinking cup he has lying around. But even if you used a measuring cup, it is likely that you got a large measurement error, because measuring by volume is inherently inaccurate. Too little flour in relation to the butter will produce the kind of dough you are talking about.

And in the end, you don't mention anything about the baked cookies. I have made chewy-cookie recipes before, and they frequently made a dough similar to what you describe: dark and non-sticky. The resulting cookies were good after baking. So, if you posted the question before baking the cookies, there is a chance that the result will be good. Even if not, the problem is likely not in overbeating.


Why are the corks of some of my Muscat wines popping out? We have bottled Muscat wine and with a few bottles (three out of 30) the cork seems to be pushing out.
The storage area is 12 Celsius. The wine was bottled in mid June of this year, by a small winery. This is a very recent event. All the other bottle tops are still that tiny bit concave.

What can be going on ?

This is generally an indication that the wine is not stable - that is, it is still fermenting, which is a defect in wines not intended to be sparkling (carbonated) wines.

If you made the wine, and the winery bottled it, this is your problem. If the winery made and bottled the wine, I would bring it up with them, as it's their problem, and hopefully they will replace the bulging bottles.

In making wines one either has to aim for a dry wine where all the sugars have been consumed and there is nothing more for the yeast to eat, or one "stabilizes" the wine by either filtering out all the yeast or chemically "stunning" them to prevent further fermentation when bottled. Whatever method was supposed to be applied to your wine was evidently not done properly or completely, and now fermentation is continuing in the bottles and causing gas pressure, which is pushing the corks out.

If you can't get the winery to replace the bulging bottles of wine, your best bet is to refrigerate it as cold as possible without freezing it, and drink as soon as possible.


Will pre-oiled vegetables become soggy? I like to do small preparatory steps ahead, make cooking faster when I do have the time.  If I oil my vegetables and store in the fridge prior to roasting, will the oil penetrate the vegetable and make it soggy?

It will definitely change some vegetables, specifically tender vegetables with large surface area (e.g. whole leaf ones). Have you ever tried making a complete salad including dressing, then storing the leftovers in the fridge for a day and having it limp the next day? That effect is due to oil.

The mechanism behind that has nothing to do with penetrating the vegetables or having the oil soak into them. It is just that it stops their perspiration, so they die off earlier than they should. (I know it is counterintuitive, but metabolically speaking, your raw vegetables are still alive in your fridge).

So I wouldn't describe the change as getting "soggy", especially because some kinds of vegetables won't change that much anyway. Especially those which are fruits or roots or tubers will stay mostly firm even when oiled. But e.g. spinach will be definitely different - whether you care for that difference or not is up to you.


brittle layered nut candies A couple years ago I was given a box of delicious Soan Papdi made by Haldiram Co. The ingredients listed are: almonds, pistachios, vegetable ghee, sugar, wheat flour, gram flour, cardamom.  It had the most amazing texture: oily, brittle, crunchy, and curiously flakey or stratified. You can sort of see the layers in this picture from Wikipedia.

It had a similar texture to what you find in:

1) Halvah sesame candy (ingredients listed by the Joyva company: Crushed Sesame, Corn Syrup, Sugar, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil [Cottonseed, Soya], Dried Egg Albumen, Natural Flavor, Vanilla [An Artificial Flavor])

and

2) Butterfinger candy bar (corn syrup, sugar, ground roasted peanuts, hydrogenated palm kernel oil, cocoa, molasses, and less than 1% of dairy product solids, confectioner's corn flakes, nonfat milk, salt, soy lecithin, soybean oil, cornstarch, natural flavors, monoglycerides, tbhq and citric acid [to preserve freshness], annatto color)

All 3 candies having the main ingredients of sugar and some kind of crushed nut or seed. How does this flakey layered brittleness come about? Are these sweets made by repeated folding of the mixed ingredients, like making the layers in croissants?... Or is it some sort of natural consequence (maybe something like crystallization) of combining crushed nuts with lots of sugar?

I don't know of any homemade sweet with this curious texture or structure. Is it possible (I mean feasible) to achieve this result in a regular home kitchen? If so, how is it done?

Don't worry, I am not looking for a recipe, but more of a "what is the process like?"

It's complicated.  Really, really complicated.
And hard, oh so very hard.

So, this kind of texture is not a "natural" consequence of nuts and sugar, in fact it has little enough to do with nuts at all - I'm pretty sure I've seen soan papdi without nuts, and other variations of this technique - and usually the nuts are flaked, and added at the very end (pressed into the top)... they can't have any effect on the texture of the candy before they're even introduced!  What the nuts might add is a bit of fats, a bit of starch in slurry, maybe some proteins, in the nut-exclusive recipes like butterfingers.  Soan papdi uses flour (and possibly chickpea flour, in some recipes), along with sugar and ghee, in the steps where they're making the bulk of the candy - the nuts are just garnish.

I don't know all the chemistry, if the protein plays a role, but I think it isn't important, I think that the flour and chickpea flour are mostly inert, chemically, in the recipe - just thickening and drying out the sugar (and absorbing the ghee, which separates the strands and keeps the stuff flaky), and all of them adding to the characteristic flavor, of course.  I think this is the case because both the texture and technique are somewhat similar to the beginnings of dragon's beard candy (hand pulled sugar floss, essentially, made with just sugar and rice flour... but add ghee and press flat, and it would be very similar stuff).

Anyway, sorry for the tangent, but the technique for soan papdi is to make a sugar syrup, boil it to the single thread or soft-ball stage, and as it cools, it is dumped onto an oiled (ghee'd?) workstation, then stretched and folded - freehand at first but then into cords or strands - generally pulled from the center to make a round, the round doubled over into a smaller loop, then that loop pulled out into a round, doubled over and pulled out, and so it goes until the proper consistency is reached (by this time it will be many rough threads).  I think it may be gently heated or the pulling surface or the workspace kept heated, to keep the sugar pliable longer, especially if being made commercially.  It's worth noting that this was traditionally made by hand, and it involved a lot, a lot of muscle power and time and effort to make.  Anyway, a (pre-cooked) mix of ghee, flour, and chickpea flour would be added to the workstation, and the stretch and fold would continue until the mix was completely absorbed (coating each strand, so they would stay separate, and adding flavor).

Then, to make a flat pan - the round would be cut, threads cut to length, and layered on top of a pan where the slivered nuts, raisins and other toppers had already been sprinkled.  The threads were often layered in one direction, but didn't have to be.  Then they were pressed down, rolled out, and generally packed into a compact layer.  It could then be cut and packaged once it had finished cooling.

So, the flaked nuts don't have anything to do with the texture directly - they aren't added till the end.  that texture comes from the constant repeated stretch and fold to make sugar threads, and coating the threads with a starch and fat mixture, so the threads wouldn't re-merge under pressure.

I think butterfingers, and possibly the hulwa, are the result of mechanized versions of the same process. The ground nuts were made into some thin paste or slurry, and added to cooling sugar candy somewhere like halfway through solidifying (too thick to actually mix, thin enough to try?), which finished cooling as the two were mixed.  In essence, the fats and starches didn't quite mix with the sugar in the candy, just surrounded it as it was mixed and ended up with sugar in flat-ish flakes and the nut paste formed into layers between the sugar.

Anyway, if you want to make something similar-ish to butterfinger candy or that halva, just to see how it works, what you need is soft-ball stage sugar syrup, cooled enough to be just workable, that is, still runny and sorta stretchy, and add a starch and fats slurry, and sloppily fold the two together - stretching it out, and folding over, as much as you can.  Don't mind the mess until the stretch-and-fold gives enough surface area to sort of absorb the slurry.  The more it's pulled thin, the dryer it will be (thinly coating all the surface area), and the more it's folded, the more flaky it will be - yes, same basic principle  of puff paste, only with solidifying sugar syrup instead of dough, and a hot starch-and-fats paste instead of cold butter.

Or, alternatively, you can start with a soft-ish sugar candy (like, say, candy corn), and heat it up, adding your fats-and-starches slurry while the candy is still cool and solid.  As the candy heats and softens and melts, it will pass through the semi-solid stage that's you're looking for, and if you're mixing (folding over) at the time, the candy will flatten out, stick to the slurry (and not to the other candy pieces melting alongside), and generally pass through a flaky layered stage you can use.  Of course, if you heat it up all the way I think the sugar will melt, then everything will actually mix instead of layer, and you'll end up with something fudge-like instead of crisp brittle layers - but heating from cold will get you to the same half-melted runny stage you need, if you keep an eye on it and stop mixing before it's actually homogeneous.

You can even make soan papdi in your regular kitchen, or substitute out the flour slurry for nut sauce or whatever variation you want, there are recipes and stuff online... just be prepared for a lot of stretch and folding, and a lot of muscle power to pull thousands of strands of sugar candy into fine, thin, threads.


Different cooking times and different dishes Merry Christmas! I would love it if all my dishes came out at the same time. Any ideas?

I am cooking a ham at 350, au gratin potatoes at 425 and a souffle at 350 what temperature should I cook at to have them all come out at the same time?

I don't think theres a good way to do this if you're cooking them fully from the start. Souffles are usually best done just before serving. Plus, your oven needs to have the capacity to do all this.

The Au Gratin potatoes should probably be cooked most of the way (you don't specify the recipe you're using, so its hard to say anything more) beforehand, refrigerated, then reheated in the 350 F oven (for a usual casserole dish, I'd guess this would take 30-45 minutes?).

So, if you do the Au Gratin a day or two in advance, throw it in the fridge, start the ham at serving time - normal cooking time needed. Then, at serving time - 1 hour, throw the gratin in and put the souffle in at serving time - normal cooking time.

You might want to finish the Au Gratin with the broiler after the souffle has been pulled out, maybe with a drizzling of cream + cheese (maybe subtract a few minutes from serving time for this).


Do household ovens ventilate heat to the outdoors? If I run my oven in the summer at 400F(~200°C) for an hour or two, this produces a great amount of heat.

Is this energy vented outdoors once the oven is turned off, or does it simply dissipate from inside the oven to the inside of my home? I suspect it is the latter since I've never seen ventilation going outdoors from an oven, but I'm wondering if this might be the case for other ovens/homes.

Running an oven in the summer while using air conditioning to counteract the heat seems like an extreme use of energy.

I've never seen one that vents to outside, and I've used kitchens in several countries.

In many places we need to heat our houses for quite a few months each year, and the waste heat from cooking is very welcome. I try to avoid using my oven in summer, choosing other things to eat instead.

Note that modern ovens are designed to be well sealed and well insulated, but many have a fan to cool the space in which the oven is installed; that's the source of warm air into the room with the door shut.

You can minimise the heat produced (i.e. the electricity used by both the oven and the air conditioning) by opening the door as little as possible, and by only preheating if you really need to. A well-insulated oven can be turned off a few minutes early for many dishes as it will retain enough heat to carry on cooking. In other words - cook as efficiently as possible.  The benefit of this is greater if you're using air conditioning.


How do I properly freeze and reheat a cooked, marinated steak? I just grilled up a steak marinated in vinegar, rosemary, and olive oil. Problem is I made too much. What's the proper way to freeze, store, and subsequently reheat this steak to get it as close to as delicious and tender as it now?

I'd recommend letting it cool to near room-temperature, then place it in an airtight sealed plastic freezer bag before it dries out too much. You can spoon some of the juices from cooking into the bag with the steak so that when it defrosts again the juices will be in there working to keep it moist.

When you defrost it, do so in your fridge leaving it overnight so that it defrosts gradually, keeping it in the freezer bag so it doesn't lose any more moisture. It should then be good to reheat, probably best in a shallow pan rather than a microwave to retain moisture.


Is there a way to make Beef Jerky at home? I would like to make beef jerky at home, is there a way to do this?

This is Alton Brown's recipe for homemade beef jerky, including a way to kludge yourself a dehydrator. You place the meat between AC filters and bungee them to a box fan to blow air through them for 8-12 hours.


How can I ensure that scrambled eggs will be fully cooked? I have some sort of digestive intolerance towards eggs that are not fully cooked, although I can handle some softness in egg yolks. In the case of fried or boiled eggs, this means that the whites are set, and that there is not an overtly liquid component to the yolk. It is difficult to map this to scrambled eggs, but at the very least, I would want the eggs to be completely set (at least in the case where nothing in liquid form has been added to them).

I generally only fry my eggs, and then I can ensure that my eggs are fine by only turning them in the pan once the majority of the eggs have been set (as per this). Even when my eggs are split into a few different non-uniformly thick pieces, it's not too hard: from experience I know that waiting for the sides of the eggs to set and for a little browning usually does the trick. The techniques here also can apply to scrambled eggs. Something like this is fine for me:

However, sometimes I have to eat scrambled eggs cooked by other people, and that are less chunkier than what I usually cook. Sometimes, it is not obvious if the eggs are fully done to me, for instance, here:

Occasionally, if the eggs are still too raw for me, I'm told that I can cook them for longer, if I'm simply eating at someone's home. Either way though, I'm still left not knowing how to tell if my eggs are actually done:

I've eaten properly cooked eggs in cafeteria settings before, and while some signs (a lack of liquid) is generally helpful, the eggs are rarely as brown or tough as what I would cook. Dryness appears to be a good measure of done-ness, but in some settings, I've had "dry" looking eggs that still tasted suspiciously soft.
When I recook such eggs, it is difficult to judge when the eggs are fully cooked, since the pieces are far too small for setting and browning to really work well.
Softness or wetness is, I suspect, a poor indicator of whether or not my eggs are done if additional "wet" ingredients (e.g. tomatoes, or perhaps milk) are added.

Given this, is there a general rule for these?

What should fully cooked, "overly scrambled" eggs look like? (Should they just be completely dry? I think this should be the case, but would appreciate confirmation.) How can I distinguish "fluffy" eggs from eggs that aren't fully cooked? (I don't want to unnecessarily throw out restaurant eggs that are too soft, but actually are cooked.)
If liquid has been added to the eggs, what is a reasonable cooking time, after which I can assume that my eggs will be done?

Perhaps this is a really "basic" question, but I rather not risk incurring any more instances of feeling sick for a few hours on the rare occasion in which I haven't been able to avoid eating scrambled eggs.

Temperature is the only foolproof way to determine doneness. Unfortunately it's not very practical to carry a thermometer over to your friend's house for brunch.

There are other indicators, of course, and you have mentioned the good ones for eggs.

I will add, however, that some indicators can be deceiving. For example, eggs releasing a pool of liquid is actually a sign of over-cooked eggs. The protein matrix is tightening to the point that it's actually expelling water. This is different than runny, uncooked egg.

Similarly, browning isn't necessary for the cooking of an egg (frankly, it's often detrimental). So while browned egg is likely more cooked than not-browned egg, it may also be less done on the inside.

They are clues you can use to identify doneness but none of them are guarantees.

I'd suggest sticking to fried eggs if that's what you enjoy and are more comfortable with.

So to answer your enumerated questions directly:

1) Scrambled eggs cooked to a typical doneness are moist, not-browned, and not expelling excessive liquids on to the plate. If the eggs are not done, they will not be "set" into curds and will be noticeably slimy.

That said, cook them how you like them.

2) Cooking time is dependent on cooking temperature. It's really not a good way to judge doneness. It works better for large cuts of meat or something that will take a lot of cooking time. An individual egg cooking time will vary. Yes, adding additional ingredients (mass) will slow it down.

Overall it will take just a couple of minutes tops. If you start with a hot pan, you can scramble an egg in just a few seconds.

Note: I'm talking about the scrambled eggs you typically see in American diners that look similar to the photos you posted. French style scrambled eggs are creamy in consistency and lack the large curds. Doneness is a little more difficult to judge in that dish.


How long will homemade Pico de Gallo last in the refrigerator? I am trying to start doing more prep work in the beginning of the week due to a busy work schedule.  We love eating pico de gallo on omelets.  Was just curious how long homemade pico would last in the refrigerator.  Haven't made it homemade yet, but will be doing it shortly.  :)

The Pico de Gallo I make (plum tomatoes, white onion, fresh jalapeno peppers, lime juice, a tiny bit of olive oil and chopped fresh cilantro, salt and pepper) will last approximately 1 week if kept in a sealed container in the refrigerator.  Over that time the tomatoes will get a little mushy and the cilantro will wilt.

Perhaps you can have everything else mixed and just add the chopped tomatos and freshly chopped cilantro when you are ready to serve?


Is using treated wood safe for smoking meat? I have some broken hickory drum sticks that I was going to throw out; but could these be useful for smoking meat? I would assume the wood is treated.

Good lord no. You have no idea how the drumsticks were treated or with what chemicals (cyanide derivatives are often used in pressure-treated woods, for example).

No. No no no no no.


Is there any caffeine in kuding tea? Does anyone know if the bitter kuding tea (苦丁茶) contain caffeine?

I believe it depends on the source of the leaves. Kuding can be made from both a wax tree species and a holly species. I do not know about the wax tree, but teas made from holly do contain caffeine (Yerba mate, for example).


Does kimchi always have live cultures? A lot of the kimchi I see in stores doesn't say "live and active cultures" like yogurts and kefir. I'm trying to up my probiotic intake, but I'm not sure if all the kimchi I get is helping me towards this end. If a kimchi doesn't list "live culture", does it mean that the culture has been killed by heat or other means?

At least in the U.S., there is no legal requirement to list "live cultures" or whatever on food labels.  Short of contacting the manufacturer, there's no way to know for certain whether or not it may contain live cultures.

Kimchi, like sauerkraut and similar cultured foods, will continue to ferment and change flavor and texture if it has live cultures.  Thus, if a manufacturer wants to ensure a more stable product and longer shelf life, they may heat treat (or otherwise process) the food to destroy active bacteria before shipping the product to consumers.

On the other hand, since many people have become interested in "live culture" fermented foods in recent years, manufacturers usually go out of their way to point out when they do maintain live cultures.  I'd therefore say it's likely that at least large manufacturers will advertise their "live cultures" if present.  If there's no such description on the product or on the manufacturer's website, it's more likely (though not certain) that the product has been treated in some way to extend shelf life and does not contain live bacteria.  For smaller and/or local producers, you probably will need to ask directly about their processing.


First time sharpening, do I sharpen on the coarse or fine side? I have a Japanese Shun chef's knfve, and I've been bad about sharpening it. I haven't sharpened it since buying it in August and now it takes a bit of effort to slice through a potato or carrot.

I just bought a Japanese Water stone on recommendation from my butcher, it's dual sided with 1,000 grit on one side and 4,000 on the other. The advice I was given, was to sharpen it on the fine side (4,000) weekly and the coarse (1,000) ever few months. Given, that I've never sharpened it since buying it months ago, should I start on the 1,000 side and then give it a go on the 4,000 side ?

Yes. The coarser grit removes material faster, but leaves a rougher finish. The finer side then allows you to bring the edge to a fine polish. The most important thing to remember when sharpening is to keep the blade at a constant angle relative to the stone -- don't change the tilt of the blade as you move or you'll just make a mess of it.


What is this French cuisine technique called, where "a piece of pheasant meat is cooked between two slices of veal, which are then discarded?" A famed physicist Murray Gell-Mann compared a theoretical machinery in high energy physics theory to a technique in French cuisine, which he described thus:

  ... a method sometimes employed in French cuisine: a piece of pheasant meat is cooked between two slices of veal, which are then discarded

This phrase is very often quoted in the high-energy physics literature. You can for example read the Nobel lecture by David Gross (a laureate in 2004) here, in which he quotes this sentence.

I always wondered how this particular piece of French cuisine would taste, but I could never order it in French restaurants so far because I don't even know how this is called!

So please, good people at cooking.stackexchange, inform me how it is called and how it tastes!

I am quite sure that it 1. doesn't have a name, and 2. is obsolete.

I read of this technique in a book on traditional English cooking (turns out that it was very similar to French cooking some centuries ago). Back then, meat was always roasted over an open fire. The fire is a hot and uneven source of heat, and they always had huge pieces of meat in a castle kitchen, so it was normal for the inside of the roast to be underdone, while the outside was practically ruined. So they used the good and tried technique of wrapping the roast, cooking for longer time than it would have been possible with unwrapped meat (which helped the raw core), then discarding the ruined wrapper. As the most plentiful ingredient in a noble's kitchen used to be meat (at least in England - maybe the French got the recipe for them despite the better availability of vegetables?) it was just a convenient tool to do the job.

Nowadays, we don't need to do this. A modern oven roasts much better. There are other, cheaper wrapper materials available for whoever wants to use one. I guess that some chefs may be reviving it because it sounds so unusual, it is guaranteed to attract attention. It could be worth eating, but frankly, if I wanted to know how pheasant cooked together with veal tastes, I would choose a recipe which doesn't discard the veal.

As for the name: The book I am referring to ("The cookery of England" by Elisabeth Ayrton) is based on very good research. The author publishes medieval recipes from manuscripts verbatim, etc. She also explains many points, gives some historical background, etc. I am 99% sure that if there was a special name for this technique, she would have known it and mentioned it at the point she describes the practice. For example, she explains "frothing" (pouring batter over the almost cooked joint) in the same paragraph she referrs to wrapping.


What to do about yeast that doesn't work? I am using a new container of yeast from the store; I keep it well-sealed (it's a small jar) and refrigerated.

I make sure to use warm water in bread recipes - I check the temperature using a digital kitchen thermometer.

I follow instructions to let the dough rise in a warm, moist environment - I put it in the oven (which is off, but was recently warmed to 100 degrees or so) with a steaming cup of hot water.

However, my bread still doesn't rise - not in the breadmaker and not when made by hand.

Should I use more yeast? If so, how much more? (..as in just a pinch more, or as in double or triple the amount?) Should I use more sugar, so the yeast has something to eat? I'm really at a loss here. Should I give it up and use different yeast? If so, what's a trusted brand?

You can proof your yeast to see if its still alive:

Heat approx. ½ cup (100ml) of water to about 115°F (45°C). Add a tablespoon (10g) or so of sugar, stir. Water should still be above 105°F (40°C). Add a teaspoon of yeast, stir. Within 5 minutes or so, the mixture should be thoroughly foamy.

If its not thoroughly foamy, yeast is bad (dead), dispose of it.

(Note: Metric conversions above are rounded, just like the imperial units. Don't use these conversions for baking, but proofing yeast doesn't need anything exact.)


Are 'premium' spices worth the expense? I have done some calculation. And I think that if I buy a jar of spice from the supermarket, it is about 25 times more expensive (it costs more and you get a fraction of the amount) that getting a bag from my local Asian store.

I am perfectly happy with the cheaper alternatives. But I find it hard to believe that there could be this much markup without some benefits. What are they?

I am going to slightly disagree with the other two answers.  First, here is an excerpt summarizing Alton Brown's opinion:

  The first step in learning how to cook with spices is learning where to find spices. Now here in America, we do have some indigenous spices: allspice, vanilla, chili peppers, all from here. But by and large, most of your culinary spices come from the other side of the planet. And in their journey from there to here, a lot of things can happen. Not all of them good. They pass through a lot of hands, and all those palms, you know, want to be greased a little bit, quality can go down.  So, if you're going to be a world-class spice cooker, you really should try to find yourself a world-class spice merchant. … I sure hope we've inspired you to set up a little spice trade of your own. Just remember: purchase whole spices, whenever you can, from a reliable purveyor—Internet or mail order are fine—and store those spices in a cool, dry, dark, airtight place. And don't keep them around too long. Two years tops for whole spices, and no more than six months for ground.

So, to summarize, the most important thing about buying spices is making sure they are fresh and have been stored properly during their transport.  That means buying from a purveyor whom you trust has properly sourced and handled the spices.  If you go to a specialty spice merchant, chances are they care enough to ensure the quality of their product, and they charge you more for the convenience of that guarantee.  If you shop at an ethnic market that buys imports its spices in bulk, that is okay, as long as the store has enough turnover to ensure that the spices are always fresh, however, you don't necessarily have the guarantee of freshness unless you trust the store owner.  Supermarket spices can be okay, as long as they are stored and dated properly.  These generally cost more not so much due to the willingness of buyers to pay more, but more due to the fact that there is a longer chain of wholesalers and middle men who all also want to make a profit.


Olive oil lid sealed properly? Is this olive oil lid sealed and safe to use even though the side looks bumpy? It looks sealed at the top but do tiny dents or slight bulges on the side of the lid matter? It was covered with plastic but I haven't opened the metal lid yet. (Above the 'R' and 'O' in POUR OUVRIR).

Olive oil bottles are not sealed for health reasons. I.e., olive oil is not processed through a sterile heat canning process.

The two primary reasons for sealing the bottles are to prevent leaks and to make them tamper proof.

The type of top in your picture is a 'Ropp Top'. It features a ring below the cap that will separate from the top when you open the bottle. This is a tamper-proof feature, as is the shrink-wrapped plastic applied over it. If the bottle had been tampered with, it would be evident and should not be purchased.

As long as your bottle has no leaks, it should be properly sealed and fine to use.


Should you avoid cooling a frying pan with water? Sometimes after I fry something, I wash it immediately in water because it's a bit easier to wash (before the remains stick to the pan).

Does this damage the pan in any way?

If you cool a pan too quickly it could deform, especially if your using a cheap pan. A cast iron pan could crack. This is most likely to happen if you dip a hot pan in cold water.

If you want to get a jump-start on cleaning, de-glaze the pan with a cup of water as you would when making gravy. Pour off this liquid and set the pan aside to cool completely.


Baking a tall cake in a regular pan I need to make a thick one layer cake (3-4") but I don't have a pan that deep.  Can I use parchment to add height?

Yes, you can do this like:

...though I would recommend multiple layers around.

That said, why is it that you "need" to do it this way rather than in layers? The actual baking of an 'extra thick' cake is likely to leave with cake that is over done at the edges and under done in the center.


How to keep battered (tempura) goods from sticking to the deep frying pan? I really like deep frying shrimp and veggies in tempura batter, but every time I put these goods in the deep frying pan they stick to the net that is in there to make the goods easy to put in and take out. It then fries around the bottom of the net and when I try to take the item out of the net it will tear off half the batter coating.

This is both incredibly messy and a bad for the look of the final product, which is now only half coated.

Is there any way to keep this from happening? I don't want to take out the net, because then the food would touch the heating coil, which will probably ruin the food and/or the fryer. I'd like to avoid frying in a regular pan because it uses huge amounts of oil and I can't easily reuse it, which makes it expensive and wasteful.

So ideally I'd like to know of a way to deep-fry tempura coated shrimp and veggies in a regular deep-fryer without sticking to the net.

(For reference and due to possible language issues, an image. I have one of these)

What you are describing should not happen when using the right technique. I suspect this is happening because you are either lowering the battered food into the oil using the net, or your oil temperature is not hot enough to cook the batter before the food sinks to the bottom. The net is only for removing the food once it is cooked.

Battered food should be partially lowered gently into the oil by hand and then dropped the rest of the way once partially submerged, if you lower using the net the batter will get in the net and it will all cook together.

Temperature-wise your oil should be about 175C (350F), if it's much lower than that the batter won't crust up fast enough.

Also avoid crowding your fryer, if you put too much in at once your oil temperature will drop too much and it may end up forcing pieces in to the net too quickly.


Cast Iron Skillet Loses Seasoning After Cooking Chicken? I season my cast Iron thoroughly until it is so slick it could sell a used car.  However, whenever I cook chicken breast, I notice the seasoning comes off?  No other foods do this.  I can cook eggs and vegetables in it with no problem, but for some reason chicken breast is the problem food.

I suspected I wasn't oiling the pan enough for cooking, but even when I added more, the seasoning came off.  Is this a thing with chicken?  Does the fat coat to the seasoning and cause it to come off?

Also, if relevant, I season using grapeseed oil on my range until the oil coats and seasons the pan as it should.

Seasoning in cast iron pans is very sensitive to acidity.
For example, tomatoes or a sauce based on it, will easily degrade your seasoning.
It is possible that your chicken, its marinade or exterior is acidic as well.

Make sure also you cook the chicken on its side long enough for it to naturally come off and no longer stick to the pan surface. Don't force it off.


How do I remove my KitchenAid attachment? My KitchenAid attachment appears to be stuck. I attempt to push up to remove the dough hook and it does not budge one bit. I am thinking I'm either doing something completely wrong or there's some way to get it unstuck!

Any advice?

It is usually stuck because of fresh or old food particles getting into the socket or release mechanism

The simplest way is to drizzle boiling water onto the release mechanism. A few large pours over some minutes may be required to soften and remove the food particles

A quick spray of silicone oil may be required after this as the boiling water removes all factory lubrication too

Unplug the machine first! and take great care not to get water into the motor or electronic parts. Position the device over a sink or bucket so that water will flow away from the motor and electronic parts


How can I make herbs easy to remove from a Crock-Pot? I made a soup in a Crock-Pot and placed rosemary directly in it. Once the soup was finished the rosemary had dispersed all over the soup.

The process I used:

Lightly spray Crock-Pot with Pam
Cut up vegetables (onion,carrot,garlic,cabbage,potato,etc)
Cut up and trim chicken breast
Place ingredients in Crock-Pot
Add chicken stock
Add in rosemary (on the stick not ground)
Add in bay leaves and a few other spices
Cook on low for 8 hours

So the soup turned out pretty good, except that it had the bay leaves and the rosemary leaves scattered throughout.

How am I supposed to add in fresh spices (not ground ones) such as the rosemary stick while being able to remove them from the Crock-Pot once the cooking process is complete?

You are looking for what is called a bouquet garni which is essentially a bundle of herbs tied together for easy removal.

There are three basic ways to do it:

For herbs like thyme or sage which are on twigs, simply tie together the twigs with some food-safe string.
Wrap the bundle of herbs in cheese cloth, and and tie together
Use a tea ball type device to hold the herbs.

When the dish is done cooking, you can then remove the herbs all in one go simply by removing the bouqet garni.


Shortbread with a snap I would like my shortbread to have more of a "crunch" snap to it; to also allow it to travel and not get damaged.

Is it too obvious to say cook for longer, or do I need to add more flour?
My recipe is as follows:  1034g flour, 924g butter, 462g caster sugar and 264g corn startch.  Oven temp 150 for 45min.  I am then cutting them into fingers.

Your recipe is a bit short of flour for a classic 3:2:1 flour:butter:sugar ratio, counting both the flour and cornstarch with the flour. You have 1298 grams of flour and cornstarch combined, it needs to be closer to 1386. A bit more flour will certainly help, but your method should also be considered. I would recommend cutting the butter in rather than mixing in order to deliver the best crunch.

Last, if you're cutting them into fingers then it sounds like it's pretty thick. I've found it's hard to get thick shortbread to be crunchy without overcooking it, I'd suggest thinner is better.

When baking use the touch test to detect when it's ready, you want to bake it until it firms up some, a few test batches will give you an idea when it's reached the point.


Using pastry flour for standard sourdough bread recipe? I am trying to make sourdough bread, but was only able to get whole wheat pastry flour (due to covid). Characteristics of this flour (from Bob's Red Mill) are: 1) low protein content 2) stone ground 3) super fine/densely milled. So far, my results have been very bad: both starter and dough are rising very slowly, and after reshaping, dough will not rise much. Standard (i.e. not for pastry flour) recipes I tried so far are:

Sourdough focacia
Beginner sourdough bread

How can I do to use this pastry flour for a sourdough bread? Are there specific recipes? Any parameters I should adjust, such as water content, rising times, starter feeding, etc?

Thanks!

I have been making sourdough bread with a few kinds of flour. In my experience, bread flour (higher protein) really does make a difference in many qualities of bread that you look for -- texture, rise, chew, etc.  However it is incremental, maybe like 10-25% better, so it should still be possible to create good bread with lower protein flour.

I can give a few tips for your starter that I recently learned. The starter should be at least doubling if not tripling or quadrupling in volume each time you feed it. When I feed my starter I add 1/3 starter to 1/3 fresh flour and water.  So for example if I have 100g of starter, each time I feed it I take 33g of that starter (discard the other 67g) and add it to 33g of each flour and water.  After 2 or 3 of these feedings it at least triples in volume each time.  If it is sluggish, I make sure it is in a warm spot, ideally about 85F.  There can be a big difference in activity between this and a cool room temp of 65F.

Also the starter should be peaking in activity at the time it is added to the dough.  For me that's usually about 3-4 hours after feeding but it depends.  If it has fully deflated before you use it the activity will be less.

Something I have started doing is overnight fermentations of the dough, usually about 18 hours, at room temp.  This results in bread that is much more sour and has a wetter, stickier texture that I like, so might not be for everyone.  However it makes it easier to get a good rise. My dough will double or triple in volume overnight and there is not much harm in having it sit for a few more or less hours.  The activity and strength of the starter matters a bit less because it sits for so long.  When I'm ready to bake, I will "stretch and fold" the dough and it usually rises back up within an hour or two and is ready to bake.


How is Botan (the Japanese rice candy) made? I was wondering if anyone might know how they make Botan Rice Candy? I have searched the web but no leads.

Do you mean this one?botan rice candy.

If so, in Japan it is actually known as Bontan Ame  (meaning pomelo candy) as shown in this description.

Here is a link to how a similar milk version is made (I think you would use mandarin/pomelo (bontan) juice in there somewhere for what you want), but it is in Japanese...Perhaps the pictures will help but...sorry, I don't know if it's ok to translate this...but it says: milk 500ml, sweet glutinous rice 500g, sugar 500g, mizuame (maltose; could use corn syrup instead) 600g, potato starch 200g, and a tray 31cmx24cmx3.5cm. Briefly, it says to soak the rice for half a day, then drain, and blend with the milk for 2-3 mins. Transfer to a pot and simmer on medium heat for 20-30 mins. Add sugar in a few lots, mix until dissolved. Drop to low heat, add mizuame and stir/knead very well - the firmness of the final candy will depend on how long you do this. Dredge tray with a thick layer of potato starch then pour the mixture in. To harden, refrigerate when cool.


Same recipe but sometimes white chocolate cookies come out strange I always use the same recipe (weight everything including eggs) but occasionally the white chocolate cookies come out funny.

When baking in the oven I can see them making bubbles constantly, they always come out flatter and taste doughy.

Here is a video showing the bubbles while in the oven: http://youtu.be/ZLA1h3HzkXY

What could be happening here?

Note: I melt the butter, use a bit of baking soda and bake them from frozen. But it only happens with white chocolate, that's what is strange!

From the same dough batch that was divided into two:

White chocolate has a higher fat content than milk chocolate.  That's very likely throwing off the balance in your dough.  Even though you're using the same batch, more fat is being added to the white chocolate cookies as the chips break down.

You may need to reduce the butter or margarine that you use for the white chocolate cookie dough by a bit.  It's probably a very fine difference, perhaps 10-25% less butter.  That's a bit of a guess but please let us know your results if you give this a try.


How can I reduce the bitterness of onions? Sometimes onions are too much better and can't use for salad. Then what should I do for reducing onions bitterness?

Although I've never encountered bitter onions, if something is bitter the best thing to do is counteract the bitterness with more sugar.

If you're eating them raw I would recommend mixing sugar and lemon juice in a bowl and mixing with the onions and leave for about 20 minutes. The sugar balances out the bitterness and the lemon juice helps to take away from the "rawness" of the onions, as well as adding flavour to mask any bitterness.