Dough safety and viability after overproofing We made dough using the below recipe last night, and realised this morning that we had left it at ~70°F (covered) for ~15 hours.

Questions:

What would be the symptoms of dough going "bad"?
How long would one expect it to take before dough went "bad" under the above conditions?
What should one expect the baked dough to be like after the above proofing?

Recipe:

Mix:
      3/4c Luke Warm Water
      1T Yeast
      2c Flour
      1t Salt

Proof for 1.5 hours

It is safe to eat?  Almost certainly, especially if you bake it.  Your dough doesn't contain anything that will "go bad" in 15 hours at room temperature.  Many bread dough recipes containing only flour, water, salt, and yeast are left to proof at room temperature for 12-24 hours, though they generally start with a much smaller amount of yeast.

Could it "go bad"?  That would only be possible if one of your ingredients was already contaminated with significant amounts of bacteria, mold, etc.  If you saw weird things growing on the dough or it had a foul odor, I suppose that could be an indication that something was "bad," but none of that should be possible in 15 hours for normal bread dough, assuming your ingredients weren't contaminated to begin with.  (Under normal conditions, it will probably take a few days or more at room temperature for bread dough to start actually "going bad" and growing mold, etc.)

However, the bread dough has probably "gone bad" in the sense that the bread produced will likely be inferior in flavor and texture.  If you bake the dough "as is," it will likely collapse significantly in the oven and be rather dense.  Chances are the dough will taste a bit odd after baking -- overly "yeasty" or "beer-like," with some "off" flavors.  It won't be completely inedible, but it probably won't taste great.  Personally, I wouldn't waste my time doing that.

The above answer I believe covers the specific question, but what can one do in this circumstance to "save" the dough?

It is possible to try re-kneading it for a few minutes and see if it will rise some more (re-kneading will redistribute the yeast and allow them to perhaps find more food), but that seems unlikely after such a long proof with so much yeast initially.

At this point, the likely only way to save it as bread would be to use it as a "pre-ferment" for another batch, that is to cut up the dough into pieces and mix into another batch of dough (perhaps tripling the overall batch size, while using no yeast or perhaps only a small amount).  Then let proof, divide, and bake.  But I personally wouldn't do this unless I were sure the dough didn't taste bad, because in your situation the dough might have acquired some less desirable flavors, and you'd be wasting more ingredients to produce bread that tastes a little "off."

If you were desperate to use the dough for something and didn't want to risk an even bigger batch of inferior bread, I'd knead the dough a bit, divide it up, and use some sort of fast cooking method, probably with some other food or flavorings where a significant rise isn't needed (e.g., pizza, flatbread, fried dough, etc.).


Can I use gelatine in Creme Brulee I'm having trouble getting my creme brulee to thicken up. I'm wondering if I should add a little gelatine to the mix.

I had a look around the net and couldn't see anyone doing this, which makes me wonder if it's possible or not. I've a little about gelatine and it seems like it would survive the heat of the oven.

Is there any reason this wouldn't work?

Anything that doesn't survive the 150° C oven is not going to survive a 1500° C blow torch.

Gelatin has a melting point of about 35° C, maximum. It is a thermoreversible reaction, unlike the coagulation of eggs, which is thermoirreversible. Eggs set well in an oven, which is why they are used in so many baking recipes; gelatin does not, which is why it is almost never used in baking recipes (except as a stabilizer for fillings after the baking process is done).

You are definitely barking up the wrong tree here. If your custard is melting as opposed to setting in the oven, then there is something seriously wrong with either your technique or your recipe. The addition of gelatin is unlikely to help and, as stated above, even if it does help the custard set firmer, it then essentially becomes a panna cotta and you will not be able to caramelize sugar on top of it.

Summary: Don't pursue this. Find out where/why your custards are going wrong, and fix it.


Difference between natural and organic For products such as bread, state they are either natural or organic, what is the difference?

Natural is purely a marketing term, and it is essentially meaningless since it isn't regulated by the USDA (I'm assuming you are in the USA, I can't speak for other countries). Since the term isn't regulated (with the apparent exception of meat), any manufacturer can put it on any (non-meat) product that they want, whether it is actually "natural" or not.

Organic is well-defined by the USDA and places a number of restrictions on the types of pesticides and other chemicals that can be used to grow the crop. For things like meat, the organic label regulates both the drugs that the animal is given as well as the production of the feed.

  Certified organic food products are
  regulated by the U.S. Department of
  Agriculture and produced by farmers
  and manufacturers under a strict set
  of rules. But the agency defines the
  term "natural" only for meat and
  poultry. In the rest of the food
  industry, the meaning is largely up to
  the producer.

See: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-07-10/business/chi-natural-foods-10-jul10_1_organics-or-least-chip-popular-horizon-organic-brand-organic-industry-watchdog-group


Does Tomato Damage a Wok's Seasoning? I have been using a wok since some years, it is nicely seasoned and I was quite happy with it and the results.

Recently, I have started cooking some Indian dishes, and because I like my wok, I just made them in the wok. However, it seems like the tomato is removing the seasoning - there are more and more blank spots appearing. Can that be?
Is it maybe the acid in them? Or is it something else specific to the Indian recipes (I use typically tumeric, ginger, garam masala, chili, and of course garlic and onions, but I used those before for non-Indian recipes without issues).

From experimental evidence*: Yes. Wet and acidic braising sauces (as you have in indian cooking) that stay in the wok for a long time are quite aggressive on the seasoning. A contributing factor could be rapid thermal changes when cold, wet ingredients are added to a hot mixture.

Also, in many cases the seasoning in cookware used for sundry purposes isn't exactly perfect - there can be spots where there is very thin or no seasoning covered by carbon deposits which can be underwashed or soaked if the pan is flooded with liquid for a long time, both softening these carbon crusts and allowing the liquid to attack the metal underneath.

*An extreme example: making american-chinese style spring roll or pineapple sweet-sour - plenty of vinegar, fruit juice, tomato balanced by plenty sugar. Seen that take a significant amount of the seasoning off a cast iron wok within half an hour.


Giant parsnip from Korean shop I bought a vegetable from a Korean food store which all I can describe as is a parsnip with the same dimensions but about two feet long.
Is there a name for this?

Sounds like Daikon Radish to me. It is commonly found in Korean supermarkets and looks slightly like parsnip. Some can grow longer than 2 feet.

Another possibility is Parsley Root. These look very similar to Parsnips but are generally not as bulbous near the top, longer and more slender.


Can I use cow feet in pho broth My instacart shopper has accidentaly given a pack of cow feet, in addition to the soup bones I ordered.

Can I boil the feet alongside the bones while making pho broth?

Cow's feet are primarily used for making stock or stews/soups due to their collagen content, which lends body and umami to the end product.

This makes it sound like a great idea, and it would act just like tendon in the soup.  Is there any reason not to do this?  I've never cooked pho or cow's feet before.

You can. Cows' feet will add gelatin without adding much meaty taste, which may not be ideal for pho both (depending on the other ingredients). In my experience they take longer to render than pork gelatin. They can also add off flavors if not treated properly (similar to tendon); blanch them in a couple of changes of water before you use them.


When turning instant soup into liquid soup, how can I optimise dissolution? At work, when I'm hungry, I sometimes resort to instant soup (Royco, in case it's relevant). Simple to make: heat water, put package content into cup, pour water into cup, stir.

However, I often find that the powdered soup has a bunch of wet powder residue left at the bottom of the cup after drinking. although this residue is full of taste, it means the rest of my soup was actually blander than it should be. I also usually have a small bit of residue on my spoon that I can't seem to fully dissolve into the rest of the soup. The residue on the bottom of the cup usually can be fixed through proper stirring, but the spoon residue is trickier.

How can I make the soup powder dissolve more effectively so all of the powder is part of the soup?

Add the water incrementally. It's probably enough to add just a bit, stir, then add the rest, but you can break it up a bit more if that doesn't work.

A clump of powder or a lump of paste won't dissolve easily into water, but it's easy enough to add a little water to it and thin it out. So the idea is to work your way up from powder to paste to thinner paste to liquid. This is a good idea for all kinds of things where you start with a powder or a thick paste, not just instant soup.


What does "Massage with salt" mean in a recipe? I want to try this recipe for Vegan Lox by Tasty.

Step 5 is

  Use a vegetable peeler to shave the carrots lengthwise into ribbons.
  Massage with salt.

I don't understand what "Massage with salt" means and I don't see anything happening in the video. Do they just mean "rub in with salt"?

I'd argue that 'massage' is the right word in this case.

I've this technique a lot in japanese cooking -- you cut up the vegetables, sprinkling with salt as you go (so there's layers of salt in between layers of vegetables), then you really get in there and basically massage (knead?) the pile of vegetables with the salt, so that the salt not only is spread through the pile of vegetables, but that there's some mechanical abrasion happening, too.  You then typically let the vegetables sit for a while, and then you rinse them off.

When people talk about 'rubs', it's often just a coating that's at most patted onto things (like for ribs), but there isn't the extended period of mechanical manipulation that you'd expect for 'massage' or 'knead'.

If you ever make sushi, I highly recommend trying it with carrots.  The carrots will lose some of their crispness, so that you can have large sticks of carrots without it being too crunchy compared to the rest of the fillings.  It's also useful for other firm vegetables that you're going to use raw in a salad.

This also works well to pre-wilt your cabbage before you make cole slaw -- the cabbage will give up much of its moisture that would otherwise end up in the final dish.  (I think this was the first time I saw it -- on an episode of Good Eats)


Pork vs chicken ramen I frequent a place that makes thick tonkotsu (pork based) ramen, so that is my point of reference. But I recently tried a new place that only makes chicken based broths and, for the same size bowl, I found it to be extremely filling to the point of being uncomfortably full

How is chicken broth typically made? and is there some ingredient in there that causes it to be much more filling than pork based broths?

The 2 places in question:

http://ramendanbo.com/our-menu-vancouver/
https://marutama.ca/menus/

We don't know since we don't have the exact recipes, but I have a few good guesses.

Pork broth is made by boiling pork bones, so the thickness comes from the extracted collagen. Chicken broth is usually made by boiling chicken carcasses, which is mostly meat and bones. That will make a lighter broth since there's not a lot of fat.

I came across a recipe for creamy chicken paitan broth which is made with the whole chicken then blended and strained, so you end up with lots of protein in the broth which will make it heavy.

Another one uses chicken wings and that will extract a lot of fat, which will also make you feel full quickly.


Why do "saute pans" have straight sides? I've read numerous times that when sauteing, the pan used usually has curved sides to allow one to toss the food. However, whenever I look at pans on shopping websites and such, the pan labeled "saute pan" has straight vertical sides and a lid. The lid is even more confusing when one thinks about it, since a lid would cause steaming--the exact opposite of the goal of sauteing. So what's up with this confusing naming?
edit:
As requested, here's a "link" to many pans labeled "saute"... Google shopping

North American cookware companies seem to use the terms "saute" and "sauteuse" interchangeably, but technically, the saute pan is the straight-sided one, and the sauteuse or "fry pan" is the slope-sided one.

In French cooking equipment terms, the straight-sided one is called a "sautoir", and the sauteuse has higher sides and while angled out, they are not curved.  The curved, shorter sided one is called a poele (and probably what most North Americans would identify as a "frying pan").  So the issue is really that there are a lot of different names floating around for just 3 types of pans.

When you saute, you want to maximize cooking surface area, so that things don't steam.  Sloped sides will reduce the cooking surface, so that's why a saute pan will have straight sides.  Regarding the lid, it would be used in the case that you want to cover the pan after a sear, to braise or steam.  It also makes your pan more versatile.

Regardless of the etymology of "saute", according to La Cuisine de Reference, the definition of saute is to cook quickly in a small amount of oil, and any of the aforementioned pans can be used for this cooking technique.

"Sauter - Cuire rapidement des petites pièces de viande, de poisson ou de légumes dans un sautoir, une sauteuse ou une poêle, avec un peu de matière grasse."


Making super-sour sweets -- issues with stickiness I've successfully home-made gummy sweets -- my preferred flavour currently is scotch bonnet chilli. They are made of sugar -- heated until just below hard-ball temperature, gelatin, chillies.

The problem I'm having at the moment is that I want to give them a super sour coating. I've done this by covering them with citric acid, which gives exactly the desired taste effect, however...

Within a few days, they go more and more sticky and gloopy until they congeal to form a gloopy, sticky mass.

This is not desirable. How do I avoid this? And how do things like Tangfastics and other super sour gummmy sweets work?

Like most candy with a coating there is some degree of processing, drying time and technics.  Anhydrous would be more preferable because its moisture free. The less moisture on a coating of any sweet the better.  Citric acid just like sugar attracts moisture.
I've had success with the Sour Patch Kids recipe from Classic Snacks Made from Scratch: 70 Homemade Versions of Your Favorite Brand-Name Treats. The quantities are merely an indication for the coating recipe. Just see how much you used and then subtract or multiply the recipe accordingly.

Coating recipe:
• 2 T powdered sugar for dusting
• 2 T cornstarch
• 2 T granulated sugar
• 1 t citric acid (anhydrous)
Whisk the powdered sugar and cornstarch together in a small bowl, and whisk the granulated sugar and citric acid together in another small bowl. Set aside.
Set a wire cooling rack in a rimmed baking sheet, making sure the rack fits comfortably inside the "walls" of the sheet.
Lightly dust a cutting board with powdered sugar, spreading it with your hand to make an even dusting. The moment your gummies are ready take them out of the pan you had them in. Flip over each gummy once on cutting board so that both sides have a fine coating of sugar.
If the candies are starting to "weep" and get goopy and sticky first dredge them in the cornstarch-powdered sugar mixture, a few at a time, tapping on the side of the bowl to remove excess powder. Then toss them in the sugar-citric acid mixture. If the candies are dry to the touch, simply coat them in the citric acid mixture.
Let the coated candies dry for 8 hours on the cooling rack until the coating is hard and crunchy.
Store the candies at room temperature in an airtight container for up to a week.


How long do black olives last once opened? I opened a can of sliced black olives for my pizza and only used half. I put the leftovers into a sealed container with the liquid and put it in the fridge. Under those conditions how long will the olives last? Is there a better way to store leftover olives?

Olives are basically cured in salt, so they will last a very long time.  They will last even longer if kept in an air-sealed container in a refrigerator.  They will last even longer than that if kept in a salty brine which covers them with liquid and minimizes exposure to air.


Foolproof Pectin test What are the visual signs to look for when adding pectin to a large kettle of strawberry jam, (200kg)  to get optimum set, just started in jam factory not going well. Help please!

There aren't many good visual signs. What I'd suggest is to add pectin gradually and take samples.

Bring the kettle to boil,
add less pectin then you would expect to add totally (say, half),
take a small amount of the jam, put it in the fridge to  let the pectin settle quickly,
see if it requires more pectin; if so, add a small amount and continue with step 2.

It's pretty much alchemy if you don't have sugar profile of your strawberries or supplier information about the pectin.

You might want to add some thermal insulation around the kettle so you don't burn unnecessary amounts of energy keeping it hot before you get the ideal amount of pectin in.


Romano vs Parmesan in Cacio e Pepe? I've tried making Cacio e Pepe a few times, using a recipe from America's Test Kitchen. In Cacio e Pepe, you boil pasta in a limited amount of water, then mix some of the hot starchy water with grated pecorino Romano cheese. The cheese melts/dissolves in the water to form a cheesy liquid which is poured over the pasta.

I've had good luck doing this with Romano, even using domestic cow's milk Romano. But one time I was short on Romano, and tried using about 1/4th Romano and 3/4ths imported Parmesan. When I added the starchy water, some of the cheese dissolved--the Romano, I assume--but most of it coagulated into a gooey, stretchy mass.

What is the difference between Romano and Parmesan, that would make them behave so differently when mixed with hot, starchy water? Are there other similar cheeses--asiago for example--that would work well in this recipe?

The difference between Pecorino Romano and Parmiggiano Reggiano (Parmesan) is that the first is made from sheep milk, the last from cow milk.I think this is the reason that they behave so differently, because they are made from milk of very different animals.The closest type of cheese to the pecorino romano might be the pecorino sardo.


Can you freeze an unbaked sour cream apple pie? I am concerned the sour cream will separate during freezing.  Did not know if I added corn starch if that would help.  Any suggestions?

Recipes that contain sour cream (and other dairy products) can be frozen, but they need to be cooked first. You can cook the filling, add it to a a parchment lined pie pan, and then pop in the freezer. Once frozen you can remove from pie shell and place in a freezer bag for a frozen pie shaped disc to add to your pie shell at your leisure.


Too much water in box cake mix batter. Can it be fixed? I added too much water in my box cake mix and I already mixed the 2 together. What can I do to save the cake? Could I add another box of cake mix to the batter?

If you are only over by a small amount (¼ cup or less) just add half the volume of flour(±).  If you added a moderate amount of extra water(½ to 1 cup) add half the volume of flour and ½ tsp baking powder and sugar equal to ⅓ the flour. Cakes fixed this way will be slightly dry but serviceable, particularly given that you started with a boxed cake anyway.

Beyond that point just make a double recipe.


Can I cook with fire? In Japanese restaurants, I always see the chefs doing crazy things with fire, and seeming to make very good grilled vegetables by lighting things on fire. I know most of that is for show, and that the volcano probably doesn't really cook the onions, but Can I light my frying pan on fire next time I'm making a stir fry and get well cooked vegetables?

Of course on the safety side, besides not being stupid with fire, are there other safety concerns I might not expect?

Fire is typically a poor heat source for direct cooking. It fluctuates with every breeze so the heating is very erratic. It also produces a lot of soot which tastes terrible and is bad for you.

When cooking on a campfire much better results are had by cooking next to the coals than above the flame. Cooking with a gas flame is more reliable of course.

A couple direct cooking applications of fire in the kitchen, that I can think of are:

Flambe: Lighting a sauce which contains a lot of alcohol to burn off some of the raw alcohol taste.
Roasting: Putting a steaming basket over a gas flame and charring the skin of peppers or eggplant.
Caramelizing: Using a blowtorch to put a crust on creme brulee or to sear the exterior of a sous vide steak.

I would recommend starting with the blowtorch for several reasons:

It is harder to burn your house down with a torch than with a pan of flame.
Blow torches are useful for things outside of the kitchen like stripping paint or starting the grill.
There is something deeply satisfying about wielding a hissing, blue, knife of fire that appeals to the caveman within.

As for safety. Keep a fire extinguisher on hand. Don't let kids or pets in the kitchen when you are playing with fire. Keep your home owner's insurance current.


Why does Angel Food Cake use a tube pan? I know from Can an Angel Food Cake recipe be converted to cupcakes that it is possible to make Angel Food Cake in a form other than a tube pan.

However, I'm wondering if there is a reason that Angel Food Cake is usually made in a tube pan. Is there an advantage to that shape? Other cakes are not usually made in a tube pan, so I'm wondering why that's the traditional shape for Angel Food Cake. Is there something about the nature of Angel Food Cake that requires the extra internal heat?

Structure is the main reason a tube pan is used for angel food cake. Angel food cake rises a lot, but does not have much of any gluten network or other means of supporting this structure. The egg whites can hold the air bubbles initially, but will lose them eventually. (Hence you should not delay baking after the batter is mixed, and you should treat the batter gently, spooning into the pan and taking care to not slam the pan around.) The tube pan helps because as the batter rises, it can "climb" the pan, sticking to the edges. This is also why angel food cake is left to cool upside-down in the pan for an unusually long time; it should not be removed from the pan until it is completely set. If it weren't for the tube, the center of the cake would not have anything strong to hold it up, so it would collapse. This is not an issue for cupcakes because they are so small.


What can substitute for barley in soup What can I use as a substitute for 1/2 cup of barley in a 2 quart soup?

Barley's there to bulk out the soup, and add a bit of flavor and texture. It doesn't thicken or have any other special function, so you don't need to add anything to replace it.

If you want to add something with a roughly similar size with some texture then short grain rice like risotto or paella rice will do, however I prefer Orzo, which is a type of very small pasta. You can also smash up some short pasta like penne, farfalle, or shells and put them in. Just remember that rice and pasta cooks much faster than barley, so add it at the end of cooking and get it off the heat as soon as it is al dente so it doesn't overcook and get mushy. Add a handful of frozen peas to it to get the temperature down quick.


Question about roasting green beans and cherry tomatoes I have a question about something new I want to try for Thanksgiving.

Everyone things we're making too many casseroles and asked me to do something different. I decided to try to replace the green been casserole. I had some roasted green beans and cherry tomatoes as Red Lobster last year and really liked them. I think they'd be a great and easy substitute. I'm not exactly sure what they did to them, but it was probably just olive oil, salt, pepper, and maybe some garlic.

My question is about cooking these two items together. I assume it would be more flavorful to cook them together as the juices would combine, but I'd really like to get good caramelization on my cherry tomatoes, but I still want to green beans to have some bite.

I feel like if I cook them together that either the green beans would end up mushy and the tomatoes caramelized, or the green beans would be good, but the tomatoes wouldn't be caramelized.

Does anyone who's made this know how this will turn out? Should I start the tomatoes first, to give them a head start, then add the green beans, or is it necessary?

I bought enough ingredients to do one test batch. They don't have to be the star of the table, I just want them to be good. Thanks for the help.

I would roast the tomatoes until they're nearly at the desired caramelisation, and meanwhile blanch the beans. Then pop the beans in with the tomatoes for 5-10 minutes at the end so they can get to know each other.


When should I add cocoa powder to instant coffee? I prepare Turkish coffee using pre-roasted coffee powder.

What is a good time to add cocoa powder to it - before heating, after heating or during heating? Does it matter?

If you're using plain cocoa powder, which doesn't really dissolve, I would mix it with the coffee powder before adding to the water, and as long as the coffee powder will tolerate it, add it all to the water before heating. Mixing the two powders should help avoid clumps in the cocoa powder, and adding it early will give it time to release flavor into the water. You'll still have to stir a bit to keep it from settling out, though!

If you're using instant cocoa mix, which is sweetened and processed to make it dissolve evenly, you can just add it at the end. There's no benefit from adding it earlier, and it'll be easiest to stir and dissolve it in already hot water.


Pretzel burger buns: how to make soft crust? According to pretzel bread recipe, raw dough buns must be dipped for 30 seconds into a water with baking soda before going into the over in order for them to develop that pretzel brown crust, but it also seems to make the crust quite hard. Is there anything I should add or do to make the pretzel bun's crust soft like this:

All the recipes I tried to follow on the internet came out with a very hard pretzel crust.

Since what you're making is a pretzel that you want to act like a soft loaf, I would try treating it like a bread.

To keep the crust on homemade bread soft, people brush the top with a fat of some kind (usually butter).  So you could try liberally brushing the tops of your buns with butter when they're fresh from the oven and still hot.  That should keep the "crust" of your mini-loaf nice and soft.


How to cook a Turkey in the Microwave? I wish to expedite the cooking process of my turkey this year.

How do I cook a full 25 lb. turkey in the microwave?

It must be edible - preferably delicious!

Ok, I‘ll bite.

While according to Today.com Butterball posted a recipe, my contradicting answer is

  You don’t.

At least not when you want a whole bird with crisp skin. Like this:

 (Source)

The inner volume of your microwave is most likely not big enough - for the experiment, I checked my freestanding 25l model: inner space is 215.0 x 337.0 x 354.0 mm, and the turntable has a diameter of 315mm.
No 25-pound bird will fit in that.
Cooking can therefore be done only in batches and you need to cut and portion the bird prior to any cooking attempt. The time needed to sufficiently heat the different batches (and reheating etc, so that you can serve your party) means you will not save any time.
Microwaves cook, they don’t bake or grill and they are notorious for uneven heating. So to get a food safe bird, you need to plan a lot of extra time to ensure heat distribution which will almost certainly mean you need to overcook parts to get the whole entity to a safe temperature. Plus you don’t get the coveted crisp skin (at least not without a few tricks and even then the results are more dry than crisp, believe me, I tried). This means that it will barely meet the “edible” requirement and “delicious” only to those with rather uncommon preferences or expectations.

So if you have only a turkey and a microwave, I see these options or a combination thereof:

Forget about the classic thanksgiving turkey dinner with the whole bird a showstopper on the table.
Find someone who has a suitably large oven, for a 25 lb bird, you will need one that can hold a 16 inch roasting pan and don’t underestimate the needed height. Alternatively, a grill or barbecue, a turkey fryer or other suitable equipment should do.
Cut the bird in parts, ideally separating various kinds of meat (breast, thigh...), find microwave recipes for the different types and prepare multiple turkey dishes.
Get a significantly smaller bird and follow the USDA’s instructions or the ones from Butterball.


When buying blue potatoes how can you tell what color the flesh will be? Most of the time when I purchase blue potatoes they have blue flesh. However, once in a while I get some that have a creamy golden flesh. Looking at them I had no idea they would be different.

I know there are many varieties but usually in the grocery store we are not provided that information. I've tried asking the produce clerks but essentially they are stockers with very little knowledge about produce.

Is there a way you can tell without opening a bag or damaging a potato to get a look?

It's almost impossible to tell without studying all the different types of blue/purple potatoes and memorizing slight differences in size and hue. One trick is that the potatoes with the deepest, darkest blue skin typically have purple flesh. And the lighter ones are more likely to have flesh that's yellow or even white.

Sometimes, the potato will have a sign with the exact name of their variety:

Examples:

Royal Blue Potato - Light blue skin, yellow flesh; typically large and oval-shaped
Andirondack Blue Potato - deep blue/purple skin, light purple flesh
All-Blue Potato -
deep blue skin and flesh

(I suggest doing a Google Image search on these varieties to learn the difference)

One interesting fact: the Andirondack Blue Potato is a hybrid developed by Cornell University, which is how it got its purple flesh. I'm not sure if purple-fleshed potatoes exist in nature.


What happens when you bake Winesap apples? In researching the answer to a question of why the apples in a pie became mushy, I noticed that two of my cookbooks contradicted each other on the Winesap apple, on whether it remains firm upon baking.  When the Winesap apple is baked, does it become mushy like a McIntosh or remain firm like a Granny Smith?  I have never used or even eaten a Winesap, so I was hoping someone had experience with them.

I went to the farmers' market last week and bought a variety of apples.

After cooking, here's the order from softest to firmest:
McIntosh, Cortland, Winesap, Yellow Delicious.

The McIntosh of course practically dissolve. If you want to make quick apple sauce, or if you like really squishy pie, they're the best.

I typically prefer Cortlands for pie, b/c they don't totally dissolve but neither do they keep their shape. I think I'm going to try Winesap, though; I think they'd work great for pie.

The Winesap apples I used got very soft, but they still held their shape. Think of it like a ripe banana or pear - it has shape, but you can squish it really easily. After 30 minutes in the oven (making apple crisp), they got soft enough that lightly pressing with a fork would squish them down. They did not stay as firm as the Yellow Delicious did and definitely not as firm as Granny Smith would.


How can I make 'Santon sauce' My local Chinese restaurant (Happy Chef on King St, Sydney for anyone who's interested) does a very simple dish of a half crispy skin chicken, served with rice and a sauce that they call 'Santon sauce'. It's the most ludicrously tasty sauce I've come across, but I have no idea what the magic ingredients are. Here's what I know:

It's about the consistency of, say, fish sauce or wine.
It's a clear, pinkish red, about the colour and transparency you'd expect from a red wine vinegar.
It's quite sweet, a bit sour, moderately salty.
The non liquid ingredients are shredded chillies (which have probably soaking in the sauce for a while as far as I can see), shredded coriander (cillantro) and sliced spring onion (scallions).
It has a strong, almost pungent taste which I think comes from something other than the chillies (although they undoubtedly contribute).
I have a reasonably decent knowledge of oriental flavours, but there is at least one flavour component which I'm completely unable to identify, or even say what it's similar to (not helpful I know!). I think it's some sort of herb or spice, which does something similar to fenugreek in terms of its flavour curve (lots of presence in the aroma, initial taste, slow fade).

Santon sauce appears to be just a name used by this particular restaurant; I can't find reference to anything similar online. Does anyone recognise it or have any suspicions?

Ingredients it might contain:

Sweet rice wine
Rice wine vinegar
Fish sauce?

Ingredients it probably doesn't contain:

Soy

From what you have described it sounds like Santon sauce may be a variation of Shandong sauce which is often served in Chinese restaurants alongside Crispy Skin Chicken. Here is a basic recipe that can be found on many internet sites. Perhaps it can be a starting point for you.

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 chilies, finely chopped (I finely strip them rather than chop)
2 scallions, finely chopped (I thinly slice them)
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp sesame oil (I always use the light version)
2 1/2 Tbl chicken stock
Pinch of MSG
3 tsp dry sherry
2 tsp wine vinegar

Heat a wok and add the garlic, chilies, onions, sugar, and sesame oil. Stir fry for 1 minute. Then add the chicken stock, MSG, sherry and vinegar.
Bring to a boil and then simmer for 20 seconds.

I have found that the flavor varies depending on the type of chilies, sherry, and vinegar used. You can try different types of each to get the particular flavor profile you are looking for.

If you try this and get the taste you want I would be interested to know the final ingredients.


French-press coffee has a powdery taste I recently ordered a French press (Bodum Kenya) and a ceramic conical burr grinder. I've tried this with two different decaf blends from Vermont Coffee Company, one which I ground at the store four days prior and one which I purchased in bean form and ground immediately before brewing.

With both cups, I experienced a weird, astringent powdery taste (arguably closer to a sensation) on the end of my tongue. I made an extra cup from the pre-ground and used hotter water (200 degrees instead of 190) and it seemed to help slightly, but it didn't fix the problem.

My methodology was as follows: heat the water, then while it's going fill my press with hot water (to heat it up, to minimize heat loss and prevent cracking) before I grind the beans. Then when the water boiled I temped the water until it hit 200 degrees even, dumped the priming water from the press, and then filled it with three scoops of coffee and roughly twelve ounces of water (my press's beaker is unmarked.)

Finally, I waited nearly four minutes before pouring.

Any idea what's going wrong here? I'm not getting much aroma or body, either. The grinder I'm using is made by Hario, and is a hand-crank conical burr grinder which received excellent reviews.

Update: As an experiment, I tried grinding a fine batch for the purposes of testing it in my bland (but unoffensive) Senseo. I learned two things: one, my brand new burr grinder has a skewed burr which screws up the consistency of the grind, and two, most of the offtastes I detected are still present. I'm drawing two conclusions:

I'm using WAY more coffee for the french press than I am for the pod-brewer
My grind probably isn't helping matters
I do not like this roast at all anyway.

I'm returning the grinder and I will order something else. In the meantime, I've ordered a bag of whole-bean Lavazza I know I like, so that if this problem reoccurs I'll be diagnosing the issue against a blend I have specific and extensive knowledge of.

Update 2: I've substantially increased the size of my grind, and made three sequential cups with smaller and smaller grinds. At the current spot I produce a decently-aromatic 12 ounces with just under two scoops of beans, and it's completely without either the sour or powdery characters it previously suffered. It still tastes weak, though, despite a faint velvety richness which I think is indicative of what this coffee should taste like.

Increasing the amount of coffee brings back the sourness, but not the powdery taste. Interestingly, in this case the spent grounds smell quite nasty - the sour taste dialed up to 11. I'm going to finish the bag of beans and replace the grinder and see where it takes me - and once the equipment issue is resolved I'll be back to report and accept an answer.

You didn't mention the size of your grind. You definitely want a course to medium grind. A fine/espresso grind will leave a lot of sediment and produce a bitter cup of coffee from over extraction.

Two things you can do to minimize sediment:

After letting it brew, before plunging, use a couple of spoons to scoop out as much of the coffee grounds as you can. This video shows a demonstration of this.
Decant the coffee. Pour the coffee from the press into another jug and let it settle a moment before pouring into your cups.

Another tip: Place a saucer over the top of the press for the four minutes to minimise heat loss.


What do I do with leftover egg whites? How long are they safe for? I made two Leche Flan the night before last, each calling for 10 egg yolks...so, I was left with about 20 egg whites. I've stored them in the fridge in a tupperware container. How long are they good for? What can I make with them (other than scrambled egg whites and frosting)?

I can't really answer the question on what to do with the egg whites but the question how long the egg whites are good: two to four days.

Hmm, what about macaroons?


how can I strip the surface from an iron alloy pan without harming the metal? Got a Debuyer Mineral Element Pan for Christmas. It has a thin coating of bees wax. I thought it would be nifty to preseason the pan with flax oil and get an awesome surface on it before I started using it. Mostly based on what I've read about iodine values of oils and conditioning of cast-iron cooking pans.

I managed to get a great looking seasoned surface on it but now that surface is flaking off. I suspect it's due to the beeswax being under the surface and the polymerized flax oil not adhering to the metal.

I'd like to strip off the beeswax and polymerized flax oil and start fresh. How can I strip it off without harming the metal? I'm assuming oven cleaner, but want to make sure that won't ruin my pan.

There is a video at the manufacturer's web site.

My French is strictly limited, but it is pretty self explanatory even if you cannot read the captions.  Just be prepared for some really cheesy music.

It appears you were supposed to wash off the beeswax (which is probably just to keep it from rusting during shipping and storage) and then season it much like any cast iron pan (although this is a die-pressed iron pan, and should be smoother).

The following advise is specifically in response to the original question asking how to remove the seasoning so that it can be re-seasoned as the OP desires.   The general advise against using detergent or soap on a cast iron or pressed iron pan is to protect the seasoning on the pan, not the metal itself:

Now that you have a wierd amalgamated coating, I would wash it with something strong--like dishwasher detergent or Barkeeper's Friend--then when you are back down to the metal, season it as desired.


Why do baking recipes often tell you to "make a well" in flour before adding wet ingredients? Many instructions for baking bread, cakes and other yummy things specify that you should "make a well" before adding more ingredients. One example is here
What's the reasoning behind this?
I've found some sources say that it helps ingredients mix together, but I don't see how that could be. I also read it helps avoid ingredients sticking to the side of the bowl, which I'd say is unavoidable when you're mixing up a dough regardless of how nicely shaped your well is.
I understand that some baking is more about technique than anything, but is this step really adding any benefit?

You don't need a bowl to make bread dough. You can make it on your kneading surface, by mounding up the flour and adding water. Of course, the water will just run off... unless you make a well in the flour to hold it until it's mixed in.
There is no good reason to "make a well" in flour in a bowl.


Can I find out the caloric content of bread by dehydrating it? If I microwave a piece of bread until all the water is evaporated and then weigh what is left, is the caloric content estimated by finding the calories in the same weight of flour?

Conventionally, drying is only the first step.  The second is burning it and seeing how much energy is given off.

But this isn't always the best way to determine the calories that your body gets from the food, as it doesn't deal with bio-availability - basically, can your body extract that energy from the food?

Diet foods often cellulose or other fiber added to them -- which can burn and have heat, but your body can't absorb.  So for nutritional reasons, they're considered 0 Calorie.

For the case of unenriched bread, we basically have only a few ingredients ... water, flour, yeast, and maybe salt.  Once we remove the water, the yeast and salt are lower percentages, so we can estimate (stress estimate), but we also need to know what type of flour was used.

whole wheat flour : ~339 kCal / 100 grams
white flour : ~364 kCal / 100 grams

(but this is likely for American whole wheat, which is white flour with bran mixed back in, not ground up whole wheat berries)

Of course, it's also worth mentioning that calorie counts on menus and food packaging in the US are only estimates.  There are tables of calories per item, and they just add them up in the amounts used to get a number. (so all wheat bread is considered to have the same kCalories/gram, no matter how it was made)  Some of those values might just be estimates based on the ratio of carbohydrates, fat, and protein in the ingredient.

But how something is cooked, and the particular person (their gut biome, how well they chew, etc.) can affect how much energy they can get from the food, so it's always going to be a really rough estimate


Is anyone aware of cast iron pots and pans that are enameled on the exterior with plain cast iron (no enamel, no non-stick) interiors? Looking for a brand of cast iron pans that is enameled on the outside, but with a bare iron interior. In other words no enamel, no ceramic, no non-stick on the inside. (so it is less likely to scratch an induction cooktop)

Staub has cast iron enameled outside and bare iron inside


Stew? Roast? Non-Braised Chicken? I occasionally experiment in the kitchen by tossing together rather arbitrary mixes of whatever I have handy.

Tonight I'm making something which I would call a stew, but with much less liquid. It's in the crockpot where it should be ready in about three hours.  It's not braised chicken, because I did start without the pre-cooking that "braising" implies.  I'd be inclined to call it a roast but it's being done very slowly.

So, of curiosity, what would be the best term for it?

Here's what I did:

* wash/scrub and trim four large carrots
* eat two tangerines, washing the rinds
  and placing them in the bottom of the crock pot (under
  the carrots which now form a sort of gridiron)
* add in a whole yellow onion (peeled and quartered)
  and a couple of shallots and whole potatoes
 (forming a ring around the edges)
* season four raw chicken thighs which seasoned salt,
  chili powder, minced ginger, whole cloves, and oregano
  and place those on the bed of carrots. with just enough
  water to submerge the carrots
* put a small pat of butter on the top of each piece of chicken

So you can see why it's like a stew or a roast but not quite either of them.

What is it?

Sounds to me like you are making an American interpretation of a Pot au Feu chicken. When making a Pot au Feu neither browning the chicken nor fully covering the chicken with water is necessary as long as the lid is very tight to hold the steam.


Does honey always have to be heated in order to liquefy it for bottling? Some honey producers claim that they are honey is unheated. Assume that the producers in question are decently large scale and sell their honey in typical bottles/jars/pails.

However, talking to other producers, they indicate that they had to heat the honey in order to liquefy it for bottling. E.g. from one producer:

  In order to liquefy the honey for bottling, it is gently warmed to around 110 to 118 degrees Fahrenheit (~= 43.3 to 47.8 degrees Celsius) and then strained through a cheesecloth.  The warming process includes only air circulation and doesn’t directly touch the honey.  No “cooking” is involved.

or from another producer:

  Our raw honey has never been heated over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (~= 37.8 degrees Celsius). Most of our honey is heated at some point. However, we do have some right now that is cold processed and has never been heated. We have cold processed until it crystallizes and then we have to warm it in order to pour it.

Does honey always have to be heated in order to liquefy it for bottling?

Example of bottles/jars/pails:

Knowing small-scale beekeepers personally, I can confirm that fresh honey straight from the combs is liquid(-ish) and can be put into jars directly.

I have seen (and participated) in the process of manual extraction: The full combs are uncapped (the wax lids of the cells are removed), then go into the extractor - think of an old-fashioned laundry spinner - and the centrifugal force extracts the honey. If the beekeeper did everything right, the honey can go straight into the jars, no heating or warming required.

But of course I wrote „if“.

Raw honey will crystallize at some point and yes, this may even happen while the honey is still in the combs. (But rarely, because it would mean the beekeeper has waited way too long to harvest, e.g. until spring.) Likewise, harvested honey will crystallize during storage and so the producers may have to gently warm the honey if they didn’t bottle it immediately. The speed of crystallization depends on the environmental conditions, but also on the ratio of glucose to fructose. Some types of honey will hardly ever crystallize (chestnut, for example), others will solidify almost immediately, like rape.

(And there is also the honey that is sold in the convenient squeeze bottles: It’s often warmed beyond 70C and filtered at some point to prevent future crystallization that would clog the nozzle.)

So the short answer:
No, honey need not be warmed if it’s bottled straight from the extractor. But it may be more practical or economic for producers to do so.

You might want to note that the bees keep the temperature in the hive between 33 and 36C - so without going into a “health” discussion, slowly warming the honey to that temperature will make it liquid without affecting the enzymes etc. significantly. Warming the honey beyond 40C starts to destroy them.


Nutrient composition of milk vs. home-made kefir I got a bit confused when looking up nutrition values for milk versus kefir made from that milk. For some reason many tables list higher values of some nutrients (e.g. potassium and magnesium) than is in the source form, i.e. the milk.

Can someone shed light on how this would happen?

I realize that lactose from the milk gets turned into carbon dioxide and alcohol, but where does it take the additional nutrients from if the only nutrition for the kefir grains is the milk and air?

It could just be the difference in milk sources. Different cows, receiving variable types of feed, produce milk with varying nutritional content. They probably only tested kefir using milk from one or at most two sources. In comparison, the figures for normal milk could be drawn from hundreds of dairy farms across the nation.

I would expect there to be changes in the carb/protein/fat content of the milk, as well as vitamins produced/consumed by the kefir.  Specifically, the carbohydrate level should be lower from lactose being digested into lactic acid.


Should brussel sprouts ever taste like chemicals? So I got a bunch of what I thought were locally grown organic brussel sprouts from the local coop the other day.  They came in an unlabeled zip lock bag, which usually means small local farm.  I cooked them with some butter and oregano. I under cooked them a little bit, but I usually prefer them that way.  When I ate them, I began to notice that they had a mild chemical taste.  It burned in my nose and the back of my mouth a little bit.  It was a sensation very similar to the one caused by ammonia or bleach fumes.  I hadn't washed them as thoroughly as I perhaps should have (there were black spots on them I hadn't noticed before, but the cooking brought them out).

Do brussel sprouts naturally have some ammonia, or something similar I might have been tasting (and why don't I remember tasting it when I've eaten them in the past)?  Did I just down some lovely pesticides and herbicides?  Could those black spots have been a fungus that was producing something unpleasant?

Brussels sprouts are in the brassica family, so you can get that family of strong cabbagey/spicey/sulfurous flavors and aromas. You probably know what that tastes like though, so I'm assuming it wasn't that. I've seen those black spots plenty of times, and I generally trim them, but I don't think they would be likely to give off a strong aroma. Once I had a situation like this where a vegetable tasted of kerosene, which I assumed was a cross-contamination and dumped it. That's what I would recommend if this ever occurs again. If in doubt, throw it out.


Forgot the yeast in a brioche bread recipe This is the brioche bun recipe I frequnetly use:

250 gr potato puree

3.5 cups flour

1 tsp sugar

0.5 tsp salt

2 tsp instant yeast

1 tbsp olive oil

50 gr butter

1/3 cup milk

1 egg

1 tsp bread improver

First mix the dry ingredients, then add melted butter, egg and potato puree. Then add olive oil and milk.

I followed the instructions but forgot to add instant yeast. And with the mistake remaining unidentified I waited for the dough to rise. But after two or so hours, all of a sudden I figured I didn't add yeat to the dough.

Is it possible to corporate it into the dough now? What can be done to save the dough?

I will sometimes add yeast late, for instance when I'm not finding a sourdough culture to be adequate for a decent rise, or on the rare occasion when I'm getting poor performance from a particular batch of yeast.

I typically dissolve it in a small amount of water (or milk for this recipe), work the mixture into the dough, and add a bit of flour if needed to compensate for the added liquid.

It works.


What is the difference between "Mongolian Grill" and "Hibachi"? For years I have been frequenting Chinese restaurants that feature "Mongolian Grill" (or Mongolian BBQ depending on the location). Recently I tried a new place that had (what they called) "Hibachi", which looked very similar, and I originally mistook for 'the same'. When I inquired about the Mongolian grill I was informed that there is a difference. While the host went on about what those differences are I am afraid that the subtleties were "lost in translation".

Can someone clarify for me what the differences are?

Hibachi are technically a traditional Japanese device used for heating one's house.  They are a basic, heat-proof container that holds charcoal.

The cooking devices that many people refer to as "hibachi" are what the Japanese would call "shichirin":

I'm guessing that the term "hibachi" was popularized in North America because "shichirin" can be hard to pronounce for Anglophones.

Somewhere along the way, primarily in North America, the term "hibachi" also started to be used to refer to teppanyaki:

I'm not sure when or why this started; perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Banihana confusingly refers to their teppanyaki restaurants as "hibachi-style".

Among these, teppanyaki is most similar to Mongolian barbecue, in which meat is cooked on large, round, cast iron griddles:

(Images taken from Wikipedia.)

If you were to actually go to a Japanese restaurant and cook your own food over a shichirin, it would likely be referred to as "yakiniku", which is believed to have some origins in Korean barbecue.

Whereas teppanyaki has been a traditional Japanese cooking method for a long time, "Mongolian barbecue" was developed in the 1970s in Taipei, Taiwan.  During that time, Japanese Teppanyaki was very popular in Taiwan, so many people speculate that was actually the inspiration for Mongolian barbecue.  There are also some similarities between the Japanese dish "jingisukan" and Mongolian barbecue, however, jingisukan predates Mongolian barbecue.


how can I get guar gum to smoothly blend in juice? I watched a demo clip of a guy who simply tossed a tbsp of guar gum powder into a cup of cold water and 5 minutes later, it looked and acted like a glass of slightly opaque jello. Yet, when I've tried to replicate this with white grape juice, both hot and cold, it keeps turning out lumpy and 'snotty', with tapioca-like beads of undissolved gum suspended in it. Any ideas on how to avoid this? I'd rather use juice since we're touting "100% fruit popsicles", so I'm hoping somebody's got a better plan than 'buy a mixing bat'. Maybe, slaking it gradually, like mixing plaster? Grazie ...

The lumps of gum in products are known as "fish-eyes". Unless you get pre-hydrated gum, the best way to avoid them is to mix it in a blender (and a pretty powerful one at that). Sometimes pre-hydrated gum will mix in more smoothly and with fewer lumps, but you'd still need to blend it. Another option that may not be practical in your case is to disperse the powdered gum in another powder, like sugar, and then mix the blend in.

Here are a couple of sets of instructions on mixing gums.


mixing cake batter in a blender? I only have a blender, and was wondering if you could make cake batter in a blender. Till now I've been mixing by hand, but I have a recipe that calls for creaming sugar and oil, and I don't know how to do that by hand.

Can cake batter be made in a blender? Does the process need to be altered somehow? Are there things to look out for?

If you have a recipe which calls for "creaming the sugar and oil", forget it and find another recipe. Creaming is a process which only makes sense with a solid fat, so the sugar crystals create tiny air bubbles which are then expanded during leavening. Mixing sugar and oil separately, with or without much whipping, doesn't do anything. If the recipe author was not aware of that, he had no business creating recipes, and you can expect there to be other mistakes.

But if we assume that you have recipes which require real creaming (they will use butter or other solid fat), you can't make them in the blender. The cutting motion of the blender blade is very different from the paddle action of a mixer. It won't work. You can do it by hand, although it is a bit tedious.

If you have other cake recipes, for example muffin method cakes, it will work OK. You shouldn't overwhip, for the reasonds SAJ mentioned, but it is not guaranteed that it will happen. A cake recipe has lots of fat and uses a low-gluten flour. If you blend in short pulses, the result's toughness will be very slight compared to a mixed cake, it can cost you points in a culinary school, but family and friends won't notice it. On the other hand, there isn't any special reason to use a blender for them and not mix by hand, as there isn't much work involved there.


Is white rice bleached before being processed? My dad is being especially paranoid of this. He claims to have read a paper years ago that said that the standard in rice processing was bleaching the rice to produce "whiter" rice.

I've been searching everywhere, and for only weird fringe sites, most of the main sites (Wikipedia, some other cooking websites) make no mention of bleach.

Is my father being paranoid about this? Or are his claims substantiated?

No. It is not general practice to add bleach to rice. The brown rice bran is removed through mechanical processes. As to whether he should continue to indulge this worry...I'd be more concerned about [insert common American male problem here] before ammonia in rice. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3138007/ This review has many free references in it.  Should you want further peer-review reading, I can provide it.


If dark pans brown food faster, do I need to make adjustments to baking when I use a light colored pan (and vise-versa)? Would lining a dark pan with foil inhibit the browning significantly?

For metal pans, lining them won't significantly affect the cooking time -- the reason they cook differently is because of how much radiant heat they reflect.  (dark absorbs, light reflects).

For a glass pan, however, I would think that if you use aluminum foil, or something light and reflective, that it could make it cook more like a light metal pan, as the issue in the glass pan is that it allows almost all of the radiant heat through without reflecting it.  I've never tested it, though.


kansui powder vs. lye water, which one is better for noodles? What is the difference between kansui powder and lye water? Can they substitute for each other?

This is a little tricky to answer because of terminology.  Kansui powder is a mixture of potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate, in powder form.  It is typically added to a noodle recipe in a range of .2% - 2.5%, depending on the type of noodle.

When it is sold in liquid form, it is also known as Kansui, but may be labeled as "lye water", or "alkaline solution", or with the ingredients "potassium carbonate" and "sodium carbonate."

They are both the same thing, and you can turn the powder into a liquid by creating a solution.

The terminology issues arises because this product is sometimes confused with food grade lye (sodium hydroxide), which is used, for example, in German pretzel making (among other things).  They are different products, with sodium hydroxide being much more caustic, and potentially a safety risk if not handled appropriately.


Can I re-heat Ricottta that hasn't seperated into whey fully yet? I am making Ricotta Cheese with Lemon Juice for my acid. I got it to 200 degrees then added my salt and acid. Perhaps i didnt add enough. I have 7 cups milk, 1 cup heavy creme, 3 tsp salt, 5tbsp lemon juice. its been sitting while I make dough. It hasnt completely turned over. I have some small curds. But I do not see whey. Can I reheat this and fix it with more lemon juice?

Yes, you should be able to, if it's still liquid.  The worst that will happen is that you'll end up with a more dry, farmers-cheese curd, but that will still be fine in ravioli.

Incidentally, this is why a lot of folks use granulated citric acid instead of lemon juice.  Juice acidity can vary quite a bit.  Otherwise your quantities look correct.


How to determine the grain of a fresh/ uncooked Arm Roast Newbie.

I have a 3-lb fresh Arm Roast from a local butcher shop.
They did not slice it into 1-lb. slices this time, so I need to figure out how to do that.

It looks like my first obstacle is figuring out the run of the grain structure and then which way to slice the meat, with the grain or against the grain.

The second obstacle will then become how to slice it into roughly three 1-lb slices. Given its shape (paraboloid) stirs distant memories from geometry class! More math than I want to take on right now for making two cuts through it.

So I am thinking that there must be some rule of thumb for making two such cuts through the roast.

Alternately I thought I might come close by starting at the halfway point then measuring out a half an inch either way, getting a 1-inch steak from the center and and two mini-roasts. I would weigh all three sections for future reference.

Any thoughts will be greatly appreciated. I do need to get this roast into the freezer tomorrow, even if I have to freeze it uncut.

For most cuts of meat, the direction of the grain should be relatively easy to see. Usually at least one face will have no visible striation, and the grain will run roughly perpendicular to that. If you scrape at a bit of fat or connective tissue at the surface with the tip of a knife, you can see what direction it takes down into the meat. And if there's a (long) bone, the grain will usually run parallel to it.

As for dividing it up evenly, that just takes practice. If you really want things exact, though, and you have a pot which you can submerge the entire roast in, you can use water displacement. Put the roast in the pot, and cover with water. (If the roast floats, keep it down with a thin metal utensil.) Note or mark how high up the water is in the pot. Then remove the roast while leaving the water in, and check or mark the new water line. Find the level 1/3 of the way between the two lines, and dip the roast down until the water reaches that point; note where on the roast the water comes to, and cut along that plane.


How to keep vegetables and herbs fresh for longer? Possible Duplicate:
  How to Store Fresh Herbs
  How long can I store a food in the pantry, refrigerator, or freezer?

Due to my lifestyle it's hard to tell in advance whether I will be cooking during some weeks. I love food though, and when I get back home after being away (or some weeks I just don't have the time), the food is not as fresh (we're talking about 3-7 days).

What are the best tips for prolonging freshness of vegetables and herbs? I'm not asking about meat or fish, because I presume the only way to store those is to freeze them, which I don't do, though refrigerators – I tolerate.

Can ingredients be grouped according to how it should be stored?

Edit: I live in Eastern Europe. Continental climate, mild. For most of the year humidity isn't a concern.

Plants continue living after they have been picked. They respirate, but without the moisture and nutrients they used to get from the soil, their metabolism goes awry and they wilt.

The only way to stop this process is to blanch and then freeze them. This works well, but needs lots of freezer space. Also, they aren't exactly like fresh, with their texture changing a lot (they get soft, as the ice crystals produced by freezing rip their cell walls to pieces). A few of them change their flavor too.

If you don't want to freeze, you can prolong their life a bit by slowing their metabolism.

Keep them at 10 to 15°C below the temperature in which they live/ripen. The lower the temperature, the slower a plant's metabolism is. But you don't want to go too low, as it destroys some flavor components and in general triggers unwanted change in your food. In the fridge, tomatoes get woody and lose aroma, bananas go brown, mangoes lose flavor, and so on. You want to keep these at above 10°C. Fruit and vegetables like apples and potatoes which don't require too much warmth for growth can be kept at lower temperatures, including fridge, without taste loss.
Keep them away from light. Light is an important environmental factor for plants, and promotes growth. You don't want anything growth-related to happen in your picked plants, it hastens their wilting.
Give them some humidity, but not too much. You want just enough to keep their slow metabolism going. Give them too much, and you will get faster metabolism, which will make them look better at the beginning (like the salad constantly sprayed in the market), but exhaust the available nutrients sooner, leading to quicker wilting. You also risk mold in high humidity. On the other hand, if they are completely dry, the wilting will occur not because of missing nutrients, but because of missing water. I can't give you a rule of thumb for the water requirements of each plant, as they are very different. They are somewhat related to the plant part: fruits (in the botanical sense, so including eggplants, tomatoes, etc.) don't need much, they are mostly self-contained. The tighter their outer membrane, the less they need; a banana will practically never wilt for lack of humidity. Leaves need more humidity, for example salad or herbs. Other parts fall in between.
Limit oxygen exposure. As I said above, they respire. Unlike the photosynthesis process which some people confuse with plant respiration, respiration uses up oxygen and produce CO2. Less oxygen means less respiration, so they keep longer. Still, storing them in an airtight humid space is a recipe for mold and rot, so you have to be careful about just how much you can limit the oxygen.
Buy them as whole as possible. The more damaged the plant, the sooner it will wilt. Pre-cut salad goes bad quickly. Hulled corn doesn't stay fresh as long as corn in the husks. Herbs and salads sold with their roots packed in earth (in pots or just plastic bags) hold much longer than the cut leaves.
Don't wash them. Many plant parts, especially fruits, have a protective coating. Some of them get wax applied by the producer. Washing this coating off speeds up moisture loss and wilting. Store all your fruit, vegetables and herbs unwashed. Clean them immediately before preparation.
Isolate them from each other. Some fruit produce ethylene, which promotes growth in other fruit. This brings a special problem: the fruit which produces ethylene is better off when not kept airtight, because the overripening effect of ethylene will be stronger than the preserving effect of low oxygen.
Carefully remove any rotten exemplars. "One bad apple spoils the barrel" is not just a metapher; very ripe (already going soft) fruit produces more ethylene (see above), and bacterial and mold colonies have it easier to jump to the neighbouring fruit if they start from a "strong base" (a fruit they have already taken over).
Learn which fruit can ripen off-plant, and buy this type slightly unripe, letting it ripen at your home. But be careful to not get other types of fruit unripe, because it will never taste good. (Applies to botanical fruits, e.g. tomatoes taste better when vine-ripened).

The perfect solution is a special fridge or cellar with the right conditions (which happen to also be good for cheese and wine). Most of us can't afford that, so you may have to create an environment which creates everything but the correct temperature range for warmth-loving fruit (you can keep apples, etc. in the normal fridge). Some people feel that the better compromise is to keep them at room temperature and have them wilt quicker but preserve flavor, others keep tomatoes etc. in the fridge wher they stay fresh but lose aroma. It is up to your personal preference.


Steel Pan non-stick improvement by polishing I recently started to research into my cookwares and decided a stainless-steel pan was a good budget investment to learn to cook better my steaks and other items. I cooked my first steaks over the last few weeks and they were great, they didn't stick and came out delicious.

FYI: usually I cook the steak by seasoning it with some olive oil rubbed in then salting
and peppering it and letting it rest till it is at room temperature. To cook it I bring the
pan to high heat until droplets of water slip on it as if they were mercury, add a tbsp of
oil and place the steak on, reverse it after about 3min with tongs and remove after about
another 3 min. The cuts I use are often thin.

However there is one problem I have not been able to get over; the steak does not stick but its seasoning will and over the cooking period burns. This causes smoke and a real headache to clean while trying not to use a scourer side of a sponge or metal wire as I have been adamantly told it will ruin the pan's surface (this got me thinking... read on)!

So over to my question which may be a little out the box, I am a materials engineer with access to metal work machines, to my knowledge a perfectly flat surface offers less surface area to stick so if I were to buffet the pan until it were nicely polished on the surface (currently I can see all the circular grooves from the fabrication process such as you see on brushed steel) would this help reduce the sticking? Or can I simply improve the way I cook the steak and avoid the seasoning sticking and burning?

(1)  It is worth noting that many people prefer stainless steel pans to cook meats on because they are NOT non-stick (meaning they stick).  The fat rendered during cooking, along with the bits of fat and meat that stick to the surface are called "fond" and are used to make pan sauces to serve with the meat.  This is a big selling point for SS pans.

(2)  Polishing the surface of your pans to a mirror-finish won't make your pans non-stick.  The sticking has more to do with the properties of the stainless steel itself rather than with the buffing of the surface.  Some people have suggested that you can season a SS pan like  you can a cast-iron pan to make the surface non-stick but that sounds fishy (but, admittedly, I have never actually tried that - I used different types of pans for different types of cooking).

(3)  Some seasonings just burn very easily - like paprika.  Seasonings that burn easily will most likely burn or scorch whether they are still on your meat, or if they have strayed to the pan.  Any spices that might burn should be applied shortly before the meat finishes cooking or applied when you serve it.


Suggestions for a substitute for almond paste in a cookie recipe? I’m trying to find a substitute for almond paste in a cookie recipe. Does anyone have any suggestion for what I could use?

This is a cookie recipe that calls for 8 ounces of almond paste. The recipe divides the batter into 3 equal parts and you add different food coloring to each. after baking in a 13/9 you layer the cookies putting raspberry and apricot jam between the layers, and then top with Chocolate. I like the almond flavoring, so I suppose my question is how do I make my own almond paste? Thanks for any help.

The most common substitute is persipan - a paste made from apricot kernels. It has less taste than almond paste itself, but you can add artificial almond flavoring. I don't know where you live, but in some countries, this combination is easier to find in the supermarket than real almond paste.


When smoking, is temperature consistency more important than exact temperature? I am smoking ribs in a charcoal smoker. The smoked rib recipe that I am following instructs smoking the ribs at 225°F. My smoker is maintaining a temperature of 215°F. I can add more lump charcoal to raise the temperature, but fear I will soar right past my target temperature.

I realize the ribs will cook slower at a lower temperature, but is maintaining 225°F paramount to cooking the ribs correctly? Am I risking food safety by maintaining a slightly lower temperature?

When you approach the low end of the low-and-slow cooking methods, a concern that is normally not an issue in faster cooking methods starts becoming important:  how long will it take the food to get to safe temperature?

You want the food to be above 140 F (60 C) for the entirety of the cooking process, for safety, although having that happen instantly is not possible.  Therefore, you want the temperature to get to that threshold as quickly as reasonably possible, especially for the surface of whole cuts of meats where the greatest risk of pathogens are.

Therefore, I would urge you to err on the side of caution and safety, and use the extra coal at the beginning of cooking until the food reaches at least 140 F.

Once it gets out of the danger zone, and into the safe zone, you have much more freedom.   However, barbecue is far from exact.  I would not worry about a 10 or even 15 F disparity. Your final outcome will likely be indistinguishable.

Still, once the food is safe, if you wish to allow the temperature to be somewhat lower, that is the time to do so.


Looking for a pliers-like tool for making crushed tomatoes I need a tool for crushing or mashing fresh tomatoes. I know I can use a grater but that takes too much table space for me to use and it's not comfortable enough - if you want to crush a tomato after you start eating, you need space for another plate to grate the tomato on top of it. You also have to stand up.

I am looking for a tool similar with an egg slicer, where you can simply push one side on top of the other to crush the tomato. Or like a nut cracker, so I can crush the tomato while holding it on top of my plate. And I can sit down when doing it.

Is there any instrument like that?

I think a lemon squeezer might work:

You would want to buy one in person so you can see the size of the holes, which vary a lot. I think some of the tomato would come out through the holes and some would be left behind mushed up in the squeezer, which you could shake out onto the plate.


What are these used for These metal tubes are open on one side and hang from the handle suggesting a frying use?

Could it be for frying a wrapped dough and pulling it out of the oil?


What is the right consistency for ghee? Some of ghee I find in stores has liquid on top (with some solids floating about), while in other brands it is completely solid (both jars are stored at the same temperature). Also, the latter ghee (that doesn't split into a liquid layer on top) is often twice as expensive as the former.

So, what is the "right" texture/consistency for ghee? Are the more "solid" brands just better at filtering out the usual water and protein? Or, are there really some components of butterfat itself that melt at lower temperatures, only to get filtered out by the more "solid" ghee brands?

Ghee is suppose to be 100% butter fat. The water has since been boiled off. If it has a liquid portion at room temperature this is either they did not remove all the water and solids that floated to the surface or an additive liquid or preservative did not set right (Most likely). I would avoid it if possible. If not, use your nose and make sure it is not gone rancid.


What would give Swiss Chard a gritty texture? I made Swiss chard rolls last night and when we would bite into them there would be this gritty bite once in a while, almost like biting into a small gravel. Swiss chard itself has a gritty texture but this was definitely "stone-like".

When I was washing the Swiss chard leaves, I did notice its texture to be grainy but not to the point of "dirty". Has anyone else encountered this? Do you think I just didn't wash the leaves thoroughly enough? I can't imagine it coming from any of the other ingredients from the recipe. Sure I had some stalk from the Swiss chard, chopped mint, and chopped arugula but it sounded like a stone.

The recipe you linked to has lentils in it. Most recipes with lentils tell you to rinse and drain them, and also to pick over them for stones. Lentils are seeds from a plant, and during their harvest, it's not uncommon for small stones to be picked up as well. (Same goes for rice and any type of legume.)

If you didn't check for any small stones before cooking your lentils, your encounter with "stone-like" objects is probably, in fact, due to stones.


Best time to cook chicken, to keep it from going off Assuming no use of freezer, or desire to salt-cure/pickle/etc.

From how I was brought up, if I notice a piece of meat in my fridge is going to go off in the next ~24 hours; I'll always try to cook it so I can hold it for a couple more days (refrigerated again).

Intuitively, this makes sense - cooking the meat kills most of the bacteria and so gives more time before they build up the dangerous levels again. However, I am also aware that the bacteria cause toxins to build up - and those will make me sick at some point - so it is not as simple as just "resetting" the storage time by cooking the food.

I'm trying to figure out; when is the best time to cook meat that I know I won't be able to use in time - in order to keep it the longest?

To be clear - I'm looking to prolong the time I can keep the meat in total, without putting myself at serious risk of food poisoning.

Example:

I have some raw chicken.
It has a use-by date, of 4 days from now (and for this, we trust that is a reliable date - as it has proven to be for me in past experience)
General consensus is that cooked food will be safe for 4 days in the fridge. See stack answer

Can I keep the raw chicken until day 4 (the day it says it will go off), and then cook it to get another 4 days cooked-storage time, giving 8 days total?

Or, does the initial storage time affect the cooked time; meaning that I should only store it for say, 2 days, and then cook it - giving me 6 days?

Noting that at the extreme end; if I cooked it immediately, I would have 0 days raw storage, and then only 4 days cooked time - giving me just 4 days total. Which is clearly not ideal (no advantage to cooking).

Compared to existing questions and answers:

There are a lot of really detailed answers on SE already about how long food can be kept in the fridge, or kept once cooked. There are also good answers on how you cannot cook food that's already gone-off, to save it, due to the toxins built up already (and that not all bacteria is killed).

However, the part I am struggling to do - is combine this information to know: "If I have a piece of raw chicken, that will go off in 4 days - and from USDA I know a cooked piece of chicken will last 4 days - when is the best time to cook it, to give me the longest total lifespan?"

This answer details how long things can be kept, but not whether the cooked and raw times add together, or affect each other.

This answer details how cooking food doesn't get rid of toxins, and suggests I can't just wait till the use-by and then cook it.

This answer details how cooking gives you a new amount of safe time, which doesn't seem to work with the above.

The best time to cook is "now" as it gives germs less time to multiply.

If you have a slow cooker, sous-vide set-up, you can keep the cooked meat for up to 21 days in the fridge (for months in the freezer).

I must direct you to this previous question for more info on food safety.

Edit: If your goal is, as stated, to maximize the time you have chicken in your fridge without getting sick, 3 days + 4 days will give you seven days. However, from a food quality point of view, cooking "now" will give you more satisfaction.

Something else... you don't know how long the chicken has been dead already. I've seen some nasty looking chicken at butchers. If the skin looks dry, it has been dead for some time already.


Safety glasses in the kitchen: why are these not common place? A long time ago in high school, we used to have "home-ec" (short for home economics classes), which also involved some hands-on-cooking. No one needed to wear safety glasses (even though one does learn how to fry stuff).

In chemistry classes on the other hand, even putting some water to boil on a bunsen burner required donning safety glasses.

The pattern applies more generally: cooks seem to regularly do things with water, oil, etc. that chemists wouldn't dare to without safety glasses.

WebMD suggests that 40% of eye injuries are caused during home-activities, such as cooking. but I am not sure how to learn more (for instance, how many of those injuries occur in the kitchen specifically, rather than at home in general?).

Are there sources that suggest that eye-safety is unnecessary in the kitchen?

One reason is that food ingredients are generally safe to ingest, unlike most school lab or workplace chemicals.

Food items often don't contain as much stored energy as lab/workplace chemicals.  Turning a standard stovetop to "High" may heat a pan to around ~650 degrees.  This is much lower than the temperatures required to melt most metals and many other elements, so the odds of creating an explosion that may send debris into your eyes or perforate your skin is much smaller.  Of course, this doesn't make it completely safe, simply safer.  If you follow common kitchen safety advice, you should be reasonably safe.  Don't add water to hot oil, don't use a malfunctioning device, etc.

When you're wearing safety equipment in a school lab or workplace environment, often you're wearing safety equipment even when it's not strictly necessary, in order to reinforce the habit of using it when it is required.  So while you may wear googles, apron and gloves to boil water in chemistry class, it's less about imminent danger, and more about making sure that everyone understands and is willing to use safety equipment properly and consistently.

Finally, kitchen equipment is heavily standardized and regulated, so while accidents can happen, their likelihood is far smaller than accidents in a lab setting.  Few people apply direct flame to glass or Pyrex containers in their kitchen.  Similarly, it's somewhat easy to clumsily knock a Bunsen burner into a classmate's highly-energetic extra credit project in a school lab.

As for the WebMD numbers, it appears that they're based upon this study.  Only a small percentage of the injuries require admittance (20k out of 636k, about 3%, including workplace injuries), and most others are either superficial injuries or injuries to the area around the eye.  At 40%, that's 8000 injuries at home that require admittance, with about 30% involving the eyeball itself, and most of those are lacerations that cooking couldn't cause.  Burns barely register across all injuries, workplace and home.

So you're pretty safe cooking at home.  You'll probably burn your skin from time to time (we all do), but don't let the small risk unnerve you.  If cooking was that dangerous, you'd see a lot more people wearing eye patches.


Cooking Temperature for Crocodile meat? Does anybody have any experience cooking crocodile meat sous-vide?

We found some crocodile meat at our local butcher, and bought some on a whim. Judging by appearances, it looked quite a lot like fish, but felt much firmer and stiffer - more like pork.

Not having found any information on cooking crocodile sous-vide, we went with a safe 60℃ for 4 hours. Although the result wasn't bad, I thought it could have been better. It certainly wasn't tough but it was very firm, somewhat dry and  gave an impression of having been overcooked - not unlike chicken breast at ~65℃.

I'm wondering whether anybody had done the trial & error on this, or whether I'll have to give it a few more shots myself :-)

Out of personal experience and out of personal taste I'll give you the following:

If you like it moist 55 degrees C for 4 hours.
If you like it to feel like steak: cook it like steak.
If you like your meat to feel more like fish cook it like steak for 20 minutes. Then drop the temperature by 10 degrees C.


Scoring medium hydration dough after it's been in the oven I've been using this setup for 60% hydration dough:

20 mins in cloche, covered, 500°
10 mins in cloche, covered, 450°
20+ mins uncovered, 450°

For all intents and purposes, the cloche works like a Dutch oven, trapping moisture:

(You can see in my second photo my rescue attempt)

I've got a baking sheet with water to maintain humidity in the oven as I bake it.

The problem I'm running into is that when I score the bread (1/4" - 1/2", single cut along the centre, trying my best for a 45° angle, immediately before it goes in the oven), the score actually glazes over, becoming part of the crust, and preventing the score from doing it's job of 'ventilation'. The first time this happened, my dough blew out. The next two times, I've caught it happening in the first 5 mins and re-scored it after it's been in the oven.

So, two questions:

Is scoring bread after it's baked for a few minutes a common thing? Do bakers do this?
If not, what can I do to my baking method to prevent the score from crusting over?

It looks like there may be some misunderstanding about how the cloche is supposed to work, and what scoring will/should look like. I think the bread in your photo looked like it didn't need any further scoring. I think it looked like a great result, since there aren't any visible blow outs on the bottom.  If you preheat the cloche in the oven, and put the bread in, with one or two deep scores, you should get some spring and steam from the oven as the water escapes from the bread inside the cloche. This is what causes the wide opening of your score.  The fact that it doesn't look like the "leaf" or "lip" that professional bakers get is mostly due to practice with the angle/depth of the score, and likely the amount of steam that is in the oven.  The cloche will create some steam, but not as much as is in a commercial oven with steam jets.    I don't see anything wrong with your pictured loaf.  It may be different from what you were expecting, but I think it is perfectly fine.  There was probably no need to do the second scoring.


Why not air-dry knives? I've read that one should hand-wash knives, and I mostly buy that. I've also seen advice that one should dry them immediately and put them away.

Why shouldn't knives air-dry? Aside from the unsightly water stains, is there any downside to letting knives air-dry?

Edit: We have Henckel full-tang knives. Rust is a real concern -- we had them sharpened, and the shop did a lousy job -- the edges are ragged.

It's to prevent rust. Rust requires oxygen and water to form. The longer you leave your knives wet or damp the more likely you are to develop rust.


Why my Biriyani gets mushy when I cook for 30/35 mins (suggested by lot of chefs) I am trying to make some Kachhe Biriyani (Cooked with raw meat and half cooked rice).
For that I am using following ingredients.
600 gm, Lamb
4 tbsp, Ghee
160 gm, Onion
70.00 gm, Raw Papaya
50 gm, Natural Yoghurt
300 gm, Basmati Rice

Now I cook my rice:

For 5 mins to cook it to 50%.
Then I mix it with meat marinade (above) and cook it for 35 mins on low flame (33% of high flame).

This is the way it has been described by a lot of cooks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLaLwAeAxBw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMuedBOODTs
But following this, my Biriyani rice always gets soft and mushy.
What is wrong? Am I using too much heat? Is my meat releasing too much water?
What is different compared to other chefs using this method?

As with many dishes of this type, there are as many ways to cook it as there are cooks - but overall I think you have three things combining to make your rice mushy.

You are over-cooking your rice at the start.

Your burner temperature is too high

Your simmer time is too short.

Basically you're driving off water but not at a pace the rice can settle to its final state, absorbing some of the oil too - or being nicely coated at least.
As a 'first fix' method, I'd start with only 2 mins boil of the rice - some chefs even kill the heat as soon as it boils.
If you have an oven, I'd switch the cook to the oven, in a pot with a well-fitting lid, 170-180° for anything from 1 to 3 hours, depending on how cooked down you want the meat. Personally, I'd go for 3 hours - that means you either need enough practise to get your water level right at the start or check it half way & add more if necessary. Don't stir it during cooking, you'll risk breaking up the rice too much.
If you still want to go with stove top, then I'd invest in a simmer ring [$£€ 5 on eBay etc] so you can spread & reduce the heat getting to the bottom of your pan. This will mean you can leave it longer without risk of it burning.
Lengthening your cook time will improve both the meat & the rice.
After comments:-
It may be worthwhile investigating different rice brands, of course, not all rice is equal.
Another option [you don't mention in the question whether you already do this] is to pre-soak the rice in cold water for 30 mins, then rinse well, before cooking.
Overall, the biryani method relies on the rice first absorbing water as it cooks, but then being infused with the oils from the meat & marinade in the later stages; through this period it will go through a slight drying stage & tend to separate better at the end of cooking.


Pizza browning agent substituting proportion I've been learning how to make pizzas.

In the book I follow, for home ovens at 500 F, one needs to add a browning agent in pizzas to bake the pizza well. In 453 grams of flour, he uses 9gm of diastatic malt. Sugar and honey are 2 other alternatives we can use instead of malt. I used 9gm of honey for my pizza dough. It didn't seem to brown at all. My first question is "What proportions of sugar and honey should I use instead of 9gm of malt and why?"

I used coarse whole wheat dough without browning agent and didn't use sufficient water (mostly?!) in my 1st iteration which didn't bake well at all. 2nd time, I used something called maida (all purpose flour) with a browning agent which was better.

I'm following Pizza Bible by Tony Gemignani. He tells to use browning agent so I'll go with it.

4.5g active dry yeast,
9g pink salt,
70g water to activate yeast first and
extra 225g ice water to make the dough
5g oil
Cold fermentation (in fridge), 1 day bulk+ 1 day after cutting dough
into balls.

I don't know exactly how much honey or sugar you should use.  I make pizzas all the time and get sufficient browning to my taste, without adding any "browning agents."  However, different recipes may react differently, and you may prefer a dough that browns faster or darker than mine.

In any case, you'll need a lot more honey or sugar to replace the diastatic malt by weight.  Diastatic malt means that it has active enzymes which break down some of the starch in flour and thereby release natural sugars in the dough.  Those sugars help to feed the yeast (and thus tend to cause a greater rise), but also will aid in surface browning reactions.

If you substitute diastatic malt with sugar itself, you're not trying to replace the malt powder or malt syrup -- you need to replace the sugars that the enzymes would have released into the dough.  Thus, there's no possible proportion to give you: the amount of sugar released by using diastatic malt will vary depending on fermentation conditions, type of flour, and probably other factors.  Again, I don't really know how to give you an exact amount of sugar/honey to use -- there are all sorts of recipes for pizza with greatly varying amounts of sugars in them.  You might start by adding a tablespoon or so of sugar/honey to your dough and see what happens.  (Definitely try more than 9 grams.)  Adjust up or down until you get the effect you like the best.  (Adding sugar to pizza dough won't just affect browning: it will alter texture and flavor too, so it's best to experiment.  And note that some of the sugar will also be digested by the yeast in long fermentations, so you may need to make further adjustments depending on your procedure.)

Additionally, you might find that longer fermentation will allow natural enzymes in the dough to break down some of the sugars too and promote browning.  There's a limit to this process, and you already mention a day-long fermentation in the fridge.  But fermenting for 2-3 days in the fridge and/or allowing a little more time at room temperature when the dough is "warming up" for fermentation may allow the enzymes to simulate a bit of your diastatic malt effects.


What is the term for "plain" non-flavored ice cream Me (russian) talked to my partner (american) about ice cream flavors. In Russia and post-USSR plain flavor (creamy-milky one) is extremely popular and often called пломбир. It is the default flavor, in contrast to American default, vanilla.

In the US though, this flavor of ice cream is not a real thing. Is there a term that I can use to find and buy that type of ice cream?

It seems like a common question, and some people call it "cream flavored ice cream", and russian->english translation can be "rich creamy ice-cream".

It's called "sweet cream" ice cream. If you make your own ice cream with something like milk, cream, eggs, and sugar, and you don't put any additional flavoring in it, it's called a "sweet cream base".


What are the differences in protein content between chicken broth and chicken stock? Does anybody have any data on the nutritional composition of chicken broth (liquid in chicken soup) and chicken stock (liquid from chicken bones)? For example, will stock contain more protein then broth? Have googled the nutritional contents I read conflicting things and I'm not sure whether they are referring to broth or stock. When during the cooking process is protein extracted? If you simmer stock for 2-8 hours, does most of it come out in the first two hours, or does more come out with prolonged simmering?

I very quickly found nutritional information for storebought (Swanson) chicken broth and chicken stock. As you'd expect, neither one contains all that much protein. The stock does contain substantially more: 4g per cup compared to 1g - this should also be expected, since stock has some gelatin in it, and gelatin is mostly protein.

Of course, it's commercially made; I imagine you'd be hard-pressed to find good nutritional data for homemade stock and broth.


Advantages of grapeseed oil? I recently spotted grapeseed oil at Costco.

I've been considering switching over from Canola oil; are there any culinary advantages or disadvantages of grapeseed oil over Canola or other cooking oils?

Grapeseed oil's high smoke point is good for dishes like stir frys where other oils might burn. However not as high a smoke point as Sunflower oil. Canola oil has a relatively low smoke point which will limit its applications.

In addition, Grapeseed oil has a clean flavour where as Canola sometimes has a bitter edge to it. Other oils will have their own flavour characters. Which you use is partly personal taste and partly dependant on what you eat.

For deep frying I'd go to sunflower. It's not the cheapest but not expensive either. It gives a nice crisp finish to most fried foods. If the oil is to be used cool, such as a dressing, olive oil would be my choice, simply for flavour. Since olive oil, like canola, has a low smoke piont, I wouldn't fry with it. For a high temperature frying such as a stir fry, your Grapeseed would be ideal. Also look at rice bran oil wich has a very high smoke point and clean flavour. Ideal for stir fries.


Chili and bell pepper substitute due to allergies? I recently learned that I am allergic to ALL forms of pepper except black pepper.  Bell peppers, chili peppers, etc.  I am allergic to and it makes my throat swell up.  I have several recipes using ground chili pepper.  Is there a substitute spice that will give my (mostly ground beef casseroles) recipes SOME flavor?

You are not going to find anything outside the chili family that gives quite the same flavor, so substituting flavor-wise is not going to be possible.  Note that paprika is a spice ground from particular pepper, so if you are allergic to all capsicum peppers, you don't want to use it.

What you can do is build other flavorful combinations which you enjoy and which you can eat.  Some things to consider that bring a touch of some type of heat with them include:

Mustard powder (a touch of mustard-type heat, and a deep flavor.  Probably want to combine with some herbs like oregano or rosemary.
Horseradish (just a touch for piquancy)
Ginger, which will work very well in Asian inspired dishes, and in combination with those flavors
Szechaun peppercorns (not a capsicum pepper) -- they have a unique flavor and effect; you will have to decide if you like them

All of these flavors are "hot" but from different chemicals than the capsicum peppers, so they will all have different effects.


Can you pressure cook whole fish and get soft bones without overcooking fish? I want to cook whole fish in a soup and get the bones soft.  According to some answers pressure cooking will soften bones.  however by the time this has happened won't the fish meat be overcooked/tear off the bones?

How long should it be in a pressure cooker for and at what setting?

Here is the answer to a related question: How to cook a fish to make it's bones soft

Basically, the pressure cooking doesn't allow any moisture to escape the system so the fish will retain the moisture and not dry out. It will still reach a hot temperature inside the can, which may result in a slightly different texture than if you were to sous vide, for example. But the pressure cooking should soften the bones and be the solution you are looking for.