Grassy Tea and brands Some time ago while traveling, I had some brand of a local bottled green tea with peach. It was not overly sweet, was mild but good - seemed a good mix of tea and summer peaches and was very refreshing. Then I had a cup of hot green tea while dining elsewhere. I added a sqeeze of Mio Lemon because I didn’t want to add sugar (but wanted a little sweet).  This was good, a little stronger, with a hint of “green fresh”, but then I expected vegetal as green tea isn’t fermented and there wasn’t any peach as in the first try.  I decided to add green tea to my home tea options. We don’t have a tea shop, wanted to hold off on online ordering, thus the grocery was my only option.  They had the Matcha powder but someone mentioned  it might be strong (for a newbie) & could get musty/old from slower turnover in the grocery due to being more expensive.  For health reasons, I figured I would eventually go to more concentrated Matcha and Sencha powders but I thought I’d wait for a dedicated tea retailer to help me with a choice. There was nothing in my usual tea brand, Twining’s, and no loose teas, so I chose the more expensive  of what was offered - “Steep” by Bigelow in individual bags. I followed directions: boil water, pour over tea, steep 4 minutes. From the moment I bought the cup to my lips, all I could think, smell, taste was summer grass clippings. I have had “green” before but to me this had absolutely no tea flavor - mild, strong, or otherwise, and certainly didn’t taste like what I had before. It was just like I cut the backyard and dropped it in a cup with hot water. I tried it at different steep times and temps, added honey, and even opened the bag and used less. Nothing helped.

So, a long way to get to my question — can anyone recommend a brand(s) that they themselves drink that won’t have this awful yard grass taste? Don’t care if it is loose or bagged. OR, is it just impossible - that either the other two (tried while traveling) weren’t really green tea, or maybe they were super diluted.  Or is it possible the Bigelow “Steep” is a higher quality, or stronger/fresher than the other two and I got a real taste of green tea and just don’t like it.  I drank each cup I made,  but there must be something better in order to get the benefits I’m looking for w/o feeling like I just ate the backyard. Any help or suggestions would be most appreciated but please only what you drink yourself or use in your immediate family.   Thanks.

PS: I’m brand new here so I don’t know where this question will land, but in another question, someone said green tea was a fad and in 6 months it would be something else. Someone answered that they “didn’t think something done for 300-400 years could really be called a fad” - Loved this come back, couldn’t believe someone would say something like this. It always amazes me that us Americans think everything we do is new and fresh but actually we are many times behind everyone else. I see examples each day -it is almost funny.  Maybe we just forget our world history. But if anyone wants to know how far back the “green tea fad” has been around try at least: China (loose leaf green tea has been the most popular form of tea in China since the Southern Song dynasty 1127-1279; Korea (introduction of Chinese tea culture and systematic planting & tea farming by Buddhist monks as early as 4th century); Japan (first seeds introduced as far back as 9th century by Buddhist monks).

The fresh 'grassy' taste is typical from Japanese green tea (sencha), where the leaves are steamed before dried. This prevents the oxidation during the drying process leading to a bright green colour and a vegetable grassy feel. In opposition, Chinese green tea is dried directly and therefore oxidize during the process, giving it the smoother taste.

Maybe you want to avoid buying sencha green tea.


Tasting food in kitchen When cooking (for example, in a restaurant), is it common for cooks in the same team to taste each other's dishes (still in progress), without asking for a permission?

In a restaurant, yes, cooks do a lot of tasting of others work. This is mainly for quality control and to maintain consistency of product. Example: the morning cook's souffle needs to taste like the evening cook's souffle.

Restaurant cooks are team oriented and focused on getting product onto customer tables. Restaurant cooks also learn from each other---most cooks learn On-the-Job, as opposed to culinary school.

In a competition, on the other hand, cooks rarely taste each other's work (with permission or not) before judging.


What is queso (the sauce/dip)? Is it short for Chile con Queso? Queso is the Spanish word for cheese but (in the US) it is often used to refer to a cheese-based dip or sauce for tortilla chips.

When I google "what is queso?", Google says "short for chile con queso". Looking it up on Wikipedia leads to a disambiguation page where the page for Chile con Queso looks like the relevant result. That page says chile con queso is "sometimes described simply as queso".

However I'm also finding a lot of people who think that it is just a cheese sauce that doesn't have anything to do with chile.

So is queso short for chile con queso or are they distinct dishes?

Google is correct, in that it can be a shortening of 'chile con queso' (most typically in the US to non-spanish speakers).  But 'chile' is not the same as 'chili'.

'Chile' refers to peppers, so the dip is 'peppers with cheese'.

'Chili' is either an alternate spelling for the peppers, but more commonly in the US, it's a dish made from meat, tomatoes and chile peppers (chili con carne, literally 'peppers with meat')

And as Cindy pointed out, 'queso' may simply mean cheese and not a cheese dip.  (typically of a central or south american variety of cheese; in the US typically queso blanco, queso seca or queso fresca).  As best I can tell in the US, this is the more likely meaning when used by Spanish speakers.

update: and to make things even more confusing from an entomology standpoint: it's quite possible that 'chile con queso' led to 'queso dip' and shortly after lost its 'chile' ... and it's actually 'queso dip' that's been shortened to 'queso' by Americans.


Whats wrong with my rice cooking process in my Zojirushi? I recently purchased a Zojirushi NP-GBC05 3 cup rice-cooker. I read through the manual and some instructions online. I have made 3 batches of rice so far and two of them have turned into a disaster.

Batch 1: Jasmine Rice 1 cup rice, washed, 1 cup water (probable Operator error, manual states 1cup to 1.25 cups rice/water) WHITE/MIXED setting result: coagulated mess

Batch 2: Sticky Rice 1 cup rice, not washed, 1 cup water SUSHI setting result: good batch

Batch 3: Basmati Rice 1 cup rice, washed, 1.5 cups water WHITE/MIXED setting result: coagulated mess

Why would both 1 and 3 give me coagulated messes?

Background:

This is my first rice cooker and first time using a rice cooker, it was cleaned after all batches, and no settings were configured besides the rice type. Just pressed the COOKING button.

Based on your description, you seem to be measuring the rice and water in a measuring cup and adding them to the pan. Having used the same Zojirushi rice maker for 8 years, I can testify that relatively small variations in the water/rice ratio can produce large changes in the final texture of the rice. In your case, it seems to be that you're using too much water. Adjusting the ratio to 1:1 should give you a chewier baseline to work with, and adding water in 1 oz. increments should allow you very fine-grained control (no pun intended) over the texture of the rice.

That said, I believe that the most reliable results come from using the 3/4 C / 180 mL "cup" provided. To use it, you scoop a number of "cups" of rice and add them to the cooking pan, washing in the pan. After pouring off the wash water, fill the pan with water to the line on the inside face corresponding to the type of rice used and the number of "cups" of rice you added to the pan. In my experience, using this method produces essentially perfect results every time. Adjusting the water level to very slightly below the line will yield chewier rice, while adjusting slightly above will yield mushier rice.


Apple pie: peel or not? Is it okay to leave the skin on the apples when making an apple pie? I'd like to leave them on, but I wonder if there will be chewy strings of peel or if they will cook tender.

Depends on the apple. Apples with softer skins will bake to a more even consistency, but apples with tough skin (the 'shiny' kinds like McIntosh or Red Delicious) tend to get caught in your teeth and throat, and are generally a pain to eat.

If you do make a pie with the skins on, use smaller pieces of apple or slice around the apples to create shorter pieces of peel. These are easier to eat and don't get caught in your mouth as much.


Converting yeast amounts from old recipes This recipe for poppy seed rolls calls for 1 large yeast. How much yeast am I supposed to use? I usually see recipes measure it in teaspoons, but I can’t guess how much “large” is. I am also assuming this is active dry yeast, maybe it’s not and that’s the reason why the size is weird.

This is short for “1 large cake of yeast.” According to this investigation, cakes of yeast traditionally came in two sizes:

Small, around 3/5 of an ounce
Large, around 2 ounces

This similar recipe gives the substitution “1 large yeast or 3 envelopes dry yeast.”’


My seitan is horrible I have no trouble preparing the seitan dough, or at least, that is what troubles me the least and can be fixed easily. However, I can't get the texture right. I don't use yeast, just vital wheat gluten and flavor adders.

First I tried with the simmering method. I put a broth to a boil and dropped in small loafs of seitan. As they cooked, they grew bigger and bigger, as they absorbed water. The loafs grew a ridiculous amount, and I was consequently left with loafs made of water and seitan, in that order.

I thought maybe water was the problem, so I tried instead of simmering it, baking it; like some online recipes indicate. I made a seitan tube and wrapped it (rather mediocrely) in aluminium foil and put in the oven. I had preheated the oven to 190 °C. The recipe I used instructed to bake the seitan for 90 minutes, and so I tried. However, about 60 minutes into the cooking, my loaf exploded in the oven (the wrap wasn't strong enough, I recon, although it was a few layers thick). To my surprise, the seitan already had a thick hard crust, and it was quite inedible to my taste.

What recommendations do you have for me? Is there something I have done wrong in each of my attempts? (Is blaming the great growth of my seitan on water wrong, on the first method I tried?) And finally, I am left to wonder: is it really necessary to precook seitan? (Why?)

Thanks a lot chefs! I know practice makes perfect but I'd rather quit wasting ingredients until my ways are right.

Seitan texture troubleshooting

Spongy when simmered

The classic Seitan problem- make a dough and boil it, anyone can do that right? Not with Seitan- either you get it just right or it's inedible. Here's two tricks.

use a container

The surefire way to avoid watery Seitan is to constrain it in some way- commonly used methods are aluminum foil, a freezable/cookable plastic bag, or a cheesecloth.

The cheesecloth is the most wholesome, but is finicky to clean. The foil is cheap and can be tossed, but you're sure to be extracting some aluminum and drawing it into your Seitan, especially if there is lime or vinegar in your broth. The cookable plastic bag is great because you can use a small amount of broth in the sealed baggie, so you won't have any broth waste- but you are also sure to have small amounts of plastic in your Seitan (no worse than store-bought).

I'm currently trying to find a good easy-to-clean cookable sealing reusable container to replace the baggie- stainless steel or tough glass. Maybe a jam jar- or event a small pan.
really, really, really, soft simmer

I was able to improve my Seitan with this, but it didn't get perfect- I'll update if it will. The idea is to boil your water, and then turn the heat down and wait until it just barely simmers. There should be no surface disturbance at all, and just the tiniest of bubbles. The bubbles you see in your water are going to poke holes their own size into your Seitan, so really turn the heat down. You also have to keep it almost at the boiling point though, or your Seitan won't cook properly. I'll see if I can post detailed surefire instructions once I've got the hang of it, these are the best known to me so far. I know others have done it.
Chill before cooking

This is as of yet untested, but I will update once I've tried this. Some recipes call for placing the Seitan in an ice bath for ten minutes before cooking. I have no idea what this does, I would guess something chemical about the gluten "development". The ice bath seemed like a lot of effort, so I just put my dough in the freezer. Results upcoming.
Roll while kneading

Kneading has the most impact on the Seitan texture. One technique to get a more fibry and interesting texture is to stretch out the seitan on one side, and roll it up. After rolling it will easily form right back into a ball, so you can use your kneading time to also texturize your seitan. When you're done, take the little part you didn't knead much and wrap it around your rolled ball. This aligns your gluten fibers in one direction. Will post back with results.
Age it

Seitan is always better the next day- this one is so true, even spongy seitan can become somewhat edible if you press the water out and let it sit there for 24 hours and then fry it. So once you've got some technique that's reliable, make your Seitan weekly and keep it chilled. Then eat cold, stew, or, especially, fry.
Compress before cooking

For unwrapped Seitan, add a step of compressing the dough after needing it- take some time to just press down on it with your hands and massage it into the shape you want, without turning it or changing the shape a lot as you would with kneading.

Dry when baked

Baking Seitan sounds too good to be true, right? No broth, no bubbles. Well, no moistness either- an overcooked Seitan O' Greatness tastes like rubber tires sprinkled with oregano. Yum.

The problem with not boiling boils down to not enough fluids. Kneading the dough needs about 1 cup of water for 2 cups of vital wheat gluten so you can handle it, but after that, the dough gets plenty more moistness from simmering or steaming. When baking, this doesn't happen- so you get a much dryer Seitan.

Soak, then bake

The most straight forward solution is to add an extra step of soaking your finished dough after you've let it sit there- try 10 minutes. This could be combined with the ice bath method above- just add a couple of ice cubes.
Reduce temperature

A lot of recipes call for 60 to 90 minutes at 350°F (180°C), and I never got that to work. 250°F (130°C) is much better. The cooking time of 90 minutes seems to be about right, though.
Water bath

Half-cover your seitan with broth in a baking dish and flip it over after half the baking time. This is just like slow-cooking a meat dish instead of boiling it.
Reduce time

I was only able to get good-ish results with this- okay, but too doughy. Use the 350°F (180°C), but only leave it in for 30 minutes- less if using smaller parts. I still found there was a propensity for this to taste like bread that also tastes like sausage and rubber bands. Some report success.

Bursts when baked

Wrap it loose and thick

As with simmering, wrapping the Seitan is much less tricky. It will expand some, so it needs to be wrapped somewhat loosely. The tighter it is wrapped, the denser it will be- and the thicker and stronger the wrapping needs to be. 2-3 layers of foil worked for me wrapping the Seitan with just a little bit of wiggle room.

Flaky when baked

Age it

Baked seitan is a little bit less finicky but still tests better the next day. Seitan always tastes better the next day. This is proverb-grade wisdom, like "a Lannister always pays his debts".

Lunchmeat Texture

Lunchmeat texture is great if you want lunchmeat or meat loaf, and it doesn't matter if you are just going to grind it down. But if you want to make a version of unprocessed meat, as good as Seitan is, it doesn't make for a very interesting texture.

You can, however, fake the fibery texture by folding the Seitan into layers like puff pastry- but then you turn it and do the same thing. This results in an interesting, semi-meaty texture, and also does a lot of compressing for you, so it gets less spongy as well.

Make a moist dough, a little more than 1 cup water for 2 cups gluten
Mix until all the gluten is moist, but don't knead
squash it flat on the counter, and stretch until it is about a quarter inch (0.5cm) high
sprinkle a tiny layer of gluten to unstick it
fold it, or cut it and stack it
squash-and-stack about 10 times. You will now have about 1000 layers of gluten fiber and it shouldn't take longer than kneading.
gently massage-unsquash it back into a roundish cube, but don't knead
turn it around by a quarter
squash-and-stack about 10 times. You will now have 1000 fibers up and across, because you made layers across the layers
gently massage-unsquash it back into a roundish cube, but don't knead
place the cube into the freezer for 10 minutes

Recommended Procedures

Here are some procedures based on the above troubleshooting to get the results you want.

1. Cold Cuts

To get a good deli style cold cut, do the following:

Make a dryish dough, slightly less than 1 cup of water per 2 cups of gluten
Knead like bread for 3-5 minutes
rest covered for 10 minutes
knead like bread for another minute
form into a log shape and wrap snug in a cheesecloth (don't leave much room, but don't compress it either)
boil for 60-90 minutes
store for a day in its broth

You will know it worked when the outermost layer is softish, and the inside is a little less firm than a rubber eraser.

2. Steak

Make a fold-and-squash cube, as above
cut the cube into 4 pieces. cut so that you are cutting apart the fibers, and each steak has a short part of all the fibers.
flatten each steak to a quarter of an inch (0.5cm). keep pressing and condensing longer than needed to keep it in shape, until it feels like it got distinctly firmer than before
no-bubble-simmer each steak for 90 minutes
store the steaks in their broth for a day
press out the broth and fry

3. Chicken Wings

Do the same thing as with steak, but also cut each steak into 4 as well, somewhat unevenly.

4. Sausage

Do the same as with the cold cuts, but wrap into 5 or 6 small logs using the same cheesecloth.

5. Ground beef

Make a cold cut log as above, and grind it in a food processor in a couple of pulses, until the biggest pieces are about a quarter of an inch (0.5cm)

6. Stew cubes

Make a fibered dough as above, but cook it in a cheesecloth as above to get extra-firm, fibered texture. Then cut, fry, and stew, but much shorter than normal stew, perhaps 45min to 1 hour. Add some xanthan gum to the stew to mimic the gelatin that usually forms when slow-cooking stew meat's connective tissue.


Where can I get local grains in bulk? Farmers markets and CSA's are great, but there doesn't seem to be a local market for grains.

Where could a person go to purchase grains (for human consumption) besides the supermarket and online?

Are you looking for grain or flours? If the latter, just track down your local mills (most farms don't mill their own flour). If the former, ask the millers or other farmers who nearby is growing grains. It might be an inconvenience to farmers to sell very small quantities, but then again, you'll be paying a premium on what they normally charge, so it's worth asking.


Freezing cheesecake with strawberries Can you freeze unbaked cheesecake with cut fresh strawberries mixing in the cheese mixture filling?

Of course you can freeze the cheesecake with fresh strawberries, but the problems lie when you try to defrost said cheesecake if you need to bake it, or even if you plan to eat it at a temperature other than frozen. Like Chris' comment above, when defrosting strawberries, then tend to exude a lot of juice, and in pastry making, you usually don't desire random wet patches. If you're planning to bake it, perhaps skip the fresh strawberries and put them in later as a topping. OR, you could always, mix in strawberries in another form, that has less problems with water content— pre-macerated, in a jam, or something like that.


Can I deep fry in my Le Creuset dutch oven? It's an enameled cast iron dutch oven. Just wondering if I could take off enamel by deep frying in it.

The enamel coating is put on by a high temperature process, much higher temp than the 300-400 F that you would deep fry in, so it will be safe to fry in.

The concern that this raises for me is the difficulty in cleaning if you fry repeatedly. After a few batches, there will be a film of oil that will form just above the level of the oil in the pot you are frying in. If you thoroughly clean it, it will not be a big deal, but left alone it will build up.

Also, deep frying in a heavy  pan is unnecessary, as you really want to get hte oil hot, and the extra thermal mass of the pan would just take extra heat. It is not bad to do so, but a thin aluminum pan works just as well for frying.


How to fix oily modeling chocolate I made candy melt modeling chocolate for the first time and it is just a bit too oily.  Is there a way to fix it?  I don't think I stirred it too long but my melts may have been too warm when I added the corn syrup because my microwave was on 100% power.  I really don't want to throw it away...

Having made the same mistake I will try and answer best I can.

Use to melt chocolate in a steam jacked copper pot. With a mechanical stirrer, witch stirred a 1 rev a second. It happened once that the chocolate seamed to created a layer of oil on top. I then saw a fault on the steam pot valve that to much steam came trough so making the chocolate too hot.

Would not say its the way you stirred but just too much heat. Chocolate should only be heated up until it melts, and all your ingredients are properly mixed. So to fix it? Add one  tea spoon of lecithin. and boil again. That's what I tried and it worked.


How can I get my chocolate cake to taste less like a brownie? I've been testing out cake recipes, and I'm having a bit of difficulty creating a chocolate cake that doesn't taste like a brownie.

What I want is a light, moist chocolate cake (doesn't everyone?), but the cake currently has the same texture and taste as a cakey brownie. I've tried aerating it more by beating the egg whites before I add them and adding more rising agent (tried baking powder, baking soda, and a combination of the two), but that resulted in the cake rising too much and overflowing the tin.

I've also tried adding yogurt to make it more moist, but that only made it denser.

I'm using real chocolate in my cake because I want it to taste super dark chocolatey. I've read a lot of cake recipes and I don't see very many that use block chocolate, usually only cocoa powder. Is this the cause of my problem?

In my experience, unsweetened baking chocolate can replace cocoa + oil at a ratio of 1 oz baking chocolate = 3 T cocoa powder + 1 T oil. I don't think this makes the result more brownie-like, but you do need to reduce the oil (or butter) in the cake to make up for the added oil from the baking chocolate.

If you use dark chocolate (or semi-sweet baking chocolate) reduce the sugar, too, but that's a little trickier to offer a hard-and-fast calculation.

If you are worried about losing the rich chocolate flavor by switching to cocoa powder, first make sure you're using a high quality cocoa powder and then you can also consider replacing some (maybe 2T or so?) of the liquid in your cake recipe with strong espresso. A small amount can enhance chocolate flavor in baked goods without actually tasting coffee-ish.

Reducing the egg (or at least yolk) and oil in the cake should also make it less dense, but reducing too much can make it dry.


How to cook rice with fish without overcooking the fish How can I cook rice with fish so that the fish is not over cooked or breaks into smaller pieces? Fish meat cooks quickly, in much less time than rice. Would anyone like to share tricks or tips for this?

While boiling/cooking rice and fish is safe for consumption, the cooking method gives the rice an extremely fishy taste. If you crave that flavour, go ahead with cooking the two things together.

However, if you wish to retain the individual flavours of the food, par boil the rice while you can pan fry the fish pieces in a separate utensil (to get rid of the excessive sweet/salty fishy flavour). Add the fish to the rice at a later stage. By doing this, not only will the fish pieces retain their shape and form after frying, but your rice would remain fragrant on its own as well.


Adding fresh fruit to a non fruited banana bread I have a banana bread recipe that I love.  I want to add other fresh fruit and nuts or chocolate to it.  Do I need to adjust the other ingredients to take into account these additions?

If you add chocolate and nuts, no. They can be added without any adjustments, as they don't tend to affect the rest of the cake at all. Fresh fruit is a bit trickier, since it tends to release a great deal of liquid when cooked which can make the result soggy. In general, if you add fresh fruit to a cake you want to toss it in some starch (eg corn starch or potato starch) to absorb the liquid it will release. Each piece of fruit should be completely coated and then just folded into the batter.


Can you make coffee by boiling it? Google results have confused me so much. I learned to make a Nescafe Classic coffee a year ago.

All I would do is: Add some coffee and sugar in a mug/cup, add a few drops of water or milk and start shaking it with spoon. A few minutes later it changes it's color and becomes a paste. It releases the flavors. Now you can add hot water or milk according to your taste. Most YouTube videos also show similar results and believe in this theory. That's it.

Now Google results like this really confuse sometimes. Kindly don't write your answer based on just this link. If you search "should you boil coffee" you'll see tons of articles or answers that nowhere tells a method like shaking and making a paste before adding the milk or water to get the flavor. They will support your Google search and say like:

Boil water and then add coffee in it
Add coffee in water and boil it
Heat water and add coffee in it

And so on.

Why is it like this? If flavor can be accieved by the method I described above, why people use boil mothod?

Coffee hates boiling water - or more specifically, water boiling at 100°C - it scalds it & kills the taste.
but read on...

There are basically two kinds of instant coffee, spray dried & freeze dried.
Both start by making up 'real' coffee.

Spray drying is achieved by then super-heating the mixture & spraying it out into an evaporator. The powder falls to the bottom where it is collected [Whether they leave it as powder or clump it is either a design choice or a method limitation, I've never found out which].

Freeze drying is achieved by reducing the atmospheric pressure then spraying in a similar way. This means they can work at much lower temperatures, as water boils at a lower temperature the lower the pressure.

The second method is more expensive than the first. It preserves the flavours a lot better, so tends to be reserved for blends & beans that were higher quality to start with. Pure arabicas will almost always be freeze dried.

So, your Nescafe is made by the first method - spray drying - & therefore has already been ruined/scalded by the process. This is one reason [amongst many] that spray dried coffees taste nothing at all like actual fresh coffee.
Pouring boiling water on this can now have no further effect. "It's already dead, Jim."

Pouring boiling water on freeze dried, however, will spoil it. Freeze dried has so far avoided the scalding.

You can test this by making 3 very simple black coffees.
One teaspoon of freeze dried coffee granules in each cup. To one, add half a cup of cold water, to the second add just half an inch. The third, leave with just granules. Pour absolutely boiling water [the second the kettle clicks off] onto all three to make a full cup. Stir, leave 1 minute & examine all 3. The first will be quite cloudy & mid-dark brown. the second will 'look like coffee'. The third will be almost black & very clear.
Taste them all. They will taste in order from, 'a bit grainy', just right, 'ooh, spoiled'.
You can try this test with spray dried, but the results are not as distinct.


What to do with dehydrated potatoes tainted black? I had many potatoes I wanted to preserve for a long time. Usually the potatoes I keep in my kitchen get rotten after a month or two (and I don't have a cellar to keep them cool), I decided to dehydrate them. So I grinded them in a food-processor and put in a food-dehydrator in 65 Celsius. After several hours they became dry but also got colored black - a strong black color on the (previously) white potatoes and a weaker color on the red potatoes.

Is there anything useful I can cook with these potatoes that turned black?

Throw them away. I would not expect potatoes to go black in the dehydration process, and although they may be safe to eat I would not expect them to be palatable, or inviting in any way. You cannot be sure they aren't toxic, and you wouldn't put them on a guest's plate, so chuck them.


Mixed-Up cake recipe instructions Please help!!  I am making a dessert, I make this all the time and this is the only time I have ever done this. The recipe is supposed to be stirred but I pulled out my electric mixer. I need the texture to be clumpy and kind of  dry because I am making a crust.  The recipe reads: “In a mixing bowl, stir together the cake mix, melted and cooled butter, and 2 eggs. Line a 9x12 baking dish with parchment paper and press the dough into the bottom in an even layer’. How can I fix this? I didn’t realize what I’d done until I was removing the mixer from the bowl and thought, “this doesn’t look right, what happened?”  The dough was almost in liquid form and I need it to be solid. I would appreciate any help.

I'm not 100% sure that it can be saved ... but that doesn't mean that it won't end up being something good as-is.  Unless that's your only dish the size you need, I'd just throw it in the oven as-is, and see what happens.

As it's a crust, you might look to see if you have anything that you can use for crumbs (cookies, graham crackers, ground nuts, I've even had ones made with boxed cereal and brown sugar) and make a quick crumb crust.

You could also flip things upside down -- take whatever was intended as the filling, and add a streusel / crumble topping ... or some other buckle, betty, etc. type thing where the crust-like layer is on the top.

As you might not have time to start again, it's possible the crust might come out like a giant cookie ... if so, pop it out of the pan to let it cool while you bake the filling, then crumble it up on top of the dessert once it's out of the oven.


Thin chutney batch from a year ago I located several jars of our home made tomato chutney from a year ago. It was a thin batch tho the taste is ok. Can we tip all contents back into a pan and either reduce or thicken with flour , and refill the jars for further months of storage? What’s best to do ?

There is no general safety rule against reusing canned food in a new batch of food-to-be canned. For example, I have seen recipes for home-canned tomato sauce based on tomatoes bought in a commercial jar. So, that would not be a limiting factor.

What is a limiting factor is 1) the safety of the original canning process, and 2) the suitability of the new product for canning. The first one is simple: if the first batch was unsafe, for whatever reason, you can't turn it back into a safe one.

The second is that you have to use a recipe that is safe for canning. For example, you cannot thicken it with flour, as flour- and starch-containing recipes are not safe for canning. Since you will not be using a known-safe recipe, but "inventing" your own (e.g. by reducing the older one) you will have to measure the pH with a reliable method (not strips) to make sure it is acidic enough for water-bath canning.


Started thawing but can't finish cooking meat: Time Sensitive I took a large pack of ground beef out of the freezer and it has been in the fridge for no more than 10 hours. There are still ice crystals on the meat. I'm on call and turns out I won't have the opportunity to cook it until next week (the works in another city). I guess I have two options

put the meat back in the freezer and refreeze
thaw out the meat, quickly cook it, and put the left overs in the fridge.

Any advice?

I'll offer a third option :

Cook the meat, then freeze it.

Holding it in the fridge for a week can be questionable, although there are some things that you can do to reduce the risk (eg, sterilizing the containers first, and pouring the fat on top to form a seal over the meat).

You can hold cooked meat in casseroles for quite some time longer than meat on its own; I suspect it's the other added moisture which helps to prevent freezer burn.

As such, I'd brown it, then moisten it with a can or two of crushed tomatoes (as it's something that I have on hand, and it leaves the meat so it could be turned into chili, a pasta sauce, or other things), then portion it out to reasonable sizes based on possible uses, and freeze those.

It's better if you can let it cool off before freezing, but if it's in smaller containers, you don't have as much of a problem with the center staying hot for too long.  I've frozen chili and soups by laying them in gallon zip-top bags on a sheet pan, and putting that in the fridge.  (2 bags per 1/2 sheet ... but I had a larger freezer back then)


Is it too dangerous to smoke a stuffed turkey? Sorry if this is a redundant question, but I'm finding conflicting advice about this: If I want to smoke an ~18 lb turkey, is there a great risk of it spending too much time in the temperature "danger zone" if I stuff it with traditional stuffing?

I've had delicious hot smoked/grilled turkey, which was brined first (not stuffed).  However, stuffing always becomes a problem with turkey.  Whether you smoke, or cook in the oven, you are going to over cook the white meat by the time the center of your stuffing is at a safe temperature.  You can certainly make it safe by using the appropriate temperature, time, and measuring with a thermometer. ...and, brining can help retain moisture.  Having to wait for the center of the stuffing to reach a safe temperature means that the question will be, how overcooked can you stand your turkey meat?


How can I find flavors that pair well with a given ingredient? "What goes with X?" is a common question. It could be a starting point for coming up with a new recipe for an ingredient you have on hand, or a way to come up with a variation on an existing recipe.

So how can I find such flavor pairings? Are there resources dedicated specifically to this sort of thing?

Note: this is intended as a canonical reference which we can provide when people ask flavor pairing questions.

First, a caveat: different people and different cultures have different tastes, so no pairing recommendations are likely to be perfect for you.

Books

You can find books on this topic, for example by searching for flavor pairing on Amazon. A couple of the most popular ones:

The Flavor Bible - for each ingredient, lists a large number of other ingredients that pair well with it, with the best/most popular ones highlighted. Also includes a small number of example ideas of dishes and several-ingredient combinations.
The Flavor Thesaurus - for each ingredient, lists a fair number of good pairings, each with a bit of additional description and perhaps recipe ideas.

Websites

There are a few websites discussing this sort of thing:

IBM's Chef Watson - lets you pick an ingredient, then suggests others, which you can accept or reject to get additional suggestions. Also provides example recipes. Free.
Foodpairing - lets you pick an ingredient, then suggests "matches". Free version has a limited set of ingredients, and for a monthly fee you get everything.
VCF 2000 - a commercial database of volatile compounds in foods. It has a demo, but the actual database is extremely expensive (currently $2775). Between that and the difficulty of basing things on aromatics, it's probably not particularly useful, though.

On pairing by aromatic compounds: while folks have used this to come up with ideas, it really seems to be at best an oversimplification. Plenty of things with "matching" aromatics don't end up being good pairings, and plenty of commonly liked pairings have very different aromatics.

Do it yourself!

Searching for recipes is actually a pretty effective method here. Just search for "X recipes" on Google, or search for X on your favorite recipe site, and look through the recipes to see what other ingredients people use with X. You'll quickly come up with lists of ideas quite similar to those you might find in dedicated books or websites.


Why does the crust of a freshly baked loaf of bread become less crunchy/hard over time? Something I noticed - I bought fresh bread today from a Polish bakery/deli. It was still warm when I bought it, so it probably just came out of the oven. When I got home and tried it, it was amazing. Just this incredibly satisfying CRUNCH with every bite. Same thing with a fresh baguette, really.

I have a hard time not downing the entire loaf, because in a few hours the crust stops being so satisfyingly crunchy. Why does this happen? Does freshly baked crust become more elastic? Absorbs water?

It is not absorbing water from the atmosphere, rather, moisture is migrating from within the bread.  Basically, as soon as a loaf of bread is removed from the oven, moisture migration begins to happen.  It doesn't take long (hours-days) for that moisture to impact the crustiness of bread.  Moisture migration accelerates staling (which turns out to be more complicated than simply drying out, but that was not your question).  The good thing is that heat can effectively and temporarily delay or limit moisture migration.  Just reheat your bread in the oven or toaster, and it should regain much of its crunch.


Can pressed cookies be made without creaming butter and sugar? Is it possible to make a cookie dough for pressing without having to cream butter and sugar (my pet hate)?

It depends on exactly what mean by pressed cookies.

If you mean the kind of butter cookie traditionally made in the US using a cookie press:

I surveyed the top dozen or so recipes on the web.  They all use the creaming method.

If you think about it, this makes sense.  The dough that will be used in a cookie press needs to be sufficiently stiff to work in the device, and yet have enough leavening to make a nicely textured cookie.  It also needs to set in the oven before it spreads, to retain the pressed shape.  As the creaming method leaves the fat as a solid, it meets these criteria well.

Prior to the advent of the cookie press (and still, in professional pastry kitchens), similar cookies were made using a piping bag.  Not all of the types of cookies that are piped require the creaming method, although they tend to be very different types of cookie.  Some of these include:

Simple meringues
French style macarons (which are meringues enhanced with nut flour usually, similar to a dacquoise)
While not usually called cookies, small petit fours made from choux paste are usually piped, as are their big brothers the eclair or profiterole


What is the difference between tomato juice and passata? As far as I am aware passata is obtained by crushing tomatoes and then sieving the result without heating. That sounds an awful lot like juice to me. What is the difference (if any) between passata and tomato juice? Under what circumstances could they be substituted for each other?

Pubs often sell small bottles of tomato juice so on camping trips etc I suspect it may be easier to get tomato juice than passata, although it hasn't been necessary yet.

Passata still contains the pulp of the tomato, whereas juice is literally just the juice.

So juice is thin like water whereas passata is thick like crushed tomatoes minus the seeds and skin. You probably wouldn't use tomato juice for making a marinara sauce.


When should I add diced vegetables to a pie, and how long to cook them for? Earlier this week I cooked my first meat & potato pie. It was quite good, however I felt that it lacked a little depth, and also seemed like a meager portion for the amount of meat that I used.

I was hoping to bulk it out with other various vegetables (I realize this would mean that it is no longer an official meat & potato pie, but I'm OK with that).

My ideas for things to add so far are mushroom, carrot, frozen peas or swede. I would want the larger vegetables to be cut a similar size to how I cut the potato (approx 1cm³), however I would then have no idea how long to cook them for.

So far I cook the beef and onion for 2.5-3 hours, using the leftover liquid as the base for the gravy, and cook the potatoes separately for around 10-15 minutes to soften before adding to the pie before baking it in the oven. The onion is almost nonexistent by the end of cooking, but adds flavor to the gravy.

So when adding any of the ingredients, should I add them to the meat/onion to add to the flavor of the gravy (whether for the full time or part-way through), or cook them separately like with the potato?

And how long should I cook each of the vegetables for considering their respective size?

There are two approaches you could use on this, which are to either make a stew with all the ingredients and then turn it into a pie, or prepare separately and then put together into a pie. Which to choose depends on your personal preference. Using the stew method blends all the flavors together and is less work and cleanup as you don't have to cook the vegetables separately. Cooking separately keeps the flavors of each vegetable more distinct, but is more work and cleanup. Personally I prefer the stew method as I like the blending of flavors.

Either way the challenge as you have recognized is to get the vegetables to the right cooked consistency, and in either case the answer is to subtract the cooking time imparted by the baking from the pre-cooking time. Baking does not cook the vegetables nearly as quickly, over time I have figured that using a 3 to 4x multiplier works ok, if a vegetable takes 5 minutes in the steamer to cook it will take between 15-20 minutes in the oven roughly. So for carrots you would ordinarily cook for 15 minutes you would pre-cook them for 10 minutes and then bake for 15-20 minutes.

Another option is to use a fork to test doneness, I've found that if I can get a fork to just start to sink into a carrot piece then putting it into the oven for 15 minutes will finish it off. Getting the vegetables to this state at the same time is the challenge, but it can be done.

This is my personal experience with cooking vegetables to be done at the same time, from longest to shortest cooking times:

Beans
Hard root vegetables: carrots are in this class
Other roots: potatoes, parsnips, turnips
Squashes
Hard leafy vegetables: winter greens, collards, cabbages
Brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower), string beans
Soft leafy vegetables: spinach, kale
Green peas: these take no time at all, cooking them more than a couple of minutes turns them to mush

There's a lot of variation between these classes, for instance cauliflower takes longer than broccoli, and thick runner beans take twice as long as fine french beans. You need to keep these in mind.

If you are making a pastry topped pie the only thing baking is for is to cook the pastry top. If you cool the filling below a certain point the vegetables will stop cooking, or at least slow down quite a bit. My favorite trick is to wait until the vegetables are just about perfect before dumping a couple of handfuls of frozen peas into my filling, this melts the peas and they cook perfectly in the residual heat while bringing the temperature down quickly. I then fill and bake.


Fried garlic turning black When frying garlic in olive oil, it usually turns translucent after a while. This time, it quickly turned black. Why? Was the pan too hot?

garlic burns very easily and is very smelly when it does.

If you are just sauteing then you should cook at a relatively low temperature and take it off the heat as soon as it is translucent.

If you are toasting the garlic then leave it on and watch it closely. Stir often and take it off when it is just golden.

If it burnt very quickly then I would agree with you that your pan was too hot.


When making filled cupcakes, is it possible to bake a custard filling in it? I'm about to make filled cupcakes for the first time. It'll be this cupcake from Ming Makes Cupcakes. The filling is basically lemon curd, i.e. a custard. Most tutorials on making filled cupcakes mention either:

Spritzing it in with a piping bag, which I don't have. Also apparently it only allows for a small amount of filling.
Cutting a cone out of the cupcake, filling the hole, and then replacing the cone - this seems fiddly and I'm kind of a klutz and it sounds like a recipe (badoom-tsch) for having half my cupcakes fall apart.

One last how-to mentioned that it's possible to bake fillings that won't be absorbed into the batter (candy, an Oreo, etc) inside the cupcake. I'm wondering: would this be possible with lemon curd? Since it's a custard, I'm guessing it shouldn't dissolve in the heat.

Does this sound feasible or has anyone tried this? If so, any things I should be careful of? E.g. should I make the custard thicker so it keeps together inside the batter? Or thinner so it finishes cooking while baking? If so how to make it keep together until the batter sets? (I'm guessing chilling thoroughly? Freezing is probably a bad idea though.)

I'm a bit late answering, but I make my own vanilla custard which is quite thick, and put some of the muffin mixture into the pan, then spoon a teaspoon of custard, or lemon curd then top up the rest of the muffin mix.  Works well.  You can make coconut lemon muffins (with lemon butter), or apple and custard muffins sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.  Banana muffins can have a tsp. of caramel Top N Fill in their centre, quite yummy.

Custard Recipe:
2 rounded tbsp.real corn flour, 2 tbsp. sugar, 9 flat tbsp. of full cream powdered milk, 1 large egg.  Mix together in a microwave proof jug with 100ml cold water, then add a further 300 mls of water and mix well.
Microwave on medium for 3-4 minutes, stir well, then repeat on medium for a further 3-4 minutes.  Stir well.  If the custard hasn't thickened by this point, just continue for a minute each time till it does.  Add 1 tsp. vanilla.
If the custard is lumpy, strain it through a sieve while its still hot. Leave it to cool, then use as above.

Banana Custard
Make as above and slice 2 or 3 bananas into the mixture while the custard is still hot.  Pour into a bowl and sprinkle with dessicated coconut and nutmeg. Let cool. Scrumptious.


Waffle iron with changeable plates for butter galettes I'm looking for a recommendation for a waffle iron with interchangeable plates for butter galettes.

I have one but it's over 30 years old, falling apart and runs off 220V to boot.
Are there any replacements? I cannot find any, anywhere.

You should be able to use the waffle iron as is and just not close it, I would think.  Though I am also not able to find a replacement, except through alibaba.

Edit based on apparent flag and mod comment:

All a special galette plate will provide is the shape.  You can still make the batter, spoon a couple of tablespoons onto a hot waffle iron and yield exactly the same thing, albeit in a different shape.


How long to cook pork ribs in the oven? tl;dr:  I've got 6 lb of super-thick pork shoulder country style ribs.  How long should I cook them in the oven if I want them to taste good?

I recently bought a 6 lb. package of delicious, super-thick pork shoulder country-style ribs.  But I bought them without any idea on how to cook them.  So I started looking online for recipes but the cooking times vary considerably.  My best assumption is that the cooking times vary due to the quantity of meat and temperature.  However, I've had trouble estimating exactly how much meat is present since some of the recipes list the rib ingredient as simply "one rack" or something ambiguous like that.  I don't really know how much "one rack" is.  "One rack" of baby back ribs is, I'm quite sure, much less mean than what I've got sitting in my refrigerator.

So, how long should I cook these babies for?

Even given a standardized recipe and method, cooking times are always only a guideline.  Quality recipes always give you a test for knowing when the product is done.

The reason for this is that there are many uncontrolled (at least from the recipe author's point of view) such as, in the case of ribs:

Exact dimensions of the ribs
Natural variation in the composition of the ribs
Starting temperature
Variation in your particular oven

That said, the variable most controlling over the time it takes to cook ribs, given a standard recipe and method, is the thickness of the set of ribs.   A longer strip of ribs (btw, the full set of ribs on one side is called a slab of ribs—country ribs are not normally sold this way) doesn't make much difference, as the heat will penetrate through the thinnest dimension.

Ribs are a complex food to cook as they benefit from low-and-slow cooking methods, which allow the touch connective tissue of the ribs (collagen) to slowly convert to unctuous gelatin.  This conversion is temperature dependent, taking many, many many hours at around 140 F, but happening in an hour or two at 180 F.

Note also that country style ribs are a different cut than back ribs (the baby variety come from a younger, smaller animal).  Country style ribs are cut with a lot of meat on the bone.

In practical recipes, the amount of time this takes will depend on the exact cooking method such as braising, roasting, or barbequing.

Recipe request themselves are off-topic here at Seasoned Advise, but you can find many recipes easily by googling "country rib recipe".  Indivdual recipes will give you a guideline for a basic cooking time related to the method used in that recipe, and a test or condition for knowing when they are done.

For example, this recipe for braised ribs from the Food Network suggests an estimated cooking time of 1 1/2 hour braising, and tells you that they are done when when the meat is tender (which you would test by poking with a fork, or just trying some).

An alternate method, as suggested in this recipe from Cooks.com is to roast the ribs in the oven.  They use three-stage method where the ribs are covered in foil in the middle stage, but the total cooking time is about 3 1/4 hours.  They carefully describe how you know when the ribs are done: "the meat should just about fall off the bone.".

Note:  I haven't tried these particular recipes; they only serve as examples.

The bottom line is, ribs are generally done when they are quite tender, which you can easily tell by poking them with a fork or trying them.  How long this takes will depend on what method you used, the size of your ribs, and a myriad other factors, but will be on the order usually of 2-3 hours.


What is early harvest olive oil? I think it means picking the olives early I.e when they are green(unripe) . Is this correct?

I’ve also heard people say that like any fruit, they should be used when they are ripe ie black so wouldn’t it go against wisdom
To be using early harvest olive oil?

Early harvest olive oil is made from olives that are partially "enveradas", changing its colour from green to purple. You need 7 to 8 kg of olives to make one litre, instead of the 4 to 5 kg/l of full ripe olives.

As the olives mature the color of the outer part (epicarp) changes from bright green, purple-green, purple and finally black. The inner part (pericarp) changes from white-yellow to purple-black. The fat content increases and the chlorophyll decreases.

The olives of the same branch mature at different times, so at the time of harvest we have a percentage of green, green-purple or purple. In the oil of early harvest, the proportion of purple olive is smaller and therefore its lower fat content and higher in chlorophyll. That makes the flavour of the oil more fruity and the acidity somewhat higher.

Early Harvest Oil has a bright green colour because of the higher chlorophyll content, also higher polyphenols and antioxidant. It has a greater herbal and fresh fruit flavours than regular Extra Virgin Olive oil, they are stronger, more piquant (greater oleocanthal content) and more bitter (greater oleuropein content).

Historical curiosity: In ancient Rome they gave different names to the oil according to the degree of ripeness of the olives

Oleum ex albis ulivis,  coming from the green olives harvested by hand.
Oleum viride, extracted from almost ripe olives.
Oleum meturum, from ripe olives
Oleum caducum, the one that was extracted from the olives already fallen from the tree.
Oleum cibarium, finally, made with chopped or rotten olives. Given to the slaves.


Ice cream stabilizer - ratio of components My husband and I are very much into creating the perfect keto/sugar free ice cream. He has gotten right into the nitty gritty science of it but still wants to tweak a few things.

We have purchased an emulsifier so that can stay out of this equation for now, I am just inquiring about stabilizers. We know we want to make a blend of stabilizers (which include CMC & Locust Bean or Guar Gum & Carrageenan). Since we can't find this specific blend for sale pre-made we would like to buy the individual ingredients and mix it ourselves. We know the ratio of stabilizers to other ingredients in the overall ice cream mix, however we don't know the ratio of each mentioned ingredient in the stabilizer blend itself.

Can anyone help shed some light here?

I generally use locust bean gum : guar gum : carrageenan in ice cream with the following ratio: 4:2:1


What's the point of the first action in double-acting baking powder? Modern baking powder is basically always "double-acting". This makes a lot of sense compared to the older single-acting powder, since the gas formed during baking won't be removed by mechanical actions like pouring batter into a dish, and occurs when the starch is ready to form a gel, stabilizing the foam.

So what's the point of the room-temperature reaction? It doesn't seem like there's any particular point in producing gas immediately, compared to during the baking process.

Note that I'm looking for documented reasoning from manufacturers or food scientists, not people's informed guesses or personal opinions.

The first "action" is when it gets wet. This is the traditional baking soda + vinegar fizzing. The second rise in double-acting baking powder is when it gets hot.

In a baked item, such as a cake, this reaction to mosture helps create rise immediately, before the cake starts to change structure, solidify, and form a crust. This enables the center to begin to rise immediately. Without this initial rise, the outside of the cake could have already started to form a crust before the inside is heated enough to rise. This would result in "trapping" the center--either causing a denser unrisen center, or breaking/cracking the crust as it rises and escapes the crust.


Will apricot Jam glaze affect the shelf life of Christmas fruitcake? I am using a apricot jam glaze to decorate the top of a Christmas fruitcake (made using rum soaked dryfruits and fed with rum after baking). This kind of fruitcake really lasts long due to alcohol in it. Now I am using a apricot jam glaze to put some nuts on top to decorate it. (could not get the nuts to stay in place during baking) Since glaze is made by heating jam with some water, does this glaze affect how long the cake will last?

No, the glaze will make very little difference. Jam is 60% sugar and sugar is an excellent preservative. To put it another way: if you find jam keeps well in the pot, the same should hold once it's on the cake.


what to use in place of marjoram in vegetable soup What can I use in place of marjoram in vegetable soup?  The recipe already calls for oregano.

It sounds like you know that marjoram is closely related to oregano; so if you don't want to use marjoram (or don't have it) you can just omit it or use a bit more oregano. If not already called for, you could also use other herbs that are generally compatible like parsley, sage, or thyme.


Does freezing food reset the amount of time you can put it in the fridge? Just read this which basically says you can freeze and thaw food in the fridge any number of times. How dangerous is it to refreeze meat that has been thawed?

I'm still unclear on one point. If I had food which would be good in the fridge for 4 days and i put it in the freezer after 3 days, when I put it back in the fridge is my food good after its thawed for another 4 days or 1 more day?

Freezing doesn’t reset the clock, it’s more like “stopping the time” - or at least slowing it down very, very much.

Like putting perishable food in the fridge and slowing down bacterial growth, freezing the food brings it to a full stop.

But unlike heating, cooling or freezing does not kill bacteria. What went in the freezer comes out again, ready to multiply as soon as the conditions are favorable again. Which means, if you quickly stashed something in the freezer just before it goes bad in the fridge, you need to use it more or less immediately after you took it out and thawed it.

Microbiologists would probably object to this answer as too general, but we are looking at the pathogens responsible for food-borne illnesses and kitchen precision.


bread maker vs conventional oven vs countertop oven vs fan force oven? I am planning to bake bread often. So I am wondering about the various types of ovens or whether I should get a bread machine instead. What are the characteristics of the various types so that I can decide what is best for me?

It depends on what you want.

A bread maker is great if you want to measure out the ingredients, press go, and come back later to a predictable fresh loaf.  Mine also makes good pizza dough.  I have quite a cool house much of the year (and no good warm spots), so proving bread is slow  without it.

If you want to experiment, or to make sourdough or unusual bread, an oven of some form is more useful. There are advantages and disadvantages of different types of oven, but basically you need one that's got a reliable thermostat and is big enough for anything you want to cook in it.

If you've already got an oven, a breadmaker can be used to make dough, then you can bake rolls or loaves in the oven. Any given breadmaker will have a small range of sizes it can do, so if you occasionally want a lot of  bread in one go, but normally only a little, you'll end up making it by hand after all. Another option is a stand mixer combined with an oven - that's flexible and saves effort, but you have to be there at the right time, just as if you're kneading by hand


How do you cook grass-fed beef so it is not tough? I recently went to a farmers market and bought some grass-fed beef.  I went with what we normally buy, and got a couple of bone-in thick cut ribeye.  I typically prepare this by liberally applying salt and pepper, letting it come to room temp, grilling (gas) over high heat for a few minutes on each side to about 125-130, then letting it rest for 10 minutes or so.  This gets it to a good medium-rare after resting.  I then slice it across grain, cutting each piece about .25 inch think.

This works great, and loved it every time.  I love the ribeye since it has a good amount of fat (thus flavor), and it not too tough.

The guy we bought the grass-fed beef from warned us that they typically are a little tougher and less fatty so they typically marinate overnight.  I thought this was odd for a ribeye, and prepared it like normal.

Although the flavor was VERY BEEFY (almost too much), way more than the typical high end (probably corn fed) beef we buy, it was SO tough.  It was like leather.  I guess this is not uncommon for grass-fed beef, but what should I do next time to make this more enjoyable?

Marinate?  Emulate dry aging by cooking low temp for a while, then grilling?  Any other tips?

This is total nonsense: grass fed ribeye should absolutely not be tough. Toughness is, however, affected by the cow's breed, it's age, by how stressed it was when it was slaughtered, by ageing of the meat, and I'm sure a bunch of other variables too. Something made the meat tough, but it wasn't grass feeding - the combination of strong beefy flavour and toughness might suggest an old cow, for instance. Next time choose grass-fed beef raised by a different farmer.


How can I improve my chicken curry recipe? So, I’ve been experimenting with making curry and drew upon various recipes I found online. The common threads that I found were the following:

Using onions, garlic, and ginger as a base
Using plenty of spices
Having a main component (Chicken, potatoes, canned tomatoes)
Pouring water and a thickening ingredient in the end (Greek yoghurt, tomato paste)

The following recipe that I eventually compiled produces an edible, but mediocre dish. Is there any way to improve it?

Chop ginger, onions, and garlic, then add them to a heated pan with sunflower oil. (Add in the following order: onions, garlic, ginger) Cook until the onions are dark.
Add chili powder, ground cumin, curry powder, salt, and pepper to taste. Then add the chicken breasts and cook until slightly browned on all sides.
Add a can of chopped tomatoes and a tbsp of tomato paste. Then, cover the mixture with water. Simmer until thickened.
Remove the pan from the heat and add a few spoons of Greek yoghurt.

Please bear in mind that my financial resources are limited, so new ingredients should be critical to the taste of the finished dish. Naturally, this is intended to be served with white rice.

Notwithstanding that there is a similar question here - Secret to takeaway curry with a lot of good answers, let me try to address your specific request, whilst mainly maintaining the ingredient list you already have...

Leave the chicken out until near the end. That will allow you to cook your sauce for a lot longer - 2, 3, even 4 hours. Every hour will improve it, so long as you don't burn it... low as it will go, or even invest in a slow cooker or one of those flat metal simmer rings that spread the heat & slow the process [$£€ 2.50 on eBay]

While the rest of the curry is cooking, you could marinate the chicken in something to add a bit of interest. It won't really affect the final flavour a whole lot but will blend it into the dish better at the end.
Kashmiri mirch would be your prime - it's not expensive but not easy to just buy at the local supermarket. Paprika [sweet or hot, not smoked] would be a fair substitute, with cayenne if you want a little heat back in it. A little garlic, crushed or paste, frozen or even powder [many curry takeaways use only powder] & some oil to bind it.

Use twice as many onions - you didn't say how many you use, but there's no such thing as too much onion in a curry masala [sauce base]. It ought to be the bulk of your sauce.

Use more oil - your standard takeaway uses a whole lot more oil than you would dream of, & very little water.

Sweat [don't brown] the onions down a long way [20 mins, not 5] before you add the garlic & ginger. Some people puree the onion; this adds a new guesswork factor, because if you puree them when they're too raw they will be bitter, & pureeing scalding hot onion isn't fun so you'd have to wait for it all to cool.
It's 'easier' to skip this step & make it up in cooking time later. I have a little 'trick' I use for this. I chop most of my onion very finely - this will pretty much liquefy over the cook time & just become part of the sauce... but I also rough-chop half an onion which will stay whole & visible in the final dish - best of both worlds.

Add your dry spices & allow them to fry in a little; keep it all moving & don't burn them but don't rush to add your liquids. You'll smell the change within a few mins.
Then do the same for your tomato puree. Pre-frying it helps thicken the sauce & also removes any bitter edge the puree may have.

I can see your reasoning for the whole can of tomatoes - it saves having half a can going off in the fridge - but you're going to need to get rid of most of the water from that over your cooking time. You can either try to boil it off at the end, right before the chicken goes in, keeping stirring like there's no tomorrow so you don't burn anything; or leave your saucepan lid off for the first hour & your heat up slightly. If you get the balance right on that you can stir it every half hour & it won't stick.
Don't dry it out completely, you've still at least an hour of simmering on very low, with the lid back on.

Half an hour before you're due to serve it, add the chicken & bring it back to temperature rapidly, then simmer. If you use bite-sized pieces rather than whole breast, reduce this time to 5 mins. You want the chicken cooked safely, but not like shoe-leather;) The longer you cook off-the bone, skinless chicken breast, the tougher it gets.
Note the chicken doesn't need frying at all for this type of dish.

5 minutes before you serve, if budget will allow, a little garam masala will add a cheap but interesting aromatic edge.
If it's not hot/spicy enough, you can add cayenne at pretty much any point, even right at the end. It's amazing how little cooking in it needs to just add a bit of punch.

Save the yoghurt for a side dish.
So...
Potential additional expenditure
Simmer ring
Kashmiri mirch or paprika. Cayenne you should have anyway; it's your 'magic add heat to anything' powder, with very little actual flavour.
Garam masala
Potential savings
Powdered garlic instead of fresh - will help thicken & also taste like 'takeaway' rather than home-cooked.
Yoghurt.


How can I preserve avocados longer? Avocados are tricky beasts.  If you get them while the peel's still green, they're hard as stones.  When they ripen, the skin goes brown and the flesh softens, but when this happens you have to eat them immediately or they'll start to go bad right away, often ending up full of nasty brown spots within a day or two.

Is there any (relatively simple) way to keep them ripe and still edible for a bit longer?

(In case it makes any difference, I'm talking about ordinary Hass avocados you can buy in pretty much any normal supermarket in the US.)

I haven't done a side-by-side comparison, but I find that once an avocado's ripe, I can keep it there for a few days by putting it in the fridge.

It doesn't halt the process of getting brown spots inside, but it seems to slow it down some.


White residue after putting bacon grease laden cookware in dishwasher I scrape off most of the bacon grease then put it in a dishwasher. The residue doesn't feel very greasy, it has kind of a powder feel to it. There is only residue on the cookwares, and no residue on all other plates. The cookwares are a nonstick pan and a silicone coated turner. It happened with two different brands of bacon. I'm using finish powerball tablets.

I don't have a dishwasher, so I do dishes by hand, but there is something I've noticed that might help--when I have something very greasy, I sometimes find it hard to get it comepletely  clean after the first washing,  washing it a second time right away doesn't work much better,   I have to wash it, let it completely dry, and then wash it again.  Perhaps putting the items with residue through a second cycle will work.


What are these called in english? I'm looking for the names of "Rollfondant" and "Modellierfondant" in english.
I'm new to the métier but as far as I can tell, Rollfondant is used to cover a whole cake, while Modellierfondant is used for modelling small figures to put on the cake. Thanks!

Wikipedia differentiates between "rolled fondant" and "sculpting fondant": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fondant_icing


How to what is left behind when I have Removed the Melted Aluminum Foil from the Oven bottom I used Twizttid' protocol successfully (BELOW)
BUT...

You’ll need some Plasticine, Drano, water, GLOVES!!, a lot of paper towels and wood skewers and GOOD VENTILATION.

Start the ventilation and open a window or door.

Put on your gloves.

Use the Plasticine to create a dam about .25″-.5″ high around the area in the oven you’re looking to remove the aluminum from. The areas you’re working in should be about 2.5″ in diameter.

Pour some of the Drano into the dam and add enough water to touch all the sides of the dam. If the chemical reaction hasn’t started (should be almost instant), keep adding the Drano bit by bit until it does. The dam contents will start to boil and ammonia fumes and a little hydrogen gas will form, hence the need for some good ventilation!!

Once the reaction is done, poke around with the wood skewer to see if the oven bottom is clear. If you’re satisfied with the results, add some some vinegar to help neutralize the solution a bit, then use the wood skewer to remove the Plasticine dam to a dish to be rinsed off ASAP.

Use paper towels to wipe up the mess on the bottom of the oven. See your results! The area of the oven bottom you treated should be free of aluminum and just be discolored instead. Not from the Drano, but from where the Teflon bonded.

Repeat the process until the oven bottom is clean.

To get a ‘feel’ for the chemical reaction and what to expect, experiment first! Take a square of aluminum foil, go to the backyard with the foil shaped into a little bowl, place it on a dish or pan, add some Drano crystals to it then add a little water. Step back from the dish and try not to breath the fumes! The dish will be hot!!

It took me about six hours to clean the bottom of my oven when this happened to me.

AND HERE IS THE BUT...
There is a mark that is identical to the aluminium shape left after the aluminium has gone. It is raised to touch and a dull black colour (looks silver in the image because of the camera flash). I do not know what it is composed of but I want to remove it. Does anybody know how? (P.s. This is a new oven and I'm not going to scrape it off even if it will come - not my oven).

Reading through the comments following that procedure you cited, the original author of that article suggested an application of naval jelly (from the paint department at your local hardware store) as the solution that actually worked. Naval jelly is pink goop containing phosphoric acid that is used to remove rust from iron or steel, leaving a clean surface.

Essentially, you spread aluminum jelly over the aluminum, smear it around every few hours, leave it overnight, wipe clean and repeat process until the residue is gone. It takes days, but it is gentle with no fumes. The solution was was verified by several users in that conversation. You can read about the process starting here:

 BK says: Back in November, I searched for a way to fix our new oven …

Bonus solution: The original article also claims that the entire bottom plate can be replaced usually for less than US$30.00. Contact your manufacturer for a replacement part and guidance on installing it.


Is it really necessary to properly heat oil in a pan before frying veggies? As an example, we often lightly fry onions in (preferably) Olive Oil before adding them to any number of dishes, such as scrambled eggs for breakfast.

My talented cooking friends frequently remind me, "Don't put your veggies into the frying pan until the oil is hot!" The thing is, I personally can't tell the difference if I put my veggies in immediately after adding oil to the pan, or if I wait for the oil to properly heat up first. My friends also tell me, "Don't turn the heat up all the way either!"

Why do people recommend heating the oil first? Are there really benefits to waiting the 3-5 minutes?
If the answer to above is yes, how high should you turn the heat up to get the oil? Can I just set it to 100% for 1 minute to cook the oil faster? Yes I realize I have to watch the oil carefully otherwise chaos will ensue.

If you are looking to fry veggies then yes, it is necessary to pre-heat.  If you put them in a cold pan with oil, you start 'sweating' the veggies instead of frying them.

For example: if you put a sliced onion into a pan with hot oil, it will cook and have a nice golden brown color as it caramelizes.  Put that same sliced onion in a cold pan with cold oil and then add heat, and the onion will first turn translucent and lose moisture.

Both of these cooking methods have their uses, but they are different.
How do you know when the oil is ready to cook? It will start to shimmer a little before it reaches the smoking point. Put the veggies in when you see this shimmer, or at the very first wisp of smoke.


Why does my first batch of cookies come out nice while later batches get thin? The first few batches I bake look good and have a nice thickness to them. The last few batches are thinner. Why would that happen? For reference, I use the Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip recipe.

The fat in your dough started to soften/melt - especially if you have a hot oven running in the kitchen.  Keep your dough cold in the fridge between batches.

See this question for more details on the issue in general, but for your situation, keep it cold between batches.  You seem to have started correctly, which is good - you just have to keep it going right.


Differences between the oven stone and the pizza oven? I'm undecided between buying an oven stone, or a pizza oven (like http://j.mp/YXeiTr).

I can't find any helpful suggestion - does anybody have any comment?
I'm aware of the major differences - for example, one has to pre-heat the stone before usage. Some things may not be obvious though, for example, does one has to wait some time between cooking pizzas if one has to cook many with the stone? Any other differences?

A pizza stone in a normal oven will only get the maximum temperature of the oven (probably not more than 280 ºC / 530 ºF).

A specific pizza oven will gett hotter (the one you linked gets 390 ºC / 735 ºF and, indeed has a stone inside).

If you want to get Italian style pizzas, go for the pizza oven. They need that high temperature in order to be ready in (ideally) 90 seconds. Those Ferrari ovens are one of Italian's favourite ones, albeit they'll need a bit more time than 1.5 minutes achievable in wood fired traditional pizza ovens.

You (probably) won't be able to achieve those high temperatures with a normal home kitchen oven, unless you have a pyrolytic home oven, and hack it in order to cook in it during the pyrolysis cycle.

As for the waiting time between pizzas using a stone, consider it as a capacitor (or a rechargeable battery): It takes heat (until is soaked up), and then gives it back. Once you make 1 pizza (or a loaf of bread), it needs to soak (a bit) again.


Why do my egg whites separate after whipping? Every time I try to whip egg whites, I seem to end up with the same problem. After a good bit of strenuous beating with the whisk, the egg whites finally reach the "firm peak" stage. I then go grab something (last night, it was the chili peppers to coat in egg), and right away the egg has separated into fluffy white peaks on top, and liquid on the bottom.
What's going on? Is there a trick to keeping the egg white a uniform texture?

This is the nature of meringue: they will start to fall apart as soon as you stop whipping.  There are a few tricks to help it hold longer, but in general you want to have EVERYTHING ready to go as soon as the meringue is whipped.

To help stabilize the meringue you can:

Use a copper or SILVER-plated bowl to whip, or add a tiny amount of powdered copper supplement from a health food store
Acidify it slightly: add 1/8 tsp cream of tartar or 1/2 tsp lemon juice per white, before beating
Let the bowl warm to room temperature, which increases the ability of the whites to take in air
Ensure there is absolutely no yolk in with the whites.  The fat greatly destabilizes the foam.

Now for WHY these tricks work:

I'm going to quote heavily from Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking", as it does a wonderful job explaining meringues and other whipped egg whites:

  Like the head on a beer or a cappucino, an egg foam is a liquid--the
  white--filled with a gas --air-- in such a way that the mixuture of
  liquid and gas keeps its shape, like a solid.  It's a mass of
  bubbles, with air inside each bubble, and the white spread out into a
  thin film to form the bubble walls.  And the makeup of these liquid
  walls determines how long a foam can stand up.  Pure water has such a
  strong surface tension--such strong attractive forces among its
  molecules--that it immediately starts to pull  itself together into a
  compact puddle; and it's so runny that it puddles almost immediately.
  The many nonwater molecules in egg white both reduce the surface
  tension of the water they float in, and make it less runny, and thus
  allow the bubbles to survive long enough to accumulate in a sizeable
  mass.  What gives the mass of foam a useful kitchen lifetime is the
  white's team of proteins.

Whisking unfolds these proteins, primarily globulins and ovotranferrin, which bond to each other and stabilize the bubble walls.  Cooking will evaporate the water and unfold ovoalbumin, creating a rigid and permanent protein network.

However, the same proteins can ALSO destabilize the foam if they bond too tightly. "The protein network begins to collapse when too many of these bonds accumulate and the proteins cluster together too tightly" (page 102). In the case of egg proteins, one of the strongest bonds is a disulfide bond between the sulfur-containing amino acids, cysteine and methionine. Eggs contain copious quantities of these amino acids, which are why they produce such a potent stench when they spoil; the sulfur is converted to malodorous sulfur compounds, particularly hydrogen sulfide.

Copper, silver, and acids stabilize the egg foam by preventing the formation of these disulfide bonds. To quote Harold McGee (page 103):

  It turns out that along with a few other metals, copper has the useful
  tendency to form extremely tight bonds with reactive sulfur groups: so
  tight that the sulfur is essentially preventing from reacting with
  anything else.  So the presence of copper in foaming eggs whites
  essentially eliminates the strongest kind of protein bond that can
  form, and makes it harder for the proteins to embrace each other too
  tightly.

McGee also notes that silver has the same property of inhibiting disulfide bonding. Acid achieves the same goal of reducing disulfide bonding, but works slightly differently:

  The sulfur bonds form when the sulfur-hydrogen (S-H) groups on two
  different protein molecules shed their hydrogens and form a
  sulfur-sulfur (S-S) connection with each other.  The addition of an
  acid boosts the number of free-floating hydrogen (H) ions in the egg
  white, which makes it much harder for the S-H groups to shed their own
  H, and so slows the sulfur bonding down to a crawl.


Can I use a plastic cup instead of a ramekin for my panna cotta? I don't have ramekins or custard cups.  Can I pour the warm (not hot) cream-buttermilk mixture of panna cotta into plastic cups to refrigerate?

Yup, you can use any small food safe receptacle.


Shelf-life of pressure-canned soups - is it still good? I am just trying to get a rough idea of how long a pressure canned soup can last. We made turkey soup with thanksgiving leftovers, which we canned. I have it dated from 10-28-2012, so it's a little less than 5 months old. I followed the pressure canner instructions for meat products (10psi for 25 minutes). I opened the jar and it smells good and tastes ok. I just can't find any reference for what shelf life to expect.

While they are almost certainly very conservative (and with good reason), the FDA recommends that you plan on using home canned goods within one year.  They do not give shelf-life guidelines other than this.

I could not find truly authoritative sources (FDA, a major university extension center) that provided more detail.  Less authoritative sources make various claims, on the order of several years, but I will not quote them or link them here.

A five month old jar is certainly well within year that the FDA guidelines suggest, assuming you followed good canning practices.  The fact that you took the trouble to date the jar is a good indicator of your diligence.


TV Programs like Good Eats I have become a fan of Alton Brown and Rick Bayless, both have shows on television that are immensely educational and entertaining, are there any other shows like Good Eats and Mexico - One Plate at a Time with people like them anywhere? I just can not get enough, I just have this feeling that there is something else that I have not discovered so I am asking here. Even something on the web would do.

Alton Brown on Good Eats usually presents graphical descriptions of the science behind cooking in a clear concise way. I particularly like the theatrical interludes, they are quite entertaining, it is indeed a fun way to learn. It is hard to sum up this show here so see this Food Network link for more information.

Here is an episode of him explaining Coq Au Vin, look at the visual aid on wine.

Rick Bayless quite often ventures out to the market place picking food products asking questions and explaining something about the products he works with, I like when chefs go outside the kitchen and give interesting information about some key food items they use. Sometimes you will see him in another chef's kitchen, usually Mexican, asking questions and getting informative answers, I like learning about food preparation in various places around the world I like mexican food so i take a liking to Rick's show.
it is just another fun way to learn. For more about Rick and his show see here.

You should check out America's Test Kitchen. It airs on PBS, but you can stream episodes from their site.

I think it's very similar to Alton Brown. They take a few dishes per episode and figure out very methodically how to make it the best it can be. It's very educational.


How to convert cook time and temp from 9" round cake pans to standard cupcakes? I am making carrot cake "cupcakes" from a recipe meant for round 9" cake pans (3 layers, if that matters).  The cake pans are supposed to cook 25-30 min at 350.  How should I cook the cupcakes?  Thanks!

Since I don't know exactly your receipe, the receipe I convert time to time makes 22 cupcakes.  You line muffin pans with with paper liners, scoop the batter about 3/4 full in the cupcake cups, and if your receipe does not have crushed pineapple in the batter, I really suggest you add about 1/2 can of crushed pineapples, without the juice, into the batter when you are mixing the batter. This makes  the cupcakes super moist as well as the cake. Don't mix the batter too much.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees  and bake 10 minutes and then reduce oven to 350 degrees and cook 30 to 35 more minutes.  At the 25-30 minute point check one cupcake with a toothpick to see is comes out dry and if dry they are are ready, or if just a touch wet you need a few more minutes.  Remember that they still cook in the cupcake pan AND I ALWAYS USE THE BIG MUFFIN PAN.  If you choose to use the regular sized cupcake pans I feel you should check at 15-20 minutes with the toothpick test. If the cupcake is wet then cook 5-10 minutes more.  Remember, IF YOU LEAVE IN THE CUPCAKE PAN AFTER TAKING OUT OF THE OVEN, THEY ARE STILL COOKING, SO IF READY TAKE OUT FAST.  Also another tip I learned years ago, if you have empty cupcake holes, fill with a little water, I don't remember why, but in some way it helps your cupcakes.  Enjoy!


Dangerous simmering - exploding liquid? (cheesemaking) This evening I attempted to make gjetost. I started with a gallon of milk and made mozzarella, then added a little dry milk, and made ricotta. Finally I was going to reduce the whey down into gjetost.

Once I got the whey reduced down to about 10% of its original volume, the simmering became incredibly... weird? Basically the bubbling became very erratic, and at least twice there was a sudden "BLUB" which sent showers of 230+ degree whey showering across the stovetop, also making a noticable SLAM when the pot physically jumped on the stovetop. After narrowly avoiding a bunch of burns twice, I moved the pot off the heat and walked away. I want to make the recipe but I'm not risking a trip to the hospital.

So, has anyone ever seen this happen? Why does it simmer so erratically and then have one big GLUB/bubble explosion in the center that is so violent? I've heard of things getting super heated, but that doesn't seem like it would apply here because it's not a completely pure liquid (there are some curds of albumin protein which would seem to be good origination sites).

Reducing whey to that level of concentration is going to create what is very likely to be a viscous, non-newtonian fluid.  That means its flow rate changes with sheer stress, much like ketchup does.

The heat at the bottom of the pan will slowly heat up water until a bubble of steam starts to form, and press against the remaining fluid.  At first, the pressure will not be enough to overcome the viscosity of the.. substance.  Eventually, the pressure will be sufficent that bubble ruptures, creating sheer in the fluid, which suddently becomes much mroe liquid.  And so you have a giant gloop.

See related:  Why does tomato sauce spatter more than other sauces?


Baking bread ... without crust? My fiancee doesn't like to eat the crust of bread. I like to bake bread. But she ends up cutting off like half of each piece in the process of de-crust-ifying it. What are some suggestions to make bread have no crust? Is it possible?

You can't bake bread to end up without crust, as it will always require high temperatures that will toast the outside (to varying degrees) without just dessicating the entire lump of dough.

For pure crustless bread, I would try to make something like a giant steamed dumpling.  There are a few examples (courtesy Jefromi and Jay's comments, respectively) of this in Chinese cooking: baozi, a filled dumpling using yeast dough; or the larger mantou, similar but without filling.

When steaming dough it will retain much more (nearly all) water, so a drier dough would be in order.  Generally in most bread-baking, the goal as Julio mentions is to get the inside to 200-210 °F, and by using steam at ~212 °F, you will get virtually no browning.

That said, crust can vary wildly, from very soft to very hard.  The softer crust breads I bake are usually done in pans at lower temperatures (325-375 °F) and often contain milk, eggs and or fat.  The more "crusty" breads are usually baked quickly at hot temperatures (>450 °F), but if done lower and slower it will change the crust significantly.


How long can you keep tuna in jar with olive oil Someone sent me tuna in olive oil from a delicatessen shop via post in a box. When I received the package the safety button of the jar was off (you could squeeze it). Due to this I was hesitant to eat it but when I opened it there was no bad smell and put it in the fridge immediately.

My question is, assuming that it was kept in room temperature during transit for about 3-4 days with the safety button in the jar released is it safe to eat it ?

Does fish stay fresh in olive oil even in room temperature ?

It is a really expensive and tasty product and I just don't feel like throwing it away.

No, it is not safe anymore.

The scombridae family of fish (mackerels, tunas, bonitos) decay in a way that does not necessarily cause a bad smell, as the bacteria just convert amino acids of the fish into a harmful version. The bacteria that does this is unfortunately facultative anaerobic, which means it prefers oxygen, but will do without, too.

So, the safety of the tuna can relies on the initial heating and keeping bacteria out with the airtight can, not so much on the oil.


Egg muffin tin cooking I make egg muffins in a muffin tin, using cubed ham, green pepper, onion etc. plus of course beaten eggs.   How long can I keep these in the fridge after they have been baked in the oven.  I've tried after 3 days and they still taste fine, I just want to know the safety factor

I always limit any refrigerated leftovers to 3days...any thing beyond that throw it out. The ingredients you mentioned are all safe for consumption during that time as long as the egg is thoroughly cooked to an internal temp of 160


Curing fresh ham with limited ingredients Help Please.  I live in Ecuador, in a small coastal fishing village, so ingredients are limited.  I purchased a big fresh ham at the market today and want to cure it for Christmas.  This is what I have on hand Tenderquick, salt,and sugars.  Any help with a formula or recipe will be greatly appreciated.  Please help or my husband is going to beat me with this sucker, I promised him I could do it and him hauled it around the market for an hour.

General information on brining and smoking a ham can be found in many online sources.  Here's a good one with illustrations.  I would draw particular attention to the injection step.  If you don't inject a large piece of meat like a whole ham, it will not cure evenly (or will take a ridiculously long amount of time to cure).  If the ham is particularly large and you don't have a syringe or brine pump, the other option can sometimes be to cut up the ham into smaller pieces and brine them together to allow greater penetration of the cure.

Since you don't have the Prague Powder, you should make the brine using only water and Morton's Tender Quick.  You substitute that for the salt and Prague Powder, following the directions on the package.  I've never used Morton's Tender Quick for brining personally, but online sources seem to imply that the package indicates 1 cup per 4 cups of water.  That seems like it would make a rather strong brine, but when curing meat, you should follow the cure manufacturer's recommendations to ensure safe preservation.  (If the meat is too salty after curing, you can soak the ham in fresh water for a short time to release some of the salt.)

UPDATE: Here's a link to what appears to be the text of Morton's own detailed pamphlet on home curing.  Morton's own website mentions to refer to this when curing large pieces of meat like ham.  Proportions for brine are given on a later page.  Here they recommend for injection brine strength:

  2 lbs. of Tender-Quick per gallon of water for meat that is to be
  kept for only 3 to 6 months.

And they recommend injection:

  The amount of Tender-Quick pumping pickle to use is 1 to 1 1/2 oz. of
  pickle per pound of meat.

While this describes the injection step, the rest of the information in this book describe methods for dry curing or wet curing with Morton's sugar cure mixtures, rather than Tender Quick.  (However, I will note that early on the book clearly states that Tender Quick can be used instead for all curing processes; it just doesn't seem to give proportions.)

I should also note this Morton's method is designed for true long-term meat preservation, rather than a quick curing method to make something that will be ready for Christmas.  (They say that hams should be brined for 3 days per pound, which if you have a 20 lb. ham will take 60 days.)  Since you're presumably just curing the ham for flavor, not for long-term preservation, a couple weeks using their suggested method followed by smoking should still give you a good product in time for Christmas.


I ruined my dumplings in the crock pot I made chicken and gravy in the crock pot. Later on I decided to add dumplings., for the next night. It wasn't hot, I figured it would soak up all the juices for cooking in the morning. Needless to say, my dumplings broke down they are stretchy and messy. Is it ruined now. Can I salvage my meal?

Salvage means different things, if you want to make it presentable at a fashionable dinner party then probably not, if you want to make it good enough for a family meal then you should be ok. It's still edible at the end of the day, it's not as if broken down dumplings are bad for you.

It all depends on how broken down the dumplings have gotten. If they are in reasonable chunks then get yourself a slotted spoon and get to work, you should be able to get it pretty decent looking. If they are really fine then you will need to sieve the liquid through a fine strainer to get them out. That will be time consuming as you will need to separate the good stuff you want to keep from the stuff you want to strain.


Is cured meat broth edible? We bought a chunk of raw beef in brine in the store. I was marked "fully cured,... boiling will develop pink color". After adding some water and slow cooking it overnight it turned into delicious corned beef with beautiful color and texture.
I tried the broth, it tastes very salty but also delicious. Wanted to keep it for a beef soup but not sure if the chemicals used to cure the beef may have deposited in the broth in unsafe concentration. Anyone has an experience and/or knowledge of that? Is the broth edible?

All the ingredients used in curing are safe to eat, otherwise they would not be able to be used in a commercial sense. Typically cured meats of the sort that you describe are called something like "corned beef". These are produced using a curing salt that is composed of sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite along with regular table salt (sodium chloride). The sodium nitrate is the component responsible for the pink colour as it converts myoglobin in the muscle into the pink nitrosomyoglobin.
Corned meats can be cooked and eaten without boiling them, often by roasting. As roasting without boiling would result in you consuming all the salts in the meat without those lost in the boiling process, you can, by inference, assume that the broth is also safe to consume as it contains only a portion of the salts from the meat.
In addition, bacon and ham make excellent and delicious stocks, and these are often cured in a similar manner to corned beef, so your stock should be safe to eat.


Why are our olives getting moldy? Our family consumes a lot of olives. About 5 years ago, we started buying the 55oz cans of Lindsey sliced black olives. We put them in about 7 separate plastic containers (Hillshire Farms sliced deli meat containers) and then refrigerate them. As we finish off a container, we open a new one. We've done this for years without a problem.

Of the last 3 cans, though, by the time we get to the third container of olives, they're starting to mold. All the containers of remaining olives are molding. Why would this suddenly start happening? We haven't really changed anything, so I can only assume that Lindsey has changed something.

Is there something we can do to prevent this?

At the rate we consume olives, it's just ridiculous to buy those tiny little cans. Even if we only go through two of the containers before they go bad, we're saving money, but we hate the idea of wasting all those olives.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Change your olive storage to glass jars and plastic lids. I use Bell jars and buy the plastic lids where I buy the jars; Walmart or hardware store, during canning season. The glass jars can be sterilized, if mold forms on the food. Plastic can never really be clean once the mold starts. Toss the plastic.


Freezing bread baked from frozen yeast bread dough If I prepare yeast bread dough, freeze it after the 1st rising and shaping, then thaw it and let it rise again before baking, can I then freeze the cooked bread for later use?  Or will it have less flavour?

Freezing does not adversely affect the flavor of bread. If anything there might be slightly more flavor from the bit of extra fermentation.

If your bread proofs sufficiently then the fact that the dough was previously frozen is irrelevant. The freezing of the dough before it is baked and freezing the bread afterwards are unrelated.

I have found that when I freeze bread the texture seems slightly more crumbly afterwards but I'm baking whole wheat bread that tends to get that way anyway.


Is there a low tyramine substitute for tamari? Help replacing miso and tamari for health reasons

I am a non-junk-food-vegan for health reasons.  Technically I'm "whole foods plant based" (WFPB).  It basically means I stay away from animal products and processed foods (like oils and sugars).  When our family made this change, some of us experienced remission of serious conditions  (like: hypothyroidism, anemia, angina with cardiovascular disease, and one is just beginning to fight diabetes and obesity with the lifestyle. So far so good.--You go Sis!)

But one health problem I had remained: headaches.  Then I discovered I had a sensitivity to tyramine.  Poof!  Headaches and brain fog gone!    But, avoiding tyramine has pushed me to avoid nuts, seeds and anything aged.  Aged ingredients, like many cheeses, vinegar, tofu, dried fruit, are very high tyramine.

I've been able to substitute for some high tyramine items:

• allspice for nutmeg

• lemon juice for vinegar (ok in small amounts)

• butternut squash for sweet potatoes

• very fresh bananas for fully ripe bananas

• blended cannellini beans for tofu (in sauces)

BUT... many of the recipes I have call for aged ingredients to provide that awesome savory/umami taste.  (Tamari and miso for example.)

I have considered substituting Redmond's Real Sea Salt and liquid smoke for tamari.

Is there another (non-nut-based) seasoning that would help?

NOTA BENE:  I know I haven't said what I am using the tamari for. I'm just looking for some ideas to keep on hand.  Tamari and miso would usually be added to bean soups, mushroom gravies, dry-sautéed onions, hummus, or even a savory oatmeal with spinach. (Scrumptious--who knew!)

As unpalatable as it might sound: Pure MSG would be umami with the least added compounds :) A very glutamate-rich (but natural) broth can be made from kombu seaweed (but keep in mind it can have an obscene amount of iodine, which could be relevant in your case.)

Distilled vinegars (or non-brewed condiment) will likely contain less amines or amino acids.