Reverse engineer the Perfect Japanese Omelet I've come across this video of a very impressive japanese omelet and I've been trying to understand how it's done and what do I need to make it at home.

I've seen this video reproducing the technique, but the omelet's surface is not smooth at all.

I'm trying to reverse engineer this omelet and learn the key techniques to accomplish that.

My attempt so far has been on comparing what I can see to what I've read on traditional french omelets.

What I have come up with:

Traditional french omelet is done on medium-high heat, and this one seems to be done at very high heat.
Traditional french omelet takes milk or water (I've read on other questions here that water works best). The second video seems to use just eggs and comes out kinda bad. The kyoto guy seems to have a very smooth egg mixture but we don't know for sure if it's just eggs or what.
In french omelets, on the first seconds since you pour the eggs into the pan, eggs are mixed from the outside-in in order to allow a thicker layer of cooked eggs before turning the omelet. This kind of omelet is mixed in apparently quick random chopstick movements combined with shaking the pan, possibly because of the much higher heat?
Once the a layer of cooked eggs start to form underneath the omelet they should be flipped over. In french omelets, ends meet sideways. In the kyoto video, it seems the ends meet on the top, flipping them with cooking chopsticks in one direction, and turning them over with hand movements in the other direction. This seems to be important for the baloony shape of the omelet. Here the second video almost falls short. The ends of the omelet meet, but they are not perfectly tied.

UPDATE 1

My omelets are successfully runny on the inside and smoothly cooked on the outside. Watching Alton Brown's omelet advice was key into mastering this, also getting a new pan with a smooth nonstick surface.

I had been on a plateau for quite some time trying to make the omelet turn on itself while in the pan.

I was practicing using traditional pan flipping motion, the same one used for doing pancakes, and it was practically impossible to make the omelet turn on itself.

Watching the videos again I think I'm starting to get it. The trick seems to be punching the pan, which leaves the omelet in free fall and makes it spin on itself.

I managed to get the omelet to spin and turn completely over. I didn't manage yet to make the ends meet, melt into each other and turn the omelet into that impressive american football shape.

It's called an "omelet", but it's scrambled eggs, well formed into an omelet shape

Cook scrambled eggs, and just before they set (20 ish seconds) fold them, and tip the pan to roll them in the curve of the pan to form the classic omelet shape and serve. Since the eggs are not yet fully set, the outer surface will form a smooth omelet appearance

You need a pan with large lip, and gentle curve to achieve a nice uniform shape. After the initial cooking phase, tipping the pan is required to ensure the eggs mold into the curve of the pan, and the also have a reduced heat to stop over cooking (you don't have time to turn down the heat anyway, so tipping does it all)

If the surface is not smooth you have cooked it too long before folding, or you did not beat the eggs sufficiently. Eggs that have been fully cooked before folding cannot form a smooth skin surface, and eggs that are not fully beaten will never form a smooth surface as the different proteins congeal (denature) at different rates and elasticities

Omelet's are handled gently, scrambled eggs are handled more vigorously, and over a much higher heat. This type of egg dish requires the scrambled approach to start, and the omelet approach to finish


Is there a term for the blending of different recipies of the same type? One of the things I do when cooking is I look at several different recipes for the same dish. I take a "base" recipe "A" and add these ingredients from recipe "B" and maybe even a unique ingredient from recipe "C." By doing this I often get the best of all the recipes I am combining.

A friend of mine said that she thought my cooking was "fusion" is this the right term?

Fusion is a great word for a thorough mixing of things, conveying the idea of almost welding them together. So I see what your friend means when she describes your fusing together of different recipes for a particular dish as fusion cooking.

But when people use the term fusion in relation to cooking they often mean the marrying together of different types of cuisine, like for example, an "Asian Fusion" style restaurant might serve dishes from a variety of different countries within Asia or dishes made with ingredients from a variety of different parts of Asia ... like maybe curry with tofu in it or, who knows, sushi with paneer? They can be as creative as they like, and it's called "Fusion".

So if your friend were to write a review of your restaurant and call it a "fusion restaurant", she might need to add a little extra explanation to avoid con-fusion.


What temperature(s) should sweetbreads be cooked to? It is very easy to find quick references for the various doneness temperatures (rare, med. rare, etc.) of different animal meats, but not so easy when it comes to offal. Sweetbreads, as far as I know, are usually prepared by poaching or blanching first, then a resting period, and then a final preparation like pan-frying before being served.

So, at what temperature are sweetbreads "done" (the temperature they should be cooked to during poaching/blanching)? Or is there a range (rare to well done)? I've never been served sweetbreads at a restaurant and had them described as being at a particular doneness, so I'm guessing there is one small temperature range at which they're not dangerous, and not overcooked. Most recipes I found just give a period of time for which they should be cooked, which varied greatly. The few references I found online which mention temperature at all only mentioned the temperature of the water bath for cooking them sous-vide (usually between 150-160 F). That seems a decent guideline for doneness, since cooked sous-vide, the meat will end up at the same temperature as the water. But never having cooked them, I can't say for sure...

While not perhaps a definitive answer, according to Serious Eats:

  Besides its amazing flavor and texture, sweetbread is nearly impossible to overcook. [...] you can sear the exterior of sweetbread to your heart's content, without worrying about the interior turning chewy and tough. Your cooking timeframe, in other words, is extremely forgiving and long—minutes long, rather than tens of seconds.

This implies that sous-vide is perhaps not as helpful for sweetbreads as it might be for some other foods that are more temperature sensitive.

The only recipe I could find that mentioned a temperature was a sous-vide based recipe that suggested 60 C (140 F) for one hour.  Note that this is one of the time and temperature combinations that essentially kills all pathogens that may be present.

From these facts, I infer that you want them cooked though (which the traditional blanching method will ensure), and hot for service, but a specific temperature as is used for beef is not important.


Can you cure fish in jar? Since it will be cold for some time, I was thinking of using my detached, unheated shed to pickle some veggies.  But another thought I was having was to actually cure/can some herrings or sardines (or another kind of blue fish) in a jar with water and salt.

Is it possible to do that similar to how veggies are pickled?  I was thinking that the brine I would put the fish in would act as a preservative and the fish would be edible after some time of curing?  Is this doable or is it just a bats**t crazy idea?

I have had some success with this recipe: http://awesomepickle.com/pickled-herring-recipe-how-to-fillet-a-fish/

The fish should keep for a couple of weeks once pickled, but I always tend to eat mine in the first few days.


Explaining raising dough I bought dough containers and would like to know a couple things: When I mix the dough do I put it in the refrigerator right away and can I seal it with the lid on or do I use seran wrap? When I take the dough out how long does the dough have to sit at room temperature? Do I shar it first?

Your question isn't as clear as it could be, but I'll try to answer what I think you're asking. You've bought a container specifically for making bread dough in and you have questions about it, right?

You asked if you should put your dough in the fridge right after making it. The answer is, it depends on what you're making. You can make bread where the bread never sees the inside of the refrigerator. What happens in this process is you're mixing together flour and water for your bread. The way you get your rise is with yeast. Yeast is a living organism. It feeds off of the bread dough and creates gases. These are trapped in the dough, creating small pockets which you see as rise.

There are different ways to achieve this. You have sourdough where you keep a single strain of yeast alive indefinitely. You leave these out on the counter when you're staring them or reviving them to make bread. However, you can store them in the refrigerator to retard their growth. Otherwise, you'd have to add new dough/feed every day. The other way is to add instant or active yeast, which come in a convenient package. These all work the same way, it's just about storage, speed, or flavor as to which you choose to use.

There are two reasons you could put your dough in the refrigerator. One is to slow the yeasts activity and cause a slower rise. It could be because of timing or it could be because of flavor. I have a pizza dough recipe and because of the families work schedule, I have to make the dough and leave it in the fridge for almost 24hrs, instead of the 4-6hrs it calls for. I've had the chance to make it both ways. When I stick it in the fridge for a few hours, it's a really good crust. However, when I leave it in for 24hrs, it has a sour quality reminiscent of sourdough. That's because as yeast uses up it's food source, it begins to produce alcohol. This is fermenting, similar to when making beer or wine. In those cases also, yeast feed on the sugars in the mash and turn it into alcohol.

So it's up to you and your recipe as to how long to refrigerate if at all. As for wrapping it, you should cover the dough whether you put it in the fridge or not. The reason is simply because you don't want it to dry out. You can either use a damp towel, saran wrap, the lid for the container (loose, not snapped on tight), or anything else you could use in the same way.

Just an FYI, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, you shouldn't put anything tight fitting on your container and you should have a container at least twice the volume as your dough. You can eyeball that. The reason is that your dough will expand (rise) and if your container isn't big enough, you're going to end up with a sticky mess all over the place. I think you could imagine what would happen if you had a tight fitting or even a locked on lid on your container and the pressure built up as the yeast turned the sugars into gases. You're not going to have a good time.

When you bring dough out of the fridge you want let it warm up a little. If you're making something like sourdough, then you want to bring it out a minimum of 12hrs ahead of time and feed it. You'll wait till it's doubling in size before using it. With other dough's, it might not be long of a wait at all. Your recipe should tell you and after you make a few breads, you'll get an idea of how long it needs to come out of the fridge before use.

I hope this answered all your questions or at least helped you narrow it down for your next question.


Camellia sinensis var. assamica in Yunnan? Camellia sinensis var. assamica is the tea variety that is associated with Assam, as the name attests.

I have also seen allusions and suggestions that this is the same as the "Da Ye" (large leaf) variety that is used in Yunnan for pu-erh and some red/black teas.  Some tea merchants certainly describe their Yunnan teas as being from assamica plants, and the Assam jungles are not too far from Yunnan so this seems credible.

Is there a reliable source that confirms that the assamica variety is the same as the variety from which pu-erh tea is made?  Or is the reality more complex, with most commercially grown pu-erh tea being a hybrid of var. assamica and other varieties?

Wikipedia pages about tea are currently poorly referenced and I tend to disregard most of the claims on the pages related to tea.  I am looking for references to scholarly books, pointers to trade literature, credible news sites, or quotes from acknowledged experts.

(Note that I am not interested in growing tea plants, this is purely a question about provenance of the foodstuff.)

I find nothing to indicate it's a different cultivar, and several sources saying that it's var. assamica. My favorite couple:

An article (with photos!) on a tea merchant's site, from a guy who says he was actually in Yunnan for a year just for the tea.
A toxicology paper, with Chinese authors (though not from Yunnan).

This doesn't rule out the possibility that there are subdivisions of assamica, leading to some tiny differences between the plants. But I can find no evidence of such subdivisions. Further, given the degree to which things vary simply based on the region they were grown in (due to climate and soil) and the effects of the subsequent processing, even if there are actual differences in the plants (beyond those caused by their environment), they're unlikely to be meaningful in terms of the tea you ultimately drink.

One caveat: this is all about what's most common. But people drink all kinds of things as tea, so it's possible that you'll find tea that was made from a different cultivar with the same processing as pu-erh, and it may well be labelled as pu-erh.


Which caffeine-free tea herbs have tannins? I like both the flavor and the social rituals associated with tea, but I don't want to consume caffeine on a regular basis, so I only drink it rarely. And I don't like many of the popular herbal teas.

I recently indulged in a cup of flavored tea in a Turkish style tea salon, then switched to flavored rooibos. And then I realized why the rooibos wasn't cutting it for me, despite all the added sugar and flavor: I was missing the tannins from the real stuff. I generally like astringent, even bitter tastes, and it is probably what makes tea tasty for me.

What herb will give me a substitute for tea such that

it has no caffeine and similar stimulants (I don't care about arguments how chirality makes theine different from caffeine)
it has tannins or other sources of astringent flavor
but without having too assertive flavor of its own (for example, I drink wormwood tea sometimes, but it is heavy stuff and not really versatile)?

Oak perhaps?

I know oak chips are added to wine and other alcohol for flavor (originally aging in oak barrels, but in this day and age oak chips are likely easier to source and use).  Oak adds tannins to the liquid, and the oak chips sourced for home-brewing are chosen to be food-safe, and the flavor is probably both generally good and also neutral, or perhaps I mean flexible, for it to work with so many different brewed drinks.  I see no particular reason a tea or extract can't be made of these oak chips, or such chips used to add tannic elements to other teas.

If you have access to oak trees, I think acorns might also work - bitter acorns are edible, but only after soaking until the tannins are down to a manageable quantity - the liquid is usually discarded, but that's because it is very strong, dilution might make a reasonable flavor.  The acorns are not poisonous, or else soaking would be about making them safe rather than palatable, and it takes a lot of soaking (several changes of water), so you should get quite a lot of... tannic extract? per volume of acorns that you can use to supplement other teas.


Flank Steak Sous Vide - Blood Spots? I got a SV wand for X-Mas, so have been doing alot of that this month.

I did a flank steak today, which I cut into 3 parts, 3 bags, and did at 52 Deg C for 4 hours.  I then Ice Bath'd all three pieces, and 2 went in the freezer, and one went in the fridge.

For dinner, I pulled the fridge version, and warmed up at 48 Deg C for 30 minutes while preparing Lomo Saltado fixins.

When I was slicing the steak, against the muscle grain, I ran into 2 or 3 small blood spots (bright red pockets in the meat - maybe 1" across and spread across 1" worth of slices.  I took them out, but was wondering if anyone knows what they are, and what that means?  I've cooked many steaks in my 30+ yeas on this earth, and had never seen that.

Second, follow on question: if I want the other 2 steaks more well done, can I pull from the freezer 90 minutes before another meal, and SV at 54 Deg C, or does "twice cooking" them introduce new problems?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!!!

I would think the red pockets are liquefied fat and/or water with red dye in them (and some myoglobin, which is what makes red meat red, but often dye is the bigger reason).

If it's steak from a supermarket, it's probably thoroughly dyed, so maybe some of the dye (or a lot of it!) stuck with the fat.  Blood wouldn't be bright red, it would be oxidized and a nice brown/gray (if it were even in the steak - almost no blood remains in a steak, it's not why they're red).  If you're used to grilling or similar methods, those would allow the fat (and water) to drip off, while SV won't: you're packing it in a bag and keeping the water and fat inside (that being the point of sous-vide cooking, after all).


Why doesn't the fat in pemmican mold? I've learned today that pemmican is pulverized dried meat mixed with fat. But why doesn't the fat develop mold? I have read fats develop mold easily.

Mold spores are everywhere, but they need certain conditions in order to grow.  Food preservation and storage steps protect against spoilage.  Mold growth is one (of many) potentials for spoilage (although in some instances, cheese for example, it is desirable).  Fat doesn't necessarily encourage mold growth any more than other products.  The conditions that mold spores need to grow are (a) water, (b) food in the form of dead or decaying matter, (c) air, and (d) temperature (70F or 20C is ideal).  In the case of pemmican, the water activity of the product is very low, as it is made mostly from dried meat and fat.  During the time that it was used and popular, it was probably protected from the air as much as was reasonable, and it was used and stored (mostly) in cool temperatures.  None of that guarantees that it will not, or never did mold.  I can imagine an early Native American, or North American explorer reaching into a leather saddle bag after the spring rains and pulling out some moldy pemmican.  In that scenario, the conditions could be perfect for mold growth.  So, to directly answer your question, it's not the fat or the pemmican.  Mold can grow on anything that supports its growth if the conditions are right.


non-rusting sauce pot for boiling water I am trying to find a way to boil 1-2 quarts of water for 10 minutes and want to be absolutely sure that the pot doesn't leak any chemicals into the water. I have tried 3 stainless steel sauce pots but they all rusted (and one rusted after a single use). What kind of sauce pot can I get that is guaranteed not to rust or break due to temperature and not leak any chemicals into the water? Price is less important than finding the right item (I'm only going to buy 1).

Just use a glass pot, Corningware make some decent ones that can be used on a stove. But any glass pot designed to work on a stove with direct heat/flame exposure should work in this case.

If you are worried about uneven heating or hot spots on a gas range due to less conductive glass, you can use a cast iron or aluminum heat diffuser plate under the glass to even out the heat.


Non-Quick Cooking Couscous - Is that a real thing anywhere? To me a big part of the fun of cooking meals traditional elsewhere is to do it "right". So I'd like to try to approximate using a couscousier as I play with my new North African ingredients. Almost all of the couscous I've been able to find (even on Amazon) is either labeled "quick cooking", or there are instructions on the box that say basically to add water, bring it to a boil, cover and let it sit for five minutes. I've found some couscous that doesn't offer any instructions, leaving it a mystery, but nothing that clearly says, "This is the real stuff, it takes time to cook." There is even couscous in the bulk aisle of my local grocery that has no instructions. I thought, "AHA! This must be the stuff". I called the company to be sure, but alas, same quick-cooking stuff.

I look at this recipe though Traditional North African Couscous and it seems pretty clear that this recipe does not refer to a product that can be made adequate by treating it like Stove-Top Stuffing. What gives? Is there such a thing as non-quick cooking couscous? If so, can you tell me how to get a hold of some?

Wikipedia implies that there is a difference between fast cooking cous-cous sold in western markets and the traditional product:

  The couscous that is sold in most Western supermarkets has been
  pre-steamed and dried, the package directions usually instruct to add
  1.5 measures of boiling water or stock and butter to each measure of couscous and to cover tightly for 5 minutes. The couscous swells and
  within a few minutes it is ready to fluff with a fork and serve.
  Pre-steamed couscous takes less time to prepare than regular couscous,
  most dried pasta, or dried grains (such as rice).

According to Fine Cooking, you can get moister and more fluffy result with the traditional steaming method, even with quick cooking cous cous.

If you want the traditional product, you could go back to basics and make your own, as described by this NY Times article and video.


Can I add uncooked noodles directly to soup? Most noodle soup recipes that I see call for boiling and draining the noodles separately, then adding them to the broth already cooked. Is there any reason that I can't just add the dry noodles 10 minutes before the soup is done, and add a little extra water or broth to compensate for that the noodles take? Doing it this way would allow the noodles to take up some of the broth's flavor, and also save dirtying an extra pot and a colander.

similar to what julio said, the main reason is that typical wheat-based noodles release a lot of starch into the water, which changes the consistency of the soup. the starches can add a dirty colour to the water, but more than that, they can also thicken the soup undesirably (think of making a roux). Finally, if there are leftovers, the noodles can sometimes become completely water logged, making eating it the next day a bit of a soggy experience.

That said, with all these considerations there are times when you might add the noodles directly in-- non-starchy noodles (eg. like rice noodles) seem to do ok. also parboiling regular pasta before hand seems to help a lot with the starch and can still help you achieve the flavour integration you mentioned.


Why does hot food placed in a picnic cooler keep cooking? A modern picnic cool box is used to keep food cool inside it during the day. However, when you place a hot stew inside the box and close the box, the stew carries on cooking slowly. Why does this happen?

What you call a "modern picnic cool box", I assume, is also known as a "cooler" in other parts of the world.  This is generally a well-insulated, most often plastic, container.  It could be hard-sided or made of soft material.  The container and insulation is designed to maintain a consistent temperature.  So, cold things remain colder longer, but also hot things remain hotter longer.  It's the same principle at play in an insulated drink container (Thermos is a common brand).  Also at play in your question is a phenomenon called "carry over cooking".  Food retains heat and continues to cook, even after it is removed from the heat. Usually not a concern with a stew, which slowly cools when you are finished cooking.  However, when you place your stew into a cooler, fairly soon after it is removed from the heat, it will take much longer to cool.  Carry over cooking will be impacting your final product.


Is it safe to use olive oil that has gone cloudy? I have some olive oil that has gone a bit cloudy. What causes that to happen, and is it still safe to use?

The most likely reason is that it was stored too cold (= in the fridge). If this is the case, then it is perfectly safe to use.

Some oils are also sold unfiltered. They don't really "go" cloudy, but are that way from the onset. But it can happen that the sediment falls to the bottom over time, then somebody shakes the bottle and it looks cloudy again.

If you had filtered oil sitting on a shelf and it turned from clear to cloudy, then this is suspicious. It is unclear what is causing the cloudiness in this case, but it is probably not doing anything for the quality, and has some potential to do harm (although there aren't many pathogens which can survive in a bottle of pure oil). Throwing it out would be on the safe sid.


What kind of cheese did I buy in Bulgaria...and how am I supposed to eat it? Today I was doing some shopping at the Tsentralni Hali in Sofia and bought some cheese, cause it looked so damn gooood.

Well, it is good indeed...but it has the consistency of a brick and you don't cut it, you chop it! And you don't eat it, you chew it!

So, maybe I'm missing something. I took a photo of the top of the jar:

What the heck did I buy? Can someone tell me how am I supposed to eat it?

This is not a traditional Bulgarian product (*). It was created by one specific dairy company ("Jossy") and it is not even listed on their normal web page (http://www.josi.bg). There is one reference to it on their Facebook page (https://bg-bg.facebook.com/JOSIltd/photos/a.153616871328971.29781.150703611620297/926675350689782/) where they ask users to recognize the product, and only one person made this identification, everybody else thinking it is some kind of unripened cheese or mozzarella style cheese.

The name can simply be translated as "braided cheese". Note that traditionally, Bulgaria only differentiated between Feta cheese (sirene) and a specific yellow semi-soft cheese (Kashkaval). Since opening of the markets in the 1990s, other cheeses get imported and their names get imported along, for example roquefort. Sometimes the names of yellow soft cheeses get applied to the correct cheese (gouda, edamer) but there is also the tendency to use "kashkaval" as an umbrella term for any semisoft yellow cheese. This is made even more complicated by having the term "sirene" mean both "cheese" and "Feta cheese", so yellow cheeses and other cheeses are not always recognized as a subtype of cheese.

Linguistic details aside, it seems they created a new type of cheese, with unknown technology, and reused the generic meaning of "kashkaval" to give it a name. Having never tried it, I cannot give it advice how to eat it. Although, "you don't eat it - you chew it" strikes me as strange, since I chew all cheeses I eat, except maybe quark and other spoonable ones. So I would assume that "chew it" is a good place to start :)

(*) please read MotoDrizzt's answer, he found out that it was a traditional Syrian style cheese which this company introduced into the Bulgarian market


How should I clean anodized cookware? I'd been bought an anodised wok as a birthday present a couple of years back, but recently, when using a honey/mustard marinade, I managed to burn some of the excess marinade, and now can't seem to get the wok clean, not even when putting it through the dishwasher (it is dishwasher safe). What can I do to clean it off that won't affect the anodised coating?

We love to using Baking Soda and water to gently clean cookware. A little bit of hot water seems to work best.


Coconut milk in iced coffee I like using coconut milk in my coffee. However, during summer, I like putting ice in my coffee. Some part of the coconut milk clumps up around the ice. This is organic unsweetened, so only coconut and a gum. Is there any method to prevent the clumps yet have it cold? Store in fridge, freezer, blend, add some additional stabilizing ingredient?

This is a common problem with coconut milk in cooler drinks, most commonly coffee.  Coconut milk is approximately 25% fats (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_milk) which will coagulate in cooler temperatures or exposed to ice.  You're essentially cooling the coconut milk fats with ice past their solidification state which is causing the lumps.

You can try using coconut creamers that are specifically designed for coffee since in my experience they do not clump with iced coffee.  Or, there are other milks like almond that don't have as much fat content to solidify in cooler temperatures.

Another note, a lot of people seem to have this problem with iced coffee and coconut milk on forums and seem to swear by using a blender to blend the chunks away.  Supposedly, this will keep the chunks from returning.

Example of others with the same issue: https://forum.whole30.com/topic/36315-lumpy-coffee-with-coconut-milk/


Brining Turkey - 4 Days in Fridge - Partially Grey Been brining a 1/4 turkey breast 4 days in fridge with pomegranate juice, meyer lemons, kumquats, salt pepper balsamic vinegar - it's grey in parts - is it still OK to eat? Smells great but that may just be marinade?

The color is likely due to other intensely colored ingredients in your marinade, notably balsamic and pomegranates. They can discolor other items so I wouldn't be too surprised if this happened to the skin and outer surface of the turkey. I doubt that it indicates a hazard.

4 days is longer than our typical guidance on food storage (which in turn comes from governmental food safety agencies) would say is strictly safe. 1-2 days is generally about the limit for uncooked poultry, but all the acid in your marinade should make a fairly unfriendly environment for microbes, so this is kind of a grey area.

Personally, I'd be okay with eating this so long as I wasn't serving it to the pregnant, the elderly, or anybody else with a compromised immune system.

You don't mention whether you intentionally let this marinade for the full 4 days, but if you did I'd advise you to back that off to 2 days at most next time. The acids present can also affect the texture of the meat, and will probably completely cover the flavor of the turkey itself. You'll have a more pleasant result and one that doesn't run into questionable food safety territory next time if you reduce the marinating time.


What are the limitations of aquafaba as an egg white substitute? I learned recently that aquafaba is claimed to be usable as an egg white substitute, able to be whipped to form stiff peaks, etc.
Now an egg-white-and-cottage-cheese omelette is a frequent breakfast of mine. So it was with great experimental enthusiasm that I mixed up some aquafaba with cottage cheese, and set about cooking it as usual...only to end up with aquafaba and cottage cheese soup. :(
What is a more realistic assessment of where aquafaba can be substituted for egg whites? Or is there possibly some modification that would make an aquafaba-and-cottage-cheese omelette possible?

I don't think it is useful to think of aquafaba as a egg-white substitute. Rather, you should think of whipped aquafaba as a replacement for French meringue, in cases you are not relying on it setting under heat.
So, when you need a vegan foam, you can try aquafaba (after whipping) to get the right texture. To regard it as a general replacement for egg whites is an exaggeration.


How long should I cook boned shoulder of Lamb? I have 794g of lamb shoulder. It is boned (can you buy it with a bone in??). How long should I cook it?

I have Delia's Complete Cooking Course, which suggests cooking for 30 minutes at 230C plus 30 degrees at 180C per pound (450G); about 1hr 20 minutes.

Delia Online just says 30 minutes per pound at 190C.

Which would people recommend?

Shoulder is a tough cut. I think you will probably find it a bit chewy if you've cooked it at 190ºC for 52 minutes. In future, preheat the oven to maximum, place the lamb in a roasting tin, cover the tin with foil, put the tin in the oven, then immediately turn the oven down to 150ºC, and leave it for 4 hours. After that time, take it out of the oven and let it rest for 30 minutes or so. The lamb will melt in your mouth.

And yes, you can buy a bone-in shoulder at just about any supermarket, and they are usually tastier. Cook it as above and you will just be able to pull the bone out of the meat.


Should I sear meat which is cooked sous vide before it goes in the bag, or after? After reading the beer cooler sous vide hack, I'm tempted to try it probably with duck, but maybe with steak.

Should I sear my duck/steak first before I put it in the bag, or afterwards, and why?  Or does it not make a difference?

After a bit of googling, I found this which suggests that searing twice (both before and after) might be preferable.


Cooking with a pizza stone As per a recent question of mine I intend to use the underside of an old granite chopping board as a makeshift pizza stone, once I've finishing testing that it won't break due to thermal shock..

Do I need to do/know anything in particular for this to be successful?
Does the stone need seasoning, and if so how would I go about doing so?

Also, if I'm having a lazy day, will a pizza stone work well with a shop-bought frozen/refrigerated pizza?
Or it is strictly for those that I have freshly made?

The stone requires no seasoning.

To prevent pizza from sticking to it you should dust it liberally with cornmeal before slapping a pizza on it.

A pizza stone will not work well with a frozen pizza. The stone surface will simply be too blazing hot for it. You'll likely burn the bottom while still having a frozen top. There should be little issue with a refrigerated pizza, although I have not tried. However, you will want to be sure to let the pizza reach room temperature before cooking.

Update

Regarding cornmeal. I just realized that you're in the UK, and I'm not sure if you guys have a different term for it than the US. I'm referring to this cornmeal. You should also use the coarsest possible.


How frequently should I feed my sourdough starter? I am growing my first sourdough starter. It is a week old, but it isn't very active. My concern is that I might be feeding it too frequently or too infrequently. I could see it going either way.

The process I have been using is to (initially) combine 100 grams of Breadflour and 100 grams of water in a bowl and whisk with a fork, then cover with a towel. Day two (at 24 hours), I added 100 grams of each ingredient to the bowl and mixed in without removing anything.

By day 3 (24 hours again), I had a slightly sour smell and noticed some bubbles. There was also a tan skin that formed over part of the starter, which I removed. I couldn't tell if it was fuzzy or not.

That evening, I watched a video where a lady was talking about how you need to feed your starter every 4-12 hours and then later in the video she said every 12 - 18 hours. I was wondering if I was starving my starter.

On Day 4 (12 hours later instead of 24) I divided the starter in half, fed one half, and decided to try making bread with the other half (I know it was early, but I figured I might as well try since I would otherwise be throwing it away). The bread actually turned out really well, at least it did for having a weak starter and having never made sourdough before.

Anyway, I went back to the 24 hour feeding schedule because the lady who said 12 hours also said that her starter doubles in volume during the feeding. Mine never changes in volume, it just gets some bubbles.

My concern is that if the yeast isn't bubbling a lot, that may mean that it isn't eating its food quickly. If it isn't eating its food quickly, then it may not be saturating the starter. So if I feed it to early, I would be diluting the starter more than I would be helping it grow. Like, you feed a well saturated starter and half that mixture is starter, the other half is food. Then you feed it again too soon and the starter (immediately prior to feeding) is only at 75%. But you feed it and now the starter makes up 32.5% of the mixture instead of 50%. then this pattern repeats until you eliminate the starter from the mixture.

Am I thinking about this correctly? Instead of time, is there something else that I should be using to determine when to feed instead of time? Is there some variable I am not considering?

-House is at a constant 70F
-Filtered water from refrigeratorstarter image from top
-Breadflour
-Feeding once daily (24 hour intervals)
-covering container with some type of cloth or towel

My first impression is that the towel might not be porous enough to let the all-important yeast and bacteria in. Try cheesecloth.
If that doesn't do it, here's the long version:
Creating a Starter:
First and foremost, a week isn't necessarily enough time to get a starter going full steam ahead. It can take as little as a few days or as long as a month. You're relying on ambient yeast and bacteria that are floating around in the air, and the amount of yeast and bacteria available varies according to location,  climate conditions, and all sorts of other environmental factors.    The specific species and strains of yeast and bacteria also vary from place to place, which is why San Francisco is renowned for its ssourdough - they have the best ambient yeast and bacteria strains.  Give it time.

Source

Maintaining a Starter:
Feeding Schedule:
As a general rule:  Once your starter is healthy and active, bubbling, rising vigorously, and smelling sour, you have two options:

If you store the starter at room temperature, you need to feed it twice a day. Don't wait for the risen starter to collapse before the next feeding, because it messes with the ph levels and can make the yeast and bacteria less active. Every 12 hours, feed it.

If you store the starter in the fridge, you can go up to a week between feedings.  The cold won't kill the yeast and bacteria, it just slows them down. Just make sure the starter doesn't get shoved into a super cold spot and freeze.

The feeding process:
Stir the starter, remove all but 4 ounces of it (you can either discard the rest or use it to bake something). To the remaining 4 ounces, add 4 ounces flour and 4 ounces of purified or bottled water (chlorine in tap water is bad for the yeast and bacteria, and most filters remove chlorine taste, but not all the chlorine). Room temperature starter gets room temperature water; refrigerated starter gets lukewarm water.  Stir until no dry flour remains. Cover with a non-airtight lid.  Refrigerated starters need to stay at room temperature for several hours after feeding so the yeast and bacteria have a chance to wake up and eat.

Source


When is a cooking oil not appropriate to substitute for another? Frequently recipes call for a particular kind of oil for making use of certain characteristics (taste, heat tolerance, health, etc.). It's well known you can substitute cooking oils in most cases (vegetable oil for canola oil).

Are there circumstances in which it is not appropriate to substitute cooking oils?

Actually, there are really only a few oils you can substitute for each other, at least without any significant side effects.

The oils which generally are used interchangeably are peanut oil, canola/rapeseed oil, and sunflower oil.  These oils have similar smoke points, don't impart any really noticeable flavour, and tend to be used primarily for high-heat cooking (pan-frying, deep-frying), so if you're paranoid about saturated fat for instance, you can substitute sunflower oil for peanut oil.  Corn oil is in the same group, but I rarely see that used anymore.  You can also use the "light" olive oil, but that will change the flavour of the dish.  I believe walnut oil has similar properties, but it's considerably harder to find.

But keep in mind that oils are used for far more than frying.  Many have highly-specialized uses:

Extra virgin olive oil is most commonly used in sauces and salad dressings ("oil and vinegar" almost always means olive oil, there really is no substitute);
Chili oil is really more of a condiment than a cooking oil.  Even if you could cook with it, the result would be inedible due to the heat.
Toasted sesame oil is used as a flavourings in Asian dishes.  It's useless as a cooking oil (and cooking with it would be a terrible waste).  Regular sesame oil, on the other hand, is often bought in a refined form and is generally used as a cooking oil.
There are a lot of other more esoteric types of oil such as palm oil and coconut oil, which you really don't want to use unless you know what you're doing (you can ruin the flavour).

I could go on, but for now I'll refer you to the Types of oils and their characteristics as a starting point.  Cooking oils really aren't freely interchangeable in all situations; even if you've accounted for smoke point and flavour, sometimes a significantly different fat content (i.e. grapeseed oil which is mostly polyunsaturated vs. canola oil which is mostly monounsaturated) can seriously mess up a delicate recipe.

It's better to be asking which oils you can substitute in a specific situation than to assume everything goes and list the "exceptional" circumstances.


Are there guidelines for choosing bread for a sandwich? I'm trying to figure out if there's a sort of "etiquette" to it, like there is with wine.

Obviously, some sandwiches just "go" with a certain bread, like cream cheese and salmon on a bagel. I'm trying to understand the link between the filling and the "right" bread.

To some extent, this is a question to which the answers are necessarily quite subjective.  However, as a general guideline, I would suggest that you look at the bread as just another ingredient in the dish -- not as somehow distinct from the filling choices.  Like any other ingredient pairing, you can evaluate the characteristics and choose things to complement each other.  So if you pick your bread first, evaluate if it's rich or mild, savoury or sweet, dense or light, crusty or soft, thin or thick, etc, and then choose fillings to complement those properties.

For your fillings, there's not only the flavour pairing of the filling and the bread to consider, but also the texture/properties of the filling.  A dry filling might not be as pleasant on a dense bread because the texture would be too much the same.  Similarly, a saucy filling needs an appropriate bread selection to contain it and make it easy to eat.

Many pairings that are considered standard will just taste "good" to us because of tradition and familiarity, but originally, someone probably put them together for a reason.  That doesn't mean it's not worth trying something different, though.  With the globalization of cuisine, we have many more filling/bread choices available and you might find a new favourite by pairing a bread from one culture with a filling from another, based on their complementary qualities.


tartine bread without dutch oven (inverted mixing bowl on top of heavy skillet)? I'm contemplating buying a dutch oven to make tartine bread.  It would be a strict unitasker for my purposes.  It's bulky and if I get a bare one, I might not bake often and it could rust.  An enameled one can't handle high heat and shouldn't be heated empty.

I do already have some heavy carbon steel De Buyer pans.  What would be the disadvantage of using an upside down mixing bowl as a dome lid to raise humidity?

Overall, you should be fine. The purpose of the dutch oven is trapping moisture and, to some extent, coralling the dough.

Keep the following in mind:

Make sure your bowl can handle the heat - high heat might cause it to warp. To some extent, this is fine, but if the gaps at the bottom get too big, you won't trap the steam the way you want. But some loss is fine, the bread needs to "dry" a bit.
Your dough should not be too runny, otherwise it might stick to the bowl and make removal somewhat messy (unlike in a dutch oven, it would be difficult to use parchment paper to keep the sides from sticking). So make sure, the bowl is big enough and the loaf well shaped.
Unlike the dutch oven lid, the inverted bowl has no handle and is likely to slip when you try to lift it, please be extra careful not to burn yourself!
If you put a cool bowl over the bread, you might get some condensation you wouldn't get from a pre-heated dutch oven lid. Drops of moisture may leave traces on the crust, but that won't affect the quality of the bread. With a nice dome-shaped bowl, this effect should be minimal.

----Edit----
There are a couple of ways how to bake tartine bread w/o a dutch oven. For one example from our seasoned advice, see here.


Whole wheat pasta from milling to the results Can it work to make pasta from freshly home-milled flour?

Yes. I will show you. Here are my experiment results.

I have this as my mill. It takes a long time to go from wheat to flour and I mean like hours maybe even days.

I tried a 2 3/4 cup flour: 6 eggs: 5 tsp oil ratio and kneaded both batches for a good 10 minutes and rested 1 overnight and 1 for 30 minutes.

I obviously got more than what is shown but I can't show a full 20 ounces with each strand separate.

those black lines are supposed to be the pasta, the dark orange representing that it is whole wheat pasta. The brighter orange is the cheddar cheese sauce. I made this by taking some sharp and some mild cheddar that I have made myself and melting it on low bit by bit so that instead of a crust I would get a smooth sauce. It turned out good and after about 5-6 minutes, maybe less, maybe more, it was al dente and it didn't turn out to eggy or flourly or oily. I think I have found the right ratio for my whole wheat pasta.


Can I re-freeze fruit? I bought about 1.2kg of frozen raspberries with the intention of using them yesterday, but it turns out I won't need them for another couple of weeks.  I had let them thaw but have put them in the fridge since I realised my mistake.

Am I able to refreeze the berries or should I find some immediate use for them?

What are the risks / consequences if I do refreeze?

Basically, you can refreeze the raspberries.
When a fruit or veg. is frozen, the water inside the plant cell expands, and bursts the cell wall, which is why there is so much 'juice' when you thaw.  If you refreeze, you can be sure that the raspberries will freeze into a giant block. If you are using them to make a sauce or a jam, this is not significant. That being said, if you are using frozen raspberries in the first place, you are obviously not looking for a perfectly intact raspberry, you are using them for some other purpose. Therefor, refreezing is no big deal. I recently answered another question about freezing and refreezing, and how it is basically a myth that it renders the refrozen product inedible. Any time you freeze you know that you are not going to get 'exactly' the same product when you thaw it, and the same goes with refreezing, there is always a 'slight' degredation of the product with each successive freeze (do you like my liberal usage of quotes?)  You won't poison yourself or anything like that, you should have no worries.

That being said, what are you doing with the berries? Certainly a refrozen raspberry should be no worse that a raspberry frozen once.


Using whole eggs versus egg whites only I have a recipe that is originally a white cake so uses only egg whites. There is a cake mix involved but other added ingredients such as sour cream and more flour but I’m making a chocolate version and want to add whole eggs. Will this alter the consistency of the cake or just make it richer

Extra yolks means more fat which gives the cake ultra moistness! Add the amount of eggs called for in the recipe but add two extra egg yolks.It adds density, fat and most importantly, extra flavor to your mix. Only adding egg whites and not adding the yolks to the cake makes the cake fluffy and whiter!


Can I still cook this white king hot cake without using any eggs? So I have a hotcake mix in a box, White King Hotcake Creamy Classic, but I ran out of eggs.

It's 1:10 AM here in the Philippines and there are no stores open so I'm asking if I can still cook this Hotcake without eggs.

Generally pancake mixes that require eggs use them as a binder, so if you try to cook them without eggs, they may not hold together.  You can decrease the liquid, but then you'll end up with something tough and probably not what you want.  You may want to have a look at suggestions in answers to this question.


What does Jiro brush on his sushi? I recently watched the movie "Jiro Dreams of Sushi," and noticed that Jiro was always brushing some sort of liquid onto the sushi, but I can't figure it out.

My hypothesis is that it's either some sort of oil (sesame, olive, etc.) or maybe a vinegar of sorts, but I have no idea.

He brushes soy sauce on it, because he knows how much is sufficient to season each nigiri. Actually not just any soy sauce, but nikiri:

  A good sushi chef adds all the flavors the sushi needs before he hands it to the customer. He mixes his own sauce and uses it behind the sushi bar. This sauce is called nikiri.

you can see him brushing it here:

According to this other site,

  Nikiri is typically made using a mixture of soy sauce, dashi, mirin and sake. The sauce has a subtle complimentary umami sweetness that is designed to enliven and enhance the flavour of the fish with which it is being served.


Why do Hong Kong chefs use a white towel instead of gloves to clutch a wok? Is the towel to prevent heat and injury? Aren't their woks' handle insulated enough?

If the insulation falls short, how's a towel a stop-gap? What if the chef accidentally touches the wok without the cloth?

3. Aren't HEAVY-DUTY HEAT-RESISTANT gloves safer?

I screen-shot 0:21 of Chef Mok Kit Keung (and 2 others) at Shang Palace, Kowloon Shangri-La.

and Chef Paul Lau Yiu Fai wok-frying Spotted Garoupa Fillet  at Tin Lung Heen. This post has 2 more photos.

Because it is more efficient when running the kitchen while in full service.

It takes less time to remove their hands from the towels than it would take to remove gloves.

This also applies to chefs in other kind of cuisines; if you look at french cooks, they will do the same thing; grab a towel to pick something from the oven, or pick a pan from the stove.


Can I rely on smell to tell if rendered animal fat is bad? I've started storing rendered tallow (beef fat) in a glass jar on my kitchen counter at room temperature. The jair has a lid but is not air tight.

Is it okay to use this fat for consumption as long as it does not smell bad? I'm worried about oxidation / rancidity.

You can smell and taste rancidity.  That is the primary way to identify it.  Rancid fat isn't necessarily unsafe, though there is some concern about rancid foods in our diet over time.  Given that we don't deal with health issues, that's about as far as I think I can go.


Barley Miso substitute? I have a recipe that calls for barley miso. I don't find barley miso in the store but they do have about five other types. Can I substitute another one? which one?
thanks

Miso is (usually) just a flavouring agent, so you almost certainly can substitute any other type of miso.  The flavour will of course be slightly different, but it is not going to ruin the recipe.

Barley miso that has been fermented for a long time is quite dark with a very strong flavour, so you may want to increase the amount of white miso or other miso to taste.


How to get clean, dry marshmellows? i made marshmellows, came out very well. i cut it and rolled in icing sugar, for a while i was good, but then it stated to absorb the icing sugar and marshmellows are now wet, b ut still in its shape. Can anybody give me a solution to clean, dry texture.
Thanks,
Jubi..

Marshmallows are full of sugar and often corn syrup, so they are going to be naturally hydrophylic.   If you coat them with powdered sugar, they will eventually absorb it as you have seen.

A better alternative, at least in terms of having them dry to the touch is corn starch (cornflower in the UK), or if they are comparable with the flavor, cocoa.

Of course, neither of these taste as good straight so they give a slight starchy or bitter impression when biting into the marshmallow.


Details of pre-cooking chicken before shallow-frying? Having made mistakes earlier which resulted in undercooked or over-fried chicken, I've been looking for details of how to correctly steam or pressure-cook chicken before shallow frying it.
Recipes like this, this, this and this do not mention necessary details.
This recipe mentions first pressure cooking until the first whistle, but is the water released from the tomato and meat sufficient to generate enough steam? I guess a small pressure cooker would have to be used because of less steam, correct? Am also worried if pieces would stick to the cooker and get burnt. If cooked until the first whistle, the meat is fully cooked. Won't shallow frying overcook it? Should the water from the cooker also be added to the shallow frying pan and the meat fried until the water evaporates?
On the other hand, this recipe recommends steaming 1.5kg chicken for 20 min and uses lettuce to prevent sticking. If the steaming is done with a steamer basket or idli stand, won't the pieces sandwiched between other pieces be undercooked?
Does the pre-cooking have anything to do with the amount of oil used for shallow frying and the duration it is fried?
If you could re-write the recipe for pre-cooking the chicken, how would you write it so that even an inexperienced person would be able to cook it?
Update: recipes like this, this and this explain the procedure, but is the short cooking time really sufficient to cook the meat? When I prepare chicken curry in a pressure cooker, I have to ensure that it is cooked till the first whistle, and after switching off the flame, it's only if I leave the cooker unopened for 2 hours that the meat gets cooked fully. So these recipes with short cooking times leave me wondering if something is wrong. Or is frying naturally faster than boiling?
Update2: I tried the third youtube recipe with four pieces of chicken and proportionally less onion etc. At the blending stage, all the ingredients flew to the sides of the mixie and didn't form the masala paste as desired. The lady uses just 3tbsp oil for 2kg chicken. I used 4tbsp oil and it got absorbed by the chicken and masalas promptly. On closing the lid and allowing the chicken to cook, the masala-onion mixture got burnt within 3 minutes. There goes another unsuccessful attempt at frying chicken. Thankfully this time my losses were only the masalas and onion. This is exactly why I asked my question here. The online recipes do not explain a LOT of steps. I'm pretty sure I was supposed to add more oil and the masalas and onion can be blended only if there is a sufficient quantity to weigh it down onto the mixie blades. That being said, from the smell I could discern that if it did get cooked properly, the result would've been delicious.

I often precook chicken (generally sous vide or slow roasting in a low oven) before frying (American style) fried chicken. The cooking method for the precook essentially doesn't matter. However you precook, you just want to have it reach a suitable temperature to be thoroughly cooked to a food safe temperature.
I usually precook a bit in advance (or the day before) and after precooking, I cool it back down and refrigerate it. This helps to keep the collagen and other "juicy" parts inside by resolidifying in the fridge.
Then I take the cooked, cooled chicken and proceed with the recipe as normal. Cooking is primarily about reheating the chicken, and cooking the breading. I no longer have to worry about hitting the exact food-safe temperature (because I already did that on the first cook!).
For American-style fried chicken, other than starting with fully cooked chicken, the recipe and method can pick up from the "bread/batter then fry" step as normal. This should translate well to other recipes as well, as you're essentially just searing & reheating the chicken at the end in your pan, rather than cooking it.


Cheap/DIY approach to compressed powder candy I'm interested in making tablet-style compressed candies (like sweet tarts or specifically the sticks from lik-m-aid), and while I can find ingredients on store packaging and figure out from there, I don't know how to compress the candies at home. I'd appreciate any advice anyone has on how to do this. So far the only even related recipes I've found have been for making molded candies out of granulated sugar, but I think I need a more technical/high-pressure approach for powdered ingredients to hold together and be hard enough (I am aiming for the hardness of a mint lifesaver basically). Does anyone have any experience or resources?

As a resource, take a look at [VIDEO]Easter Gift: How to Make Shaped Confections with Candy Tablet Press TDP-0

You will need to provide the die or punch, but the result corresponds to what you're looking for.  Not sure of the price though.


Squash Casserole: Reducing the water content? I love squash casserole, summer squash or zucchini.  I notice when I use the zucchini, there seems to be a much greater water content and it makes it hard to set.  The summer squash, although there seems to be less water content, still has a little.  The recipe I use calls for boiling the squash first before making the mixture for the casserole.

Any suggestions on when boiling squash, how to reduce the water content?
I suppose I could grill them instead?  Are there any tricks to be known?

I've roasted vegetables to address the same issue; it definitely works for eggplant and squash. All you have to do is spread them out over a baking sheet or two (if they're piled up the moisture won't escape as well) and roast at say 425F until they're mostly cooked, a bit shrunken down, and obviously not as wet.

Your idea of grilling should work fine too, just maybe a little more work. (...unless you speak British English so grill means broil in American English in which case, basically the same thing.)

The only other thing I can think of is salting it and leaving it out to dry on paper towels, but that sounds like a lot of effort, so unless you really want the squash still raw I'd just precook it.


compound chocolate vs real chocolate I have recently bought a small coating pan which I am going to use to coat peanuts & raisins with chocolate, and then polish with capol. I am quite new to the whole chocolate thing. Especially establishing the quality of the chocolate. I have used only a basic chocolate bar bought from the store, tempered it accordingly and coated a few peanuts.

The chocolate bars is just so expensive. So I was thinking about getting compound chocolate and mixing it 50/50 with the milk chocolate bar bought from the store. I am just worried if this is such a good idea. So what is the differences between the two? And would it be a okay to mix the two?

The difference is that compound chocolate is a low-cost substitute of lower quality than real chocolate. Accidentally, I am not sure that your "basic chocolate bar" is real chocolate either, the standard brands like Milka in Europe or Hershey's in the USA use a lot of foreign fats too.

Is it a good idea? Only you can tell. If the compound chocolate is good enough for your taste, then it is a good idea (and don't let snobs tell you that your taste must be wrong). If you want the flavor and texture of pure chocolate, you'll have to use pure chocolate.

If you want something softer than pure chocolate, you can try making a ganache, which also lowers the cost. But you can't dilute too much for a product meant to be picked with your fingers.

You can generally mix different types of chocolate bars, including compound chocolate, without a problem. (I am talking of solid bars here, not ones like Bounty which have a nonchocolatey filling).


Wooden vs Anti Microbial Cutting Board For Carving Meat Wooden cutting boards look good and are pricier whereas Anti Microbial ones are darn cheap and I am not sure what chemicals/materials they use to make the boards anti microbial. Are these boards safe to use and dependable? Can these boards be used for carving meat?

Lots of hardwoods have antibicrobial properties, so a board that is well-crafted and properly maintained will be safe to use and will last much longer than a synthetic cutting board. Many privately owned butcher shops work over a hardwood table. To clean the surface, you can either scrub with bleach water or you can cover the surface with salt to pull moisture from the board and kill any microorganisms on the surface. Always treat your hardwood cutting surfaces with food safe mineral oil.


Why can't you susbtitute oat flour for wheat flour 1:1? Wheat has gluten, and oats have avenin (which are similar proteins).
What is different about avenin that you can't substitute oat flour for wheat flour when baking cookies, breads, etc?

I don't know what you mean by avenin being "similar", but it doesn't behave like gluten at all. Oat flour behaves like any other gluten-free flour and is a poor substitute for wheat flour. You can only use it in recipes which are specifically engineered for gluten-free flours. If you try using it in recipes which rely on gluten, you will fail for certain.
It is somewhat interchangeable with some other gluten-free flours like chestnut or sorghum flour (also buckwheat if you don't need the flavor profile), but gluten-free recipes being fickle, you always run a risk of failure, unless you have a pretty forgiving recipe like crepes. It is not a good substitute for nut-based flours, and is a mealy, not waxy starch.


What is the additive they put in apple juice to change it from cloudy to clear? I was told today that my juice was cloudy because they hadn't put the additive in it that makes it clear.

My question is: What is the additive they put in apple juice to change it from cloudy to clear?

(after reading this: http://www.ncbe.reading.ac.uk/ncbe/protocols/inajam/pdf/jam01.pdf)

They usually use pectinase  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pectinase) to break down pectin molecules to help mechanical filtration.

They also use gelatins to help clump up particules to help mechanical filtering.


Green spots on bullseye egg I cooked some bulls eye eggs with some onion, and after cooking there was some green stain on the albumen, but not before cooking, therefore I wonder what it might be. I thought it could have come from the onion but just a hypothesis.

I'm assuming clean pan, no green die/residue, transfering to the egg whites. In which case green spots would consider mold/bacterial contamination based on this, in which case "DO NOT EAT".

However if the whites are cloudy or overall green tint would be safe caused by vitamin B2. If you are getting fresh high quality eggs, this would be more likely.

Sorry I couldn't locate any good images to help out here, Green Eggs and Ham is really messing up the image search.


When cooled, my browies are very sticky and hard towards the edges. What are the possible reasons that this is happening? My recipe:

  150g butter
  90g chocolate
  125g flour
  15g cocoa powder
  300g dark brown sugar
  2 eggs
  1/2 tsp baking powder
  1 tsp vanilla

  Melt the butter and chocolate together. In a separate bowl beat the
  eggs, sugar, and vanilla. Add the cooled chocolate and butter
  mixture. Sieve in the flour, cocoa ,and baking powder. Fold
  everything with a spatula, until just combined. Bake in a preheated
  oven at 180° C for 25 mins.

I think you are trying to make a more chewy brownie, and your got a quite like hard and cookie like at the bottoms.

Dark brown sugar contains more molasses than in light brown sugar then in white sugar. Molasses is hygroscopic which means it holds on to moisture and so using brown sugar will result in baked goods that are softer and moister. But if your brownie bottom is hard, it is not the problem of lacking for moisture in your brownie mix (not brown sugar problem making the brownie hard). And if the centre of the brownie is the type of cake you need, then the reciepe is ok.

I would suggest:

Use a suitable baking pan size(diameter) that could make your brownie batter is of certain thickness (else your brownie maybe overbaked and becomes hard, if the brownie mix are too thin in the pan)
Butter (or spray with a nonstick cooking spray) an your baking pan, and line the bottom of the pan with parchment or wax paper.


Substitute pig trotter for powdered gelatine in an aspic I'm intending to make a raised game pie, which involves making aspic from the stock.

The recipe says to make 1 pint of stock from the game bones and trimmings, herbs, root vegetables, and to whisk in a 0.4oz sachet of powdered gelatine before chilling the stock.

However I'm aware that the traditional method of producing savoury jelly for pies is to use pig's trotters.

How many pig's trotters should I use to produce 1 pint of aspic for a pie? Is there anything I should know that I might not have thought of?

I think the biggest problem is your not going to be able to judge how much gelatin any given pigs foot is going to produce, hence the recipe calling for extracted gelatin to sort of foolproof the recipe. But if your going to try and make it with just the pig's feet I would suggest having a look at this recipe here for "Trotter gear"

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/03/recipe-for-a-healthy-jar-of-trotter-gear.html

Anything coming from Fergus Henderson is going to be awesome. It recommends 6 feet and that recipe produces a pot's worth of stock so I think that will suffice for you.


Which is the best way to de-grit clams and mussels? Salt, cornmeal, or salt + cornmeal? What's the most effective way to de-grit clams and mussels? Apparently there are 3 possibilities.

Salt only.

Cornmeal only.

Salt and cornmeal.

Has any academic peer reviewed or researched this? This blog tested just with or without cornmeal:

After 24 hours and 4 water changes, I steamed them in separate pots. The first batch (sans cornmeal purge) had significantly more sand in their bellies and shells and the pot in which they were cooked than the second (with cornmeal purge) batch, but they still tasted of the sea.  The clams in the second batch were lighter in color, plumper, and notably sweeter than the sea.

I think salty water is a given in purging, and the article you shared is no exception to this. Quoting directly

You need lots of water—about 1 gallon of water and 1/3 cup of kosher salt per 1 dozen clams—that should be changed several times over 48 hours in order for them to be squeaky clean

I think salt and cornmeal can be used complementarily. As it’s mentioned in the article cornmeal will alter the taste, but it will also expedite the purging (from 48h to 24h per the experiment in the article).
It looks like using both is a better option than just using salt. And assuming salt should always be present in the water, I would rule out the only cornmeal option.


How long takes store-bought fried tofu to go bad? According to expiration date in the package it only takes a week. Maybe it can keep for longer?

Expiration dates can be quite arbitrary. When tofu goes off, you should be able to smell it and it would also begin to taste sour. You also want to watch out for molds. Other than that, depending on the type of tofu and how they are packed/pasteurized, they can last longer than a week or two.


Sourdough starter developing alcohol I have been dealing with my sourdough starter since about 1-2 months ago, when I started it from scratch with just water and flour .

In the last 2 refreshments I have added some honey, just 1 teaspoon each time to deliver some easy-to-digest sugar to my sourdough, I don't think it's too much based on the quantities of water and flour . The real difference is that in the past I have used a bowl covered with a wet piece of cloth, but since the last 2 refreshments I have been using a big cylindrical container made of glass with a plastic tap, and it's almost airtight, it's really different from just having a cloth on top of a container .

My sourdough starter was developing a really good smell, it was a "flat" odor of flour mixed to water in the first days, but it developed into something more fruity in the next days/weeks . Now in the new sealed container, stored at room temperature, away from direct sunlight, in the back of my cabinet, it started developing a punchy alcoholic smell .

I suppose that it was something I should expect from bacteria that goes into anaerobic mode, but my questions are about the cooking aspect of this :

what this means for my yeast/sourdough culture, it means it's good an healthy and I should keep storing it this way ?
how to prepare/handle my sourdough when I'll make pizza or bread out of it ? I should just take a piece of it and add it to my ingredients as always ?

If you've truly gone anaerobic and the smell is off, you are growing things other than the intended cultures...

As a rule, I simply feed mine flour and water. No sugar. The cultures can get along fine with the flour. (I did read in a reputable baking book about adding leftover water from boiling potatoes, for the starches, but I haven't had a chance to try.)

If the smell is off, I would dump and start over in a more breathable container. Your entire goal is to grow the sourdough cultures and let them flourish in their happy environment. And as you've smelled, there is a distinctive scent of happy sourdough. Now if the smell has changed, you lost your scented sourdough and are now growing something else.

I've kept sourdough for over a decade, and it's from a culture that is 84 years old. But if it smells funny (or gets brightly colored mold), he's going down the sink faster than dishwater. It's just the nature of the beast.


Can a blunt knife be sharpened? The knives I have just come from a second hand shop, and are quite blunt.

Is it possible to sharpen them using an ordinary sharpening stone/steel, or is there a point that they are 'too far gone'?

You will not be able to sharpen it with a steel as per Ching Chong's answer. You will be able to sharpen it with a couple of sharpening stones. If the blade is totally blunt you will need a reasonably coarse one to bring the edge back, and a finer one to refine the edge. Then you can strop it on the steel or the back of a leather belt to remove the burr.

However, unless you have experience in sharpening, the results will probably not be worth the outlay for the stones. That is, unless you use these knives for practice, then invest in a decent one afterwards. There are any number of videos on YouTube showing you how to sharpen kitchen (or any other kind of) knives.


Problem cooking chicken wings with a bbq marinade I've cooked chicken wings in a bbq marinade before and the results were disastrous, I put them in a pre-heated oven that was heated to 200 degrees celsius however as the marinade contains sugar the outside got burnt before the inside was cooked. So I've a few questions:

Would it be better to cook the wings without the marinade and then heat up the marinade and allow the wings to steep in that after they've cooked?
I also want the sauce to adhere to the wings nicely, not drip off, how do I do this?
I want wings with tender meat yet a nicely crisped exterior, what temperature and duration would I need to cook to achieve such a result?
Would cooking the wings covered in foil dome/tent and then removing the foil and cooking for the rest of the duration on high heat allow me to achieve this?
Would it be better if I cooked them on a wire rack/frame, rather than laying them down flat on an oven dish? (as that would allow the heat to get under the wings)
How important is the use of oil? Should I brush the wings with oil?

Thanks

Marinade

Whether to cook the wings with the marinade, or apply it after cooking depends on your specific recipe or method.  The traditional technique for Buffalo style and similar wings is to fry (or bake) the wings sauceless, and then toss them with the sauce after cooking.

The advantage of this method is that you will not burn the sauce (which if it is sweet, can burn easily); the disadvantage is the sauce does not cook onto the wing, and so how well it adheres is down to the thickness of the particular sauce you are using.

The other traditional method, more often used for grilled wings or baked wings is to cook the wings until they are mostly done, then baste them with the sauce for the final part of the cooking.  The advantage of this is that the sauce will not burn, and is baked on to the wing.  The disadvantage, of course, is that it is more work.

Adherence

There is no simple answer to getting the sauce to stick to the wings.    The biggest influencer is the thickness of viscosity of the sauce recipe itself, so that it sticks of its own volition.

Tenderness

There are many methods that result in tender meat but crispy skin.   Perhaps the three most common are:

Baking.   Baking is relatively slow, and so makes it easier to cook them without overcooking.  Alton Brown, for example, recommends 40 minutes (with one flip) at 425 F / 220 C.
Deep Frying.   Deep frying can cook them through and render the skin very crispy, but is very fast, so it is harder to prevent overcooking, and more sensitive to size variation among the wings.  The Food Network recommends 375 F / 190 C for about 15 minutes.
Steaming (or otherwise par-cooking) the wings to cook them through and render the excess fat under the skin, then crisping them with another method.  This is most often done when doing a grill (in the sense of a charcoal grill) to finish.   Serious Eats uses this method solely on the grill, initially cooking on the cool side of the grill to cook through, and then searing on the hot side to crisp up.

Rack

Whether to use a rack depends on the cooking method; it only is applicable to oven baking, where it is a good idea.

Oil

Oil is not usually required for chicken wings, which have a great deal of fat under the skin.  Normally the challenge is rendering that fat.


Is creme brulee supposed to be fatty? I just made creme brulee but it felt a lot like I am eating butter.

I know it should be made with ~35% fat cream so it makes sense to be "fatty". I just have never eaten "real" creme brulee with which to make a comparison and am not sure if it really should taste fatty like butter or if I did something wrong.

No creme brulee should not resemble butter in any way. Not in taste nor in texture. Its consistency should be like that of a thick custard where the eggs determine the firmness of the custard.
We tend to use single cream with 15% fat for our creme brulee. This works very well and leads to a lighter and less fattier result.


Do I need to increase the liquid amount when adding cheese to my scone recipe? I would like to make a cheese scone out of my classic scone recipe. Recipe as follows:

Mix Dry:
450g self-raising flour
50g sugar
salt
100g frozen butter, grated into flour

Mix Wet:
2 eggs
Milk to make 300 ml

Mix wet into dry, flatten and cut into rounds, bake at 180C for 20 min.

I would like to add cheese to this recipe. 50g - 100g of cheese (really cheese-y!). I will also perhaps reduce the sugar for more of a savoury flavour. I would add the cheese to the dry before mixing with the wet.

Since I'm increasing the dry volume, I'd normally change the wet too, but cheese doesn't really absorb moisture. Do I still need to add more liquid? Also, now I'm practically doubling the amount of fat in this recipe. How will that affect things?

In general, I would expect this to work without adjustments.

The cheese is not actually a dry ingredient - as you say, it doesn't absorb moisture. If anything, it's slightly wet, in that as it melts in the oven, it will soak/meld into the scones a little. So if you had sufficient cheese, you might manage to turn things into a bit of a greasy mess. But in this kind of ratio, 50-100g of cheese and about 900g of other ingredients, that really doesn't seem like an issue.


Can I liquify/blend caramelized onions? I will be making sausage and want to include the flavour of caramelized onions. I have caramelized the onions but the pieces seem a bit large to be in sausage.

I intend to add wine to the sausage as well. Can I simply liquify/blend the caramelized onions in a blender with some wine? Would this have any unintended or unwanted effects when introduced to a sausage mixture?

I could also run the caramelized onions through a meat grinder with the meat, but I am concerned the onions will be too "wet" and lead to a strange effect.

The recipe I am using is pretty simple. I am using garlic, salt, pepper, wine, and caramelized onion and I am making fresh sausages. I am worried that blending the caramelized onion will lead to an ugly brown in the sausage, but perhaps it is fine.

Seeing your recipe would be useful; though I'd be tempted that with just the small amount of information you provided that wine & onion, blended, then fried off again to reduce moisture content would be a solution to your problem.

Alternatively, bulk with breadcrumb, though I'd prefer the first solution.


How can I successfully glaze asparagus? I've tried making this recipe a few times, and the glaze never really sticks to the asparagus.  I feel like there should be a better technique for getting glaze to adhere.  Is there a better technique for glazing asparagus or other smooth vegetables in general?

Would a dip in cornstarch or other binding agent help?

Try peeling the asparagus. This would work better with thicker asparagus.

Since the outer skin of asparagus is so smooth, I can see how glaze would just slip off. Peeled asparagus will have a slightly stickier surface for the glaze to hold on to. An added bonus is that some of the glaze should penetrate if the asparagus is peeled.

Be aware that peeled asparagus will cook faster than unpeeled. See also: Should asparagus be peeled before cooking?


Is it safe to cook in a grill\oven that is rarely cleaned? I don't grill or oven often and there always seems to be dirt and crumbs left over from long ago.  it's a mammoth task to clean so i dont clean it.  i just think provided the food sits on foil paper and doesnt make contact with any of the previous food and i dont eat the previous food all should be well.  the heat should also kill any bacteria thats been there for a long time.

is eating food in above situation safe or not?

Just to add following peoples request for more information, it is not just the crumbs i'm concerned about.  though it hasn't been used the walls inside the grill(broil) compartment look sludgy and touching the walls sometimes reveal sludgy dirt.  the oven is at least 20 years old so might have something to do with that.

The build up on the oven walls is likely grease.

Food contamination risk is low to none if they don't touch.

The bigger risk is a grease fire.


How to remove a smokey/ charcoal taste from food? I just cooked a huge batch of burrito filling.  Everything seemed okay, but then it turned out to have a really disgusting charcoal aftertaste.  I think maybe some burned bits got stirred in while I was cooking it.  Can you tell me how to remove the taste? I find it inedible, but it's about $50 dollars of ingredients.  Any advice would be hugely appreciated.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don't think there is anything you can do to remove that flavor. It sounds like what is often described as "scorched" flavor. In restaurants, that is well known as the one flavor you can't mask, you just have to dump the whole batch and move on. You can feel free to take a shot at masking it with acid (lemon, vinegar, ...), salt, sugar, and spices, but I don't think it is going to work.


citric acid usage for packaged hummus We are trying to come up with a hummus product which will have a shelf life of at least one month. We will cook the chickpeas first then add all the other ingredients and blend. Product will be packaged in jars. Do you know how much citric acid should I use to extend the shelf life? And should it be in powder or liquid?
Thank you!

My advice if you want long shelf life hummus, would be to make a dehydrated product which comes to life when a little water is stirred in.

I wouldn't add any other preservatives unless your food scientist thought it was necessary.


What is a poolish starter? I asked a question about what I could add to homemade bread to stop it going off so fast and someone suggested trying "a poolish starter". I've never heard of this before, so what is it?

Poolish is a type of sponge. You prepare it before mixing your dough. As in 16 hours before. Then, you mix it with the rest of the ingredients.

What I usually do is mix 150g of flour and 150g of water with a pinch of yeast (less than 1g) and no salt at all the night before the day I'm going to use it. The idea is to use the same amount, in weight, of flour and water, and the least amount possible of yeast and let it work as slow as possible.

This will depend on many factors. I'm giving you my quantities, but it changes from winter to summer, you will have to experiment. That's half of the fun. For the mixing I use a fork and a 1 litter/quarter container and 30 seconds of work, it shouldn't take you more. The poolish usually gets almost to the top in 14-18 hours. Once I put 5g of yeast and got to the top in 1 hour. This is not bad but defies the purpose of the poolish taking a lot of time. Some people even put in the refrigerator to make it take longer.

Why would you want it to take time? This is what I was told and makes sense to me: when you mix water, flour and yeast two things happen: the yeast transform the sugars and some good bacteria starts creating acids that will determine flavour. The yeast work depends on the temperature and amount of yeast (among other things, like water, salt, fat, etc). The bacteria doesn't. Also, the bacteria and the acids help preserve the bread.

Once it has reached the top you have 1 hour approx to use it. If not, it will collapse and you better start with a new one. If you think you are not going to use it in 1 hour, use a fork to degass it before it collapses and let it rise again. It will rise faster this time, but that will buy you some time. You can see what it looks like.

If you have a recipe you like, try replacing 150g flour and 150g water with the poolish and see what happens. You may replace between 10% and 50% of the final dough. You'll see changes in color and flavor.


after re-hydrating and desalinating a salted cod it became slightly brown I bought a dried and salted cod (Bacalhau) and cut it into pieces, used some of those and left about half of it in a dry, dark area in the kitchen cabinet for a month.
Salted cod should last much longer than that, what got me worried is when after re-hydrating and desalinating the remaining pieces in water(about 48 hours) I saw the outside of the fish became light-brown instead of white.
The cod smells perfectly, it's just the appearance. I asked several restaurant cooks and they said it's fine to consume, which I did.
My question, why did the salted cod become brown? Did I make a mistake in the re-hydrating and desalinating process?

I suppose, the reason why the cod got brown, was that after storing the several pieces, the cut face, despite dry and salted, was not covered by the skin of the fish anymore and started to oxidation, hence the brown color.


Puff pastry chocolate tart? I've got some remaining puff pastry left over (1 sheet, store bought, frozen).

I have seen recipes online for puff pastry chocolate tarts, like here https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/76952/rich-chocolate-tart/

However, I don't have heavy cream now  so I plan on using the chocolate filling mixture from this recipe https://tasty.co/recipe/silkiest-chocolate-tart . But the recipe I just linked to above wants me to pour the mixture into the pre baked 'dough' and bake it further.

But, the recipe that I first linked to is for puff pastry and I don't think you can bake it twice?

Sorry if I sound confusing. I just want to know if it would be fine if, I would just bake the puff pastry for a little in the oven, then pour the mixture (from second recipe) into the thing then bake it further?  Or does anyone have any suggestions (or any other recipes for a puff pastry chocolate tart sort of thing, that doesn't need cream?)

First of all, you can make the chocolate pudding in a saucepan (using a chocolate pudding mix), bake the puff pastry by itself in the oven for a few minutes and then spoon the pudding in to the puff pastry to make a delicious chocolate tart.

By the way, you can also do the same with fruit, such as apples, cherries, blueberries. You can either make a homemade fruit filling or buy canned fruit filling.
Good luck!


Substituting red beans for adzuki beans? I've recently gotten into making mochi and really wanted to try my hand at daifuku (red bean paste-filled mochi) and I'm finding that there is an upsetting lack of adzuki/azuki beans available in my area.

I've seen suggestions for using dark red kidney beans as a substitute, but I want to know if I could  possibly use the small red beans I have in my pantry already.

My experience is that adzuki have a very different taste and texture than red beans and I wouldn't substitute one for the other.  If you've really gotten into mochi, it will be worth the effort to find adzuki  - I've bought them in natural food stores, Whole Foods and on line  And I buy in bulk so I never run out.  Beans seem to last forever.


Why does my milk bottle lid have two dates I'm living in Switzerland at the moment.
I've just come back from a short holiday and realise I've left some milk in the fridge.

The top oddly has two dates. One marked a which was yesterday and one marked b which isn't for another week.

Knowing that swiss milk tends to be nuclear and last a while I tried the milk and...it does seem a bit off. The water and the solid have seperated slightly in some places. It doesn't smell but it does taste odd.

I think it's fair to say I shouldn't use it. I should do without milk for a day.

However the question remains: what are these two dates?

I guessed best before and use before but that seems wrong.

I haven't been across the border in a while, but I just double-checked via image search.

Most dairy products (and other foods with a short shelf life) in Switzerland have or had two dates, a "sell-by" and a "best before" or "consume by" date.

Often, there will be a descriptive text, sometimes even in German, French and Italian, but there are brands that omit the text, probably because the average Swiss consumer knows how to interpret the double dates.

An example of a non-dairy product is this:

Source

Interestingly, there was a debate about the double date, centered around the confusion of consumers and their impact on food waste. Some supermarket chains like Coop have removed the "sell by" date since 2016, Migros insists on keeping it. (Source, in German)


Does adding olive oil in pasta while boiling make it sticky? I am planning to make a pasta dish and would like to know if adding 1Tb spoon of olive oil while boiling 500 gram of pasta make it sticky. What are the other advantages and disadvantages of this approach?

Some people think adding olive oil to pasta water will keep the pasta from sticking, but in reality it does absolutely nothing. Adding a tablespoon of oil to pasta water won't affect the outcome in the slightest, doing that is a waste of a good ingredient.

Adding olive oil to pasta after it has been drained on the other hand will keep the pasta from sticking. It will also make it oily, which may not be what you want.


Using osmotolerant yeast in regular bread After the demise of my sourdough starter, I've decided to switch to instant yeast, and am trying to decide which to buy. Specifically, I'm comparing Saf-Instant Red and Saf-Instant Gold. The former is officially recommended for dough with up to 12% sugar, while the latter is recommended for dough with between 10% and 30% sugar. However, I've read several anecdotal reports that Saf-Instant Gold is perfectly fine for plain, low-sugar bread.
I don't bake often enough to justify stocking two different yeasts, so is Saf-Instant Gold (or any similar osmotolerant yeast) suitable for regular bread, and do I need to adjust any recipes if I'm using it in place of Saf-Instant Red?
Ideally, I'd like an answer drawing from a statement from a yeast manufacturer, substantial personal experimentation, or a published study.

It should be fine. There is no reason it won't grow at lower sugar content, though there is a possibility that it has slightly slower growth under lower sugar levels, due to optimization of the metabolism for the more bio-available sugars.
All the information that has been is saying is that if you have a relatively high sugar content in your bread, then use the "osmotolerant" variety, not that the variety won't grow under conditions outside of those specified.
I seriously doubt that recipe adjustment would be necessary. As I mentioned above, it may have slightly slower growth under low sugar conditions, but this is likely to be minimal and at worst require longer proofing/rising stages.


What should I look for in strawberries at the market? When I'm selecting strawberries at the market or farmer's stand, what should I look for to indicate the most flavorful berries?  I don't need the strawberries to keep; I'll be using them immediately.

I mostly agree with Rumtscho, except that I think "red through and through" is a bit too strong: a bit of white at the top doesn't have to mean anything, as long as it is not too much, and as long as there is not white in the bottom half—so these look good:

Another thing to watch out for is how far apart the seeds are. I think one can never be sure of anything with strawberries, but, if the seeds are farther apart, that usually means they are sweeter. I also like the ones where the seeds are a bit deeper into the skin better. The ones above look good in both respects. These, however, do not:


Fermenting by accident I had made some lemonade for a party and now having some leftovers sitting on a counter for a few days it has started to ferment. The containers were all sterilized with bleach, produce was washed and water was boiled. It tastes totally fine. Would this be safe?

5 gallon water
1 c honey
1 c sugar
2 c fresh lemon juice
3 c barley
Lemon zest
Mint leaves

Add barley and honey/sugar to water, boil for 10 min
Remove barley
Steep lemon zest and mint leaves in the lemonade
Once cooled down, add lemon juice

Accidental fermentation is never safe. You have bacteria growing in your food, and you don't know which bacteria they are. Fermentation is only safe if you use a process which has been tested to only allow the growth of benign bacteria.

  The containers were all sterilized with bleach, produce was washed and water was boiled

This is irrelevant. It is only good to ensure that you won't be starting with an unusually high load of random bacteria - because if you had such a contamination, the food could start spoiling before its usual storage lifetime has been reached. But once you either 1) reach the end of the storage lifetime (which is 4 hours on the counter, as for any prepared food) or have visible signs of spoiling (and fermentation is one of them), hygiene precautions stop mattering and your food is unsafe.


Are hop leaves edible? I had to thin my hop plants and I have some hop leaves. I know people use hop shoots and hops for cooking but I was wondering if hop leaves are edible and, if so, how they are used.

I had to do some research1, but: yes, hop leaves are edible, e.g. as salad.

You might be better off with tender young leaves, but there are no critical ingredients that should deter you from giving them a try. Commonly one would expect the leaves to be used in a salad, but for older leaves I'd be tempted to add a heating step, like adding a handful in a stir-fry or omelette - think spinach or chard, for example.

As for the chemical compounds that influence the medicinal properties 2, the contents are extremely low in the leaves, so unlike for shots or flowers there is no limit to the amount you can safely consume.

1 Sources (in German, Endlish souces were less fruitful):

http://www.vivalranger.com/index.php/wissensdatenbank/essbare-pflanzen/126-hopfen-wilder-humulus-lupulus
http://selbstbewusstgesund.de/ernaehrung/essbare-wildkraeuter-3/

2 We explicitly do not discuss health and nutrition here, but some foods should be consumed in limited amounts nevertheless. For hops, that is mainly due to ingredients with calming and estrogen-like properties.


NY Steak vs NY Strip Steak My local grocery store (Fred Meyer/Kroger) has NY Steak in the clearance section today, (it's going out of date soon.) What I can't seem to find is whether the NY Steak is the same as a NY Strip Steak which you find at all of the top steak houses. (These steaks are bone-in, with a little bit of bone in the tip.)

Are these the same as NY Strip Steaks, or am I paying too much for a worse cut of meat by buying them?

Yes, they are the same cut of beef. Depending on the butcher it may or may not be 'trimmed' a little differently. A New York strip is cut from the sirloin primal, specifically the 'top loin'. If one looks at a typical T-bone (or Porterhouse) steak the 'larger side' of the steak (to one-side of the bone) becomes a strip steak once cut from the bone. After that the way it is trimmed and prepared makes the difference between New York and Kansas City strip steaks, but these too are the same basic cut of beef.


Should homemade lasagna be frozen cooked or uncooked? My wife and I are prepping some meals ahead of time before Baby #2 arrives early next month.

She just made 3 small lasagnas (8"x8" pans) this afternoon and we are debating whether to bake them first and then freeze them down, or freezing them uncooked and bake when we are ready to eat.

What is the proper method to maintain the quality of the food as much as possible?  Cooking and thawing times when we decide to serve it are less of a factor.

We used standard noodles (not the no-boil type) and it has canned sauce, pork sausage, ground beef, ricotta, and fresh mozzarella in case the ingredients impact is the best option.

I'd say freeze nearly all of them uncooked and bake when ready.  That way they go through only one cooking and maintain the fresh lasagna taste/feel.

The sauce and and the cheese will freeze ok.  Mozzarella is a pretty sensitive cheese and once it's been baked, it's not going to hold as well when thawed and re-warmed. In my experience it gets gummy and the fat runs off.  You have much better chance of enjoying a good meal with the cheese frozen raw.

Unfortunately, your noodles will likely take the hardest hit, but will likely fare better than going through two heat cycles.

The ground beef and sausage will also fare better that way.

The reason I suggested freezing MOST and not all, is that there are times when you're behind the 8-ball, hungry, and don't have the time to bake the sucker, and even ponder settling for dog-food.  At that point having a silver bullet in the freezer is a bonus ;) and you'll be ok with inferior lasagna.


Which Dessert fit a Thai dish? I plan to cook a thai dish this weekend and I search for a dessert that fits to that. In particular it will be a chicken dish with lemon gras.

I moved the drink part of the question here. Sorry for that.

what about thai iced tea, and sticky rice with the mango?


Ground coriander vs coriander seeds What is the difference between ground coriander and coriander seed? Can you use coriander seeds instead of ground coriander? If yes, Can you use whole coriander seeds?

Ground coriander is made from the seeds, so you definitely can substitute seeds. But you do need to grind them first. It's hard to get them ground very fine by hand, at least for quick cooking dishes, but if you toast then before grinding they're more brittle (so break up better). In a longer cooking dish the bits soften a little, so you can get away with slightly bigger bits.

Whole coriander seeds (or big pieces of them) are unpleasant to find in food, and don't deliver their flavour well to the dish. They're too big and hard to ignore, but to small to go round (unlike the cardamom pods sometimes found whole in rice dishes).

Seeds store well, keeping their flavour, so toasting/grinding them when you're ready to use them makes for a better-tasting end result. If you're used to using ground coriander that's been hanging around a while, this will be particularly noticeable, and you want want to use a bit less.


What is the difference between the dairy products quark and skyr? What is the difference, if any, between the two dairy products quark (consumed in German-speaking countries) and skyr (traditional in Iceland)?

They are both similar to what the result would be if you took cottage cheese and blended it.

I'm interested in any differences in the contents. I read the Wiki articles I linked to. In Britain skyr is labelled as yoghurt (at least the Arla brand is) and must therefore contain both Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus. Wiki mentions both in their skyr article and neither in their quark article, where they mention lactococcus instead. But I don't take Wiki as canon and I wouldn't assume that these and only these bacteria are included.

Stiftung Warentest, a famous German consumer protection agency, actually tried to answer that question and even had trained food testers try to determine the difference in taste. The result was basically that Skyr is very close to lightly beaten (Mager-)Quark, but with a higher acidity closer to traditional Yoghurt than traditional Quark and with a higher calcium content.