Crumble added to muffins before baking I put a crumble on my blueberry as recipe called for, why did they caved in?  Could it be the altitude?

If you're asking if the crumble is the source of your problem - it isn't.

Without a recipe and some indication of how you mix and bake your muffins, it is difficult to determine the cause of your cave-ins.  This is a common problem with muffins and cupcakes, though.  The most likely culprits are:  (1) too much liquid in your batter, (2) oven not hot enough, (3) chemical leavener is spent or you used too little, (3) you use too much leavener, (4) you didn't bake them long enough, (5) you used too much batter for each muffin (filling the cups too full), & (6) overmixing.

If you are following a respected recipe carefully and you know your leavener is fresh, then please make sure you are cooking in an oven that has been pre-heated fully to the temperature in your recipe - that temperature probably shouldn't be below 375°F (and, of course, altitude could be an issue here - how high-up are you?).  Most importantly, mix your ingredients only long enough for them to just barely come together (remember that it's OK if little traces of unincorporated flour are still visible) - mix by hand if you have used an electric mixer in the past.  Finally, avoid filling the cups in your muffin tin more than 2/3 full - using more better doesn't always make larger muffins - at some point, the muffin loses its ability to support the doming of the center.


What is the purpose of adding oil when cooking scrambled eggs on non-stick pan? Today I had… hard conversation with my girlfriend whether to use or not oil (semi refined sunflower) when cooking scrambled eggs on a non-stick pan.

My point is that there is no reason for oil, because coating of the pan will prevent eggs to stick. Was I right or adding oil is essential for some other reason than prevention eggs to stick?

I always add butter, as much for the flavor as to keep the eggs from sticking. In scrambled eggs, butter is as necessary for me as salt and pepper.


Is there a difference between infused oil and adding the ingredient? For example, is there any difference (taste, use, health, etc) between using an olive oil infused with lemon and a regular olive oil and adding lemon juice?

If there are differences, do they only apply when not cooking with the oil (e.g. in a dressing or garnish) or also when heating the oil?

There certainly are differences. Specifically regarding lemon there are differences not only in taste, because the lemon olive oil is flavored using the zest of a lemon, but also in acidity. Lemon juice is very acidic, olive oil is not. There are plenty of times where it is completely inappropriate to add an acid.

A better comparison would instead be lemon infused olive oil compared to olive oil and lemon zest. There would still be a difference, but it would be less noticeable. The infused olive oil has had more opportunity to capture the fat soluble flavor compounds in the lemon zest, however the flavor compounds that aren't fat soluble will be forever lost.

That is generally the trade-off when it comes to any infused oil. You will get lots of the fat soluble flavor compounds, but you will lose the non-fat soluble flavor compounds.

As for difference of use in the olive oil and lemon juice case, yes, definitely. You can't always add acids to foods. In the lemon zest case, apart from the slight flavor difference, there's also a texture difference. Of course, if you want something very smooth, pieces of zest wouldn't be a good thing. Apart from those though, not really.

All of these differences still apply both in uncooked as well as cooked preparations.


Why isn't my homemade yogurt smooth? Last week I successfully made my own greek yogurt! I was and am very excited that I finally got it to work. But now the problem is, the yogurt I am making is just not very smooth. Store bought greek yogurt (such as Dannon Oikos and Fage) is silky smooth, thick and creamy. This texture is one of the biggest reasons I enjoy it so much.

My DIY greek yogurt has a rough consistency closer to ricotta cheese. It also has very small (1 mm) cottage cheese like curds in it. I found out that you can make Ricotta simply by heating up whey. That causes the albumin protein to turn into ricotta. The first step to make Greek Yogurt is to heat up the milk to denature albumin protein. Apparently this results in the protein staying in the  yogurt instead of the whey. So I thought if I didn’t heat the milk up as hot, it would keep more albumin protein in the whey and the result would be a smoother yogurt, and a higher yield of ricotta from the whey. What I ended up with was  more whey and less yogurt. More importantly, the yogurt had the same texture as before.

Does anyone know of something I can change in the yogurt making process that leads to a more silky smooth consistency?

You are correct that the milk is heated to denature the albumin so that it becomes part of the structure of the yogurt instead of washing out in the whey. When distributed through the yogurt properly this protein will not cause the clumping problems you are seeing.

You shouldn't expect to make ricotta from yogurt whey- even if the milk wasn't boiled it just doesn't work well.

Most yogurt problems, including breaking and clumping, are caused by poor temperature control. Heating the milk too much during incubation, over incubating, or erratic temperatures, can all cause your bacteria to misbehave. Often this causes the yogurt to be too acidic and to curdle which would explain your clumping.

As has been canvassed in other answers; the best yogurt incubation temperatures are between 100 - 110°F (38-48°C) but it seems to vary a little with the starter. The best results seem to be had from putting 110°F (48°C) milk in an insulated container to incubate rather than trying to use a heater.

Many yogurt recipes call for powdered milk to boost the milk protein in the mix. Another possible explanation is if you mixed it in insufficiently.


How can I make my dish less sour? I use peri peri sauce for grilling chicken, but it's coming out to be too sour. How can I neutralize the sauce?

There is really no way to reduce the acidity in a marinade or sauce without creating undesirable flavor compounds. Adding a base would neutralize the acid but would also produce salts which don't taste so good.

If you are making a marinade then simply add less acid to it, however if you are using bottled sauce then you have a few options to deal with the excess acidity:

Add some water: thin the mix out, and you will reduce the acidity. You will reduce the overall level of flavor but at least it won't make the chicken too vinegary
Marinade using less sauce: Less sauce = less acidity
Marinade for less time: this will mean less acidity, but less penetration of the flavors into the chicken
Add some sweetener: this will not reduce the acidity but will balance it out

If it were me I'd combine some of the above, I'd add some sugar and maybe a bit of water until it's a bit weaker.


Can a blender be used to make emulsified sausage? I'm interested in making emulsified sausages like hot dogs. Most guides suggest using a food processor, which I don't have. I do however have a high-powered blender. Can a blender be used to make emulsified sausage?

I can imagine it working, but since this is not something I've seen in books or guides I have my doubts. I'm also confused how a food processor can create a true emulsion, but that is a separate question!

Would I also need to grind meat before I put it in a blender? Or could I put meat chunks straight into a blender?

I think your issue, using a high powered blender, is that the friction in such a blender produces quite a bit of heat. You will need to account for that.  Secondly, your grind might be too thick for the blender to circulate effectively.  You want your meat near freezing for the initial grind, so you will want to pre-grind for sure.   However, then, some heat helps with the emulsion.  I could see it working, with some pulsing, then maybe some time in the refrigerator, then a return to pulsing.  It depends on your blender, the amount of mix, and your patience.  It could work.  This might help you consider the variables.

Upon further investigation, heat might not be your biggest issue if you choose to use a blender.  In the case of emulsified sausage, "emulsification" is a bit of a misnomer. A blender, however, could cause a problem by over-processing the fat particles, leading to a less stable "emulsion."  According to the source I just linked:

  Fat emulsification involves, as mentioned previously, the reduction of fat to a small enough size that the extracted protein can coat or entrap the fat. Of the fat particles are too large we will not get a smooth, stable emulsion but if the fat is chopped too much the surface area may be too large or too many fat cells may be broken to yield a stable product.

Again, you might be able to make this work with care and patience, but a high speed blender is probably not the best tool for the job.


Tetrasodium pyrophosphate How do I use this ingredient in making marshmallows? I've tried all other recipes and they just don't come out like the store bought ones. They also don't roast like them to. Instead the just melt.

I would be a little surprised if you could get your hands on food grade tetrasodium phyrophosphate(TSPP), but maybe you're a Sigma-Aldrich employee or something...

TSPP is commonly used in commercial food applications to inhibit bacterial growth, especially where animal proteins are present.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22934995 This phosphate is also found as an anticaking and conditioning agent in dry vanilla pudding mixes, although my personal experience tells me that the TSPP may be acting anticaking/conditioning in marshmallows, but it's more likely that it is inhibiting bacterial growth since many commercial marshmallows use gelatin(animal-derived) in their recipes.  http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/summary/summary.cgi?sid=24898899

I would also like to posit a partial reason for why your home-made marshmallows are not behaving the way you expect.

First, the industrial process(ultra precise & temp controlled equipment) is probably yielding marshmallows that have less water in them, creating a more dense and solid marshmallow.(lowering the water content/activity of the food means that bacteria will be less likely to set up colonies on your food product). Yay, technology,  Second, the marshmallows you are buying from the store have probably been sitting around for a while...like A WHILE, meaning they have lost a little bit more water from transit and storage before getting to your grocery shelves.  I believe both of those situations contribute to the textural and roasting difference.  Less bound water in marshmallow = more similar to commercial product.  More bound water in marshmallow = more melty...faster.

So your question was HOW do you use TSPP in recipes...were you to possess some...

I would incorporate  an amount into the water before you hydrate the gelatin.  There is an LD50 listed on the pubchem resource I provided, as too much can be detrimental to human health. As for how much you should add...I won't voice any advice on it.

What you might try, is using invert sugar in your recipes if you can source that (much easier to do, and doesn't require any hazard chemical shipments), or trying to get rid of more water through your heating steps in the recipe, and finally by letting your finished marshmallows dry out a bit after they have set up. If I had that kind of time, I would turn them out onto a fine-grate cooling rack and covering them with cheesecloth to accomplish drying the final product.

Good luck on your endeavors.


Cooking a chicken and peppers in a crockpot instead of sauteeing, how much water should I add? My father shared a recipe with me and my mother "gently corrected" some of the details, but it sounded good, and I wanted to replicate it, but cook a little more to have some leftover for later.

The recipe they're using is:

1 whole onion, sliced
1 bell pepper, sliced
1 1b chicken, sliced into ~1" x 2" pieces
1 jar pasta sauce
  handful of parmesan cheese
Saute the onion and pepper for about 10 minutes, till they start to have some juice
in the pan. Add the chicken and cook about 3-5 minutes on a side, till it's about
cooked through. Add the pasta sauce and let it come to a slight boil (so it's nice and hot)
Remove from heat and cover with the cheese (so it melts)

But I've moved up to 5 peppers (two green, one red, one yellow, one orange) and 2 onions and 2.25 lbs chicken breast, sliced as per recipe (also seasoned a little with some light marinade to give it a little extra taste). I thought it might be nice to cook it in the crockpot (4qt classic) with the cool weather and let it slow cook, and have something nice when I get home.

My plan is to add all the veggies and chicken when I leave the house, and add the sauce right before I'm ready to eat (I actually want to split half of the crockpotted mixture and store it without the sauce on it, to heat later with the sauce). What I'm not entirely sure about is:

Do I need to add some water so the chicken doesn't start to stick while it cooks, or burn in some way? I'm going to be at work but I'll be home at lunch if I should stir it or change something.
What is the best temperature to set my crockpot to? Low I would assume.

If I really need to cook this in my large deep skillet I can, but I like the idea of trying this recipe in a slow cooker.

You don't need to add any water to the slow cooker whatsoever. Your recipe is somewhat similar to the one that I use to cook my lunches but the quantities seem larger than mine, much larger. I assume that you chop everything up into small piece, including the chicken. The slow cooker should not be more than 3/4 full, so reduce your amounts if the quantities are too big.

Chicken breast doesn't need more than three hours on the 'high' setting in order to cook (six hours on low); this cooking time leaves most of the vegetables crisp (courgettes and pumpkin soften, but bell peppers, carrots and onions retain their texture).

Running a kosher kitchen, I would not know about adding cheese to the food, but anyway I would recommend adding the cheese to the food prior to serving, not while it is being cooked.

If you wish to separate some of the vegetables, one technique which I have used successfully is to put these vegetables in a wire tray (I use the plastic punnets in which we buy fresh mushrooms): these vegetable are cooked like the rest but are kept separate.

If you do wish to add certain vegetables after you have already started cooking, then you are supposed to add 20 minutes to the cooking time (every time one opens the lid of the cooker, steam escapes and it apparently takes 20 minutes to obtain the same amount of steam).


Are tomatoes worth rinsing off if you boil them soon after? Have a large set of tomatoes to make some pasta sauce. To soften them for the food mill I boil them. My question is whether it's worth rinsing if they're eventaully gonna get boiled anyway?

Boiling can take care of any bacterial contaminants.

But boiled dirt still tastes like dirt. And boiled pesticides are probably still not good for you.


Is tomato foliage edible? I was picking some home-grown basil for a simple pasta dish yesterday, and like many people who grow in home-made compost find tomato seedlings are very common weeds. Obviously the leaves of basil and tomato are very different shapes, but the colour is very similar and it was only as I ripped up the leaves that I noticed they weren't all basil.

So I started wondering whether tomato leaves can be eaten. By this I mean whether they're safe to eat, and also whether they're pleasant to eat, in the sort of quantities we might use for herbs or salad.

I've looked online and there's disagreement: NYT says they're edible, even tasty when done right. Many sources make the same claim as Modern Farmer, that the leaves are actually toxic (in quantity -- I linked to a more cautious article than some).

I'm ideally looking for something definitive.

Tomato leaves are edible, both the articles agree on that. The Modern Farmer article says you'd have to eat pounds and pounds of them before you'd get appreciable amounts of toxins to make you ill, and even then it's more of an upset stomach issue. Some people might react more to Tomatine, which is the mild toxin in the leaves, and is also in green tomatoes. People eat fried green tomatoes enough without getting sick.

For me the cooking issue is flavor, the leaves are pretty pungent and I haven't seen a recipe that uses them without burying them in the middle of a host of other ingredients. They're too strongly flavored to be a salad leaf, and they generally need to be cooked as they're tough.

The flavor thing can work out, you can put a couple of tomato leaves in a tomato sauce to boost flavor in the last few minutes of cooking, then pick them out. They can also be put into a pesto, adding a strong tomato flavor.

The message is you can eat them as long as it's not very large amounts, which you'd probably not want to do anyway because they're so strong.

EDIT: if you grow tomatoes you'll have tomato leaves for weeks, not one single harvest. Once the plants mature and you start to get tomatoes you'll typically prune many of the leaves off to concentrate the plant's energy on ripening the tomatoes, that's actually when you get most of the edible leaves off the plant, a good time to make a pesto if you want to try it. You don't want to harvest many leaves when the tomatoes start ripening as the plant needs what's left for photosynthesis, but you could prune one or two to put into a sauce. As the last tomatoes ripen the plants start to die back and you probably wouldn't want to eat them then.


Can I use sugar as a pie weight when blind baking at 425F? I found a recipe by Brave Tart (Stella Parks) for pie crust that's blind baked at 350F. I'm using it for one pie but I have a Cook's Illustrated Dutch Apple Pie recipe that uses a different recipe for the crust and bakes it at 425F. The recipe calls for using white sugar to weight the crust when blind baking, which is really awesome because I don't have any pie weights and I've been really concerned about using dirty pennies.

I'm worried that the sugar will melt at this temperature. Will I need to find different pie weights or can I bake the pie crust for longer at the lower temperature and have it come out nicely?

Unfortunately sugar decomposes at 367F/186C, so I don't think using it at 425F is a good plan.

That said, I think that lower-temperature blind baking will work on pretty much any pie crust recipe. I've used it on both the Stella Parks recipe you mentioned, and Kenji's easy pie dough and it worked fine.

The benefits of using sugar and of blind baking at a lower temperature are described in yet another article on Serious Eats. The lower temperature reduces the puffing and deforming, and the sugar is just easy and effective. None of it is associated with any specific pie crust recipe, so again, should be fine on the Cook's Illustrated recipe.

Of course, you can also always just pick your favorite plain crust recipe and use it on every pie you ever make that calls for a plain crust, even if it includes its own unique variation, and then you'll know exactly how to deal with blind baking it (with sugar).


Brining chicken wings I'm trying to figure out how to brine chicken wings (for hot wings) and have some questions about brine:

What is the minimum and maximum amount of salt to water ratio to make a brine?
Does brine have to be boiled? I've seen some brine recipes that call for the solution to be brought to a boil, then cool. Can't I just stir the solution until the salt and water are fully incorporated?
Some brine solutions add ingredients other than salt. When does such a solution become a marinade instead of a brine? And what's the difference?

What is the minimum and maximum amount of salt to water ratio to make a brine?

This is a very complicated question--in the chemical sense, salt dissolved in water is a brine, but they can vary in concentration (usually measured in percentage of salt by weight).

For the culinary purpose of seasoning and helping meat cuts stay moist, it varies considerably; the stronger the brine, the shorter the brining time, in general, although below a certain threshold you are going have little effect.  Too much salt in the brine, and it will get to the point where you are are wet curing, and the product will start to take on hammy textures and flavors.

A good range for culinary brines is about 3-5%, depending on the length of time you intend to brine, and the size of the cuts being brined.

Does brine have to be boiled? I've seen some brine recipes that call for the solution to be brought to a boil, then cool. Can't I just stir the solution until the salt and water are fully incorporated?

No, you don't have to boil the brine; doing so is for ease in dissolving the salt (and possibly sugar).

For safety, you only want to brine in cold brine, so you would then need to cool a previously boiled brine.  This is usually done by boiling half the water weight with the salt/sugar, and then adding the other half of the weight of water as ice after.

Some brine solutions add ingredients other than salt. When does such a solution become a marinade instead of a brine? And what's the difference?

Marinade is not defined scientifically, so there is no formal distinction.  It is a matter of culinary purpose.  My personal take is that brines are made of water, salt, and sugar, and possibly one or two flavorants; marinades often have an oil, dairy, or acid (such as orange juice or vinegar) base, although there is considerable variation.

Marinades are about adding flavor (usually), and possibly tenderizing (when acid, or an enzymatic actor such as pineapple juice is present).  Marinades act at the surface of the food product.

If the primary purpose is to help the meat stay juicy, and to season it, the application is brining, so call it brine.  Brines, with enough time, will affect deep into the meet, although there is some argument over what the exact scientific mechanism is.

The thing is, despite the myth, brining does not help flavor (as opposed to salt, for seasoning) enter the meat--adding extra ingredients to it beyond salt, sugar, and water is not generally helpful, as these flavors will not pass the cell walls (they are too large at the molecular scale), so they don't actually have much if any effect on the meat other than at the very surface.

Here is a link to an article from Virtual Weber Bullet with great information on brining, and a myriad links to even more resources.


What is what I'm doing called? At restaurants, I know that meats are often cooked by searing or grilling the meat to "mark" it, and then it is put in an oven for some time to be cooked. I also understand that this is done partly for consistency, partly for convenience, and partly for speed.

I've been cooking chicken in a similar manner at home, especially now that it's winter. I season the chicken, then sear both sides in a little bit of oil in a pan (a few minutes per side), and then I put the whole pan in the oven at 425 or so for about 10 minutes.

The chicken always comes out nicely moist and flavorful, and I am happy with the results.

However, when asked what kind of chicken it is, I have no idea what to call it. I'm not really baking it, I'm not frying it, I'm not broiling it, and I'm not roasting it.

...

Or am I?

What is this cooking method called?

This technique—searing or marking on the grill or stove top, then finishing in an oven—is called pan roasting.


Turkish delight sauce or syrup I want to make a turkish delight syrup for topping purposes! So i can pour it over my ice cream! Any idea on how to make this?

Turkish delight is simply syrup cooked with starch and flavoring until it has the texture we know. If you want the same taste but in a liquid form, take any standard recipe and leave out as much starch as you want, possibly even all of it.


How do I adjust cooking time when temperature may be off by 5-10C? Over the holidays, my mom tasked me to prepare a Crown Roast of Pork for our Media Noche (basically it's the meal you have as you approach the New Year with fireworks)  meal. All of the recipes I found on youtube used the Fahrenheit. The procedure would go:

Preheat Oven to 450 F
Roast Crown Roast for 20 minutes
Reduce heat to 350 F and wait for another 130 minutes

Our Convection Type Oven has a Celsius Degree Scale. Converting those temperatures to Celsius, I got:

450 F = 232.2222 C ~ 240 C
350 F = 176.6666 C ~ 180 C

Now, the dials (yes, our oven has an old school rotary dial for time, temp, and function) are only divided into 10s, from 50 C to 250 C, so I didn't have a clear 232 and 176. What I did was I rounded up to the nearest tens instead and then used the same cooking time, thinking that the Fahrenheit equivalent of the rounded up Celsius values wouldn't be too far off.

When I took the Crown Roast out, the outside was charred a bit but the inside was cooked well, although a bit dry. My siblings described the char to still be edible and didn't have that bad and bitter burnt taste.

So, after almost botching our dinner, I rescaled my values back:

230 C = 464 F (originally 450 F), cooked for 20 minutes
180 C = 356 F (originally 350 F), cooked for 130 minutes

Now, we see that there is quite a disparity between the new Fahrenheit values, and being cooked at a higher temperature dried up my pork and burnt the outside.

My question is, is there a "time-scaling" rule to follow when converting Fahrenheit to Celsius? What I mean by this is that for example, in my case, it might be:

450 F for 20 minutes or 230 C for 25 minutes or 220 C for 18 minutes

Wherein after converting the temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius, the time you cook it in that temperature would also change since the temperatures or not the same. The temperature may have been decreased or increased in order to accommodate the limitations of the cookware.

Sorry if this winds up being an opinion based question or something that can only be discussed but not answered. As much as possible, I'd like to see if anyone tried something with regards to this, may it be from experience or from a book or a class or a show and if others have used the same method.

Rounding to the nearest 10C is more accurate than your thermostat probably is anyway (don't round up, round to the nearest).

Conversion isn't your issue, your thermostat is much more likely your culprit.

Use an oven thermometer, not your dial.

And keep in mind that ovens hover above and below their set temperature by switching on and off.

Use Google or whatever to do your conversions, and then your oven thermometer to keep your thermostat honest. The natural variances you'll get from rounding are fine.

You should also be using a meat thermometer; pull a roast to rest when it is 5F below your target temperature.


How do I use fridge's super cooling properly? My fridge (Whirlpool BSNF 8152 OX) comes with "Supercool" or "Fast cooling" feature. It's supposed to somehow improve the process of cooling newly stocked fridge/freezer. I am unsure about the way it works and I failed to find any information about how am I supposed to use it.

In my understanding, when turned on it slightly lowers the temperature in the fridge and "prepares" it for cooling of the newly stocked food. But am I supposed to use it when stocking the freezer or the fridge or both? How long should I leave it on?

The manual states:

  The use of this function is recommended when placing a very high
  quantity of food in the refrigerator and freezer compartments. Using
  Fast Cool function it is possible to increase the cooling capacity in
  the refrigerator and freezer compartments. Note: Fast Cooling function
  should be also switched ON before placing fresh food to be frozen in
  the freezer compartment, in order to maximize the freezing capacity.

These functions usually turn off after about 3 hours or when the set temperature is reached again. As the recommendation is to turn it on before stocking, it's safe to assume that it's a simple time-based "heavy duty" mode. As there is only one button for the fridge and the freezer, it has only one cooling circuit. So you turn it on when stocking the fridge or the freezer and so one compartment is "fast cooled" in vain.

The purpose is not to further lower the temperature, this is merely a side effect. It would be kinda silly to lower the temperature and then open the door, let room temperature in while stocking and let all the cooling effort dissipate. I would give it ten minutes for the cooling circuit to prepare and then start the stocking.


Is sugar necessary for the texture of homemade sherbet? I buy pure sucralose and acesulfame potassium which I mix half-and-half and use in my iced coffee. A scant 1/8 teaspoon of the sweetener sweetens an entire pot of coffee and the flavor is perfect, almost indistinguishable from sugar. I would like to try to make (almost) sugar-free orange sherbet with that mixture instead of sugar. I have the type of ice cream maker with an insert that goes into the freezer at least 24 hours before churning the ice cream, then you add the mix to be frozen and it continually stirs the mix for about a half an hour, after which you can pack the ice cream (or sherbet in this case) to freeze somewhat harder before service. If it turns out, it will probably spend 6 hours or so in the freezer before it is consumed.

I have a guest coming for dinner just soon enough that I really don't have the time for a test run, so I'd like to know any caveats now instead of later.

My plan is to mix 1 quart of fat-free half-and-half with orange juice concentrate, dark chocolate shavings, my sweetener, and vanilla to taste. Of course there is some sugar in the form of corn syrup in the fat-free half-and-half, and there is natural sugar in the juice concentrate, but the overall sugar concentration in the mixture will be drastically reduced from what I have churned in the past.

I understand that sugar will somewhat inhibit solid freezing if I were to freeze the mixture in say ice cream trays, but what if it is churned?

That sounds to me like it'd come out completely rock hard once fully frozen. Immediately after churning while it's still just barely frozen it'll probably be okay, but I'm not sure if it'd make it through six hours in the freezer.

You have no fat to soften it (the thickeners in fat-free half-and-half doesn't really do much), and essentially no sugar (just the bit from the orange juice), so there's nothing to stop it from just freezing.

Homemade ice cream/sherbert/sorbet tends to come out harder than storebought things to begin with, thanks to the lack of softening additives and often people being a bit more conservative with fat and sugar. For example, frozen yogurt with full-fat yogurt and a decent amount of sugar can still end up solid and unscoopable once frozen, and the same can happen with more lightly sweetened sorbet unless you add alcohol. Taking the fat and sugar all the way out without compensating doesn't sound feasible.


Stuffing bread for the next day Can you make your dough and stuff it/roll it with meat or whatever you choose, then place it in fridge overnight to be cooked the next day?

What I mean is, do everything like you are about to bake but instead of putting it in the oven, you put it in fridge. Will it keep and bake right the next day?

The dough should be fine retarded overnight on it's own. What you are asking really depends on the filling. If you are filling the dough with something that has a tendency to "weep" or lose water, it can negatively effect your finished product. The water will be stuck in the cavity and can make your bread soggy and hard to bake completely.

If your filing contains sugar, it can draw moisture out of your dough. This will create a syrup and can also lead to sogginess, though it's more likely to lead to a thick caramel shell wherever the liquid leaks out. Salty fillings can also cause unpredictable results.

I think your best bet would be to make the dough, portion it, then retard the dough by itself. Let your dough portions warm up again before you're ready to bake and then fill them as close to the baking time as possible.


Is a whole chicken still safe after 5 days marinating in the fridge? I marinated a whole chicken and put it in the fridge for 5 days--can I still cook and eat it?

Five refrigerated days is pushing well past the recommended boundaries--MeatSafety.org and FoodSafety.gov both recommend no more than 1-2 days.

The marinade would make no significant difference in the overall shelf life of the chicken.  This applies even to acid or enzyme based marinades since the concentration and application is not uniformly controlled.


Is there a way to recover hardened Pecorino Romano? I've had a wedge of Pecorino Romano wrapped in plastic wrap in the fridge for a while.  There are many of you out there that probably have had the same problem.  :)

I actually cut a small piece and it was quite crunchy! I tried to grate it and it's no longer crumbly. So it's quite hard to grate. The cheese still tastes good, though.

Is there a way to get it back to its slightly softer and crumbly consistency?

I don't think you can rescue it, but you can use it. Try putting it into a vegetable soup; you'll find that it adds a bit of body as well as flavour. You can also do this with the left-over rinds of any hard cheese.


What uses are there for basil flowers? I have tons of basil in my herb spiral.

However, this stuff is precious, and I always feel bad when I throw away the basil flowers when I make pesto sauce.

Is there a way to use the basil flowers when cooking?

If you pinch off the basil flowers as they start to grow, the plant will produce more leaves. (Yes, this is a horticultural answer, but it will help you make more yummy dishes with the leaves.)


What is the name of this Czech bread? I recently went to a Czech restaurant and ordered the meal pictured below. It was well made and is one of my favorite meals at that restaurant. I want to try and make the "bread" (if that's what it's called) that was on the dish, but I can't figure out what it is. Here's a photo of it:

My best guess is that it's some kind of potato bread.

I can't tell for 100% certain from that photo, but I believe it may be Houskove Knedliky, a sort of unstuffed dumpling common to many Czech dishes. The variety in your image looks similar to Houskove Knedliky v Ubrousku, literally "Bread Dumplings [cooked] in a Napkin":

http://www.trixicooks.com/2015/10/houskove-knedliky-v-ubrousku.html

You can find several recipes for that variety of houskove knedliky, though when I lived in the Czech Republic ordinary houskove knedliky (i.e. not the "in napkin" style) were far more common as sides to dishes like Svickova, Gulas, etc.:

http://recepty.vareni.cz/kynute-houskove-knedliky/

If you want to find recipes for ones made from potatoes, add the word "bramborove" to your searches. Here's one example I found:

http://www.mimibazar.cz/recept/94046/bramborove-knedliky-v-ubrousku


Alternative to low calorie spray for frying sausages? My wife has recently decreed that we are to use low-calorie sprays instead of oil. For the most part, these seem fine.

However, I have been through several different types and not found one that is suitable for frying sausages in. No matter which type or how little spray I use, I end up with little black burned bits in the pan and on the sausages. It's not the sausages burning, the black bits can be scraped off to reveal a nicely cooked sausage. This happens no matter what type of sausage I use.

I could always grill the sausages instead, but I prefer to fry them as I can keep an eye on them while I'm doing other things.

Is there anything low in calories that I can properly fry sausages in without it burning?

Edit:
The question is not about low-fat ways of cooking sausages, it's about avoiding having two lots of oil. My wife has decided to use these low-calorie sprays instead of proper oil. It is not her that is eating the sausages, it's me and the kids. Of course, I could just buy some regular oil and use that for the sausages, but I thought I'd ask and see if there was another way

This is going to sound strange, but the 'low calorie oil' that you're looking for is water.

What you do is you start the sausages cooking in a little bit of water (about 1 cm; 3/8").  The water will prevent the sauages from getting too hot too quickly, and the fat in them will start to render and leak out into the water.  Once the water evaporates, you're then cooking the sausages in their own fat, avoiding the need to add any additional.

The water acts as a conduit for the heat, while also moderating it, so you cook sufficiently up the side of the sausages, rather than it just being really hot where it touches the pan and  burns in those spots.


I want to duplicate my bread mistake! I make all of my own bread. For just everyday use my go-to recipe is as follows:

Honey-Oat Pain de Mie

255g lukewarm water
361g AP Flour
85g old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick oats)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
64g honey
57g melted butter
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast

I use a Pain de Mie pan like this:

Typically a loaf loaf looks like this, I made this loaf a few weeks ago:

Over half the times I have made this recipe (including yesterday), I've used my bread maker to knead the dough. I always use my (spookily accurate) digital scale to measure the ingredients; I put the bread maker insert or bowl on the scale and tare between ingredients.  I always bake in the same Pain de Mie pan. Up until yesterday it has always taken 1 hour for the first rise and a half an hour for the second. I preheat the oven during the second rise, I bake for 25 minutes (per digital timer), covered, then 5 more minutes uncovered. It's as routine as brushing my teeth.

Yesterday I noticed the dough was a bit sticky when I put it into the pan after the first rise, and the first rise was done a bit quicker than usual, maybe 45-50 minutes instead of an hour. The second rise took 25 minutes instead of the usual 30.

But this is where it got really weird. The dough just went nuts in the oven. It oozed into the lips of the pan lid and onto the oven floor. You can see the shape of the loaf is odd because the dough was squeezing into the crannies.

I would just blow it off, chalk it up to human error, and assume that my next loaf will be normal. But, this bread was the best loaf of this type that I've ever made, so I want to figure out what I did wrong so I can do it again :)

I have not shopped since my last loaf, just a few days ago, and I haven't opened any new packages.  So it can't be different oats, salt, butter, yeast or honey.

It is possible that I grabbed the 00 flour instead of AP (but not terribly likely, the canisters are different).

The measurements listed in the recipe by grams could have been measured incorrectly, but in this case weight errors seem less likely than spoon errors.

The least likely measurement error would be the water because I measure the water in a Pyrex measuring cup, heat it in the microwave, stick a thermometer in it until it comes down to 110F, and then pour and weigh it. So the measurement of water is redundant, and that's a pretty solid habit. I specifically remember that my water temp was normal as well.

The mistakes that I can most easily imagine are for the salt or yeast. I could have accidentally grabbed either a tsp measure or a TBS measure for the salt. I usually use a 1/2 TBS measure.

For the yeast I usually use 2 tsp measures and a 1/4 tsp measure. So 3.25 tsp would probably be the most likely error of that type.

So. With that info, what would you say is the most likely reason for this great loaf?

EDIT: It's such a good and (usually) foolproof recipe, I thought I'd share the rest of the recipe details. Use a 9" Pullman Pan, this one is great. Mix dough ingredients and then give it a 20-30 minute rest to hydrate the oats. If using a breadmaker, just run it through mixing, unplug it for 20 minutes after mixing, before kneading. After 20 minutes plug it back in, starting over, and let it run through the dough cycle. If hand kneading just knead as normal after the rest, let it rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350F (175C).

Give the pan and lid a bit of Pam or butter (not much, the pan is very non-stick, I do it mostly just for crust texture), shape, and place the dough in the pan. I poke across the top until it looks pretty even. Cover with plastic wrap, proof in a warm place until the dough averages just shy of an inch or 2.5cm from the top of the pan. Put the lid on and bake covered in a preheated oven for 25 minutes. Uncover and bake for another 5 minutes or until it registers about 195F (90C).

Remove loaf from pan and cool on a rack.

I think adding the butter twice could maybe account for it. extra hydration, then collapse.

That seems like quite a bit of fat already. (just based on what I've done myself)

If the dough is normally close to being over hydrated, when it gets too close to the stage where it collapses, a tiny bit more liquid can tip it over the edge. Maybe even an unusually humid day.

I have a funny feeling that butter doesn't interact with gluten the same way as water, but I still think it's the butter.

Whatever it is, I've made that loaf myself more than once :)


when baking vegan lemon drizzle cake, should the soya milk be sweetened or unsweetened, fresh or longlife? I'm making vegan lemon drizzle cake for a friend and not being vegan myself, I am unfamiliar with some of the ingredients!  Should I use swettened or unsweetened soya milk? If I used sweetened I thought I may be able to lower the amount of sugar that the recipe calls for but not sure of the ratios I will have to have a few practise goes! Also, does it matter if the soya milk is fresh or longlife when making vegan cakes please?

I've never had a problem w/ the long-life stuff.  (the 'fresh' stuff is likely also long-life, but people think of it more like milk when they see it in the coolers).   I actually prefer the unchilled stuff, as it's available in smaller containers so less likely to go off if I don't use it all up in time.

Sweetened will be closer to the sweetness of cow's milk, which might make substitutions easier if you're converting a recipe yourself.  If you're working from a recipe that calls for soy milk, just go with your own preference.


Boiled beef bones and ended up with green marrow...is this normal? I boiled beef bones that had a good bit of marrow in them and the marrow turned green. Can I still use as a soup base?

Yes. From my experience, if the bones were good, i.e. they had no odor before boiling them the soup is fine, just taste and if you like it all is good.

Maybe one of the ingredients turned the marrow green.


Îles flottantes vs. oeufs à la neige Long ago, I ate at someone's house and was served pieces of meringue on chilled crème anglaise.* The hostess called it îles flottantes, but I have since heard it called oeufs à la neige. Meanwhile, I've seen île flottante used to refer to a single meringue atop crème anglaise. So are these same dish, except for the size of the meringue? Are the two terms interchangeable? Or are there other differences?

*I didn't know at the time that that's what it was, because I was a kid; I've learned it since.

The short answer appears to be: îles flottantes and oeufs à la neige are two different names for one dish.

First of all, you can find some recipes, in English and in French, using the names interchangeably:
"Floating Islands (Oeufs a la Neige)", Saveur
"Recette de Ile flottante, le classique...POUR LES OEUFS EN NEIGE", L'Atelier des Chef

So clearly, to some people, they are the same thing.

However, in reading through recipes I noticed something that may suggest some difference: in recipes for oeufs à la neige, the meringues always seem to be poached in hot milk (BBC, New York Times, Le Journal des Femmes, L'atelier des Chefs), while îles flottantes meringues are sometimes poached (Saveur, BBC, New York Times), and sometimes baked (Food Network, L'atelier des Chefs). Those poached meringues are supposed to be made into an egg shape (thus, "oeufs") - although more often the egg-shape is only hinted at (e.g. "oval-shaped" rather than "ovum-shaped"), but the baked meringues are generally not formed into any particular shape (unless a dollop is a shape).

I don't think this difference is that significant. Mostly because it's only occasionally a difference. It's possible that one dish was originally poached and one baked, but it seems to me that these baked meringues could probably be classified as "not totally traditional."


What type of flour is "wheat flour" in the UK? I want to replicate an American recipe of Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins. It requires 1 cup of wheat flour.

What type of flour would that be in the UK shops?

What you are looking for is called wholemeal flour.

Here's a quick US to UK baking translation guide. US on the left, UK on the right:

All-purpose flour = plain flour
bread flour  =  strong flour (both have extra gluten)
whole wheat flour = wholemeal flour
1 stick of butter is 113g (get a scale, trust me)
1 large egg = 1 medium egg


What is this metal utensil tool with wooden handle? Saw this at a flea market with other kitchen tools and do not know what it is. The end of the tool that is pictured is attached to a wooden handle, not a gear or some other mechanical attachment.

Update: I'm still Google searching periodically. Other ideas include parts for a cookie/pasta press.

This is what the handle looks like:

I think I'm on a lead with these grill scrapers.

I'm fairly confident that the tool is in fact a grill scraper. The handle matches the wooden one shown below. I can't think of any other explanation for the one indent on the tool that is like a hook. You ban see it matches the one in the two metal scrapers. The idea behind the design is to scrape both sides of the grill rung at the same time.


How do I keep a longer lasting heat? I'm smoking a turkey for the first time and I've received different tips on how long I should smoke the bird. However, I struggle with getting my heat to stay at 225-250 for more than 2 hours. How do I keep a heat that will last me 8 to 10 hours?

I'm going to assume that you are smoking with charcoal as electric smokers don't really have trouble with fluctuating temperature.

Plan on needing to add charcoal every couple of hours during the entire smoking period. I start mine at unwholesome hours of the morning and set alarms to get up and stoke the fire. It is nice if you can stoke the fire without letting out all the heat but that depends on the shape of your smoker.

Keep in mind that you only need to add your smoke producing wood for the first couple of hours. After that all you need is heat, no more smoke flavor will be absorbed.

It is very helpful to use high quality, lump charcoal. Lump charcoal burns longer and produces much less ash. Charcoal briquettes are filled with clay. Not only do they burn out more quickly but they leave mounds of ash that you have to clean out several times during a 10 hour smoking. Around here I can find lump charcoal in large bags at the hardware store and sometimes at Costco for much cheaper.

Another alternative:
If you aren't a purist who needs to be able to say that the turkey was cooked only with coal, you can always finish it in the oven. I've read that meat will soak up all the flavor that it is going to in the first hour and that matches my experience. After that it is just slow cooking which is much more conveniently done in a low oven.


Can I leave boneless chicken breast flat in freezer overnight? I buy refrigerated chicken breasts and cut them into smaller pieces, lay flat on a cake pan and freeze overnight, then separate them and put into individual bags in the morning. Does this cause other food in freezer to get contaminated?

Other food will get contaminated if they come into physical contact with the chicken, but as long as you keep the food separate that will be fine. It's not that good for the chicken, putting meat and poultry into the freezer without protection will damage it, however if it's only overnight it's no big deal. I'd still put some plastic wrap over the tray to protect it.


Milk powder doesn't dissolve I'm following some recipes making chocolate, candies and cookies that use milk powder to enhance the flavor. I tried several milk powder brands, different types skim vs full cream, but I never can dissolve milk powder completely. My dough/batter always end up with a lot of milk powder chunks. How can I avoid this?
To make chocolate, I mixed milk powder, cocoa powder and icing sugar with coconut oil.
For cookie dough, after creaming butter and egg, I added flour and milk powder.
To make candies, I melted butter and marshmallow then finalized with milk powder.

Milk powder is not supposed to dissolve in fat, so you will never get a perfectly smooth product here.
The closest you can do is to disperse the milk powder well. This quite finicky. I prefer the technique where you carefully blow small amounts of the powder into a mixer running at high speed (this won't work if you have a very stiff mass). It will get rid of the lumps you describe, but there will be a noticeable graininess left. Trying different brands is also helpful, as some are milled finer than others - just feel with your fingers which is the softest.


What is this substance in my canned ground beef? Do you know from pic what the yellow jelly like substance is on what seems to be the side surfaces of my corned beef(I can’t see it on the top or inner part)?
The ingredients say: Cooked Beef, Beef, Water, Salt, Sugar and Sodium Nitrite.
So not sure what it is.  If you say it’s fat shouldn’t it be white and solid like normal beef fat and why does it migrate to the sides, assuming it’s fat to begin with.

Product link:
https://www.penguinfresh.com/products/corned-beef-halal-canned-grace

It's a jelly formed of water and proteins from the meat, primarily collagen.  More or less the same substance as aspic, though "aspic" normally refers to an intentionally created dish of this stuff, rather than a little bit forming as a byproduct of canning.
It's normal for a small amount of this stuff to form naturally at the edges of canned meat products.  It's safe to eat; there's nothing in it that isn't also in the rest of the product.  It will melt down and disappear as you cook the meat.


How long do "quick" pickles last unrefrigerated? I'll be opening a fried pickle concession stand in the next year. I want to make my own pickles because I'll be cutting them a way you cant buy from a store. I am using a quick pickle method right now that is 100 percent vinegar (along with spices). I've noticed they fry better being cold. My problem is I won't have enough storage to refrigerate them all. I'll be storing them 5 gallon buckets. How long can I keep them out before they have to be cooled or used?

When I make quick pickles, I leave them out for a few days (~3-5 days) to get sour before storing them in the fridge. I use a standard, diluted white vinegar solution for mine. If you're using 100% vinegar, you should be fine keeping them out for at least 3-5 days. Vinegar is very inhospitable to pathogens (just make sure that the pickles are completely submerged). Good luck!


How to fix ghee which partly turned white and smells rancidly? A friend of mine has mistakenly stored his ghee in a bowl which was not quite hermetic hence exposed to oxygen and the sun light. The result is that the ghee turned white and is rancid. See the picture:

Is there any method of fixing it? Or should I just throw it out? Thanks

There is sadly no way to reverse or undo rancidity, and the potent flavors are very unpleasant.  The rancid portion should be discarded.

The photo is unusual in that there is a clear color line, which may or may not correspond to the depth the rancidity reached, or how far into the main product the unpleasant breakdown products permeated.   You might try scraping off all of the obviously bad portion (plus a little extra).  Retain the remainder only if it smells (and tastes) normal.  Fortunately, rancidity is easy to detect by odor and taste.


Can I mince garlic in advance? I really hate mincing garlic in tiny batches for each dish. Is there any way to mince many bulbs in advance and store them for a week or more?

Mince fine a large quantity of garlic in the food processor and freeze it in ice cube trays. When solid move the cubes to a freezer bag.

My Indian friends mince garlic and ginger together and freeze it this way.


Chicken thighs in pressure cooker Me and my wife are starting a business from our home kitchen. Our main dish is roasted chicken thighs with potatoes, and luckly the orders has been growing every week. The problem is, the thighs took more than 1 hour to cook in the oven, this is our main bottleneck.

Is it OK to cook it in a preassure cooker and just finish in the oven with the potatoes?

If by “OK” you mean whether there are food safety issues the answer is no, pressure cookers are safe places to cook chicken.

If by “OK” you mean “will it have the exact same texture and flavor and so forth,” the answer is that pressure cooking is more intimately related to boiling and stewing, and is a fast method of doing those sorts of high-moisture approaches. In the presence of heat and water, a central structural protein in skin and muscle called collagen becomes gelatin; this is why a pot roast left for long enough becomes “fork-tender”, it falls apart without need for a knife. In your pressure cooker, that effect is happening to your meat and chicken skin, and it is irreversible. It is not necessarily a bad effect, maybe you prefer the texture that way—but the texture will very likely be more floppy than your roasted chicken recipe used to be.

There may be some other options; for example one of the reasons you should never cook a steak in the microwave is that it causes these waters to evaporate and these muscle proteins to  contract without that slow conversion to gelatin which makes a pot roast bearable. But ironically this may better suit the texture that you are going for; you may get something resembling the right consistency you had by pressure-cooking or parboiling your chicken in stock, par-microwaving it for a little longer, and then finishing it in the oven—maybe. It is also possible that this completely wrecks the delicate balances that made your product what it was; for example oven fries that are parboiled before roasted can have a more chewy texture than the oven-fries you get without parboiling, it's not necessarily a bad effect but it is different. On the extreme other side you could also just sous vide the chicken maybe and then broil it with the potatoes—this takes significantly longer but you haven’t told us why you think an hour is too long to cook the chicken, and it is possible that it frees up some critical resources (such as manpower or the oven) by moving them elsewhere. It may also be possible to simply tightly wrap the pans of chicken in foil to trap the moisture which would have otherwise evaporated from them, and maybe then they cook a little faster in that gentle steam.

All of this is worth a test run; your taste is the best judge. Science is nothing if not the repeated doing of crazy experiments until you figure out something better that works consistently.

Also keep in mind that these slick approaches could maybe halve your cooking time and hence double your throughput, but you can double your throughput in a different way by simply having a second oven. Where I grew up in upstate New York, several firehouses had very long fire pits which they used to mass-produce a local variety of barbecued chicken to raise extra funds, so these sorts of approaches can be scaled way way up, with some imagination.


Why does garam masala powder taste bland? Garam masala is meant to taste sweet.  However the powder I use doesnt taste sweet it tastes bland.  I imagine this is because the powder has oxidised over time.  Is oxidation really that bad that it can turn something like garam masala from sweet into bland and so is the only way to get around this to use fresh ingredients?

Additionaly is it the case that even fresh garam masala isnt really tasty but bland, and so you in order to get any real taste chilli or other sweeteners such as paprika, black pepper etc need to be used?

I think we’re up against this mis-interpretation of the word ‘sweet’ again.

Garam masala is a blend of aromatics you add towards the end of cooking. Many of the ingredients are the same as a generic curry powder, but emphasis on aromatics, so you get some elements of those spices in a long cook plus a quick burst of new aroma.

Its shelf life is relatively short, maybe a year, max, once opened.
It’s a simple smell test when you open the jar, the aroma should be huge. As it gets old, the last smell to go will probably be the cloves, the rest just fades to a generic ‘musty’.


How can I save this vanilla extract? I tried making my own vanilla extract a few months ago. Normally, it should be pretty dark (almost black). Mine isn't, as you can see:

 (full-size image)

What I did was (after sterilizing it) filling a 250 ml (about a cup) bottle with vodka. I also cut up some (mostly seeded) vanilla pods, I think 4-5.

My guess is that there isn't enough vanilla in it. I'm planning on putting some more in. Is that the proper way to save this half-extract? Are there any downsides to adding new pods now?

I can't think of any downsides to adding more. The recipe I use calls for at least 8 beans per cup (more is better).

Usually it's recommended to cut the beans in half and scrape out the seeds, adding both the beans and the seeds to the vodka - at least, this is what I do, and I think it probably allows more flavor to be extracted.


Any reason I can't use popover batter to make one huge popover without separating into little cups? Something like http://www.food.com/recipe/perfect-popovers-189284 but all in one baking pan?

You absolutely can do that. Brits call it Yorkshire Pudding, and the technique is actually fairly forgiving. You can make them muffin sized, or you can make one big popover. Just don't mess around, popovers get their "pop" from steam. A medium cast-iron skillet (9 inches or 23 cm, roughly) is perfect, you can do it in a square tin too.

My British buddy says: http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/25537746#25537746


How can I reheat a roux-based (alfredo) sauce in the microwave without separation? I made an alfredo sauce last night using a roux made with ghee instead of regular butter, since that's what I had on hand.  The ingredients were: ghee, flour, heavy cream, garlic, pecorino romano, and salt and pepper to taste.

The sauce turned out great, I was able to get the consistency to exactly how I wanted it.

When I went to reheat it in the microwave at work today for lunch, the sauce separated terribly, essentially leaving a pool of butter in the bottom of the bowl.  It tasted ok, but it definitely felt like I was eating spoonfuls of butter at times.  If it matters, the sauce and pasta were combined before microwaving, I didn't reheat the sauce by itself.

Is there a trick to reheating a homemade alfredo/béchamel sauce that will keep it from separating in the microwave?  As suggested in this thread, could I add an emulsifier that will help the next day, but won't negatively affect the taste or consistency of the dish when it's still fresh?

Note: I posted this as a separate question from the one I reference above because this is specifically about separation during reheating, not storage, which might have different answers (such as lower temp or less time).

Sunflower lecithin (sorry, best link I could find) is gaining in popularity as an alternative to soy lecithin because it is widely perceived to have a neutral taste and actually has superior emulsifying properties.  It's a little on the expensive side, though.

Soy lecithin by itself doesn't taste horrible if you buy it as a food additive (as opposed to a nutritional supplement).  It's common to find in a lot of popular frozen pasta-and-sauce dishes, such as Michelina's, which obviously must be microwaveable without the sauce curdling or separating.

Another option is Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, if you can get hold of it.  This one adds a little sweetness which is generally pleasant-tasting, or at least inoffensive.  You'll find it used most often as a dough conditioner or in baked goods, but another popular use for it is in commercial sauces, although unfortunately I can't find specific examples right now.

But probably the best emulsifier for what you're trying to do here is xanthan gum.  It's also used as a gelling agent, but in small quantities works as just an emulsifier.  You can find it, for example, in this Bertolli Creamy Alfredo Pasta Sauce - exactly the sort of thing you're making.  It's also used in the Stouffer's Alfredo sauce.

Mix in a little lecithin or xanthan gum as an emulsifier while the sauce is fresh or cooking and it's very unlikely that your sauce will separate, either in the fridge or in the microwave.

As for what you can do to specifically prevent separation while reheating, if you didn't add any emulsifiers in the first place... I really don't think there's anything you can do.  If you're a slow enough eater the sauce will eventually separate right in front of you; that's just what happens when you have water and fat in the same sauce.  Best to reheat on the stove top in that case, and stir frequently to prevent any further separation.


Want to bottle and sell a marinade/sauce I have a marinade recipe I want to sell to local small stores but I don’t know the logistics of how to make the product last with shelf life and I’ve read about oils causing botulism. I’m not sure where to find this information or how to go about it .

Check the colleges near you as they may have a food incubator program. There are several in Louisiana both affiliated with colleges and privately owned. They have programs to teach you the basics, professors to help answer questions, staff to help take your recipe from small batch to larger quantities, and commercial kitchens for rent.

You can also contact the Department of Health. they were quite helpful when I was starting my company, especially with label reviews.

If you are planning on making an acidified product, you should look into a Better Process Control course. These are offered at some universities (some have online options) and are a requirement of most food incubators. Hope this helps.


Alternative fish for Fish and Chips There is no cod or haddock where I live and I am looking for an tasteful alternative. I tried seabass and it was nice but what would be more accurate alternatives for cod & haddock?

I have often heard that some restaurants use Atlantic pollock for fish and chips. Your question piqued my interest and I decided to look around a bit.
 From wikipedia ,

In Britain and Ireland, cod and haddock appear most commonly as the fish used for fish and chips,[31] but vendors also sell many other kinds of fish, especially other white fish, such as pollock or coley, plaice, skate, and ray (particularly popular in Ireland); and huss or rock salmon (a term covering several species of dogfish and similar fish).
In the United States, the type of fish used depends on availability in a given region. Some common types are cod, halibut, flounder, tilapia or, in New England, Atlantic cod or haddock. Salmon is growing common on the West Coast, while freshwater catfish is most frequently used in the Southeast. In Canada, pollock, haddock, and halibut are popular choices, alongside cod.

From my experience, pollock and halibut (respectively) would be closer to the the flavor of cod and haddock than some of the others.


How can I save sweet from ants without refrigerator? Sometimes when I don't have refrigerator, I didn't save sweet from ants. How can I save sweet things from ants without refrigerator?

You need to place them in something ants can't get into. A box, jar, or sealed plastic bag should to the trick. Note that as @joe points out in the comments, whatever you use has to seal tightly, and the plastic bags have to be thick.


What is the physical effect of sifting dry ingredients for a cake? I notice that for recipes that call to sift the dry ingredients, most usually cakes or cupcakes, there is a noticeable difference in the batter after the wets have been incorporated.
What are the physics for sifting dry ingredients?  How does this process result in a light batter?

Originally, before flour was as processed as it is now, sifting helped remove things like twigs and other contaminants.
Sifting just helps remove clumped up dried ingredients (flour, powered sugar, etc, ) so that when you add in the wet ingredients you do not have to mix too hard to remove the clumps.
Edit : When mixing the mixture too hard or too long you risk of "creating" gluten and that will render the cake mix too "bread" like (too dense, too chewy)
You could just use the flour as is and whisk it in the bowl to try to remove the clumps.
see : https://www.thekitchn.com/is-sifting-flour-for-baked-goods-really-necessary-213894


What features should I look for in a vessel for making Indian curd (yogurt / Dahi)? What is the most suitable vessel to make perfect curd without any liquid in it? If that true that a clay vessel will be good for it because clay will absorb liquid and the remaining thing you get will be curd?

PS:  this image is just for reference. As there were some misunderstanding regarding for what curd i was asking.

And the clay vessel i am talking about look like this(In india we call it "Kulhad") :

The slight ability of clay to soak up whey doesn't matter, you won't really notice much difference with it. Just use any vessel that is convenient - glass, metal, plastic, glazed or unglazed clay, other ceramics will all work.

If you want curd without whey, you have to use a method which produces less whey (usually, that needs slower fermentation at lower temperatures) and/or strain the curd. Do it in a cheesecloth overnight under its own weight, don't press it like paneer. The vessel is not important.

In principle, better isolation can give you more stable temperatures and thus ensure better fermantation, possibly giving you curd with less whey. In this sense, the thicker the walls and the less heat-conductive your vessel, the better for curd. This would be a reason to use clay, ceramics or glass. But it can be easily offset by using more isolation for your fermenting environment.


Is there an official comprehensive list of E-numbers? Does an official comprehensive list of the E-numbers exists?

I'm thinking of something along what the Wikipedia page provides:

Number
Role
Name
Description
Approval
Notes

An example of an entry could be:

E110
Colour
Sunset Yellow FCF
Used to grand a yellow-orange colour
Approved in the European Union, approved in the United States of America, banned in Norway
Products in the European Union require warnings and its use is being phased-out

These informations can be found scattered around the internet, but I've not yet been able to find a single page containing all of them besides the Wikipedia article (not that I've anything against Wikipedia, but I'd like an official source instead of a page anyone can edit and whose accuracy can't be guaranteed), lLooking up the informations through 4/5 documents every time is impractical.

At the moment I've been able to find these official documents:

Class names and the international numbering system for food additives
Codex general standard for food additives
Current EU approved additives and their E Numbers

http://www.ukfoodguide.net/enumeric.htm

The E numbers are standardized across all EU nations.  I'm not even aware if non EU nations use them?


How do I know if escargot is fully cooked? I recently had escargot the first time at at buffet. It wasn't piping hot but I was able to pull the meat out of the shell easily and it was chewy. There are bits of black
here and there on the meat.

Questions

1) How do I know if it's fully cooked?

2) What are the little black bits on the meat?

I asked the servers but they all said it was fully cooked and safe to eat. But how do I know?

By the time escargot1 are heated to serve (I presume you had the standard garlic / herb butter gratin version served in the shell?), they have already been cooked for two to three hours in total.

Escargot are killed by dumping them in their shells in boiling water, not unlike some cooks prepare lobster.2

The soft body is removed from the shell, inedible parts and mucus removed, then cooked for another two hours. Snails will always be a bit chewy (they loose about 2/3 of their weight during cooking), but shouldn't be rubbery.

After that, the meat is ready to serve or to be used in other recipes, stuffing them back in their shells with garlic butter is only one of them.

Without pictures, it's hard to tell what you mean by "black bits", from pigments in the snail's skin to flecks of herbs or peppercorns there are many options.

1  Typical cultivated species:

The Burgundy snail (Helix pomatia)

The Garden snail (Cornu aspersum)

2 Yes, some kill lobster before boiling them, but that's not the main topic here.


Why use a sandwich press instead of an oven or pan? I often make hot sandwiches. Usually I just put butter on the outsides of the bread, then put them in the oven just until the cheese melts. I see other people just put the sandwiches in a pan with butter, and flip it a few times.

I notice the store selling sandwich presses, but am confused by the purpose. They do not seem more convenient than an oven, because that just adds another item to wash, and they seem to smash the sandwich.

Is there some advantage to using a sandwich press in terms of convenience or of taste?

There is really no advantage or disadvantage to using a sandwich press. This is more a choice of preference from person to person.

For me, a sandwich press is preferable as it toast the bread on both sides simultaneously, so you get an even toast on both sides, and it also presses the sandwich together so that it does not fall apart. A sandwich press also heats up faster than an oven (note, I'm talking about electrical ovens that is commenly used in RSA) and consumes much less electricity to do the same job.

So yes, this is all about what you prefer and what works best for you


Protein in cooked vs. raw chicken breast filet I'm a bit confused by the label on an uncooked versus a cooked chicken breast.  Both mention 23g of protein per 100 g of product:

If I cook the raw chicken myself, it loses a lot of water, so after cooking it only weighs 80% of what it used to weigh, and as none of the protein evaporated, my cooked chicken now contains 23g of protein per 80g, (28.75g / 100g) whereas the store-bought cooked chicken has 23g of protein per 100g

Where does this discrepancy come from?

Proteins are complex chemical forms so it depends.  Let me elaborate by giving 2 extreme examples:

If you boil an egg, the proteins unfold, hook into one another and therefore a liquid becomes a solid that doesn't melt again when you cool it down and there is no protein loss whatsoever.
if you burn a piece of chicken breast fillet to a crisp on a barbecue overnight, a lot of protein mass will be lost.

In your particular case, I see the following possibilities:

there is an error in the label of one of the products and they probably did not send off their product for actual testing, but took their ingredient list from a database.
the cooked chicken is encased in a batter and the end product just happens to have the  same protein content as the uncooked chicken.

You should contact a local consumer protection program and have them send off both products for actual testing as these kinds of tests are quite expensive.

As your labels are German, I advise: https://www.test.de


Evenly sauteing green beans I like to saute green beans.  In case it matters for answering, I saute them in canola oil and soy sauce.  I always end up with some of my green beans perfectly sauteed, some overdone and some not quite done. I sit there and stir them every 3 minutes or so while they are frying, but they never distribute evenly.

Short of constantly stirring for 30 minutes, is there a good trick to get them to all cook evenly?

Try blanching them first, that way they will be almost cooked before you start frying them. Just drop them in copious boiling, salted water, allow the water come back to a boil (over high heat, it shouldn't take more than 30 seconds or so, covering the pan will quicken the return to a boil), then allow them to boil until they are the brightest possible green (that can take anywhere from a few seconds to a minute). Drain them like pasta and then plunge them in ice water to stop the cooking. Drain the ice water after the beans are cold.

You can do this part hours in advance if you like, that would make the final fry at meal time go super quick and easy. They will be evenly and perfectly done by just thoroughly heating through when you fry.


When carefully separating eggs, what to do with the chalazae? I separate eggs with my hands, I'm pretty good at whites going one place and yolks going another. What's got me stumped is the chord. It seems to want to stay with the yolk, but it tends to hold on to quite a bit of the white. Should I let it stick to the yolk, pull it away, or what? Does it contain any fat? If I keep it with the whites, will it keep the whites from whipping as fully as possible?

The function of the chord, that is attached to the yolk, is to hold the yolk into place. To have the most uniform baking possible, you remove the chord. However, I never do. I keep it in with the rest of the whites and I've never had any problems with the finished products.

So you can:

toss it
keep it with the yolk (a little bit of whites with the yolk is not bad, the other way around is)
keep it with the whites since it does not contain fat, it will not stop the whites from being whipped

It's up to you.


Boiling Water For Pasta - With Lid On....Do I Have To Wash The Lid? I hope this is an appropriate question for the site.

Today I was cooking pasta.  To begin with, I filled a pot of water and placed the lid on top.  Then I cranked the heat up until the water was rapidly boiling.  At this point, I was of the opinion that the lid was still clean.  I'd even argue it very clean, as it had been 'steam cleaned' and the high temperature would (in my mind) probably kill some germs.

A roommate of mine disagreed.

Is the lid dirty?

It depends. In a commercial setting - definitely not. In a private one, well, you have some leeway. However when cooking pasta you might want to add some salt and/or olive oil to the water, which might get on the lid. Also pasta might release some starch while being cooked, which might also stain the lid.

In your case I'd say it was as good as clean, however depending on how greasy your fingers are you might consider giving the top a little scrub while cooling it down with some cold water before storing it.

Also if if pot wasn't quite clean that might affect things, but essentially you've steam-cleaned the underside of the lid, and if you weren't cooking anything splashing grease around your kitchen even the top might be cleaner than when you started.

So in conclusion, it depends. Unless you can document the states of the lid and kitchen, and what criteria should be used for "clean", all any answer here can hope to achieve is give basis for opinions you and/or your roommate(s) still have to choose between =P


Why does adding lemon juice before baking cause a thick layer of dense cake to form? I am trying to adapt a recipe for lemon cake. I want to add actual lemon juice to the batter and omit the lemon zest. The recipe I have goes as follows:

250g butter
250g sugar, half and half powdered and granular
4 separated eggs
250g flour
baking powder for 250g flour
zest of 2 1/2 lemons

I experimented with several ratios of lemon juice to the other ingredients. However, each time I tried it, when I took the cake out of the oven and looked at the cross section there was a dense, slightly darker layer at the bottom which disrupts the otherwise fluffy nature of the cake.

How can I get rid of this layer, while still adding lemon juice to the cake?

The original recipe is leavened with baking powder, which these days is a mixture of baking soda, an acid, and a special acid which activates at high temperatures.

Lemon juice is strongly acidic, and will react with all the baking soda in the baking powder. This means you won't get as strong a leavening effect during baking. (Some people also feel that the un-reacted acid from the baking powder results in a metallic taste.)

To compensate for this, you can try adding baking soda (in addition to the baking powder) to the recipe; I've heard 1/2 tsp baking soda to 1 tbsp lemon juice, but I don't have any direct experience with that. I don't know what this will do to the overall leavening or taste of the cake.

It is unusual to see lemon cake recipes which use much lemon juice in the batter. Drizzling lemony syrup in afterwards is more common. You might want to try that instead.


Optimal cooking tool for long-duration steaming I'm a recent college graduate, and will begin working 40 hour weeks soon. I'm not good at cooking, and I prefer to cook all of my food (fish, chicken, turkey, vegetables) by steaming them in a small rice cooker. This currently works out great, and is quick and simple enough to clean up without a mess.

However, I was wondering if it's possible to use one of these "multi-cooker" steamers, such as this Cusinart model for steaming and then slow cooking (i.e. "keep warm") chicken breasts for 4-5 hours while being away.

I was thinking about coming home for lunch, starting the steamer, then letting it run for 4-5 hours until I get home from work.

My current rice cooker isn't built for very long durations of "keep warm", and if I use the "keep warm" setting for more than an hour, it makes it more difficult to clean up.

Question:

What would you recommend for an optimal cooking tool given this situation. I'd rather start the cooking mid-day (12pm), then have it finished and ready by the return from work (5pm).

If you search "multi cooker" on Amazon, you'll see a multitude of devices similar to the one you linked and the vast majority of them are able to do what you're asking. Another option that would defintely be worth considering since you're already accustomed to preparing the sort of dishes you're wanting to make with your rice cooker is upgrading to a higher-end Japanese model such as the Zojirushi Umami. I own a comparable rice cooker and it's probably my favorite small kitchen appliance. It also seems tailor-made to do exactly what you're saying you want to do. It uses an array of sensors to slow-cook/steam to perfection and automatically enters a 4 hour keep-warm cycle when the cooking is done. You can also set a start-timer if you need more time and want it to wait a while before it starts cooking.

As an added benefit over the multi-cookers, you'll also be able to effortlessly prepare rice that comes out so indescribably perfect that even the rice at an upscale Asian restaurant won't compare to what you can make at home with the touch of a button. That's Japanese design for you; when the electronics capital of the world also happens to be a place where pretty much everyone eats rice daily, their engineers are going to produce one hell of a high-tech rice maker.

I apologize in advance if this answer is deemed inappropriate; I understand that answers aren't supposed to just be opnions, but there are many different methods and appliances/tools that could be used to accomplish OP's goal and no objectively best way to do so. Anyone's suggestion would probably just be based on what they'd do in their own kitchen.


How can you tell if pizza dough has been kneaded enough? I am making pizza dough for the first time. I know that you can use the window test and the poke test for bread, to see if it has ben kneaded long enough. Can you use the same tests for pizza dough and bread sticks? Some of the recipes  say only knead for 2 minutes, other say 7-8 minutes. I can not find any tips for how to tell if it is kneaded enough.

The window test works well for pizza as well and is really the only one of which I am aware. I do not believe the poke test will work as well.


Kitchen safe touchscreen recipe reader I think it would be nice for me to have a rugged computer based networkable device with a touch screen mounted in the kitchen to bring up those difficult recipes.

Does anyone here have any experience with such equipment and so point me to a reliable one?

I've been using an iPad as others have suggested. Option 1 is to vecro it to a cabinet or the fridge etc. where it is not in danger of getting caught in a spill. You can navigate just fine with a nuckle or the back of your wrist if your hands are a mess.

Option 2 is put it in a gallon zipper bag. I recommend the 'storage' type over the freezer type as the plastic is thinner and won't interfere with the screen. If you are going to be using it for something with audio it won't sound good, but if you have something with airplay (I use a in the kitchen you can shift the audio over there, which is a good idea anyway as the volume level of an iPad really can't compete with kitchen noise.

I'm considering putting in a permanently mounted 50" LCD screen when I remodel. If so it will be connected to a computer in the basement under the kitchen, and have a touchscreen overlay added to it. The overlay uses light beam interruption and senses 'touch' without you really having to make contact with the screen. This is probably more than most people want to mess with though.


What can be added to non dairy milks to extend shelf life? I'm not sure what's going on but the last two batches of homemade cashew and sunflower seed milks went bad faster than usual i.e. 1-2 days.

What can be added to make them last longer? Both artificial and natural preservatives are ok for me.

This question has two facades:

First get rid of the already-there spoilage microorganisms.

Before blending the nuts, I soak them in vinegar for a while and rinse thoroughly. And always using sanitized equipment and boiling the water (and sugar if you're adding) is quite a good practice to kill the microorganisms you might have in your ingredients.

Prevent (or at least postpone) future spoilages.

If you have a sous-vide setup, using the lowest pasteurization temperature at 54C you can try to pasteurize. Please check some charts on this. It's hard to give an estimate without knowing your container sizes.
Some nut-milk can handle acidity, some can't you can experiment with that as well.


Carb, fat and protein changes in vegetable fermentation, specifically a ballpark reduction arc in carbohydrates I have been fermenting vegetables, kimchi for the most part, for a few years and am familiar with the general arc of the process, as well as observing how active my ferment is.
Yesterday, I started a half gallon of sauerkraut, a half gallon of white kimchi, and a couple pints of fermented beets. Today, I am working up nutritional values for each in support of a Keto eating plan. I've had no trouble working up the raw calories, fat, net carbs and protein for each recipe. Yet I know that fermenting will change the carbohydrates and perhaps other values.
I am aware there is no one-size-fits-all for this calculation, rather the opposite, it seems the number of variables is too broad to pin down any kind of equation. Case in point, I have three ferments going, all burning at a different pace. That said, I'm looking for any kind of rough approximation based on experience.
Two facts seem certain. One, that the fermented product will have a lower carbohydrate value than the cumulative raw ingredients. And two, the resulting carbohydrates will never reach zero. That leaves the rate of burn. Based on your experience, what would you expect the carbohydrate burn to be in a highly active ferment for something like Napa Cabbage, Red Cabbage, or Beets?
Less important, but of keen interest, should I expect the other values (cals, fat, or protein) to change as the result of fermentation?

on the "Less important, but of keen interest" question:
let's talk carbs instead of cals here.  cals are potential chemical energy stored in carbohydrates, fats, proteins, etc.  in vegetable fermentation, the fat and protein content is not a significant contributor to potential calories, so i'll confine this to carbohydrates
microbial fermenters' (effective, not comprehensive or quantitative) ...
most who do this don't track a carb burn rate, but they definitely notice when the jars quit bubbling.  CO2 output rate is directly proportional to carb burn rate, but those are very difficult to measure without specialized equipment
there are two ways that fermenting usually stops, when fermenters

run out of food (mostly carbs)
byproducts (here, lactic acid) are concentrated enough to halt reproduction

so if the jar's quit bubbling, it's important to understand that it might not be down to near zero carbs
inputs are

carbs
minuscule amounts of protein and trace minerals

outputs are

more fermenters
carbon dioxide, which is not retained by most canners
lactic acid
compounds that lend funk to flavor and aroma

note that fermenters consist mostly of:  water, lipids (structural and energy storage), and protein (structural and information storage)
to answer the keen interest ...

net change in carbs?  yes.  down
net change in protein?  yes.  up, but not by much
net change in fat/lipids?  yes.  up, but not by much


How to create a muffin recipe I would like to experiment more with muffin recipes, but I don't want to stray too far and end up with inedible product. Are there basic parameters I should follow in creating my own muffin recipe?

What makes a muffin a muffin, as opposed to a cupcake?

What proportion of wet to dry ingredients should I use?

What is a good method for converting one fruit/veggie ingredient to another? So if I have a great apple muffin recipe, how do I know how many berries to use instead? Or grated carrot or squash?

Michael Ruhlman's Ratio defines a muffin as a form of a quick bread.  The basic quick bread ratio is:

  2 parts flour
  2 parts liquid
  1 part egg
  1 part fat

So you can make a muffin with those basic ingredients in about that ratio.  Remove any of those ingredients, and you no longer have a muffin.  Substantially change those ingredients, and you've moved somewhere else in the dough continuum or even towards a batter.

Personally I'd classify a cupcake as a type of cake.  The ratio for pound and sponge cake are both:

  1 part butter
  1 part sugar
  1 part egg
  1 part flour

The differences between cakes are often the mixing method - creaming versus foaming, for example.  You can see, though, that in a muffin your flour-to-fat ratio is higher than in a cake.  Muffins also don't require sugars.  Cakes and cupcakes do.

From the basic quick bread ratio, you should be able to add any fruit or other ingredients (try bacon or turkey bacon), substitute in dry ingredients for flour such as bran or oatmeal (or another grain), and make a lot of other interesting changes.  Just make sure you stick to the basic proportion of a quick bread.  If you add a very wet ingredient, remove some liquid.  Change tastes by adjusting oil versus butter (or browning your butter).  Add sugar, baking powder or soda for leavening, spices, extracts, etc.


Why don't we need to ice-bathe all leftovers before refrigeration? I'm considering picking up an immersion heater for Christmas and reading up on that led me eventually to Douglas Baldwin's sous vide website (http://www.douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html).  In the safety section of the guide he is quite firm about the need to quick chill in an ice bath the cooked sous vide food if it will not be immediately consumed.  Here's the relevant passage:

  If you’re not going to eat all your food immediately, then you need to
  know that some bacteria are able to make spores. Spores themselves
  will not make you sick, but they can become active bacteria that
  could. Cooking to kill active bacteria like Listeria, Salmonella, and
  E. coli will leave these spores unharmed. If you keep your food hot,
  then the spores will not become active bacteria. But when you cool
  your food, the spores can become active bacteria: if you cool your
  food too slowly or store it for too long, then these active bacteria
  can multiply and make you sick. To keep these spores from becoming
  active bacteria, you must quickly cool your food – still sealed in its
  pouch – in ice water that is at least half ice until it’s cold all the
  way through.

However, it's not obvious to me why his reasons for doing so don't apply to "normally" cooked food as well.  For example, wouldn't many of the various spores (especially heat-resistant ones) that survive sous vide also survive "normal" cooking?  So why don't we need to put all leftovers in ice baths to be able to store them safely.

(Seeing cooked food sitting around on Thanksgiving particularly brings this question to mind. :)

First off, I assume this may partly be out of caution since many (probably most) people don't take cooling leftovers seriously.  Yes, spores do survive cooking, and yes, they can very well make you sick, particularly if food is left at room temperature to cool for hours before refrigeration.  Classic example is in many cases of "leftover Chinese" food poisoning.  Most people assume that it was something in the food they ate when it was still hot, or perhaps due to some seemingly "more dangerous" food like meats, etc.  But frequently it's rice that has set on the counter in a take-out box for a few hours.  In that time, the spores can reactivate and grow significant toxins that will not be destroyed even if the rice is reheated to boiling.  (Moreover, for almost all leftovers, official food safety organizations generally recommend reheating to ~165F, just to kill off most things that grow during cooling.  Again, many people who munch on leftovers directly from the fridge don't follow this advice, and in some cases, it can lead to food poisoning.)

All of that said, usually for small quantities of food, just getting the food into the fridge reasonably quickly is enough.  Why the ice bath here (which is usually only recommended for large quantities, like a big pot of chili)?

One thing is that he's not only talking about "leftovers," per se.  From other things said in the guide, I think he also wants to cover stuff like the fairly common practice of sous vide in restaurants these days where you do the cooking for basically the full sous vide time in advance, then chill, and then merely reheat until at serving temperature.

Related to that, I think one thing is clear from his table, where he lists thicknesses.  Many people sous vide things like roasts or large poultry parts or whatever.  In those cases, it can take many hours for the center of a thick piece of meat to come down to refrigeration temperatures, even with the ice bath (see his table).  Normally people cut up a roast or whatever before they have "leftovers," so cooling down a very thick hunk of meat is less commonly encountered than it might be in sous vide where you precook the meat in advance.

Beyond that, though, there are some specific concerns raised by the sous vide procedure.  As emphasized in the linked guide, it's best to think of sous vide times as "pasteurization," NOT sterilization.

Say you're doing sous vide on a think hunk of beef, which you like relatively rare, so your water bath is only 132F.  It takes a couple hours to "pasteurize" at that temperature, and that's after you hit that temperature in the center -- which for a think hunk of meat could take a couple hours in the water bath to get there.  Moreover, the temperature rise of the center of a thick piece of meat will get more and more slow as is gets closer to the water bath temperature.  That means that the meat may spend more time in the ~100F temperature range (which happens to be around the ideal growth temperature for many bacteria) than the same hunk of meat might in an oven at a much higher temperature.

So, you'll likely grow more bacteria, which may form more spores once you get to 130F or so than you'd have in a more traditional cooking method.

But that's not all -- by not going to a higher final temperature, you're not going to denature some of the toxins that might form and even kill off some spores of weaker bacteria.  Cooking poultry to 165F may not be necessary if eaten immediately, but if you only cook to 135F or whatever, you're likely to have a lot more bad stuff left over to start growing as the stuff cools.

But wait, there's more -- the linked guide mentions that food-service technique I mentioned above (see the section "Chilling for Later Use").  In that case, you're going to repeat this heating up process, slowly re-pasteurizing the meat.  (Obviously heating it up higher than the original water bath temperature would defeat the whole purpose of sous vide in the first place.)  For situations like that, you're looking at THREE trips "through the danger zone," and that last trip will be with all the activated spores that "came to life" during cooling, now ready to produce toxins.  And they won't be competing against the more harmless bacteria and things that are around during an initial cooking phase, since those harmless bacteria were almost all killed off.

And again, since your final temperature for reheating is likely fairly low, you're not going to hit thresholds necessary to denature many toxins, which you might if you were more aggressive in reheating leftovers to 165F or higher.

I'm guessing that this latter "three trips through the danger zone and never heated to normal high cooking temperatures" thing that the author is specifically worried about -- after all, in the section you reference, he mentions to chill the food "still sealed in its pouch."  That doesn't sound like typical leftovers to me left on the plate or whatever -- he's specifically worried about people who have entire leftover "pouches" of food, or those who may deliberately plan to do a sous vide reheat later.

If you have small leftover bits of food that chill relatively quickly and/or you plan to reheat them until they're actually steaming hot, his advice may not apply.  If you have a largish piece of meat in a sealed pouch that was merely "pasteurized" via sous vide at a very low temperature and plan to reheat it via sous vide again, I'd strongly recommend following his advice.


Does there exist a chemical-free, homemade substitute to deli? Kids eat cold cuts cheerfully, whether alone or in sandwiches. I avoid salamis as their (saturated) fat content is conspicuous and alarming, but even the better ones, such as capocollo, are still filled with chemicals, with MSG, sodium erythorbate, and sodium phosphate present in those claiming to be superior because they contain no wheat.

The next best option is to prepare my own meat, slice it as thinly as I can, and use that. Unfortunately it'll be necessary to freeze and thaw, since otherwise the time investment would be prohibitive.

What is a class of homemade cold cuts that can replace store bought ones? I can think of roasting (slow cooking) lamb, pork, or chicken, suitably spiced with garlic, oil, and mustard, but the resulting flavor does not quite compete with the deli section. Does a healthy (chemical-free) homemade solution exist?

Roast beef is relatively easy to make at home and is much more delicious that store-bought.  Here is a good roast beef recipe from the New York Times.

There is a Japanese method of cooking chicken called "Torihamu" where the goal is to make the chicken the texture and flavor of deli ham.  Here is a little more information and a recipe.

A lot of the flavors of deli meat are dependent on salt.  A deli meat without salt just does not taste the same.  Remember that when making it at home, you will always be using less salt than a manufactured meat.  Celery salt may also give you the flavor you need.

There's also a lot of good recipes like this DIY Homemade Lunch Meat.

Here is a video for making deli ham.  The trick to that deli ham texture is cooking gently in water and then pressing.

I hope this was helpful!  Best of luck to you.


What might be the English name for this chilli? I got this picture from searching google hence some unrelated content.

Kasa/khasa Morris is the name of this chilli in the first pic and it is often used in Bangladeshi cuisine.  They usually use the green one I.e it’s a green chilli.  I’m trying to find the English name for it so I can get an idea of the Scoville heat rating for it.

I am currently using this.  Does anyone know what the English name is and what sort of heat profile it might have.

This isn't a definitive answer, but I suspect that the name you have for it is the english name. There are many many varieties of chili and many of them are not found in the english speaking parts of the world, so the local name is the english name.

I googled the name as you provided it and found that it probably is called an unhelpful "green chili". It is very probable that the "morris" part is a corruption of "morich" which translates to pepper (see the entries for morich on this list of Bangladeshi spices). Within that list is an entry for "green chili pepper" which has the local name of "kancha morich" or "kancha lonka", which seems to be a variant name with associated recipes.

I have been unable to find a Scoville rating for this chili or even which of the species of Capsicum it is, but the rating is normally done on dried chili (I think!). There is an excellent summary of chili varieties and types in this page, which might give you some direction.


How to clean a toaster from inside? This is the toaster that I have. I wish to clean it from inside. It has got a kind of wire mesh inside it. What's the way out?

Just found this page when I was trying to find a solution to removing crumbs that lodged on the areas above the tray and wouldn't move when I shook the toaster upside down. I have now discovered that using a paintbrush (art not decorating) is successful.