Shaking cocktails without bar equipment Is it possible to make shaken cocktails without bar equipment handy? How do you improvise when a cocktail shaker or strainer isn't available?

I've been able to shake and strain cocktails with two cups pretty easily.  Ideally one cup should be slightly smaller than the other, though this isn't absolutely necessary if you're careful.

Put the open ends together and shake as necessary (if they're slightly different sizes as described, you can get a real nice seal and shake vigorously).  Now, place one cup on the counter, and the other on top of it upside down, ideally still "inside" the other one.

You want to tilt the top cup about 5-10 degrees to the side, which will "break the seal" between the two cups and leave a very small opening.  That's where you'll strain through.  Now all you have to do is tilt the entire contraption 90 degrees and pour!

This is more easily explained with images...I will try to find or make one for you ASAP.

edit: Couldn't find a good example, so made one for you with what I found around the office:


What is the cranberries/sugar ratio used in the American cranberry sauce? I once tried to make a cranberry sauce like the one I tasted on Long Island, but the one I made tasted differently (it was more sour). I guess I used less sugar that I should have done.

Do I wrongly recall, or do you use also lemon juice to prepare the American version of the cranberry sauce?

For 12 ounces of cranberries, use about 1 cup of sugar. You may like to use part brown sugar. Lemon juice, orange juice, or zest of either are welcome additions. There is no absolutely standard American version; like anything else, every cook has their own variation.


What are the mushrooms used in this (video) recipe? On this video of a recipe for mushroom-onion pudding, I can't seem to recognize which mushrooms are used (at about 2:20 in the video).

What is the name of these big mushrooms?

I'll elaborate on Joe's answer some. It's a little known fact that button mushrooms (also called common, white, or table mushrooms), cremini (crimini, baby portobello, baby bella, brown mushroom), and portbello (portabella) are all the same species. Specifically, agaricus bisporus. The difference in appearance and taste is based solely on maturity. The youngest are white button mushrooms, and the oldest are the big portobello mushrooms. There can be slight differences in skin color for the portobello's, though it tends to be darker than the stark white of the button.

The mushrooms in that video are most certainly fully mature agaricus bisporus, a portobello.

It's a safe bet that anytime you see a mushroom being substituted for a "steak", that it will be a portobello. They have a rich meaty flavor and texture that is perfectly suited for this.


Are Green Potatoes OK? Sometimes when peeling a potato, I find that areas of it are a bright shade of green. Does this mean that:
A) The potato is OK to eat?

B) The potato is OK to eat, as long as the green parts are removed and discarded?

C) The potato is not OK to eat (and if so, why not)?

This just means the potato has been exposed to light and has produced chlorophyll (the green color). It is most likely safe to eat, minus the green areas.

Producing the chlorophyll also produces solanine, which is toxic in large quantities. Remove the green parts and don't eat more than 4lbs.

For detailed information, see this link.

http://www.wisegeek.com/are-green-potatoes-poisonous.htm


How to adapt brownie recipe to cook well in a mini-muffin tin? I've got a great brownie recipe that works awesome in a 9x11 pan.  The top comes out crunchy, the bottom cake like and the middle nice and fudgy.  I figured I would try to make them in a mini-muffin tin, thinking it would be easier for the kids to eat.  Ended up with a mini disaster.

Things I had not counted on:  they rose seemingly more than in the 9x11 pan.  Too much cake like vs not enough fudge center.

Should there be things I need to be aware of?  I cut a good 7 or 8 minutes off my cooking time of 25 minutes int eh 9x11 pan, and even still, they were over cooked.  But more importantly, I realized that with all edges being cooked (as opposed to square in the 9x11), there is a lot of "cake surface" vs soft and fudgy centre.

Is there something i should consider doing specifically to the recipe?  Is there a way to make good fudgy brownies in a mini-muffin tin, or am I just looking for trouble?

Recipe is butter-free (just uses vegetable oil) and only 1 tsp of baking soda as a leavening agent.

Brownies are bar cookies.  Note that the brownies are at the edge of the pan are more cooked, and raised higher:  they set before they settle back down.

Baking the brownies in a mini-muffin tin will essentially make each mini-brownie all edge.  They will rise and set very rapidly, and then easily over bake.

I would suggest that brownies are not ideal in a mini-muffin tin.  Instead, cutting them smaller would be a better solution.

If you do want to try it again, I would suggest:

Don't overfill the tins.  You don't want the batter more than about 1/2 inch deep; you want about the same depth it would be in the pan for which they are designed.
Let the batter sit for about 5-10 minutes after portioning into the muffin tins.  This will give some additional time for the sugars to dissolve, and the flour to hydrate since they won't have as much time in the oven.  This should help texture and crust development (the shiny crackly top).
Reduce or eliminate the chemical leavening.  I would experiment with cutting the baking powder by 50% to start.

There are ways to incorporate air into brownie batter mechanically, by (for example) beating air into the egg-butter-chocolate mixture, but the exact way to approach it would depend on your particular brownie recipe.  If you go that route, you can probably completely eliminate the baking powder.
Reduce the oven temperature by about 25 F (maybe even 50 F in a second trial, if they still over bake and are too crusty too rapidly) or so, to allow the baking process to slow, and give more time for the mini-brownies to rise and settle.
Check them much sooner.  Mini-brownies are going to go from not-done to overdone very, very quickly.  I would start checking as early as 15 minutes, until you have an expectation.  When you can smell the chocolaty aroma is a good time to start checking.
Bake only one mini-muffin tray at a time, so that they are even.  You don't want shadow effects and changes in oven convection to throw off the baking by having more than one tray in the oven at the same time, although that is more an issue of consistency than it is of the complete character of the outcome.


I never succeed in thickening sauces with pasta water. What am I doing wrong? Every cook praises how starchy pasta water is great for thickening sauces and helping the sauce cling to the noodles.

But no matter how much pasta water I add, it never thickens the sauce.Yesterday I cooked one pound of pasta in a liter of water (which should yield extra thick pasta water) and the pasta water was still not nearly as thickening as a cornstarch slurry.

Is it over hyped, or is something wrong with me?

I use Barilla and DeCeCo pastas

You seem to have the wrong expectations. No, it will never be as thickening as a cornstarch slurry. If that's the level of thickening you expect, you are really better off using the slurry.
Don't forget that pasta water thickening is a traditional technique from the time when people did not go to the supermarket to buy a pack of cornstarch. They cooked down ripe tomatoes for several hours, and the starchy water saved from needing a few more hours of evaporation. Also, they cooked with homemade pasta, which had some flour residue sticking to it, not the perfectly-gelatinized industrial pastas we buy today.
If this is not how you cook, and if you prefer pudding-thick sauces, then the slurry is probably the better method for you.
I notice Kenji from Serious Eats has also tested pasta water and recommends it for flavor reasons. He also tested it for thickening - but against salted water, not against a slurry. That's what people mean by "it thickens" - it thickens when compared to random liquids, not when compared to thickeners.

There is also another thing that might have been meant in connection with "pasta water for thickening sauce". It is actually a very specific kind of sauce: an emulsion between pasta water and a liquid fat. There, you start with the pasta water, cook it down sufficiently, and stir in the fat into the hot pasta water. It produces a "thick" sauce - not as thick as, say, mayonnaise, but it is certainly thicker than the oil you are putting in, or than the pasta water itself. It may have been in this context that you have been hearing of "pasta-water-thickened sauce" and thought it meant that pasta water is a thickener for random styles of sauce.


Excess coriander in mutton curry I have made a mutton curry with onion, tomato, garam masala and chilli powder, after marinating the mutton in coriander, garlic and ginger.
However, the coriander in the marination has been excess and hence the curry is overpowered by coriander flavor. How can I get rid of this excess coriander flavor? Help!

If the flavor is already in the dish, there isn't really a way to get it back out. You may be able to add more spices to bring it back into balance, but this is also likely to simply make all of the flavors equally overpowering.

If it is only the marinade that has too much coriander, you may be able to leave the coriander out of the remainder of the recipe.


Wrong consistency when making "after eight" chocolate I am following a very simple recipe for making peppermint-stuffed chocolate, like the "After Eight" kind. I have a problem with the uniformity of the mint mass and am looking for advice.

A few spoons of egg white is hand-mixed with 60 g flormelis (icing sugar). Then a few drops of peppermint extract is mixed in. That's it.

The texture tastes good but is very "corny". You can taste and feel the small icing sugar grains, as if it is not fully dissolved. It tastes very strongly of icing sugar and then the aftertaste is the perfect peppermint taste.

I am looking for a method or recipe to make a smooth version of mint filling for the chocolates.

Recipe requests are off-topic but I can solve your problem nonetheless:

After Eights are filled with soft fondant, which is sugar, often glucose syrup and water boiled to the soft ball stage, then whiped. If you google "poured fondant" you should find enough recipes online.


Cooking octopus: simple boil or broth? I have heard about "polvo à feira" (Pulpo a la Gallega/Spannish style octopus) and I went on a search for recipes.

In one of my findings (https://youtu.be/bHSjnzNvJYo), I have seen Eric Ripert boiling the octopus with ham, celery,  parsley, onion, garlic and seasonings (black pepper and paprika), in a process that he called a "broth".

As I am not familiar with it, is there advantages of doing a "broth" instead of a simple boil (in which one can add an onion) when it comes to the flavor?

Eric Ripert's approach is essentially that if the cooking liquid tastes good, it will help impart flavor on whatever you cook in that liquid.

By adding ham & aromatics, the goal is that the octopus will take on some of that flavor. By converse, the same theory would say that if you cook in a simpler, bland water, your octopus will flavor the water, and the water will dilute the octopus's flavor.

Whether it's necessary is really a point of personal preference. You may find that other ingredients in your recipe provide enough flavor that you can go with the simpler method, or you may find that it really needs that extra flavor.

In general, these seemingly complicated, seemingly unnecessary steps (like using broth instead of water) make restaurant dishes have a more complex, deeper taste. Sometimes that attention to detail is just the difference between a home cook and professional chef. Sometimes the difference can be subtle and feel "not worth it" when cooking at home--you'll have to decide that on your own.


When I bake a 2lb loaf, the very Centre of it lacks structure Am I over proving my bread,  or might there be some other issue?  I'm using a fairly standard baker's mix. 750g flour, 450g water, salt, quick blend yeast (Doves).

I bulk prove for 40 minutes, then shape reasonably tightly and into a large, heavy duty loaf tin.  30 minutes in the oven at about 200 degrees c. (Fan oven).

You can see this effect in the image, where I've held it up against a light.

I think everyone who bakes bread has had this issue at some point.

Two key things:

Make sure the bread is fully baked before removing it from the oven.  Use a probe style thermometer to check the middle of the bread. For a sandwich style bread like you've shown above, the internal temperature should be about 195-205˚F.
Let the bread cool fully before cutting (30-60 minutes).  When you remove bread from the oven the interior is partially in a gel-like state... It will continue to cook and the internal structure will stabilize as it cools and the water vapor redistributes throughout the crumb.  As tempting as it is to eat warm bread right out of the oven, cutting into the loaf immediately will guarantee that some portion of the center will be undercooked.


How do I cook any recipe with frozen eggplant? Four days ago I cut the ends off of a one pound eggplant, sliced it lengthwise, spread 1/4 tsp. of salt on each half, and left at room temperature (approx 65 degrees) for five hours.  Then I soaked up the liquid and brushed off each piece with paper towels.  At that point, I placed both pieces in a zip-close freezer (gallon) bag.  Now, do I thaw completely before using?  Thaw partially?  Cook straight from the freezer?  Any help would be appreciated!

If the slices are thin, you could bake/roast straight from frozen. I do believe the texture will be quite soft so use a parchment lined sheet if you wish to roast it. I like to brush a bit of miso mixed with honey on roasted eggplants.

Another option would be to lay it into a lasagna. I think this option is the most appealing. I wouldn't bother to thaw it if your slices are under half an inch thick.

If you sliced it only in half, such that you have two "boat" shaped halves, I would thaw it fully first. It'll take a while to thaw in such large pieces. Baba ganoush would be a good option in this case.


Light vs Dark Brown Sugar Is there a practical difference between light and dark brown sugar? I ask because I've seen many recipes specify one or the other. Do they really behave differently in some way?

They have a different ratio of white sugar to molasses.

Therefore, dark brown sugar is more hygroscopic, and will have a deeper molasses flavor (and color, obviously)  They're pretty similar, and you can usually get away with replacing one with the other, but if you want subtle flavors coming through, dark brown sugar might mask it.

I've seen recommendations that call for substituting light brown sugar with a 50/50 mix of white sugar and dark brown; I don't know how messy (or if even possible) to add molasses to light brwn to get dark brown sugar.


How to recover cast iron skillet with melted fiber on it So I decided to try seasoning my cast iron skillet in the oven. After a few hours I made the mistake of thinking I could take it out and look at it with some pot holders. It turns out pot holders than will be just fine at 350 can't stand up to the max heat of my oven -- Fibers melted on the handle, or maybe they got stuck in the oil, I'm not sure -- but I can't get them completely off with a brillo pad.

My next step is something a bit more drastic -- sandpaper or a dremel with a buffing wheel. This will leave bare cast iron exposed unfortunately. I realize it's just the handle, but I don't really want that to rust either. If I do wind up scrubbing it down to shiny metal, is there any reason I wouldn't be able to just reseason it using advice on this site?

First, you should never scrub cast iron with a brillo pad, as the steel in the brillo is harder than the cast iron, and can not only strip off the seasoning but scratch up the iron itself.  The same would be true with sandpaper or a dremel.

Instead, you should plan to completely strip and reseason the pan, using lye or oven cleaner (scroll down a couple pages in that article).

If it is only the handle that is a mess, use the oven cleaner method to just strip the handle (protecting the rest of the pan with a plastic bag), then continue the seasoning process.  The handle will end up with fewer layers of seasoning than the rest of the pan, but that's fine, it's just the handle and not a cooking surface.

Alternately, if you can heat the pan in a well-ventilated area (an outdoor grill, for example), you may be able to simply burn off the fibers, depending on what they are made of (if they have a silicone or metallic coating, probably not).  In this case, just heating the pan to more than 500F/250C for a couple hours may take care of the problem, and can even be part of the seasoning process.

Finally, if you plan to handle the hot pan during seasoning again, get some welding gloves.


How to adjust refrigerator temperature/power? On my refrigerator, there's a wheel (1-5) to adjust temperature/power, but there's no indication about it - is it power (1 is low power and 5 is max power with max cold) or are those numbers the temperature?

It not the first time I come across refrigerators with that kind of setting, and I eventually always try a low and high number and try to compare between them about how it feels.

I have a simple refrigerator of Electra, and it has no indication I can see about a model.

Is there a standard for this? How can I know what the wheel numbers mean?

There is no standard, and you cannot know what the numbers mean, at least without the user manual. If it is important for you to keep a certain temperature, get a fridge thermometer and use that. Be certain to measure in multiple places, or in the place you are most interested in because the temperature varies throughout the refrigerator body.

A second way would be to try to jump through hoops with customer support (maybe send them a photo of the refrigerator? or turn it around and see if you have a model label and/or serial number somewhere around the compressor) and have them locate a user manual for you, or maybe even the temperature itself. But this will only give you the temperature the designers intended, which is not exactly the same as the actual temperature in the fridge.


How can I relably work out the largest cut size of vegatables X and Y so they roast in the same amount of time? I'm interested in making an ultra simple seasonal roast vegetable dish. This site tells me that the vegetables:

  Beetroot, Brussels Sprouts, Carrots, Leeks, Onions, Parsnips, Potatoes, Pumpkin, Red Cabbage, Swede, Watercress, and Winter Squash.

are totally in right now (but answers should related to any selection of roastable vegetables)

I'd like to be able to throw some of each in a roasting pan and put in the oven.  However I am aware that each veg will take a different amount of time to cook (assuming I like them all equally soft/crunchy).

I believe that I can make them all be ready at the same time by cutting them into different sized chunks: leeks should be bigger than potatoes.

How can I find relably work out the largest cut size of vegatables X and Y so they roast in the same amount of time?

Ideal answers show me where I can find a look up table that either gives the values, or gives values that I can put through some maths to get the values I'm looking for.

First, there are two approaches. I like to cut things into the size I want to serve (for roast potatoes each piece about 2 or 3 bites), and cook them differing amount of time. This lets me prep veggie #1, get it into the oven, and start prepping veggie #2. Or you could take your strategy of prepping them all at slightly different sizes and putting them all in at once.

Either way, you'll start with a decent guess [*], and monitor as they cook. Some things will be ready too soon - you can just pull them out and have them wait for the others. Some won't be ready when everything else is and will get some time on their own at the end. Either way, you need to update either on paper or in your head that veggie X needs to be cut smaller (or put in sooner) or cut larger (or put in later.)

* hardest need to be smallest or first: I would try Potatoes, Winter Squash, Pumpkin, Swede, Beetroot, Parsnips, Brussels Sprouts, Carrots, Leeks, Onions, Red Cabbage. Watercress I would barely cook and you can't change the size. Toss in for the last minute or so.

Next time, use your adjusted sizes or times. Repeat until it's perfect every time.


How to make a batter that is hard and hold up to sauce I am trying to recreate Beijing Beef like they have at Panda Express.
Most copycat recipes are recommending a batter made from some combination of cornstarch and flour.  I am finding that the batter is too delicate and quickly turns to mush when mixed in with the sauce.

The batter on the Panda Express beef is quite thick and hard, almost like a rock so it holds up to the sauce well, although I would say it is not the most crisp of batters.

Do any of you have any ideas of ingredients/techniques that can produce that kind of heavy and hard batter?

It sounds more like they're frying, then baking the beef in the oven to finish it.

Fry the battered beef until in floats (to ensure it cooks all of the way through,) then bake in a 350° oven until it reaches your desired crispness. The longer it bakes the harder it should get.


When I boil rice, they lump together after a while. How to prevent this? I boil rice often and then store them. Next day when I take them out of the fridge, they are lumped together in one structure. I can heat them and then press them to separate them.

The same even happens within the pan in which I have cooked the rice, if I leave it alone for some 10s of minutes once the rice is ready.

What do I do to keep the rice separate?

To get very separate rice I use a long grain rice, pre-rinsed and cooked at a 2 to 1 ratio of water to rice by volume.

There are three factors that affect the tendency for rice to stick together:

Length of the grain. Long grain is the least likely to stick together. Medium and short grain are starchier and are more likely to stick together.
Amount of hydration. If your water to rice ratio is too high, it will cause even long grain rice to cake together.
Cold rinsing. Rinsing your uncooked rice in cold water helps to wash away the excess starch. My basmati rice recipe calls for a rinse followed by soaking the rice in cold water for 30 min to an hour to ensure very fluffy separate rice.


Sausage roll pastry - how do I achieve a smooth shiny effect? I came across this on the net and would love to be able to make them for a party next week.

http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/296105_10150312607032555_324958872554_8041834_494890086_n.jpg
I've seen pastry like this on sausage rolls in France but don't know how to get the effect.
Is it just puff pastry they use with egg yolk? How is this effect achieved?

No, this is not puff pastry at all. It is a rich yeast dough, similar to the dough for an unsweetened brioche. The dough has a low hydration (around 50% or maybe 55%), so it can be rolled out into a sheet, similar to a pizza base, without being sticky. In Europe, these are made with AP flour, not bread flour, they are supposed to be soft and not chewy. If you are looking for a recipe, search for brioche recipes with a low amount of sugar which are intended for kneading by hand instead of a mixer.

From the rolled dough, you have to cut a stripe, maybe 1 cm wide. You also need molds for baking. They look like a long cone, maybe 8-10 cm in height and 2-3 cm in base diameter. (You can roll your own from tin halfcircles, if you have the tools to cut a tin sheet into halfcircles). You wind the strip of dough around the cone and bake it with the cone still inside. Afterwards, you have to remove the cone with care, and so you have the hole where you can put the sausage.

I haven't made or seen the variation with eyes. Obviously, you have to add the pips before baking. I am not sure how the white/dark blob is achieved. It looks like something was piped on before baking, maybe normal and colored eggwhite "snow".

The shiny effect of the crust of this picture seems to be due to baking with steam in a commercial oven. You can't replicate it at home, if you want them to be shiny, you may consider using a glaze or wash.


Sprouting and Sowing seeds What is the distinction between seeds/grains for sprouting and other edible uses and seeds/grains for sowing/planting?

Generally there is no distinction, other than that the variety for eating the sprouts may be a special one developed for taste.

Having said that there is another consideration: Seeds for sowing often (not always, depends on the supplier and type of seed) are coated with anti-fungals and things to make them less attractive to pests. These seeds should not be eaten, nor should the sprouts from them!


How do I prevent jams from turning brown? I have been a jam maker for years.  We live in an area of fresh fruit so it's always naturally sweet.  I decrease the sugar in each recipe by at least 1 cup and I always add fresh lemon juice.  My question is: do I need to water bath the jam to prevent it from turning dark on the top?

It doesn't affect the taste but it doesn't look very pretty.  I have jams I recently made & I'm also wondering if I could water bath them now even though I made it a few weeks ago? I pack hot jam into scalding hot jars with hot lids.  I always have good seals & I love the sounds of the jars sealing!  I call it the Canner Symphony!

Turning brown on top is usually a sign of too much oxygen in the jar.

The NCHFP FAQ covers this exact topic (search for "dark"). There are a few primary causes:

too much headspace, or bubbles left in the jam before processing;
not enough liquid to cover bits of food/fruit; or
not enough processing time.

All of these result in the surface of the jam being exposed to oxygen. The first two are fairly direct: there's too much air on top. The third is because processing drives some of the air out of the headspace, leaving lower pressure air, which not only prevents browning but also creates a reliable vacuum seal.

Too much headspace is an easy possibility for you to check. The right amount varies depending on the jar size, but you might well have too much.

The processing time is the really worrying thing to me in your case; you're not processing your jam at all, just packing it in hot and letting it seal. That's actually a good way to get unreliable seals, but it sounds like you're getting lucky and it's working out. (But be really careful to test the seal later just to make sure after it's cooled - push down on the middle and make sure it doesn't pop back up.) Still, I might suggest trying a couple batches of jam with a tested recipe that involves water bath processing just to be sure. It might well solve your problem, and it'll make your canning safer.


Can I use soy butter instead of olive oil for baking vegetables? I'm putting olive oil (probably too much) in my oven tray when roasting vegetables, potatoes, poultry, etc.

Can I use soy butter instead of olive oil?

Alternatively, what are some cheaper types of oil that I can use for baking vegetables?

Put it on the vegetables not on the tray.

Anything not on the vegetables is wasted.  You can put a little bit on them then roll them around with your hangs.  Olive oil is good for roasting.  Just skimp on it.

You can bake with any bland oil.  I used to keep corn oil for baking.  It is cheap and flavorless.  Sunflower oil is pretty cheap too, and it has a little bit of flavor that I think goes well with baked goods.  That is what I was using until I used it up this week.


Is "instant flour" worth bothering with? I have not used "instant flour" before as it is not available in my home country, and I have never seen it on my travels

I have seen a few references to it in North American cooking though. Does this product have any real advantages over normal flour other than for quick and easy sauces and gravies?

If so, is there a simple way to make a substitute?

I currently have no problem cooking and emulsifying flour into sauces etc.

Instant flour has the advantage of speed and ease.  You can pretty much always do without - but for home cooks in a hurry, it can be an easy solution.  Its used for sauces, but sometimes recommended for pastry work because of the ultra low protein content.

Normally, when adding flour to a sauce you'll need to make it into a slurry or roux and mix in correctly to avoid lumps.  Then you'll need to cook it for a bit to get rid of the 'flour taste'.

With instant flour, its just pour and stir - no clumps, no waiting.  My understanding is that this is ultra low protein flour that as been flash hydrated, cooked (possibly with steam), dehydrated, and then finely ground.  This means its pretty much 'ready' to use - it won't taste 'floury' since its already been cooked and the superfine particles are supposed to not clump.  (It may also contain some malted barley flour as a dough conditioner).

You could try (this is just an idea) making it at home by basically repeating the above process - steam cake flour, dehydrate, grind...but I don't know why you would.  If you going to do all that, just make a slurry or roux or use cake flour.

This site lays out a few interesting uses.  Using it for crepes because it will hydrate quicker.  Using it for pastry work when you can get pastry flour and you don't want the bleachness of cake flour.


Caramels turn out too sweet I've tried a recipe for caramels that turns out too sweet for my own liking. I substitute agave syrup for corn syrup because it's an invert sugar and I can't find glucose or corn syrup in my area. The recipe itself is
2 Cups sugar
1.5 cups corn syrup
1 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups heavy cream.
basically is there anything I can do to lower the sweetness?

Bring your sugar to a higher heat, or DARKER. This will create a more bitter-sweet, complex caramel flavour. If you don't bring it dark enough, it'll taste very sweet and bland in comparison.


Rescuing peanut butter frosting I was trying to get a smooth, frothy peanut butter frosting. I used a cup of creamy peanut butter, half a cup of butter, and 2 cups of powdered sugar. I liked the consistency of the mixture. But I accidentally left it on the stove and the heat of the oven caused the frosting to melt. The sugar is crystallized, and the color is much darker now. Also, its a lot thicker than I want it to be. What do I do now? Is it ruined, or is there a way for me to rescue it?

There is no way to rescue your frosting. It is not just a mixture of ingredients, it used to have a very complicated internal structure, which is now gone. You will have to start a new batch.

I assume that the taste of the frosting hasn't changed much. It cannot be used for its original purpose, but you should be able to repurpose it in many ways, for example as a bread spread, or as a filling somewhere.


Buckwheat groats have grassy smell? I bought some buckwheat groats recently. These are from a different source than where I normally get them, and I notice that these have a slightly grassy smell both before and after cooking. The other brand has a nuttier smell. They don't taste bad, but I want to see if this is normal and make sure there is nothing wrong with this batch of groats. I soak the groats overnight and then make them in a pressure cooker. Thanks for any tips!

There is nothing wrong with them. The buckwheat is probably ok because on the on the official website called Anthony’s goods every single review is a five star( in fact one of the reviews called the grassy smell you talked about “natural”)one except one review which is four stars ( the four star review was because there was a rip in the package). Plus on the official store the buckwheat groats are sold out meaning people like them and want to buy them. Additionally all the other products on the store also are rated 5 stars. Here is a link to the official website (https://www.anthonysgoods.com/products/anthonys-usda-organic-raw-hulled-buckwheat-groats-grown-in-usa-5-pounds-5lb-certified-gluten-free?variant=1813269699)


Can unsweetened almond milk be used for the same things as regular milk? Yesterday, I bought a bottle of almond milk from the store across the street.  Normally I get lactose-free milk for my wife's sensitive stomach, and today I tried the almond milk in my cereal...it tastes very weird.  I'm wondering if I've made a poor decision in purchasing all this almond milk.

Is almond milk, for cooking and consumption purposes, essentially the same as milk, but with a different taste?  Or are there some things we won't be able to use this almond milk for?

Almond Milk for cow's milk was a really common substitution in medieval recipes.  A lot of medieval recipes used almond milk - almonds being a lot easier to store without spoiling and find reliably when a medieval cook needed some.

  Almond milk was a staple of the medieval kitchen. It was used in a wide variety of dishes as a substitute for milk or cream, especially on "fish days", when the church placed restrictions on what foods could be eaten (the most prominent of which were the days during lent).

from http://www.medievalcookery.com/recipes/almondmilk.html

  In the Middle Ages, animal milk was, of course, not refrigerated, and fresh milk did not stay fresh for long. Most cooks simply did not use much milk as the short shelf-life of the product made it a difficult ingredient to depend upon...  Rather than animal milk, Medieval cooks turned to something they could depend upon, and that was the milky liquid produced by grinding almonds or walnuts. This liquid, high in natural fats, could be prepared fresh whenever needed in whatever quantities. It also could be made well ahead of time and stored with no danger of degeneration. Because of its high fat content, it, like animal milk, could be churned into butter, and because it was not animal milk, it could be used and consumed during Church designated meatless days.

from http://godecookery.com/goderec/grec31.htm

Some dishes cannot be made with this substitution, those that depend on the physical and chemical properties of milk - like cheese, or whipped cream.  It would take a lot of processing and additives to make the almond milk mimic those products.  However, both milks contain fats, proteins, and sugars in solution, and so behave similarly enough in the chemistry of cooking to make them easy substitutes.

I will admit that while I cited medievalcookery.com and godecookery.com because the quotes were convenient, I posted my comment originally drawing from David Freedman and Elizabeth Cook's "How to Milk an Almond, Stuff and Egg, and Armor a Turnip: A thousand years of recipes" which is very well researched and contains a number of period citations and recipes.


Will the bean salad dressing that I made ahead of time still work? I have been making bean salad for a long time. Recently I mixed together the vinegar, oil, sugar and black pepper for the dressing, and put it in a pint sized canning jar with 2-pc lid and refrigerated it, intending on making in the next day or so, but it never happened.

I still have this nice dressing in the refrigerator, and am wondering about food safety - all the ingredients are fine for long periods unrefrigerated, so there should not be a food safety issue, right? I'm also wondering about staleness. I don't want to use it to make bean salad, and have a less-than-wonderful salad. I hate to throw out perfectly good food. Can anyone help me?

It's fine. Vinaigrettes last pretty much indefinitely in the fridge.

If the oil was exposed to too much light or air it might have become a little rancid. Smelling and tasting it before using it on the salad is a good idea. I wouldn't expect anything like that after just a couple months.

Catija alluded to garlic above. Garlic in oil is dangerous because it has an elevated risk of developing botulism- however in a separated vinaigrette all the particulate matter is submerged in the vinegar portion. More than acidic enough to prevent any botulism.


How to make hard candy with only fruit as a sweetener I have a child with a restricted diet that can have no added sugar or other form of sweetener, with the exception of fruit juice.  He is in desperate need of cough drops or throat lozenges, but I find they simply don't exist without some form of added sweetener in them.  My idea was to craft a hard candy with just fruit juice as sweetener, and then just add menthol or something similar for soothing cough/throat.  But I also can't find any recipes for hard candy using only fruit juice as a sweetener.  Is it because the sugar or corn syrup, etc is needed to make the candy hard??  Is what I am trying to do even possible?

I think classic hard candy would be difficult if not impossible to make with fruit juice because it combines the fruit sugars (fructose) with a lot of other things, and hard candy is normally made by heating sucrose (table sugar, which is 50% fructose, 50% glucose) to the hard-crack stage (300-310F) to the point where it is essentially 99% sugar.  As the sucrose heats it  hydrolyzes into glucose and fructose which changes the structure.

Pure fructose does not behave the same way as sucrose. I think you need some glucose to get it to form into a hard candy.  (You can also make hard candy from sugar and high fructose corn syrup instead of from table sugar.)

Additionally,  fruit juice isn't pure fructose to begin with and the other things in the juice would cause problems with the process and would probably scorch.

I think the idea given in the comments of trying for a gummy or a syrup will work better.


Why is Rum not affected by distillation like Vodka is? Is this true:

  Distilled alcohol such as gin, vodka, scotch, whisky and rye are
  produced from fermentation and distillation of wheat, barely or rye.
  The distillation process separates the alcohol from the gluten
  proteins, producing an extracted product that is gluten free. Despite
  being manufactured from grains that contain gluten, the final product
  contains NO gluten.

  Rum is distilled from sugar cane and is high in FODMAPs, so avoid if
  you can. However, it is a gluten-free option safe for those with
  celiac disease.

Why by vodka is the gluten gone but by rum the sugar still an issue if they're both distilled?

Quoted source: https://stephanieclairmont.com/alcohol-doesnt-make-belly-ache/

There's 2 different statements there:

Distillation makes alcohol gluten free
Rum is gluten free but high in FODMAPs

Both could be independently true or false, there's no logical tie between the two. Some of the information in that article is incomplete and/or wrong:

Distillation does not result in gluten free alcohol in all cases. It reduces gluten a substantial amount but there is frequently traces left which may not be tolerated. The standard I've heard for gluten free is less than 20 parts per million, but that 19ppm may still cause a problem
Gin and Vodka are made from wheat, barley or rye. This isn't always the case, any sugar-producing plant can be used for gin and vodka, for instance beets, potatoes, grapes, sugar cane, corn, etc. There's plenty of grape and potato vodka and gin, which are gluten free because the sugar source never had any in the first place
Not all whiskey is made from wheat, barley or rye. Some whiskeys like bourbon are made from corn, although the requirement is only 80% so some may contain wheat as well

Repeated distillation can produce a pure alcohol, however it would remove the compounds that give spirits their flavor. Alcohol stills used to make drinking spirits are often shaped in specific ways to retain flavor rather than get rid of it. Some of these flavor compounds aren't friendly to people with stomach problems, so the less flavor the better essentially if you have issues. It helps of the sugar source is bland to begin with and there's no flavor additives. Rum has lots of flavor after distillation because sugar cane has flavor, whisky has flavor from the grain, but has more added if it's smoked (Scottish whiskeys are peated) and gets further from the barrels its aged in. Potatoes are comparatively bland, and vodka isn't generally barrel aged (it is available but it's not the clear stuff you know) so it's a clearer and "cleaner".


What everyday ingredient will emulsify rapeseed oil? I'm about to concoct a batch of Falernum (spiced ginger & lime syrup for adding to coctails), and one of the possible ingredients is almond extract which I've just found out is in rapeseed oil.

I bought a Madagascan vanilla extract at the same time, which is in ethanol so can be just thrown into the mix. I assumed the almond extract was the same, but have discovered post-purchase that it isn't.

So in order to use the almond extract, I need to emulsify it, ideally with everyday ingredients that won't negatively impact on the flavour of the Falernum.

Googling seems to indicate that eggs (both yolk and white) will do the job; but I'm slightly reluctant to use eggs as I don't know how much is required and if it will affect the flavour.

There is about 36g of oil to emulsify altogether.

Can anyone advise on (A) a different emulsufier or (B) how much egg yolk/white/both would be required?

I think you will have much better luck if you just wait to get an appropriate almond extract. Aside from the difficulty of mixing an oil based flavoring, you'll run into texture issues if you do get it mixed. Generally an emulsion will be thicker than the component liquids. Further, the flavor probably won't be what you want. If you're creating a water or alcohol based solution, an alcohol based extract will flavor it better. Oil based extracts are generally better for things with a higher fat content for the flavor to disperse into, ie: even if you get the oil emulsified, you won't have an almond flavored liquid, you'll basically have almond flavored droplets suspended in another liquid.

If you really want to go ahead, I'd recommend lecithin and/or a hydrocolloid like guar gum. Both will result in the end product being more viscous though.


Store avocados for say a month Is there any way to store avocados, so that if I buy them today from the supermarket (green and unripe), in about a month's time, I will have them just ready and ripe to eat?

[I don't think this is a duplicate, I've looked at the other avocado questions and none seem to answer this specific question.]

If you buy them hard, and put them in the refrigerator right away, you can probably get a month out of them. After having been refrigerated, they will take longer to ripen at room temperature. So check them two days before you want to use them. If they're still a bit hard, leave them in a paper bag on the counter for twice as long as you would unrefrigerated avocados of the same hardness.


Grape Juice left out overnight, now has fizz So I left some grape juice out overnight, I forget how long, but now it has developed a "fizzy" taste. Also when you open the bottle you can hear the fizz escape. I've put it back in the refrigerator, is it still safe to drink? It tastes okay.

I'd be very wary of this, if only because it seems to have fermented remarkably quickly. The fizz is likely the result of carbon dioxide being produced by yeast eating the sugars in the grape juice; this is the same process that carbonates beer or sparkling wines.

The thing is, most of these yeasts are introduced deliberately, and they take a while to do their job. In my experience with home brewing, it would generally take at least a few days for the yeast to begin producing significant carbonation. If you truly did just leave this out overnight and it's already noticeably carbonated, that seems to be a very aggressive or efficient strain of yeast. Since it's impossible to know for sure, the safe thing to do would be to throw it out.

Wild fermentation of this kind is used to produce certain beer styles, and other fermented goods such as sauerkraut, so it's not unsafe by definition. I would exercise caution here only because that level of carbonation seems very unusual to me, and grape juice is unlikely to be precious enough to justify the possible hazard.


Jar pasta sauce resealed itself in fridge overnight. Is it safe to eat? I opened a jar of heavy cream pasta sauce (pumpkin, tomato, cream, etc), ate some and stored the rest in the fridge. The next day it seamed to have sealed itself. The button stayed down when I happened to press it. When I opened it the second time it popped loud. Like new.

Why did this happen? Is it safe to eat? The sauce was store bought. Thank you.:)

Additional info added by OP (in a now-deleted answer):

I put it into the fridge within 20 minutes. But it was room temperature when it went in the fridge. I didn’t heat it at all and it wasn’t especially hot weather.

I asked because sealing seems significant. And it resealed itself with no action on my part. Should I check my refrigerator? Could a jar reseal on its own happen if the fridge temp was unstable? (The power didn’t go out but it's possible it could have been finicky in the storm overnight.)

If you put hot (or even warm) sauce in a jar, seal it, and place the jar into the fridge, as it cools, it (as well as the air in the jar) will contract. The larger the temperature change, the greater the vacuum that will be created.

Most likely, what you are seeing is warm sauce cooling and creating enough vacuum to suck in that button on the lid. If that's the case, it's perfectly safe to eat.

You say you opened the sauce, used some, and placed the rest (immediately??) into the fridge. That's a perfectly safe procedure for saving leftovers, so long as handling of the sauce did not introduce cross-contamination (ex via "double dipping").


It is safe to store celery in aluminum foil? Because I cannot find on a regular basis celery, I am trying to preserve what I buy as long as possible.

After trying some methods, the one I found is aluminum foil.
I wash the celery, dry it, put in paper towels, then in aluminum foil, then put in the vegetables area of the freezer.
I managed to have fresh celery for 2 weeks, maximum, keeping in mind I didn't use a metal knife for cutting the edges.

Is it safe to store celery in aluminum foil?

Yes, it's safe.  It's not acidic, and thus won't corrode the foil or cause it to leach in.

Personally, my favorite was to store celery is in the crisper, in a vented tupperware container, lightly moistened.  This extends lifetime somewhat.


Can I freeze stock and can later? I have a lot of frozen stock and need to free up freezer space. Can I thaw and then can this stock in a pressure cooker?

If it was frozen immediately or quickly after coming off the heat, then it's not much different from "fresh" stock. Food keeps indefinitely in the freezer, safety-wise, and the quality isn't going to be impacted very much because it's mostly water to begin with.

Just don't can any meat products that have been exposed to room temperatures for more than 2 hours, and follow the same safe canning practices (i.e. pressure-canning) that you would for any low-acid product.


Freeze or refrigerate bread? What is the better way to store lots of preservative-less bread approaching the expiration date: freezer or refrigerator?

Does one method dry out the bread more than another?

Methods, from best to worst (assuming the bread is in a sealed plastic bag):

Freezing
Room temperature
Refrigerating

According to the FAQs for Dave's Killer Bread, which does not use preservatives:

Q: How should I store my bread?
A: The best way to store your bread is on your counter or in a bread box at room temperature. Take care to keep your bread away from sunlight, heat, and high moisture levels, they can cause the bread to mold early. Yuck! To store bread for extended amounts of time (up to three months), put a second bag around the original bag, seal it tightly, and place it in your freezer. Thaw slices as you need them. Storing bread in the refrigerator will keep your loaf from molding; however it may also dry out your bread. We recommend freezing bread if you can't possibly eat  it all, but good luck with that.

Refrigerating doesn't slow down the starch recrystalization process that causes bread to stale. According to "Does Refrigeration Really Ruin Bread?":

When bread is stored in a cold (but above freezing) environment, this recrystallization, and therefore staling, happens much faster than at warmer temperatures. Freezing, however, dramatically slows the process down.

Presumably moisture is lost during the starch recrystalization process.

Actually, moisture retention or loss has very little to do with bread staling:Simon Field, Culinary Reactions, ch. 11 "Heating":

Heating starches changes crystallized starch molecules into gels. Bread becomes stale when the starches crystallize, and warming the bread returns them to their soft gel state, making the bread taste and feel fresh. Stale bread is not dry; it just feels that way because of the crystallized starches. In raw potatoes, the starch is compact, but heating makes the starch granules swell and absorb water, becoming soft and easier to digest.


What can I do with Bhut Jolokia's? I'm growing some Bhut Jolokia's (world hottest pepper aka ghost pepper) amongst other hot peppers. Anyone have any recommendations what I can do with them? I picked one off the plant last night. I'm looking for something other that hot sauce or chili.

I once made habanero poppers for some friends.  Sliced the habaneros in half length wise and seeded them. I stuffed them with a mix of cream cheese, monterey jack, sour cream, salt and pepper and then baked them in the oven until the cheese had turned GB&D.

They were very tasty, as the pepper itself was quite a bit sweeter and more flavorful than the normal jalapeno I would have used. I would expect that since the bhut jolokia is in the same general family as the habanero, the same would apply here.  However, they were significantly hotter, almost to the point of unpleasant for the non-chiliheads.

As the bhut jolokias are even hotter, I would urge caution when handling them.  I would also probably enjoy every moment of the pain of eating them.


Pepperoncinis vs Banana Peppers I have never known there to be a difference, until stumbling upon Papa John's extras menu where pepperoncini is listed separately from banana peppers.

When shopping, usually I find the names to be interchangeable. For example, if you go to Subway here in the US and ask for pepperoncini or banana peppers, the sandwich maker will grab the same vegetable.

What is the difference then, if there is any?

I find them to be quite different, actually.

The pickled banana peppers you find at sandwich and salad bars are usually cut in rings. They have a sour but quite sweet flavor that I like a lot. I don't usually define these as being "hot" at all. They have thicker flesh than pepperoncinis.

I could eat these things all day. They have a really pronounced flavor, too, that often overpower any other flavors in a dish.

On the other side, you have pepperoncinis... These I also will eat but I don't find them to be nearly as sweet as banana peppers. They also seem to be more bitter. I nearly always find them served whole, often in a salad (as you find at Olive Garden) or with a pizza.

The descriptions of them here seem to corroborate my feelings:

  Banana Peppers:

  Have a heat level ranging from 0 to 500 SHU
  The skin is often smoother and thicker
  The end edge is pointier
  The taste is mild, sweet, and tangy.

  Pepperoncini:

  Have a heat level ranging from 100 to 500 SHU
  The skin is often wrinkled and thinner
  The edge is more bulbous
  The taste is also mild and sweet, but slightly tangier and a little bit more bitter.

My guess is that Subway only has one or the other (banana peppers, it's pretty obvious to me and what they also say on their website) but they know that people tend to use the terms interchangeably, so they don't argue with you when you ask them for "pepperoncini" and all they have are banana peppers. They reach for "the same vegetable" because they only have the one.

Papa Johns offers both, which is why they have both on the menu. If you ask for one pizza with one half with one and the other half with the other, you will get two different things... though based on their website, you can get banana peppers as a topping while you get pepperoncini as an "extra" meaning it's not cooked onto the pizza, it's served on the side. If you asked, they'd likely be willing to do put the pepperoncini on the pizza but it's not their standard practice.

Possibly worth noting that I'm pretty sensitive to bitter flavors, which may explain why I can tell more of a difference between the two.


Can I use casserole steak instead of braising beef for this Chinese Beef Casserole recipe? I can't find braising beef easily, but I do have casserole steak. Are they the same? Would they work the same for this recipe?

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/9646/chinesestyle-braised-beef-onepot

For the recipe you are using, any flavorful cut of meat that is up for long cooking should work okay. Had to look up casserole steak as that is not something I've ever seen in the US, at least not by that name.
From a  Jamie Oliver forum  , please see the following:

Braising steak is often used in a casserole. Mostly nowadays "Chuck" steak is sold for braising steak and is often used in "Casseroles". This is a cut of beef from the "forequarter" of beef and is the shoulder piece of the beast. It contains a fair bit of fat which is normally rendered down and incorporated into the dish. Sometimes the "Blade or LMC (leg of mutton cut)" is also sold as braising joint of beef......which is on the other side of the blade bone to the Chuck steak but is very lean and somewhat void of flavour.
Stewing steak is nowadays mostly "shin of beef"....which is what is says...shin. This can be from the forequarter or the hindquarter of the beast. It differs quite a lot from braising steak as it contains a lot of sinnue and membrane which separates the individual muscles within the cut. All these sinues render down in cooking to give a gelatinous addition which a good stew requires. You are more likely to see the hindquarter shin for sale as stewing beef as the fore-shin is usually taken for sausagemeat or burgers etc....along with the neck (clod) and skirt which we don't really see anymore.

The terminology may or may not be exact, depending on where you are located, but again, any cut that will stand up to long cooking should work.


What do you use to measure the weight of ingredient? I don't have a single tools to measure the weight of ingredient.
I came across recipe with different weight:
1/4 cup olive oil
1 pound dried spaghetti
2 tablespoons butter
4 ounces Pecorino Romano cheese, finely grated
1 1/2 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
Salt (optional)

There are already 5 units, how do you measure them separately? If you use a scale, do you translate the unit?
Also, do you have any picture for the size of cup/tablespoon/teaspoon/etc? I have spoons in different size. And cup, to me, is also unknown in size.
I also welcome recommendations of scales and alternative methods to weigh the ingredients.

This is something that really puzzled me when I went living in an English-speaking country. Having grown up in Italy, where recipes tell you "Put 120g of this then add 250g of that", I've always used a scale. The first time I saw I recipe with cups and teaspoons I said: yeah, but I've got 10 types of cups in the kitchen... which one should I be using?
Then someone told me that they were real unit of measure and introduced me to measuring spoons (something that in Italy would be very difficult to come by).
So, going back to your question:

I strongly second @Adam's opinion of buying a digital scale: they're cheap and do the job (personally, I would not spend more than $30-40 on it, but you can find $300 ones if you wish).

If your recipe calls for teaspoons, cups, etc. then you can:

Buy measuring spoons/cups (you can find a complete set for $10, for instance this)

Convert them to g (or whatever your scale measures) using an online calculator. If you google for "teaspoons to grams" or "cups to grams" you'll find plenty.

You can even get an app on your phone. I use this app which works pretty well (I'm sure there's a similar thing for iPhone, but I don't use Apple products, so I can't help there).


What species of shrimp is "delicate pale colored river shrimp"? Which is the species? There are YouTube videos how to make 龍井蝦仁.

Dragon Well Green Tea Shrimp Stir Fry 龍井炒蝦仁 | Chinese Recipes at TheHongKongCookery.com

  Traditionally delicate pale colored river shrimp were used for this dish.  As river shrimp are almost impossible to come by these days we used frozen shrimp.   But let me quantify that statement.  Frozen shrimp sold in Hong Kong is absolutely fresh when frozen and tastes pretty darn close to fresh shrimp.  The Cantonese are famously picky about their shrimp.  But as you know, once shrimp gets not fresh it just don't taste good at all.

Stir Fried Prawns with Longjing Tea (龙井虾仁) – teavivre

  Stir Fried Prawns with Longjing Tea (Longjing Shrimp for short) is a typical dish of Hangzhou cuisine. Just as its name implies, Longjing Shrimp is made by cooking peeled river prawns with tender shoots of famous Longjing tea.

Wikipedia works well as a contextual dictionary in these cases, so I just C+P the chinese name in Wikipedia and it gave me this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longjing_prawns

In that case you should be looking for river prawns (a.k.a. freshwater shrimps, depending on where you live), and a quick search in google gives you this guy: https://www.siamcanadian.com/freshwater-shrimp.html


Can I fill my sous vide container completely full? I am cooking a brisket in a 12l container right now. It is packed absolutely full right now. Water covers everything, but pieces are pressed against the sides and against each other. Is this ok?

No, that doesn't sound good. The circulating water is what transfers heat efficiently to everything, making sure the water is the same temperature everywhere. If the flow is obstructed that can't happen. And if the food isn't all surrounded by water that's held at the desired temperature, it won't get heated as desired.


How do you keep corned beef from falling apart in the crockpot? I cooked 3.5 pounds of corned beef in the crock pot last week with the intentions of making reubens. Taste wise the dish was great, but the corned beef fell apart and I did not get those pretty deli slices I was hoping for. I cooked the beef according to my butcher's recommendation, and verified the cooking time later with an online resource and they were pretty close. Did I miss something in the process or is there a better preparation method other than a crock pot for cooking corned beef?

Did you let the meat cool completely before attempting to slice it? Even meat that is completely-fall-apart tender straight out of the (crock)pot will firm up quite a bit when cooled.


What happens if you freeze a soft serve of ice cream? If I buy a soft serve of ice cream (a single serving in a cone or tub) and put it in my home freezer, will it retain its shape and texture? What will happen to it?

Soft serve ice cream is soft because:

It's warmer than hard ice cream. According to Wikipedia, it's generally made at about -4 C, rather than -15 C for hard ice cream. It's also served at a higher temperature -- 14 to 25 degrees F, compared to 5 to 7 degrees F for hard ice cream.
It contains more air. The technical term for air introduced during freezing is overrun, and it's calculated based on the percent increase in volume of the ice cream. The more air, the fluffier and softer the mouth-feel.
It usually contains less fat than hard ice cream, which is mitigated by the soft creamy mouth-feel resulting from the warmer temperature.

If you were to freeze soft ice cream, you'd lose the advantage of item 1. In addition, your freezer takes longer to freeze ice cream than an ice cream maker, which may result in ice crystals in the ice cream. Furthermore, once the soft ice cream chills to the freezer temperature (usually around 0F), the lower fat content may decrease the perceived creaminess, because of the information in item 3.

Of course, having said all of that, I haven't tried the experiment, so I'd be interested in hearing first hand stories.


Use of pizza stone in gas oven I have a new gas kitchen stove.  The oven seems to burn so easily. I have a thermometer in there and it is registering the temp that I have the oven set on.  I have seen where people have used a pizza stone to even out the heat.  I want to know if you place a rectangle pizza stone directly on the bottom of the oven or should it be placed on a rack on the lowest setting?  I would appreciate replies from anyone who has used this and if it had helped the problem

We had an older (1950's) gas oven for a decade which had very uneven heating and used a large pizza stone ( 13" by 16" ) to even out the heat.  We did this by putting the stone on an oven rack in the lowest position, and making sure to give the oven at least 25min of heat-up time so the stone would be as hot as the oven.  This did, indeed, help even out hot spots in the oven and decrease its tendency to burn delicate foods like cookies.  It also eliminated the requirement to remember to take the pizza stone in and out of the oven.

You do not want to put the pizza stone directly on the oven floor.  Three reasons:

It could block hot air vents from the flame into the oven chamber;
The oven floor is generally not designed to support weight and could
be damaged;
The pizza stone is liable to crack or even explode from thermal
shock due to rapid heating if it's in direct contact with the metal over the burner.

Also, do be aware that your pizza stone will accumulate crud from food dripping/dropping in the oven, which burns into a black carbon powder.  We turned the stone upside down every few weeks limit accumulation.


How can I improve rich taste of spiced milk tea? I don't have experience in preparing milk tea. I do have good previous experiences with preparing lemon tea, ice tea and black tea. I mostly used to drink black tea or lemon tea, but nowadays I have started enjoying milk tea.

I tried to prepare it by several procedure and also googled for the methods of spiced tea but I still am not getting the desired results. Nobody seem to like the tea prepared by me. I need to prepare tea almost every morning and evening so I would like to understand where and what I am doing wrong.

Here is recipe I am currently using :

  1.Boil water and afterwards add milk to boiling water let it boil to 4-5 mins(equal amount of milk and water quantity).

  2.Add adequate amount of tea leaves(loose tea) to the boiling solution.

  3.After 5 mins, add sugar to it(as per taste) and tea spice/(ginger and basil leaves).

  4.Serve it after straining tea leaves from sieve.

When I make the tea, I always find it tasteless. Mostly I find that the rich milk taste isn't good enough. It has a brownish color and the smell of tea seems to be ruined. It still has fragrance but nowhere near as much as I am expecting from best quality tea leaves I am using.

Can any one suggest what I can do to improve my cup of milk tea? Are only certain types of tea leaves applicable to this method of tea making? Are there any steps I can take to maximize the rich milky flavor of my tea?Is boiling tea leaves more than adequate time may have negative impact to its essential oils, flavor and color?

Hmmm.....
Well, I've lived in India for 12 yrs & this is how I make 'masala chai' or 'spiced milk tea' at home & in my restaurant-

2 cups water

1 teaspoon black tea, loose leaf (I use Tokla tea from Nepal)

1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger

10 black peppercorns, coarsely ground

500 ml full fat 'whole' milk

Sugar to taste

In a stainless steel 3L pot combine tea, water, ginger & black pepper, bring to boil over high heat. Allow to boil for about 2 minutes.

Add milk to boiling tea, again allow to come to a boil. (Watch the pot closely in case the milk begins to foam, if it does foam- stir & decrease heat a little) Allow to simmer uncovered for 6 minutes.

Remove from heat, let stand for 2 minutes. Add sugar to taste if desired & stir. Use a tea strainer to strain into cups to serve. (or serve sugar on the side so people can add sugar to their own tastes)

Some notes-

I think you are trying to make 'tulsi' chai?
Tulsi = Indian holy basil

If so usually the fresh tulsi leaves (around 8-10) are added to the boiling tea mixture with   around 8 green cardamoms, 2 cloves, 1/4 tsp fennel seeds, and a pinch of cumin seeds as I recall. Some Indians dry roast the whole spices to mellow the flavor a bit.

Use spices like fennel, cloves, star anise, cumin sparingly as their strong flavors can take over & give the chai a 'mouthwash' taste which isn't pleasant.


What should I look out for when creating my own beef jerky marinades? I have had some success with making beef jerky at home in my food dehydrator. I would like to try and start experimenting with some original recipes. A whole host of questions:

What sorts of ingredients can I use in my marinades?
Does it matter how thick / thin the marinade is?
Can I use fresh ingredients (chopped ginger for instance) or should I start with dry?
Can I use maple syrup / molasses instead of sugar?
Is salt (or soy sauce) an important part of the process or can I leave it out?

I'm not looking for specific recipes, but rather the basic attributes of a jerky marinade so that I can be inventive without throwing too many batches out (or being unsafe if salt is required for the drying process).

I have to admit that I haven't tried a lot of free-form jerky experiments so take what I say with a grain of salt. (see what I did there?)

Jerky is a double action meat preservation method. You soak the meat with way too much salt and then dehydrate it. Bacteria don't stand a chance. As Alton says in that episode "Club med becomes club dead". Not one of his best puns but it gets the point across.

Salt (or soy sauce, same thing) isn't required for the drying process but it is important for long term preservation. I have seen recipes that try to reduce it but I would never leave it out altogether. I would expect a reduced salt recipe to not have the longevity that most jerky has- If stored in an air tight container it will last nearly forever.

The non-salt ingredients don't really matter as long as they won't oxidize or pick up bad flavors during dehydration. The type of sugar also doesn't matter- although the recipes I prefer don't include any.

I honestly don't know about viscosity- I would expect it to need enough liquid to carry the salt into the meat. That would take some experimenting.

It is very important that there be as little fat as possible. The leaner the meat the better and don't add any to the marinade. Fats will go rancid quite quickly when exposed to so much air.

Lastly- I think I've posted this recipe before as the answer to some other question but it bears repeating. This family recipe is my favorite by far and I use it as a starting point for any experimenting:

Auntie Fern's Beef Jerky

3 lbs. deer meat or beef, sliced thin
1 T salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 T pepper (I like coarse ground)
1/4 c. soy sauce
1/3 c. Worcestershire sauce
1/3 c. liquid smoke (hickory flavor)

Combine and marinade 12 hours. Drain. Dry.


Made a bland curry, it's cooled down and about to freeze it. Help! I've just made a tasteless chicken and veg curry. I have put various spices in, but it's still bland. It's cooled down now and I was going to freeze it tonight as I've made it to take camping next weekend, so will be heated up again then.

My question is - can I save it now? Can I add more spices to cold curry now, mix it and then freeze it? If so, what spices will give it more flavour?

I have no idea how you're going to reheat your curry, but if we assume it's in a pot over the campfire, you have a few options:

Bring spices with you, bloom them in oil, then add your pre-made curry to reheat.
Make and cook a spice paste ahead of time (or buy one), as it won't have the 'raw' spice qualities that using a curry powder will.  You can then stir it into the curry to taste as you heat it up.  If you're using a curry roux, you may need to add a little extra liquid, as it'll act as a thickener.
Bring along chutneys, Indian relish, or similar things that people can mix-in to add flavor.  (I like the 'hot' chutneys for adding flavor.  Sweet chutneys are better for mellowing out a chutney than adding flavor on its own)
Serve it over heavily seasoned rice.  Dice up some carrots and onions, cook them in oil with a (possibly heavy) pinch of salt, add any spice powders or seeds (tumeric, mustard seeds, whatever else you like in your curry), add the rice, let it toast a little bit like for risotto, then add your liquid and steam as you normally would.  I'll sometimes also throw in a cinnamon stick or a few cloves in just before I add the liquid.  But count the cloves and warn people, as eating under poor lighting conditions can result in surprises.

I wouldn't suggest reheating your curry in advance; camping typically suggests food storage without refrigeration, and you often have hungry people not waiting for food to fully heat back through.  Because of this, it's best not to keep reheating / cooling off food unless you're going to bring it to a full boil each time, and that could start turning the meat and vegetables into mush.


Are bubbling preserved lemons a sign of spoilage? I recently made preserved lemons using a recipe from Jerusalem: The Cookbook. Having poked around a variety of recipes online, it's pretty much the same as all the rest: Lots of salt, squeeze out the juice, fill up the container with more fresh juice, add some rosemary and a red pepper. Float a little oil on top. Let sit in a cool, dark place for 30 days.

I opened the lemons last night, and a considerable amount of gas escaped from the lemon juice, which bubbled for about 2-3 minutes before calming down. The cap on the jar wasn't distended, and the mixture wasn't malodorous in any way. My instinct is to say, "This is bad; throw this away", but I haven't canned anything before so I'm not sure what to expect. What little information I can find on google is either contradictory or tongue-in-cheek and suggest it's fermentation.

What's up with my lemons? Are the gas bubbles escaping from the mixture a sure sign of spoilage?

EDIT: After a week, I'm still not not sure which answer to accept, as this, too, contains contradictory information... I suppose time and votes will tell.

This is totally not a problem.

This style of lemon preservation relies on fermentation. The salt is not intended to halt all fermentation- it just restricts it to the tasty kind. Fermented pickles are a common and traditional way to preserve food because the salt and acid and thriving tasty bacteria make a very inhospitable environment for bad bugs.

The production of gas is just a symptom of the fermentation and not a problem. I regularly make Indian lemon pickle, which sounds like a similar recipe, and it produces some amount of gas. Recipes will typically call for the lid to be gently closed to allow some of the gas to escape- just to prevent the bottle from exploding.

This is not your typical canning. Typical canning uses acid or high temps to stop all bacterial growth. In that kind of canning gas production would be a very bad sign and you would have to throw it out.


How can I make vegetarian marshmallows? My girlfriend is vegetarian and we have been trying to make marshmallows at home but so far after over four tries with agar agar we have yet to be very successful. We have made one batch that were tasty - but too dense to really be marshmallows (but sweet and we coated them with roasted coconut so they were quite edible) but our other tries have resulted in gooey, sticky not very tasty concoctions.

So what are the secrets to making vegetarian marshmallows at home?

This is definitely one of those times where I wouldn't recommend substituting agar for gelatin; it's simply far too stiff for marshmallows.

If you can get hold of some methyl cellulose, it works great for marshmallows.  Unlike other gelling agents, methyl cellulose hydrates in cold water and sets when heated, so you can roast it with direct heat and it will still hold its shape.  All you need is methyl cellulose, vanilla, sugar, and water.

You can find the full recipe at playing with fire and water (see "methocel marshmallow", second on the page).


When should I add spinach to homemade pizza? When making pizza, do you put the spinach on raw or cooked? I would prefer to put it on raw, but I am concerned that the high water content in the spinach will release in the oven and make the crust wet. I have used well drained cooked spinach in the past but I find no matter how hard you ring it out, it is still very wet for a topping! I am using baby spinach. Any suggestions?

The moisture that you're talking about really has nothing to do with draining it or wringing it out. When it's heated, the cell structure breaks down and the water in the cells is released. Since it's predominately water, that means you have a lot of moisture on your pizza to make your crust soggy. At the restaurant I used to work at we had two methods. If there wasn't going to be a lot of spinach on the pizza, then we would just put it on raw. If there was going to be a lot of it, then we would give it a quick saute and then put it on the pizza. I would do the same thing with squash, eggplant, etc. Anything with a high moisture content. You could also roast it first. In both cases, I wouldn't cook it for long as the goal is to just get most of the water out and then let it finish on the pizza in the oven.


Why are my cookies undercooked in commercial oven? I have recently started using a commercial kitchen to make chocolate chip cookies (and other similar types of cookies). The kitchen has a Blodgett double deck convection oven. The problem is even if the cookie looks done on the outside, the inside is undercooked and gooey. I am able to bake in my home oven on a convection setting at 325 degrees F. When I tested that in the commercial kitchen, the cookies were basically raw inside.
I've tried different temperatures all the way from 200 degrees to 325 and I still don't get cookies that are good in the middle. I'm not sure what to do at this point...should I let them cool for longer? The sheet is cool before I remove a cookie.

I think there are a couple things to troubleshoot here.

Check that the oven is working. you can buy an in oven thermometer to verify that you are getting accurate readings. seems you have done this already.
Could the oven be steam-injection? that could cause some problems with done-ness.
Maybe some other part of your process is different now that you are working in an commercial kitchen. Note act 14 in this episode, small things you change can have huge ramifications (in this case not letting the meat rest for a short time lead to a drastic reduction in flavor and color).


Should calcium propionate be disolved in a liquid when making yeast bread? There isn't much information online for home bakers regarding the use of calcium propionate. I've started an Etsy shop and selling various yeast breads and other sweets. I'm going to start testing to see which percentage of the preservative works best for my recipes and gives me the best result.
I need my products to last a minimum of a week. Would it work better being dissolved in a liquid? Would my yeast survive the preservative better if the calcium propionate was mixed dry into flour? Any tips or insight into the use of Calcium Propionate in yeast breads would be extremely appreciated.

With a solubility of 49 grams per hundred ml cold water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_propanoate I would not worry about dissolving Ca propionate in anything before adding to your dough. As with sugar, the liquid already in the dough should be plenty to get your propionate dissolved.


How to avoid too hot pan that causes fire I've start cooking large batches of food on Sunday in preparation for the week.
One item is cooking chicken at a high temperature on my cast iron skillet until it is cooked through. Last night as I removed the first batch to put on the next I added some oil as it was needed. It'll probably come as no surprise that the skillet became alight with a grease fire.

How can I avoid this in the future?
Would it be best to let the skillet completely cool, add oil then, and cook the next batch? Any advice would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

Not likely that pan itself was hot enough to ignite. The auto-ignition point for cooking oils is 400 to 435°C (750 to 815°F).

You must have splashed some oil and it contacted an ignition source (e.g. flame).

One option would be to kill all flames before adding any oil.  Note that on an electric stove, it'll take some time for it to cool down, so you'd have to kill it and wait.

Have a proper lid on hand to smother a fire.

A deeper pan will help.

Pour only what you need from a measuring cup.

Most important - stop cooking so hot.  The oil will splatter more, the oil will be more volatile/flammable, and you have a bigger ignition source.

How Hot Does Cooking Oil Need to Be Before It Catches Fire?


How can I incorporate powdered peanut butter into a boxed banana bread? My husband has made this boxed Gluten Free Banana Bread Mix a number of times. It's easy, always comes out moist, and stays fresh for 3 or 4 days.

Ingredients:
1 package Banana Bread Mix from Anna
2 jumbo eggs
⅓ cup oil
3 ripe medium bananas pureed in a food processor or blender
(approximately 1 cup)
⅔ cup chopped nuts (optional) (He leaves these out.)

Directions:
 1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Set rack to center.
 2.  Grease 8 ½ x 4 ½ inch. loaf pan.
 3. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, mix all wet ingredients
until creamy.
 4. Add Banana Bread Mix from Anna™ and stir until well
blended. Fold in chopped nuts.
 5. Spoon batter into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour, or until
center tests clean with a toothpick or knife. Let cool in pan 1 hour before slicing.

To add some additional flavor, he'd like to incorporate powdered peanut butter.
The powder contains only organic peanuts, organic coconut sugar, and salt. (When making peanut butter, the ratio is one tablespoon water for each two tablespoons of powder. That ratio makes a thin consistency of peanut butter, similar to many brands bought off the shelf.)

Obviously he can't predict the level of peanut flavor, as that would be a matter of trial and error, but he'd like to start by adding 2 tablespoons of powder into the pre-made mix. His concern is that the banana bread will be dry. To avoid that, is there a way to adjust the other ingredients?

Here are some pictures of the peanut powder:

It's a light, loose consistency which looks like this:

He's right. It likely would come out with a different consistency. That 1/3 cup of oil and maybe some egg would be partly absorbed by the peanut butter. That will affect the texture.

For a first try: In a separate bowl I would reconstitute the 2 T of peanut butter with water (4 T in this case). For easier measuring 4 T = 1/4 cup.

Add the reconstituted peanut butter to the batter, two options to mix in:

thorougly mix in the peanut butter until it's fully incorporated into the batter
or, swirl it in, kind of like a chocolate marble cake


Are countertop blenders with plastic jars dangerous? At my local shopping center, I notice that all models of countertop blenders, even the most expensive ($500 USD), have plastic jars. I am concerned that if the blade inside comes loose or breaks while the power is on, that the blade will break through the glass. Are plastic blenders dangerous to use? Which material (e.g. glass, plexiglass) should I look for when choosing a model that will be used to blend fruits, meat, and vegetables?

Looking at it from a materials-science standpoint rather than a physics standpoint, I agree that plastic is safer than glass.

The difference is in how they break.  Glass is stronger than plastic, for any plastic that a blender jar is likely to be made out of, and is less likely to break from, for example, trying to blend a spoon you forgot to remove.  However, glass is also brittle.

When a plastic jar breaks, the most likely break is a single crack running up one side.  The rest of the jar will flex to absorb the energy of the break and then return to its original shape.  The jar will remain in one piece, without exposing any sharp edges.

When a glass jar breaks, it can't flex the way plastic can.  Instead, the jar will shatter into two or more pieces, and unless it was made from tempered glass (unlikely) or laminated glass (even more unlikely), those pieces will be sharp-edged, making for a dangerous mess to clean up.


Sushi in lunch box? Sushi rice preservation I want to make maki rolls for my 10 year old's lunch box.

As I will be making the sushi rice the evening before, I will be refrigerating it until the next morning when I will do the maki rolls with smoked salmon (it's for a 10 year old).

Obviously my primary concern is food safety over texture and I have come upon conflicting information on whether or not to refrigerate the sushi rice.

Any thoughts or ideas?

If your primary motivation is food safety, then you shouldn't keep rice at room temperature for extended periods of time.

There are some people who say that leftover rice shouldn't be kept at all, because there's a risk of Bacillus cereus multiplying between the time that you cooked the rice and got it chilled down.

As such, you should cook your rice, cool it down to make the sushi, and then either consume it, or refrigerate it immediately.

Also possibly of interest (although I don't know if it would work for sushi), scientists have found that adding coconut oil when cooking rice, then chilling it can convert sugars to a non-available form, if you're concerned about diabetes risk.


at what temperature is whole wheat durum pasta cooked, and therefore safe to eat? someone says that temperature is the most reliable way to know if a food is done is or not

they say that there are various signals to know but none of these are actually that reliable

(source: How can I ensure that scrambled eggs will be fully cooked?)

they do not mention the most reliable way, they only mentioned time. the 'suggested time' given on recipes, as we know, is also not very reliable because few recipes are well-tested by the person that made that recipe, but many (a very large percentage) are not tested and or based on significant evidence

(source: How can I tell if the food inside a pressure cooker is done cooking?)

Unfortunately, temperature is not a good way to determine when pasta is cooked. It's great for some things that are simply done when they reach a given temperature, without time being a factor. Meat is the most common example, but it will certainly work for eggs too as noted on the question you linked.

Pasta is different - cooking involves hydrating it, not just heating it. If you're cooking it in boiling water, it will most likely all reach 100C/212F before it's done, and then still be at that same temperature when it's done. On top of that, it'd be very difficult to actually stick a thermometer into pasta to get a reliable temperature reading, and it's so small that it'd be cooling down rapidly once you take it out of the water to do that.

The most reliable way to tell if your pasta is done is to simply test it directly - bite through it and see what the texture is, or I suppose cut it with a knife if you don't want to bite possibly underdone pasta for whatever reason. If it's not done yet, you'll see an opaque, whiter bit in the middle. For far more detail, see What's the best way to tell that pasta is done (when boiling)?

The times given on packages are also fairly accurate, though there's some room for personal preference in doneness.If you cook it as instructed, it will definitely be done - but it might be either softer or more "al dente" than you prefer, depending on the brand and your preferences.  (Some packages may actually give an "al dente" time and a "fully cooked" time, if you're really lucky.)

If you're looking for consistency, and not having to test every time, you can just time it once. That time will keep on working for you, if you cook it the same way. As a bonus, you can also compare that time to what's on the package. If it matches, you can probably use the time on the package for all types of pasta from that brand, and if you like it cooked 10% less, you can extrapolate a very good guess for other types, and so on.


How long can chicken stay out raw at room temperature before becoming unedible? I know chicken isn't edible raw, but how long can it stay outside the refrigerator without gaining bacteria to where you can't even cook it?

Chicken that has been defrosted in the fridge can be kept for an additional 1 to 2 days in the refrigerator before cooking; chicken that was thawed in the microwave or in cold water should be cooked immediately to be safe, but up to 24 hours or so should be fine.


What can I do with a large amount of dried cilantro? My husband came home from America and proudly Presented me with about 4 cups worth of dried cilantro he bought from pensey's spices. I do love pensey's, but I don't see how coming from pensey's can save this stuff from it's existential crisis.  What do I do with 4 cups of dried cilantro?

Cilantro (or as the rest of the world calls it, coriander) is one of the most ridiculously applicable cooking herbs I have had the privilege of using.

That said, you are correct - when dried, it's application becomes far more limited (to a far greater extent than most other herbs and spices).

I have successfully used dried coriander in english stews, curries, pies, ice-cream, fried/breakfast egg seasoning, salads and coffee.

I have not successfully used it in stir-fries, any asian cooking, thai curries, or anything complicated or french, where fresh coriander does seem to work.

Take this with a grain of salt, but I think it has something to do with the way coriander breaks down in slow-cooked or oil-heavy dishes, so fast stuff or with coconut milk etc doesn't work so well with the dried herb.


How do you determine whether a coconut is young or not by knocking on it? I've seen some people knock on a coconut to determine if it is young or not. Sometimes they knock with their knuckles, or with a machete. How do they do that?

A young coconut has lesser meat, but softer and almost-translucent. The coconut water also tastes better.

Edit: Take note that the key word here is KNOCK. I generally don't see them shaking the coconut.

Shake it gently and listen for and feel the slosh. As coconuts age the liquid level decline to zero

An unripe coconut is nearly full and can hardly slosh. A good slosh sound is a generally ripe coconut (about 150 to 300 ml's of liquid). As the liquid get less and less the flesh get softer and tastier to eat raw

There are many different types of coconuts, this may not apply to them all?


Would freezing affect the flavour of mint tea? I have a recipe that calls for a large pot of strong mint tea. I don't have time to make the recipe these days, but I'd like to make the tea before the spearmint in the garden dies off so I can finish this later when I have time. My plan was to harvest the remaining mint (I was going to include the stems as well since by now I've already used many leaves - but would stems affect the flavour in a negative way?), brew a pot, then put it in a container and freeze it, and then thaw when necessary. Would freezing affect the flavour?

Some of the volatile flavors will be diminished, but I've managed to make fairly good drinks with the help of mint that I kept frozen. In my experience, freezer burn starts to become visible after two or three months, and starts to harm flavor probably around 4-6 months.

I'm not sure preparing the drink will work really well, but if you just defrost the drink in the refrigerator, it probably won't be terrible. Active thawing with heat will probably cause some harm. Many infusions and teas become a bit cloudy and lose color after bottling or freezing, which is why most bottled teas use an enzyme (not usually a listed ingredient) designed to mitigate that.


Can any custard be made into a frozen custard? I recently came upon a book of antique recipes, and there are several wonderful custards. I really have my eye on an almond custard, but not to serve as a custard, but to freeze in an ice cream maker and serve as a nice summer dessert.

So, quite simply, can any custard recipe be used as the basis for frozen custard? Or does a recipe have to be made specifically with freezing in mind?

There are a variety of frozen desserts which are all related.  The main difference between ice cream and frozen custard is the amount of eggs used to thicken the base mix.
Philadelphia style ice cream is made from a base mix of milk and/or cream, sugar, and flavorings.
French (or simply plain) ice cream is made from a base mix which is essentially a very thin custard or creme anglaise:  milk and/or cream, sugar, and flavorings thickened with egg yolks or whole egg.  The base mix is cooked to thicken, and then chilled prior to churning.
Frozen custard is very similar to French style ice cream, but with a greater ratio of eggs or egg yolks to dairy or liquid in the mix.
With this information, you can adapt nearly any custard recipe to be freezable as ice cream or frozen custard.
My survey of frozen custard recipes indicates a ratio of eggs to dairy of about 5 egg yolks to three cups (700 mL) dairy, or 6 whole eggs to 4 cups (1 L) of dairy.
To adapt any custard recipe for freezing, then:

Adjust the ratio of egg yolks to dairy to no more than about 5 yolks per 3 cups dairy.
You may also want to adjust the total yield to be based on no more than 3 cups dairy depending on the capacity of your ice cream maker.  Many home ice cream makers have a 1 quart (close to 1 L) capacity, but you need to leave room for the air which will be incorporated as the mix is churned.
I recommend not using whole eggs for frozen custards, as the yolks facilitate a better texture, and create the rich eggy custard flavor.

Frozen desserts are served colder than custards normally are, so the flavors will be more muted.  You may need to compensate by increasing the ratio of flavoring ingredients.
This will be hard to judge until you have made the frozen custard/ice cream at least once.

Cook the custard until it thickens on the stove top, per the normal custard method.

Chill it rapidly for safety, and then hold it for at least 4 hours (overnight is even better).  While I cannot explain the science, empirically, allowing the mix to mature lets the flavors meld and produces a better frozen dessert.

Churn it into a frozen dessert according to the instructions of your particular ice cream maker.

Note that you can even convert a custard recipe into a Philadelphia style ice cream by eliminating the eggs completely, and simply creating a dairy/sugar/flavoring mix.   These still benefit from overnight maturation before churning.


What is the right use of bake and broil? I look inside the oven and realize that when baking the heat comes from below and when broiling the heat comes from the top.

Although there's a intuition which says that the oven is small and so everything should be at the same temperature from the inside I'm sure that as I have two options there's at least one big difference.

What is this difference between them? Why do I bake a cake and not broil it? Which should I use for all kinds of meats? Depends? If I could extend this question to the default temperature of each, why are they different?

When you use an oven to bake, you can control it's temperature. When you use it to broil, it just turns on the element as high as it can go.

For baking or roasting, it is vitally important to control temperature, so don't ever broil.

When doing some veggies or meats (steaks, fish), you may want to broil. It cooks from the outside VERY quickly, so it is good for rare steak and partially cooked veg.


If a recipe calls for canned beans and I want to use dried beans, what do I need to do to the dried beans first? This is for chili in a slow cooker and I'll be using red beans of some kind--kidney I suppose.  I know I need to soak them, but do they need to be pre-cooked too?

Canned beans are already cooked, so if you want the same texture... yes.  Soak and then cook your beans until they are just tender.


Dehydrating Strawberries - Wax Paper or Parchment? I just tried dehydrating strawberries in our oven (it has a dehydrator setting), and used parchment paper to line the metal trays. The results were quite good, but the parchment absorbed a lot of juice and I'm wondering if wax paper would be better? Or would that just leave wax on the fruit?

Instead of parchment or wax paper, why not aluminum foil? If you use the slider type of foil  (where one side is non-stick and food slides off easily), any juice released when dehydrated will also dry under the strawberries and stick to the dried berries, not the foil. I use it when dehydrating herbs in my oven. (I put a 100 watt incandescent bulb in the bulb socket and leave the light on. The temperature stays just under 120° F or about 50° C.)


Mozzarella. Obtaining buffalo milk from whole milk and heavy cream I am trying to make mozzarella using rennet, citric acid and milk. However, having read on the Internet about this process, I've found out that the best mozzarella is produced from buffalo milk.

I only have whole (3% fat) milk available and I was wondering whether I could approximate buffalo milk by adding in heavy cream (30% fat).

Is this possible and what is the ratio of milk / cream to obtain a similar consistency? If this is not possible do you have any good tips on creating a good curd from whole 3% milk (pasteurized) available off-the-shelf?

According to Wikipedia, buffalo milk has 8% milkfat by weight. Cow's milk is listed on that same table as 3.9%, so I'll use that figure for consistency, though the number does vary both from cow to cow and by breed.

So, you need to figure out the portions in which you'd mix together whole milk and heavy cream to reach the same fat content as your buffalo milk.

What you want is a formula in which the amount of fat from the whole milk plus the amount of fat from cream equals the amount of fat from buffalo milk. The amount of fat from the whole milk would be 0.039x, where x is the amount of whole milk, and the amount of fat from the cream would be 0.3y, where y is the amount of cream. And finally, the amount of fat that you would have from the same quantity of buffalo milk would be 0.08(x+y). Putting it together you have 0.039x + 0.3y = 0.08(x+y)

Solve for y to get y=0.18 x, or 18% as much cream as milk. If your milk truly is 3% fat, this would be closer to 22%. Lets meet in the middle at 20%, since it's going to vary anyway.

What this boils down to is that, to approximate the fat content of buffalo milk, you'd use about 200mL cream for 1L of whole milk.


What helps against astringent mouthfeel from spinach or chard? Spinach and chard dishes, if prepared from fresh veggies, have a somehow astringent mouthfeel, that can be unpleasant. Does anybody know what exactly causes this mouthfeel chemically and/or knows a good counter substance that makes the astringency go away?

Blanching briefly does an excellent job of neutralizing bitterness, or more precisely, astringency, even if the blanched spinach is recooked.

Basically, boil water, add washed spinach until submerged (5-30 seconds depending on preference; chard could go up to a minute or so depending on the target texture desired). Drain quickly. Submerge drained spinach in a bowl of ice and water to rapidly chill. Press spinach to remove excess water.

Recooking, even in applications like quiche, will do a very nice job of retaining the bright green color and generally astringency, if present at all, is minimal. If I am not recooking in some way, I often just dress simply in something like fresh ginger and soy sauce or a ground sesame, mirin and salt based sauce without reheating.


How to turn a large piece of meat without losing breading I have a mustard-crusted pork tenderloin recipe that I really like, but I have a presentation problem. Basically coat the tenderloins in a honey mustard sauce, then bread with panko. These are fried for a few minutes in a large skillet in clarified butter. Once brown on all sides, the loins are finished in the oven.

The problem is I always loose most of the breading while turning the loins to brown them or when I take them out of the pan. The ideal is that each medallion should be evenly coated around the outside. Instead I end up with a platter of saucy (and tasty) crumbs underneath my half-crusted meat.  The challenge is that each piece of meat is quite large, about a pound, and pretty long. How can I turn and lift these tenderloins without ruining my crust?

I have tried both metal and plastic tongs, with no better result. I have tried some of the tips here: How can I get breaded chicken to stop from sticking to the frying pan?.  Though my problem was not quite the same.

Here are a few ideas which might help:

Toss the meat in some flour first, then put it in the sauce, then breadcrumb it. The flour will help everything stick better
I haven't seen your honey sauce recipe, but if you can incorporate an egg or egg yolk in it, give it a go: it will work with the flour to make the sauce far stickier for the crumbs and you won't taste it
After breadcrumbing the meat, leave it in the fridge a few hours or overnight before frying
Don't try moving the meat until the surface in contact with the pan is genuinely cooked and golden - it will naturally start to unstick from the pan as the cooking surface caramelises so this is your best shot at keeping your crust. Before getting your spatuala under the meat, shake it loose first, and once it is moving you can go in for the flip
If 4. just isn't working, you can even put a piece of siliconised greaseproof paper in the pan, put the oil on the paper and fry the meat on that - you can then flip it just by lifting the paper (I sometimes do this with fragile fish)

Hope it works out for you!