White spots on the dough while it was rising Yesterday I was trying to make Croissant. I started by making the dough that contained yeast as the rising agent, and after mixing all of the ingredients I left it to rise at room temperature.
After 2 hours when I checked it out I found that there were white spots on the dough, and they are similar to the spots forming on breads when they go bad.
It was very similar to this image except that the small spots in the image are flour but in my dough it were, I guess, fungal things.
I didn’t know what exactly it was or whether to continue the rising process or not, but I decided to wrap it and put it in the freezer until I know what to do.
By the way, I discovered that I forgot to add sugar (which was in the recipe) to the dough before allowing it to rise), and still I didn’t add it, could this be a factor?
Do you have any idea what are those white spots and are they harmful? And what should I do with the dough in my freezer?
Thanks in advance!

Those white spots are simply flour on the outside of the dough, it would take far longer for mold to develop. It's fine, continue your bake as normal. Leaving sugar out won't hurt anything except the dough will be less sweet.


Sausage grease in fridge I forgot a pan with a little sausage grease in the fridge (1 1/2 to 2 weeks). The pork sausages had peppers, herbs and maybe onions in them, the grease is orange from the chilis and peppers. If I cooked them properly (350 degrees for 40-45 minutes) can the leftover grease have any risk of harbouring botulism? (I'm not going to eat it but would like to know how to I clean it safely). Would recooking the pan kill off any toxins, etc.?

It was a metal baking pan and a knife and fork. I am only worried about botulism and I don't know if normal washing is enough if by chance it was in the fat and whether it would contaminate the sink, etc. I read about bacon fat but wondered if sausages might be different with peppers and maybe onions in them.

Discard the contents of the pan in the trash.

Wash the pan with hot water and soap.

All will be well once you've done this. There is no reason to be concerned about which particular pathogens you tossed in the trash and washed down the drain. You can safely assume it was a few of all of them.


What would "Disintegrant", "Ammonium", or the units of measure "glass" or "gl" mean in a non-American book? Just purchased a baking cookbook online which, while written in English, is clearly from a country outside of the U.S. Units are metric, which is fine, but there a couple of terms with which I am unfamiliar. Could anyone give me a clue about 'disintegrant', 'ammonium', or the units of measure 'glass' for dry ingredients or 'gl' for liquids? Thanks!

Thank you very much for the responses, much appreciated!
In response to your comments, here is a pic of the cookbook and a pic of a sample recipe using 'dintegrant'.
Thanks in advance for your interest!

"Ammonium" is probably "baker's ammonia" or "ammonium carbonate" -- this is an old-school leavening agent, which has mostly been replaced with baking soda & baking powder in modern cooking.

A "disintegrant" is the opposite of a binder. Without context, knowing what it is specifically talking about is hard to say. In pharmacology, a disintegrant is used in oral tablets to make them rapidly break up when they get wet. Most "chewable" oral tablet medicines have a disintigrant to help them quickly break up when you put it in your mouth.

Edit: Based on the example recipe that you added, I'm going to guess that it's also reference to some kind of leavening agent. Whether it's intended to be baking powder, baking soda, or is also a reference to baker's ammonia, I'm not sure. Seems like it would be necessary to experiment a little bit to determine--but I think it's safe to say it's probably one of those leavening agents.

I presume that "gl" is an abbreviation for "glass" and both refer to the same unit. This other question indicates this is a common Russian unit of measure (is your cookbook Russian?). There is no accepted answer on that question, but the answers there all indicate that it is somewhere between 200ml and 1 cup.


How can brisket have separable lean and fat, when it is trimmed to 0" fat? The USDA has different calorie amounts for brisket

Lean and fat, 0" fat (1.69 kcal/gram)

Lean, 0" fat (1.37 kcal/gram)

Lean and fat, 1/8" fat (2.78 kcal/gram)

Lean, 1/8" fat (1.29 kcal/gram)

What would be examples of each of the 4 above scenarios?

Lean brisket and fatty brisket refer to two different parts of the cut.

Lean is also known as the flat.

Fatty refers to the point, a separate fatty muscle group that sits on top of the flat.

These two cuts are often served separately in American barbecue. Also, because they vary in fat content and therefore tenderness, they are often cut to different widths.

I’m not sure that this is a perfect answer because I’m not sure I completely understand your question. But I think this information may be important to help you reach a conclusion.

Please refer to the annotated photo below courtesy of Eater. Especially in reference to the thick layer of fat that rests above the point and how the muscle of the point has a different appearance than the flat.

To more directly answer the question, the part where it is talking about a fat measurement is literally the thickness of the fat layer. Where it talks about “lean” vs “lean and fat” I think it’s talking about which part of the brisket. The flat or the flat + the point. That’s my interpretation just from an initial reading.


Why did my toasted acorn squash seeds smell like chocolate? I recently toasted some acorn squash seeds in my toaster and, to my surprise, when I opened the toaster I got the unmistakable aroma of chocolate. A friend readily confirmed that they did indeed smell like chocolate, so I'm pretty sure this wasn't just wishful thinking on my part. Alas, they didn't taste like chocolate...

I didn't do anything fancy to the seeds before cooking them - I just washed them and broiled them in my toaster at 450F for about 5-10 minutes.

I assume that there is some chemical reaction taking place that produced the same compound in the seeds that also occurs in roasted chocolate, but I have no idea what it is or why I'd only have this happen with acorn squash seeds and not, say, toast.

Any ideas about what caused this?

Thanks!

The difference between carmelization and the Malliard Reaction

When cooking seeds and nuts, you are essentially carmelizing various basic sugars and amino acids (the components of protiens) via the malliard reaction.  This is what gives a grilled steak a different flavor than a boiled one, just like white table sugar has a different flavor from carmelized sugar via carmelization.

When cooking anything you are trying to add flavor to, there is a point where it goes from tasty to not-tasty.  Think of a charred steak or burnt caramel.  Some items that we expect a certain amount of bitterness from (coffee, chocolate, etc) are pleasant to smell because they smell like they will taste; a little bitter and likely robust.

When you are expecting a buttery, nutty taste, the smell of chocolate or coffee may seem pleasant, but it tends to signify the seeds have cooked to that doness, which is probably not an ideal one for that item.  A medium-well tuna steak may smell nice, but (arguably) won't taste as nice as a rare/medium-rare steak.

You essentially burnt your seeds. (no snickering!)

I would recommend in the future you pull them out of the oven a few minutes before they smell like you want them to.  They will keep cooking on or off the pan for a couple minutes due to residual heat.


Chemical meat tenderizers I know pineapple (Hawaiian cooking), onion (Chaliapin steak), pickle juice (Chick-fil-A) and honey (Shokugeki no Soma). All tenderize meat via cooking and / or marinating. My questions are:

What others meat tenderizers are there?
Is there a tasteless or more mellow substitute that wouldn't impart so much of a flavour?

The tenderizing actions for all of the examples you've listed are different, and some are entirely debatable. Tenderizing isn't about specific ingredients; it covers a whole range of different techniques used to increase the perception of juiciness in the final meat, while reducing the perception of tough connective tissue. There are many different ways to accomplish this.

Tenderizing is very often coupled with attempts to add flavor to the meat, as in the classic and important marinade. Marinating does several things: it exposes the meat to salt, and to acid, and to other flavorful compounds. Since you're asking specifically about limiting flavor additions, let's discount that last and look at the other actions, which we can perform separately:

Brining: in general, this uses salt (and often sugar) to cause osmotic changes and denature proteins within the meat, which causes it to retain more moisture during cooking; hence it can seem more tender after cooking. A simple brine generally doesn't add a lot of flavor, but it does add plenty of salt (which can affect the perception of other flavors) and it takes time. This is the effect of pickle juice, which contains large amounts of salt.
Acid: exposure to acids denatures many proteins, to the point where some delicate proteins can be "cooked" entirely using acid, as in ceviche. However, longer exposure can unpleasantly break down meat into mush - there's such a thing as too tender. Acid adds a tangy flavor, and this flavor provides part of its "tenderizing" power; it triggers the release of enzyme-laden saliva that tenderizes as you eat.

There are other ways to accomplish similar results that introduce even less flavor:

Enzymatic action: a few fruits, notably pineapple and papaya, contain enzymes (bromelain and papain, respectively) that are particularly good at breaking down the proteins and connective tissues present in meat. This is similar to the breakdown that acids cause, and it has similar downsides; too much breakdown causes the meat to do from "tender" to "mushy". However, bromelain and papain powders are both available commercially, and they add much less flavor than acids do. There is some speculation that the onions in Chaliapin steak provide a similar enzymatic action, but evidence is mixed and there's a lot else going on in that dish besides.
Velveting: this is a cooking technique that uses a thin, largely flavorless coating on the outside of thinly sliced strips of meat to cook them more gently, reducing moisture loss and keeping them tender. Thin slices are important here too. The manga that you cite for the effect of honey does seem to imply that honey has an enzymatic action, but in a previous question that addressed it I concluded that the actual effect is one of velveting. As with onions, it's questionable whether honey contains the right enzymes for quick tenderizing.

Now, all of this so far has discussed chemical means of tenderizing meat. But it turns out there's an entire category of classic tenderization that adds no flavor whatsoever:

Mechanical action! For ages cooks have tenderized various tough cuts by breaking down their connective tissues with a variety of means. This can be as simple as slicing across the grain with specific cuts of meat, which shortens tougher meat fibers and produces a better result than slicing parallel to the grain. Meat can be pounded or sliced thin to break down connective tissue as well (and this is the main tenderizing effect with Chaliapin steak). Mechanical tenderization can use something as simple as a common spiked kitchen mallet or the back of a heavy pan, or a larger commercial device which uses spiked rollers or long needles to puncture the meat repeatedly and break connective tissues and fibers. If you're looking for a way to tenderize a cut of meat without affecting its flavor, this is the gold standard. It does tend to be immediately visible, and it's often thought of a "cheap" way to affect tenderization, but there's no denying the results or the ubiquity of this method across many different food cultures.


Advice for gingerbread houses? I'm considering entering a gingerbread house contest with my mom this year.  I might've done a few as a kid, but I've only done one before in my adult life, more than 10 years ago, and I remember having problems with the amount of spread of the parts.

Does anyone have any advice?  are there any tricks to keep parts from spreading as much, or should I be baking the parts, then cutting them?  (or par-baking, cut while still soft, then finish baking to firm everything up?)

Should I bake the parts well in advance to let them dry out / stale up so they're stiffer before assembly, or do I want a little bit of flex when I'm assembling so I don't accidentally crack them while working?

Also, recommendations on the best thickness of wall sections to use (especially based on the height I'm dealing with, as I assume I'd want them thicker the higher I'm going) would be great, too.

I make gingerbread houses every year. Walls should be approximately 1/4 inch thick. I have found that cutting the pieces first to work best. Yes there is some spread, but when they come out of the oven, I replace the stencil and trim up any spread (for the straight outside edges, a pizza cutter works well). I know it sounds redundant, but sometimes I don't cut quick enough, or I am distracted by the phone, or any other number of things, if I only cut after  baking. With the items pre-cut, if I get distracted, I at least have a usable part. Granted I may have to shave any spread very gently with a microplane or the edge of a knife, but that is just what works for me.

I also will roll the dough out on parchment paper, cut and remove the excess, then slide the whole thing onto a pan for baking. This way, you don't get any "stretch" of your pieces. I have several square cookie cutters that I will use to cut out the windows and such. I make the windows rectangular by using the cookie cutter and cutting a square then moving it and cutting another half square. This is helpful because when the gingerbread comes out of the oven, you don't have to spend a lot of time with a knife trimming the inside of all the windows... you just punch any spread out with the cookie cutter.

As Sobachatina mentioned, melted sugar makes beautiful windows. I however, will lay the walls on a silicone mat and pour the sugar directly into the window holes. No need to "glue."

I'd hate for you to make a gingerbread house with the "wrong" icing. You want an icing that will dry rock hard, like cement. For this you will want to use "Royal Icing."

For larger houses, use canned goods to hold the walls in place while the icing dries. The house should be built at least one day before you start decorating, to be sure it has set up really good.


What can I make with corn flake that is no longer crispy? I left the cornflake bag open for too long that it is not crispy anymore. Still taste good, but I wonder what can I do with it.

You can crisp them up again in a hot oven for a few minutes (exact temperature not too important, spread them out thinly on a baking sheet and take them out before they burn).  I'd then go on to make a normal cornflake cake recipe of your liking straight away, to avoid having the same problem again.


How to cook fried potatoes in a No Fry Cooker? I want to “No Fry” French fried potatoes. Can I stack them on top of each other to cook and brown a little? I have seen pictures of them being piled on top of each other in a No Fry Cooker. In a regular oven you put then on a sheet pan in one layer. Can they be piled on top of each other?

The reason to spread out oven fries into a single layer is to remove moisture from them more effectively, so they don't end up soggy. An air fryer's convective heating is much more effective at removing moisture, even compared to a convection oven. So piling them up doesn't cause much of a problem. If your air fryer doesn't have a stirring arm, you should still stir or shake the fries partway through cooking, to ensure even browning and avoid soggy spots.


What's the difference between a flauta and a taquito? At one of my favourite local Mexican haunts they list Flautas and Taquitos as separate meals.
One day, they were out of flautas and the waiter suggested I get taquitos as they are "the same".

They definitely tasted similar, but why are they listed as separate entities if they are the same?

Can anyone shed some light on this?

The flauta I'm refering to is a deep fried corn tortilla filled with chicken approximately the same size as a spring roll.

If I remember correctly, flautas are made with a softer flour tortilla while taquitos are made with a harder corn tortilla. Both are filled with similar fillings and then wrapped and deep fried.

However, you can oftentimes find taquitos made from flour tortillas and flautas made from corn tortillas...so what's the deal? There is another differentiation: size. Flautas are often longer than taquitos, as taquitos are made from taco sized tortillas, while flautas are made from burrito sized tortillas.

Another little tidbit if you go to a fancier Mexican place: flautas are often narrower on one side to create a funnel shape. But this is not common in your standard places.

TL;DR; They're oftentimes the same thing


Cleaning a commercial-grade grill surface Here is a griddle.

Most weeks, it's used to cook for a community dinner where I live. And, most of those weeks, I'm the volunteer who cleans it.

Based on instructions I inherited, I've got, for tools, a 4-inch paint scraper and a supply of blades, and then a stack of micro-fiber rectangles with a handle and pad I can use to apply elbow grease.

I warm the thing up, I scrape it with the scraper (leaving, always, some small scratches), and then scrub it until clean. Then a quick rinse and a coating of cooking oil.

Last night, it seems that one of the cooks had gone postal -- there were some metal divots sticking up from the surface that blocked, and dinged, the scraper blade. I eventually removed them with a wad of stainless steel 'wool' that is usually used on pots. But, even afterwards, it seemed to me that the scraping process was causing more scratching than usual.

So, for those of you with actual professional experience, what's the story? Is the main problem here that the Terminator was wailing on the surface, or am I taking the wrong approach in part or in whole?

If you have dinged or scratched grill that is a problem.

I am used to used to starting with something like this: a grill stone / block / brick.
(Skip the paint scrapper - especially if it is scratching the grill.)

If you are using something like this:

Those are also use used but I like a brick.

Then a green scratch pad on grease.
Then a green scratch pad with water.

Then just some very very light oil.

This is how a pro does it.  clean a grill like a boss

If you shut it down dirty and fire it up to clean it is twice the work.  It should get cleaned as it is being shut down.  It kind of like lets the stains set.


Pumpkin mousse looks grainy and slightly watery I attempted to make my first mousse last night, and followed this recipe for Pumpkin Mousse: http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/2077-pumpkin-mousse

The only changes I made to the recipe was cutting the sugar by about 1/4, and using 1% milk instead of whole milk.

Below is an image of the final result after chilling in the fridge for a few hours.  Unfortunately, as is immediately apparent, it is not particularly "mousse-looking", and is instead rather grainy, a little lumpy, and seemingly too "runny".

I am looking to potentially salvage the large amount of "mousse-goop" I've made, and I'm wondering if I should try to:

Blend it more, or...
Add something to potentially improve its consistency.  Any advice is greatly appreciated, thanks!

No, you cannot turn this mixture into a mousse. You have to eat it as it is - which is probably simply a tasty creamy pudding without the expected mousselike consistency. Even if it is grainy, there is no reason not to eat it that way. Unless you find it utterly impalatable, in which case you have to throw it away. It is normal to expect some failures with such an intricate recipe, especially if you have little previous experience with patisserie.


Should Rice be soaked before cooking? Is it necessary to soak rice every time before cooking.What happens if you don't soak rice? Does it effect the taste after cooking? If soaking is necessary then, How much time is required to soak rice?

Rinsing the rice is always suggested, it removes the leftover husk, powder from the rice being handled and/or processed, insect fragments (you'd be amazed!) and more.

Soaking the rice is part of the cooking process. Wild and brown rice benefit from this because they'll more evenly cook 'to the tooth (al dente)' with less liquid and time; this is how you get a nice and fluffy pilaf. If you don't soak the rice before cooking, it will require more liquid and time, and be more likely to come out clumpy and overcooked.

Most good markets have dozens of kinds of rice and each one does best with a different kind of process and finesse. And we haven't even talked about Sushi rice or Arborio (literally: "absorbent") rice yet.

Soaking long-grain or basmati rice has benefits too, depending on how you season it. If you like to cook your rice with achiote powder and safflower strands, soaking in some warm water for an hour is really helpful.

Some South East Asian recipes call for the liquid where rice was soaked for a few hours as a thickener or ad-hoc liaison. Tinola (a brothy chicken dish) is one, sinigang na baboy (sour pork soup) another. A fan of either dish can tell when the broth is missing that starchy quality only rice can bring. Rice flour, or cornstarch, even in small amounts, would be too much.

So. tl;dr;:

Always wash whole rice for hygienic purposes.
Consider soaking the rice as part of the technique of cooking it, but make sure it's a conscious decision, e.g. "I think soaking it will yield [result]"
Pre-packaged parboiled rice usually doesn't need to be washed or soaked, follow the packager's directions and your own instincts / experience.


Wet-heat cooking intensity vs. time Dry-heat recipes have a variety of options for low-slow vs. high-fast cooking. Techniques like searing, caramelization, smoking, etc. all contribute special characteristics to the end result.

For wet-heat recipes (steaming, poaching, boiling), would there be any such differences? As long as the food is properly controlled for internal and external temperature, does the process used affect texture, taste or appearance?

I can think of a few differences for delicate foods, where vigorous boiling would destroy the texture. But that seems to be more of a control and timing issue.

Not sure I understood your question correctly.

Yes there are differences.
1)soups and stocks. If you boil a chicken soup in will end up cloudy. If you simmer it will be clear.

2)rice. The proper way to make rice is to get it up to heat then cook covered on low heat. If you were to boil, the outsides would be destroyed/mushy and the insides would still be hard.
I'm sure there are many other examples


What causes curdling and how can you prevent it? Some sauces are more at risk to curdle than others. What exactly (ingredients, techniques, temperature...) causes this curdling? What can you do to have the curdling risk at minimum?

I'm not asking for ways to fix this, that's already asked here.

In most cases, curdling occurs because proteins in the sauce are denatured and bind up with each other forming clumps.

In cooking, proteins are denatured by excessive heat, acid, salt, or enzymes.

Heat and acid are the usual culprits for me. For example, when making a hollandaise sauce- the egg yolks are slowly cooked to allow them to set. In most recipes the lemon juice is added later. If the sauce is heated too abruptly or too high then the egg proteins will curdle.

To prevent curdling you have a few options-

Don't expose the sauce to as much heat.
Be careful to not overcook egg rich sauces. If possible add the protein rich ingredient later in the process- for example adding yogurt to a sauce just before serving.
Heat the sauce gently.
Heating too fast will also make proteins denature. Many sauces are cooked in a double boiler- not to keep the sauce from overheating but to ensure that it heats gently.
Don't expose the proteins to too much salt or acid.
Dropping a couple tablespoons of lemon juice into warm milk is a recipe for paneer not sauce.
Take out some insurance.
Proteins bind with each other after denaturing when there are a large quantity of similar molecules all together. One solution then is to introduce a lot of dissimilar molecules that will interfere with the protein's ability to bind to itself. Common candidates for this are starch or fat.

It is difficult (but not impossible) to curdle the milk protein in cream based sauces with just heat because the high concentration of milk fat gets in the way. This is why reduction sauces can add cream to a very hot liquid and let it reduce. However, adding acid and heat can still be enough to curdle so be careful if your reduction sauce is very acidic.

Many otherwise fragile sauce recipes will call for a little bit of corn starch as an insurance policy. In the related question that you posted- yogurt sauces are particularly susceptible to this because low-fat yogurt is very high in protein and low in fat, and starch.


Does jaggery need to be soaked? One of our TV chefs has done a show on India, and one of the ingredients he has used in a few recipes is jaggery, a sugar made from palms.

In the show, it appears to be soft, like soft brown sugar. However,the jaggery I have found at the supermarket is in hard lumps.

Does it require soaking or some other preparation before using?

Jaggery doesn't require any kind of soaking.

It's usually added either while sautéing or if the dish is gravy based, while its boiling.

Jaggery usually softens up when heated and gradually dissolves with other ingredients just as salt or sugar would.

The hard blocks of jaggery are difficult to break into pieces and its easier to grate it.


Amount (percentage of sodium in meat being cooked) of sodium left in water (broth) after cooking meat On a low sodium diet (AFib and Congestive Heart Failure)- cooking stew- want to use the stock as a broth substitute- how do I figure the amount of sodium from the meat left in the broth?

You have 2 options to measure the amount of salt in the soup. Measure the salt content directly by weight, or measure the electrical conductivity of the broth.

For either solution you need to filter the soup as much as possible preferable until it is almost clear.

Solution 1: Cook the filtered soup until it is dry and stops smoking, weigh the leftover residue that would be mostly salt.

Solution 2: Get a meter that detects the mineral content by testing electrical conductivity. Get something like this http://amzn.to/2u8pdwM and you can calculate the approximate amount of salt from that reading.


Replacement for Almond Milk I have a muffin recipe for Almond milk but I'd like to replace it since Almond Milk is only good for 7-10 days, I can't find small enough containers, and no one in my household will drink it.  Outside of replacing it with other forms of milk, what are some substitutes for Almond Milk?

To make your life easier, I'd look for another muffin recipe that does not use almond milk.

You should be able to substitute with rice milk, soy milk.. or even regular milk (cow, sheep ...) or other non animal milk.

For example, this site tested muffins with different kind of milks.

https://teaspoonofspice.com/almond-milk-muffins/


How to make Cheeze Burst Pizza same as Domino's? I'm a true pizza lover and at Domino's they make a great style called "Cheese Burst", the only problem is I can't eat it due to religious reasons.

As a Jain, I don't eat some common foods. For more details about Jain food restrictions you can read: this or this.

At Domino's, they told me, "we use a catchup sauce which is made with garlic."

Can someone tell me:

How to make a version of the Cheese Burst Pizza that I can eat?
How to get that cheesy layer when you take a slice out of it?

Experiment! If you can't have garlic, try for a tomato/italian seasoning mix. Make your own pasta sauce from scratch and substitute in or out for the things you can/cannot eat. Onion and garlic will be hard to replace, but don't confine yourself to "this is what the sauce should be." Use spices you like the flavor of. Maybe try a curry-inspired sauce?
The cheesy layer seems to come from a thick layer of cheese melted between the dough and sauce. If you grate mozzarella directly onto the olive-oiled bread, then top it with sauce and your second cheese, that should be enough to sate your cheese-lust! Also keep in mind that that is food-photo magic in part. Yours will most likely not look like that, but it will taste great!


how to get a ciabatta with a more uniform shape My ciabattas tend to have be domed along both axis. So towards the ends they are too thin, and near the middle I end up making them are thicker than I want. I think this is because the dough has so much water in it. When I am resting it on the tray before putting it in the oven, and even when I first put it in the oven it spreads out at the sides and each end. And ideas how to get a more even round shape along the whole loaf?

The actual bread itself is quite good otherwise, but at the edges there is too much crust and too little content.

Here's why I think this is happening:
In the oven, the internal temperature of the bread is going to transition from room temperature to cooked.  The only way heat it introduced into the bread is at the surface.  The sides have significantly more surface area than the center.  The problem you are having is the sides are making this transition way before the center is.  So the sides have very little time to rise and get cooked while the middle is in the prime rising temperature.  So the yeast in the center has substantially longer to work before it is too hot for it.

You can try forming the bread thinner toward the center and thicker toward the edges.  If you get the thickness right, it should be uniform.

I have also had good experience cooking on a stone.  It will almost certainly speed up cooking time, but should help keep the temperature transition uniform across the whole loaf.  So you don't end up with a thick part and a thin part; if you start out with a uniform thickness, you end up with a uniform thickness


How to classify the parts of a recipe ingredient? I'm build a recipe app/website, and I'm interested in how to properly classify the sections of an ingredient (as you would find in a cookbook or on a website) with regards to the terminology.  Let me give an example of what I mean.  Let's say an ingredient reads:

  3 cups Ore-Ida southern-style hash browns

My best guess at terminology for the parts of this sentence fragment would be:

3 = quantity
cups = unit
Ore-Ida = brand
southern-style = variation
hash browns = ingredient

I'm not sure if this is correct, or if there's a more precise descriptive term usage for this.  I'm interested in learning the proper terminology if this is not considered to be correct.

One more thing worth noting is that in 99% of cases, there probably won't be a brand at all, or if there is, it's not of significance.  In addition, if an ingredient doesn't include a unit, I'm making an assumption that the unit is "count", (e.g.: "3 eggs" would mean quantity "3", unit "count", ingredient "eggs").

This is an exercise in data modeling, more so than cooking.
What you are describing is the design of your database.
You are on the right track.

You will want to consider how many of each of the fields you need to have.  For example:

Quantity - Unique [there will be exactly one of these]
Quantity unit - Unique [exactly one]
Brand - Unique [optional] (either one or none)
Variation (or style, or preparation-note) - Non-unique [optional] (0,
1, or many)
Ingredient - Unique
Initial cooking temperature - Unique
I.c.t. Units - Unique

Preparation Instructions - (you have a decision whether to make one block text, or a series of fields which may or may not be used)
Cooking Instructions - (same as Prep. Instruction)
Cooling Instrutions...   et cetera

ADDITIONAL:

To your question about when multiple modifiers might be used with an ingredient:
You might have an ingredient which is expected to be prepared at the time of cooking.  So: "minced onions, blanched".  It would seem that order might be important to you here, as well.  As you see here, there are two styles (I just realized 'modifier' might be a more all-encompassing field-name).

So you might typically see the descriptive nature of the ingredient listed like this (although maybe not the exact verbiage - I'm not sure if this exact ingredient has ever been listed).  So you would have to make a decision as to whether you could have 0+ modifiers listed before the ingredient, format with a comma, then have 0+ commas after the ingredient.

Naturally the comma would only appear if there were >=1 modifiers listed after the ingredient.

Since I have thought about how infrequent you might see minced onions, blanched...you might instead see shredded red potatoes, salted and peppered.  There are many considerations with respect to how modifiers could used, to be sure.

One more word - in database design, you'll want to take as much time as you can to develop pre-authoring/programming.  Any minor change to the database schema could cause you to have to start all over again.  :)


How to use stock from tablet So, sometimes I am a lazy cook. And this is a question for the very lazy days.
Sometimes I use stock from a tablet.
I was wondering: If a recipe calls for 'adding stock', is it important that you first make stock from the tablet and then add it to the recipe. Or can you just put in the right amount of (hot) water and the tablet?

I can imagine it does matter in some kind of dishes. But when does is, and when not? And why?

It depends on the kind of stock cube. Drier, powdery stock cubes can be crushed and sprinkled in and the appropriate amount of liquid added.

Paste cubes should be broken up (I often chop them with my knife so as not to get sticky stock paste on my fingers) and placed in hot water before adding to the dish, because they don't dissolve as readily as the powdery cubes.


Spoiled garlic ok to use? I bought a 3 pound bag of peeled garlic. Some of them have white mold on them. Should I throw the lot away or pick through the bad ones & discard?

Throw the lot away. Mold is not always visible but when it is, the mycelium may be present in the entire substance, especially in foods with high moisture content. Eating the mycelium can make you sick and it can continue to develop mold after you've cut the moldy parts away.


Is there a discernible difference in taste between aeropress and chemex / pour-over? Using the same coffee beans with the same grind, I can definitely tell a difference between cups of coffee made by drip-machine, chemex, and french press.  Chemex is my favorite, as it has more flavor the drip-machine, but without the grit of a french press.  I want to purchase a pour over solution for home use, and can't decide between a traditional Chemex pot, or an Aerobie Aeropress.  Aerobie claims that it's press method is far superior to a chemex pot, but of course they are going to say that.

Has anyone done a side-by-side comparison with the same coffee? And if so, is there a huge difference?

I'm guessing that there will be some difference in taste, depending mostly on the amount of time the water spends with the coffee grounds. Depending on how long you let the water sit with the grounds before the press part of the Aeropress will increase the bitterness of the coffee you pour off and drink.  Similarly, the more water you pour over your grounds in the Chemex, the more bitter your coffee will be.

If you only use one cup of water in both methods, and don't let the Aeropress steep very long, the more similar the taste of the cups of coffee will be.  But if you pour a second and third cup of water through the Chemex without changing the grounds, the third cup will be significantly more bitter than the first one.  Similarly, if you let the water in the Aeropress sit in the water for 5 minutes before pressing the grounds down, your coffee will be more bitter than one that sat for only 1 minute.


Yogurt-based sourdough smells like alcohol I'm following this yogurt-based sourdough recipe, and (right now) at the 18-hour mark, it (the dough) smells like alcohol. Is this a bad sign, that it should not be consumed? And, moreover, is this recipe perhaps dangerous for leaving yogurt out for extended periods of time? Or will the baking process make it safe to eat?

Note: I'm aware that when sourdough starter smells like alcohol, it needs to be fed. But this is actual dough and not starter, which is cause for my concern.

Edit: Finished baking it. Smelled sour-dough-y and fine so I tried a bit. Not as good as regular sourdough but I think the alcohol-smelling issue was actually a non-issue.

You should try the same recipe again, but use a cloth instead of plastic wrap to cover your dough for the fermentation period.  The alcohol smell is the ethanol the yeast is producing, and in my own experience the more anaerobic the greater the level of ethanol produced.


What is the best USDA rated beef best for stew in a pressure cooker? We all appreciate how delicious USDA Prime beef tastes, but there is a point where the pressure cooker will do just as well with a lower quality.  Should I go for USDA 'Choice', or should I buy the cheapest or 'Select' grade and save money?  Thx

So, understand that MANY recipes were developed to make poor choices of food products chew and taste much better.

Stew is one of these that allows a tougher cut of meat and some older veg stored in the root cellar to be made tender and tasty.

However, all other things being equal, no matter why a recipe was developed, using the highest quality of meats and veg will always produce a superior product.

So the best beef meat to get for a stew would be prime grade beef, and fresh veg is the best to use for the best flavors and textures.

One more however though. There are diminishing returns on goodness versus price. You don't need prime beef for stew. It will be amazing, but is it worth spending $40 for the beef rather than $20? That's up to you and whether you want to 5 star your stew that was really designed to make halfway inedible stuff decent to eat.


semi-freezing ripe avocado for easier handling I've got a sack of ripe avocados that are going to be used in
vietnamese salad rolls, sliced into long pieces. The avocados
are getting bit too soft to cut, and I'm considering putting
them in the freezer for 1-2 hours to harden them up so they'll
be easier to peel and cut.
Am I asking for trouble putting my avocados in the freezer?

I would avoid freezing them as it will change the texture. A lot of people say they don't notice, but I notice right away. I can tell if food has been frozen in the first bite.

I just halve them, take out the pit and then slice them lengthwise in the skin.
Then with a spoon carefully scoop out the slices.
Works like a charm, no matter how soft.


is Le creuset pan 22 cms enamelled or not I bought an old pan on ebay and I wish to know if it is enamelled or raw. Inside of pan has a black layer and a spot patch 6 by 3 cms of different layernature.
How do I find out out if pan is raw cast iron. The thin black layer is difficult to identify. The seller says that pan is not enamelled. But I doubt it.

Enamel is usually white, though it may stain to a beige color.

Bare cast iron when stripped of its seasoning is steel grey. The first coat of seasoning will be a dull olive greenish brown, and each coat of seasoning will get darker. With use the seasoning will turn jet black as some of the oil polymers get toasted more over time.

If it is bare cast iron you will want to continue to wipe it down with oil after each use at a bare minimum of care.


How to get rid of the raw tomato smell from tomato sauce? I'm making marinara sauce with crushed tomatoes, and no matter how much seasoning I add or however long I cook it down, the smell of raw tomato is still in the sauce. Does anyone know how to get rid of that smell? I don't smell it in the sauces I buy at the store.

Do you use tomato paste in your sauce as well? Starting your sauce by cooking tomato paste down (by itself) will give the sauce a more "cooked" smell because the sugars in the paste will begin to caramelize.

This guy references the technique. I picked it up from Mario Batali, but I can't find a reference for it. http://forums.egullet.org/topic/140049-frying-tomato-paste/


Will steaming fish cause salt to come out or cause fish to fry in its own fat? If you brine some fish and then boil it in water (make a soup) ,the salt and other nutrients leach right out thus defeating the purpose of the brine.  I will soon buy a steamer, however I just wanted to know if you brine fish and then steam it, is it likely the salt will leach out, move onto the surface or will it stay in the fish?

Also if you grill food, the fat comes out and falls of it, however I have noticed the meat is lightly frying in its own fat as it moves along the meat.  Would the same thing happen with steaming, i.e. fat will come and drip out or lightly fry in its own oil as is the case with grilling?

Salt moves due to differences in concentration, from regions of high concentration to regions of low concentration. So, when you boil brined fish, you surround the salty flesh with low salt concentration liquid, and thus the salt moves out to equalize the concentrations.

Steaming the fish will not result in as much movement of salt, because steaming applies less total liquid to the surface of the fish. Steaming works because the very hot steam condenses onto the cooler food, and by condensing it liberates heat (which transfers to the food). However, you still will have some movement of salt because the condensed steam on the surface of the fish remains at a lower salt concentration.

Also, steaming is much gentler on the fish, since the meat is not being constantly agitated by boiling water. With less agitation comes less leaching.

Grilling is the transfer of heat from pan to food, or from direct heat source to food. The temperatures are typically much higher than for steaming (steam is at 212F, 100C), so you get entirely different chemical effects from the process (e.g., caramelization). Therefore, I doubt the fish would "fry" in its own oil in the case of steaming.

If you're concerned about maintaining the salinity of your brined fish, you could consider steaming it en Papillote, or even in foil. This would result in the fish cooking in its own moisture, essentially eliminating the leaching of salt (although some salt would move to the surface, carried by the water).


Does garbage disposal horse power matter that much? I am in the last leg of a kitchen remodel and need to purchase a garbage disposal. And I am wondering how much of a difference horse power makes in the day to day operation of the kitchen?

Has anyone here experienced the pros and cons to disposal units with different horse power?

NOTE: I almost posted this question on the DIY site, but I feel it has more relevance here. Moderators, feel free to move it if you think it belongs there instead.

UPDATE: We decided to go with the Waste King L-8000 Legend Series 1 Horsepower. It is really smooth and quiet. It takes up a fair amount of space under the sink however.

I'd go for a more powerful one, in general, and I noticed that the higher powered disposals are sometimes quieter, which I really like.  I really learned that paying the extra for good plumbing parts (faucet, disposal) through our plumber was worth it, since they can be fixed, unlike cheaper big box store stuff, and that there was a real difference in the higher quality disposal.


How do I mellow out the saltiness in black olives? I have some dishes where the umami olive flavor would be perfect if not for all the saltiness that is added to the dish. I am looking for a way to mellow the saltiness in the olive in a subtle way so I could incorporate them to more dishes.

You can sometimes get olives that aren't in brine, but instead in oil (often with herbs & garlic which might be a good thing or might not). They're less salty but still have some salt as it's used in the processing.

If you can't get those, or want to use everyday olives you already have, don't just rinse them but also leave them in plenty of fresh water for a few minutes or even longer before draining well.

There's also quite a bit of variation between brands. I haven't tested how well the flavour correlates to the salt in the nutrition label.


Why are my roast potatoes not coming off crunchy? Besides the first time making them, they always come off with a soft,straight surface rather than a crunchy, craggy surface full of blisters.
Here is the recipe. The thing making the potatoes crunchy is a slurry (after parboiling the potatoes, you toss them with some oil. Their surface then gets ripped, making the slurry) that coats the surface. Here is a picture before cooking:

Here is a picture after cooking:

Its smooth and not crunchy. Any idea how to make them crunchy next time?

Your result looks like too much water, and too high a roasting temperature for an even, golden crust. (The ones illustrated in the recipe don't look as if they achieve that, either).

My way: Choose a floury, not a waxy, potato variety.

Par-boil from cold in salted water, until 3/4 cooked, a skewer should meet resistance before reaching the middle. (about 9-10 minutes, your size.). Drain in a colander, and leave to dry completely, but not cool.

Pre-heat your fat in the roasting tray, a thin layer. Transfer the potatoes to half-fill a dry bowl, pour over the hot fat, and shake gently to break up the surface. The roasting tray should be big enough to give the potatoes room to breathe, they shouldn't be crammed in.

Roast at about 180C (fan) for 40 minutes or so, turning once or twice. If your oven gets steamy, open the door a crack every now and then to let the steam out. Before serving, keep warm, uncovered, somewhere that doesn't trap steam, on paper towels to wick away excess fat.


Is it possible to cook millets without having to grind it into a powder? Am considering Ragi as a substitute to rice to avoid the spike in blood sugar each time I eat rice. Purchased 1kg of Ragi seeds and found that every single recipe makes use of Ragi flour. Even friends in India say they are unaware of recipes that directly use the seeds.

Is it really necessary to grind/mill millets? On searching, I found one lemon millet rice recipe, but I'm not sure if it can be applied to Ragi, since Wikipedia says the bran is bound tightly to the endosperm. Am hoping it would be possible to cook it like in the lemon millet rice recipe at least if the Ragi seeds are sprouted?

Millet in general is perfectly cookable as a whole grain. It functions pretty interchangeably with other grains and pseudograins, except where you need very specific qualities (e.g. you probably won't be able to make sushi out of it because you can't get the right amount of stickiness).

I don't know about Ragi specifically, as opposed to the generic food sold as just "millet", but I don't see any reason for it to behave differently. In the worst case, just give it a try - there is little reason to think it could fail.


How do I get the flaky top on ooey gooey butter bars? I'm making Paula Deen's Ooey Gooey Butter Bars (also known as Ooey Gooey Butter Cake) for holiday goodie baskets. I'm having trouble getting the top to be flaky like it is on the bars sold at the store - the same kind of flaky top that's on brownies.

I'm guessing I'm either not mixing something long enough or mixing it too long or something. I've seen pictures of the process online and my top batter looks EXACTLY like the batter in the picture, but something is going wrong. In my eight tries, it's only turned out right twice. I can tell when it's going wrong during the baking process, because the top fluffs up and the crust never forms.

For the unfamiliar, this is a bar with a cake mix-butter-one egg crust on the bottom. The topping is a block of softened cream cheese, one stick of melted butter, two eggs, vanilla and two cups of powdered sugar.

Could it be the quality of the ingredients? I've used no-name butter sometimes and other times Land O'Lakes. Help!

With the recipe you mentioned there is no indication as to what temperature the cream cheese and butter should be at and I'm guessing that's one possible item making the difference.  Since it looks a little like a creaming or foaming (sponge) method for whipping ingredients, I'd try to make sure my butter, eggs, and cream cheese, but especially butter, were around 70 degrees F.  You want them to be able to incorporate air.  The first link talks about how to get things crispier or fluffier based on how long you cream, etc.  Then you will want to play around with batter temperature when it hits the oven.

Also note that more fat in a cookie recipe, at least, is equivalent to crispier.  Are you subbing nuefchatel cheese or low fat or no fat cream cheese for the cream cheese?  If so, don't.  Moisture in sugar has an impact so make sure you aren't subbing any other sugar for powdered.

Real gooey butter cake is a yeast cake rather than the rip-off versions that use cake mix and not really all that much more complicated, although more time consuming.  You may want to try doing a more authentic recipe, or at least one that uses a yeast cake.  I have had success with the one linked.


Is mustard lid supposed to pop when opening? I opened a jar of English mustard with a flat plastic lid and it didn't pop. It wasn't bulging or anything and contains citric acid. Is it supposed to pop? I notice French's mustard (North American style squeezable kind) doesn't pop so I think it's the same. It's just that we are so conditioned to expect jars to pop that when they don't I wonder. Mayonnaise doesn't either which I know is okay...

Plastic usually does not pop, it bends slowly under the pressure differential. Metal usually bends quickly and pops when the vacuum in a jar is relieved. Some jars use thicker metal that wont bend, so you have to listen for the rushing intake of air. Sometimes now they replace air with nitrogen before sealing. You won't get a pop or any other sound from a jar canned that way.


How do I make a frappuccino less watery? I'm trying to recreate a Starbucks caramel coffee frappuccino, but it's coming out awfully watery. I've watched them make it and here is what they do, as far as I can tell:

half fill the blender container with ice
pour milk on up to half the level of the ice
add some (hard to see how much exactly) coffee from a tank labelled "frap", which I assume is just regular cooled coffee
add some squirts of caramel syrup
blend.

Yum, delicious. But when I do this, I get a very watery result which is not thick and creamy like theirs. How can I improve it?

Aha, the article and comments on this site:
 http://www.squawkfox.com/2011/06/16/frappuccino-recipe/
suggest using double-strength coffee and (the secret ingredient) adding a pinch of xanthan gum. I might have to see if I can get that anywhere!


When pureeing tomatoes for a fresh tomato sauce, should you throw out the juices or not? One benefit is reduced cooking time since you need to evaporate all the juices before the tomatoes start caramelizing. On the other hand, wont these juices contain flavor you might waste if thrown away?

How much flavor will I miss out on if I throw the juices?

I would not throw any part away.  There is flavor in all parts of the tomato, particularly the interior (see my comments under an alternate response below). Plus, if you are pureeing first, don't you think the flavors are being mixed, resulting in the loss of at least some flavor if you remove some part of the mixture? Simmering does indeed allow water to evaporate, but, in doing so, it concentrates flavor.  How much flavor is gained or lost?  I am sure this will depend on the variety, seasonality, and ripeness of your tomatoes.


What makes sous vide brisket tender? Recently a friend of mine made a sous vide brisket.  This was done by leaving the brisket at 140F for 4 hours, then finishing it on the stove with high heat.  It was extremely tender, even though it wouldn't have come much above that 140F mark.  From reading another Seasoned Advice question, I thought that brisket would have to be cooked to much hotter (185-200F) or potentially much longer (most recipes there called for well above 4 hours) in order to come out tender.

Is there something else going on there, how does sous vide break down the connective tissue at a lower temperature than regular smoking / baking / braising?

The low, constant temperature balanced the hydrolysis of collagen into gelatin with keeping the other meat proteins from over coagulating.

Based on a cursory search on the internet, hydrolysis of collagen into gelatin begins at roughly 140°F, although it really gets going at 160°-180°F.  Had the cook left the brisket in for longer, it probably would have become more tender, but some hydrolysis likely had taken place.  This hydrolysis might have been enhanced by the addition of acid that served as a catalyst to the hydrolysis.

Additionally, the meat was kept at 140°F, i.e. at medium.  This means that the cook kept the proteins in the beef from coagulating to the point that they squeezed water out of the meet.  Usually, stewed or slow cooked meats must be cooked longer and at higher temperatures (e.g. in a pot roast, a barbecue, or a braise) because not only does the cook need to hydrolyze the collagen to avoid toughness from the collagen, but also needs to hydrolyze additional collagen to make up for the dryness that results from the fact that most stewed and braised meats are, technically, overcooked.  The 140°F for four hours manages to hydrolyze some of the collagen, but it was probably enough because the meat was not overcooked.  Note, however, that leaving the meat in an immersion cooker for longer will hydrolyze more collagen but will not overcook the meat, meaning that it will be even more tender.

Then, the cook can further prevent toughness by cutting the meat very thin and across the grain.  This mean that any meat fibers that are tough won't be very long and can effectively be swallowed whole.


Can you prepare eggplant by salting, then baking, then finally rinsing? In normal eggplant preparation, you salt and rinse first. However, when the eggplant is baked, it continues to release water. This leads me to believe that I could achieve a less bitter and tastier result by putting the eggplant in the oven on a rack with salt still on it, and letting the heat help drain it. Would that work?

I did the experiment complete with pictures, unfortunately I managed to to screw up the pictures, but luckily I took notes.

I started with two very similar eggplants, globe variety, Like this:

I sliced each of the eggplants into five slices of equal width, discarding the ends. I took one slice of each eggplant to make five pairs to treat differently as far as salting. I pre-salted three of the pairs and drained them for one-half hour prior to baking. One of those pairs was rinsed and dried before baking, another pair was not rinsed - just thoroughly dried with a paper towel prior to baking. The third pair was left salted for baking. The fourth pair was salted (not rinsed) just before baking. The fifth pair was left unsalted.

I baked all of the slices at 400F for 90 minutes, until they were just about done. At that point I rinsed one slice of each pair and returned all of the eggplant to the 400F oven for 10 more minutes.

I weighed each of the pairs at the beginning and end of the experiment.

After allowing the eggplant to come to "eating temperature", I invited a friend to join me in the tasting. We concurred 100% as to the palatability of each slice. Here are the results:

So, bottom line, at least for this variety of eggplant, pre-salting and draining is an unnecessary step, although rinsing is necessary. Rinsing can be done after pre-salting and draining, before baking, or the eggplant can be rinsed at the end of baking. The difference in weight loss is negligible. Unfortunately, I wasn't really able to gauge "bitterness", because the eggplant wasn't bitter to begin with.

Based on this experiment, if I were to bake something like an Eggplant Parmesan (unbreaded), I would salt the eggplant just before baking, rinse when the eggplant is nearly done, sauce, then continue baking until the final dish is done, cheese melted and slightly browned. As per Joe's comment below, breading would be a different ball of wax, but I would certainly consider par-baking the salted eggplant to eliminate the draining step, rinsing is really necessary either way. A few minutes in the oven after rinsing the par-baked eggplant would give you an ideal slice, ready to bread. As a matter of fact, I'm not crazy about eggplant, but my friend is. I'll update this answer in a few days with the results of modifying Eggplant Parmesan by par-baking the salted slices prior to breading instead of draining the salted eggplant then breading. I suspect the prior method will produce better results in the same amount of time with less sogginess of the breading, as the moisture loss continues during the cooking of the pre-salted and drained eggplant. For that continuation of the experiment I will make two separate casseroles, and weigh both the par-baked eggplant and salted and drained eggplant prior to breading.


Can I make skim milk from whole pasteurize homogenized milk/yogurt? I'm trying to turn whole milk/yogurt into skimmed/no fat milk/yogurt. I don't live in US and no fat dairy products are 4-5 times expensive also hard to find in store. Can I just whip pasteurized homogenized milk or yogurt and make butter.

If I take butter from milk remaining liquid is buttermilk, can I use this for sour cream, is this cultured buttermilk. Of course I can't find buttermilk either.

There are many questions here, but the practical answer to almost all of them is "no".

To understand why, you have to understand what all these products are.

full-fat raw milk is an emulsion of fat in water (plus other components which are not relevant here).
full-fat milk from the store is also an emulsion of fat in water, but it has been stabilized so it doesn't break.
low-fat and skim milk are the same as full-fat milk from the store, but with less fat in them.
yogurt is milk, cultured with specific cultures
buttermilk (old meaning) is the liquid left after churning butter, consisting of tiny pieces of butter floating in whey. It is not an emulsion. It can be cultured or not, depending on whether you soured your milk first.
buttermilk (modern meaning) is a cultured product just like yogurt, but uses different cultures, so the taste and consistency are different.

What won't work

If you were to churn butter from raw full fat milk, you would end up with butter + buttermilk (old meaning). The result is not low-fat or skim milk, since it is not an emulsion. It is also not the buttermilk required by modern recipes. You could it for either antique recipes or drink it, but it isn't like milk.

If you try to churn store-bought full fat milk, nothing will happen, because the emulsion is stabilized.

If you try to churn yogurt, nothing will happen - Getting butter from yogurt.

What works in principle

If you want low-fat buttermilk (modern meaning), the only way is to start wih low-fat milk and culture it. The catch: you said you don't have low-fat milk.

Also, if you want your own low-fat milk, the way to go is to find some raw milk, pasteurize it yourself, then let it sit in the fridge for 2-3 days. Then remove the fat from the top. You cannot control the exact percentage of remaining fat that way, but is definitely lower than in raw milk. It is certanly not no-fat, probably closer to the 1.5%ish milk that is sold in many countries. The catch: depending on your location, it may be easier to buy 1.5% milk than to buy raw milk.


What is this odd tool used for? What is this tool I found at the thrift store in the kitchen section?

Following Lorel C's idea, I searched a bit for "patent" "kientz" and "foot massager", and found the patent for this device - https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/3b/09/3c/f580058fba56fc/USD243557.pdf

Short answer - yes, it's a foot massager.


How to remove smell from plastic lid? A set of Ikea glass jars are used for home counter top food storage. One of them was temporarily used to store bars of soap. Now it is wanted back in the kitchen. The plastic in the lid is retaining the perfume smell of the soap. How can this smell be removed?

Mix baking soda and white vinegar together (it'll get all foamy) and lather it up pretty well with the mixture and leave sit for a few hours.  Rinse and it should be clear of smells.


Problems using my black garlic fermenter I just got my fermenter and my garlic came out hard and dried.  It also tastes bitter.

The machine I have is Homend 5L Black Garlic Fermenter Full Automatic Intelligent Control Garlics Maker Multiple Clove Garlic DIY Cooker.

Just wondering if anyone else has used a fermeter and has had this problem also.

Try it for just 7 or 8 days instead of 12. Some machines let you adjust the time starting at 7 days because for the garlic available in North America, 12 days is too long.


How to bake lokum rolls well? These rolls are made by rolling short pastry dough thin (0.5 cm/0.2 inch), cutting it in small squares (ca. 5 cm / 2 inches) and rolling a small log of turkish delight (1x1x4 cm, 0.5x0.5x1.5 inches) in the square, resulting in a cylinder filled with turkish delight. They are baked (the turkish delight melts to a honey-like viscosity in the oven, but usually doesn't flow out), left to cool, then confectioner's sugar is sifted over them. The turkish delight filling resolidifies somewhat after cooling, but not to its completely dry state from before baking. They are not supposed to cook hard and dry and brown, they are more like Russian tea cakes in texture.

The problem with this recipe is that more often than not, the pastry is underbaked in the middle. I think that the combination of a thick roll and getting soggy from the melted filling is responsible for the problem. However, I don't have a solution. Using less crust isn't an option - not only would the ratio of crust to filling be disturbed, but if there isn't substantial overlap in the cylinder walls, the melted lokum is likely to flow out during baking (I've had that happen). Blindbaking isn't an option - not only don't I have an idea how to hold the shape, but also the upper part of the crust will overbake during the real baking later. It is already baked at lowish temperatures, so I don't think that lowing it further will help.

Any ideas how to get well-baked rolls while keeping the nice gooey filling?

I would start by rolling the pastry dough thinner; I often have my dough too thick the first time or two that I work with a recipe.  Keep the dough cold to make it easier to work with.

Next, I would try different oven times and temperatures.  Try a temperature 25-50 degrees (F) higher, and pull the rolls out 30 seconds to one minute sooner.  The nice thing about playing with oven times and temps is that you can go through many tests quickly by just putting a few of the items in for each time/temp combination.  (Extra mass in the oven, such as a pizza stone or even some bricks, will help keep the oven temp more steady.)

If the outside of your rolls are getting over done before the inside is done, try chilling the rolls in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or so before baking.


Dealing with a hank of natural sausage casings The hog casings I purchased came packaged in a large amount of salt, and I was not able to pull them apart. So, I removed the casings from the salt and put them all in soaking water.

That leads me to question 1: is this the normal practice? Soaking the entire hank even if you aren't planning to use all of it? Should they be easier to pull apart when salted?

After soaking all of them, based on what I've read, I should be able to take any that are not used when making sausage this evening, pat them dry, and put them back on salt and safely store them.
So this brings me to question 2: Can anyone verify if this is true - you can safely re-salt the rehydrated hog casings that haven't been used? Or did I just waste 10$ of pig gut for a relatively small amount of sausage.

Hanks of casing aren't generally that big (of course, this is relative - if you're only making one pound of sausage it's gigantic!) so I've always soaked the whole thing.  They should be slightly easier to pull apart, but it helps a lot if you soak them in slightly warm water and then after they've soaked for a bit, find the end and run warm water through the hole (so it goes into the casing), then pull the end out of the hank so the water runs down and through the inside of the remainder of the casing.  The water will bulge out the casings and help to make them easier to remove and also wash out the inside (which also contains some salt) - once you have the casings separated as you want them, you should wash them out using this method again.
I have saved the leftovers in the past, but how you do it depends on how long it will be before they're used. In any case, you should rinse them in warm salt water as when you're making sausage, bits of meat tend to find their way where you don't want them.
If you're going to use them soon, just make a more heavily salted brine than what you rinsed them in, make sure the brine covers them completely and there's no air inside, and put them in the fridge (ideally in a dark container)  If it will be longer than a week, you can brine and then freeze them - but this is a bit of a controversial issue.  Some say this weakens the casings, but I've done it in the past for up to a month with no problems.  Your milage may vary.  In the future, if possible, only buy what you need.


Is it safe to eat frozen flatfish with brown color? I bought some pieces of frozen flatfish. All pieces are white except one.
That piece is brown, with black strips at the center.

Does that indicates corruption?

Note: After unfreezing, I found that the brown piece is not as flexible as others. So I threw it away for safety.

As long as your fish has been handled and stored properly, there shouldn't be any safety issues.

Most all flatfish have a dark side and a light side. (There are only a couple that don't.) Their eyed side would be the dark side and their blind side is the light side. This doesn't just apply to their skin, but to the meat as well. So, if you filet a flatfish, the meat on one side will be white while the meat on the other side will be dark. Typically the dark side will be thicker.

There is a slight difference in the taste and texture between the light and dark meats. What I see served most often in restaurants is the white meat.

All said and done, taste is subjective. Some people prefer the white meat and others prefer the dark. Personally, I find the white meat to be a little more delicate in both flavor and texture. But I like both. I use the white meat for more delicate recipes, e.g poaching, serving with sauces, etc. I tend to use the dark meat when frying or in heartier dishes.

My answer is based on the experience of catching, cleaning, filleting, and cooking flatfish. For anyone interested, PBS has an interesting and informative article about flatfish.


Would cooking a leg of lamb for 12 hours be a problem? I found a nice recipe for a leg of lamb. It is however supposed to be baked for four hours.

It would be more practical for me if I could let it bake for 12 hours (overnight) -- would 12 hours vs. 4 hours be a problem?

I was planning to seal the pot and set the oven to 110°C (230°F)

EDIT: did it. 2 hours at 180C then 12 hours at 90C. The it was sealed with plastic foil (heat resistant) It was fantastic.

It shouldn't be a problem. I would probably use a lower cooking temperature however. Start with a highish temperature of about 180-200C, to bring the meat out of the danger zone quickly, then lower it to 80-90 for a long slow cook. You will probably want to introduce some liquid to the pan to avoid it all drying out.


Should you layer Greek yoghurt on porridge oats or mix it in with the porridge oats? I am experimenting with creating overnight oats with Greek yoghurt. However, I was not sure whether to layer the yoghurt on top of the oats with multiple layers of oats and yoghurt, or to mix in the yoghurt with the oats.

I was told by one person to layer the oats and yoghurt, but online tutorials seem to instruct you to mix the oats instead.

Should I layer or mix my yoghurt with the oats?

Are there any benefits of choosing one method over the other?

The point of overnight oats is to allow the oats time to hydrate slowly at a cool temperature, rather than cooking them in water. So it's best to have them well-mixed with the liquid they'll be absorbing. If you put them in (sufficiently thick) layers, it's likely that some of the oats will be less hydrated than others.


What made these red lentils 'brick' together? The lentils in the above photo are raw. They did not form a solid block when they were dry, but after I poured a bit of water in, they suddenly did this.

Obviously, they need a bit of washing. Red lentils stick to the pan easily.

Red lentils have no skin and are thus more absorbent. They literally sucked up the wee bit of water clinging to them along with their neighbors. Surface tension of the water couldn't be broken by the light-weight pulses.

When crumbled apart, the brick doesn't feel pasty, no?

Next time maybe pour lentils into water; either way, no harm to finished dish.


can I roast the nuts before I make a maple candied walnuts Can I roast nuts for flavor before I make my maple candied walnuts? The recipe says raw nuts. I want to roast the nuts before I put in the maple candied walnuts recipe. Will that make the nuts overcooked

I would recommend sticking to raw walnuts.  I recently prepared a batch of candied pecans and used raw pecans.  They turned out amazing and had sufficiently rich, roasted flavor.  Nuts can get bitter if they're roasted for too long. Roasting the nuts prior to putting them in the maple candied walnuts recipe might lead to over-roasting.

My recipe called for tossing the pecans in a one egg white (to develop a super thin, sticky coating) and then sprinkling them with cinnamon sugar before roasting.  They turned out amazing.  I've been snacking on them non-stop! Good luck!


Can you deep fry chicken in a 6.75qt dutch oven? I wanna fry up some chicken and I'm wondering if my 6.75 Le Creuset will be large enough. Assuming it's half to two-thirds of the way full (3-4 QTs of oil). Does anyone have experience with this?

Edit: Clarifying my question a little, I'm asking about frying chicken pieces, not an entire chicken. Also, I understand that I can simply find a small pot with several cups of oil and fry up an entire chicken 1 piece at a time. I was hoping that my dutch oven would be large enough to at least get through a whole chicken in 2-3 batches (3-4 pieces at a time).

It depends on the size of the chicken, and how much you want to cook at one time.

Place the bird (or pieces) in your pot and fill the pot to about 3/4 full with water.

Remove the chicken and measure the water...this is how much oil to use.

If the chicken isn't covered in the water at 3/4 full (this will probably be the case) remove pieces and work backwards till the water and chicken are at a safe level). After replacing the water with oil you will need to work in batches (which is probably what you will need to do, you will probably be well served to do about a 1/2 chicken at a time.).

For what it is worth I recently purchased an infra-red propane 'fryer' that does an excellent job on a whole chicken (or turkey).


What kind of cookies can be shaped? I was wondering what to look for in a cookie recipe if I want to cut it out into shapes using a cookie cutter.

Some cookies tend to spread out much more than others and so would not retain any semblance of the original shape. I did look at this question, but that only mentions that cookies with more fat in them will result in a more spread out cookie. What kinds of cookie dough does it makes sense to try and shape and can any cookie recipe be modified to make it more structured?

Cookies for shaping are usually rolled cookies.

Common categories would include:

Sugar cookies (as Mien mentioned)
Gingerbread
Linzer cookie dough

Look for recipes where you use a rolling pin.  These are already formulated for minimal spread.

Adapting other cookie recipes for use with cookie cutters will be trickier, and probably not worth the effort, in my opinion.


Does teff flour destroy gluten, and what do do about it? I like to add various different types of flour to bread when baking for sake of variety: Amaranth, Chickpea, Teff, Corn, Sorghum, etc.  These all worked fine when I was using a bread machine.

Now I like to do everything by hand, and I'm encountering the following problem with Teff flour specifically (and none of the others so far!).  Basically, the dough becomes extremely thin (like a liquid) even with just a small amount of Teff (even just 15% Teff and the rest wheat).  Even when I use less water to maintain a reasonable consistency in the dough, I can't seem to form it into a loaf; the gluten just breaks down almost immediately.  This is not just an issue about not having enough wheat flour: I can add easily 25% of other gluten-free flours such as chickpea flour without any problem.  Does Teff flour destroy the gluten in some way?  Is there any way around this other than baking in some sort of receptacle which creates the correct shape for the loaf?

Teff is probably one of the oldest domesticated plants so doesn't lend itself well for modern processing:

Normally the seeds are boiled just like rice
If you insist on making bread with it, you can make Injera (an unleavened bread)
For baking a "standard loaf of bread", it's not really suitable for that due to its high protein and mineral content, but you can still generously dust your bread with teff as you're using a small % anyway


Guidance about using pith in marmalade I've been looking at recipes for orange marmalade and some say "don't use the pith because it's too bitter" but the photos often show the peel and pith (the part just under the peel) in the final product. And some say just to use the pith and pips in a muslin bag (ie thrown out at the end). Any guidance on this?

I'm posting this as an answer even though I really have very little experience, just some vague stuff I've picked up along the way.

The pith is all about bitterness. Bitter is a big part of the flavor profile of marmalade. So, how much pith you want to use is very subjective. How bitter do you like it? That's the difference in recipes.

Personally, I like maybe 3mm of pith still on the peel that stays in the marmalade.

I can see no benefit at all to using the pips.


Better way of getting out excess water/oil from food other than paper towels? There have been a lot of recipes where I've had to use a bunch of paper towels to get the excess liquid out (making bacon to get out the excess fat, when you're frying foods and want them to be dry). Is there a better way of getting the liquid out without just massing tons of paper towels?

If you have the time, wrapping something in a cheese cloth & suspending it over a bowl can get a lot of liquid out.


What does sourdough starter REALLY need? I have one of these fancy french baking books that says that the sourdough needs to be feed with a 2:1:3 ratio of water, starter and flour. But a lot of videos I see online basically just pour a little out, add equal parts of water and flour (seemingly regardless of how much starter they have) give it a mix and call it a day. What's the truth behind maintaining a sour? Not talking about storing in the fridge for now as the variation doesn't seem relevant to the question. Thanks for the advice!

What it really needs is consistency. Whichever method you choose, make sure you stick with it. What you are doing is creating a colony of bacteria. You create a given environment, the microflora in it fights it out for some time, at the end one strain (or a handful of them) wins and takes over. If you change the conditions, another strain gets a chance and the war for ecological niches starts over.

As for what the exact "right" ratio and schedule is: there are many of them. This doesn't mean that any random combination will work - if you pull something out of thin air, you could get a colony of pathogens instead of good sourdough culture. Also, some methods might be easier to work with, producing more robust colonies, while others might be way to close to a bifurcation point.

So what you should do is follow a recipe. As always, there is a chance that you happen upon a bad recipe, or upon a recipe which is in principle good, but explained badly. You may prefer to use the more exact recipe from the book since the precision leaves less margin for error, or the more simple (but possibly less easy!) recipe from the videos, hoping that you will get it right despite the missing precision (or that it is so inherently robust that it never needed it in the first place). It is a personal preference for the method.

To make it even more complicated, you are also likely to end up with different taste profiles from different recipes. But you can't know for sure if and how they differ before having tried both. So unless you are in the mood for extensive experimentation, you cannot really use this as a criterion to which recipe you should pick. So you are back at just committing to one and see if it works for you.


Why is it necessary for Turkish Coffee to start brewing with cold water? In nearly every Turkish Coffee making recipe I have found them recommending us to start by putting coffee in cold water and then bring it to boil.

Why is it necessary for Turkish Coffee to start brewing with cold water?

Turkish coffee refers to the method of making coffee, not a type of coffee. Also known as mocha or kahve, it is traditionally made in an ibik using cold water to prolong the time the coffee "brews" and releases flavour. The ibik (aka cezve in Arabic) was invented in the 16th century, replacing the previous method of steeping the coffee in hot water set in sand on a tray over glowing embers for a whole day.

The Turkish coffee or mocha maker also aims to produce as much foam as possible and has to bring the mix of water. sugar and very finely ground mocha coffee slowly to the boil stirring all the time. Cold water ensures the maximum oxygen content in the water and therefore potentially more froth. As the coffee comes to the boil and the froth rises, it must be quickly removed from the heat before it boils over -- a little like boiled milk.

Sometimes the froth is skimmed off and divided into the demitasse or mocha cups about three times before the coffee is finally served. The more proficient the mocha maker, the more foam they can produce. And a real Mocha Master knows exactly when to take the mocha off the hotplate at the first boil. Wait too long in the hope of obtaining more foam, and the coffee "catches" and is overcooked. It is then considered a failure and has to be thrown away, because it tastes too bitter and burnt. If, however, you get the timing right, the taste and the silkiness of the foam is unforgettable. Interesting to see that Wikipedia Turkish coffee page mistakenly shows a cezve and not an ibik serving Turkish coffee in Turkey.

In Turkey it is said when a girl can make coffee with a full "head" of froth, she is ready to marry.

The Coffee Barer by John Frederick Lewis (1857) The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons


Does wrapping a bottle of whisky in plastic affect the taste? I want to store a couple of whisky bottles with boxes in some idle place at our house. I'd probably sell these after 5 years. To prevent damages to the box, I'm thinking of wrapping the boxes of whisky but would it affect the quality of the whisky? Would the plastic cause the bottles to warm up?

The bottles will be stored in a location with room temparature. Not too hot nor cold. Also with no direct sunlight.

Plastic isn't going to cause heating, and won't impact the quality of your whisky. Plastic wrapping is likely to trap moisture, however, which could be a concern as it could damage the labeling on the bottles. If you want to protect the boxes with plastic wrap my advice would be to make sure you have airflow.


Peking Duck - why do they take my duck away? When I go eat at Peking Duck restaurants, they always bring a delicious duck over, present it to me and friends or me and family members, then they proceed to slice a few pieces onto the little buns, add some hoison sauce, veggies, and then distribute to us to eat.

Then, it almost seems shocking, they take our duck away.

It's like...half a duck is taken away from us...mysteriously back into the kitchen.

So now we have to order another duck ...then a third duck... + some sauteed dishes to fill us all up.

So my question is:  Why does this happen?  Is only a small part of a duck edible?  Are we being ripped off?  E.g., Are they keeping the duck for themselves for some purpose?  Making soups comes to mind.

Are they making duck soup with the duck that we should have eaten?

But then here's another interesting obversvation:  I notice that Peking Duck service stations at buffets actually throws away big parts of the duck, after slicing up a few pieces to make the buns for people standing on line.

So...perhaps it is just a fact that most of the duck is inedible.  But I would just like some information from this forum.

Thanks in advance!

In several of the restaurants I've ordered peking duck at they offer it as part of three courses. They will first present the duck and cut off slices of the skin (with only a small amount of meat), this is then used with the pancakes.

They will then take the duck away away and create a noodle dish with the remaining meat. Finally they use the everything left to make a duck soup (dishes may vary from place to place).

It's quite possible that the restaurant you went to only offers the dishes separately.


Can Enamled Cast Iron cause fires? I heard of someone who supposedly had a fire while cooking on an enameled cast iron grill pan. I am not sure if this was due to negligence on the part of the chef or if there was something in the grill pan that could have caused this. What do you think?

Could some materials like the enamel coating have reacted to certain foods?

Metal (cast iron) would have to melt before it would burn, and it takes a lot of firepower to melt metal-- that's why we cook in it.  Enamel likewise isn't going to burst into flame at temperatures generated on the average stove or grill.  Something smeared or coating it might, though.

Like grease.  On a grill pan, what you describe sounds like a grease fire.  Possibly (but not necessarily, could have just been clumsiness or an accident) caused by negligence of the chef, the drippings from whatever was being cooked in the pan caught fire.  If you leave grease/oil in a hot enough pan long enough, its certainly possible for it to catch flame, especially if there's something with a lower smoke point floating in it.

That said, plain cast iron does react with acidic foods, but in a way that makes your food taste off, not burst into flames.


How do I preserve my mushroom stuffing for freezing? What do I have to do to preserve a mushroom stuffing with eggs, crab and cheese as ingredients so I can freeze it for use at a later date?

But, as Catija indicates below its not clear whether you are stuffing mushrooms or whether the stuffing contains mushroom. Based on the other stuff used I am going to go ahead and guess that you are stuffing mushrooms with this, but I am going to make this and if/then answer to cover both cases.

If the stuffing contains mushrooms:

you have to decide whether it's ok for the mushroom to get mushy, then you don't have to do anything special, just make sure it's in a freezer bag and get all the air out. However, If you want your mushroom to stay firm, then don't freeze it, and wait until you get closer to the day you need to use it, then you can refrigerate it for a day or two.

If not:

I think you'll be just fine to freeze it. I might freeze the portions on a cookie sheet first before putting into a bag, it will make thawing swifter and more painless.


If the recipe says simmer beans for 3 hours, can I just turn up the heat and cook faster? I just got home from work, and tonight is my night to cook. Unfortunately, I just realized this recipe for Mexican beans says I should simmer the beans for 3 hours. I'm too hungry for that, but I really want to eat these.

Would be okay to skip the simmering? Or is there something else I can do to produce the desired effected?

You probably want to just use already-cooked beans, from a can. (Hope there's a store nearby.) Then you just have to cook as long as it takes to let the flavors mingle; half an hour is plenty.

If you happen to have a pressure cooker, you can cook dried beans much faster, something like 20-30 minutes. See for example this recipe - you can add back in whatever seasonings you like from your recipe.

But otherwise, there's no way to speed up cooking dried beans - boiling water doesn't get any hotter than 100C, and it just takes time for them to slowly soak up water and cook through.


Caramels without cream or condensed milk? I have a chocolate caramel recipe that I love, but I'd like to tweak it to not use heavy cream, which I don't keep for anything else. However, I always have butter. Any thoughts on how I would need to adjust the ingredients, to not need heavy cream? Here's what I have now:

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup plus 1/8 cup light corn syrup

1 tablespoon oil

3/4 cup heavy whipping cream

You should be able to use butter easily, there are good caramels based on butter.

As a starting point in reengineering the recipe, I would try 1/3 of the cream amount as butter (by weight). So 3/4 * 240 g (1 cup of cream, rounded) / 3 = 60 g butter. Cream has about 33% milk fat, and the water in it evaporates anyway when making the caramels. You'll obviously have to test it and tweak it until you have arrived at the best substitution ratio. Removing the oil may simplify things, it's unlikely to have much contribution when you are working with butter.


Converting kneading recipe to no knead recipe I'm a beginning baker planning to make ensaymada, which has a sweet buttery dough. The recipe I found requires kneading. Do I have to make some adjustments to the recipe, or can I just make the dough, let it rise for 2 hours, and then put it in the fridge as Gemma Stafford did for her cinnamon rolls? According to this question, someone made a no knead recipe out of a regular recipe without any changes other than letting the bread sit. Will this work or do I have to add more liquid? Thanks in advance!

I am not an expert by any means, but my understanding of the no-knead process is that it really is just TIME that makes all the difference. I do not think you would need to alter the amount of liquid in your recipe. The time is just for the yeast to do its thing and develop flavor in your dough. Kneading accelerates the process, but if you have the time to allow the dough to sit, you can achieve the same thing with less hands-on work.


Leftover Uncooked Pasta Dough I made pasta dough (flour and egg only) and still have half the dough in the fridge. It is folded in thirds and in plastic wrap, not yet rolled. After a day or two it started turning darker which I didn't expect. I'm wondering what I can expect if I roll and cook this pasta in terms of taste, texture and appearance. (I'm not asking about food safety.)

I don't have the exact same experience, but I did have some egg pasta noodles I'd already rolled out in the fridge for a couple days, and they discolored like yours did. I cooked them anyway and really didn't detect any difference. I felt, if anything, the pasta might have been a bit firmer than if I'd cooked it fresh, but I'd think that has more to do with partial drying or gluten formation/relaxation in the fridge than anything. I didn't taste any difference through the sauce, or notice a change in appearance.

That said if you only roll it now, I don't know if you'd have the same, slight textural difference I did.

....You could perform a simple experiment, pinch some off, roll it into a sheet, cook and see what you think. Since my pasta, eggy though it was, might have had more salt (or something), there's no guarantee my experience would be the same as yours.


malted balls centers How can make malted milk ball centers - not the chocolate covering? If I mix malted milk powder with any liquid it just melts into it. I don't have any way to compress the powder mechanically, which might work. There used to be pressed hard malted candies but I can't find them anymore.

The ingredients of Whoppers are:

  SUGAR; CORN SYRUP; PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED PALM KERNEL OIL; WHEY (MILK); MALTED MILK (BARLEY MALT; WHEAT FLOUR; MILK; SALT; SODIUM BICARBONATE); COCOA; CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: RESINOUS GLAZE; SORBITAN TRISTEARATE; SOY LECITHIN; SALT; NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR; CALCIUM CARBONATE; TAPIOCA DEXTRIN

I'm guessing that the sugar, corn syrup, palm kernel oil, cocoa, glaze, and lecithin are in the chocolate coating. This leaves you with a few things to play with for the filling. The wheat flour could be adding some bulk and helping to hold the filling together. However!

Tapioca dextrin... the plot thickens! Tapioca dextrin is a filler made from cassava that has almost no flavor. It is used as a bulking agent in things like sauces and dressings, but it is also used as a binding agent. One of it's main functions is to hold medication together in pills, so that could easily also be holding malted milk powder together in the filling.


Cleaning bacon in new cast iron I have a new cast iron skillet. It came unseasoned, but I seasoned it using the flaxseed oil method that seems the new (recent?) hotness. When I then cook bacon in it some of the bacon is nailed to the surface. I could scrub it out but it will take the seasoning with it (that is, I tried this once, removed the seasoning, then had to re-season the pan. For my second attempt I used electrolysis to completely reset the skillet.)

Should I just leave some of residue, including the brown bits of bacon that are stuck on, add a thin layer of oil and toss it back in the oven

EDIT: My thought on tossing it in the oven again with a new layer is that what bits are on the pan from bacon are just going to carbonize, which I've read is part of the idea of seasoning.

All my attempts to "clean and repair" a sticky-seasoning layer have ended badly as well. I know who already snickers in the background, but my opinion is: start clean. Give the pan a lye bath and a good scrub, then reseason with a better seasoning.

"The new hotness" of flaxseed oil goes back to the fact that it doesn't go rancid easily, without heat it just dries out making a film which can protect things like wood. I bought into it, and seasoned a pan with it, and wondered why all my seasoning tries were unsucessful (I stripped and reseasoned 3 times, I think). I came to blame it on the smooth forged iron.

Then I got Cookwise and read the chapter on fats. And surprise, what does it say? That PUFA stick to everything around. (Makes sense, if you stop to think about it - those unsaturated bonds are unstable, they itch to break apart). So, when I got my next iron pan, I seasoned it with three (very thin) layers of flaxseed oil (for a solid base which will stick to the pan and the finishing layer) and then two layers of lard. After the oven, I heated it from brown to almost-black on the stove (empty).

This seasoning turned out perfect. I made crepes on it, re-oiling once every 7-8 crepes only (no fat in the batter). The pan released them like a charm. The old flaxseed-seasoned pan still sits around with some carbonized matter burnt onto the seasoning, and waits for a lye-flaxseed-lard session.

Of course, I would still take some caution with new seasoning and oil well the first few applications (I only tried the crepes after I noticed that less problematic items work great). And if you tend to often fry with the fashinably-healthy nonsaturated vegetable oils, don't heat them too much, else they could bake in a sticky-seasoning layer onto the pan. In the worst case, if you do get sticky-oil (but not carbon) buildup, try adding a new lard layer before you strip-and-reseason.


Oil/Fat substitutes in bread I have a bread machine and make bread using margarine (I need to avoid all dairy). The problem is the margarine doesn't always mix properly and sometimes ends up on the outside of the dough, leaving shiny dark crunchy spots. The recipe I am following is

1 1/2 cup water
3 tbs margarine
1/2 tbs salt
1/2 tbs + 1 tsp sugar
4 1/8 cups A/P flour (Canadian A/P flour)
1 tsp bread machine yeast

Can I substitute some kind of oil instead of margarine? I suspect this will mix better but I'm not sure about how the chemistry works.

Well, it sounds like the answer should just be to soften your margarine first.  Either your margarine is ice cold or your machine doesn't need very long if you're ending up with little studded bits of margarine in your crust - that's very unusual.

Can you add oil? Sure.  Try adding some olive oil instead or just vegetable shortening .  There's a little water in margarine and butter, its an emulsion - about 16% of it - so if you're going to add pure fat then technically you'd need to add about 1 tsp of water as well.  Will 1 tsp of water matter overall? Probably not...but its there.

(Overall that recipes looks a bit low on water to me also - I'm not sure how that would effect the margarine mixing though.)


Homemade flour tortillas without cast iron My wife and I love making things from scratch, but we're just starting out without a lot of equipment. We don't have a cast iron pan, especially because my wife has a neuromuscular disorder, so she can't lift really heavy pans.

Can you make good homemade flour tortillas in a regular stainless steel saucepan? What should we watch out for?

Sure, I made hundreds of tortillas on a couple of old revere-ware saucepans before springing the big bucks ($7.50-$12.00) on a couple genuine mexican sheet-steel (not stainless) tortilla griddles. The griddles work better, because you can do 2 at a time per griddle, and flipping is easier because there are no sidewalls to get in the way of your metal spatula.
Incidentally, I prefer the wooden tortilla presses to the metal ones; less persnickety. A couple square sheets of clear flexible window plastic make a good, and nearly permanent replacement for thatendless stream of saran-wrap or waxed paper.


How to mince garlic efficiently without the garlic sticking to the sides of the knife? Whenever I mince cloves of garlic on a cutting board, it sticks to the sides of the knife making it a tedious task? Is there anyway to prevent this from happening when using a knife to mince garlic the old-fashioned way? Otherwise, I frequently have to wipe off the garlic remnants from the sides of the knife.

As with franko's answer, the reason why you use salt (preferably sea salt) is that it helps to crush and mince the garlic whilst you are chopping.  If you are worried about too much salt in your diet, then do not use any other salt than what is used whilst mincing your garlic.  Like above, I don't understand why you have to discard what is on the knife, I am assuming that you have peeled your clove.  If you are worried about cutting yourself, simply scrape the side of the knife on the edge of the board, gather it up into a little pile and carry on mincing, a bit of chop chop, then scrunch down with the sea salt.

As an aside to this, though this was always my preferred method in the past, I have now taken to grating garlic with the very fine part of a cheese grater.  This not only takes a second or two but also you don't have to peel your clove as the skin is left on the top side of the grater, whilst the grated garlic is on the underside.


Baking cauliflower with potatoes I like to cook a very simple recipe for roasted potatoes: I peel and cut potatoes to cubes, mix them in a sauce of olive oil, garlic and sweet paprika and place in the oven for about an hour under aluminum foil. I then take out the aluminum foil and for about 10-15 for a crunchy texture.

Now, I want to add cauliflower to the dish. I plan to cut the cauliflower to small pieces and just mix them with the potatoes. I don't have much experience with cauliflower - will I get thoroughly cooked and crunchy cauliflower? Do I need to pre-boil the cauliflower?

With an hour in the oven at roasting temperatures (400-450 F/205-230 C), small pieces of cauliflower will likely overcook, not under. Most recipes call for only 25-30 minutes in the oven at this temperature. Under foil, the cauliflower will add a lot of liquid - steam - and may even get sort of mushy before you remove the foil. You definitely don't need to pre-cook the cauliflower.

You haven't noted your baking temperature or the size of your cubes... for that long amount of time, I'm guessing you're baking your potatoes at a lower temperature, as recipes for 1/2 inch (1 cm) cubes of potato don't generally require that long of a baking time... but most recipes don't call for cooking under foil for that matter.

Have you thought about finding a recipe (if only for the methodology, not flavors)? Seems like you should be able to ditch the foil, cook at 400 F/205 C for about 30-40 minutes and be done with it.