Why does KitchenAid recommend against using the Dough Hook on Speed 1? KitchenAid's manual for the stand mixer contains several warnings not to use the dough hook on any speed other than 2. While lots of websites explain how high speeds can overheat the dough, what can go wrong at low speeds?

A KitchenAid  mixer does not have adjustable gearing; at low speeds it’s being run at low power. If run at low power with a viscous, resistant load like bread dough it can end up stalling, either continuously or repeatedly during the knead. This can overheat the motor and reduce its lifetime.


I was trying to take off the absorbant pad while my chicken was still frozen, and it broke I rinsed the chicken as well as I possibly could, to make sure all the gel was off. What if there are small pieces of the gel stuck, and now I'm cooking it? Is it safe to eat or is it trash?

Don't worry, the materials in those pads are non-toxic. The absorbent material is silica (purified sand) or plant cellulose, and the plastic is thin and non-digestable. So if a small amount sticks to your food it's no big deal, just make sure it's cooked through as that will kill any bacteria in the gel that happens to be left. What I would do is let the chicken thaw and then rinse it thoroughly.


Can I still use a Tagine that was outside for a while? I have a ceramic Tagine that I used regularly to make Middle Eastern dishes.
However over the last few months I didn't use it and it sat outside on the balcony for a while, collecting rain water and dirt.
I took it inside and cleaned it thoroughly but I am still not sure if it is a good idea to use it.
Will the rain / dirt / etc. have any lasting effect that may not be visible and ruin any dishes (e.g. having absorbed a foul taste) or am I fine after cleaning the Tagine?

If all the tagine was exposed to is water and dirt then you should be fine as long as you clean it off and bake it to drive out any water. Tagines are generally unglazed on one side so will absorb water, if you don't dry it out it could crack when you try to use it. the process would be put it in a cold oven and turn it up to 170°C (350°F) for 2 hours, then turn the oven off and let it cool overnight with the door closed. The baking may tell if you have problems, if it smells nasty you'll probably want to get rid of it, if it's a normal clay smell you should be good.
If your tagine has been exposed to significant amounts of weed killer, bug killer, liquid fertilizers or other chemicals then it may have absorbed them in which case you'd want to think twice about using it. If there's been a couple of sprays around it there's nothing to worry about.


Does brown rice or white rice expand more when cooked? Which expands more when cooked: brown rice or white rice?

I'd say the answer will depend a lot on the exact type of rice, as well as cooking method, and how much you might "fluff" it afterward.  I've seen internet sources that claim brown rice expands more, and other internet sources that say white rice expands more.

For a more precise measurement, I went to the USDA food composition database.  There you can find measurements of nutrients by volume for cooked and raw rice.  Although volume measurements are difficult for things like cooked rice, I figure if there's any resource that attempted consistency in measurement, it's probably something like this.

Anyhow, what I did was compare the calories listed for 1 cup raw vs. 1 cup cooked rice in various instances from the USDA nutrient list.  I assume there aren't a lot of calories randomly lost during cooking (or at least any minimal loss is at similar rates).  Note that the standard USDA preparation seems to be to cook until all water is absorbed (for example, in data sheet here), rather than methods like boiling in excess water and draining, which could result in more nutrient loss.

So, by comparing the calories per cup in raw vs. cooked, we can get a sense of the relative expansion of each variety of rice.  Here's the data for calories per 1 cup portions, along with my calculated expansion ratio.

Brown rice

Long-grain: raw 679, cooked 248 = ratio 2.74
Medium-grain: raw 688, cooked 218 = ratio 3.16

White rice

Long-grain: raw 675, cooked 205 = ratio 3.29
Medium-grain: raw 702, cooked 242 = ratio 2.90
Short-grain: raw 716, cooked 266 = ratio 2.69
Glutinous: raw 684, cooked 169 = ratio 4.05

Bottom line is that the shape and type of rice grain seems to matter just as much as whether it's brown vs. white.  Again, there are bound to be inaccuracies here, so I'd only take these figures as estimates.  But there doesn't seem to be a significant trend that brown rice always expands more or less than white.


What has a cooler got to do with sous-vide cooking? Kindly explain paragraph 3. I can't see link between this device for sous-vide cooking and coolers? What does unmatched versatility mean here?

This is the Chefsteps Joule sous-vide cooker

Coolers (chilly bins) are ideal sous-vide cooking vessels as they are well insulated, and thus conserve energy and avoid temperature varying across the water bath.

Most sous-vide cooking happens at less than 80°C (176°F), so the plastic will stand up fine.

Many commercial clip on sous-vide cookers are only suitable for fish tank style containers (thin walled). These tanks look pretty, but waste a lot of energy, and can struggle to keep the same temperature throughout all the water. An interchangeable clip, or wide reach clip is more useful for coolers or other insulated vessels.

Specifically with the Chefsteps Joule sous-vide cooker: it seems to have a powerful magnet in its foot, so if you place a sheet of coated steel on the bottom of your cooler, you won't even need a clip.


How is rare steak made safe to eat? The USDA recommends cooking many meats to an internal temperature of at least 145 °F (63 °C) to kill off pathogens. That usually works for me, but the big exception is steak. Whenever I try reaching at least 145 °F (63 °C), I always cook the steak to well-done, and online articles generally say rarer cuts have to dip well below 145 °F (63 °C).
Still, regular portions of rare steak hasn't ever gotten me sick. So what keeps the raw meat safe enough for us to eat rare? Are there things I do or should do to ensure safe raw meat (e.g. sourcing, preservation, preparation, and cooking)?

First, 145 °F (63 °C) and higher is the temperature for a well done steak. So, with the addition of carry-over cooking, your results don't surprise me.  If you are shooting for rare, cook to an internal temperature of 125 °F (52 °C), and let your steak rest 10 minutes before slicing.
While the USDA correctly and necessarily provides temperature guidelines, in fact the reduction of pathogens follows a logarithmic curve and includes the variables of temperature and time. That means, in general, that longer times at lower temperatures will reduce pathogens. This understanding is the basis of sous vide cooking, for example.
Additionally, we generally assume that any potential pathogens are only present on the surface of whole muscle cuts.  So, again, in general, achieving the target temperature on the surface eliminates the threat.
Finally, the quality and handling of the raw product is critical.  It is important that you have fresh products, kept refrigerated or frozen until use, and handled by people who are practicing safe handling procedures (washed hands or gloves, ...).


Do I need to worry about differences in produce in foreign recipes? I am from Egypt and so I think some produce is different from the ones in Europe or the US where most of the recipes found online are written. Should I stick to a regional cook book or is the variation in things like garlic, onions and tomatoes unnoticeable?

tl;dr: Yes, there are significant differences ... but use them as guidelines, don't just blindly follow recipes.  (Jacques Pépin agrees)

Part of the size issue that Jefromi mentioned is not only growing conditions (hotter/dryer/morning sun/in a greenhouse/etc), but there are typically different varietals of things.

Eggplant is one of the most significant -- In the US, we have in some shops 'japanese' or 'chinese' eggplant, which is a long slender thing ... but the typical US eggplant is the 'globe eggplant', a bulbous dark purple variety.  Indian eggplants tend to be smaller in size, firmer, more egg-shaped, and are much more difficult to find in the US unless you're growing your own.

For cucumbers, the ones we used to have in the shops were about 8 inches (20cm) long, thick skinned with rather significant seeds.  These days, I mostly find the 'English' cucumbers that are longer (over 12"/30 cm), skinnier, with thin skin and smaller seeds.  But some shops will also carry 'Persian' cucumbers, which are much smaller (under 6"/15cm).  Where and when the recipe was written will greatly affect what is meant if they don't qualify the cucumber.

There's also significant variation in hot peppers.  In your area, 'crushed red pepper' might be Allepo pepper, which is much fruitier than the variety used in the US.  (I'm not even sure what variety it is -- it might be cayenne)

We also have things like 'oregano'.  Mediteranian oregano (origanum vulgare) is a member of the mint family, while Mexican oregano (lippia graveolens) is in the verbena family.

Although flat leaf parsley is often the only 'parsley' in US shops these days, for years curly parsley was unqualified (just 'parsley'), while flat leaf was called 'chinese parsley'

Apples are another item with significant regional differences -- in part because they're typically bred for thrive in a specific growing condition, so many American varieties aren't available in Europe and visa-versa.  When I lived in the Netherlands 30 years ago, the typical apples in the shops were tart green apples, similar to the Granny Smith in the US.

Carrots have also changed rather significantly in the US.  'Baby carrots' were originally a way to sell broken carrots that would otherwise go to animal fodder, but as they could sell for a higher price, many farmers started growing more slender varieties where the majority of the carrot could be turned into the pre-processed "baby carrots".  In my area, the only places that I know to get decent sized carrots (as large as the old 'winter carrots') are in international grocery stores or Restaurant Depot (if I need 50lbs).

... I'm sure that I could go on, but unless you're baking, you can taste as you go and adjust however you like.  If you've never tried the dish you're trying to make, it just looked interesting, you can always use it as guidelines ... if you think it looks dry as you had smaller tomatoes, go ahead and add some more.  If you've had the dish before, you have more of a target of what you're aiming for ... but that still doesn't mean that you have to strictly stick to a recipe.


Toaster Oven pan Without The Toaster Oven Growing up, my parents had a couple of little, 2 layer pans that came with Toast-R-Ovens (The appliance themselves had been lost or broke, but the pans remained.). They were great for cooking drippy things, and fit in the dishwasher beautifully.

I would like a couple or 3 of those pans, but I don't really need a toaster oven, and I certainly don't need 3. It there a place I can get those pans or ones like them?

I regularly see them in the catalogs that come to the house all the time. If you are looking for a pan in which a rack sets into, try Walter Drake at this link:

http://www.wdrake.com/WalterDrake/Shopping/ProductDetail.aspx?CID=Kitchen&SCID=Food+Preparation&ProductID=0000136379&SourceCode=20509000001&mr:trackingCode=6726E407-C781-DE11-B7F3-0019B9C043EB&mr:referralID=NA

They also have a few other toaster oven pans that may interest you.


Do slow cookers require liquid to operate? I have a Butterball turkey breast roast that I'd like to cook tomorrow, and I'm planning to do it in my slow cooker.

The recipe as provided online is the same one that is on the turkey packaging:

  Slow-Cooker Instructions:
  Place THAWED roast, skin side up, flat in 8” diameter slow-cooker. Add 1/2 cup water. Cover, cook on low 7-1/2 hours to internal temperature of 170 degrees as measured with a meat thermometer. After 4 hours, check temperature at center, ends and near top for food safety. Turkey must reach 140 degrees within 4 hours.

Now, I haven't done a lot of slow cooking before, but when I have, I've always added enough liquid to fill the slow cooker up to about 3/4 full.  Half a cup of water will barely cover the bottom of my slow cooker.

I did some research, but found nothing conclusive.  Some people say that slow cookers should always be more than half full, while others seem to indicate that it's fine to run them almost empty.

Is there a minimum level of liquid necessary when cooking in a slow cooker?

It's really no different from cooking something on a stove: if you have no liquid at all, things are probably going to start getting too hot, sticking on the bottom, and maybe burning. As long as there's some liquid, you'll be fine. The important thing is to add enough; if you keep having to open it to add more, it won't stay hot. This is basically the minimum level: enough that it won't boil dry in an hour or so. If you're cooking something really simple like a piece of meat, using too much water just provides more water for the flavor to get diluted into.

This is precisely what the first page you linked to says: if it's not full enough, it might all boil off. The writer is just way off about quantities. I suspect his cooker's lid doesn't fit well, or he's unnecessarily cooking on high. I don't think my slow cooker would boil dry from half full in 8 hours on low, and there's no reason to put it on high if I'm cooking that long.

The recipe at the second link isn't exactly empty - a can of cranberry sauce will provide a good amount of liquid. It also might not be a great recipe. On that note, I might suggest you look for more authoritative recipes. Perhaps check out a slow cooker cookbook from your library (these tend to be pretty common) to get an idea of the kinds of things you can do. (Of course, if all you want is a plain piece of meat, I guess you don't need much.)


How to remove pizza pan from oven without a peel? I was given a set of mini-pizza pans for making personal sized pizzas, but I noticed these pans don't have handles or ridges around the edge like my larger pizza pan to grip with my oven mitt. I don't have a pizza peel, so I'm wondering what the best alternative method for getting the pizza out of the oven with equipment I probably already have around the kitchen?

You can use a spatula or tongs to pull pizzas off of a pizza pan/stone in the oven onto an upside down baking sheet, cutting board, or even a plate, assuming your pans are just flat surfaces, like a pizza stone.

You can also assemble pizzas on the upside down baking pan and slide them off it onto the stone in the oven.


Storage of Pecorino cheese — is room temperature ok? Is it permissible to store and transport an intact wheel of Pecorino cheese at room temperature for 2 or 3 days before putting it back into refrigeration?

If the wheel is intact, 2 or 3 days at room temperature will be fine. Hard cheeses like that are aged at temperatures not far below normal room temperature. If the wheel were cut, if the temperature got above room temperature or if you were asking about a longer period of time, I might be slightly concerned. But in your situation, your cheese will be fine. On the off chance that it develops some mold, cut the mold away with at least a one inch buffer.


How do I pick the best potatoes at the supermarket? I was picking potatoes randomly from the supermarket without much thinking, and some potatoes take more time to bake properly.

So on what basis should I pick potatoes, potatoes for baking?

I'm not referring to the baking/roasting question, which discusses what type of potatoes to use.

There are two basic kinds of potatoes: starchy and waxy.

The difference is actually in the amount of starch in them. Starchy potatoes, such as Russet or Idaho potatoes are best for baking, since the starch will allow it to be nice and fluffy after it's baked. They don't hold their shape particularly well when cooked. If you cut into a baked potato, it should be crumbly and dry.

Waxy potatoes include most fingerling potatoes, and most red potatoes. They hold their shape better when cooked, so they are good for soups and stews and potato salads.

Yellow-fleshed potatoes such as Yukon Gold or Yellow Finn are in between, and so can be used for either purpose. Purple potatoes also seem to have medium starch, and so can be used for both.

According to one cookbook I have (Moosewood Restaurant New Classics), there are two ways to determine which is which. If you cut the potato in half, the blade will have a film or a foamy residue on the knife. These potatoes may also stick to the knife because of the starch.

The rules for the brine is to make it of 11 parts water to 1 part salt. A high-starch potato will sink (it's denser) and a low-starch one will float.

Here's a good overview.

Now as to choosing ones that will bake well, it really depends on size. You want potatoes that will bake evenly, so try to choose ones of similar size. I bake my potatoes directly on the oven rack so that the hot air can move freely around them. Try to give them lots of room for that. Also, if you wrap them in aluminum foil, they'll steam and won't give you the nice crunchy skin. (And I'd avoid any potatoes with irregular shapes -- the smaller diameter ones may cook before the larger ones.)

Large potatoes take about an hour to bake at 350F. Lots of small ones may take a bit less time -- experiment with your oven and your potatoes. I'd start squeezing slightly after about 40-45 minutes. If they yield when squeezed, they're probably done.


Challah braids melding together I am trying to make Challah using this recipe, and the bread tastes good, but the braids are melding together like this:

What is going on here? I am kneading using the slap-and-fold technique without adding any extra flour, and I am testing the gluten formation using the window pane test. I am a novice baker, so I cannot rule anything out though. I am withholding some flour to use while shaping, but I usually have about 1/4-1/2 cup left over. Is the dough too moist?

I have posted this gallery showing some of the process, so hopefully that is helpful. Thanks!

There's nothing wrong with your dough, it looks like you are getting a good rise out of it, which is what you want. I can't see you wanting to mess with success.

What you need to do is adjust your rolling and braiding technique to take into account how much rise you are going to get. Try rolling out your braids a bit thinner and braiding them much looser, this will give the bread more space to expand. If you need a shorter and wider end result try a 5 strand braid instead of a 3. It may take a few tries to get it right but practice in this case is perfect.

It looks like you've got a heat problem from your picture, one of your loaves is torched! If you are using a fan oven turn the fan off and use a non-fan mode, or if that's not possible try creating a wind-break with a piece of tin foil to keep your loaves out of the direct path.


Does unopened whole wheat flour have to be refrigerated? The organic whole wheat flour that I bought is in a sealed thick plastic bag and has never been opened. Should it be refrigerated (or frozen)? And does opened white flour need to be refrigerated?

My question refers to unopened whole wheat flour. And the second part of my question refers to white flour which I now understand is better in the freezer. Thank you!

Whole wheat flour will turn rancid faster than AP flour because the germ contains oil. For best baking results you should use the flour within one month (opened and unopened) (source: 1 and 2). You can use the flour even longer but it will taste rancid and the gluten won't work as well as in new flour (source: 3). As far as I know there are no health concerns if older flour is used.

Flour can be refrigerated and be freezed. This will slow down the oxidization. If you want to use the previously chilled flour, make sure that the flour is warm then for good baking results. (source: 1).

Sources
1: Does white whole wheat flour need to be refrigerated?
2: How long can I store a food in the pantry, refrigerator, or freezer?
3. How to store flour


Trying to make a 3 layer curd tart Want to make a 3-layer curd tart or pie using layers of blood orange, lime and lemon curd but don't know how to do it. Do I need to heat all three curds, let all three cool, then pour into pie shell one at a time? Will they bleed together or stay in separate layers?

Cook one layer, pour it into the shell, and chill until firm. When it's firm, cook and add the second layer. You don't want to add the curd while it's still super hot. Let it cool a bit, but pour it before it begins to set. Repeat with the third layer.

That procedure should give you very clean and lasting layers.


Why slow ferment after shaping? Many people say you have to slow ferment your bread after shaping to give it better flavor, but I can never understand that.  Why not just slow ferment the whole batch then shape it when it is done fermenting?

This way is way safer as you can't ruin the proofing if you forget it a bit longer than intended and it has been giving me the desirable results I am after.

Are there any advantages in slow fermenting individual breads instead of the whole batch?

I am talking about crusted white bread. After the slow fermentation for the whole batch, I will just shape the bread, put it in a dutch oven and let it proof for 10-20 minutes, slash it then pop it in the oven to bake. For the other method (which I don't use) they just get it out of the fridge, slash it and pop it into the oven.

Your first batch is used for building gluten strength in the dough for shaping and giving the yeast time to wake up and do their job. After shaping, you are letting the dough rise to its final form while still adding flavor from the yeast.


Can I make risotto without wine? I want to make risotto without using any alcohol. I am a vegetarian and I want to use vegetarian or mushroom stock only (without any meat).

What is the role of wine in making risotto? Does it help in getting the consistency or does it add flavor?
What can I substitute instead to get a comparable flavor?

Yes, all it is, is flavour.

Apple juice and grape juice are 2 things I've used in the past for non-alcohol people. You can also get away with not using anything as a replacement as long as you use enough of everything else (butter and Parmesan etc).

Wine just gives a little depth and a sort of 'freshness'.

Edit:

I just read the vegetarian part of your question. I'm assuming you already know, but Parmesan isn't vegetarian, as it is made from rennet (rennet is extracted from the lining of the inside of the stomach of mammals), and most commonly from the fourth stomach of young calves. The vegetarian substitutes I've tried in the past (Called pasta cheese), are not great. However, unlike Parmesan, Gruyere is allowed to be made with vegetable rennet and tastes great (I personally prefer it over Parmesan).


Goal of macerating fruit for marmalade I have a recipe for kumquat marmalade, it calls for 2 parts fruits, 1 part sugar and 1 part water. Before boiling the liquid it states that one should macerate the fruit in de sugar water first. How does this maceration help?

Macerating breaks down the fruit and extracts the juices. Especially when making jam, it can expedite the process, allowing you to prep the fruit a day in advance. While some recipes say to macerate for several hours, letting it sit overnight can produce better results, particularly when using dried fruits.


How to check if a vegetable is bitter without eating it I want to know if my cucumber or ridge gourd is bitter before cooking, but for some reason, I can't eat or smell a slice of it to check. Is there any other way to check its bitterness?
(I'm hoping that there will be another way, for how else would factories that produce bulk food products use cucumbers or ridge gourds unless they have an army of workers whose job is to eat slices of each cucumber :-))

For cucumbers in particular, it's quite interesting.
Commercial growers use F1 hybrid varieties that produce only female flowers, and grow them in green houses or polytunnels, or under netting.
The reason for this is that in many cucumber varieties, the fruit from pollinated flowers is bitter; from unpollinated flowers it isn't. Picking reasonably early and ensuring even watering also helps.
When growing traditional and outdoor varieties you can remove the male flowers (identifiable by the stalk behind them) to avoid pollination, or buy all-female F1 varieties - but neither approach will help if there are male flowers growing nearby.


For crackling, should I give pork a blast of super heat at the start or end of roasting? I will be slow roasting a whole pork shoulder tomorrow -- it's huge!  For most of the time the oven will be set to a fairly low temperature and the joint will be covered with foil.  However for a time I will remove the foil and turn the oven up to full temperature to get some good crunchy crackling developing.  My question is: should I do this crackling at the beginning or the end of the roasting?

The heat should be applied at the end, if you covered the crackling with tinfoil and slow cook it will soften (not crispen!) due to the steam and the trapped fat.


Can I put other vegetables in a manual wheat grass juicer? I'm thinking about buying a wheat grass juicer, but the fact that it only juices one thing gives me pause.  Are they adequate at juicing vegetables such as spinach, kale and carrots?

Some juicers are better than other kinds for different things.  A dedicated wheat grass juicers probably isn't going to juice spinach, carrots, and kale well.

A centrifugal juice usually doesn't handle wheatgrass well and in general isn't supposed to be as efficient as some other kinds for leafy greens.

A single-gear or double-gear masticating juicer works great for leafy greens, but isn't supposed to be as efficient for softer fruit.

If you're looking for something that will do wheatgrass, leafy greens, and a variety of other things - consider something like the Omega 8004.  Long warranty, easy to clean, and gives good quality juice.  If you need to make juice for a lot of people though, it is kind of slow for large quantities.


White things growing on my carrot ferment? I'm a newcomer to the world of lacto-fermentation.

I've previously made my own sauerkraut with great success, and thought to dip into the unknown and try lacto-fermenting onions, carrots, and beans.

I did so by cleaning the jar with boiling water, wash the vegetables, adding water, salt, and some brine left over from the sauerkraut ferment.

It's has been 2 to 3 weeks when I check my carrot ferment today. There are quite some white growth on top. It has a faint alcohol-like smell. Does this mean it has gone off and unsafe to continue?

EDIT: Browsing the internet, seems to be either mould or yeast. I don't want to chance it so I am disposing it.

Throw it away and start again. How much of that liquid was bribe? Something went wrong.
It looks like you added too much liquid.  You only need enough to cover your vegetables. I would use 5% by weight of salt for this type of pickling. For example, if you use 100 pounds of carrots, then add 5 pounds of salt.

Don’t give up! Try again


Why do some green gram seeds float on water while some don't? I wanted to make sprouted green grams. I put a handful of them in a bowl and added water. Some of them floated on water while some remained suberged. Is this normal? Is there a difference in quality between those green grams which floated and those that did not?

Which could mean one thing for sure . The density and weight of the grams which float is way too lower than the ones that sink. Which means, there is a possibility that it is hollow inside , because of some bug infestation or small worms/bugs gotten inside them, eaten them making it hollow. Else the natural weight if the gram is practically very low, and the growth is incomplete., Former being the most probable cause. If would examine the lot for any worms/bugs to ensure that's not the case. If proved clean, and the number of floating grams is much less, then I will just ignore and use. On the other hand, it there proves to be bugs/worms in the lot, the better option is just to discard them to be safe. Because, pulses and lentils infested with bugs mostly no longer taste the same. Thanks. Hope it helped.


Is it safe to overcook beef or other meat? When making hamburgers, I prefer to grill the beef until it is very dark and the outside is entirely black. I know that it is dangerous to eat beef that not cooked enough, but is there any hazard in eating beef which is cooked too much?

From a food safety point of view, no. There is no danger, because the meat contains no pathogens after overcooking.

From a "healthy living" point of view, it might be a problem, because you can have created carcinogens by charring. But we don't discuss such topics here, because nobody in the world knows how much eating charred meat contributes to the risk of developing cancer.

From a cook's point of view, you are doing it wrong. Well cooked meat is juicy and tasty. Overcooked meat is tough as shoe leather. You can continue doing it, if you want to, it is just irrational, like saying "I let my salad wilt for at least a week before eating it, I prefer it that way."


Plastic Bowl for Bread Is it ok to let bread rise in a plastic bowl?  I got rid of my glass and metal bowls because they were too heavy for me to lift.

It really shouldn't be a problem.  A thick-walled bowl is usually preferred to help maintain an even rising temperature.  As long as it is food-safe, you keep it in a draft-free area, and it remains at a consistent temperature, you should be fine.


How do I make authentic Russian black bread? I am interested in making the dense pungent black bread that is traditional in Russia. Recipes for black bread are varied and seem to disagree with one another. Too many of them make spongy, pumpernickel-like loaves which, while good, are not what I'm trying to make.

Is Russian black bread always made with a sourdough starter?

Some recipes have called for cocoa powder or coffee to darken the loaves as just rye flour will often turn out gray instead of dark dark brown.
Are such additives common in traditional black bread recipes? If not how is the dark color obtained?

The primary coloring agents in a traditional black Russian loaf are molasses and dark rye flour.


How long to steam fish for? I bought a Homemaker Food Steamer. How do I steam Fish (Ling Fillet) in it? How long should I steam the fish for?

When I steam fish, I usually steam it whole, but here are the steps I used to check for done ness

Are the eyes of the fish white?  A cooked fish's eyes will harden into white balls as the proteins in the eye coagulate

Can you separate the fish meat from the bone easily? Cooked fish should just barely stick to the bone and should come off very easily

Is the flesh easily separated? Using a chopstick or some other implement, the fish should "flake"; you should be able to easily separate the "sections" you see in the fish without much force

Is the flesh a solid colour or translucent? Cooked fish should be a solid white/pink/whatever colour and not slightly translucent like it is when uncooked

Of course, only the last 2 steps will probably apply to your fillet, but hope this helps!


What is the difference between molasses and treacle? I'm just wondering what the difference between the two are, and whether you can substitute between the two? My recipe for sticky toffee pudding calls for treacle but I only have molasses. Can I substitute the treacle for molasses? It is kinda hard going to the shops just at this moment?

Here is a good article explaining the different types of molasses.

Excerpt:

  True treacle dates back to Victorian times. The pale, refined molasses
  is notably sweeter and has a much more mellow flavor than molasses.
  Nowadays, treacle is a blend of molasses and refinery syrup. It ranges
  in color from light gold to nearly black. British treacle can be
  substituted for molasses in most recipes, but much less frequently
  will molasses work as a replacement for treacle. If you do substitute
  molasses for treacle, use the lightest, unsulphured molasses you can
  find.


If you don't cure a ham and just brine it, is it just considered a pork roast? I brined a ham over night and then slow baked it. Then topped with an apricot honey glaze. It looked and tasted just like pork tenderloin and was white meat and not pink.

I know curing it gives it a salty taste and pink meat. Is what I made just a pork roast?

Techincally, ham is the cut of meat (the rear leg of the pig)--so what you prepared was a fresh ham roast, or just a pork roast.  You happened to brine it preparation.

The term ham has also come to mean the cured pork product--or now, with so-calle turkey ham and whatnot on the market, similar cured meat products.  "Fresh ham" emphasizes that you have the non-cured cut.

The thing is:  as long as it was delicious and you enjoyed it, why worry? :-)


Are bell peppers with brown seeds safe to eat? Sometimes when cooking with bell peppers, the seeds on the inside are brown (instead of white). What causes this, and are the peppers safe to eat?

A quick google brought this:

  In this case, the brown ones may have been closest to mature or
  viable. When fully ripe, most peppers seeds are supposed to be brown
  or tan. not white.

In my experience, peppers with brown are just old and withered.  They are safe, just not as tasty.  Unless the brown thing is mold, in which case they may be poisonous.


How long can a bottle of self-made basil sauce last without rotting? I made a bottle of basil sauce by myself last year summer. It composed of basil leave, extra virgin olive oil, pine nuts, garlic and parmesan cheese.

It was kept in a glass bottle in the refrigerator, and I've add some lemon juice on the top of the sauce to preserve it.

It should be rotting already right?

Last summer was a long time ago. The National Center for Food Preservation has this to say about herbs in oil:

  Oils may be flavored with herbs if they are made up for fresh use, stored in the refrigerator and used within 2 to 3 days. There are no canning recommendations. ... Pesto is an uncooked seasoning mixture of herbs, usually including fresh basil, and some oil. It may be frozen for long term storage

Clostridium botulinum is a serious enough hazard with oiled herbs that I'd not trust a dash of lemon juice on top of the oil to protect me from getting sick after 9 months storage. You're much safer freezing the stuff as recommended.  Ice cube trays produce nice pesto cubes that you can store safely in a freezer bag for at least a couple years.


Why does canned mango pulp have no vitamin A? Mango contains plenty of vitamin A (http://www.thefruitpages.com/chartmango.shtml). I have some frozen mango which confirms this on the bag. However, a can of mango pulp says that it has 0% of the daily recommended amount. Why is that?

The vitamin loss is due primarily to the puree'ing. The viramin A in mangoes comes from beta-carotene, and beta-carotene breaks down easily due to oxidation. On a similar note, I've seen recommendations that carrots (another good source of beta-carotene) not be chopped into small pieces before canning to preserve their vitamin content.

Lots of vitamins are also destroyed by the heat of canning, but beta-carotene is not as susceptible to this problem because it is fat soluble.


Non-coconut substitute for coconut cream? I found a recipe for cornbread that I want to try, but it calls for "1 cup Goya coconut cream". Two problems with this: one, I don't have any such creature (I'm not even 100% confident I know what it is), and two, I passionately hate, detest, and abhor the taste of coconut. You won't find me boiling up some grated coconut to make my own coconut cream, which is the only substitution suggestion I've found.

So, given that (as mentioned) I hate, detest, and abhor the taste of coconut, what can I use instead? What role is the coconut cream playing here? The ingredients are:

1 cup of flour
1 cup of sugar
1 cup corn meal
1 dash of salt
1 cup of corn oil
4 tsp baking powder
1 cup Goya coconut cream
4 eggs

There is absolutely nothing unusual about that recipe except the coconut cream and the nearly dessert like sugar level.  Use regular dairy cream instead, which would be more standard anyway.

See also:  Are there any general principles of ingredient substitutions?


Does salt prevent water from absorbing nutrients and falvours from food? A long time ago, I read somewhere, that there is a very specific reason, why we put salt in the water for cooking pasta: The point is to hinder the water from absorbing flavor and nutrients from the pasta. With soup its the other way around: We want to absorb the flavors into the water, which is why we salt it only at the end.

The explanation was, that salt "ionizes" water, which somehow makes it less likely to absorb things.

Is there any truth to this theory?

Source:

https://www.finecooking.com/article/the-science-of-salt

Quote:

  Because pure water draws salts and other soluble nutrients from the
  interior of vegetables, salting vegetable cooking water also minimizes
  nutrient loss.

As a chemist, I'd say that you have it all wrong.

You add salt to pasta water to have the salt infuse into the pasta. So as the dry pasta absorbs water, salt comes into the pasta too. Salted pasta tastes better than unsalted pasta.

Salted soup tastes better than unsalted soup. Salt enhances our perception of the flavors in the soup, but it does not extract the flavors.


What is the coating of this spring roll called, and how is it made? I had these spring rolls at a restraunt, but as you can see the outside was quite different to the 'normal' spring rolls I usually see.

The texture is light and crispy and looks 'stringy (but doesn't taste or feel that way).

I think it was quite interesting and would like to give them a shot but aren't sure what they're called to search for a recipe.

It's regular roll made with net rice wrapper
It's common wrapper in Vietnam.
Here's site when you can see the package and rolls made with it bearnakedfood


Can I pickle and brine without salt? I have to reduce my sodium intake. I love kosher dill pickles. I'd like to make my own with less or no sodium.
So in researching, I see references to using saltpeter in place of salt sometimes. It is described as a preservative. But it doesn't look like it can completely replace salt.
Is there a way I can pickle and brine without using sodium? Will the taste be close to kosher dill pickles?
It would be fine if I have to eat it within a few weeks.

Thanks for your reply.
I think I may have found the answer here. Apparently you can sous vide pickles to pasteurize them, and then leave them packed in vinegar so no bacteria can grow. As I read this, salt is just a flavoring agent here.
https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/make-crisp-flavor-packed-pickles-on-the-quick

Now, is there a way to make corned beef or pastrami without salt?


My bread recipe book isn't linear with its ingredients? The book that came with my bread maker machine has bread ingredients and quantities in the back but I note that they aren't very consistent in terms of quantities. Take a look at this sourdough:

I note that the 1.5lb loaf uses the same amount of sugar as a 1lb loaf, but a 2lb loaf uses 3x the amount of sugar as a 1lb loaf

I'm hence wondering if I should use 2tbs of sugar, this being the halfway point between the 1lb loaf's 1 tbsp and the 2lb loaf's 3tbsp?

Similarly they all use the same amount of yeast; does that seem right? By that pattern I could make a tonne of sourdough using only 1/3tsp of yeast! :)

Mine has only 2 sizes but also has some nonlinearity. You see it with the water as well (in yours and mine). Things like the rate of temperature change, and therefore the rate of rising, will depend on the total quantity, and some change in the proportions of the ingredients will offset that. Yeast multiplies, and a pseudo-sourdough with very little yeast to start with relies on slowly but surely growing the yeast (if you take it to extremes you end up with a true sourdough from wild yeast, with a tiny bit of cultured yeast). So you probably don't have a typo, and can trust the recipe, at least to start with.

Feel free to experiment; you may prefer the result. I use around 1/3 the stated salt and 1/2 the sugar, for example. The rise and texture aren't very different, but I used to find the bread tasted salty (then sweet if I didn't also reduce the sugar).


Gelpro Mats - do they work? This might not be the right forum for this question, so feel free to remove this question if it is. We have super-hard tile floors in the kitchen, and after an hour or two of cooking my feet are KILLING me. I've been thinking about getting commercial-grade anti-fatigue mats, but they are so ugly.

Does anyone out there have the Gelpro mats, and do they actually do what they say they do? I've had many 'anti-fatigue' mats in the past that have done nothing to ease my aching feet.

I find a pair of basic Crocs to be very efficient as kitchen clogs. (As does Mr. Batali, though the orange color may be in questionable taste). They are well cushioned, reasonably priced, and easily cleaned. They won't provide a ton of protection against dropping something heavy, sharp or hot, though they do sell some upscale models that provide more.

If you really want a mat, these Wellness Mats are superbly cushioned.


How to cook multiple batches in a wok without things burning I've read in a number of places that instead of doubling a recipe in a wok, just do multiple batches.

However, whenever I try to do multiple batches, by the second batch things are starting to get smokey and by the thrid I've set off the fire alarm.

I typically cook something with an egg which seems extra difficult on multiple batches, but I feel like I have this issue even when I don't use egg.

Just scraping the sides does not seem to be enough. I tried wiping down the sides with an oiled paper towel, but it just burned. Am I supposed to completely turn off the burner and wash the wok between batches? Should I just avoid egg and other things which are difficult if doing multiple batches? Will things just get easier the more 'seasoned' my wok gets? Am I not using enough oil?

Does anyone have any tricks for cooking multiple batches in a wok?

I admit that I've spent too much time in Panda Express... but you can see their kitchens from the line and how they batch their food - often switching from a main dish to fried rice (with egg) and back to a stir fry and the solution they use is to quickly rinse out the wok with warm water and scrub it lightly with a brush before dumping it and reheating the pan for the next dish.

This is easy for them since they have sinks under their woks to catch the rinse water but you can do it at home, too. This is the process recommended here

  Wok cooking is done in many small batches to keep the temperature of the wok from dropping drastically when adding a lot of cold or room temperature ingredients therefore it is  often necessary to clean the wok in between batches. Use warm water and a brush to rinse out the wok, discard the water and dry the wok over fire until it just barely starts to smoke before adding oil to cook the next batch.


How can I make yeast- and gluten-free pizza dough? I'm trying to make a yeast-free, no-gluten pizza dough for a friend who basically can eat neither, but loves pizza. The last try included water, rice flour, olive oil, salt, baking powder and guar gum, and although it was better than previous attempts (the dough held together after baking, and didn't turn into a giant crispy cracker) it was still not chewy and crisp as a traditional pizza would be. I'm not expecting a result that perfectly mimics traditional recipes (where gluten and yeast are involved), but would like to know if anyone has tried other flours and yeast replacements that can create a stretchier dough that will result in a crispy yet chewy dough?

I've tried making pizza crust w Garbanzo bean flour (Besan or Gram flour) with some success.
Starting w a recipe similar to this: Chick Pea Tortillas. Leave the fried onions in, and add some olive oil. Fry until nicely browned, and use as crust for pizza. First time I tried, I left the batter too thick, and pizza was overly bready, almost pancakish. Up'd the water on second try and result was crispier, but too flimsy. Perhaps an egg. and some spicing? Haven't tried adding baking powder to the thin batter, but it seems there might be a workable recipe in there somewhere.


How long is cooked hamburger able to sit in a crockpot? I came across a crockpot recipe for burritos. It calls for cooked hamburger (1 lb) as one of its ingredients and specifies that I should cook the mixture on low for 6-10 hours. Is this safe? Whenever I have cooked meat in the crockpot in the past I only use a high temperature and I take it off as soon as it is done so its not kept on 'stay warm'. Since the hamburger is already cooked this is not a question on will this cook it properly but more a question on is this safe and how long (max) can I leave hamburger on low?

food is safe so long as the Crockpot is on, and functioning correctly. The food will maintain a simmer as long as its on, which is too hot for bacteria.


Does egg make the cookies rise(puffy)? I want to make chocolate chip cookies that are chewy and thin (spread out).

I followed the recipe here however I reduced everything by half.

The result was not impressive at all. It's nothing like what you see on the website - it's thick and has a dome-like shape, not thin and spread out and without cracks.

I added more milk in hopes it might help make the cookies spread more but it still didn't.

I tried to use only egg yolk instead of the whole egg but the problem still persist.

What did I do wrong??

These are my guesses:

Over-creaming process? but it's melted butter (and melted butter is supposed to spread, doesn't it?)
Egg? Do eggs leaven the cookies?
Baking soda? Does it make the cookies puffy?

Also, how do I make them flat and have cracks on the top?

The texture of cookies is a complex interaction of many factors, including the size of the cookie, the temperature of the oven, the amount of leavening, the way the fat is treated, and so on.

The flat, thin cookie with the cracks on top that you describe and desire is achieved by slightly under-baking the cookies, allowing them to rise, and then taking them out of the oven.  They then cool and deflate, causing the "cracks" and thinness.

The most likely culprit is that you are over-baking your cookies, and they are setting in the oven while fully domed up.  They would be fine cookies, but more of a crispy style.

A secondary, and related, contributing factor would be having the oven temperature too high.  If you don't already have one, an oven thermometer is an inexpensive and helpful investment to make sure you are baking at the desired temperature, as many ovens are off by a fair margin.

Note also that these are quite large cookies, baked with a "large" scoop, only six per tray.  That helps achieve the fallen state.  Don't make your cookies too small, if you are looking for this texture.

To answer your sub-questions:

Creaming cannot apply to a melted butter cookie, as it requires a solid but plastic fat to incorporate air into the cookie
The egg contributes structure (from protein), tenderness, and usually a fairly considerable proportion of the overall water in the cookie dough
In this recipe, the baking soda is primarily present to promote browning, as there is very little acid for it to react with other than from the molasses in the brown sugar (it will leaven a little).   Since these are "fallen" cookies, it is harder to get good browning and therefore flavor development.  The soda is to promote that.


I'm making tomato sauce which never thickens I tried the following recipe.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5211/amatriciana-pasta

The result is tasty, but the sauce looks nowhere near the image. It is some red paste, yes, but with onions and bacon still clearly taking about half of the volume.

My guess is that I didn't let the onions caramelize long enough. Is this correct? Basically, the "sauce" I get didn't thicken much and the water from the tomatoes evaporated without leaving anything of substance.

I wouldn't worry too much about your results not matching the picture.*  If you got enjoyable results, enjoy them. However, some notes can be made about your concerns.

The bacon certainly isn't going to disappear -- no matter what you do (short of blending), you will always be able to see those bits.

The onions in the sauce shouldn't really be caramelized, but they should be thoroughly sweated -- without coloring -- so that they are soft and just starting to be sweet. If you'd like the onions to disintegrate more, you can cut them differently: either dice them finely or slice them latitudinally. There are fibers in an onion which run from top to bottom, so if you slice from pole to pole, you get the whole length of it. If you cut across the fiber, the slice will break down much more when cooked.

  the water from the tomatoes evaporated without leaving anything of substance.

It sounds from that like you may actually have cooked it down too long. You can cook tomatoes all the way down to paste, if you like, but in this case you want to stop before that happens, leaving a fair bit of the tomatoes' juice, enough to coat the pasta when you mix them. It sounds like the sauce did thicken, and then went past that, to drying out.

Keep the time that the recipe gives for the tomatoes to cook down in mind only as a very loose guideline. Much more important is the results that you see on your own stove. The person who wrote down that recipe has a different pan, different burner, different kitchen... Of course, to know exactly what is right (for both your equipment and your preference), takes repitition, and thus the time-based guideline to put you in the ballpark.

I'd suggest just trying it again, paying particular attention to the consistency of the sauce after you add the tomatoes. Taste and evaluate it frequently as it cooks, and take it off the heat when it looks and feels the way you expect.

As an aside, if you're interested, the official recipe for the sauce is available on the website of Amatrice (the town), although it's in Italian, of course.

*For one thing, the presentation is amateurish -- the cooked pasta should be mixed with the sauce, rather than just being topped with it. (And it's entirely possible that the picture is not even the product of this recipe.)


Added sugar instead of syrup to sorbet mixture I made a sorbet at work and I was in such a rush. I'm still new to the making sorbet (it legit is one of the simplest things ever), but I had the biggest bonehead moment ever and put sugar in it instead of sugar syrup. Just so you know our recipe is:

700ml sugar syrup
700ml feijoa juice
100ml of feijoa vodka

But I did the great thing of putting straight sugar in the mix. Do you have any suggestions own how to resolve it or make it smooth or anything?

Everything is added into one container and now it sits in the freezer (unturned) waiting for some genius to give me the answer I need :)

One problem is the amount of sugar, and to adjust for that the specifics of your sugar syrup would matter (how much water to how much sugar, and is that by weight or volume?)

From there, you could add enough additional juice, vodka and water to regain the proportions, and then it's a problem of dissolving the sugar (which is not being helped by being kept in the freezer while you figure out what to do.)

Running it in a blender or putting it in a mixer with a whisk are typical ways to deal with the dissolving problem, as is warming it up, though you may not want to simmer it as that will affect the vodka and possibly the flavor.

The simplest resolution might be to admit the error and ask your boss what they would like you to do - screw-ups happen, and it might be better to toss the ingredients (or pay for them and take them home to try your salvage operation on) than to try and save them and end up serving inferior product. Generally the cost of ingredients is a small fraction of the price of the product served, and serving a bad batch might have a long-lasting negative impact on anyone who got that batch.


Are poppers better than a paper bag for making popcorn in microwave? I have been making popcorn in the microwave by putting popping corn in an ordinary brown paper bag, folding it closed, and cooking on full heat for 2 minutes or until popping stops, whichever comes sooner. It works pretty well, although sometimes the popcorn gets burnt or a hole is burned through the bag. My microwave does not have a popcorn setting.

I have seen microwave poppers offered for sale, to good reviews. They are typically made of plastic or silicon and are basically containers with lids. Would these give better results than a paper bag, or should I save my money and stick with bags? I prefer not to use oil or butter when popping.

While I could buy an air popper, I prefer to minimize the number of appliances I have, for space and cleaning.

I have used some of the poppers which use "concentration disks" made by several sources, and will say I have had much better results with them than paper bags.  Popping time tends to be fairly consistent with much fewer unpopped kernels than a dry paper bag.  It only takes a couple batches to know what the popping time is for your microwave.  If time starts to increase or yield goes down with more unpopped or under-popped kernels, time for a new disk or your corn has gone stale.  It does cost more than paper sandwich bags, but with not burning batches and less loss and trouble, I personally found it worth it and probably a push on price.  And you need to make sure you keep a supply of the disks.  Usually it seemed 8-10 batches per disk before they would start to tear and need replaced.

I have not tried the ones which do not use the disks so cannot compare them.


Smoked a chicken and the skin came out like boot leather I recently decided to smoke and entire chicken so I dropped it in and kept the smoker around 225-250 for about 4 hours.  I went in and sprayed it down with a little apple juice and vegatable oil every hour or so.  The meat came out delicious and tender, but the skin was so tough it was not edible.

What can I do differently to keep the skin from getting so tough?

Take cheesecloth and soak it in melted butter and drape it over the bird before you put it in the smoker. This will protect the skin during the long slow smoking process. You may want to pull the cheesecloth off about 30 minutes before you are done. This will give you a nice golden brown skin that is not leathery.

I first read of doing this with a smoked turkey, but tried it with a chicken and it comes out great.


Saw this at my local chinese grocery This was near the seafood section in a big vat of ice at my local chinese grocery.  What the heck is this?

Pretty sure it is congealed pig's blood. It's commonly seen in SEA (South East Asian) countries and Hong Kong. It is used as an ingredient in some dishes and in Malaysia, I have seen it been used in soup as well as soup based noodles.

One way to identify them is that they are always sold in cubed form.

update: sometimes, chicken blood is sold/used in the same form.


Wheat-free bread with added gluten? I would like to make wheat-free bread but add gluten (can't eat the high fructans content of the wheat, but can eat gluten). I can't find any recipes that do this. Anyone got any pointers? I was thinking of using standard gluten-free (and therefore wheat-free) flour, then adding wheat gluten. Would this work?

I've never found wheat gluten flour that was higher than 80% gluten which is what I use, adding some when I make bread with rye flour. But if you can't eat wheat due to high fructans content, would you still be able to digest the fructan in the other 20%? You wouldnt be adding much gluten flour so the small amount of fructans might be okay.

Rather than buying and using standard gluten-free flour which is quite expensive, why not mix up your own? It's easy to. I've made gluten-free bread a few times for a friend who's since moved. The wheat-free flour mix that I made was rice flour, tapioca flour, potato flour and coconut flour in the ratio 3:3:3:1. You can then add gluten flour to this mix if you still want to try using gluten instead of xanthan gum. Xanthan gum is added to all gluten-free bread flours to help the dough keep its shape while rising. It's not needed if you plan on adding gluten though.

Bread flour is normally 10-13% gluten. Trouble is I don't know if that's by volume or weight. Maybe someone reading this knows and can tell you. If it is by volume, then replacing 2 tablespoons of the flour mix with 2 tablespoons of gluten flour should give you roughly the right gluten content. Hard to be exact as it's possible gluten flours vary in their actual gluten content.


Can you eat alligator? I have heard of people eating alligator. But only southern people. I am from Ohio and don't know any place in Ohio that has alligator meat.

Another thing I am concerned about is that alligators have lots of microbes and some might be heat resistant. If that is the case than that could cause food poisoning or worse, ulcers.

So is it safe to eat alligator?

Yes you can and it is. Google 'menu alligator' and you will find plenty of restaurants that actually have it on the menu, like this one, this one or this one.

I doubt that a restaurant would (be allowed to) have it on the menu if it's unsafe to eat.


What can you tell about the state of margarine in this cookie? I want the find out about the structure of the margarine used, shown in the photo below.

I baked this cookie from a frozen dough I bought. The frozen dough was very hard. I  am  wondering about these spots that look like freckles. I want  to find out about the structure of the margarine used. The fat did not set uniformly. Some spots ARE SHINY, and some spots are not. Is this margarine? Was it in hard cold state at creaming?

The frozen dough acts like it has oil in it. Or the fat was melted, because I can pick the chocolate chips in it. But I don't think it has oil in it, because the frozen dough is hard. And won't get soft.

They don't stick to the dough. When I use room temperature margarine, the  chips just blend in with the dough...

When I use room-temperature margarine it just won't keep a uniform  structure.

Would cold margarine act different?

What can you tell about the margarine used in this cookie? Cold? Melted?

If I am looking at the same things you are when you describe the "freckles", they look more like debris from shattered chocolate chips than any artifact of the dough ingredients. How did you shape the cookies from the frozen dough you purchased? Was it in the shape of a log that you sliced? If so, that cutting would create small chocolate chip particles on top of the cookie that would look like those freckles when they melted during cooking.

As far as the shininess on the top of the cookie, that can often be caused by an abundance of sugar in the dough. Especially since they look to be slightly underdone.

I am curious why you are focusing on the margarine in this dough and comparing it to what happens when you make cookie dough at home. If this is commercially produced frozen cookie dough, there are probably many industrial ingredients and other additives in it that you don't use at home, and these can cause effects very different from what you are used to in homemade chocolate chip cookies.


Can you interchange oil and butter in emulsified sauces? You have sauces like hollandaise and béarnaise, which are made with egg yolks and clarified butter. You also have mayonaise, that is made with an egg yolk and oil.

What would happen if you would make hollandaise/béarnaise with oil; or mayonaise with clarified butter? Is it possible?

What will happen is that you will make Escoffier cry. Nothing more.

In a more serious tone, the naming of sauces is somewhat arbitrary/tradition driven. There are five mother sauces, Hollandaise being the only emulsion among them. All other sauces are derived for them, making Mayonnaise a Hollandaise derivative. There are hundreds of derived sauces, and the difference is always slight. The use of butter instead of oil (or the other way round) would be enough for the result to be considered a completely new sauce, neither mayonnaise nor hollandaise. While it is a common occurence in home kitchens, I don't think there is an official name for these switched versions. Some cooks even use the name Mayonnaise for a pure water-yolk-veg oil emulsion, without the mustard and vinegar (for example Ruhlman in Ratio).

Technically, there is no reason not to do it. The slight difference of water to fat ratio when you are using butter shouldn't matter. A yolk can emulsify lots of fat, and the amount of fat you use per one part water is mostly a matter of taste. So you can go ahead and substitute butter in a mayonnaise recipe. The taste will be different, but you will be as successful as with a normal mayonnaise. Only remember to serve it warm, I would expect it to harden a bit when cooled.


Looking for peach preserves substitute I'm making a dish that that has a "sweet and sour" sauce to it.  The recipe calls for apricot and peach preserves.  Unfortunately I am highly allergic to peaches.  Does any one know what a good substitute would be?  Could I just use Apricot alone and double the amount needed?   It is being served with an Asian style chicken and vegetables over rice if that helps.  As I can't eat the peaches I don't know what would be best to match the flavor profile.

Apricots (Prunus armeniaca and peaches (Prunus persica) are botanically speaking “close cousins” and have a quite similar flavor profile. Fresh apricot tends to be both sweeter and tarter, peach is a bit milder overall. The difference is less pronounced with preserves.

For your sauce, apricot alone (i.e. using more apricot to get the same amount as the original apricot + peach) should be perfectly fine, assuming that you will adjust the sweet and sour other ingredients and seasonings to your liking anyway.

If you find that apricot alone is too intense (unlikely, but of course there is no accounting for taste), I suggest some very mild fruit, e.g. pear or a sweet apple.


Best way to cut up a cheesecake into bites I will be making Pumpkin cheesecake bites for Halloween using this recipe. I already made a trial batch and it came out quite nicely, except for the fact that cutting it into bars was a little difficult. What's the best way to do it?

Also, the tasters preferred that I skip the top layer of flour/nut mixture and this will make the cutting up more difficult as the top will have a creamy texture.

Would freezing it beforehand help?What's the best tool to use?

My grandmother's favorite method for cutting cheesecake is dental floss.  Waxed or unwaxed shouldn't matter, though waxed may help keep cake from sticking too much.  Just be sure not to get a flavor!

Grip the ends tightly, the way you would if flossing your teeth and pull evenly down through the cake.  Then release one end and pull the floss through the cake.  Do NOT pull the floss back up.  Repeat as necessary until you have the size pieces you want.


How are jasmine and basmati rice related, how are they different? While I really like to eat rice,
I did not spend much attention on the kind of rice I was eating - up to now.

Actually, I'd probably confuse basmati and jasmine rice...

Obviously, I'm now curious about every aspect of them,

both the academic, the biology and history,

and the emotional - can the taste be compared? Which cultures prefer which one?

Welcome Volker! Please see the pic below and the information found on  menurice.com . Way too much to copy - 9 pages - but there is a ton of great information about rice.


Are steaks I had in a cooler over the weekend ok to eat? Over the Fourth of July weekend, we took steaks camping to BBQ but the ziplock bag I kept them in got water in it. They were kept on constant ice and never got warm, but they sat in a bag full of ice water. Are they still ok to eat? They look drained of their blood.

As long as they were kept cool, they will be safe to eat.

For example, high end steak houses and butchers age beef to improve flavor, sometimes to the point of allowing visible mold to form on the surface. In that circumstance it is removed before cooking, but the meat is safe to eat.

The fact that yours were immersed in water for a prolonged time may affect the quality but not the safety of the meat.

If those were in my kitchen I would thoroughly dry them, allow them to come to room temperature, pat them very lightly with corn starch aka corn flour ( a trick I learned from Cook's Illustrated) and grill them at high heat. A crust will form based on the corn starch which should act as a mouth-feel counterbalance to any texture changes from the soaking. I am thinking you may need to salt the meat after  cooking or charring to account for the myoglobin loss (red fluid) but you will need to do that on an ad hoc basis


What is this scum in my coffee For full disclosure I have posted the questions originally here: https://coffee.stackexchange.com/questions/5150/what-is-this-scum-in-my-coffee but since I got no answers after two weeks, I would liked to post it here as well. I have my own theory of why its happening but would like a second opinion!

Cross posting is fine according to: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/65931/cross-posting-on-stackexchange-sites

Hello, Lately my coffee seems to have a film on the top. The picture makes it look a lot worse then it is. It is more translucent in the cup. This happens once the coffee gets cold. When its hot it looks like bubbles or just the oil from the coffee beans.

What is this? Is this just the oil from the coffee? Or do I need to clean my machine?

Coffee Details:

Black Coffee, nothing added.
Made in espresso machine.
Ground to order.
Run through several times as I "overpacked" the coffee.
Hot water added to make Americano.
Beans from local roaster, last week.

This is what my coffee looks like before it turns into that:

That scum looks like it could be hard water deposits interacting with the oils in the coffee, I get a similar scum on my tea when my brita needs replacing. I would suggest de-scaling your espresso maker and using filtered water.


Why are my braised pork chops inconsistent? I have a recipe for long, slow, braised pork chops. I make them the same way every time. I buy 1 inch chops on the bone. Sometimes they come out incredibly tender and sometimes dry and stringy. I know it has to do with fat content as the dry ones have very little fat to skim from the sauce. But I can not discern from the raw meat, which is fattier. I buy center cut chops. The recipe calls for blade chops, but stores don't always have that. Help?

The resulting quality of a braise has to do with the connective tissue rather than the fat. Your recipe calls for the blade chop because it is close to the shoulder, which is tougher and contains more connective tissue. This tissue is tough to start, but braising breaks it down into a gelatin and makes the meat tender (and juicy). When you pick your chops, look for thin lines white connective tissue throughout. Or, just use a pork shoulder.

Also, remember to let the meat cool in the braising liquid. (Not to room temperature, but to an edible temperature). As the meat cools, it draws in some of the liquid and prevents it from drying out.


Sugar forming tiny bubbles in microwaved coffee? When I heat up coffee in the microwave and then pour in sugar, a layer of tiny dense bubbles forms at the top of the glass and stays there for the duration of the drinking, diminishing slightly over time. When I prepare the coffee by other means of heating this does not happen. What causes those tiny bubbles?

Upon addition of sugar to the superheated coffee, the formation of bubbles (phase transformation) occurs because the fine particles of sugar provide sites for the heterogeneous nucleation of gas from the liquid.

When the introduction of a fine inoculant (such as sugar particles) results in sudden fizzing of a liquid, it is an indication that there has been minor superheating of that substance.

Superheating tends to occur more in microwaves than on stovetops because people use metal saucepans/kettles on the stove, while generally using glass or glazed ceramic containers when heating a volume of water in a microwave oven.

When water is heated in a glass or glazed ceramic container rather than a metal one, the very hard surface of the container means that there are few scratches on it to act as sites for the heterogeneous nucleation of gas. Fewer heterogeneous nucleation sites means less heat loss through the transformation of liquid to gas.

This university site also makes a good point about the tendency for stovetop heating to cause localised superheating in the vicinity of the container walls... However, I think that this would tend to cause more boiling due to localised heating to the point that homogenous nucleation can occur (with the homogeneously nucleated bubbles then acting as further heterogenous nucleations sites) – not because of stirring of the water.

With regard to why your bubbles remained present for the duration of drinking, I would hypothesise that this perhaps has something to do with the oils in the crema of the coffee, and/or reaction of the dissolved sugar to form something that increases the surface tension of the water. (Not sure what you would call the opposite of a surfactant effect).

A final thing I would like to mention is that (as indicated on the UNSW page), microwaving liquids has the potential to result in violent reaction, or even explosion, of the liquid — in other words, you are risking serious burn injuries by taking a shortcut to heat it up.

Adding a powder (like sugar or instant coffee) to superheated water is particularly bad because in doing so, you are introducing millions of nucleation sites at once. That said, you should also be aware that since gas bubbles themselves promote heterogeneous nucleation, simply placing a spoon in the cup can be enough to cause an 'explosion'.

If you really need to microwave a liquid, (e.g., if you are cooking something), consider heating it in a microwave-safe plastic container that has been washed a few times (and is therefore abraded on the inside). You should also stop the microwave to check the temperature of the liquid at regular intervals, rather than nuking the fluid for an excessively long time.


My Candy Apple is too brittle, how to prevent? I am cooking the candy mixture to 302°F and dipping right away, but the candy seems to be brittle and not holding to the apple when you either cut into it or try and bite into it.

How can I prevent this?

I am using the following ingredients:

3 cups sugar
1 cup water
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
White food coloring
2 additional colors of food coloring (I made marble apples)

As already suggested, maybe you should try for Soft Crack instead of hard crack.
If you are unable to rely on the thermometer just try a cold water test. Drop some hot candy in to iced water. Stop cooking after the hard ball stage. As soon as it will form pliable threads.
See

https://www.instructables.com/id/Candy-Making-without-a-Thermometer-Cold-Water-Tes/
https://www.thespruceeats.com/making-candy-without-a-candy-thermometer-520309

These tests show what happens as the candy cools, and so predict what the final candy will be like. Even if your mix needs a different temperature from the 302 F you are aiming for it should work.
Make a note of what the indicated temperature is on your thermometer, and if the candy apples are ok then on future batches just use that thermometer and that temperature.


Pemmican -- how was it prepared without metal tools? The wikipedia article states that "The meat was cut in thin slices and dried, ...".

Well so, but how would the people who chased a heard of grazers down a cliff some 10k years ago cut the meat into thin slices to dry?

I have difficulties cutting meat into thin slices even with modern high performance steel knives.

What am I missing?

You are missing the tiny detail that metal is not the only material which can provide sharp, cutting edges.

The reason the Stone Age got its name was the use of stone for tools. Both flint stone and obsidian, a volcanic glass can splinter with razor-sharp edges. Both the raw material and the tools made from them were highly prized goods and mined and traded in prehistoric times.

Even today, obsidian scalpels are still used for some surgical procedures, especially in cosmetic surgery. What works for a face lift in Hollywood should easily be good enough for pemikan - not that I'm comparing the two tasks.

Failing to obtain the stones, bone knifes from long leg bones would also have been able to handle the task of cutting thin meat strips quite smoothly.

Not for the squeamish:

This Youtube video shows the butchering of a deer with a simple, hand made obsidian "knife".

This video compares a flint and a bone knife.


Why does melted asiago impart a strong numbing mouthfeel? I've put asiago in a couple dishes as of late (mac and cheese as well as a risotto) and always tend to get a strong taste accompanied by an almost ... numbing sensation in the mouth. Is this normal of asiago?

Perhaps you are experiencing and allergic reaction.

I got a numb palate and lips from eating sourdough with generous flour on the outside, never had that before. On googling this, it seems it's a form of intolerance. Dry flour baked on a loaf is not the usual way to ingest wheat, and there was a lot of it! Glutens and gliadins in wheat, casein in milk products as well as many other proteins can react with sensitive skin like the mouth.


Why do you need to heat the pan before heating the olive oil? In the Netflix documentary Salt Fat Acid Heat, Samin Nosrat says this when she is making sofrito and she is about to put olive oil into the pan:

  This is one of those important things that I think home cooks always
  forget, is how important it is to pre-heat the pan. You have to heat
  the pan before you heat the oil.

Why do you need to heat the pan before putting the oil in?

TL;DR: heating the pan before the oil has no useful effects in most cases.

While this is a duplicate of another question, I'm going to answer it again because that question's accepted answer provides zero evidence or citations to back itself up.  Which is important, because the accepted answer is wrong.

The popular myth is "Cold oil in hot pan and food won't stick".  Like most such cooking myths, this one is nonsense; as Kitchen Myths points out:

  What you really want is “hot pan, hot oil” and that’s what you are actually getting because the cold oil heats up almost instantly when added to the hot pan. You’ll get the same results if you heat the oil along with the pan rather than adding the oil at the last minute. In fact some cooks prefer this technique because the appearance of the oil in the pan can give you some indication of when the pan has reached the proper temperature.

Serious Eats says the same thing:

  The thing is, only raw proteins will form this bond. Heat causes proteins to fold in on themselves, or even to break down and form all new compounds. Once in their folded or rearranged form, they no longer stick. So the goal is to get the meat to cook before it even comes into contact with the metal by heating oil hot enough that it can cook the meat in the time it takes for it to pass from the air, through the film of oil, and into the pan.

So, you want a hot pan with hot oil.  Most of the time, this means that you want to preheat the oil with the pan, not add oil to a preheated pan, although the latter doesn't do any harm.  It just doesn't provide any benefit.

You'll notice I said most of the time, though.  There are times when you do want to preheat the cooking vessel before adding fat, and both of those times have to do with needing to heat the metal hotter than the smoke point of the oil you are using.

If you are cooking with a wok, getting proper "wok hei" (searing) requires heating the wok above the smoke point of vegetable oil, dry, a technique called "long yao" (video, skip to 3:22).  Classic cast-iron steak cooking uses a similar technique, heating the pan to 250 °C/500 °F before adding the oil or meat.
When cooking with butter as your fat (or a few other low-temperature oils like unrefined coconut oil), the burning point of the fat is sometimes a lower temperature than you want to cook at.  If so, the only way to get the pan hot enough is to preheat at dry plan, add the butter or fat, and then quickly add the food before the butter burns.

Neither of these cases has anything to do with preventing sticking, though. They are both about not burning the cooking fat.  And the first technique only makes sense if you are using cast iron or carbon steel; it can damage other types of cookware.

You might ask: doesn't this apply to cooking sofrito, though?  And the answer is no.  Filtered olive oil has a smoke point of 210 °C, which is plenty hot enough for the very wet ingredients in a sofrito, which will drag the real pan temperature down to 105 °C or so in a few seconds anyway. Further, a sofrito is made up entirely of non-starchy vegetables and aromatics, which means that sticking isn't a serious concern.

So, myth busted!


Bottled tomato sauce separated I made tomato sauce yesterday but looking at the bottles today it has separated, can I re cook it to hopefully thicken it? I made it with fresh tomatoes.

Simple tomato sauces (type "coulis") often separate, as fresh tomatos contain a lot of water. We've had it with such sauces prepared for freezing, and used the sauce as a basis, which worked perfectly well.

You can recook it, but depending on how much liquid there is, that can require a lot of time: you'll have to evaporate must of the (separated) liquid. The taste will change (more 'caramelised', 'cooked' taste): longer cooking and higher temperatures at the end due to the higher concentration of dissolved matter.
Or you can skim off the liquid that separated.

To be safe, in both cases you'll have to sterilise your sauce again using the full cooking time.

But why bother recooking it if the taste was correct: such separation is perfectly normal in sauces that are not very concentrated and commercial tomato sauces have additives to avoid this separation (added ingredients like carrots help, and so does some starch, and there are others, look at the bottle). And if you use the sauce as a basis, you might cook it again at that stage.

The above assumes you did cook the sauce according to instruction regarding conservation (so long enough to sterilise the sauce correctly).


How to Store Fresh Herbs What is the best way to store fresh herbs like parsley or cilantro?  I find I have about the same luck with them whether they are left in a plastic bag or I put them in a cup of water.

If you're going to store anything leafy in a plastic bag, I wrap it first in a paper towel, then in the plastic bag, so none of the leaves touch the bag.  This prevents the issue where the outer leaves turn to goo.  (I'm not sure what the actual biological issue is ... moisture/condensation? poor respiration?)

Don't wash it before storage, as the extra moisture will cause it to rot faster.

I think I've gotten as long as a month out of flat leaf parsley, when I buried them in the back of my crisper drawer and forgot about them.  (of course, I wasn't constantly opening the bag as you would when using them, and I'm not sure exactly when I placed it in there, as I had forgotten about it).


2000g sourdough boule in medium sized dutch oven I've been just starting to get into baking. I made my own starter and I've been following the tartine bread recipe to reasonable success. The problem I continually run into, though, is weak oven spring. I understand that there are a bunch of factors that are difficult to isolate that go into this. Despite my loaves pancaking, I'm usually able to get a pretty nice hole-y crumb, which leads me to believe that the difference between the loaf size and my dutch oven could be a major culprit (it's maybe 2 inches in diameter larger than my desired loaf).

So, I wonder, what if instead of separating my dough into 2 loaves, I just bake it all at once? Is there anything I should know before trying this?

Here's my recipe:

Leaven:
1 tbsp starter
200g 50/50 bread flour
200g water

Dough (2 variations):

Rye:
200g leaven
180g rye flour
710g all purpose
800g water
20g salt

Whole wheat:
200g leaven
700g whole wheat flour
300g all purpose
750g water
20g salt

Steps:
1. Mix leaven, let rise for 10-14 hours
2. Mix dough ingredients except salt and 50g water, autolyse for 30 mins.
3. Add the salt and remaining water. Bulk Fermentation for 3-4 hours, turns every 30 minutes
4. Separate into loaves, light preshape to create surface tension, bench rest for 30 minutes
5. Fold each loaf once, shape into boule. Final rise in shaping bowls 2-4 hours
6. Bake in dutch oven at 450 F, lid on for the first 20 mins.

Thank you!!

Weak ovens still get to needed temperature, but slower and/or they may "leak" heat. The only way around it is to "accumulate" heat by placing baking stone into the oven, and (Thanks to Alton Brown creativity) place upside–down large clay pot around the bread. Naturally, you need to pre–heat them before you place the dough in.

Stone and clay keep heat much better then steel your oven is made of. Also, they distribute it more evenly.

This technique is similar to baking in a dutch oven.


Pulled pork too sweet I made pulled pork and added too much brown sugar. What can I add to dilute it so it's not so sweet? Tried not adding barbeque sauce, but that didn't help.

The sugar flavor is in there whether you like it or not, you can either use the pork as an ingredient in something else where sweetness is an asset (salads, casseroles, etc), or balance the sweetness with other flavors.

To me the way forward is to try and balance the sweetness with acidity and bitterness, and a really good way is to make a barbecue sauce with these qualities. Add no sugar to it so it will counter the sweetness in your meat. I'm thinking a southern style mustard and vinegar sauce will work well as that has bitter and sour qualities. A little bit of unsweetened chocolate or instant coffee adds both richness and bitterness. Or instead of a sauce you could pair the meat up with foods that will balance the sweetness like kale, leafy greens, and spinach.


How do I choose frozen fish so that it doesn't release so much water? I bought a package of frozen, individually wrapped, vacuum-sealed pacific cod fillets (about 150-200 grams each) from what I thought was a reputable brand (and not the lowest price) in my nearest supermarket, and attempted to pan-fry it. I defrosted it by running cold water in the sink as advised in this answer (it took about 15 minutes). When I opened the package, a large amount of water had separated from the fish. I carefully dried the fillet with towel paper, coated it with flour and put it in a hot pan over maximal heat as explained in this other question. Despite my efforts and the hot pan, the fish immediately started releasing even more water, dissolving the flour and turning into a small 75-100 grams of boiled, chewy fish fillet instead of a nice fried, tender one.

So I am looking for advice on how to properly choose frozen fish in the first place. I know that it should be properly vacuum-sealed and from a reputable source (whatever that means). But even then, some frozen fishes will loose a lot of water (it was obviously the case here). What qualities should I look for when buying it? Can I tell by the fish aspect or something else if it's good or not? Are some species better than others?

As far as I am aware, you cannot recognize this in advance.

What you describe is due to very damaged cell structure in the fish. The "water" are the fluids contained in and around the fish cells, which make the filets juicy. They flow out when the cell walls in the fish rupture.

The reason for rupturing is that the fluids are water-based, and water expands in the 0 to -4 Celsius range. When meat or fish is flash-frozen, it goes very quickly to under -4, and in the small time it spends in the problem range, the cell walls withstand the pressure from the expanding ice crystals. When it is frozen in a "slow" process, the cell walls rupture. Or, if it was flash-frozen, but sometime during storage it spend long periods above -4, it will also have this problem.

There is no way for you to recognize whether a piece of frozen fish or meat in the supermarket was flash-frozen or not. So sorry, but you have to rely on luck, and maybe try to find if there is a correlation between certain brands and quality by buying them repeatedly.


Roasting a turkey in a roaster oven Can I brown my turkey in my conventional oven first?  That way, my turkey would have a nice brown skin, and I could continue the roasting in the roaster oven to leave my regular oven free to bake other dishes.

Since the roaster oven is so much smaller and has a fairly tight fitting lid, you are left with an environment that more steams than roasts in a nice dry heat.  Because of that, you will be left with a not so pretty bird.  Roasting it in the oven first might give you the color, but the slow moist cooking of a roaster oven will soften the skin to a less than pleasant texture.  Your best bet is to cook the turkey in the roaster oven first, THEN roast it in a high heat in the oven to brown it up and crisp up the skin.

I would suggest doing the last half hour in the oven.  Lightly butter the skin and turn the oven to 400°F to finish it off.  The best part is, all the drippings will already be in the roaster, so you can pour that off and make the gravy while the turkey is finishing up.  And if you have a large enough roaster, you can set it to low, throw in some of your side dishes and use it as a little hot box to keep everything nice and toasty.


New lodge cast iron pan brown colour I recently got the 18cm lodge cast iron pan that comes pre-seasoned. I wanted to take the pre-seasoning off using a scourer and baking soda. I then dried it and put canola oil onto it and rubbed off the excess and put it in an oven preheated at around 410F/210C for an hour and let it cool in the oven. The pan ended up looking weird like in the photos I've attached. All photos are of the same pan under different lighting-the first is in natural room lighting, the second directly under sunlight and the last one is under my yellow cooking light. Is it rust? I'm concerned about any potential health risks if I cook with it like this.

Click for full size

Your seasoning is uneven. Possibly because of the very pitted rough-cast nature of modern cast iron pans. It looks like your oil has been more attracted to itself than the pan surface.
DIY seasoning isn't evenly black to start with. It's brown. The black comes with time & repeated re-heats.
You could see if several repeated coats will eventually smooth out - seasoning is not done in one go, it's done over several repetitions using the absolute minimum of oil each time.
I'm at a loss as to why you considered it necessary to remove the professional quality seasoning provided by the manufacturer to save you have to go through this yourself. It does fortunately look like you weren't totally successful in removing all the existing seasoning, or your first DIY coat would have been spotted brown over silver-grey.


Is it possible to do sous vide cooking in a crock pot? I'd never heard of sous vide before coming to this site, but all the posts about it here have made me want to try it.  I've seen the beer cooler method, which I also want to try, but, for a smaller scale test, is it possible to do it in a crock pot?  What would the differences in cooking times and techniques be?

Yes you can.  Some of the best sous-vide I've had has been in a crock-pot.

You'll need a crock-pot with a manual (analogue) dial. What you do is set the dial to maximum and use a PID controller (found ~$20 on ebay).

Take a look at this article about hacking your slow cooker:

http://www.cookingforgeeks.com/blog/posts/diy-sous-vide/

Update:

Sous-vide by definition requires control of the temperature (Beer Cooler does not control, but holds well).  However, you can still do this without extra logic.  All you need is a good thermometer and time:

Fill your crock-pot to 70% with room temperature water, set your Crock-Pot to the lowest setting, and leave it for 2-3 hours.  Thermo-dynamics laws dictate that you will reach an equilibrium with time.  If you're bored you can keep a log of the temperature change over time and stop when you notice it doesn't change much any more (it'll be helpful for next cooking session).

Measure the water temperature and check against where you need to be (125, 140, etc).  Adjust the dial and throw more time at it until the crock-pot reaches equilibrium again.  Repeat until you have reached and sustained your desired temperature.  Make sure your crock-pot is not near an open window with draft to mess with the crock-pot (i.e. keep the room temperature steady).

Weigh your food and put it in the rock-pot.  Take out the same amount of water from the existing water in the crock-pot so that the total weight of the crock-pot is the same.

This isn't hard if you use the metric system.  Each Millilitre of water weighs 1 gram.  So for 1lb, take out 454ml or essentially two cups.

Now you can use the same timing and temperature rules as everyone else.

PS: For the 'ballistic' method, I.E. the beer cooler, you can measure the temperature loss over time of water in the cooler to land you perfectly where you want to be. Chef Kenji says a 'couple of degrees higher'.  But you can predict the drop over your cooking time as well as the initial temperature.  And roughly speaking: Mass Of Food x Food Temperature + Mass of Water * Water Temperature = Total Mass * Final Water bath temperature.


Why is milk powder used in bread machine recipes? In a bread machine bread recipe, why is milk powder included?  And is milk powder needed?

I have baked several loaves without milk powder.    When the bread is baking sometimes the loaf collapses with a 'crater' depression of about 3 cm.

Milk or milk powder are not strictly needed in bread recipes.  There are many formulas that omit it:  the minimal ingredients for a loaf are water, flour and yeast; salt is probably essential for a loaf that is tasty.

Milk (or milk powder) is a way of enhancing the dough to:

Make a softer loaf (due to the milkfat acting as a tenderizer by interfering with gluten production)
Add flavor to the loaf
Enhance browning of the crust due to the potential carmelization of the milk sugars

The use of milk powder as opposed to liquid milk may be just for convenience, or because there is sufficient hydration in the loaf from other reasons, so it avoids adding additional water as part of the milk.

You may choose to omit the milk powder, but you will lose its benefits.  Instead, I suggest you find one of the myriad bread recipes designed for bread machines that doesn't include it if you don't want to use it.

The cratering issue is likely to be unrelated to milk or milk powder.


Why double fry French fries after blanching instead of just blanching and frying? I love good fries fries.  I've made them with some success at home using the Steak Frites recipe originally developed by Cooks Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen.  In their recipe cut potatoes are rinsed, soaked, fried at a lower temperature, then finished at a higher temperature.  It did not involve blanching, and I've been convinced through research that blanching them can be helpful.

In another recipe I've found for twice-cooked fries, they are merely blanched and then fried.  Is this technique going to produce good fries?

According to Serious Eats fries from McDonald's are both blanched and fried at a lower temperature, frozen, and then finally fried before being served to you.

The French Culinary Institute has a technique that pre-blanches, blanches, freezes, and then twice fries - talk about work!

From what I've read pectin is released during the blanching at certain temperatures.  Also the blanching removes some external starches, which I assume rinsing and soaking may accomplish.  Plus if you blanch in salted water you pre-salt the fries.

My question is, what does that initial lower temperature fry do?  Cook the inside?  Why should I do it instead of just blanching and frying once?  The accepted answer to this question says the initial fry is to cook the fries, which it seems blanching already does.  It seems to have something to do with starch molecules, but I'm interested in the details.

The double fry process is to make a crisper potato chip. Tests have indicated that less oil is absorbed too, so this is a general health benefit

The blanch process is mainly for mass production reasons to stop potato chips from sticking together when packed. It removes all surface starch. Cold water rinsing is all that is needed for home, small scale production

Cooling and drying the chips between steps generally makes for a better chip

The quality, and suitability of the potatoes is still probably got more to do with it than the cooking process

Interesting experiments at http://www.macheesmo.com/2010/02/the-great-baked-fry-experiment/


How long can halloumi be stored in refrigerator? I am planning to store a cooked meal of halloumi + couscous in the refrigerator.
How long can it be stored safely?

Halloumi by itself can last a long time in the fridge.
The problem is the couscous which should last at most 1 or 2  days (or less) in the fridge depending on other ingredients in the preparation..


How long does it take to cook eggs safely as a function of temperature? The FDA recommends cooking eggs (or dishes containing them) to 160°F (71°C) for safety. However, I know it's possible to make them safe by cooking for a longer period of time at a lower temperature.

Douglas Baldwin's excellent sous vide guide has an egg section showing the results of cooking at various temperatures. Unfortunately, as far as safety goes, it only mentions that 1.25 hours at 135°F will pasteurize them.

So how long does it take to make eggs safe at temperatures between 135°F and 160°F?

You can find out more than you'd ever want to know about cooking eggs safely in the International Egg Pasteurization Manual.  The standard USDA guidelines for pasteurization of plain whole eggs require 3.5 minutes minimum holding time at 140F (60C).

(Note: Holding temp here refers to egg temperature itself in liquid form: see edit for clarification below.  These times/temps are NOT sous vide water bath temperatures for eggs in shells.)

As you can read in that document (particularly Table 6 on page 12 and Table 29 on page 25), adding in small amounts of salt or sugar increases the requirement for pasteurization by various amounts, up to 6 degrees F (3.3 degrees C).  Yolks or whites alone also have different numbers.

So, it's really hard to generalize here.  Particularly if you start to include any dish that may contain eggs, the required pasteurization temperature may vary a lot.  If you mix in eggs with a good growth medium and then slow-cook that mixture for a couple hours before it hits ~130F, there will be a lot more bacteria to kill than in an intact whole egg, hence requiring a longer or higher temperature process to make sure the food is safe.  And different textures of food, different moisture levels, etc. will also affect pasteurization.  Yes, in general if you hold eggs long enough above 130F, you should eventually kill off enough bacteria to make the food safe to eat.  But there's no easy formula for it, particularly if you include mixing other things with the eggs.

If you want to be safe, the easiest thing is often to buy pasteurized eggs or follow the 60C/140F recommendation for 3.5 minutes with whole eggs to pasteurize them whole yourself.  Then you can mix or combine them with other foods with less worry.  The only major egg property impaired by pasteurization at 140F is the foaming of egg whites.  (Egg white alone can be pasteurized at 136F (57.7C) for 6.3 minutes, which will retain much of the foaming properties.  With whole eggs, going above 140F, even by a degree or two, begins to inhibit other baking properties; see the linked document for details.)

EDIT: After a comment pointed out some ambiguity here, let me note that the linked document is only about liquid egg mixtures.  That is, if you break your whole eggs and bring that mixture to 140F, they will be pasteurized in 3.5 minutes.  If you are cooking eggs in shells in a water bath, that's going to be a lot more unpredictable.  Larger eggs will take longer to come to temperature, eggs that start colder will take longer to come to temperature, and water baths that have a very active circulator will heat eggs a lot more quickly than a static water bath.  If you want to ensure safety for eggs cooked in shells, you'll have to hold quite a bit longer to ensure they reach adequate internal temp, but that time is unpredictable because of the above factors.  There are sous vide guides out there, as noted in the question, that give much longer times to try to ensure safety for eggs in shells.  Sous vide guides can't give minimum temp/time with as much precision as the pasteurization guide in the link here, because most people aren't monitoring the internal temp of their food in a water bath.

I was originally trying to address the question about cooking eggs in general (not just "boiled eggs in shell") and dishes containing them safely, which would mostly involve liquid eggs and various mixtures including them. And the only way to be precise about minimum time/temp is to specify final internal holding temp, as you'd measure a turkey or whatever.  Minimum overall cook times will always be estimates.