Is ground upper turkey thighs the same as regular ground turkey? I usually buy ground turkey at costco, which is labeled ground turkey. However, I asked the local butcher for ground turkey today and when I arrived home, the meat label said "ground upper turkey thighs".

Is it the same thing as regular ground turkey? (I need to know calorie wise)

What really matters is the fat content.  I suspect that being all thigh meat, it's similar to regular ground turkey, which is 85% lean.  Ground turkey breast (or "extra lean" ground turkey) is 99% lean.  I've also seen mixtures in the store of light and dark ground meat that clocked in at 93% lean to split the difference.  Jennie-O, a large national producer of turkey, makes all three varieties (http://www.jennieo.com/products/collection/65-Ground-Turkey).  You can check your nutritional information against theirs to see where your ground thighs fall on the spectrum.

Just check the fat content and use it in a recipe that works with that fat content.  In fact, it's probably ideal for something like a turkey burger which definitely needs the fat in my opinion. ;)


Effect of potato water on bread (early experiment results) Inspired by another question here, I am going to make potato bread. I am using the King Arthur Flour recipe.

(For 2 loaves)

1 tablespoon instant yeast
99g sugar
283g to 340g lukewarm water or potato water (water in which potatoes have been boiled)
170g softened butter
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 large eggs
198g mashed potatoes (from about 1/2 pound potatoes)
780g King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

My question concerns the water. What effect should I expect from using the water used to boil the potato? I assume that the major difference between potato water and tap water is starch. I further assume that the less water I use to boil my potato, the greater the concentration of starch.

What differences am I likely to see in loaves made with tap water, low-concentration potato water and high-concentration potato water?

I ask because I haven't started yet. Answers to this question will influence how I boil my slightly aged and should be used soon potato.

I found this, it's Ask.com so even though I'm posting it as an answer, I don't consider it the answer. I'd still love to hear what some of the expert bakers here have to say.
(emphasis mine)

As you begin to bake different types of breads, you will come across some older bread recipes that call for potato water. Potato water is the water that potatoes have been boiled in. The potatoes release their starchy goodness into the water as they are cooked. The potato water can then be used as a substitute for milk and it makes your bread deliciously moist.
To make potato water, wash and peel 2 to 3 potatoes. Cube the potatoes and add to pot. Cover potato cubes with water and boil for about 20 minutes or until potatoes are soft. Remove from heat and drain potato water into a liquid measuring cup. Let cool to warm before using in your recipe. The potatoes can be mashed with a forked and added to potato bread recipes.
Potato water can be refrigerated for up to 24 hours. After this time, the potato water sweetens and can spoil the taste of your bread.

What that article doesn't cover at all is concentration. I'll try it, just adding water to barely cover the potato (it's a big one, it'll be more than enough). I'll update this with the results of that bread and the same recipe made with tap water.
EDIT and 1st experiment
I made two loaves per the recipe in the original question, one with highly concentrated potato water, one with filtered tap water. To make the "highly concentrated" potato water, I boiled 4X the amount of potato ultimately called for in the recipe, barely covering the cut up potatoes with water. After it settled (the starch settles to the bottom of the cup), I poured off half of the water, leaving just more than I needed to accurately weigh. I'd consider that the highest possible concentration without getting "extreme" about it.
With potato water:

With filtered tap water:

I carefully weighed all of the ingredients, the weather is unchanged and I started with the water at exactly 110F (43C). I used the first loaf to guide exactly how long I rested, proofed and baked the second loaf. Guided by a digital timer, I tented the second loaf at exactly the same point (and even using the same tent) as the first loaf. The final internal temperatures of both loaves were just shy of 200F.  I mixed and kneaded with a bread machine, so there is as little human variance as possible between the two loaves.
Tentative conclusions:
The color is better on the first (with potato water) loaf. Is that because of the potato water? It's too soon to tell. I can say that I could not discern any difference in the flavor or texture between the loaves.
Browning aside, the loaves seemed identical.
Next I'm going to try my often repeated, go to recipe for plain white sandwich bread. That one calls for milk. I'll try replacing the milk with high-concentration potato water.
BTW - That is an OUTSTANDING recipe. The bread is great. Just don't even try it without a stand mixer or bread maker. That is some of the stickiest dough I have ever encountered (I was warned by the website, and YOWZA they weren't kidding).


HELP with brining a Turkey and still have regular tasting gravy? So last year I made a phenomenal brine with kosher salt, pure maple syrup and a few seasonings. I loved the turkey, it was awesome. However the pan drippings that became my gravy turned out very sweet and tasted like maple syrup. I really want to brine. I need help with a brine that will make it flavorful yet give me normal tasting gravy when done.

In my opinion it can't be done without cheating. A fully brined turkey will always make overly salty drippings, and a maple brined turkey will produce overly sweet/salty drippings. Some cooks have successfully made gravy with brined turkey drippings (see Can you make pan gravy if the turkey was brined?), but I suspect that those turkeys were under brined.

A solution is to buy inexpensive turkey parts. Necks, wings, backs and giblets (if you like them) are all good for this. Don't brine them, just roast them in a another pan at the same time you roast the brined turkey. Use those drippings for your gravy. You can cook those parts way past the temperature that you cook the brined turkey to give you more drippings and yummy brown bits for gravy. The meat can then be shredded to add to your dressing or gravy if you like.

Little by little you can add some of the drippings from the brined turkey to the drippings from the miscellaneous parts, tasting after each addition. Carefully adding some of the brined drippings to the plain drippings could result in a spectacular gravy.


Best apples for apple pie I am making an apple pie for the first time this Thanksgiving.  I was wondering what the best apple was for apple pie.  There are so many to choose from.

Some of this is a matter of opinion, as you must decide what type of apple pie you like.  Do you want one with discernable applie slices, or one where the filling becomes somewhat like apple sauce?

Kenji Alt of Serious Eats has done an in depth review of 10 commonly available apples (at least in the US), and his conclusion is:

  [...] the best ones in the running are the Golden Delicious and the
  Braeburn. They're the ones I use for all of my baking purposes.

Still, I suggest reading his review, and drawing your own conclusion.

He also shares that the level of acidity an apple has correlates with how long it takes to brown when cut and exposed to air--the slower the browning, the more acid.   Those apples with the most acid tend to produce the firmest cooked product, as the acid helps keep the pectin from breaking down.


What kind of sandwich can be made with Shredded Beef? it's my first time asking here so I am not exactly sure if this question is off-topic or not. So here's the question. My mother made something with shredded beef. I contains a little amount of greens and is quite tangy. It's been in the freezer for quite long now and whenever I look at it I vision a sandwich. Thing is, I don't what to make it with.
The most daunting part about it to me is finding a right binding agent that'll keep the beef from falling out of the bread slices.
Any ideas people?
Also any sauce you could recommend with it would be great. Thanks.

Don't know what the flavor profile of the shredded beef, but a nice flavorful hummus (Sabra is my favorite brand) is one of my favorite alternates to mayonnaise in beef sandwiches. Sounds unusual, but it's a great textural and flavor compliment.


Why do baking recipes call for instant coffee instead of fresh ground coffee? I have seen many recipes for cakes, cupcakes, coffee buttercream, etc. that call for instant coffee than the freshly ground/brewed coffee because the instant coffee produces much better flavour. Why is that when fresh coffee is considered much better and flavoursome than instant coffee?

Fresh ground coffee requires some sort of brewing process to extract the flavor, generally extended time in hot water. If you just dump some into a cup of warm water, you won't get much out of it - some wet grounds and some slightly coffee-ish water. Same goes for baked goods: coffee grounds won't efficiently release their flavor. If you brew it first, you'll have to add a lot of liquid in order to get enough coffee flavor, likely more than the recipe called for in the first place.

Instant coffee, on the other hand, is designed to dissolve and release all the flavor. Used in baked goods, the same thing happens. Sure, the coffee flavor itself isn't as good as you'd get from real coffee, but you get all of it. It also happens to be much easier!

The main alternative is to use espresso; the flavor is much more concentrated, so a recipe may be able to replace some of its liquid with espresso and get enough flavor out of it, without throwing off the recipe.


How much juice is in 1 pear For a science project I need to know how much juice is in 1 pear or apple.
I looked on the internet, but didn't find anything that answered my question.

Study linked below states that pears are made up of 84% water. So 84% of the weight of the pear in grams would be a close estimate to the weight of water of the pear, in grams. Water weighs 1 ml per gram, so you could then convert the weight in grams of the water to ml of water in the pear.

Water Content of Fruits and Vegetables


Cooking with a cut or burn on my hands I know from this question that I should avoid cooking (at least without gloves) if I have an open cut.

However, once a cut starts to heal, how can I tell if it's safe to cook without gloves? Are there any firm rules, or is it based on experience and watching how MY cuts react to being washed often?

Are there different rules if I have a burn? Or is it the same -- if I'm likely to ooze, I should wear gloves. Otherwise, I'm okay without them.

If you're really worried about it, put some superglue over it. It actually works really well...Just don't stick your fingers together. Regular superglue can irritate your skin, so if you have time to plan ahead, buy some Dermabond, which is a cyanoacrylate surgical glue...They use it in place of stitches sometimes. Works great. Your wounds will NOT seep. Period.

Honestly though, people get cut all the time in professional kitchens, and I've never seen someone do more than slap some glue or a piece of tape over it, and keep going. You can't just quit work for a couple of days without throwing the whole business into chaos. It's a rough trade.


Dal stays hard after frying tarka I have a problem with hard dal after frying. Can someone explain the cause.

I made a tarka for lemon rice yesterday and added 1 tsp of urid dal to the frying mixture as called for in the recipe. Left out the 1 tsp toor dal cos they are bigger and I couldn't imagine that they would cook. On eating, the dal was very hard and weird in the rice. Like eating uncooked rice with cooked rice.

My friend made this recipe before (and used toor dal as well) and when we ate it, I did not notice any hard bits (and I ate the rice for a couple of days after that). I asked her and she said she doesn't know why it became hard. She has also encountered the same problem.

Should the rice be left to steam further after mixing in the tarka?

Generally you have to soak lentils for many hours, use a pressure cooker to soften them up or a combination of the two. Only masoor dal can be cooked straight away. So I'm guessing you missed a step in whatever recipe you are following.


travelling with cooked chickens I want to cook some chickens in the morning, and then travel about 2 hours in a car later in the day. Should I cool the chickens in the fridge after cooking them, or just wrap the hot chickens in tin foil and travel with them that way?

This scenario is on the borderline, if the travel time were the only factor.   Generally, you don't want to hold foods in the danger zone (40 - 140 F / 8 = 4 - 60 C) more than about 2 hours.  However, you have indicated you want to cook the chickens earlier, so that adds on to the time they would not be at a proper temperature if you tried to keep them hot.

The safest method, then, is to chill them properly, and transport them in a cooler packed with ice.  Putting the chickens into zip-type bags will keep them from getting water logged.

See also:
How do I know if food left at room temperature is still safe to eat?


Can a steak be deep fried in clarified butter? Steaks can be deep fried and this is usually done with an oil with a high smoke point. People seem to report reasonably good results with this.

I'd like to deep fry with butter as this would impart that butter flavour. Using un-clarified butter would lead to a smoke show (I think), but clarified butter should get hot enough without smoking too much.

Would it be possible to deep fry a steak in clarified butter?

If so, can the clarified butter be recuperated and used again?

If so, could the clarified butter be infused with garlic or thyme some how?

I haven't tried it personally, so this is purely hypothetical. Clarified butter has a smoke point of 252 degrees Celsius, which is well above the temperature one would use to deep fry anything. So deep frying in clarified butter should be possible. I would not however try to infuse the butter with anything. Infusing it would mean adding oils from herbs or garlic with a much lower smoke point, which would probably make the end result taste burned.


Is there an official standard vegan packaging symbol designating that a product is vegan? I'm trying to eat vegan and having a hard time determining (by the packaging) which products are appropriate for me.

Are there symbols or certifications I can look for, preferably something backed by a federal or state government?

If there isn't such a thing in widespread use, then what is the reason for its non-existence or lack of general adoption?

There are two common symbols; the European Vegetarian Union (EVU) and Vegan Action.

In my experience, you will see the EVU on packaging and on restaurant menus. I've only ever seen the Vegan Action symbol on packaged products.

The EVU is not exclusively vegan so you'll still need to read the packaging or ask about ingredients if in a restaurant. The Vegan Action symbol is exclusively vegan and is becoming very popular in the United States.


Ganache by pouring before fondanting a cake in a few days, I will be trying to create a buttock shaped cake (back and buttocks). I want the fondant to look very smooth and want to ganache the cake to have a smooth effect. I will be using dark chocolate to make the ganache. I am pretty good at ganaching a square or a round cake (traditional method) before I fondant the cake but am not very confident getting the ganache smooth on a carved cake. I only did it once and it was a disaster and wasn't smooth at all.

I was wondering if I could pour a layer or 2 of ganache while it hasn't set yet but is cool enough so that it sets firm on the cake and gives me a smooth finish. I couldn't find anything anywhere and was wondering why its always the traditional ganaching method and if the pouring method would work or not.

This is the look I'm trying to achieve but with a carved cake

There is no reason pouring ganache wouldn't work for this. 50/50 cream to bittersweet chocolate will work just fine. Just move quickly while the ganache is warm - you shouldn't have any problem at all.

here's a picture of a cake iced by pouring 50/50 ganache:

50/50 poured ganache sets firm in the sense that it stays put once it has cooled. Considering the carving that your cake is going to require, and the fragility that I would expect in the cake, I'd definitely go with a liquid that is more pourable than the icing in your picture looks to be. 50/50 ganache slices just fine. Look at the cut out in my picture. The slice through the ganache will just as "clean" 48 hours later.


Why should you serve risotto on a hot plate? In many places it is said to "Serve risotto on a hot plate - or else" or "you better serve it on a hot plate".

Why is that so?

What moscafj says is true, but it doesn't explain specifically for risotto.

Basically, the creaminess** is because of a starch-based solution.  Starch based solutions are temperature dependent and will get much thicker as it cools.  If there's enough starch, it can solidify to the point where the sauce will break into pieces if you try to manipulate it.

** Don't start with the 'it's not creamy because there isn't cream in it' crap again.


Recreating an accidental crust effect For a bake sale, I made a pumpkin cheesecake with a ground ginger-snap cookie crust. It's the first time I had ever made the recipe.

As I do whenever I make cheesecake, I cooked it in a 9" springform, and had the springform in a deep water bath as it cooked. The water bath had been in the oven long enough that the water had started to boil by the time I put the cheesecake in it.

When the cheesecake had finished cooking, I took it out, and to my horror realized that the springform had leaked, and the water bath had gotten into the crust. The crust was fairly wet, but still held together, so I figured it was salvageable.

I took the water bath out, put the cheesecake back in with the door slightly ajar, turned the oven down, and left it for another half an hour. My goal was to try to dry the crust.

It seemed to work, as the crust dried before the rest of the cheesecake became overcooked (yay). I chilled it over night after it had cooled.

When I cut into it the next day, there was a thin layer of darker crust between the crust and the cake, and seemed to actually hold the crust together. I managed to cut the entire cake using the hot-knife method without any of the crust crumbling. When I ate a piece, I noticed that the thin layer was slightly syrupy (but not enough to poorly affect the texture), and indeed did hold the crust together very well.

My only explanation for what could have caused this was the boiling water entering the crust dissolved some of the cookie's sugar, then sat as a layer on top of the crust, and dried, depositing the sugar.

Because it looked so nice (it was a "double layer" cake already, so the new crust layer gave the cake 4 different colored layers), and held the crust together so well, I'd like to try to reliably reproduce this effect.

Cheesecakes are relatively expensive to make though, and take a fair amount of time, so repeated trial and error would be difficult to do.

Does anyone know a way to reproduce this? Is this at all a common technique?

I have seen recipes where a hot caramel was poured on the crust before the filling is added. It's designed to help help keep the crust from becoming soggy.

Sadly, I can't find a recipe for you; googling turns up a lot of results for caramel sauces on top. But I can give you a basic approach:

Prepare your crust in the pan. Dissolve 1/2 cup sugar in 2 tablespoons of water. Bring to boil over high heat. Cook without stirring until it becomes a nice, rich brown (about 350 degrees).

Pour the hot syrup over your crust, and tilt to cover the crust evenly. (You'll probably have more syrup than you really need.) Allow to cool (about 20 minutes) before pouring in the filling. Bake as before.

(Bonus: it helps to wrap a large, wide sheet of aluminum foil around your springform pan before putting your cake in the water bath, to prevent leaks.)


Braided bread: how to prevent ropes from springing back I've been making challah regularly for years and would like to find a way to make the ropes longer before braiding so the end result can be a longer loaf, but they always shrink up. I've read that letting the dough rest will accomplish this but I have not had luck with that. My challah is always delicious and I'm happy with my recipe. I just want to have more flexibility in forming the loaves.

My method: I use a bread machine "dough only" cycle. I use either all AP unbleached flour, or half AP flour - half whole wheat flour.(I adjust the amount of water accordingly to make sure the dough isn't too dry.)

To make a rope, I either roll it on a floured board, or I hold it in the air and roll between my two hands.

How can I get the ropes to not spring back?

Patience, my friend!

If your dough springs back, you are in fact doing everything right. A good dough will be elastic, that means you can stretch the ropes to a certain point and beyond that, it will return to the original length - and after that, start tearing. If you leave the dough alone for a few minutes, the gluten strands in the dough will relax a bit, allowing you to stretch the ropes longer. Rinse and repeat...

Now I can see why working in intervals over, say, twenty minutes is not what you want. We want to get things done and probably have other stuff to do, right? But there are a few things that help:

Don't start with balls of dough, but with longish rolls. Take your dough portion for a strand, flatten slightly and roll it up lengthwise. If the dough is still flexible, hold your (left) thumb parallel to the long axis and (with the right hand) pull the dough over it section by section and seal the edge by pushing down. This will give you an even narrower strip to start with. (I posted some pictures in another answer, but work lengthwise, not crosswise as in that answer)
Alternate working on the individual strands. Always roll one only until you get just to the border where it starts to spring back, then take the next. By the time you are through your three / five / ... strands, the first will have relaxed enough to allow more stretching. Bonus: it's a lot easier to get all strands to the same length.


Spice cake has sweet crispy top I made a spice cake from scratch.  I've made it before, this time I made cupcakes.  The cake was perfect, but the top was crunchy and sweet with little holes.  Was the butter not incorporated enough and fried the sugar into a sweet top?

German Apple Cake also responds like this. Must say that I've come to adore the crunchy top! :) But yes, you are right, it doesn't really happen if you bake it as a large cake. It's mostly just along the outer edge of the cake, in my case anyway.

My reasoning is that cupcakes contain less batter per surface area exposed to the oven... I think the oven just caramelizes the sugar in the batter. Think of meringue where the sugar isn't properly incorporated... you see little holes in the surface of the meringue. I'm not saying you should dissolve the sugar better in this cake recipe, but if the crunchy (slightly holey top) isn't desirable for you, try using caster sugar which dissolves easier.


Is there a difference between poached and steamed chicken? I'm planning to make chicken sandwiches and was wondering what the difference is when chicken is steamed vs poached. I know the technique for both but was wondering if steaming was meant to leave the chicken more juicy (or vise versa), or are they much the same?
Recipes call for one of the other and I'm curious if I can substitute!

I would say its a matter of personal preference.  One method or the other doesn't mean your chicken will turn out jucier, either of those methods can dry chicken out if not done properly.  For your application, just cook the chicken how ever you enjoy it the best whether its those methods listed, grilling, frying, etc.  As long as you cook the meat properly it will stay juicy and tender.


How to substitute in baking so the result is both egg- and gluten-free? What is a good substitute for egg and wheat flour in baking?

I have a friend who is allergic to eggs and I would like to be able to bake for her.
I have another friend who is gluten free.

Can these allergies have combined substitutes?

AFAIK, (which isn't much) there is no one good substitute for eggs in baking. This is because the egg can be there for one or more of several reasons. This includes as a flavorant, emulsifier, moisturizer and leavener. So, I'll address each of these separately.

Flavor - I have yet to find an ingredient or ester I can easily produce to replicate the very eggy taste of eggs. You're best bet is likely a commercial substitute (which also may solve the other issues below).

Emulsification - (Soy) Lecithin. Period. Probably about a tablespoon per egg yolk replaced. If this leaves your recipe too dry...

Moisturizer - Applesauce. Period. The high pectin is an emulsifier as well, and it will moisturize without imparting strong flavor. Alternatively, add more liquid (which see below for gluten notes).

Leavening - Baking powder may do the job here. You may also want to use buttermilk alongside it. If that doesn't work, Xanthan Gum may be worth trying alongside the BP or buttermilk. Use VERY LITTLE XG, it will thicken it up nicely. However...

Gluten. Its what makes bread so bready. As long as what you're making isn't bread (if you need to sub egg out for a whole egg in bread, I got nothin') you can substitute out any flour that's not wheat, rye, or barley based. If you're friend has Celiac Disease, simply not using those flours or any byproducts in a from-scratch recipe should be fine. If your friend has IBS and it's a FODMAP issue, there's quite a few more landmines to avoid, and I recommend asking a nutritionist for specific advice/check a recipe. If it's an allergy to wheat, ask for a list of known allergens from your friend. Best thing to do is have your friend forward the specific diagnosis that their doctor/nutritionist gave them; I'm sure they wouldn't mind so that you can safely cook for them.

It's not quite as easy as just using a different flour though. You'll probably want to use less flour overall, and a mix of different flours to go toward a specific taste and feel.

TLDR; Substitutions are hard. Use rice flour and applesauce, I guess.

Experiment! You can report back with your findings...


What property does rice flour add to a shortbread recipe? I bought a book with recipes for shortbread as I wanted to try making my own shortbread. However, most unusually (given its general availability in shops), many of the recipes call for rice flour in addition to wheat flour.

What would be the effect expected from rice flour in a shortbread recipe and is there a more commonly available substitute (I was thinking potato or corn starch, but I am unsure)?

There are numerous recipes also calling for corn flour or corn starch instead of rice flour; so you can substitute with any gluten-free and low-protein flour or starches (also potato starch). The idea, is pretty simple actually, cutting down the protein content of the mixture.

Considering there's a good amount of fat in the shortbread, it will inhibit the development of gluten.

Adding riceflour will help you utilize these two measures, in our battle against gluten development, resulting in moister and less chewy end results.

And please note that, afaik, the traditional recipe actually calls for oat flour. (which, i believe, is also gluten-free)


Is it safe to leave cooked poultry at room temperature overnight? Assuming that I've already cooked the poultry (or eggs) to recommended temperatures - does it need to be refrigerated immediately, or is it safe to eat if it's been left at room temperature overnight?

Time for a safety lesson.

When you are dealing with food products that can spoil, what you are concerned about is the Danger Zone, which is the temperature range at which bacteria multiplies fastest. While specific numbers will vary, a decent rule of thumb is 4-60 degrees Celsius. What that means is any food prone to spoilage must be kept out of that temperature range, and if it is going to be within that temperature range, it must be for less than four hours, aggregated across the product's lifetime. What this also means is that when you are chilling hot food you need to do so as fast as possible, in order to minimize the time spent in the Danger Zone.

Foods that are dangerous are the ones you would expect: anything which requires refrigeration. Potatoes, for example, are perfectly safe to keep at room temperature when raw, but must be refrigerated once cooked. (Perhaps a poor example, as potatoes fare better when kept below room temp but above fridge temp, but you catch my drift I hope). So we're talking about raw meats, most dairy (very hard cheeses may be kept at room temp with no ill effects other than possible softening), many vegetables and fruits, that sort of thing. Eggs and butter can be considered a somewhat special case; eggs can be kept at room temp with few problems (and in fact eggs used to be kept right out on kitchen counters, in the shell of course, not after they have been cracked), while butter can generally be kept at room temperature for a few days before the fats will start to become rancid (anecdata: we never kept butter in the fridge when I was a kid, except for butter my mother needed for baking, where the temperature is a matter of physics in the recipe, and not health. Never had any problems.) Harder vegetables--potatoes, carrots, parsnips--can generally be kept at room temp without problems, as can many fruits--apples, oranges (all thick-rind citrus really), bananas, and so on.

So. According to the food safety experts, you absolutely should not leave even cooked poultry out overnight, as any bacterial contamination will be severe after a few hours. In real terms, unless you are very young/old or immunocompromised in some way (e.g. leukemia, chemotherapy, HIV/AIDS, etc) you're probably going to be okay. I am a professional chef, and at home I'm pretty lackadaisical about expiry dates, how long most things have been sitting out, etc. In the context of work, however, I am extremely anal about rapid chilling/heating and keeping food safe, and I will always advise other people to be cautious with their food; what I choose to do with my own body is my concern. When In Doubt, Throw It Out is always good advice; there's a reason it was stencilled across the inside of the walk-in refrigerator door at one restaurant I worked at.

You should also bear in mind that much of the time bacterial contamination is not detectable by the eye, nose, or tongue until it has become severe. Even when contamination is not detectable with our senses, serious illness can occur (see, for example, recent outbreaks of E. coli, listeria, and salmonella, none of which can be detected with eyes/nose/tongue). So the 'smell test,' while in use by almost everyone who cooks food, is really not all that reliable as a gauge for spoilage; taste and smell can definitively say that a given product has gone bad, but it cannot say that a given product is definitively okay to eat.

(As a side note on food safety, if cheese has gone mouldy, don't trim off the mouldy bits. Just throw it out. While much of the time any such mould will be entirely harmless, it's not worth taking the chance over, especially given that if mold has bloomed on the surface of the cheese, spores will be present on the entire surface, with penetration into the cheese itself. Seriously, just toss it, and re-examine how you store your cheese and/or how much you're buying at a time).

Even easier to remember: keep hot food hot (above 60C) and cold food cold (below 4C). Make things hot as fast as possible, and cold as fast as possible.

(Note that I am a cooking professional, not a medical professional, and nothing here should be construed as medical advice. Always err on the side of caution.)


Convert seed based measurements to pre-ground? I want to use a recipe that gives ingredient measurements based on the spice seeds. My local grocery store does not have at least half of the ingredients in seed form. But the store does have them pre-ground. How can I translate this recipe's measurements into something I can actually buy?

Ingredients:

1 1/2 dried chipotle chiles, stemmed, seeded, chopped
2 tablespoons pink peppercorns
2 tablespoons coriander seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 teaspoons dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon mustard powder

Read More http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2011/07/chipotle-rub#ixzz1Qo0PBoPp

Converting whole spices to ground spices is not as simple as matching up the weights. Ground spices have a distinctly different flavour from the whole. The freshness of the grind will also affect the taste quite considerably as well as how carefully they have been stored. When the spice is freshly ground it will have a very strong intense flavour, so you would reduce the amount you use slightly. However, ground spices rapidly loose parts of their flavour. The taste changes and you may find you will end up using more than the recipe states in order to get a similar taste. However, you'll never get exactly the same taste, grinding changes the spice.

The best solution is to try to get an supply of the whole spice from an online store. You can then use them whole or grind them yourself, fresh, as the need arises.


What's this yellow plum-like fruit with a spiky stone? West Africa I recently bought a couple of these from a fruit seller in Sierra Leone. On the right is the stone after eating the fruit. They're small-ish, a similar size to a lime or a kiwi fruit.

I asked the lady what it was called, but she just looked at me as if I was mad in stony silence (I'd already bought and paid for the fruit, despite clearly not knowing what it was, so maybe she had a point).

The skin is thin but strong. The fruit flesh had a texture and flavour similar to an unripe English plum, with maybe a hint of citrus-y melon and pear-like flavour. Quite sharp and slightly sour and/or slightly bitter, very slightly crunchy, slightly sweet (not very sweet). The flesh is very very slightly translucent and slightly whiter that the skin (you can see a little still on the stone).

The spiky root-like fibres are strong, sharp and make it quite hard to eat... It's like eating a very bony fish.

The only thing that came close from my research was a marula, but the stone is very different.

Best guess:  June Plum, apparently underripe.

Another page has pictures of june plums that match your photo quite well:

All the photos above are of the same type of fruit at different stages of ripeness.
Scientific name Spondias Dulcis:

Spondias dulcis (syn. Spondias cytherea), known commonly as ambarella, is an equatorial or tropical tree, with edible fruit containing a fibrous pit. It is known by many other names in various regions, including kedondong in Indonesia, buah long long among the Chinese population in Singapore, pomme cythere in Trinidad and Tobago,1 Dominica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique,2 June plum in Bermuda and Jamaica,1 mangotín in Panama, juplon in Costa Rica, golden apple in Barbados and Guyana, golden plum in Belize, jobo indio in Venezuela, cajá-manga and cajarana in Brazil and São Tomé and Príncipe, quả cóc in Vietnam, manzana de oro in Dominican Republic, cas mango in Cameroon. In Republic of Maldives Anbulha.
Spondias dulcis is most commonly used as a food source. In West Java, its young leaves are used as seasoning for pepes. In Costa Rica, the more mature leaves are also eaten as a salad green though they are tart. However, it is most commonly used for its fruit.
The fruit may be eaten raw; the flesh is crunchy and a little sour. According to Boning (2006): "The fruit is best when fully colored, but still somewhat crunchy. At this stage, it has a pineapple-mango flavor. The flesh is golden in color, very juicy, vaguely sweet, but with a hint of tart acidity."5 In Indonesia and Malaysia, it is eaten with shrimp paste, a thick, black, salty-sweet sauce called hayko in the Southern Min dialect of Chinese. It is an ingredient in rujak in Indonesia and rojak in Malaysia. The juice is called kedondong in Indonesia, amra in Malaysia, and balonglong in Singapore.
The fruit is made into preserves and flavorings for sauces, soups, and stews. In Fiji it is made into jam. In Samoa and Tonga it is used to make otai. In Sri Lanka the fruit is soaked in vinegar with chili and other spices to make the snack food acharu. In Vietnam the unripe fruit is eaten with salt, sugar, and chili, or with shrimp paste. Children eat the fruit macerated in artificially sweetened licorice extract. In Jamaica, it is mostly considered a novelty, especially by children. It can be eaten with salt or made into a drink sweetened with sugar and spiced with ginger. In Trinidad and Tobago, it is curried, sweetened, salted, or flavored with pepper sauce and spices. In Cambodia it is made into a salad called nhoum mkak. In Suriname, the fruit is dried and made into a spicy chutney, mixed with garlic and peppers. In Thai cuisine both the fruits and the tender leaves are eaten.


How to store salted cod? Salted cod is a famous dish in Portugal and I would like to prepare it. It is common here to see the whole of a fish (well, without head, guts etc obviously) in supermarkets - like this:

Wikipedia

I expect that it can be stored at home for quite a long time without refrigeration. However I'm not sure. What is the best way to store salted cod? For how long can it be stored? And, as a bonus question: what to do against the whole house smelling like codfish? ;)

According to Still Tasty, 10-12 months, refrigerated.

To prevent odors, it should be left sealed in its original packaging, or put into an airtight container such as freezer bag (the freezer ones are better sealed and less permeable than the regular zip lock type bag).


Why is some metal safe to use in a microwave, but others not? This might be a more scientific question, but it relates to cooking and I thought it was interesting.

I just made my lunch which was a microwavable bowl of chunky soup.

The directions said:

  Remove metal lid, remaining metal rim is microwavable.

How can this be?

Metal on its own doesn't necessarily cause electric discharge in a microwave.

What causes the sparking that you see when you put a fork in a microwave is due to the "sharp" edges of the fork. These edges concentrate the voltage at their tips which will cause a spark when it exceeds the dielectric breakdown of air.

Things like sheet pans (with rounded edges), or rounded metal racks are used frequently in microwaves with no ill effect. The absence of any pointed edges allows this. The rim of your bowl fits this requirement.


Cooking with Ornamental Cabbage (Kale)? Is it safe to cook Ornamental Cabbage such as this

Should I just pretend its your average cabbage when cooking with it?

Ornamental cabbage is often actually a kale.

See this link with pictures very similar to yours:
http://www.arhomeandgarden.org/plantoftheweek/articles/ornamental_kale.htm

Kale is edible and nutritious but it is tough and very strongly flavored compared to cabbage.

Kale recipes usually involve long braises in flavorful liquid to break down the toughness. Cabbage recipes, which require less cooking lest you release the dreaded sulfur demons, would almost certainly not be sufficient.


What is slow cooking and what it is good for? I've read several question about slow cooking, but I don't know what is it and what it's good for. Can someone explain it? Thank you!

Generally, slow-cooking means any food preparation method which relies on using low-heat for a long amount of time. Barbecues, smokers, luau pits, and low-heat ovens could all qualify.  The benefit of slow-cooking, generally, is that food becomes incredibly tender, as all of its connective tissues break down.  Also, flavor can infuse over time and provide deeper results than with virtually any other method.  Lastly, long-cooking times create a celebratory atmosphere where food is the focal point of a social gathering.

Specifically, slow-cooking refers to the 'slow-cooker' a counter-top set-up which has a large, electronically heated ceramic bowl and a glass lid.  It usually has only a few settings, such as 'low', 'medium', and 'high'.  The benefit of slow-cooking in a slow-cooker is mainly convenience.  These units are safe enough to turn on before work and return to before dinner, with fully-cooked, piping hot food ready to go.  The slow-cooker is geared towards 'one-pot' recipes, which means they require minimal food preparation.  You simply cut up the ingredients in fairly large chunks, add seasoning, and liquid, and that's it. They are a favorite of working parents, but increasingly, also a device for more advanced experimentation.


Air fried sweet potatoes have black dots on them I attempted to air fry some sweet potatoes and over cooked them a bit. I noticed that they had black dots all over them which I havent seen before. Is this normal or was there something wrong with the potatoes to begin with?

Sweet potatoes picture on imgur

a better image

I bought the store, pre-cut package from the veggie section.

It is on all of them (about 40 pieces) and I havent eaten any yet in case it was some type of mold or other craziness that got air fried

Those are just burnt or almost-burnt spots where the sugars in the sweet potatoes caramelized a bit too much. It's possible the potatoes are still palatable - taste them.


How do I age ginger? For the past few months all I can find is young ginger from the grocers. I am in need of old ginger which I can't quite purchase.
I have tried to leave it out in the kitchen in an open basket (no sunlight) but it went all mouldy. When I did this, the average temperatures in my (Australian) city were a high of 30C and a low of 15C.
How can I age young ginger, so as to have 'old' ginger?
Ginger photo :

What's the difference?
I did a little research, and this article does a good job at summarizing both the taste difference, and the growing difference.
Young ginger (or spring ginger) is harvested at the start of the growing season, before it has gotten as fibrous, and when the exterior skin is still thin & delicate. It also has  a more mild flavor. Mature ginger (what the OP calls "old ginger" is simply grown longer and has a tougher skin, and more pungent taste.
Full text from the above article:

Fresh ginger is available both young and mature.
Spring ginger. Young ginger which is sometimes called spring ginger has a very thin skin that requires no peeling. The skin is edible. Young ginger is very tender and has a milder flavor than mature ginger. Young ginger is found in Asian markets in the springtime.
Mature ginger. Mature ginger is usually harvested in the fall and has a tough skin that must be carefully peeled to reach the flesh underneath. Mature ginger is more pungent than young ginger.
Just harvested ginger—whether young or mature–should have a fresh, spicy fragrance.

So what can you do?
Once it's harvested, there isn't really a way to "mature" it at home in your kitchen. That needs to happen when it's still in the garden. You could try simply using a "heavier hand" and use more ginger to compensate for the slightly more delicate flavor, though that still won't be the same thing as using mature ginger to begin with.


Do honing steels wear out? We have a knife set that's approximately 15 years old, and as we were honing a knife tonight, a question arose. Do honing steels get worn down over the years? Should they be replaced? If so, how often?

They are either made of surface hardened steel, which can't be realistically sharpened, or bonded with tungsten or diamond grit, again which can't be realistically replaced

Most steels just need a good clean; soak the steel in warm soapy water for a while, and then give it an aggressive scrub with a nylon bristle brush. Dry thoroughly

If it still does not hone well, then maybe it's time to buy a new one?

I am using a full size silver handled surface hardened steel that is 70+ years old and still works fine. It looks quite beaten up, has had surface rust, but always brings a knife back to life

I have a short portable diamond grit steel for camping that is less than 5 years old, and is nearly useless already

There doesn't seem to be consensus on what exactly a honing steel does to a knifes edge. But to me it's a very fine file, so it will wear out over time. Considering the normal usage in a domestic situation that could be a very long time


Caramel Coating producing inconsistent results I have been experimenting with a recipe for Caramel Coated Pecans.
The problem I have been experiencing is that (I believe) the instructions are too general.

The first time I used a 'larger' sauce pan and I ended up with something that was more like a 'pecan brittle' which tasted slightly burned.

In my second attempt I used a smaller sauce pan and I ended up with a very grainy result (much of the caramel coating turned to

I suspect that instructions of "four minutes at medium high heat" are not specific enough to achieve the desired result. What I need is to know what temperature to raise the sauce too in order to get a smooth coating. (or if I am wrong, any 'other advise' would be welcome.)

It is odd that the original recipe didn't include a temperature, as temperature is absolutely critical in candymaking. That is probably why your results were so inconsistent, as different pans would have heated the mixture at different rates. I would shoot for a temperature of 240-250F (Hard ball stage) as that should be thick enough to coat the nuts and allow them to finish caramelizing in the oven.

To avoid getting the pecan brittle again, avoid excess of the coating mixture on the pan and be sure to keep the nuts moving frequently during the bake.

Here are a couple of recipes that show a similar temperature range:

Candied Orange Walnuts

Brown Sugar Walnuts


How do I make this particular pizza dough? I don't know how widespread this was, but I have found myself in the position of having to duplicate those sheet pizzas that used to be used for cafeteria work.  It consisted of a dough layer, a sauce layer, a cheese layer and a sprinkling of either sausage or peperoni cubes.  I can handle all the other layers but I know the doughs that I normally use for my various pizza applications aren't going to replicate the base layer of this "pizza".  It wasn't very crisp and it didn't rise very much and it wasn't very chewy.  This leads me to believe that there should be little yeast, and the flour shouldn't be to hard, but beyond that I'm kind of lost here.

Please understand that I am NOT looking for a true pizza dough here.  It should still be white and pliable when the toppings are finished.  If anybody knows what the brand name they were or has a place to start to fix my dough, it would be very much apprieciated.

Not to disparage some of my go-to cookbooks, but when I want something that's a little more institutional or American traditional (and I'd say your pizza qualifies), the first places I look for recipes are the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook or the Joy of Cooking. I would bet that their recipes are going to steer you toward that kind of pizza crust.

I would think you'd want to look at a dough recipe with some fat in it--most likely olive oil. And I would think two rises would be good to get that sandwich bread texture of smaller bubbles/tighter crumb. Compared to a traditional Italian pizza, you'll also need a lot more dough, and I expect you'll cook it at a lower temperature than for a thin gourmet pizza (which is usually as hot as your oven can go).

If you're concerned about thick dough coming out a little undercooked (especially in the middle), you could blind bake it (with no toppings) briefly before taking it out and topping it.

If you're feeling really desperate for "that kind" of pizza dough and don't think anything you'll make will be white bread enough, Pillsbury makes a dough in a can that you pop open like their crescent rolls and cinnamon rolls. Pop it, and the dough is inside ready to rock--just unroll it and go.


What is this cooking utensil labeled "Orka by Mastrad" and "1 ml = 1 pinch"? It is labeled "Orka by Mastrad".  It also says "1 ml = 1 pinch" on the right-side part.  What is this object and what is it used for?

This is a single salad tong, as seen here

Notice the way the two tongs connect at the handle, and how the nearer one has the same shape as the poster's image.


How do these flavors of liquid smoke differ? When buying liquid smoke I'm generally faced with a choice of:

Hickory
Apple-tree
Mesquite
Pecan

How do these differ? I'm interested in knowing things that'd help me decide what to pair them with.

Mesquite is a very assertive flavor that typically goes with beef, especially fatty beef.

Pecan and hickory are stronger than apple, but milder than mesquite, and are great for pork or poultry, and work just fine with beef.

Applewood is very flexible, a bit lighter and sweeter. It's the only one of the woods you mentioned that I would consider using with fish.

Ultimately, there's no hard and fast rules - taste things and do what works for you!


Pizza stone or firebricks to fix uneven cooking I have a Zanussi  commercial gas oven... probably 15 yearas old but in good condition....and it cooks unevenly.  Am wondering if placing a pizza stone  or fireplace bricks  on the bottom  will help even out browning and cooking?  The burners are at the bottom and run in a double row from front to back in the centre.  Dont, know if it is possible to put a pizza stone / firebricks on the base of oven? Will this damage the oven or be dangerous.  Has anyone done this before?

Bricks in the oven are an old breadmaker's trick. They do increase thermal mass, and thus temperature consistency.
I've kept 3 regular, not fire, bricks on the bottom shelf of my gas oven for years, and they work well. Plus they're always handy when I need to press some eggplant.
If you go with something other than firebrick, you need to be sure the things are real clay all the way through. There are modern composite 'bricks' with a clay coating over something else. Those'll likely break if you bake them. The way to tell if a brick is solid clay is to break one in half and have a look.
Whether regular brick, or fire brick, the first time you heat them up, you'll want to do it slowly. Say 80°C (175°F) for a couple hours before heating above boiling. That'll minimize chances of potentially violent cracking.


Flavorings for clear gelatin I'm planning to make a sort of diorama, and the 3D nature of it is going to require suspending things in clear gelatin.

Are there flavorings that would work that wouldn't significantly affect the color and opacity of the gelatin, or its setting strength?

You can use Lorann flavors, they don't affect the clarity of gelatin:

Found them here: https://gelatinartmarket.com/products/assorted-gelatin-art-flavoring-lorann-oils?variant=14121096455


How to remove mould from a wooden spoon One of my wooden spoons has mould on it (black spots, not able to be removed by surface scrubbing - I went on holidays without clearing the dishwasher...).

Is there a way to remove the mould?  Or should I just buy a new wooden spoon?

If its soaked in the spoon, I'd not risk it for an inexpensive wooden spoon. A soak in a bleach solution is the common treatment though.  I'd buy a new one or replace it with a high temp silicone spoon (no unremovable mold issues in the future then!)


How to replace sugar with dry fruit in a cake recipe? How do I replace all the sugar in a cake recipe with dry fruit e.g. dates?
should I rehydrate dry fruit and make it into a paste? how much liquid should I add to the dry fruit to make that paste?
what is the correct ratio of dry fruit paste to use compared to other ingredients in a recipe like eggs, flour and butter, in weight or volume?
I am trying to make any cake that allows me to replace all the sugar with dry fruit, I don't mind a denser cake.
Thanks

This will definitely require some experimentation on your part. As a starting point, I recommend comparing the sugar content of the fruit to the sugar content of sugar. Below, I use dates as an example.

48 grams of dates (approximately 2 dates) contains 32 grams of sugar (source)
48 grams of sugar contains 48 grams of sugar (source: common sense)

So dates are 2/3 (67%) sugar by mass. This means it takes 1.5 times the mass of dates as sugar, to get the same amount of sugar. For example, in a recipe with 100g of sugar, substitute 150g of dates.
Making the dry fruit into a paste seems like a good way to get the sweetness evenly distributed through your batter. I suggest re-hydrating in hot water. Then puree the re-hydrated fruit, and incorporate it into the wet ingredients. Measure the amount of hot water you use, and reduce the amount of liquid in the cake recipe accordingly. Depending on the type of liquid used in your cake recipe, you may be able to use that liquid to re-hydrate the dry fruit. I know from experience that citrus juice works well for re-hydrating dry fruit; I'm not sure about milk or cream.
Of course the results will not be exactly the same as the original cake recipe. Different types of fruit will seem more or less sweet. The fruit paste will add flavor and effect the texture of the cake. Typically it will probably make the cake more moist and dense. This technique will not be suitable for cakes which are intended to be very light and fluffy, such as angel food cake or sponge cake.


Problems cooking Wagyu brisket While I save up for a proper outdoor smoker, I've been experimenting with using the basic brisket BBQ techniques, but with a fan forced in our kitchen. So far, the regular briskets have turned out fine, but the Wagyu ones have all turned out tough and dry.

This weekend I tried again with two identical 7.5lb Wagyu briskets - one on Saturday and one on Sunday.
The one on Saturday was tough and dry, so I reduced the temperature and the cooking time on Sunday - same result.

Would appreciate any advice. My cooking methods over this weekend are below:

SATURDAY

Use paper towels to remove excess moisture.
Apply a rub of salt, pepper and smoked paprika.
Wrap in foil and leave overnight in the fridge.
Preheat the oven to about 248 deg F (120 celsius)
Put a container of water at the bottom of the oven for moisture
Remove the brisket from the foil and place on the middle rack
Leave in the oven untouched and unopened for 3.5 hours
At this point the color was good but the outside was hard,
and when pushed with a finger the meat felt well done.
Spritzed with cider vinegar, then wrapped in foil
Placed back in the oven and reduced the temperature to about 220-230 deg F
Cooked for a further 2.5 hours in the foil
Removed from oven and rested for an hour

RESULT - Dry, well done and chewy with the meat in the middle looking gray.

SUNDAY

I reduced the initial temperature to about 220 deg F
and reduced the unwrapped cook time to about 2 hours.
Everything else was the same.
When I took it out, it wasn't as dark but still felt well done
and when cut, it was still dry and 'overcooked' right through.
The foil-wrapped cooking time didn't help tenderize it at all.

QUESTIONS

Why is it overcooking and drying out at such low temperatures, when normal briskets don't?
My Mom says that a fan-forced oven is hotter than a regular one, but I reduced the temperature
to compensate for this. Could a fan-forced oven still be the problem?
I would have thought Wagyu would be even more tender than regular brisket. What's up?

Thanks in advance.

Your brisket was undercooked, not overcooked. At the temperatures you stated, rule of thumb for brisket cooking time is about 1.25-1.5 hours per pound. Convection may drop that down a tad. A 7.5 pound brisket should be cooked for at least 8 hours, and could be closer to 10 or so.

The cuts of meat that are designated as "barbecue" meats are generally full of connective tissue. You put it through a long, low-temperature cooking process to render down that tissue, which will both tenderize and moisturize the meat. Undercooked barbecue will often be mischaracterized as "dry," because the amount of chewing required on the meat robs the mouth of saliva. Properly-cooked brisket will slice easily, and a slice should easily pull apart when gently tugged with two hands. This is not a steak, so the sensibilities you would apply to cooking a steak go out the window. A brisket has only just BEGUN to break down its connective tissues when it reaches what would be regarded as "Well Done." It is not likely done from a quality perspective until the internal temperature of the meat has reached at least 190f.

Next time, budget a cooking time 1.5 hours per pound. If it is finished sooner, wrap it in foil and towels, and leave it to rest in a cooler. It will safely keep that way for up to four hours, and a long rest will result in a better product anyway. Start checking the internal temperature of the meat about halfway through your budgeted time. At around 165f, wrap the brisket in foil, pouring some beef broth into the wrap, and return it to your oven. Start checking for doneness at about 75% of the cooking timeline you have laid out. You should be able to slide a probe in and out of your brisket easily, with just a small amount of resistance. That is when you know it is done. Not by time, not by internal temperature, but in the tactile clues provided by the meat. You can optionally take the brisket back out of the foil when you think your are close to being done, in order to give yourself a better bark. When you are confident the meat is done, rest in a cooler (using the aforementioned foil/towel treatment) for at least an hour.

When you are ready to slice your brisket, be sure to SLICE ACROSS THE GRAIN. This will serve as another tenderness aid. You should also reserve the jus that is generated, and pour it over your brisket slices. This should enhance your success with making a brisket.


What is the sous vide botulism risk if storing meat post-cooking at home? So I understand that cooking sous vide has a potentially high risk of botulism due to the anaerobic environment (vacuum). As such, you need to be careful with time and temp combinations. If you are storing food for service later, you need to flash chill it and then keep it in a fridge below 4C. This is easy enough at a restaurant with a walk-in, but is somewhat difficult in a home fridge as opening the door creates wide temperature swings.
Douglas Baldwin proposes the following temperature / time guideline for "safe" wrt botulism:

[S]pores of Clostridium botulinum, C. perfringens and B. cereus can all survive the mild heat treatment of pasteurization. Therefore, after rapid chilling, the food must either be frozen or held at
below 36.5°F (2.5°C) for up to 90 days,
below 38°F (3.3°C) for less than 31 days,
below 41°F (5°C) for less than 10 days, or
below 44.5°F (7°C) for less than 5 days

So a couple of questions about those guidelines:

How big should I expect the swings in my home fridge to be with normal usage?
If I have a second fridge and the door rarely opens, what will the temperature swings be there?
Since the botulism concern is due to the vacuum, am I correct in thinking that this concern will disappear if I remove the meat from the vacuum to store it? Obviously, this approach would reintroduce all the normal safety concerns with storing cooked meat.

I'm not sure about your question 3, but as I thought about 1 and 2, I figured the swings would not be too big if you don't open your fridge for extended periods of time: how much air is really exchanged between the inside and the outside if you open your fridge door for 5 seconds - which already gives you plenty of time to get something out?

I figured the internets would have to know something about this so I set about searching for some graphs. Turns out Berkeley has a class that includes an experiment where students measure the temperature in their fridge over a 24 hr period. Most graphs look somewhat like the one on this page, where indeed the swings in temperature from the hysteresis window are larger than occasional increases because of opening the door.

I found two outliers. The first one is from a fridge catering to a large group of students, and the article suggests someone might have put a warm dish in the fridge. The second one is potentially very interesting - the author says she thinks the big upswing is from a wall defrosting cycle in the attached freezer, but that meal time opening of the fridge door didn't do anything to the temperatures.

So it looks like there are only two potential causes for raising the temperature of your fridge by more than a degree or so:

putting hot or warm food in your fridge;
having your fridge do a wall defrosting cycle for the attached freezer.

Other swings are negligible when compared to the natural operating cycle for your fridge.


Pasta machine rolls dough wider than machine I have a (admittedly rather cheap) pasta roller that I try to use fairly regularly. The issue is that when I am rolling it out,the dough keeps getting wider, not just longer, beyond the size of the rollers, and then getting all mangled at the edges. It also has a hard time feeding in straight.  Every video I watch on pasta making doesn't seem to show this, so it is just some trick they aren't mentioning, the cheap machine, or what?

You might be rolling the dough too thinly, too soon. Start by feeding a somewhat flattened 'disk' of dough through the pasta machine at its widest setting. Change the setting by at most 1 for each subsequent pass.
You might also benefit from 'laminating' the dough: after the first pass, fold the dough in thirds, turn it 90 degrees and pass it through the machine again. Here is a picture demonstrating the procedure from the Serious Eats "Science of the Best Fresh Pasta" guide.


Recipes of Turkish drinks in Voltaire's Novel There are some description of Turkish drinks in Voltaire's novel 'Candide', written in 1759 -

presented them with several sorts of sherbet, which they had made
themselves, with kaimak enriched with the candied-peel of citrons,
with oranges, lemons, pine-apples, pistachio-nuts, and Mocha coffee…

Are there any books or documents that are close to above described drinks? Thanks.
Note:
I assume Mocha coffee is served separately which is common in today's world.

First, let me clarify a linguistic point: Nowadays, both words "sherbet" and "sorbet" have entered the English language as loanwords. They both describe frozen desserts, and I have seen some people use them interchangeably and others making a distinction, e.g. that sorbet is dairy-free and sherbet has dairy. No matter how they are interpreted, sources about this meaning are not relevant to your question. It just so happens that the loanword's meaning has changed when entered English.
What you need is information about the word "sherbet" as understood in Turkey, not in English-speaking languages. And I am afraid that it is not a very informative word - it is a generic word for a sweet drink. I would actually go so far and translate it as "syrup" while noting that in modern Western countries, a syrup is seen as a concentrate to be diluted, while in Turkish cuisine, it is drunk straight (maybe at concentrations slightly lower than of the "simple syrup" found in classic western pastry books, but not too much lower).
Being that the word is so imprecise, there won't be a source referencing some kind of exact recipes for the drinks mentioned in that passage. Instead, you have to imagine people taking any combination of water, sugar (lots of sugar), and additional flavorful stuff, and drinking it. It is similar to a milkshake - what I throw in the blender is differnet from what my neighbour throws into the blender, and the "pistachio milkshake" I make today may have different ingredients and ratios from the one I made last week.
Dairy is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of sherbet, but there is also no sherbet police to prevent people from using it, so the kaymak (thick cream) was probably just added for more richness.
I wouldn't necessarily assume that the Mocha was drunk separately. Maybe it was, but maybe the specific example described was of a coffee based drink, the way people add espresso to milk to create a latte, or maybe they used a tiny bit of (brewed or ground) coffee as a flavoring. Just because it's unusual today, it doesn't mean that it has to be unusual across different cultures. Again, it wouldn't be a classic example for sherbet - the classic, purest form would be sugar and water, with maybe fruit juice as flavoring.


What is a substitute for red or white wine in a recipe? If someone cannot or will not use wine for cooking, what would be a good substitute?

Question applies to both red and white wine.

For white wine, try:

chicken broth/stock
vegetable stock
white grape juice
ginger ale
canned mushroom liquid
diluted white wine or cider vinegar

For red wine, try:

beef or chicken broth/stock
diluted red wine vinegar
red grape juice
tomato juice
canned mushroom liquid

A great list of substitutions for cooking with various alcoholic ingredients may be found here.


Advantages to "burning off" grill My father insists on "burning off" the grill by letting it run on high after each use. Is there any advantage to doing so?

The idea is to clean the cooking surface.  I typically fire up the grill, then, just before placing product on, use a wire brush to clean the grill surface.  No reason that you couldn't do this at the end of a cook, preparing for the next cook.  The advantage to cooking on a clean surface is that there is reduced chance of food sticking to the grill.


Why do shrimp / lobster / crab turn pink or red when cooking? Cooking is a form of chemistry - so there must be a scientific reason behind this.

Why do all crustaceans turn pink or red when cooked?

Crustaceans like shrimp, lobsters, crabs and crayfish have a pigment called astaxanthin in their shells.

Astaxanthin belongs to the terpines class of chemicals of which the carotenoid ¹ class is a subdivision and, in a marine environment, gets produced by an algae that is subsequently consumed by crustaceans (and other animals like  salmon, red trout, red sea bream and flamingos ² )

As Astaxanthin absorbs blue light, it will appear as its opposing additive colour: a deep red.  The more this deep red is diluted, it will subsequently become red, orange or yellow in colour.

  While the crustaceans are alive, astaxanthin lies wrapped in the tight embrace of a protein called crustacyanin. The protein holds the pigment so tight, in fact, that it’s flattened and its light-absorption properties are changed. The astaxanthin-crustacyanin complex then winds up giving off a blue-green color. ³

This can be observed if you have aggressive live lobsters you want to cook: just put them in the sink full of water with a glass of white wine added for a few minutes and they will get drunk instantly as they've never had alcohol in their lives relax and the blue colouring can then be clearly seen at the fronds of their carapace.

The astaxanthin-crustacyanin complex gets:

  separated when a crab or lobster is cooked. Crustacyanin is not heat-stable, so introducing it to a boiling pot of water or a grill causes it to relax its bonds with astaxanthin, unravel and let the pigment’s true bold red color shine through. ³

Note ¹: Carrots have given carotenoid its name
Note ²: Eating minuscule shrimp containing this carotenoid is what turns flamingos pink: pink flamingos will be more well-fed than pale flamingos...
Note ³: Sourced here


How do I make a flaky croissant? I found this nice vegan croissant recipe: http://www.sabjimatablog.com/2011/05/17/recipe-vegan-croissants/ I am quite happy with the end result, but I wish I can bake a flakier pastry.
I have a feeling that I didn't get the folding quite right. I used kremelta vegetable shortening that made from coconut oil and soya lecithin. I rolled kremelta into a thin-dough like, and fold it inside the dough. The shortening blend in quite well into the dough after 3 folds, although I can small lumps of kremelta in my dough. I put it inside a 200 degree oven, bake it for 15 minutes. I notice that I had a lot of oil on my baking pan. I suspect that all that oil came from the Kremelta.

Is this normal? I suspect that this why my dough didn't turn up into a flaky croissant dough. Does anyone have any tips on how to make a flaky croissant dough ?

Flakiness in pastry is usually achieved by careful incorporation of butter at the correct temperature. Cold cubes of butter are cut into the flour, cold water (or milk) is added, and then the pastry is rolled out, flattening the butter pieces. These pieces act to separate layers of the flour and liquid mixture.

The butter then melts during cooking, 'setting' these layers in the dough. The outer surface of the dough dries out, which means the layers don't stick together, and so it becomes flaky.

If the butter becomes warm and soft during rolling or cutting in, it blends with the flour and liquid and so doesn't promote layer formation.

In my experience, even refrigerated shortening is usually quite soft, and may well be simply absorbing into the rest of the dough when you roll it in. You might try freezing the shortening until it reaches the same consistency as refrigerated butter and working from there. I would also use ice cold water rather than warm water as the recipe suggests.


How can I bake crunchy chocolate chip cookies? Since I'm British, I'm used to biscuits that are crisp, dry and crunchy all the way through, with no soft chewy centre. Most chocolate chip cookie recipes are trying to do the exact opposite. How can I bake chocolate chip cookies with a more British texture? Essentially, I want the exact opposite to the answers to this question.

The best way to achieve what you are looking for is to lower the temp and lengthen the baking time. Lowering the temp will slow the edges from getting burned while the center is allowed to continue to cook.

Allow the top of the cookie to brown before removing from the oven. For soft cookies, the moment it starts to turn brown is the moment you are just a little too late for the cookies to stay soft after they've cooled. If you let the cookie brown just a touch, the cookie will harden on the cooling rack.


Is washing hands before handling meat/poultry necessary? I was wondering if meat and chicken get cooked well, do we need to wash our hands before handling it?

Well, nothing is mandatory as long as you are cooking for yourself.

If you are cooking in a commercial setting, there are clear guidelines on hygiene, including washing hands before handling food.

There can be a lot of things on your hands that you might not want to go on your plate, including the dust after cleaning the house.

So if you are cooking for other people, I’d consider it a basic courtesy to work with clean, i.e. washed hands.
If you are cooking for yourself and if you think it’s superfluous, feel free to act as you see fit. Let me suggest a test if you think about skipping the initial hand washing: Would you lick your hands without batting an eye?

The overall effort of washing ones hands is so small, during the time you are pondering the question, you could easily have washed and dried them. And if you remember that washing hands is the easiest way to prevent colds, stomach viruses and other infections, the first stop when arriving home after a day at the office or in town should be your bathroom sink anyway.


How to keep drinks carbonated I like to occasionally, but not regularly, have a carbonated drink such as soda water. Buying these in small containers is more expensive and uses more packaging. Big containers go flat before I have finished them. How can I keep my carbonated drinks from going flat for as long as possible?

Transfer the contents of the large bottle to several smaller bottles.

Fizzy drinks go flat because each time they are opened & re-closed, the gas is released from the liquid until parity pressure is reached in the container, preventing any more from escaping.

Once you've reached about the halfway point in any size bottle, you're on a losing run from thereon in. Every time you release the pressure, whether you drink or not, you have a lot of gas to release from the liquid to reattain parity pressure.

If you continue to re-use the smaller bottles, the planet will send you a big green hug too ;-)


what kind of meat is used at carving stations? If I go into a cafeteria and they have a hunk of meat on a carving board that the cafeteria is calling "roast beef"; generally what cut of meat is used? The cafeteria slices it very thin about an eighth or an inch.  the serving size is 1 to 3 slices.

I know it is not Prime rib.  it is cut too thin to be Prime rib.

Most buffets serve "steamship round" which is whole round, or the top round--because they are relatively inexpensive.  I have no experience with the particular restaurant named.

However, the question IS vague and there is a lot of variation.  Restaurants serving prime rib at the carving station usually make it quite evident.


My chicken breasts release a lot of fluid when cooked. How do I prevent this? I notice when cooking chicken breast in a pan, or in the oven, the chicken releases a lot of fluid, watering down the flavour.

This happens with fresh chicken as well as frozen (de-frosted) chicken.

How do I prevent this?

Moisture-release is not a result of the cooking process but of the quality of the chicken.

Try the following experiment:

Buy halal or kosher chicken breast
Buy the cheapest chicken breast you can find.

Now put two pans on the stove, and put the industrial chicken breast in the left pan and put the kosher/halal in the right.  Ensure both pans have the same heat setting, the same amount of fat (I prefer duck fat for frying chicken breast) and watch the amount of moisture coming out of the left one and the fat actually being soaked up by the right one.

So the easiest way to avoid this is to buy good quality chicken...


How to remove individual steaks from a lump I mistakenly froze together? I got a vacuum sealer and stored about 7 pieces of steak in 1 bag. I put it in the freezer and just now I decided to take out a couple of steaks to thaw out so I cut open the bag but all the steaks are frozen together. I know if I heat them all up I won't be able to refreeze the rest. What can I do? Should I re-vacuum seal the bag and wait until I can cook them all at once?

Also how do you use a vacuum sealer effectively with bulk meat? It doesn't work too well to store them all in one bag because if you are going to eat one at a time you need to re-bag everything each time.

Your best bet for preserving quality (and safety) is to re-seal the bag, then leave them in the fridge for a bit. You want them to thaw a little, so you can pry them apart. Its safe to re-freeze after this (as the meat never entered the danger zone, indeed it probably never got above ~30°F). There will be some quality loss from the partial thaw-freeze cycle. I recommend waiting to do this until you'll be cooking at least one of the steaks.

Now, how to freeze them:

Freezing in vacuum bags isn't special. Just like with freezing in ziplock bags, freezer paper, foil, etc., you need to freeze individual servings individually. If you want to economize on vacuum bags, you can try one of:

Wrap the steaks in plastic wrap or freezer paper to freeze. Once frozen, transfer to vacuum bag and draw vacuum.
Place two steaks in the bag next to each other, separated by ~1in (depending on thickness of steak, you want the bag to be able to conform to the shape of the steak). If you're using an external vacuum machine like a FoodSaver (as opposed to a $600+ chamber machine), the steaks may be pulled together as it sucks out the air; press your finger down on the plastic between them to keep them apart.
Separate steaks with freezer, parchment, or waxed paper (you can try plastic wrap, but they may freeze together anyway...) in one bag. You can stack them on top of each other, or put the immediately next to each other (without the 1in space), or both. Freeze after sucking air out.

There is a disadvantage to stacking things thicker to freeze (as in the last suggestion): generally speaking, the faster you freeze something, the more quality is retained. And of course the thicker it is, the longer it takes to freeze through.

If you're cutting from rolls, remember that each time you open and re-seal the bag, you're going to cut off an inch or so of plastic, depending on your vacuum machine. Cut the bag big enough to accommodate this.


How-to Cut Baking Chocolate bar clean for perfect squares My recipe calls for 1/2 square of baking chocolate per cookie. But trying to cut thru the bar into the indicated squares just crumble and are not neat or exact. Is there a method of somehow either warming the chocolate or softening it, so that it will cut easily/nicely from the solid bar?

You can score and snap.  You make a shallow score in the chocolate using a knife or other sharp object (gentle!).  Then you snap it.  It works better on harder chocolates.  Since all I have around the house this instant is a leftover halloween candy, I'll show the sequence here, but with this soft chocolate it would be easier to actually cut it through...

1) Score.

2) Pinch it. Here I pinched it between a plate and a cutting board.  You may be better off using a cutting board and your fingers -- so long as your hold it down stiffly with your fingers.

3) Strike it with a blunt object.  Or depending on the chocolate you can often just bend it with your fingers until it breaks.

(This basic approach is used in industry to make straight cuts in glass, tile, and silicon chips!  The harder the object, the better it works.  You can also try this on brittle candy, etc.)


What's the fluid that comes out from cheese after heating it up? I just put some cheese sandwiches into my microwave oven, and I can see a small layer of fluid on the surface of the cheese (trappista). What's this and why I can't see it before heating cheese up?

I assume this is fat, but I'm not sure.

It is almost certainly either fat, water, or a combination of the two which was squeezed out of the cheese as a result of the heating.

The heating would cause the proteins in the cheese to further tighten, squeezing out the liquid, which is why you may not see it until heating the cheese.


One side of the cake rises higher than another It doesn’t happen always but at times one side of my cake rises higher than the other side creating a lop sided cake, it is not a dome, but more a problem of uneven rising. I oil the pan, place parchment paper and oil and flour the parchment paper itself. Do you think uneven oiling of the pan could be causing this?

It's probably not due to uneven oiling of the pan.

Assuming you haven't managed to stir your batter so that the baking powder (or other leavening) got distributed primarily on one side of the cake, which sounds pretty impossible, the most likely source of asymmetry would be the oven. Are you sometimes cooking these cakes too close to one of the walls of your oven - I mean off-center in the oven?

Or maybe there is an uneven temperature pattern in there. Not sure how to remedy a situation like that, except for trial and error and noting the positioning when the cakes on occasion do come out even.


Can you substitute whole eggs for egg whites in baking? Will using egg whites instead of whole eggs have an effect on the finish product when baking?

It will definitely make a difference. Yolks contain various things like fats and emulsifiers that affect the flavor and texture of baked goods.

If you want more details, then tell us what you're baking.


Crock pot left on high for longer than recipe called for My recipe said to cook the chicken on high for 1 hour then low for 5-6 hours. I forgot to change to low and it was on high for almost 2 hours. How do I adjust the time on the low setting now?

Make sure nothing burned onto the sides (scrape it out if necessary), and add extra water if too much has boiled off.

After that, I'd probably check it after 3 hours on low, pretending that the hour on high cooked it twice as much as it would have on low, and see if you think it's done. No harm letting it go the full remaining 4-5 hours if it seems like it needs it, or like it won't hurt.

The recipe probably isn't very sensitive anyway; there's a good chance even if you had followed it exactly you'd think it was fine over a pretty broad time range.

...all that said, a chicken cooked on high for one hour and low for one hour sounds like it'd probably be done to me. I'm not sure why the cooking time is so long, and you could honestly just check it right now.


Who sells unstabilized (truly raw) oats in the U.S.? Who sells unstabilized (unsteamed, truly raw) oats in the U.S.?

Oats from Tractor supply are definitely uncooked (about $15 for 50 Lb). I've planted them to grow cat grass for years. Unfortunately, they are also not hulled. Hulling is usually done by hurling the oats at a steel wall at about 70mph, then separating oat from empty hull and oats still with hull by fractionating through a stream of air. Naturally, buoyancy depends on a groat's size, as well as its density. It's a tricky task to run at home. You can make a centrifuge out of an old angle grinder, with an impeller designed to get the oats up to speed, but the air driven density separation is quite hard to mimic with only an 8 foot ceiling. There are other ways the separation can be accomplished, but dry oats tend to build up quite a static charge when you roll them around.
For whole, uncooked, dehulled oat groats you'll want either a food coop or a health food store. At about $1.50 a pound you can usually do as well or better than the 50Lb sacks available through Amazon.


Adjusting Cooking For Smaller Portions I am going to University in the fall. I love to cook and bake but since I will be myself, I cannot cook the regular portions I had before. Is there a way that I can figure out the correct cooking time and temp for a recipe that I have halved? I use many kinds of meat and veggies in most any kind of cooking style (crockpot, stove, oven, etc.).

It is difficult to offer a general answer applicable to all recipes and all cooking methods.

In almost all situation, there is no need to change temperature (I cannot think of any exceptions off the top of my head, but I am sure others will think of a few).

The most obvious effect portion size has on cooking time is the time needed to take the food from starting temperatures (say from freezer or fridge or room temperature) to cooking temperatures. Once the food is reaches cooking temperature and if there is a need to cook it further by holding it at that temperature for a certain amount of time (for example a casserole has holding time requirement, but a piece of steak does not), this time should not change regardless of portion size.

For the same stove or oven and at the same setting, half the amount of food by weight will take half the energy to raise it to cooking temperature, a linear relationship. However, the transfer of heat into the food is strongly influenced by the shape of the food, surface area and thickness. This affects the time it takes to raise the food's temperature. This is where "it depends" matters. If you are comparing a small chicken to a large chicken, then size difference is usually accompanied by change in surface area and thickness. A 1kg chicken will take more than twice the time than a 0.5kg chicken. However, if you are cooking one piece of chicken breast instead of two pieces of the same, the heating time will be halved.

If you are making two trays of pasta bake, then cooking just one of the two trays will take half the heating time and unchanged holding time. However, if you are going from one big tray to one small tray with half the quantity, the change in geometry (thickness and surface area) will mean that heating time change is no longer a straight forward linear decrease.

In practice, doing a heat calculation will only give you a very rough idea so that you know where to aim, but you will need to test it and get an empirical relationship.

Edit: There is one more caveat. Imagine frying a piece of chicken breast in an open pan. You will likely find that adding another piece (or more) does not change cooking time noticeably. They probably all cook to the same doneness in the same duration. That happens because with a single piece, especially in a large pan, there is considerable "wasted heat". Your stove is likely putting out far more heat than there is food too cook most of the time and you end up heating up of kitchen air.


What is the meaning of reconstituted juice? The following is written on a packet of Juice by a renowned company:

ingredients: water,  red grape juice concentrate 24.7 % *
*reconstituted 100% grape juice

1- What is the meaning of reconstituted (100%) grape juice?

2-  What is the meaning of juice concentrate 24.7%? Does that mean it is having only 24.7% original juice and rest added water?

3- How much diluted is this juice

Kindly help me understand.

Update:

My main concern is: are they cheating me because they call  it 100% Juice?

What they mean is that they took some grape juice and concentrated it by evaporating some of the water contained in it (a concentrate is juice in which the sugar content is increased at least of 50%).

This is good for producers because concentrated juice has a lower volume, is easier/cheaper to stock/transport etc.
When they bottle the juice, they then reconstitute it by re-adding the water to the concentrated juice.

24.7% means they originally removed 75.3% of the water to make the concentrate. Because they added it back, at the end you are back with reconstituted 100% juice.

EDIT: fruit juices are regulated by the Codex general standard for fruit juices and nectars (PDF) which lists the minimum Brix Level (=sugar content) for various juices. Reconstituted juices must oblige to these minimum standards, although local laws may vary.


What is the practical way to peel off zest of an orange? Peeling the zest doesn't seem like peeling a full peel of an Orange.
Any special kind of knieves to be used? Any special method?
What precautions need to be taken care off?

What is the practical way to peel off zest of an orange?

The ideal tool depends on what you're trying to do with it.

If you want something nice and fine, which will release as much flavor as possible, avoid getting any of the pith, and not add distracting texture to a dish, use a fine rasp grater (sometimes known by the brand name microplane):

(There are also coarse rasp graters. That won't be any better than a standard grater. You want one that looks like the picture.)

If you want something small but visible, use a citrus zester:

You can get skinny little strips that tend to curl with the small holes at the end, and bigger curls like you've seen on the rims of cocktails with the wider hole in the middle. (Edit: added the second picture. That looks like it was fun.)

Finally, if you want big pieces to put in something to cook in something, then maybe fish out later, you can use a normal vegetable peeler:


Best way to cleanly cut brownies? So, I'm on a brownie kick, and am currently playing around with baking batches of brownies in 9"x13" pans. I want each batch to yield 15 brownies (so I'm aiming for brownies that are around 3"x2.5") and I'd like them to look as presentable as possible (e.g. like these guys).

So far, I've read suggestions like:

use a warm blade, wiping it down after every cut
let the brownies cool in the pan until room temperature (~ 2 hours), chill in the fridge or freezer, then cut
use a plastic knife
forgo the entire process and bake in muffin tins.

Do any of the experts here have any time-tested advice? Or if people subscribe to any of the above methods, can they elaborate a bit more? For example, if you believe in the warm blade method, what type of blade would you suggest?

The brownie mix I'm using has chocolate chips in it if that helps anyone.

I can't select either of the above answers as the best answer for the following reason:

The brownie I'm making is meant to be "gooey", and even after cooling for 2 hours, and then chilling in the fridge for another 30 minutes, the the upper-half brownie still remained fudge-like. I ended up using Jay's suggestion to eye-ball a 4x4 grid, however I didn't use a hot knife. I used a plastic knife with an up-and-down sawing motion and got fantastic results.  The cuts were as clean as you could ask for, and the entire process didn't take more than 5-10 minutes.

As an aside: I decided to forgo the "aluminum foil sling" and just spray the 9"x13" pan with PAM, line the bottom with parchment paper, and spray it down one more time. The brownie "loaf" came out with zero fuss and had a perfect looking crust.

edit: I plan on experimenting with 2 large metal rulers to score the loaf, instead of eyeballing the grid.


Does freezing meat lead to differences detectable by blind testing? "Fresh" meat tends to be coveted relative to frozen meat. I'm not inquiring about the debate of frozen vs. fresh, but rather am wondering about the potential magnitude of the differences between fresh and frozen meat.

Imagine a scenario in which a person buys a whole striploin, or chicken, or salmon, and freezes half of it. Later on, the meat is thawed and it is cooked alongside the fresh (never frozen) meat, and a taste test takes place comparing the fresh vs. frozen meat.

Is the effect of freezing meat so large that it can be detected by blind testing? I'm looking to get into freezing meat and am hoping that it has a very minimal impact on flavors and texture, assuming I do it correctly.

Meat is... complicated. There are many factors here, but it helps to have an understanding of why freezing affects meat at all.

The first impact is textural: ice crystals that form during freezing damage cell membranes within the meat. This primarily affects the muscle fibers that give meat its primary structure; connective tissues are tougher and less susceptible to damage (and breaking them down is usually considered desirable anyway) and fat contains less water in the first place. In extreme cases meat badly damaged by freezing can develop a "mushy" texture.

The second impact is that metabolic processes within the meat aren't completely stopped by freezing, just drastically slowed. From the same source linked above:

  Meat freezes at 28° F (-2° C) but to freeze all water present inside
  of the meat we have to create temperatures of -8°-22° F (-22°-30° C),
  which is well beyond the range of a home refrigerator.

At the typical temperatures of a home freezer, the complex amino acids which give meats their distinctive flavors can continue to break down, although slowly. Some could potentially be damaged by the freezing process itself. Since the flavor of meat can vary substantially depending on the cut and how the animal was raised (including what it ate while alive) it's difficult to provide a single definitive answer here.

From a practical perspective this means that you should attempt to limit the damage caused by freezing in the first place:

Freeze as quickly as possible, to limit the amount of time ice crystals have to form. Start from meat at refrigerator temperature, and set your freezer as low as possible. (A blast chiller is really the ideal way to freeze, but impractical for the home chef.)
Store your meat properly. It should be tightly wrapped, ideally vacuum-sealed in impermeable food-grade plastic. Air gives ice crystals space to form, insulates the meat so that it freezes more slowly, and can allow the outer surface of the meat to dry out causing freezer burn, so remove as much air as possible. Keep the temperature low and constant; you don't want any potential thawing and re-freezing (which will form new ice crystals, causing additional internal damage).
Select meats that freeze and store well. Fish and seafood in general, for example, are easily damaged by freezing because they contain more water. In my experience leaner cuts such as chicken breast or pork loin are also more susceptible to damage, presumably because they contain mostly muscle fiber with less connective tissue or fat.
Use and cook the meat within a reasonable amount of time; say 3-6 months as a general guideline. Frozen meat is safe for much longer periods if kept frozen, but its quality will degrade over time unless it's kept at super-low temperatures in industrial-grade equipment (which I'm assuming you don't have, as with the blast chiller).

It turns out that you can in fact freeze and thaw meat with results pretty close to fresh! But in the context of a blind taste test, to determine whether these results are detectable by tasters, there are other things to consider:

What cut of meat is being tasted? As mentioned above, certain meats are more easily damaged by freezing; any damage caused should be more easily detected. The gold standard for this is possibly sushi-grade fish served sashimi style. Conversely, naturally tougher cuts (flank steak, lamb leg, and so on) could even subjectively benefit from mild freezer damage, assuming no major freezer burn or other storage issues.
How will the meat be prepared? A rare steak will showcase the quality of the meat, and serves as a more "direct" taste test. By contrast, the muscle fibers in something like pulled pork are by definition overcooked, to the point where collagen breaks down into gelatin. Any damage to the muscle fibers caused by freezing will likely be obscured by the cooking process itself and less detectable to the taster.
Finally, who is doing the tasting? An expert will almost certainly be able to detect subtler differences between frozen and fresh meat than a neophyte. A chef who runs a world-renowned steakhouse will likely have a keener palate than your uncle Ted who eats his steak well-done with ketchup.

I'm not aware of any research that has attempted to untangle or examine these factors; there might be something out there, and I encourage more enterprising or well-read members of the community to edit in references where applicable. But I hope this suffices to answer your general question: assuming you freeze properly and carefully, you can avoid much of the damage that will make your meat obviously different from fresh. How large a difference is acceptable will depend on the meat you're freezing, how it's prepared, and the audience you're serving.


What is the difference between coffee grinds/beans labeled as "espresso coffee" and ordinary coffee? I was reminded of this curiosity just moments ago when I got a craving for coffee and couldn't find any normal coffee beans/grounds (owing to the fact that I don't normally drink coffee at home anymore).

I unwittingly purchased this so-called espresso coffee at a supermarket in the heart of the Italian district here, and most of the writing on it is Italian; I didn't even realize my mistake until after I had used it three or four times to brew normal coffee and saw, in very tiny letters, the words "espresso coffee" written on one of the sides.

So I shelved that coffee until today; even though it seemed fine, I figured I might have been using it inappropriately.  After my act of desperation today I decided to look this up.  According to Wikipedia:

  Espresso is not a specific bean or roast level; it is a coffee brewing method. Any bean or roasting level can be used to produce authentic espresso and different beans have unique flavor profiles lending themselves to different roasting levels and styles.

This is what I had always believed.  The answer to What factors lead to rich crema on espresso? does hint at a possible difference, though: It says that darker roasts are better for producing crema.  However, the coffee I have does not seem to be particularly dark a roast; it's dark, but I've had "normal" coffee that was darker.

Needless to say, I'm a little confused, and the internet is helping me a whole lot.  Maybe it's because the caffeine hasn't kicked in yet.

Is there an appreciable difference between coffee beans or coffee grounds labeled as "espresso coffee" and plain, ordinary coffee?  If so, what is it?

Perhaps more importantly, is espresso coffee suitable for use in a normal coffee maker or press?

It IS the roast that is the difference.  The only real difference in the beans is that some beans taste better at a higher roast than others, so they are more appropriate for espresso.  Your Italian grocery coffee company may be using the espresso label for marketing purposes, but in general, espresso coffee beans can be the same beans that are used for "regular" coffee, but roasted to a French or Italian roast level, which is darker than City or Full City.

Since the advent of Starbucks, many roasts are much darker than they used to be.  Dunkin' Donuts coffee, which is a Full City roast, used to be the norm, but now a French seems to be what you can buy.

I roast my own coffee and take it to just into the second crack which is, generally, a Full City roast...a point where the character of the coffee predominates rather than the flavor of the roast.  There is more information about roasts at Sweet Marias where I buy my green beans, and reading through the site will give you way more of a coffee education than you probably ever wanted.

So, yes, you can use the coffee you have to make brewed coffee.  It will probably be roastier than you would normally have, unless it is just a marketing ploy, in which case it will taste normal.  Consider how long you have had this coffee; if it has been shelved for a while "normal" probably won't be all that great, since freshly roasted coffee is, generally, way better than old coffee.  But as long as the oils aren't rancid, it is more likely just going to be bland.