Impact of using egg yolks vs whites in a spaghetti dish? I'm making a dish that calls for several egg yolks and 1 full egg (all scrambled together) to be poured over hot spaghetti and cooked salt pork (to cook the egg), and I'm wondering how much of a difference using yolks vs using whites makes.

If I could use the entire egg, I would be able to use less total eggs; but if this will have a serious impact on the dish, then I don't want to mess it up.

Thoughts?

The Yolk and White are very different and I would expect to see a significant difference in result.

That isn't to say it will be bad, just different.

The Yolk is the source of fat.  It is going to impart flavor to the dish and provide a creamier texture.

The White is mostly protein and so will set more, have more of a texture impact.

If it called for several whole eggs and you wanted to take a Yolk or two out for less fat, that would have less of a variance, but switching several Yolks to several Whites should definitely alter the results.

Extra info:
Here is some nutritional information of a Large Whole/White/Yolk.
http://www.incredibleegg.org/health-and-nutrition/egg-nutrients/nutrient-chart

You will see they both carry protein however the Yolk has almost twice as much fat as protein while the White has less than 2% of fat as it does protein.

This makes their behaviors very different.


Tips for a small kitchen I enjoy cooking but have a seriously small kitchen. There is only about 3 ft of work surface and that has kettle and toaster on it. I have a fair amount of shelf space but still need to larder goods and plates in another room.

I find it almost impossible to keep the kitchen clean and tidy while cooking. With more complex dishes becoming almost impossible.

Are there any good techniques for cooking in a small space?

Do what professional chefs do: clean constantly.

Put all of your ingredients out in an organized place.  Use them.  Put them away.  Clean the station.

If you can, prepare.  Put stuff that is prepped back in the fridge until you need it.

Try to use the same few tools for the whole meal--cutlery, mixing bowls, cutting board.  Quickly rinse and re-use rather than multiplying utensils.

Aim for dishes that can be cooked in stages in the same pot rather than needing multiple pots or saucepans.

Try out dishes with fewer ingredients.  Great chefs can do wonders with 3, 4, or 5.  Maybe you don't need more complicated?

Put non-essentials away. Move the kettle and toaster to a shelf until you're done.  Use the sink as a repository for anything you're not using but might still need.

Use another room, too.  A nearby table could become your staging area, a place to put ingredients that are prepped, finished, or waiting to be used (so your work area isn't cluttered with them).

Just some ideas.


Pickled Eggs with slightly gooey yolks? In short, is it safe to make pickled eggs where the yolk is still soft?

I want to make some jars of pickled eggs to give as Christmas presents but I hate hard boiled eggs. I have a technique down pat that results in solid egg whites and yolks that are orange and have a gel texture. Having never even seen pickled eggs with anything other than hard boiled yolks, it got me wondering whether there's some kind of food safety reason behind that. I've done some searching around on everything from food safety websites to food websites, to pickling blogs, to here and I can't find anything relating to yolks that are anything other than hard boiled.

Can anyone advise me on any possible safety concerns with using eggs that have yolks that are still not entirely set in the middle?

I want to do the same thing.
Here's an article about acidification and its effect on pathogens in commercial egg pickling.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24215686/
It basically says that eggs must be held in refrigeration while approaching the correct acidity of less than or equal to 4.6 pH, but that the bacteria won't actually die until the acidified eggs are allowed to sit at a higher temperature (room, or ambient temperature), after the target acidity is achieved.  After about 14 days, no pathogens were detectable, using the methods they outlined, but they knew their exact acidities.
Below a certain temperature, the metabolism of a bacterium slows down to the point that is virtually in stasis, and it needs to be active in order to absorb something that is toxic to it.  Most sanitizing and disinfecting agents are designed to work at ambient temperatures for that reason.  You kill germs more effectively using the exact concentration of an agent specified by the manufacturer, too.  Higher concentrations may make it harder for bacteria to uptake the agent, due to hypertonicity.  So, the antibacterial action of many agents depends on the temperature of the solution, the concentration of the solution, and the pH of the solution.  This might explain the rationale for specifying that the eggs need to be held at ambient temperature for a period after brining completely under refrigeration.
Another site, dedicated to egg safety, said that whatever cooking method must heat eggs to a uniform temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit, or hotter.
https://eggsafety.org/cooking-eggs-right-temperature/
You would need to test your cooking method by temperature measurement before cold shocking them, and then be very careful to always use the exact same process to ensure reproduceable results.
That means measuring an exact amount of water and an exact amount of eggs, placing all of your eggs in at the same time, and shocking them precisely after they are pasteurized to keep them from getting hard yolks.
The December / January 2020 issue of Cook's Country does an excellent breakdown of achieving perfectly consistent egg yolk doneness on pages 24-25.
I can't legally upload images of their copyrighted material, but I can say that they cover the measuring, timing, and cold shocking, and then give nice pictures of egg cross-sections from soft to hard boiled, in one minute intervals of increasing cooking time.
The yolk is the part where the bacteria normally grow the most, so, it's kind of important to achieve a safe yolk temp and then refrigerate during acidification.
There is more at stake than salmonella, too.  If done improperly, it is not widely reported, but possible to end up with botulinum toxic in pickled eggs.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4934a2.htm
In that instance, the man who was hospitalized had pricked his eggs to speed up brining, but he ended up contaminating the eggs internally.
Another thing to note about botulinum toxin is that it can be broken down by boiling.  There was a tragic case in the early 1900s of a family of 12 people who all died of botulism from improperly canned beans.  A photo of seven of their caskets grouped around a church altar appears in some college microbiology textbooks.
The editors of the textbooks say that the great shame of it is that they could have survived if the beans had been boiled for 10 minutes before serving.
Still, it is best not to get sloppy with canning or pickling safety, and not to rely upon a final heating before serving to remove potentially lethal pathogens.


"Parts is parts" in sausages? I'm not sure I really want to know the answer to this, but in the United States, are sausage manufacturers required to specify certain cuts of meats in their sausages, or does "beef" or "pork" suffice?

The reason I ask is that some brands of chorizo sausage disclose with great specificity what parts of the pig go inside their casing. For instance, the cuts in the Cacique brand pork chorizo contain:

  PORK (SALIVARY GLANDS, LYMPH NODES AND FAT (CHEEKS))

On the other hand, several other brands simply list "PORK" as the meat. Is this disclosure (or concealment) by marketing choice, or are certain cuts required to be explicitly called out in the ingredients?

Following on from my comment, I have found some (old) US government documents that seem to answer this question. TL;DR: salivary glands, lymph nodes, and fat are "pork byproducts" (thus not "pork") and as such must be named explicitly on the ingredients list.

The long answer: The USDA's 2005 Food Standards and Labeling Policy Book lists:

  MEAT BYPRODUCTS:
  Byproducts must be individually declared by species and specific name in the ingredients
  statement, e.g., Pork Liver, Beef Tripe, and Beef fat.

and

  “(Species) tongue trimmings” may also be used to
  identify salivary glands, lymph nodes, and fat from which the muscle tissue has not been removed.

(note that OP's ingredient list specifies "Cheeks", suggesting that these may indeed be "tongue trimmings". A different USDA website gives some idea of what is considered a "byproduct":

  virtually all parts of the live animal that are not part of the dressed carcass.

The policy book further defines Chorizo (which OP's product is marketed as) as:

  CHORIZO (SP):
  The product name “Chorizo” can be used for any type of chorizo sausage that is cooked, dry, semi-dry, cured and fresh without further product name qualification. Other requirements for various types of chorizo apply, including the sausage standard.

Finally, we can find the following text:

  SAUSAGE CLASSIFICATION: [...] Cooked sausages and/or Smoked sausages: [...] Meat byproducts may be used when permitted by standard.

There are a few plot holes:

There is no mention of byproducts in any type of sausage other than "cooked and/or smoked", so I cannot tell if they are allowed or not.
The policy book has an entry that seems to forbid the inclusion of these ingredients, contradicting the quotes above:

  Trimmings with fat from tongue is acceptable ingredient in cooked sausage products covered under section 9 CFR 319.180 of the regulations. Lymph nodes and salivary glands are not acceptable ingredients.


Is it safe to eat pumpkins grown specifically for carving? As it is coming up to Halloween, there is an abundance of cheap pumpkins in the shops now. I quite like to eat pumpkin rather than carve them. Are the large round orange pumpkins good to eat are are they just grown (with lots of nasty chemicals/fertilizer) to only be used as carved lanterns? From the outside, the shell seems very hard so maybe they will be quite tough. I would more than likely roast the flesh and use it for soup.

UPDATE

From the two other related questions highlighted by @Jefromi, one referenced this article that states:

"All pumpkins may be eaten, but there is a big difference among varieties. Decorative pumpkins, which American children and patient parents carve just before Halloween, are grown with color, structural strength, a flat bottom, and a sturdy stem as their main attributes. The flesh tends to be bland, watery, and fibrous. No one cares because they're going to be carved and smashed in the street (or disposed of properly)."

So from that I would assume that the decorative pumpkins are not very good to eat.

Safe? Or good to eat? Pesticides usually don't penetrate thick-skinned produce (oranges, etc), so as long as you're not using the skin, there's not a lot to worry about.

They're not the best pumpkins to use for other reasons (linked in comments). In summary, the smaller "sugar" pumpkin is better for cooking, if you have the option.


Maintenance and safety of cast iron skillet I come from Stack Overflow and this it my first post on this branch of Stack Exchange!

I write here because I received a small skillet as a gift (I assume its material to be cast iron), and I don't know how to handle and maintain it properly because I have never used one. Also, I have a couple concerns regarding it and I hope that I could get proper advice here.

TL;DR (yes, this question in quite long, if you read it all I'd really appreciate)
Is it normal for the skillet to have residue when I pass my finger on it? Is it safe to cook in it? Out of the many advices that I could find on the Internet on how to clean it, which one(s) should I follow?

Detailed version
The skillet serves to keep food hot on the table by lighting a candle underneath it. I first saw it at a Japanese restaurant and I liked it a lot, the one that I have should come from the same place the restaurant bought it from.

Some pictures:

The first picture is of the stand: the candle is put in the hole, and the skillet is put above. The second pictures is of the handles, and the third is obviously of the skillet.

The person who gave it to me washed everything twice thouroughly. I think this might have caused some of the coating to come off from stand & handles, as you can see from the pictures. I wouldn't care for that, I also think that the material used for the stand is not iron as it is very light. I'll just use the stand and never wash it.

I noticed that the skillet itself, though, leaves a bit of residue when i rub my finger on its bottom. It's different from the pieces of coating that come off from the stand, it's a very fine powder.
I've looked online, and it seems that from now on I'd better not wash it with water and clean it in other ways instead. The problem is that I've seen a lot of different advices on the Internet, and I can't figure out how to properly take care of the skillet. So here is my list of questions:

1) Is the residue normal? Can I get rid of it? Is it dangerous for my health to put food in the skillet?

2) Out of the many methods that I found to clean the skillet, which one should I use? I've seen people suggesting that I rub it with salt, then I apply a thin film of vegetable oil. Others say that it can be cleaned by pouring water in it while it is on the stove, and letting it evaporate.

3) While I don't care about the base, I'm not OK that the handles lose coating above my food. Should I avoid using them, or again there is something that I can do to stop it from coming off? If they are made of iron like the skillet, can I assume that a proper handling (e.g. scrubbing with salt, no more water, rubbing with oil) will work?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: When I asked the question I didn't know about cast iron seasoning. Now that I read something it seems reasonable that the skillet came kind of oily and with a bit of smell like fried oil.
To reply to Jolenealaska's comment: I'm pretty sure that the skillet is cast iron and the base is not. I'll check about the handles. Too bad I don't have an oven that can reach the high temperatures required for a self-cleaning cycle (it can go up to 275°C).

However, I found advice from a chef online that a preseasoned skillet (like mine seems to be) can be simply treated the following way: clean with hot water, scrub with salt, season on the stove with vegetable oil three times and then store it after rubbing with vegetable oil. Does this seem reasonable? I would post a link but the video is in Italian.

Great question - very well put!

Your chef advice is sound. I have been cooking with cast iron skillets for longer than I care to admit (old guy) and at first they can be intimidating but in the end, they become your go to pan especially for searing/cooking hot.

You asked the same question several times, "is the residue safe?" It's as safe as the cooking oil you use to season it and as clean as you were able to get it before storage. A clean oiled cast iron pan in your cupboard is safe. Sometimes, I will wipe the old residue off with a paper towel just before cooking just to get any dusty nasties off of the cooking surface.

Basically, this is how I use my cast iron.

1) Remove from cupboard

2) Take a look - is there any dirt, debris, dust or corrosion. If so, remove. (Corrosion being the most difficult but a little scouring and re-seasoning will do the trick.)

3) Heat pan thoroughly before cooking - again, the heat will kill anything you can't see but don't want to consume.

4) Cook your food.

5) Eat your food (grin).

6) Clean the pan (NO SOAP)

a) Remove any remaining food with a scouring brush - in the sink, use hot water and elbow grease.
b) Fill pan with hot water
c) Place on burner (on high)
d) Wait till it comes to boil
e) Turn off burner and remove from heat (careful - water is hot).
f) Pour out water and brush clean with scouring pad/brush
---If clean, let cool to touch - if not, repeat b-f
g) When cool, pour a small amount of cooking oil into pan
h) with a paper towel, spread cooking oil all over the inside of the pan
i) With the same paper towel, wipe the outside of pan and handles, bottom, everywhere
--You're looking for a nice coating of oil - no pooling - just a nice gloss. This will prevent corrosion and keep the pan seasoned.

7) Once pan in completely cool, return to cupboard.

Tip - if you were unfortunate enough to leave the braising residue in your pan for a few days and it's a sticky mess, you can try filling it with warm water and putting a couple tablespoons of dish washing crystals (Cascade works best for me) in the pan. These "crystals" contain little enzymes that will "eat" the residue and make cleaning much easier. Don't leave in too long, about an hour or so - repeat if necessary. (Works on other pans too but not recommended for Teflon or non-stick pans.)

Tip 2 - I stack my pans in storage. To prevent metal to metal contact (not good), I put a paper towel between each pan. Be careful that the cast iron is not touching your other pans. Dissimilar metals have a way of talking to each other (causes corrosion on both).

There you have my tried and true method of caring for a cast iron pans. For some reason, I find myself craving some cornbread.

Good Luck!

Gringo Dave


Please tell me what this kitchen tool is called and its use, specifically This vintage tool is stamped "Guelon, France." I believe it is some type of zester, but I cannot find an image of it anywhere online, nor any info on it.

Please help me and, if you can, tell me its specific use and possible decade(s) when it was sold. The image I have added here is the tool shown on its side.

The tool is 7" long overall and the diameter of the round head is 1.5".

Looks like a butter curler to me.

  A butter curler is a kitchen tool designed to produce decorative butter shapes for use in food decoration. It can also be used to make chocolate and wax shavings. In typical use, the material to be cut is chilled slightly while the curler is dipped into hot water to ease the cutting.

Here's an example of a more modern one and the results of using it:


Roasted chickpeas for houmous? I accidentally bought roasted, salted chickpeas (I've never heard of this - why would anyone want that?) instead of normal, dried chickpeas. To be clear, these chickpeas are dry and powdery, rather than boiled chickpeas roasted with salt to make a soft/crispy snack.

Can I still use them to make houmous? Or should I give this one up?

Roasted, salted dry chickpeas are a snack food.

I would not expect for you to be able to make humus out of them; for one thing, they would have way too much salt, and the texture would be wrong.  It might be possible with a lot of experimentation, but you'd need to go through several failed batches before you got one which worked.  Personally, I'd just go back to the store.


How much turkey should I plan per person? For the holidays, I plan to do a turkey, but I need to order in advance since the place I'm buying from is popular and usually sells out in pre-orders. Estimates of how much turkey to plan per person vary widely across the internet; does anyone have authoritative data on how much turkey to buy? There's clearly a difference between a small child and a hefty eater, for example, and I'd imagine the meat-to-bone ratio changes as the turkey gets larger or smaller. I also want to plan to have leftovers, since my family enjoys leftover turkey sandwiches. Does it matter how many sides I plan to make?

Note that this is for Americans at Thanksgiving, so portion sizes are intended to be larger than normal.

Unless you're feeding 20, chances are you want the smallest bird they have. It doesn't really matter if you should have 1 lb per person or 1.5 if you have 8 people and their smallest bird is 12 pounds - and I'm willing to bet that's the case.

That said, I generally allow 1 lb per person and don't count the smallest children (say, haven't started school yet.) I also tend to send a lot of leftovers home with other people. Our feasts are very veggie heavy, but as I mentioned above you may have less control over this than you think.


Turkey broth cooking in a crockpot for two days I've left turkey broth cooking on low in a crockpot for two days.
Is it still safe to use for soup. Or should I just throw it out?

I just strained my two day turkey stock.

As long as it stayed simmering the entire time it is perfectly safe.


Brine added made sauerkraut too salty I make my sauerkraut in a big crock. I do about 20-30lbs at a time. I usually can it, but this time I just wanted to pack in jars and put in fridge. Unfortunately I didn't have enough brine in the original batch so I had to add more to each jar. Now the good sauerkraut I made is really salty. What can I do?

If you feel that your brine, and the resulting kraut is too salty, once your kraut is fermented, you can rinse it before you use it.  In fact, there are recipes for sauerkraut (Julia Child's choucroute garni comes to mind), that rinses the kraut several times before braising.


Too much sugar in soup -- how to make it less cloying? I was making this recipe: Cabbage Borscht, which was from the old Lincoln Del, one of my mom's favourite places. I mistakenly doubled the sugar, putting in 1/2 a cup instead of a 1/4 of a cup. Given the 2/3 of a cup ketchup, which was Heinz, the soup turned out way, way too sweet.

Is there any way I can rescue this?

Removing dissolved sugar from a recipe, as in your soup, practically impossible.

You have two main choices:

Reduce the impact of the sweetness.  Increasing acidity (lemon juice or vinegar for example--since ketchup contains vinegar, vinegar or more ketchup may be most compatible with your specific recipe) may mitigate how sweet the soup seems.  This may or may not work--you would have to experiment, and it could make the soup taste worse worse (the risk being you would then still have to discard the soup.)
If you really like the borsht, and can eat (or freeze) it all:  make a second batch with considerable lower sugar, and combine them.  You will now have twice as much soup, but flavor balanced.


Costa Rican empanada-like food? So I went to Costa Rica and tried a a savoury pastry that is similar to empanadas but it is not empanadas. The pastry had a yellowy-orange colour, the shape of it was rectangular and it was stuffed with some sort of flavourful meat. I really want to know what the name of this food is.

What you describe sounds like a Jamaican Patty. From  Explore Costa Rica.com :

  A Jamaican patty or pattie is a pastry that contains various fillings and spices baked inside a flaky shell. Technically, it is a beef filled turnover. As its name suggests, it is commonly found in Jamaica, and is also eaten in other areas of Costa Rica, especially on the Caribbean coast. It is traditionally filled with ground beef, however, fillings now include chicken, vegetables, shrimp, lobster, soy and cheese.

They are quite tasty!


What's the difference between cooked and uncooked eggnog? I am planning on making eggnog for the first time, and in looking across recipes I am finding both “cooked” and “uncooked” recipes. For example, Alton Brown's eggnog recipe on Food Network has both an uncooked variant (first half) and a cooked variant (second half).

I do not have much experience seeing eggnog made and have not tasted it before. I grew up in a country where eggnog is not a thing (Australia) meaning I have not grown up around people making it, and am living in another where that still seems true (the UK).

What's the difference between cooked and uncooked? What should I know when making a choice between which version to make? Is this just a personal preference thing?

Chef Treble comments on cooked having a richer flavour, at least for one recipe. I have read about people recommending pasteurised eggs for eggnog, and UMN says in their article about making safe eggnog that “using a pasteurized product means that no further cooking is necessary.” Should the uncooked version only be using pasteurised eggs, or something like that?

Cooked or Uncooked eggnog is a safety decision.In US you get pasteurised eggs generally, unless you are in a raw food store or something. With pasteurised eggs you can use then raw in recipes without worry. In some other countries (like in India where I am now) eggs are not pasteurised. So to kill the salmonella etc, it is required to bring the eggs to above 160F in recipes. This you can see in Tiramisu recipes also where it similarly starts with a custard.


Can I make gelatin from bones without beef flavor? I was looking around on the internet to find out how to make gelatin from bones ( cow bones to be more specific). I found some methods but they mention the gelatin will have a beef flavor. This is a problem for me since I want to use it for making nut cheeses as a replacement for agar and gums. Is there a way to remove the beef flavor from the gelatin? I heard some mentions of using acids but I ma not sure about that...

Additional context:

I want to see if I could make gelatin from a whole cow's carcass which would be several hundred pounds of bones. I wish to use every part of a cow once I have my restaurant business somewhere in the future. Much of a cow's weight is in their bones so I thought making gelatin would be good way to increase profits by using it for other uses such as making nut cheeses. That's why I want the gelatin to be of good quality, yield and flavorless.

After hearing the difficulty of doing this I am abandoning this application looking for other more practical uses for the bones...

Intentions and expectations

Could it be that you have some oversimplified ideas about making gelatine? I think that, if we look closely at what you are proposing, it is not practical at all. The process is very far removed from spending half a day with a kettle and getting the shelf stable powder with reliable gelling properties that is sold in the supermarket.

You seem to want to 1) start with a huge amount of bones, 2) get a similar quality to store-bought gelatine, and 3) even are worried about yield. That already makes no sense - at 250 pounds/113 kg of bones and a theoretical maximum yield of 24%, you are looking at up to 27 kg of gelatine. That's of course the theoretical maximum, and not even commercial producers get that, but still, you will be left with many kilograms of pure gelatine, probably bulked up by the water in which it is dissolved (I doubt you can get it dry the way commercial gelatine is). So you will have to dedicate a full freezer to it, taking up space and consuming electricity until you have made a couple of thousand kilograms of nut cheese and have used it up. Even if you could do this successfully, the cost and hassle is probably not worth it as opposed to buying it in the supermarket, and if you for some reason need these large amounts, you can probably get bulk discounts and store the stuff in a cellar.

That being said, let's get to the process of making gelatine. I will be using this document by Mihai Sebastian as a source, since it is pretty complete without being a full book - if you want to advance with that project, I suggest that you read it. Citations in the rest of the answer all come from it.

There are basically three versions - by boiling, by acid or base treatment, and by using enzymes. The gist of it is that the only one that is realistically doable in a home kitchen is the boiling one, which Sebastian describes as

  crude gelatin extracts with poor organoleptic proprieties were prepared by boiling bone and hide pieces and allowing the solution to cool and gel

where "poor organoleptic properties" basically means bad taste and/or mouthfeel.

The process of making gelatine

Preparation of the bone

For all three types of extraction process, you have to start with degreased bone, so-called ossein - that's not negotiable, no matter how worried you are about lowered yield. If commercial manufacturers could remove a cost-generating step and get higher yield at the same time, they would have done it - but they have a reason to do it, since the remaining fat is reducing your gelatin quality a lot, and in ways other than just smell. The process for this step is

  the bone material is gently chipped to a cube size of about 0.5 cm anddegreased by washing for 30 minutes with hot water (85-90°C) under strong mechanical agitation. [...] Subsequently, the chipped bone is dried with hot air in continuous driers and then sieved and sorted according to particle size.

So for this step alone, you would need a mixer which can deal with a sufficiently large batch of bones, while keeping the contents heated. I guess you could rig something similar to some homemade sous vide setups, including some kind of mixing arm suspended in the container beside the heater, but that would be already difficult and expensive for large batches (I assume you don't want to process 100 kg of bone in 1 kg batches).

Extraction (choose one from the three methods below)

Enzymatic

I won't call it impossible to do at home, but it is a project of "design and build your own small rocket engine" complexity. You have to be very determined and have a good understanding of lab work (certainly above than what perfect grades in highschool chemistry gives you) and be prepared to invest some weeks in prototyping the process with small batches, then scaling it. Some kind of engineering background will also be needed to be able the debug the problems which will certainly arise in such a complex process. I'll mention only the most obvious showstopper: it requires you to bring a 300 l vat of bones-in-water to a pH of 11 and heat it. I use small amounts of lye at home every now and then (and users from the site always comment how dangerous it is), but when I hear 300 l, my gut feeling is that you have even chances of ending up with gelatin extract or a Darwin award.

Acid or base extraction

You basically corrode away the bones until you are left with a suspension of gelatine plus minerals in your water bath. The engineering complexity remains as with the enzymatic process. The added challenge is that you also have to wait until the process is completed (3-12 weeks) and in that time, recognize and eliminate pathogenic growth. Again, you have to deal with 300 liters of liquid at a very unpleasant pH.

Boiling extraction

This one is not used in industrial production. It is likely what you found described online, and in my opinion, the only process truly suited for home conditions. The result is not very pure though, neither does it have a good yield.

Recovering the extracted gelatine (do all following steps in the given sequence)

Filtration

You now have a murky broth full of all kinds of things besides gelatin. Industrial people use centrifugation and microfiltration here, you probably have to go with some kind of filter of chinois fineness, since I don't know how you will manage to force the solution through something finer. You will probably not be able to remove much of the residual fat. (Ironically, one of the best methods to clear broths in the home kitchen is to add gelatin to them and freeze, then remove the gelatin together with the impurities).

Deionization

You can skip this step if you use the boiling extraction method. For the other two, you neutralize the pH of the gelatin mixture by adding a base if you used acid, or the other way around, and now the salts formed by the base and acid swim in your liquid. I suspect that, even if you chose to create a salt with low solubility, it won't precipitate well because of the gelatin. So, you have to use deionizing equipment. I don't know if home reverse osmosis contraptions marketed for hard water will work well enough - this probably depends on the exact salts you produced.

Concentration, sterilization and drying

I guess that at home, you have to do this simply by heating and waiting for the water to evaporate. I'm not sure how you can make sure that you end up with the proper amount of residual moisture. For 300 l of liquid, you are probably looking at several days of heating, getting it to evaporate without burning it. I suspect you won't easily bring you to the needed dryness, and you have no good way at home to measure whether you succeeded, so, unless you are willing to risk your kilograms of gelatin going moldy soon, you should store it in a freezer afterwards.

Alternative

A quick search on Alibaba showed that they will sell you gelatin starting at around 3 dollars per kg, some of them allow small orders (1 kg) and even low-grade commercial gelatin will be much higher quality than what you can obtain at home. I'm mentioning this because of your "whole cow" comment - for most home users, it is preferable to buy smaller packages locally, even at a higher per-kg price.

Making your own gelatin at home can be a fun science project, but its usefulness is in the area of having played around and learned something. If you have utalitarian goals such as yield, quality, saving money, etc., it is entirely the wrong way to go. Based on all the requirements I read from your question and comments, just go and buy it.


Is it possible to make dough with no water or milk? Please see details for specific ingredients list I found this business online selling frozen yogurt toppings, and they list the ingredients used in each product. This one is for sticky rice:

Ingredients: HYDROXYPROPYL DISTARCH PHOSPHATE, GLUTINOUS RICE, MALTOSE, SUGAR, SALT.

As you can see, it contains no liquid as a binding agent. No water, milk or the commonly used coconut milk.

I am wondering if you can use viscous liquids like honey, liquid glucose or in this case, the (possibly liquid) maltose, as a binding agent.

The ingredients list is from: https://www.bossenstore.com/collections/no-cook-toppings/products/original-mini-mochi

Thanks

The ingredient list usually skips water, unless it's a liquid product (juice, drink). That doesn't mean water wasn't used, or is absent, but often the product after being dried contains very small amounts of it (and difficult to measure, and changing with air moisture and small changes to technological process, and so on). Water being mostly nutritionally neutral is not essential in ingredient lists, and the ingredient list is not a recipe. Also, sometimes the water comes from other sources - e.g. egg, or some syrup, or even butter/margarine. I believe some doughs may be based entirely on fats as liquid too (e.g. clarified butter), but a liquid in one form or another is a must.

As for 'liquid glucose', in common syrup form it's just a water solution (and of course can be used as the binder.) Liquid dehydrated glucose (or sugar) will be extremely hot - to the point of scorching other ingredients, plus it solidifies into hard glassy substance once it cools down. This process is used to make some sweet, in particular mixing with seeds, like sesame, where the heat brings out extra flavor in the seeds. But that's definitely not dough.


What is the difference between granulated cane sugar and granulated sugar? I see two types of sugar in the baking aisle that I can't differentiate: "granulated sugar" and "granulated cane sugar". The latter is considerably more expensive. So, what is the difference between granulated cane sugar and this (unspecified) granulated sugar, and why would I want to choose one over the other?

As I understand it, cane sugar is extracted exclusively from sugar cane, while the other kind (the one that is not labeled as cane) can be a mixture of sucrose from several sources. Is this difference enough to make one a better candidate when cooking? baking? sweetening tea/coffee?

There is no real difference between types of granulated, white sugar. The options you are likely to see are cane sugar and beet sugar. Granulated sugar from sugarcane is often considered "superior" to beet sugar by Americans, but the idea that cane sugar is in any way superior to beet sugar has no basis. Granulated beet sugar and granulated cane sugar are completely interchangeable and indistinguishable. Swapping them will cause no issue.

By the way - this is sugarcane:

These are sugar beets:

I'd post a picture of the granulated sugar made from each, but it seems kind of pointless as they look the same.

On this question (almost an exact duplicate), some posters see a small difference. I never have. The difference between beet sugar and cane sugar


Cooking steak in frying pan, problem with oil splatter I was using canola oil and put the stove top setting on "high - 9". I read plenty of guides suggesting there will infact be oil splatter, but it was pretty excessive and burning my arm with one drop getting near my eye before I stopped. I turned the heat setting down to "medium - 4", where the oil splatter seemed to drop substantially. Before I try to make steak again I'd like to get some clarification

So my questions are:

Which heat setting am I supposed to use?
Is that type of oil splatter normal or should I try using a different oil, and if so, what oil?
Should oiling the meat instead of the pan help the problem?

You need to realize that oil doesn't splatter, water does. In fact, you could heat oil until it catches fire without any mayor movement.

But the moment water reaches the oil, which in a hot pan is way beyond the boiling point for water, it will instantly turn into steam, expand and pull oil drops with it.

So apart from lowering the heat - which is not what you want to do for a well-seared piece of meat - you want to make sure your meat is as dry as possible on the outside. Kitchen towels to blot off your meat would be my first choice.

In cases of wet marinades, remove the marinade and either grill your meat or lower the heat of your pan a bit. But not because of splatters, but because the marinade may burn.

The more oil you use, the more can splatter. A thin layer, possibly even just brushed on with a silicone brush will suffice in most cases. You may also oil the meat instead of the pan. For the type of oil, just stick with an oil that can handle high heat (save your extra virgin olive oil for a salad), canola is fine and so is peanut and some others.

And finally, there are splatter-guards on the market that can catch those propelled oil droplets. They are made from a fine metal mesh and placed on the pan like a lid. My prefered "hack" is using an inverted round cooling rack with a single layer of kitchen towel for these "will certainly splatter" cases. It lets steam escape better than many of these fine-mesh splatter guards and the towel absorbs moisture, which then can't drip back into the pan. Besides the rack can go in the dishwasher while at least some splatter guards need hand washing (if only because the mesh tends to catch debris from the water).


How to keep insides of calzone from being too runny I have cooked calzones with differing results.  Sometimes it comes out that the insides of the calzones are too runny, even after cooling.

Some things I have done to ensure a dry, solid center are:

Use egg(s)
Use cheese
Squeeze the ricotta with paper towel

I feel like the last item should not be necessary, that there should be some way to ensure a solid center each time.  I'm just not sure what those steps are.

Any advice from those who know?

Cook's Illustrated really has the definitive guide to making calzones which aren't soggy.  Since that one requires a subscription, check out Serious Eats recipe, which does not, although it doesn't have as much of the science behind making crisp calzone.

To summarize their points on avoiding water:

No eggs
Drain the ricotta
Par-cook and drain vegetables before using in the filling (e.g. blanch, squeeze out, and blot dry spinach)
Add a melty, low-moisture cheese like dry mozzarella or provelone below the ricotta
Cut 2-3 slits in the top and make sure they're open all the way

You can shortcut some of the work by simply using much drier ingredients.   For example, I've been known to make calzone with ricotta salata, which is dry enough to absorb moisture from other ingredients.

Also, if "as hot as it will go" on your oven is more than 500F/250C, you might turn it down a bit.


What plant-based (non-dairy) milk do not separate when making caffe latte? This is a little subjective, but what plant-based milk is best used to make a latte?

By "best" I mean one that doesn't separate (like plain soy often does) and has a creamy consistency that best resembles dairy.

Preferably this milk should also steam well.

Note that answers on making custom plant-milk recipes are welcome as I know that making your own nut milks can produce a wide variety of consistencies and textures.

A good plant-based milk I've had success with is hemp milk. I'd say try coconut and almond milk, but these two are thinner in my experience, and tend to be less creamy. Hemp milk foams well, and is quite tasty. Like most things, don't get it too hot, or it'll break and be less desirable. That said, I never have problems in this regard with soy milk, but using non-soy is probably better for many other reasons.


Can I reuse coconut oil for cooking? I was using Coconut oil to fry up tostada shells and I was wondering if its safe to reuse the oil I used the night before to cook up more shells the next day?

For most oils, you can re-use them several times, if you're OK with (or want) the flavors the oil takes on from the food cooked in it.

The thing to watch is the smoke point. That's when the oil starts sending off whisps of smoke. For coconut oil, that's 350F. As oil is re-used, that smoke point starts to drop until it's no longer able to stay hot enough to properly fry food.

We're dealing with an oil that has a relatively low smoke point in the first place at 350F, as opposed to 450F for peanut oil, and proper frying needs to be pretty close to 350F in order to have the moisture in the food hold out the oil from rushing into the food like a sponge. That, unfortunately means that coconut oil isn't a great candidate for re-use.


Creme brulee cooking temperature I intend to try and make Crème brûlée.

However, instead of baking it in a bain-marie I intend to cook it in my Kenwood Cooking Chef, which uses induction heating to cook the ingredients right in the mixing bowl. I can set the temperature with 2 degree precision and do not intend to actually melt sugar on top of the creme or pour it into rameskins. That is why I would benefit from knowing the exact temperature that the creme actually "bakes" in, or in other words what temperature I should cook it at in order for it to be able to set after putting it in the refrigerator (if it would be needed?) and be edible.

I've never used a heated mixing bowl, but I do sous vide, which I believe works on the same principle as what you're trying (namely that you can't overcook it because the cooking temp is where you want the final internal temp of the food to be).

Anova has a pretty popular recipe for creme brulee which specifies 176ºF (80ºC) as the correct temp.  They also have an older, less popular recipe that specifies 180ºF (82ºC).  This recipe for traditional baked creme brulee says to bake until the internal temp is 170F-175F, but with residual heat I would expect it to continue cooking until somewhere between 176-180F once out of the oven and water bath.

If I were you I would set the mixing bowl temp to 176ºF (80ºC) and see how that sets up.  If the final consistency isn't quite where you like it, you can try it a little higher next time.


How to store clay dishes? I’ve got some (partially glazed) clay dishes, the kind that are used often for Spanish tapas or as containers for some soft French goat cheese:

The problem: the clay draws in a lot of moisture when cleaning and they are continually damp. As a consequence, they mould very easily (both on the glazed and the unglazed surfaces). I’m already storing them on an open shelf and stack them shifted to let air enter but that doesn’t prevent the mould.

Surely there must be a way to store them safely – after all, they are used quite commonly in some kitchens.

The trick is not storage, but washing. These types of dishes soak up loads of water if you dip them in. I wash these types of dishes in an empty sink and then try them right away. I would also never put them into the dishwasher.

If they get too damp you need to dry them our, the best way I've found is to warm an oven, turn it off, and then to put the dishes in leaving the door cracked open. The heat will drive the moisture out and the open door will allow the moisture to escape.

As for storage a dry cupboard should do just fine.


What is the cons of using high temperature/low water to cook curry? I cook curry with curry power. (This kind.) They said pour it in water under medium heat. Sure enough after some time it starts thickening. When it is thick enough I considered this ready to eat.

However what is contributed to make the curry from "raw" state to the ready to eat state? I think the thickening is because of something in the powder is "cooked" so wouldn't increasing the temperature hasten this process? And another things that contributes to the thickening is the water evaporation, so if I add very low amount of water from the start is that means I don't have to wait as long as the higher amount of water?

What I am guessing from my many tries is that, after certain amount of time where the powder is "cooked" from this point onwards you only wait for the water to reduce enough to get thick. If this is true perfectly calculated curry should aims the water amount for when the powder is cooked, water is at the right amount so it is thick enough.

One con of cooking this way, high temp and less water, is that your curry is much more likely to burn.  Both lower temperatures and more water slow the cooking, making it easier to find the right spot where everything's cooked through and done, instead of overreaching the time or not stirring quite enough and finding the bottom burned.  It maybe can be done, if you're very attentive and keep stirring and measured everything just right - but it is riskier.

Another con is that longer cooking often affects dishes differently.  Cooking longer at lower temperatures gives flavors more time to meld, with ingredients reacting to each other or breaking down differently.  Depending on your ingredients or the dish's texture the spices may distribute unevenly if they don't have enough time to equalize (one reason stew, for example, does very well with longer cooking times).  Cooking at higher temperature for less time may also give you a very different effect - think garlic sauteed in oil versus garlic roasted with oil, very different flavors.

Likewise, using less water may mean your ingredients cannot mix as freely, so they interact with each other less and it takes more time for the dish to reach the same melded flavor effect.  It is also a safer limiting factor - if the powder is cooked before enough water is evaporated to make it thick, the extra water can be simmered off.  If the water simmers down first, then the powder will not be finished cooking - which might be a bigger problem.  It will also be harder to correct, and will take more time since any water added at that point will have to heat before the powder can finish cooking.


Benefits of a cleaned/seasoned cast iron I just started using a cast iron that I got from a friend (I don't believe it has ever been cleaned/seasoned/any special treatment). So far, everything I've cooked in it (steak, fish) has come out really good, even though the typical traits of a good cast iron are definitely not there (rust, uneven surface, no shine, etc.) In what ways would food cooked in a well kept cast iron differ from a poorly kept one?

I would say that rust, an uneven surface, and no shine are the traits of cast iron that has not been cared for.  It sounds like you are using a seasoned cast iron pan.  You do need to maintain it, or it will not stay that way.  (There are lots of questions and answers on the site about cast iron.  Just use the search bar.) The benefit of cast iron is heat retention, and the even conduction of heat.  A well-maintained pan will also develop a virtually non-stick surface.  In addition to having to deal with rust, a poorly maintained pan would lead to more sticking.


Food safety after rodent issue Can we still eat our corn if the rats just ate the silk part? Rats ate into some of the cobs. I do still have corn that they didn’t eat. Can I consume this corn? If so, what is the best way to proceed?

It is not just the food that the rat has eaten that is of concern, any cross-contamination on food due to rat urine or faeces is also a major health risk factor.

Leptospirosis and Listeriosis, while not generally fatal, do carry a wide range of risks from flu-like symptoms to meningitis and organ failure.

If you were a restaurant or cafe, most health inspectors in the UK or Europe would seriously consider closing down your operation until the rodent problem was properly dealt with. As an individual though, obviously you have more latitude and choice in the matter. Provided the outer layers are not damaged or stained I would inspect the remaining corn with an ultra-violet torch (to check for any  protein staining from the rat urine) and then dispose of those cobs. I would also spray the remaining "clean" cobs (once the outer leaves are removed) in a undiluted vinegar solution followed by a 3% Hydrogen Peroxide solution, let sit for 10 minutes, then gently scrub under running water to remove the solution.

To be honest though, unless you have a large quantity of corn, I'd err on the side of caution and skip on the corn this once. I personally would not feel comfortable serving it to family or friends unless I was sure there was absolutely no risk of infection.

References:

http://www.grubstreet.com/2014/04/possible-effects-of-eating-rat-and-mouse-tainted-food.html

https://clearandwell.com/diy-fruit-vegetable-wash-remove-dirt-bacteria-pesticides/


Is there a table that shows the cooking temperature and the duration for different meat types and its bones? Just wondering if there is a table (similar to the one below - including a example) that can shows the cooking temperature and the duration to cook different types of meat (and/or its bones) in different style?

============================================================================================
| Temperature (Celsius) | Min. Cooking Period (Minutes) | Meat / Bones        | Styles     |
============================================================================================
| 150                   | 25                            | Steak               | Grill      |
============================================================================================

A table like you're asking for can't actually exist: doneness depends on the internal temperature and hold time of the food, not the oven temperature; your table is missing some columns.

So, there are a couple variables you're not accounting for—the biggest one being the shape and size of the meat. A ½" thick steak will cook much quicker than a 1" thick steak. The other one is the starting temperature—a steak that has been left to warm for an hour before cooking will cook quicker than one straight from the fridge. You could, I suppose build a table for all variations of size (steaks go from maybe ¼ through 2"), initial temperature, and desired doneness, but that'd be a large chart, just for a steak (and it'd be different for a T-bone or porterhouse due to the bone).

More reasonably, you could just use a food thermometer. Then you only need to worry about the temperature for desired doneness.


Which part of the coffee brew is best? At work we have a coffee machine that makes 10 cups of coffee in about 3 minutes. Sometimes, 3 minutes is too long to wait for coffee :P So I will poach it as it comes out of the dispenser and then quickly replace the coffee pot so the rest is caught. However, I am not sure if I am getting the short end of the stick.

Should I wait for the entire process to finish before getting coffee? Is the coffee that is first dispensed from the machine the same quality as the coffee which is dispensed in the middle or end of the process?

It is not simply a matter of strong versus weak.  Rather, different qualities are extracted from the coffee over different parts of the brewing process.  The most volatile components are extracted early in the brew, and the less volatile components come out over the length of the brew.

So the distribution of flavors varies over the brew.  Total brew time is carefully calibrated in quality coffee makers to extract the most desirable flavors possible, and minimize the least desirable.

By taking some out early, you are guaranteed a bad first cup, and are consigning the remainder of the pot to be less than it could be.

For best quality, you should wait for the entire brew, so that the flavors are balanced from the entire brew time.


Stablising berry coulis I have made a coulis with strawberries and raspberries, 500gms of each with half a cup of sugar and the juice of one lemon.  I boiled it for 15 minutes, then pureed it, put it through a fine sieve to remove all seeds, then bottled it and sealed with a tamper-proof lid.  My question is, how do I make this coulis shelf stable, are the ingredients I am using enough to ensure this will be fine until opened, then into the fridge?

I recommend freezing portions of your finished coulis into some sandwich or freezer bags, and pulling them as you require.


What is the effect of adding alkaline or acidic substances to wheat flour? What are the chemical  reactions of adding alkaline substances to wheat flour dough and how does it change the properties and behavior? The same for acidic substances.

I can think of adding alkali or acid substances mainly as means of changing the ph of the dough. And adding can be understood as in the dough, or on its surface.

Alkali/basic additives or ingredients

Gluten only works if PH is between 3 and 11. Outside those values it loses its stength.

Before reaching PH>11  it will make flour have a higher absorption.
It's a way to relax the dough, as the technic used to stretch noodles as it has previously been cited in this question (see @TFD and @Chad's answers), and also in this question. To make that kind of noodles, you add the alkali to the flour, resulting it to be in the dough.
Another way basic substances are used in dough is giving them a bath in caustic soda, as  Germans do with their Laugengebäck (the most known ones outside Germany probably are the Brezels/Pretzels). The lye makes them have their characteristic crust: brown, and hard and thin, like a good sausage.

Acidic additives or ingredients

Acids can also weaken the gluten, but in bread making is not so strange to add certain acids, or wanting an acidic dough.

One of the reasons on wanting an acidic final loaf is it will help increasing the shelf life, as it will act as a preservative.
Besides that, there is a very common acid used in doughs: Citric acid / Ascorbic acid / E-300. It helps the dough to rise more and faster, and be more manageable and have a crumb that resembles like cotton candy. You can read more on Ascorbic acid at the page of the Real Bread Campaign, and in this YouTube video you can see its effect in dough.
Another reason for wanting a low PH dough is to avoid starch degradation. Flours have enzymes (amylase) that end up degrading it. But that enzymatic activity is stopped with a PH<4.5. This is well known with 100% rye breads:

  I know the question states wheat flour, but this example is clarifier. Rye flour has low gluten, and it has a somehow "low quality" (if compared with "normal" wheat flour). Some recipes call for strong high gluten wheat flour to retain gas bubbles from the leavening that won't get trapped by rye's gluten. But in 100% rye breads gas can also be trapped. That is why usually rye breads are made with sourdough, which has acetic and lactic acids. They give the dough the right PH, and the starches in rye will get gelatinized and catch the gasses in a similar (although less effective way) than gluten. Sometimes, instead of sourdough, yeasts and acid are added as ingredients.

That was an specific example with rye, but wheat flour also has starches, and they can also be gelatinized, giving a distinctive sourdough touch to to 100% wheat breads.

Acidic and basic at the same time

(Thanks @ChrisSteinbach for reminding me it)

When mixing an acid and a base, a chemical reaction happens, neutralizing both and releasing CO2 gas:

NaHCO3 + H+ → Na+ + CO2 + H2O

That gas is employed to leaven the dough, as in a chemical leavener. I.E. in Irish bread or typical cakes.

Stuff that is not acidic nor basic... yet

As a chemical leaveners improvement, one would like the reaction wouldn't start as soon as acid, base and water are mixed, but a bit later. This woud let some more time to work on the dough. Some salts have the characteristic of degrading at high temperatures into acid, helping (usually in the oven) for a second rise.


Waay too much baking soda, can I salvage these tea buscuits somehow? I baked something from the 2014 Canadian Milk Calendar's April page, cheddar onion tea buscuits, but I didn't have cream of tartar nor baking powder, and in a rush I substituted far too much baking powder (double what the recipe called for.)  They turned out fine rising-wise, and taste great, until the weird stinging aftertaste (more of an during-feel, I guess) hits you.  What could I top these with or dip them in that would counteract that so that I don't have to throw the rest of them out?

They are probably unsalvageable, sorry.

There are two possibilities for the bad taste. If you didn't have much fat in the dough, then what you are getting is probably an alkali taste. It is bland and subtly bitter. Alkali (basic) stuff can be neutralized with acid. But for the neutralization you need to mix your alkalic stuff with acid in a liquid environment. So, you could soak the bisquits in something acidic. But it is almost certain that the cure will be worse than the disease. There is a small possibility that you can get it to work right, if you use a sugar syrup with enough acid. You will get something dripping, revane-like.

In my experience, this kind of dessert is an acquired taste, and you may not like it at all, even if you manage to execute it, and if it works reasonably well (and these are two big ifs).

The second possibility is that you had sufficient fat in the dough to saponify it with the soda. Then you practically got soap in your dough. There is no way to reverse it at all.

Any tries to add something to the bisquits will fail. Humans are very good at detecting bad tastes, even when diluted. You can only try to "remove" the taste, and as described above, your chances for success are minimal.


What's the size of the plastic cup that came with my rice cooker? I have a cheap-o rice cooker that works fine for me.  It came with a plastic cup to measure 1, 2 or 3 "plastic cup" units of rice.  Water is added to match the '1', '2' or '3' mark in the cooker bowl.   It was great until the cup vanished.

Now how to pour in the right amount of rice?

Do all rice cookers use the same standard "plastic cup" unit?  By any luck, would it be exactly 1 cup, or 1/2 cup, according to a standard measuring cup?  Maybe I could dump rice and water into the bowl in any amount as long as they're in the right proportion by volume.   Meeting the '2' or '3' mark isn't important, actually, just getting great rice in the end.

The actual model I'm using is CKRVRCM061 and yes, of course I could google it, but it would be great to have a general answer which could apply to any cooker I or anyone will use in the future - for those of us with a talent for losing small important items!

Assuming you bought a rice cooker designed by a Japanese company (and apparently even other brands tend to meet that market's expectations), the measurement is 1-gou, slightly more than 180ml, which, by no coincidence, is also the typical measure of a wooden sake, cup, and is closely associated with a historical sake bottle size (approximately 1.8l)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masu_(Japanese)

It turns out that this amount, 1 gou of dried rice, neatly corresponded to a typical serving of rice. In practice, most contemporary Japanese eat about 1.5-2 gou per day; 1 gou of dried rice cooks up enough for 2 Japanese adults for one meal if you have several side dishes. There are other measurements that derive from the gou (or perhaps the other way around), such as the koku, which was considered the amount of rice that a single person would consume over the course of a year.

This is one of the human-centric forms of measurement that has survived the metric push; you can find various examples of this in many otherwise metric-converted countries. It turns out some studies show that those metrics often make certain categories of estimation easier for people.

Edited to cover the concern about matching the right amount of water:

It's worth noting that you don't need perfect precision for the amount of water, as long as you cook with the full cycle and not one of the express cooking modes. I can't remember the exact scientific principle behind it, but perhaps something to do with osmotic pressure. Some people use the remarkably effective method of measuring a certain amount of space between the dried rice and the water based on the size of their forefinger segment or thumbnail. It apparently works well for almost any imaginable size of pan (though you can have other problems with a pan too wide to have the rice cover the bottom). (Some types of rice do prefer more water than others, but within a single type, you have a fairly flexible range for the water ratio)


Why wait for water to boil? I've always heard that you should wait for water to boil before adding pasta/perogies/vegetables/etc.  What is the reason for this? Is it because it reaches boiling point faster?  If so, why?

The primary reason is for accuracy and reliability in cooking times. Boiling water is guaranteed (not accounting for altitude) to be at 212 F (100 C). With a set temperature you can then say things like "boil X for 9 minutes" with a very high measure of confidence.

You certainly can cook things in the water as you go, but it's going to be a lot more hit-and-miss. Pasta, for example, will begin to cook before it reaches the boiling point. You would need to measure the temperature, and check the pasta regularly to determine when it was done. You can't give someone an accurate cooking time with this method either. The time it takes for water to boil will vary greatly with stove heat output, pot size & shape, and the amount of water.


Is corn a fruit, vegetable, or a nut? I've been debating with my friends whether or not corn kernels are considered to be fruits or vegetables or nuts. To my knowledge, a fruit is a sweet "bubble" (in that it's a membrane with a fleshy interior) of a plant's seed (they remind me of pomegranate seeds). A vegetable is part of a plant that is eaten but not part of the seed. I was under the impression that nuts were only from a specific "branch" of plant evolution that is predominantly trees. This information would lead me to believe it is isn't any of them. Looking into it myself, I learned the word aril, but I'm not sure if corn's kernels are like that, either. It doesn't sound like it fits the criteria of that, or any of them.

Taking up from there, I'm a bit confused on what corn should be called. Do we have a name for corn like we do everything?

Thanks!

Corn (Maize) is clearly a cereal grain, and not any of the other things you mention. Even the farmers and agricultural agencies consider it a grain - it's one of the "official grains of Canada" and regulated by the Canadian grain commission.

I'm not sure when or why it started being called a vegetable, but as far as the culinary definition goes, it has far too much sugar and starch to fall properly into that category. The typical culinary definition of a vegetable is savory, not sweet.

Botanically, the kernels can be considered a type of fruit called a caryopsis (AKA a grain), although it's not normally eaten as fruit (for one thing, it's normally cooked).

It may accompany vegetables reasonably well, just like rice or many other grains. But it is a grain.


How do I prevent coconut milk from separating in Thai curry? It seems like every single attempt I've made at making a Thai-style coconut curry ends up with the sauce mixture separating. Although it usually still tastes good, the coconut ends up looking like it has curdled.

My question is what could I be doing wrong?  I've mainly been following the recipe on the side of the curry paste I have (Thai Kitchens brand, IIRC).

Stir some of the paste with a can of coconut milk (I've been using Chao Koh) until that boils.
Add some fish sauce and chicken broth along with the meat and vegetables
Simmer until cooked.

My suspicion is I may be using too much chicken stock. I usually use about 1-2 cups. The vegetables I add(typically bell peppers and onions) will also contribute additional liquid to the curry.

My family and I love this dish, but I would really like to perfect its preparation. What steps can I take to prevent the coconut milk from separating from the curry?

Even though it isn't really milk (in the dairy sense), coconut milk still naturally separates into a thick cream and thinner liquid like regular milk. As such, when working with coconut milk you should still follow the same procedures you would to make a milk-based cream sauce.

The number one rule when making any creamy sauce is: DON'T LET IT BOIL! Boiling will guarantee that your creamy sauce (including sauces made with coconut milk) will break in some form or fashion. At most, you should cook these at a bare simmer.

Other than that, there are some techniques you can use to keep your curry smooth.

You could use an emulsifier like honey (common in vinaigrettes, where it is used to make sure the oil and vinegar don't separate), added toward the end of cooking.

You could also use a thickening agent, like a cornstarch slurry or a quick roux. Curry paste is also a thickening agent. As a general rule of thumb, when making Thai-style curry I usually cook my vegetables in a little more oil than I think they need, then add the curry paste and sauté that until it has absorbed the oil (along with any dry spices). It will act as a roux for the coconut milk and make sure there are no lumps in the final curry.

Lastly, cooking the curry uncovered at a simmer, stirring occasionally, will thicken it up nicely and help all the ingredients stay together.


My soufflé turned grey I have been trying to make a raspberry soufflé, because, well, I found a recipe, and it sounded tasty. It utterly failed, but because I'm stubborn, I wanted to keep trying until I got it right. However, every single time, it has turned grey. I've been beating the egg whites in a plastic bowl, and I've read  now  that you shouldn't do that for some reason or another, but never anything of them turning grey. Besides, the mixture doesn't turn grey until I add the raspberry mixture (which consists of raspberry, sugar, a bit of water, and maizena). My best guess is that the maizena somehow reacts with the whites, because I honestly have noe idea how raspberry would make eggs turn grey.

Help, anyone? The eggs were all fresh, and they looked completely fine up until I added the raspberry mixture, every single time. I just don't understand what's making them turn grey.

The pigments in raspberries can turn grey in an alkaline environment, and egg whites are one of the very few foods which are alkaline, although I am surprised the effect would be strong enough to notice.

You might wish to whip your egg whites with a bit of cream of tartar or lemon juice to help them be less basic, and therefore not react with the raspberry pigments.


Emulsifying oil-soluble flavour compounds in homemade soft drinks Commercial soft drinks seem to often use rather exotic emulsifiers (brominated vegetable oils, quillaja) to mix flavour bearing oils into the drink - I would assume that is how you get citrus tastes beyond what just adding citrus juices can achieve.

Is there a method that is viable for the home lemonade maker, without using too-obscure ingredients? Will the oily phase (eg lemon zest steeped in coconut oil) stay emulsified if it is first mixed with a small amount of alcohol - or would a small amount of a food-grade soap (from food grade oil and food grade lye) work without upsetting the taste intolerably?

The emulsifiers are probably used to keep them mixed on the shelf, rather than to get them in to the mix in the first place. Traditional home made drinks such as still lemonade are intended to be mixed and served immediately, and plenty of stirring will disperse the oil in the water-based drink for long enough. Bottled drinks, whether ready to drink or concentrate, would separate in storage. There's also an aesthetic reason: people don't like to see a layer of oil on top of their drink.

Trying to extract the oils from the zest without steeping in further oils would be a good idea, because you'd have much less to emulsify or mix. Hot water would release quite a lot of the oil, and for some things an alcohol extraction would work (the amount of alcohol per serving would be miniscule if done properly).

In terms of replicating the commercial product you would be best off buying emulsifiers (lecithin perhaps). Reacting food grade sodium hydroxide with edible oils doesn't necessarily leave you with an edible product - saponification is a chemical reaction resulting in a new substance so we can't conclude it's food safe even if the reagents were. On top of this, soap in even tiny quantities is unpalatable.

There's so much rubbish written online about "natural" foods that it's hard to find much sense, but honey is reputed to have some emulsifying properties,and is a traditional ingredient in lemonade recipes.

To conclude, I'd try boiling the zest in water and straining, before mixing with the juice and water, then sweetening the lemonade with honey instead of sugar. Even if it doesn't work perfectly it should still be a pleasant experiment.


Should syrup or pastry be cooled when pouring on to Baklava? When making Baklava, should you let the syrup or pastry cool before pouring the syrup over pastry?

The pastry should be cool, but the syrup should be neither hot nor cool - it should be lukewarm. If it's too cold, it will be too thick and difficult to pour, and it if it's too hot, it may run or damage the pastry. I usually allow mine to sit for 10-15 minutes, until I can comfortably place my pinky finger inside it.


Is it reasonable to expect "spiciness" to fry off? I got in a "heated" discussion with my wife this evening about a fried turkey recipe that I want to try for Thanksgiving. It calls for:

1 cup of Creole seasoning
1/2 cup of black pepper
1/2 cup of Cayenne pepper

all mixed with a bottle of a bottle of italian dressing, which I will admit sounds pretty damn spicy.  But after readying the reviews it seems like everyone says the heat cooks off and the bird comes out delicious.

It it reasonable to expect that the spiciness will fry off during the cooking process or am I going to ruin (another) Thanksgiving?

Capsaicin, the molecules that make chilis hot, is soluble in oil.  So when you're cooking something spicy in oil - you're most definitely taking away a lot of the heat into the oil.  This is assuming you're going to fry the turkey.  If you're not...good luck ;)

So yes, the recipe isn't that insane, it should be reduced in heat.  Like soegaard says though, test on a piece of chicken first and then fry that piece.


black residue left at the bottom of bowl after eating honey bunches of oats When I was eating honey bunches of oats with milk the other day, I noticed a black powder-like substance at the bottom of my bowl. Does anyone know what this is?

The company says that it is grain dust. Yes, I contacted them to ask when I found the same powder in my cereal. I've seen many, many different types of grain dust in my life, and none were anything like that black powder. Needless to say, I don't believe the given "explanation," so I stopped eating the cereal


Can I RE-freeze chicken soup after it has thawed? Can I RE-freeze chicken soup after it has been thawed and heated?

Yes, you can, assuming that the total time the soup (which is very perishable) has spent in the danger zone (40 F to 140 F, 4 C to 60 C) is less than 2 hours for the entire lifetime of the soup and its ingredients, from raw, and through all of the cooking, heating and cooling cycles.

If you have boiled the soup after thawing it, any new pathogens will have been killed.  The conservative recommendation above is because some pathogens leave behind toxins that are not destroyed by simple boiling.  In practice, these recommendations may be extremely conservative, but you will have to assess your own risk tolerance.

Of course, the quality of the soup, especially if it has noodles or potatoes, may suffer during the heating and cooling cycles.

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


Determining a wok's material I bought a wok at a Goodwill a little while ago and haven't really used it for much yet.  I don't know how to determine what material it's actually made out of.  I suspect it's just got a teflon coating on it, since it's fairly light and both the inner and outer sides of it appear to be different materials.  I don't want to use it at high temperatures in case it's got a non-stick coating, so it's kind of important to figure out if it is.  What would be good determining aspects of the different, most common wok materials?

Edited to add: The outer side of it is a dark, grooved, almost matte black, while the inner side is a slightly ligher shade, almost more grey.  The reason I was first thinking it might be teflon is that there's a light scratch on the inner side where a much lighter, steely surface shows through.

Pictures: 1 2 3 4

edit to add: After getting a carbon steel wok, I can confirm that what I had here was definitely not anything like that.  Comparing my old wok to ones in stores, it seems the one pictured here almost certainly has some kind of non-stick coating, and so isn't very good for a wok's high temperatures.

Check the bottom of the pan; often useful information is stamped there. Like the brand, sometimes even model number. Assuming nothing useful:

Steel and iron are ferromagnetic. That is to say, a magnet will stick to them. Both are unlikely to be Teflon-coated (edit: though Wikipedia informs me they exist). The black (which is hopefully somewhat shiny) is seasoning (cooked on oil). Iron would probably mean cast iron, and would generally be heavy (my cast iron wok weighs in at well over 10lbs). So, if they magnet sticks, you probably have steel.

Some stainless steels are ferromagnetic, but most aren't. Stainless is also unlikely to Teflon-coated. But it'll probably be shiny, at least on the outside. So, if not magnetic, its probably aluminum. Aluminum is probably coated.

Teflon isn't the only coating that may be used. It could be anodized aluminum as well (which, I guess, may not technically be a coating). Or one of the newer nonstick coatings. They all look different: Teflon is very dark gray to black, anodized is light gray to dark gray. The newer ones unfortunately are numerous and some can be any color. (Your description of the color sounds like Teflon to me).

You could also try cooking a scrambled egg in it; start it in a cold pan. Teflon in at all good shape will release the egg very easily. Seasoning will, unless very good, probably have you cursing.


How can I make kimchi with everyday ingredients? I've read about kimchi, which is a traditional Korean food made from vegetables. I'm not sure I can find Napa cabbage here in Hungary though - can I make it with regular vegetables?

To answer your specific scenario, kimchi has myriad variations using any number of vegetables, from perilla leaves to Korean radishes to napa cabbage. There are forms of kimchi that involve no chilies (white kimchi), some involve a lot of water and bear little resemblance to the typical napa cabbage one (mul kimchi). The main constraints for Korean-ness of kimchi will be that you've fermented it (for all of the types that I can think of, anyway), and that it doesn't stray too far from familiar Korean flavor profiles (rules that you can break if you've got a deep enough foundation in Korean culinary traditions).

Napa cabbage isn't particularly hard to find in Europe, however, so I'm not sure why it would need to be substituted. For whatever reason, it was called "Chinese cabbage" in Germany; I'd be surprised if you couldn't find it. If I wanted to make the typical cabbage kimchi, the hardest thing would have been finding the right kind of chili powder, which I was able to obtain without too much trouble when I was a 20 year old student there many years ago. Then, the typical small bits of raw oysters or other kinds of fish or dried shrimp can reasonably be substituted with locally available ingredients (and some regions in Korea don't always use those ingredients anyway).


Cranberry beans on a slow cooker (crock pot) I have only made a few stews on my slow cooker so I want to try a different recipe. I want to try cooking cranberry/cargamanto beans for a bandeja paisa (similar to a Brazilian feijoada) on a slow cooker instead of a pressure cooker. Basically, I want to replicate the traditional method of cooking the beans on low heat (open fire) in a clay pot using a slow cooker.

The pressure cooker recipe recommends to pressure-cook the beans for 30 minutes before adding the remaining ingredients (plantains, carrots, pork) and then pressure-cook everything for 20 more minutes.

Could I add all the ingredients at once in a slow cooker and set it on low for a long cooking period (8 hours)? Or should I cook the the beans for a while before adding the rest of the ingredients?

I've generally had success cooking dried beans in a slow cooker for about 5 hours on high with plenty of water (about 4 c. per 1 lb of beans). While you COULD add everything at once, I wouldn't recommend it, as the rest of your vegetables will become mushy and grainy.

For that exact recipe, I'd cook the beans in the slow cooker, than combine everything on the stovetop for about 45 minutes to get the flavors to combine.


How can I get my bacon less salty? I was reading this question, and there's a solution to the OP's answer. I'm not fond of salt and this is a drawback for bacon (to me, that is). I do want to end up with pieces of cooked bacon (so mixing in milk or less bacon won't work), but less salty. Where I live, we also don't have 10 brands of bacon, so choosing the brand with the smallest amount of salt isn't good enough.

Is there a way that I can reduce the saltiness of bacon?

I don't care about the actual salt percentage. I'm curious about salt perception, so masking up the salt would be nice.

Soak and rinse... completely immerse the side of bacon for a few hours in clean, cold ice-water, drain, rinse, and repeat. A cooler is best for this, as it keeps the meat cool and offers lots of water for the salt to dilute into, otherwise a use a large pot in the fridge.

The downside is that this may also affect the "cure" - the smoke-flavor that many manufacturers add in lieu of actually smoking the bacon. Higher quality bacon may not have this issue (but then again, higher quality bacon won't be so salty).


Does wax on citrus fruit make the zest unsafe to eat or compromise its flavor? A number of (chiefly British) recipes specify unwaxed lemons for zesting. Unwaxed citrus fruit are not widely available here in Sweden, so I have to make do by attempting to remove the wax before zesting. Recently I have had doubts regarding the extent to which I actually succeed in doing so, and now I wonder whether it is even worth the trouble.

Citrus fruit have a natural wax coating that is washed off along with orchard grime at the packing house. A new protective coating is applied before packing, and it is this that I am concerned about.

I have two concerns. First there is a food safety issue. Reading the FDA and EU food additive regulations, I see that some substances are permitted for citrus and fruit such as apples and pears where the peel is normally eaten. Other substances are only to be used on citrus or other fruit where the peel is not normally ingested. On the face of it this seems to suggest that the consumption of citrus peel has not been taken into account. I understand that this may not be the case, but since neither regulatory body clarify the issue (at least not in the linked documents), I feel my concern is warranted.

My second concern is regarding whether the taste of the peel is compromised by the coating. This is a tricky question for me to answer since I have no access to untreated citrus. There is the additional difficulty that there are so many substances permitted, and the supermarkets here give no indication of what is used. Presumably some types of coating taste better and others worse. I include this part of question with the faint hope that there may be someone reading who is not subject to the same limitations.

Is it worth bothering even trying to wash the wax of citrus?

I recently did some experimenting on this exact topic. I can't contribute anything to the safety part of your question, but I have some notes regarding flavor.

The experiment: I blind tasted lemon zest in a group of associates and friends with varying degrees of palate development. Most people were able to differentiate between fresh zest with wax and fresh zest without. Nobody could tell the difference once we'd incorporated the zest into a dish, probably since the wax reflows and becomes very diluted. The experiment didn't eliminate every possible variable or control for every factor, but I thought I'd pass this along in case it's useful to you.

In my personal experience - when I compare waxed and unwaxed citrus fruit side by side - the taste of fresh zest is slightly bittered by the presence of wax. Mouthfeel is appreciably gummier and I find it harder to perceive the zest's moisture as well.

If enough of us perform this experiment we could cobble together our own unofficial data :) I'd be more than happy to crunch the stats.


standard way to make crispy sweet potato fries? I've been looking for a way to fry (not bake) sweet potatoes, maybe like the double-fry method for russet and russet-like potatoes, to get a crispy exterior.

Maybe I'm missing something but I'm having difficulty finding something for sweet potatoes (of any kind). I've consulted my cookbook library, and I haven't come across much. I've had mixed experiences with blog recipes, so I trust them less, but maybe this Munchies single-fry-from-frozen sweet potato fries article (which I will try this weekend) has some truth to it?:

  Ingredients:

  2 pounds large orange-fleshed sweet potatoes
  1 teaspoon baking soda
  1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cornstarch
  Peanut oil, for frying
  1 cup clubsoda or water Kosher or fine sea salt

  Instructions:

  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and make enough room in the freezer for said baking sheet.
  Peel the sweet potatoes, if desired, and cut them lengthwise into 1/4-inch-thick batons (fry shapes). Place them in a bowl with the
  baking soda and 2 tablespoons cornstarch, and toss. Arrange the sweet
  potatoes on the baking sheet in a single layer, making sure they are
  not touching. Freeze them until rock hard, at least 3 hours. If making
  fries later, transfer to a gallon-size zip-top freezer bag; they will
  keep frozen for up to 2 weeks.
  Pour the oil into a large, heavy pot, preferably a Dutch oven, that's fitted with a deep-fry thermometer to a depth of 2 inches. Set
  the pot over medium heat and begin gently warming the oil to 375ºF.
  In a large bowl, whisk together the remaining 1 cup cornstarch and the club soda. Stack several layers of brown paper on a baking sheet.
  When the oil reaches 375ºF, drop a handful of sweet potatoes into the cornstarch mixture and coat evenly. Lift them from the bowl,
  letting any excess drip into the bowl, and carefully add them to the
  oil. Fry, stirring with a spider so they do not stick to the bottom of
  the pot, until deep golden brown and cooked through, about 8 minutes.
  Using the spider, transfer the fries to the brown paper to drain.
  Immediately season with salt. Repeat with the remaining sweet
  potatoes, returning the oil to 375ºF between batches.

I'm looking for validation or refutation of the instructions of that article or, better yet, tried methods from people here that result in crispy sweet potato fries.

Freezing fries opens up their texture and makes them more fluffy. This is helpful for regular fries or sweet potato fries.

Sweet potatoes have too much sugar and not enough starch to crisp up on their own. The only crispy sweet potato fries I have ever made- or eaten- were coated in starch to provide the crispiness.

While I haven't tried this exact recipe- I haven't used club soda for example- it has all the right steps and looks like it would work.


Adding flavorings & fillings to bread dough I have a basic sourdough bread recipe that I've made a few times with consistent results, so I decided to try modifying it with different flavors and fillings.

My question is, are there general rules of thumb, specifically regarding how different additions affect overall hydration percentage, baking & proofing times, etc?

One plan is too try a recipe with walnuts, and given their low water content, I assume I can just try adding them in after the first proofing and keeping everything else the same, as I might with seeds and other drier ingredients.

But what if I wanted to add a pure liquid like olive oil, or something with a higher water content like onions?  Should I tweak the flour:water ratio?  Should I add them in at different times?

And can I add a small amount of an extract, or will the alcohol have some negative effect on the proofing and/or baking process?

As you have already intuited in your question, what you do to adjust is going to vary based on the ingredient, and how much of that ingredient you add to the bread.

I can try to address some of the specific cases you mention:

Walnuts
This generally should not be a problem with adjusting hydration, other ingredients, or cooking times, although if you add too many walnuts (or other fillers) it can make the bread fall apart more easily. If I am adding nuts to a dough, I typically stick to a quarter cup or so for a normal-sized 1 lb loaf.

Olive oil
Adding any oils or fats to your dough will fundamentally change the character of the bread. As you add more fat, the resulting bread will tend to be softer and of course oilier. The crust will also usually tend to be darker when you bake it. A standard white bread loaf might have 1-2 tbsp of butter in it, for example, whereas a brioche might have 4-5 tbsp. If you just want an olive oil flavor in your sourdough, you might consider brushing the surface of your dough before baking (this will also usually cause the bread to darken more while baking) or right after you pull it out of the oven.

Onions
This depends on the hydration of the onions, but when I use fresh, finely chopped onions I do usually lower the amount of water or other liquids in the recipe. I tend to go by the texture of the dough rather than any hard and fast rules here, but is say for a quarter cup of fresh onions I may lower the amount of water for a single loaf by a tablespoon or two. One thing I will advise is that it takes a while for the water in the onions to be incorporated into the dough; I typically add less water to start, mix the dough thoroughly for 5-6 minutes with the onions, then check the texture of the dough to see if I need to make any hydration adjustments.

Extracts
Small amounts (e.g. a quarter teaspoon) do not have a significant impact on the proofing in my experience. In fact, small amounts of alcohol are already created during fermentation, and for a typical bread yeast (or wild fermentation as is the case with a sourdough) the alcohol levels would need to reach over 10% and potentially much higher before fermentation is inhibited in any way. Link Saccharomyces cervisae or "brewing yeast" is the same type of yeast typically used in bread-making, although in sourdough you will usually also find other things that contribute to the character such as lactobacillus and pediococcus.


Is unwrapped refrigerated cheese safe? Is unwrapped, refrigerated cheese safe?

I usually have Australian or New Zealand cheddar cheese or similar cheese in my refrigerator.  Recently I've been discarding the original wrapping which usually is not resealable and also not bothering with "cling wrap".  I simply put it on a laminated disposable paper dish and refrigerate.  Is this practice safe?  A 250 gram block is usually consumed within 5 days if not much sooner.

It is almost certainly safe unless it was left out at warm temperatures to spoil, or has molded, or otherwise spoiled in a manner not directly related to being uncovered.

It may, however, be unpalatable due to:

Drying out
Picking up flavors or odors from other items in the refrigerator

Since you are eating it relatively quickly, if you are not experiencing these issues, your practice should be just fine.

My own personal preferred method is to put my cheese chunks in a zip lock type bag, which substantially cuts down on the drying, especially for moister cheeses like mozzarella or semi-firm cheddar.


Kind of apples for apple purée / apple sauce Recently I made a thick apple sauce by cooking apples with some juice. The cooking process took less time than expect - after about 20 minutes or less the apple pieces were soft enough to mash them.

The apples I chose were a bit sour and had a dark green colour (unfortunately I don't recall the brand / kind of apple I used), by accident a good choice.

Are some kind of apples better suited than other to cook apple purée? Why is that so? And how do I recognize these apples in the supermarket?

While not directly addressing the question of apple sauce, this Food Lab article by Kenji Alt on apple pie has some excellent information on differences of apple varieties.  He surveys a number of common (at least in the US) varieties.

He notes that apples which brown more quickly tend to be both less tart (as acid, which underlies a tart flavor) inhibits browning; they also tend to cook down less quickly as the acid helps maintain the pectin structure.

Many apple sauce recipes try to find a balance among several apples, with both tart and sweeter varieties, and some that break down quickly for the body of the sauce, and some that retain more texture.

For example, Cook's Illustrated recommends Jonagold, Jonathan, Pink Lady, and Macoun (possible pay wall).

In an article at Oregon Live, interviewing applesauce expert Peggy Acott, writes:

  "Even two sweet apples taste different," [Peggy Acott] says. "You can also pair
  a sweet and a tart apple, a mild and a spicy one, or spicy, sweet and
  mild ones." She suggests using two or three varieties. "One year I
  used four and that was overkill."

  She believes in tasting the apples before you choose them. The same
  variety of apple will taste different year to year, she says. Some of
  her favorite past pairings include Ginger Goldens, a creamy yellow
  sweet-tart apple, and at least one other variety. Maybe Cox's Orange
  Pippins, an old English variety known for being tart and crisp, or a
  Rubinette (a cross of Golden Delicious and Cox's Orange Pippin).

An article at the Your pick of apples: Which varieties work best for baking, sauces and other recipes at the Missoulian indicates:

  The spicy, supple McIntosh will melt like ice cream when baked, but
  creates a smooth, flavorful applesauce. The soft, tangy Jonathan and
  the sweet, crisp Empire will also deliver a flavorful puree. The Cox’s
  Orange Pippin [...] is a wonderful juicy heirloom for sauce.

As you can see, in the end, you will want to get to know your own locally available apple varieties, and what you like.  There is a tremendous amount of variation.

Apple sauce is very simple and quick to make, especially in the microwave.  If you are a huge applesauce fan, you might want to make a sample from one apple of each variety and take notes on its flavor and texture.


Nixtamalized cornmeal for polenta? Do Italians ever use nixtamalized cornmeal ("grits") for polenta, or would they no longer call that polenta?

This translation dictionary gives some examples of where "hominy" is synonymous with "polenta," but that doesn't seem correct.

At least in the US, there are two types of grits: (a) dried ground corn, and (b) hominy grits.  The latter is nixtamalized.

I can't find any historical references to using nixtamalized corn in Italian cuisine.  I would be interested to learn of any uses from any Italians who are on this site.

I did find much more recent evidence of using nixtamalized corn for polenta, here, for example.

Corn, typically in the form of polenta is common, especially in northrn Italian cuisine.  Reference to this does appear in relation to the history of nixtamalization.  It seems that while corn was brought from "the new world" back to Europe, the nixtamalization process was not.  Given the fact that it was inexpensive and plentiful, large quantities of corn (usually in the form of polenta) were consumed as a main dietary staple.  This corn was not nixtamalized, and given the lack of other dietary nutrients in 19th century Italy, resulted in a serious skin disease that the Italians named pellagra.  This disease is a result of a lack of niacin, which the nixtamalization process allows us to access.


Thermometers for high temperature ovens Are there any thermometers that you can put in clay ovens, or under a broiler? Most of the thermometers have a temperature limit of 350 ~ 400 degrees.

I actually burnt one down last year by turning the broiler on by accident.

You'll want a commercial oven or high heat thermometer.

This one goes to 750° F (about 400 C):

My Big Green Egg Temperature Gauge goes up to 750° F (about 400 C).

But if I want to monitor the internal temperature of what you are cooking in a hotter oven/broiler, I usually use a remote thermometer which has an all-metal wire and probe:


How to deal with foul fishy odor of frozen shrimp Note: I can't actually cook, I am just trying to learn to roughly assemble and heat things. Explain things to me like I know nothing.
A few weeks ago I decided to try out cooking some shrimp for myself. I planned to start off simple: cut out the veins, boil, and panfry. So, I bought a few meals' worth of shrimp and froze them. Over the last few weeks I've defrosted the portions and tried cooking them as planned.
Every time I noticed a foul fishy odor in the defrosted shrimp that made me gag. When I cooked it, I learned that it did not go away like the lighter ocean smell of fish. Overseasoning could not make the smell or taste go away. I have noticed this in some cod before, but it wasn't nearly as consistent as this batch of shrimp.
What on earth is that smell? Did the shrimp go bad? If it did, was it bad when I bought it or because I froze it? If not, what should I have done to get rid of that foul odor?

Shrimp, but also seafood in general, should not have a strong smell. You should be able to smell a faint salt water scent from them when not frozen, and basically nothing while they're frozen. If they're smelling a lot, that's a sign they may have gone bad.
It's impossible to say exactly what went wrong with them. If it didn't smell when you bought them and froze them, my best guess is that you defrosted them in an unsafe way. Always defrost in the fridge or under running cool water. Never leave them out on the counter (especially not over night).
I will also point out that your cooking method seems like a bit of overkill. It's very easy to overcook shrimp and have them end up rubbery. Just pan frying is perfectly sufficient. There is not need to boil them first. Overcooking can cause a strong fishy smell in seafood as well.