What was the original "Lea & Perrins" recipe from Bengal? In the history of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce it is claimed that

The story of Lea & Perrins famous Worcestershire Sauce begins in the early 1800s, in the county of Worcester. Returning home from his travels in Bengal, Lord Sandys, a nobleman of the area, was eager to duplicate a recipe he'd acquired.

Does anyone know what that original recipe from Bengal might have been? Are there any Bengali dishes that might have been the inspiration for Lea & Perrins?

The trouble with the Lea & Perrin's story & Lord Sandys' "original recipe" is that it is mainly myth/fable/advertising copy (I'd hate to outright call it a lie…)
Worcestershire Sauce originally was basically curry powder and water, with anchovy sauce. It didn't start from a Bengali sauce at all, it started from curry powder, which someone decided to mix with water.
The rest is kind of true; it was too strong when freshly-made but after having been abandoned in a cellar for some time, turned out more palatable.
It's never been impossible to copy, though perhaps difficult to get exactly the same. HP Sauce did a similar thing with a thick sauce - they went the fruit route; somebody was thinking of chutneys when they modified to arrive at that. Some companies make both, thick and thin. A million others make generic 'brown sauce' all tasting just about the same.
Interestingly, a later Lord Sandys himself later tried to cash in on the story - http://lordsandys.com/product-info/ though never really gained the worldwide reputation Lea & Perrin managed to solidify.
From the lovely, if rather dated in its HTML skills, Science of Cooking - Worcestershire Sauce

at the date of the legend, "Lord" Sandys was actually a Lady. No identifiable reference to her could possibly appear on a commercial bottled sauce without a serious breach of decorum. It is likely her heir who agreed to sell the recipe.
To abandon the unrevised legend and substitute a more accurate version that was published by Thomas Smith, Successful Advertising, (7th edition, 1885):
we quote the following history of the well-known Worcester Sauce, as given in the World. The label shows it is prepared "from the recipe of a nobleman in the country." The nobleman is Lord Sandys. Many years ago, Mrs. Grey, author of The Gambler's Wife and other novels, was on a visit at Ombersley Court, when Lady Sandys chanced to remark that she wished she could get some very good curry-powder, which elicited from Mrs. Grey that she had in her desk an excellent recipe, which her uncle, Sir Charles, Chief Justice of India, had brought thence, and given her. Lady Sandys said that there were some clever chemists in Worcester, who perhaps might be able to make up the powder. Messrs. Lea and Perrins looked at the recipe, doubted if they could procure all the ingredients, but said they would do their best, and in due time forwarded a packet of the powder. Subsequently the happy thought struck someone in the business that the powder might, in solution, make a good sauce. The profits now amount to thousands of pounds a year.

There's a second confirmation of this being the potentially "true story" at https://www.foodbeast.com/news/worcestershire-sauce-history/
There's also a BBC News story about a potential discovery of the original recipe - Recipes for secret sauce emerge which gives this as the ingredients list, but no detail on how they transformed that into the famous brown stuff…
Sauce ingredients:
water - 20 1/2 lbs
cloves - 2 lbs
salt - 10 lbs
sugar - 34 lbs
soy - 8 gallons
fish - 24 lbs
vinegar - 18 gallons
acetic acid - 2 gallons
essence of lemons - 8 oz
peppers - 5 lbs
tamoraide - 14 lbs
pickles - 40 lbs

I don't think there's really any doubt that Messrs Lea & Perrin took the beginnings of an idea and turned it into something rather spectacular, just that the 'origin story' is perhaps best left to the mists of time.


Why is my bread dough sticky? I'm been making this Japanese bread "Melon pan" many times and it had been success.Then my brother told me to add more sugar to make it more sweet. Try adding little at first, the bread still taste the same. So decided to put a lot more sugar. I started to knead my dough and it very sticky, already added flour (even too much) but still sticky. Continued to knead it for 15-20. Still Sticky :( But somehow I baked it and my brother tried it and said the amount of sugar put in was good. But the bread lost its crispiness so It was a fail. What can I do to solve this problem? Thank you

This is the original recipe that worked before I added a lot of sugar.

Bread Dough -
140g Bread Flour (4.94 oz)
25g Sugar (0.882 oz)
1/3 tsp Salt
5g Non-Fat Dry Milk Powder (0.176 oz)
3g Instant Yeast (0.106 oz) - a little less than 1 tsp
1 tbsp Beaten Egg
70ml Warm Water (2.37 fl oz)
15g Butter (0.529 oz)
Bread Flour for dusting
Cookie Dough -
25g Unsalted Butter (0.882 oz)
35g Sugar (1.23 oz)
25g Beaten Egg (0.882 oz)
80g Cake/Pastry Flour (2.82 oz)
1/4 tsp Baking Powder
Bread Flour for dusting

I've never tried making a bread dough with that much sugar in it. You're up to ~80g sugar, compared to 140g flour (a "baker's ratio" of 57%).

It's possible that much sugar interferes with gluten development. Since you're already adding butter later (at around 4:07 in the video), the first thing I'd try is to mix the extra sugar and butter together, and add them both there. That's probably being done after some of the kneading because butter interferes with gluten development. So if the sugar does too, that may help.

Also, sugar definitely makes yeast more active (they're eating the sugar). So you probably need to let it rise for less time. Go by how much it's expanded (risen), not by the time.

Second thing I'd try would be a tad bit more flour. Knead in a little more and see if the stickyness returns to manageable levels.

Third thing would be to use some artificial sweetener. Those are substantially sweeter (per gram) than sugar, but of course have aftertastes... The combination of some artificial sweetener and still plenty of sugar will mostly mask the aftertaste.

Fourth, similarly, different natural sugars have a different sweetness level (per gram). Fructose, for example, tastes sweeter than sucrose (table sugar). A mix supposedly tastes sweeter still.

Finally... consider just serving it with syrup! Or icing or frosting it after baking.


Steamed chicken soup I just made some steamed chicken breasts in a multicooker. Naturally, I still have water used for steaming in the bowl. It smells like and even looks like chicken soup. I'm not sure if it's good to eat, but wouldn't want to just throw it away.

What is usually done in this case?

Actual chicken soup is based on chicken stock which is made by simmering a chicken carcass for several hours, usually with stick veg and a few herbs.

This long cooking breaks down the collagen in the bones, skin and cartilage, turning it into gelatin and extracting a lot of flavour.

The steaming water should be perfectly safe to eat but definitely isn't the same thing as chicken stock.

Maybe use it to cook rice or noodles to go with the chicken or if the breasts cam e off whole chicken then add it to the carcass to make stock if you want. But in reality it probably doesn't have that much flavour and probably isn't worth keeping unless you have an immediate use for it.

A an aside one of the great thing about poultry in general is that you can use the whole of the bird to make several dishes.

The breast meat provides good texture, the legs and thigh meat is moist and flavoursome and good for pies and stews, the carcass can be used for soup and the wings and timings can be turned into a tasty sauce or gravy.


Why are predominantly grapes an ingredient in wine? Commonly, wine is defined as an alcoholic beverage made from fermented grapes. In contrast to this, wines made from other fruits are called fruit wine (except mead, cider, perry for historical reasons).
There are plenty other fruits that have a high sugar content and are (slightly) tart (e.g. apples, oranges, berries ...) but I see much more grape wine in the shelves than apple wine (cider) or other fruit wines. What makes grapes superior to other fruits in terms of making wine? Or is it only coincidence that wines made from grapes are more popular? (Well, at least they are popular in Germany, France and Italy.)

While almost every fruit and berry contains right yeasts on its peel, according to this article people prefer to make wine from grape due to right acidity, sugar and tannins contents.

I also can assume the grape was easier to process manually at almost every stage from collecting to juicing.


How can I preserve soy sauce eggs? My favorite restaurant has an appetizer (or banchan) that my friends and I all adore. They're eggs that have been soaked in some kind of soy sauce brine and quartered.

Back when I was just learning how to cook, and regularly made terrible, terrible decisions, I came up with "Osaka eggs," in that restaurant's honor. (I still make terrible decisions, actually, but now with confidence.) My Osaka eggs are boiled for as long as possible in a salty soy sauce broth. Since it takes some time, I usually make a big batch, and occasionally I lose a jar in the back of the fridge, and a month later they've gone lacto on me. Probably safe, but I'm not a fan.

As a result, I've been considering the possibility of canning them. But I don't have a pressure canner. So I looked into hot water bath canning, and... you're only supposed to do that with sugary or acidic preserves. I'm not interested in introducing any more sugar or acid to my eggs.

So, my question comes down to what can I (or must I) do to preserve my Osaka eggs without introducing a bunch of sugar or acid? Use more soy sauce? Could I strain/reduce the braising liquid and have high enough salt content to make the hot water bath safe?

Or, counter-intuitively, should I not heat the soy sauce at all? I know vegetables are preserved, via fermentation, in miso and doenjang. What about soy sauce? Because with the long braising time, my soy sauce brine is pasteurized.... So, could I actually make my eggs last longer by simply leaving the soy sauce uncooked? (And cooking everything else in some lightly salted water, just so we're clear.)

**Here's the basic recipe I multiply for making terrible Osaka eggs so you can see the relative concentration (or lack thereof) of salt.

(...And a warning that you might not want to try these at home, kids. One person thought they were tea eggs, got all excited, and ended up running outside to spit it out. They taste like ...something that should be meat but isn't meat and some people become confused and even distraught by the cognitive dissonance they create. But I love them and want them to last, dang it.)

2 cups of water
1/2 cup of soy sauce.I like Lee Kum Kee's double-fermented. Sometimes
I'll add some dark soy sauce or mushroom-flavored for part of it.
1/8 cup fish sauce
1 T oyster sauce
Some kind of spices: cinnamon stick, cardamom pods, star anise, black
pepper, fennel, allspice, cloves, coriander.... Whatever makes you
happy.
.....
A sliced red onion
A sliced shallot,
Some rough-chopped garlic, you measure with your heart,
A hot pepper,
7 or 8 dried anchovies, heads and guts removed.

The first block of ingredients go in a pot, preferably of the crock variety. The other stuff goes in a dry saute pan and are accordingly sauted before being added to the pot. If anything's stuck to the saute pan, splash a little more water in to clean it and add that to the pot. Then add a bunch of boiled and peeled eggs, and let it go however long you want. My friends and I will let them go for a full day or three, and the mushy braised vegetables (and anchovies) are a nice bonus topping for rice.

You could ferment your eggs; salt-pickled fermented eggs are a thing and don't require any higher salt content than you already have.  However, there are some potential problems with that.

First, your comment that "a month later they've gone lacto on me. Probably safe, but I'm not a fan" gives the impression that you wouldn't like the result of fermentation.  Second, a couple of your ingredients -- the oyster sauce and the anchovies -- are easy-spoiling ingredients that could cause the batch to go off.

Your brine doesn't seem quite high enough in salt for canning them to succeed.  You can hot water bath brined eggs, but only if they are brined in a very high salt solution -- the linked post says 25% brine.  Heck, with enough salt you can keep eggs for months without canning at all.  But that's a lot more salt than you're using.

While you can theoretically pressure-can boiled eggs without salt or acid at all, after an hour of cooking under pressure they would not be edible.

Overall, I don't believe there's any way to preserve them that wouldn't substantially alter their flavor/texture.  So ... I'd say make as many as you'll enjoy in a few weeks.


How do I prevent cream puff shells from deflating? Every time I try to bake cream puffs the shells deflate before I can fill them with the cream.

I have tried poking a hole in the shell with a toothpick in the last few minutes of baking. I have also tried leaving the shells in an "off" oven with the door open to slow the cooling process but have not had success.

Does anyone have any other suggestions to solve this problem?

hobodave is on the right track with his multi-temperature cooking suggestion: you really need that burst of high heat right away in order to get sufficient rise out of the dough (your aim is to create steam inside each pastry while the dough is still soft). In fact, I go over 400°F: try 425-450, depending on your oven, and aim to have the heat increasing during the first stage of baking. Then you need to cut the heat, or they'll burn rather than crisp.

However, I don't bother with a final slow-cooking phase: for one, it limits the use of your oven! If you're trying to produce more than a single batch of cream puffs, this is unacceptable... But also, it has not (in my experience) produced reliable results.

Instead, leave them to cook until they're a deep golden brown, and them immediately remove them from the oven, place them on cooling racks, and take a bamboo skewer (or thin pencil, or equivalent - a toothpick is far, far too small) and poke a hole in the very top of each pastry, making sure you penetrate to the center. This allows the steam to escape without softening the pastry, and is crucial to maintaining the shape and texture. As a bonus, you can pipe in filling through the same hole...

For the first batch, pay close attention to how they're cooking. You'll want to reduce heat as soon as they've risen and start to set, and remove them from the oven before they scorch. Exact times will vary based on your oven and on the size of your cream puffs.

Finally, don't make them too big - I aim for maybe a tablespoon of dough per cream puff at most. Remember, when properly cooked they puff up and are hollow inside - you just need enough dough for the shell! If you're ending up with webby, doughy centers, you're just wasting dough (and making them harder to fill later on).


Cleaning burnt beans stuck to pot? Yep.  Every several years, a pot of beans is left unattended, sinks up the place and ends up with a rock formation of encrusted bean matter that can't be removed.

This time, it's my dearly-beloved Calphalon One Anodized Infused pot.  Sigh.

This method got me to the point where the bottom of the pot is nice and clean.  The problem is that there is a ring of burnt-ness starting an inch or so up.  It would be very hard to apply the vinegar/baking soda method to the sides of the pot.

Any ideas?

You can either add a lot of vinegar (to get above the problem area) -- or
you can try to displace the vinegar so you don't need as much.

Find a smaller pot and fill it with water and set it in the center of the pot to clean, and then pour vinegar between the two pots (or pot & item).

Although I said 'fill it with water', you only really need a little bit more than what you need to keep it from floating once the vinegar is in there.

If you don't have a suitable pot, look for anything else that you can use that is heat safe, non-reactive, won't float (in that amount of vinegar), and will fit inside the pot.

And if you're using an anodized aluminum pot, check the bottom for scratches -- odds are they'll oxidize over time (a white powder forms), and if you have a lot of scratching, you might not want to give it an acid bath.


Why does my omelet with Velveeta froth up in the microwave? I like to make a quick cheese omelet in the microwave, in a bowl (no pans to clean up). I had the technique working well, but one day switched from shredded cheese to some Velveeta. The amount of cheese was comparable, but the omelet boiled or frothed up and overflowed the bowl (by a lot).

It does not matter whether I cube the Velveeta and mix in well, or just lay it on top in slices. In the latter case I've also tried adding the slices at the end (the last minute, on 50% power), and it still froths up. The eggs themselves to that point were bubbly but contained. Once the cheese gets hot it takes about 10 seconds to make it froth, after a 15 second cool-down period, so just stopping the microwave and stirring would add several minutes as well as requiring lots of intervention from me, which kind of defeats the purpose of fast and easy.

I like the taste of Velveeta in the omelet, but am tired of dealing with the mess. (Putting a plate under the bowl now gives me something else to clean, plus I want to eat the cheese, not wash it down the drain. Using an over-sized bowl also worked--though I still had to stop & stir a time or two--but I only have one of those so what do I do until it's time to run the dishwasher again?)

Does anyone know why this happens, and/or what I can do about it?

Velveeta is a processed 'cheese' (I believe the package says something like 'processed cheese food product, which is about as far from real cheese as you can get), which means it has a much lower melting point than real cheese. In fact, I would be astonished if the melting point weren't lower than the coagulation point of eggs.

Use real cheese. And a pan. Your tastebuds will thank you for it.


My éclair (pâte à choux) was doughy I followed the Pierre Hermé éclairs recipe:

  60mL water
   75mL whole milk
   3g salt
   3g caster sugar
   56g butter
   75g flour
   A little over 2 eggs

I did the recipe and it called for 45 minutes of baking at 185°C.

I baked them for 40 minutes and left them in the oven for an extra 10 minutes before removing them.

The result was that the exterior was terrific, but the inside was too doughy and I couldn't fill it with crème pâtissière (custard).

Is skipping the 5 last minutes of baking the reason it failed?

I'm fairly certain that the last 5 minutes of baking would not have opened the texture of the interior.

Pâte à Choux is supposed to be very soft inside. It has ribbons of eggy material running through it. That is why cream puffs are usually scooped out before filling.

The material is very tender so, with eclairs, injecting the filling pushes it out of the way and the shell is firm enough to hold in the pressure.

When the dough is baking the steam inflates the abundant egg proteins in big pockets. This happens in the first part of baking and the rest of the time is setting the proteins and drying the exterior. If your interior truly has as tight a crumb as bread, this would have happened at the beginning of baking and the 5 minutes at the end would not affect it.

Pâte à Choux is very easy to make. I wonder about your process.
Recipes always consist of:

Combine and scald, or boil, milk, butter, sugar, and salt,
Add flour all at once and stir until it forms a cohesive ball that pulls away
from the sides of the bowl,
beat in the eggs one at a time.

I would make sure that your milk mixture was properly scalded and that your flour was mixed in well enough before adding the eggs. The flour should have gluten activated and its starches gelatinized before you add the eggs.

If you haven't been already, you might try using bread flour and see if the problem is lessened.


Substitute for chicken broth in tomato soup In this recipe, how can I substitute chicken broth?

Just use vegetable broth. It's sold in plenty of stores, though you can certainly make your own too, lots of recipes out there. The most canonical ingredients are onion, carrot, and celery, with some assortment of herbs and seasonings, but you'll also sometimes find things like mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes (surprise!), and even root vegetables! It's hard to recommend anything in particular, though; everyone has their preferences, and stronger flavored broths may not work as well in certain recipes.

Or of course you can go find a tomato soup recipe that doesn't use chicken broth.


Do all new cast iron pans and skillets have a protective coating on them, which must be removed? http://whatscookingamerica.net/Information/CastIronPans.htm

  All new (not old cast iron cookware) cast iron pans and skillets have a protective coating on them, which must be removed.

Is this information correct? What is the point in buying a seasoned cast iron cokware if we have to remove the seasoning then?

This coating is not the same thing as a seasoning.

Iron rusts when exposed to air. For cooking purposes, you season it, and it prevents rusting. Some manufacturers sell their iron cookware pre-seasoned, but others use other types of coating to prevent rust. This other coating can consist of wax or petroleum products such as parafin. Its only purpose is to seal the pan air-tight for the time it spends in warehouses and stores. It would melt during cooking and mix with your food. Therefore, you can't use it instead of seasoning.

But you can't season a pan "on top" of the wax coating. The real seasoning would stick to the wax, and when the wax melts, the seasoning will come off. Therefore, you have to remove the wax coating before making a normal seasoning from polymerized oil.

If you bought a pan which was seasoned instead of wax-coated, you can start using it without any removing and re-seasoning.


I added olive oil to my cake, but I haven’t baked it yet The taste is so strong, and I haven’t even baked it yet.
How do I make it taste better?
I added it as a butter substitute... now what do i do?

First, you could bake it as planned. The taste may become less pronounced, especially in comparison to the other, still developing flavors from caramelizing and the Maillard reaction during baking.

There are quite a few cake recipes that use olive oil (so it’s not necessarily a bad idea), and often they use citrusy and slightly savory flavor combinations, e.g. a pound cake with rosemary and orange or a lemon cake. (Not sure whether olive oil would work too well with, say, milk chocolate.) You could take that approach as an inspiration: If there's still time, add e.g. some lemon peel. If not, you can combine the baked cake with a citrus marmalade or a glaze.


How much lemons are needed to produce pure 1 kg lemon essential oil? First of, sorry of the question is not for here, but I can't seemk to find more proper place...
My question is, how much lemons are needed to produce 1 kilogram pure essential oil, not the method with olive oil, but pure one, with only lemons?

I haven't personally tried making lemon essential oil. But according to Young Living, an MD named Jean Valnet estimated that it takes 3,000 lemons to produce one kilo of Lemon essential oil. Here are some links to the estimations (keep in mind that a kilogram is roughly 2.2 lbs):

Young Living (states 3000 makes 1 kilo)
LemonMania (states 3000 makes 1 kilo)
Veriditas Botanicals (states 3000
makes 2 lbs (about .91 kilo))


How to reheat a baked potato? How should baked potatoes be reheated in order to most closely approximate fresh-from-the-oven   quality?

Sadly, baked potatoes are one of those foods that are only truly at their peak when first baked.  Either re-baking them or microwaving them will give the least bad results for reheating.

Your better bet, however, is to give them a new life, for example as potato pancakes, hash browns, as an ingredient in a hash, or similar application.   While they won't have the same quality as a fresh baked potato, these can be very good dishes.


What can I substitute for hot Korean chili oil in this pork noodle recipe? Our local supermarket sells fantastic pork, normally also on offer.  Yesterday I bought a kilo of cubed pork (magro). Yesterday we had kebabs, today perhaps Asian.

So, I've thought about making this Korean noodle dish.  I have never been that good at replicating authentic Asian food, but I'm always willing to have a go.  It's Sunday and the shops aren't open around here.  The recipe calls for - 'Hot Korean Chili Oil', is there something 'different' about it or can I substitute it for what I have in the cupboard?

You can always just make your own Korean chili oil. For example, here's The Woks of Life formula for chili oil:

  1½ cups oil (ideally a vegetable, peanut, or grapeseed oil…light olive oil is fine, but it has a tendency to set in the fridge)
  5 star anise
  1 cinnamon stick, preferably cassia cinnamon
  2 bay leaves
  3 tablespoons Sichuan peppercorns
  ¾ cup Asian crushed red pepper flakes (Sichuan chili flakes are the best)
  1 – 1½ teaspoons salt (to taste)

  Heat the oil, star anise, cinnamon stick, bay leaves, and Sichuan peppercorns in a small saucepan over medium high heat. When the oil starts to bubble slightly, turn the heat down to medium.


What kind of cooling garnish is like ice cream but doesn't melt? In a related question, I asked about plating with bread for sampling chili. Here I need to find a cooling, as in take the heat off the capsaicin with fats, garnish.

For this question I would like to know how to garnish. I am making a bacon and pulled pork chili, and need a smooth, subtle garnish to take the edge off the peppers. First off, I will be dusting the top with a mixture of nutritional yeast and a smidge of dround coffee and ground, dried orange rind.

Initially I was inspired by the idea of a bacon flavored ice cream, served to the side of the bread with a hal strip of maple-smoked bacon candied in the oven with light brown sugar. The idea of being able to have a whole spoon of chili and then a nibble of the garnish is very appealing.

I pitched the idea at a friend and added, "but I don't want it to be frozen, or to melt." The cold would be impossible with the heavy texture of the chili, and melting would disturb the dusted topping.

We came up with a mixture of sour cream and cream cheese, with a bit of arrow root as a coagulant (since it will be semi-cold, I want it to retain some stiffness on the surface of the chili). Basically, blend it all up with some of the bits of candied bacon and some spices, then chill it over night in the fridge to marry the flavors until competition time.

What ratio would the above mixture need to be relative to arrow root (I haven't used it before)? By the teaspoon, tablespoon, fraction of a cup per cup of dairy?

Is there a better coagulant for the purpose
Are there any flavor/textural issues with arrow root that I should be aware of to begin with, and specifically in the context of sour cream / cream cheese?

Is there a better solution to fit the problem; that is, what other kind of ice cream like garnish could I use that would resist melting for a bit of time and would have a smooth texture and be able to nibble on with little scoops from the spoon?

I'd avoid a coagulant if you can, it will likely keep this dense on whats already a rather dense sounding dish.

Personally, I'd beat loads of air into your sour cream/cream cheese mixture and serve a small whipped dollop of it.  It will keep it light and still offset your spiciness a little.  If the pork chili is the star, keep it complimented but not complicated.


What teas with natural caffeine can be used for lemon tea? I like to drink hot, naturally caffeinated tea (so no added caffeine please) in which one entire lemon or lime is prodded, pulped, and steeped. What kinds of naturally caffeinated tea would correspond?

A Google search desultorily yields 'black tea', a term which is too vague, and 'Earl Grey' tea?

This is kind of a "experiment and find out" kind of thing, there being such a large variety of teas in the world.

Earl Grey and lemon is a classic pairing, but a whole lemon might be too much. Jasmine green is smooth and pairs well with lemon, but not lime. Either and any citrus fruit typically pairs well with Yerba Mate.

but the list is huge. I would recommend going to check out your local tea shoppe and seeing what they have.


What are food additives that help popsicle/shaved ice melt slower? What are food additives that help popsicle/shaved ice melt slower?

Simple popsicle ingredients: water, sugar, flavoring

I used agar agar and gelatin before, but don’t want to: The texture is not the same, it feels like icy flakes, not like fluffy snow.

You could experiment with decreasing the sugar...higher sugar means quicker melting.  However, if you want to eliminate all melting, you could try making a fluid gel using low acyl gellan (typically 0.5% to 1.25%...so, it doesn't take much). Then freeze that. It is more freeze/thaw stable than agar.


What's the point of "draining" yogurt? I'm making a recipe for tandoori chicken, and it told me to "drain" 1 cup plain yogurt "for 15 minutes in a fine sieve or cheesecloth." I did as it asked and absolutely nothing happened, yogurt did not move through the cloth. I'm using yoplait, which I know and it's pretty thick—but wondering if anyone knows what it was expecting to happen and what the result for the marinade might be.

Often, yogurt will drain away excess liquid in that length of time, thickening the yogurt. If left to drain overnight, a lot of yogurts will drain away a huge quantity of whey (yogurt water), some yogurts will hardly release any. If your yogurt didn't release whey, that just means that it was good and thick to begin with. That's great, but don't assume that your next container of yogurt will be the same way, even if you get the same brand. If you drain yogurt and it releases whey it will be a lot thicker than it was before you drained it, making the resulting marinade thicker in the bargain.

In the US, that's the major difference between Greek yogurt and "regular" yogurt like Yoplait original. Greek yogurt is thicker because it has been strained. "Real" Greek yogurt may also use different cultures, I don't know, but in this country the difference between Greek and "regular" is straining.

Welcome to Seasoned Advice!


Thick carbon layer on wok? I just got a 100,000 BTU burner for wok cooking. Today when I used it, I got a very thick layer of carbon on the wok (see picture below). Is that normal? Should I remove it? If so, how?

EDIT - FINAL RESULT:

Ok so I took a combination of the advice here.

I used an old metal baby spoon to scrap as much of the loose carbon off as I could. Then I turned the wok burner up to high high heat and burned the crap out of the carbon. A lot of it actually turned liquid and I poured it out. What didnt' turn into liquid, loosened considerably and I was able to, with a hacking/chopping motion of the metal spoon, get all the thick carbon coating off. I was surprised how resilient the seasoning on the wok was, very little of the actual seasoning scraped off. Here's the wok after the burning/hacking with the spoon I used:

Next I used some very coarse sea salt and with my hand I scraped and scraped until the inside was smooth again. Then I wiped some grape seed oil on the wok where the seasoning and come off, and burned it over high heat with the burner. Below is the final result.

100k BTU sounds like overkill for a single burner unless your wok is HUUUUGE (like, fit to serve a large restaurant).  I think that's related to your excessive carbon buildup.  A little burned-on crap is normal, but that amount is a sign you're either putting in too much heat, or not keeping enough food moving around in it.

Carbon is... well it rhymes with "witch"... to remove.  I've not seen it soluble in anything available outside a chem lab, and there are no easy tricks.  Here are the removal methods I've seen:

Scrape it off. This is the standard for serious built-up carbon on pans (particularly ones used as smokers). Use a paint scraper or bench scraper, and steel wool.  There are specialty tools for cleaning flat grills which have a flat, very sharp edge that work even better, but in a pinch even a stiff spatula will work. Yes, it's exhausting but it turns out to be surprisingly fast if you can pick a good scraping tool.
Burn it off, using the powerful burner or the self-cleaning cycle on an oven.  Be prepared for a lot of smoke.  Naturally, you'll have to re-season your wok, but this will remove some of the carbon.
I've HEARD people say they can get carbon off by repeatedly heat-shocking it.  This means heating it as hot as possible and then dropping it into ice water.  However, they talked about like 30 cycles, and it could render metal more brittle.  Might be worth a shot?

Personally I'd either scrape the bejeezus out of it, or just ignore it.


What kind of rice can I use in a salt shaker to prevent clumping Will brown rice eliminate clumps in the salt shaker as well as white rice?  I know white rice works well in a salt shaker to eliminate clumps caused by humidity, but I only have brown rice on hand.  Will brown rice work as well as white rice?

I do this at home, and it makes a significant difference.  I suspect that it is the mechanical action of the rice, but since adding a teaspoon of rice to each shaker, I don't have to get out the toothpick ever few weeks to clean the hole.

Brown rice includes the germ (embryo) of the grain, which contains some oil.  This oil goes rancid, which has an unpleasant smell.  In the quantities that you are using, and that the oil is still inside the rice, I don't think you would notice.

Note that it doesn't have to be rice.  a few beans, some barley, lentils, or wheat should work just as well.


Smoked a brisket that was edible but not great. What would you do differently? I smoked my first brisket last weekend and even though it wasn't terrible it was a little dryer and rougher than I would have liked.

Here is the smoker I used: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B7W8NHW/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Here are the steps I followed (along with some notes on things I may have done wrong):

I bought a four pound fresh brisket from a butcher.  It was 9.99/lb (next time I'm going to hit up Sam's club and try and get a 10-12 lb packer cut of USDA Choice)
I used Stubb's store bought dry rub.  I rubbed it on and then seared the meat on the grill.  I did not sear the fat cap. (Should I have let the dry rub sit longer?  Also, next time I'm thinking about doing equal parts salt, pepper, and paprika.  Should I have seared at all?  A lot of people seem to throw the meat right in the smoker after giving the dry rub some time to set in).
I had turned the smoker on and set it to 200 degrees before searing, so when I put the brisket in it was at 200 degrees and was already smoking.  I used dry wood chips and filled the water pan to the mark specified in the pan.
The smoker stopped producing smoke about 30 min in.  I wet some wood chips and put them in, but the smoke never came back.  (How often should I be adding wood chips?  Should they be wet? How long should the smoker be spitting out smoke?)
I let it sit for six hours.  I didn't have a meat thermometer at the time.  (What internal temp should I go for next time?)
I pulled the meat out, didn't wrap it in foil, and cut it after 20 min.  The bark looked nice but the meat was brown like a pot roast. I know when I get good restraunt BBQ that the meat tends to be a little red/pink.  The meat still tasted ok although it was a little tough.

Other questions.  Should I have wrapped the brisket in foil at some point?  When should I do this and what are instructions for after?  Some people seem to advocate doing so once the meat hits ~150 degrees F which will drastically decrease the cooking time.  Others seem to advocate taking the brisket out when it hits about 180, wrapping it in foil, then putting it in an empty cooler until it rises to ~200.

I know that this is really a bunch of questions rolled into one but I feel like this is a typical experience for a smoking newbie like myself.  I don't expect answers for every item but please try and point out the things I've done which are just empirically wrong.

From what I can tell you're generally on the right track here. From what you've said, there are probably just a few issues.

tough/dry/rough. Believe it or not not cooking long enough could be the problem here. You want your brisket to get in that 190-200 range, this will cause the connective tissue to break down and make it very nice. The other possibility here (and you didn't say so we don't know), is that brisket can be very tough if it's not cut properly. You need to cut the flat across the grain for it to be tender as it's a very long muscle.
Lack of a smoke ring. This is what we call the pink ring around the outer bit of the meat. You don't want the inside to be pink, you want the outside to have a pink ring around it. This can be unpredictable in formation and depends on a lot of things. If you liked how much smoke flavor your meat had, I wouldn't change anything, but if you wanted more smoke, try to either put in more wood chips at the start, or put them in dry (careful though, you don't want them to burn, but wetting them really just slows the burn time). From what I've read, the smoke ring forms early, so the first hour or so is the important part here.
Foil. This is hotly debated in the BBQ world. I only foil if I need to hold my meat for a period of time (if I mistime and finish early I'll wrap it up, drop it in a foam cooler with towls), but a lot of people swear by it for producing juicier meat. Totally up to you, experiment here.

Lastly, a few bits of advice (I've done a couple of briskets now, all on charcoal though). Don't bother to sear the meat, let your smoker take care of the whole cook. Do that, make sure you get your meat up to temp (brisket is hard to tell without a thermometer as it doesn't have a bone you can check, so go get an instant read one, they aren't too expensive). As far as the dry rub goes, that's a matter of taste, a lot of folks put it on the night before, but the meat gets plenty of flavor just applying it right before you put it on.


Do I need to let red wine breathe each time I uncork the same bottle? I have always allowed my red wines to breathe for at least 45 minutes prior to pouring.

Often I don't drink the whole bottle, but instead cork what is left.  When I go to serve on a different day, does breathing the wine provide the same benefit?  Is it recommended each time I uncork the same bottle?

Some wines improve with aeration.  Others, not so much. Mostly reds, but deciding which is which is a matter of experience and some information.  Many younger red wines will benefit from, at least, swirling in the glass...but could also improve in a decanter left open for 30 minutes to an hour.  I would guess that most people are drinking wines that are less than 5 years old.  Many of these wines improve with some air.  Older wines is where experience and knowledge come into play, as some need air and others will fade with time exposed.

Saving is another story.  Red wine should be vacuum sealed and refrigerated, as air will continue to work on the product.  ...over time, this is not necessarily a good thing.


Converting upright charcoal smoker to electric I bought an upright charcoal grill/smoker years ago because it was cheap and I was interested in doing both grilling and smoking. However, I didn't find it to be a great grill (too small, and the airflow to the charcoal pan was lousy) and my one attempt to use it as a smoker didn't end well, either (keeping a constant, low temperature with the charcoal + wood was really tough). I've since bought a larger kettle grill and love it, but I would love to try to smoke again with the old upright...but this time, using an electric hot plate instead of charcoal (Alton Brown-style).

My plan is this:

Put the hot plate on the bottom rack (of three), running the cord out the bottom.
Put wood chips/chunks in a heavy pie pan and place directly on the hot plate's heating element.
Put the water pan on the middle rack.
Put the meat on the top rack.
Use one probe-style thermometer to monitor the air temp around the meat, and another thermometer to keep an eye on the internal temperature of the meat.
Add additional wood to the pan as needed through the access door.

Questions:

Do I need the water pan if using this method? I'm reading conflicting information about the purpose of the water. Most sources say it is to maintain moist air in the closed cooking space, but others say this isn't really true, and that it is used as a "thermal buffer" to absorb heat and/or smooth out temperature changes.
What is the best way to adjust the temperature up or down? My hot plate does have an adjustment knob, but should I also drill some holes in the smoker's lid (it doesn't currently have any) that can be opened/plugged as needed?
Is this going to work at all? :)

1- The meat drying out is a very real problem when cooking for so long. When I have smoked with water it has seemed to be less of a problem. I'm sure it also gives a nice thermal buffer but I haven't conducted experiments on this.

2 and 3-
When I built the AB style smoker mine was smaller and earthenware so it would retain heat better. My cheap little hot plate was not able to get the temperature up to even 200F.

With a bigger smoker and one made out of metal I don't think a normal little hot plate will be able to get hot enough. You can experiment of course. It may be that my cheap hot plate was just under powered.
In my smoker I adjusted the hot plate temp knob as necessary. Eventually of course it stayed at full on.

If you are interested in more of a project- there are many hobbyist projects for making temperature controlled smokers. They would be more work but for an excellent reward. I was just looking at this one today that uses a wireless router for a web interface and an Arduino for control. Kind of like a homemade sous vide setup but for a smoker:
http://tvwbb.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9270072103/m/5721075126


Shelf Life of Homemade Panettone I'm thinking of making a few panettones for Christmas presents, this year. At what time would you recommend? This question is largely motivated by the potential for them to spoil or go stale; but also, if there's any maturation time, that would be good to know.

I'm guessing the water activity level is probably pretty low, so they won't spoil quickly and staleness would be more of a concern. I remember them being made commercially (in Italy) in October, but presumably they have access to better preservatives.

Panettone is better consume in the first 2 to 3 days. Even if it comes from the supermarket.

After the second day I recommend you to heat the piece you are going to eat in the oven for 7-10 minutes. Raisins will become creamy again–and your kitchen will smell delicious–. I've lived in Italy and my Italian flatmate used this trick.

Giallo Zafferano says you can freeze the dough after the last raising time

Translation:

  Preservation

  Homemade panettone keeps its freshness less time than manufactured
  panettone.

  You can preserve it for up to 2-3 days inside a plastic bag.

  It can be frozen after the last rising time. Defrost it inside the fridge and leave it there for at least 2 hours before kneading the dough again. Add the butter inside the cross and bake it.


On heating smoked salmon I'm trying to make onigiri (Japanese rice balls) that are typically stuffed with fish and eaten warm. I'd like to "cheat" and use smoked salmon or canned tuna instead of cooking a whole fish to save time and money.

Is heating uncooked cold fish like smoked salmon or tuna not recommended ? My main concern is food safety, but I  also want to know whether heat denatures or ruins the taste of prepared fish.

As far as food safety is concered, simply warming smoked salmon or canned tuna is uncritical (tuna casserole, anyone?).

For all warm, cooked foods the two-hour rule applies: After two hours in the 40°F - 160°F (4°C - 60°C) it should be discarded. (see more here)

So it is irrelevant whether you stuff your onigiri with smoked salmon or pickeled plums, because the rice alone falls into the "potentially hazardous" category.

Now for taste:
If you manage to pack your onigiri with very hot1 rice, yes, the smoked salmon gets heated and it may be partially or fully cooked, loosing some of the "melt in the mouth" character. But unless you plan to keep your onigiri hot (which is rather uncommon, afaik), they should cool down quickly enough so that they won't overcook the salmon, leaving you with a dry center or dry flakes thoughout the onigiri. Note that the same problem would exist with pre-cooked fish. Canned tuna is beyond help anyway, as far as cooking goes...

1 And there is a limit to how hot your rice may be so that you can shape it with bare or even gloved hands...


How do you organize your recipes? I am thinking of collecting and organizing recipes that turned out to be good.

The first thought I had is to write down the recipes in a word processor, print them out and collect them in a thin ring binder. My system would have only one recipe per page (including simple to complicated versions). I would make handwritten notes on the printed recipe whenever I feel the need to update it. Eventually, I would modify the recipe in the word processor if there are too many handwritten notes. This way, I would keep a clean and tidy recipe book for reference. What do you think?

How do you organize your recipes? What works best for you and what does not?

I've started keeping mine on a wiki. Google Docs would probably be a great alternative for someone who doesn't want to set up a server somewhere.


Looking for advice on making halva w/ allulose - first attempt came out gummy and taffy-like w/ oil separation I'm trying to create halva, and my first attempt ended up with something that wasn't crumbly like halva is supposed to be - instead, it ended up a hard, taffy-like confection that was tasted like halva but had none of the correct texture. I also had oil separation - when drying, the end product sweated out a lot of the tahini oil, so the end result was more dense than I wanted. Looking for advice/pointers on what I can do next time.

Note: I'm using a different sugar called allulose that very similar characteristics to regular sugar (sucrose). http://allulose.org/reformulating-products-allulose-considerations-flavor-profile-freezing-stability-sweetener-compatibility/

The (seemingly very simple) recipe I tried to follow from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64_ckmBf01M:

Ingredients:

2 cups of granulated sugar (the recipe calls for granulated sugar, and allulose I bought was in powdered form, so I actually used 1 1/8 cups powdered allulose for equivalency)
1.5 cups of tahini
1 tsp vanilla extract
0.5 cups of water

What I did:

Heated water, allulose to 160 degrees F.
Warmed up the tahini. It was supposed to be heated up to 110 degrees, but I accidentally let it go to 150 F. Added Vanilla extract to tahini.
Turned off heat.
Slowly mixed warmed tahini into sugar (well, allulose) solution.
Transferred the whole concoction into pan for cooling.

Everything looked good while I was doing the cooking, but as I mentioned above, the end result was more like taffy than crumbly, which is what I expect halva to taste like. The fact that the thing I ended up with released (sweated?) a bunch of oil was also off-putting. The taste wasn't offensive and the result of my experiment is perfectly edible. Just not halva.

I know that I overheated the tahini a bit, but I didn't think that should have mattered. Or was this my mistake? Maybe I should add more tahini or more sugar? Or is there a specific timespan to mix the two together? Why did the mixture release all the oil instead of setting correctly?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

Thanks,
Greg

It's really better to work in weight especially when cooking with different types of sugar. Trying to change the fineness of sugar, and the sugar chemistry, and then make up for it with adjusting volumes is prone to failure.

Halva is easy to make but hard to get the right consistency. My last lot ended up too soft/sticky. But it's ill-defined: different cooks and different cultures aim for different textures.

So I'd find a recipe that's described as being the type you're aiming for, make it exactly, and only then start substituting.


Ground beef meat colors seem different these days Why is it that in the "good old days" (I've been cooking/ buying/butchering for 6 decades) freshly ground meat was red until prolonged oxygen exposure turned it brown (store-bought, packaged meat was a bit greyer...darker red on the outside and nice pink/ red on the inside). Today I notice the opposite, red on the outside and grey on the inside. Why is this happening?

The color of meat comes from the pigment myoglobin. Freshly cut meat shows a purple-red color. When exposed to air, myoglobin forms oxymioglobin, providing an attractive cherry-red shade. However, long exposure to air and store lighting lead to the formation of metmyoglobin, which is brownish-red.
The inside part of the meat can show a more greyish color due to the lack of contact with oxygen.

The industry uses some techniques to control / cover the oxidation of myoglobin up to metmyoglobin and keep a nice red shade for a longer time.

Modified atmosphere packaging (MAP): to avoid complete oxidation of the meat and final brownish/greyish color (that does not look appealing anymore); some gases like carbon dioxide and nitrogen are used to decrease the content of oxygen and to slow down this process. Therefore, the outside doesn't turn grey that fast. For more information please refer to: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4093050/
Color additives: in Europe, minced meat is a product category that is subject to contain color additives according to the Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008. E.g. the category "burger meat" can contain carmine or carminic acid (red color extracted from crushed bugs and stabilized with aluminium salts...), whereas other categories within the group may not be allowed to contain such color additives but natural colors or vegetable extracts. Nowadays many meat producers are switching to red beet or radish extracts to enhance the red shade of fresh minced meat in fresh sausages, meatballs, etc. while keeping "clean label".
In the US there is a list of commonly used meat additives (https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/food-labeling/additives-in-meat-and-poultry-products/additives-in-meat-and-poultry-products)

Note: nitrites and nitrates are food preservatives not used in fresh meat but in cured and/or processed meat.


How to adjust stewing time for different weights of meat? Simple scenario: I've got a Madras recipe that tells me to stew 2.0 kg of Lamb shoulder meat in the oven, covered with foil for 2,5 hours at 180 deg Celsius, then another 30 mins at 200 deg without the foil.

Now I'm cooking for only a few people, so I have 0.6 kg of meat, i.e. only 30% of the recipe's weight.

So, my question: How should I adjust the cooking times? Any useful rule of thumb?

My initial thought was be to factor times down to 0.6 / 20, i.e. respectively 45 and 10 minutes. Then again, this seems on the low side for a tender stew (or is it?). This is probably because of those 2,5 hours, maybe 50% would be to ensure the meat's cooked, and the other 50% is to ensure it's tender; and those halves are to be adjusted differently?

Suggested questions "that may already have your answer" has one great title, but question nor answer helps me answer my question. Searching seems to yield zero results, though my queries may've been wrong.

With lamb (and stews in general) it's not a great idea to adjust cooking times to account for quantity of meat. I have found some useful information on this Chow.com article:

  The key to cooking any tough cut is slow simmering over low heat—lamb shoulder could take upward of two hours to reach the tender zone. Don't be alarmed if the meat seems quite tough after it's cooked for a while, sunshine842 says. The muscle fibers seize up, then relax into a state of tenderness after more cooking. Just keep simmering.

So if you reduce your cooking time to 30% then the meat will have 70% less time to relax and become tender. I suggest to instead stick with the original cooking time and just check it now and then. You can't really over-cook shoulder over low heat.


What kind of food should be stored in a refrigerator's "snack pan" drawer? (This may be a silly question, but I'll ask anyway since I am curious about this.)

We have an older fridge and it has a drawer labeled "snack pan."  I'm not sure how to understand "snack" here.

What is a snack pan refrigerator drawer intended to hold? Is it primarily for deli meats? Or else should deli meats go in the "chilled meat compartment"?  What else goes in a snack pan?
Is the benefit of a snack pan drawer to simply provide a place for smaller/shorter items to keep the shelves free for other things, or does food being in snack pan affect the food differently (such as how the chilled meat compartment is colder?)

I tried searching Google already, but all I ended up with were pages of replacement parts, repair instructions, and a few spammy links. Sadly, there was nothing truly informative.  So here I am.

I believe that "snack drawers" tend to be the same temperature as the rest of the refrigerator and really just exist as a place for you to corral small items/kid-friendly foods. I know some people that put pudding, cheese sticks, etc. in their snack drawer without issue.


Why worry about "danger zone" when thawing meat if I'm going to be cooking the meat immediately after? I'm cooking my meat above 55C, mostly around 65C.
I understand there are all kinds of safety measures surrounding defrosting. Using cold water and changing it every 30min or defrosting in the fridge. Making sure not to leave it on the counter or not to use warm/hot water.
This is because of the danger zone; bacteria doubles every ~20 min.
If I am defrosting meat in order to cook it, and I am cooking at safe temperatures, then why should I worry about how I defrost my meat?

If I am defrosting meat in order to cook it, and I am cooking at safe temperatures, then why should I worry about how I defrost my meat?

If this were true, wouldn't it then follow that it would be safe to cook meat which has already spoiled, so long as you cooked it at a safe temperature?  It's not true.  While the bacteria would be killed by cooking at a safe temperature, but the toxins they leave behind remain and can make you ill.


How do I pound chicken (or other meat) without making a mess? Despite my best efforts, my kitchen (and sometimes the chicken) always looks like a war zone after pounding 8 or 10 breasts.  Maybe this is just a messy job, but I think there must be something I'm missing.

I've tried using mallets, both metal and wooden  The meat always gets stuck to the pounding surface and the mallet.  I've tried putting the meat inside a plastic sandwich bag or freezer bag; the bag is always ripping and falling apart before the meat is flat.  Wax paper is about the same.

I've also tried rolling pins.  Even got a "non-stick" one.  This way is even more hopeless for me, because the meat either slides around on the surface or sticks to the pin (doesn't matter if I use flour).

Surely there must be a combination of tools and techniques that would allow me to complete this task without requiring 20 minutes of constant cursing and an extra hour of cleanup.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Clingwrap works fine for me -- but I don't use a meat tenderizer -- I just use a small but fairly heavy pan (but not my cast iron, as it's not smooth on the bottom).

When I was in college, I tried a few things.  I can get pretty decent results just hitting it with my cutting board.  (with it between saran wrap).

Part of it might be technique -- if I'm doing chicken breast I first slice is sort of following the taper of the breast, so it's neither with or across the grain, but kinda of diagonal.  You also don't want to hit straight down -- you want to angle the blows, so you're actually pushing the meat out, and not just trying to force it through the counter.

And I should mention that I've only ever pounded out poultry and pork -- I assume beef would be the same, but I have no experience to confirm or deny it.


Seasoning advice for seitan to replicate gyro meat I am looking for a seasoning recipe to flavor seitan so that it tastes like gyro.

I have tried products on the market but all have been disappointing. The most successful recipe I have tried is the vegan gyro at the Chicago Diner in Chicago.

Has anyone made this? Any tips on how to get that salty savory depth of flavor?

Bury it in bread. A meat-substitute burger or kebab meat that has obvious textural or flavor flaws when served bare will often appear near perfect in a pita or bun. Also, you can keep a lot of oil/sauce on it that way, which carries seasonings and juicyness.

Start with baked seitan, made from vital wheat gluten (and 10-20% of another protein flour like lentil or chickpea optimally), and season both in the dough and when sauteing the cut up seitan later - experiment with which seasoning is best added at which time.

Try strong soy sauces (eg chinese light), cumin, smoked salt and/or smoked paprika, sugar, nutritional yeast/msg, flavorful chile pepper powders (eg turkish chile flakes - not just cayenne pepper powder!), garlic, onion. Also add something acidic, eg sumach or lemon.


Are calemondin leaves edible? I have a little bush which lost quite a few leaves due to overwatering. They are healthy looking and fragment.
I wonder if I can use them in a similar way to kaffir lime leaves? I couldn't find much info re: toxicity, but lemon leaves are used in some regions to impart flavour .

This is Texas A&M University's description of calemondin:
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/patiocitrus/Calamondin.html

In it, they seem to indicate that the leaves are not toxic:

  The distilled oil of the leaves serves as a carminative with more
  potency than peppermint oil.

However, they list just about every use of the tree and its fruit, from marmalades to hair conditioner, and that's the only mention of the leaves.  Because that's the only usage mentioned, I would suspect that even if the leaves are not toxic, they're not suited for flavoring anything.

I hope that's at least a little helpful.


Multi-nozzle piping rig? I need to frost a ton of cupcakes (hundreds) for an event in a few months and I'm looking for something to help me do this. Has anyone ever seen a manual multi-nozzle (like 3 or 4-nozzle) piping gun, or something like that? (Imagine 3 or 4 caulking guns side-by-side.)

This project is too big for a home kitchen and yet too small for large-scale commercial production. I only need this a couple times a year, so it's not worth buying a professional automatic frosting machine. Would it be possible to rent one or run some batches in a commercial production-line bakery? How could I find one? (I must not be searching for the right keywords b/c I couldn't find any online near LA/Orange County).

I'm even willing to make a DIY project out of this but don't know where to start - wood, PVC, duct tape + baling wire?

Any suggestions? Thanks!

UPDATE: The objective is to decorate 3-4 cupcakes at a time while keeping the piping tips handheld in order to allow for the finesse of hand piping. By multi-nozzle, I mean more like this or this rather than this. Only one frosting, no conveyor belt, and not this EZfrost gizmo. Almost thinking a 1:1 pantograph, but to output 3 or 4 finished products at a time. The nozzles could even be hoses coming from a single tube/tank to a bracket with 3-4 tips, remotely kinda sorta like this.

The mechanism could use piping bags or these fillable caulking tubes, just need to make sure they're food safe. And for the nozzle tips, it would need to accept either a standard large decorating tip coupler, or allow me to put the decorating tip on and secure it somehow.

OH, and I have access to a 3D printer! (I just don't know how to create the models.)

For a commercial kitchen, I'm willing to buy ingredients and do all the production there to preserve sanitation. For additional human labor, I had friends and family help me last year, and 26 hours later they all pretty much said they never want to see or hear about another cupcake again in their life... not sure I want to do that to them again.

Food safe zip ties do exist. A thin rolling pin or knife steel could make a handle crossbar for a couple of piping guns, and palette knives or narrow cutting boards could be useful as structural elements to cross-tie the piping guns too. Everything made out of food safe parts :)


How do I adjust the cooking time for two joints as opposed to one? I have a recipe for roasting sirloin of beef. It calls for a 1.5-2kg piece of meat. I couldn't find a piece this large, so have two half sized joints - one about 950g, one about 700g. My recipe tells me to:

Roast for 30 mins at 200 degrees C.
Turn heat down to 180 degrees C and cook for 10-15 mins per 450g, depending on how rare you like it.
Rest for 30 mins in a warm place, wrapped in foil.

How do I adjust this for two separate pieces of meat? I am aware that they have a larger surface area and don't want to overcook them, or dry them out. Can anyone help me?

talon8 is absolutely right: the best way to go about this is to use a thermometer. However, it is still an interesting question how the expected cooking time varies with the weight of a roast.

It is such an interesting question that in 1961, SIAM Review published a scholarly article entitled "On Cooking a Roast". To be a bit more precise, the question that the authors answer is this: Suppose we have two roasts with exactly the same combination of identical tissues, and the same shape except that the one is a scaled (blown up) version of the other. Let's weigh both roasts and compute the ratio between the two weights; let's call that ratio r. Suppose furthermore that the roasts have the same starting temperature, and we will cook both until they have both reached some given (higher) temperature at their centre. What can we say about the times that both roasts need to cook for?

The answer is that under these assumptions, the bigger roast will need r^(2/3) times as long as the smaller one.

So, assuming each small roast (700 and 950 grams) has the same shape as the big one that the recipe writers used (let's say 1750 grams), for the 950 gram roast you'd expect to use (950 / 1750)^(2/3) = 0.665 or about two-thirds of the cooking time, and for the 700 gram one you'd expect to use (700 / 1750)^(2/3) = 0.543 or just over half of the cooking time. In particular, for the 950 gram roast, you should expect to roast it at 200C for 20 minutes, then turn down to 180 and roast for around 0.665 * 1750 / 450 * 12.5 = 32 minutes more. (1750 / 450 * 12.5 = 49 minutes is the average time they would recommend for the 1750 gram roast, and we're using that as the base for comparing our 950 gram roast against.) Then check with your thermometer!

Finally, I think for the resting time, you might as well use the original 30 minutes, because that's not (only) about getting the internal temperature to a certain level (although it does contribute to that - the heat will spread out through the meat), but also about things like the muscle fibers relaxing and the like, which are not covered by the article.


Why are my macarons cracking on top? I've tried to make macarons eight times in a row and I failed. I used this recipe (text version is in the description below the video).

They all cracked on top and the surface collapsed as you see in the picture. I did some research and watched youtube videos to find out what I am doing wrong. As I figured the following factor could be the reason behind ugly macaroons:

I read somewhere that the time you let the batch sit and dry before putting i the oven is an important factor. I let it rest for 45 minutes to one hour instead of 20-30 minutes, but the result was the same, if not worse.
The other factor is beating egg whites to stiff peaks. There, I think this is where my problem come from. So I beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt to medium peak stage, then add in the sugar in 3 batches while mixing with hand mixer. After watching several videos I know what stiff peaks look like, or at least I think so. But trying the recipe keeping that point in mind it still had the same result:

What else is important in making macarons that avoid them crack? What am I missing?

The weird thing is, my first batch was a success without precise measurements and so on! Here is the picture:

You had too much air in your batter. This isn't a result of beating to much, but rather insufficient macaronage after folding in the sugar and almonds. The excess air expands in the oven and creates a hollow shell that then collapses.

The macaronage is really the trickiest thing about macarons - it is very hard to convey in recipes exactly what the texture of the batter should be after the process. It just takes practice and experience. It is hard to get out of the sponge-making mindset of gently folding ('must retain air, must not overdevelop gluten!'), but you must in fact beat the air out of the batter like nobody's business. Knowing when to stop so you don't end up with batter puddles is the key.

For what it's worth, I have tried many macaron recipes over the years, all with varying degrees of fussiness regarding age of the egg whites, texture of the almonds, stiffness of the peaks and so on, but the best recipe I have ever used is the one that does away with most of that nonsense - you can find it here.


Sous Vide time for 1.5 lb 1 inch thick bone-in chuck roast at 140F Would this require a 24+ hour bath at 140F, or would the limited thickness and size allow it be 12 hours?

It takes very roughly 81 minutes for your meat to reach the 140F cooking temperature assuming you have just the meat and no marinade in the bag, and no part of the meat is frozen. The rest is all steady state cooking time. Based on my own experience, I am inclined to say that if there is any difference in texture and flavour between 12 hours and 24 hours, it is subtle to the extent that it may be noticeable in a side-by-side comparison.


Baking chicken - temperature vs time I'd like to bake a chicken. Let's say it's already washed, marinated, sitting on tray and ready to bake. I usually do it at 180 degrees C, for 1 hour. My main problem is that the skin is not crunchy enough and the meat is kind of "wet" and watery.

I'd like to know what will change if I bake it longer at this temperature, or if I bake it for the same time at higher temperature. Basically, how does temperature, baking time and air flow (optional ventilation in the oven) affect the meat. I guess I should experiment, but I'd like to understand the underlying processes a bit.

If the question is crispy skin, these related questions (1 and 2) provide a lot of tips and tricks to get what you want.  As you can see in this answer, the trick is to start at a lower temperature to render all the fat - you also want your chicken sitting on a rack or on top of vegetables so it's not sitting in the fat once it's rendered.  Towards the end of your cooking you want to turn up the heat to crisp up the skin after the fat has rendered.

Note that watery meat isn't good, but you do want to keep your meat moist, so you don't want to cook it so long at a high heat that it dries out.  Tender meat is greatly helped by using a brine.


Meat and Poultry Changing Color in Marinade? I am working on a marinade for my chicken breast and filet mignon for a fondue we are planning on having tonight. I took the meat out of the fridge and noticed they both seemed to change color. The chicken turned white and the meat turned brown. I over-marinated -- it called for 8 hours and I marinated close to 24. I didn't think it would harm them. Both meats were bought that day as well.

Some ingredients I think would affect this would be red onion, olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, and salt.

Is this okay? Am I worrying too much? I really don't want to get sick!

At least in the case of marinades containing acids (such as vinegar or lemon juice) or certain enzymes, especially from papayas, kiwis, or most commonly (at least in the US), fresh pineapple juice, a certain amount of denaturing of the proteins will occur at the surface of the marinated meat. This will turn it opaque rather than translucent--chicken will look kind of white. This is perfectly normal, and safe.

Depending on the color of the marinade, and the particular cut being marinated, some of the marinade may also penetrate into the meat, changing its color as well.

These are normal effects, and assuming you have otherwise respected good practices (keeping the meat refrigerated during the marination, not holding the food uncooked longer than would be safe without the marinate, and not cross-contaminating and so on), the product should be safe to eat.

In the case of your meat marinated triple the planned time, the outcome will depend on the nature of the particular marinade.  If there was active enzymatic action, it could be very mush to the point of unpleasantness. On the other hand, if the marinade was mostly for flavor, rather than highly acidic, it might just have a more intense flavor from the marinade.

Edit:
I should add for clarity, when safe above means when properly cooked...


Mayonnaise in stand mixer is very runny I've frequently made homemade mayonnaise in my food processor following Alton Brown's recipe, and consistently had good results.

Last week the food processor was busy with something else, and so I decided to make the mayo in the stand mixer. Using the whisk attachment and turning it up to high speed, I got everything emulsified but the resulting mayonnaise was very runny -- not broken or separated, but much less viscous than what I get from the food processor. It's been in the fridge for about a week, and is still the same consistency (emulsified but runny).

I assume it got too much air whipped in or something. Is there a way to use a stand mixer for mayonnaise, or does it really need the speed of a food processor or blender?

I'm taking a stab here, but since you're accustomed to making mayonnaise in a food processor, you probably already have a habit for how you pour in the oil. Since a food processor moves so fast, it can emulsify quickly, so you can pour the oil in relatively quickly.

A mixer is much slower, like using a whisk, you need to pour the oil very slowly, so every drop becomes completely emulsified before more is added. So try it slower next time.

For this mayonnaise, try to fix it as if it's broken, as in this video

Put another egg yolk in a mixing bowl and slowly add your thin mayo while whisking (or mixing in your mixer). Then slowly add more oil until the consistency is right.

BTW: See how slowly she's pouring?


How can I make a chocolate syrup that can be frozen? I am looking to make a chocolate syrup without eggs, that freezes well.

The most common methods to create chocolate coated ice cream bars, with or without a stick are to:

Use truly tempered chocolate, which may be more trouble than it is worth
Use a mixture of chocolate thinned with vegetable oil.

See for example, this recipe from Serious Eats.


Can I ferment blanched cabbage? I've blanched some cabbage and I wonder if I can ferment it in order to have sauerkraut.
Will it work? Will it be safe?
Edit I followed the recommendations and added some raw vegetables and a little bit more salt than usual. The fermentation process was fine and the end product was delicious. Note for future me, don't blanch cabbage for sauerkraut :) . It's less troubles.

Probably, two considerations; Depending on how much you cooked it and how you drain it it may mess-up the salt balance. And, I started my kruat with a little bakers yeast and sugar so did not rely on natural yeast , because you have killed the natural yeast you may need something to start it. I understand that the yeast produce lactic acid in homemade while commercial kraut has added acetic acid.


Cooling off a kettle-style grill I'm trying to slow-cook using indirect heat on my kettle-style grill, and having some temperature issues.

Most of my experience with my grill follows one of two patterns:

First cook the food item (almost always meat) sous vide. Dump an inordinate amount of white-hot coals from the chimney into the kettle. Sear the meat for about 30 seconds for a quick crust without affecting the perfectly-done interior. Rest and serve
Sear first (following method above), then cook indoors.

But, as much as I like the consistent results I get from cooking sous vide without having to pay attention, I am trying to improve my BBQ game.

So, I tried using fewer coals, preheating them a bit less, and reducing the air flow. Even still, low and behold, I got a fairly hot fire going that I really didn't want this time.

So, how do I cool it down? I'm trying to get from over 300 down to under 200. I think water will do the trick, but I worry it will put out the fire. I already have the airflow restricted--again, I'd be afraid of closing it off too much and killing the coals. What tricks are available to drop the temperature to a range I can start maintaining.

Simple answer:  fewer briquettes.  Space them out a bit.  You can make fine adjustments by raising the cooking surface or lowering the briquettes.  I know my kettle has a lower briquette grill, if you take out the main one.  I've also seen briquette grills with sunken channels to create small pockets of heat.  I also have a couple of trapezoidal briquette holders, which I can use to position briquettes and create warmer or cooler spots.

Charcoal briquettes are designed to be a consistent temperature.  Of course, poorer quality briquettes will be less consistent or burn for less time, but in general any single briquette will burn as long and as hot as any other.

Trying to douse or smother the briquettes may cause smoke or steam, but it's not going to have a good, consistent effect.

Interesting comparison info from Dutch Oven cooking:  with a standard 12" Dutch Oven, 12 briquettes in a ring under the oven and 12 spaced around the edge of the lid will give you approximately a 350 degree oven for about an hour.  Temperature is adjusted by adding or removing briquettes.  This means, in a grill, 24 briquettes could give you a grill temp near 350, if the food is about 2-3 inches away.  (The linked chart has a slightly different arrangement; 12/12 is what I learned as a simple rule of thumb, but everyone has different practices...  or may desire top browning or bottom boiling.)


Vegan Cheese - Almond Milk Curdle Does almond milk curdle?

I tried to make it curdle to make vegan cheese. I added vinegar and cooked it and nothing happened. I continued to cook off all the water and was left with essentially an almond paste. How do you make a colloid like this curdle more to make it like cheese?

Vegan cheeses are typically mot made by curdling a vegan milk. As you have noticed, vegan milks don't curdle when you introduce an acid. Vegan cheeses tend to be made by either making a nut paste with some add-ins to give it a nice flavour and texture, or by thickening a vegan milk mixture with some starch or agar agar.


Torte Milanese without puff pastry dough I'd like to make Torte Milanese today, and I wouldn't use puff pastry dough in that recipe since my home-made puff pastry is not as soft as it is expected for such a dish. What other dough could I use here?

If you use something other than puff pastry it's not a Torte Milanese anymore, and other kinds of pastry will not hold together in the same way puff pastry does. Puff pastry's layers provide a certain amount of strength and will help keep the shape when sliced, other pastries will crumble much more easily. You can use short crust or any other pastry, it won't be the same but maybe that's not so important to you.

You could of course just buy pre-made puff pastry, there's no shame in that. Puff pastry is challenging and time-consuming to make, and in many places you can buy frozen pre-made all butter puff pastry which gives excellent results. I've made puff pastry, but when I need it I usually buy it as I don't have hours free to spend on it.

One option would be to make "rough puff" pastry, also known as "flaky pastry" rather than full-blown puff pastry. It's less time consuming, a bit more forgiving, and will still give a similar product.


Where should I store my cakes? Where is the best place to store cakes?

I usually store them in a normal, plastic box but I had  an idea to store them in a freezer. Would that be okay to store cakes there? Could it degrade the flavour and the taste?

I'm asking because I don't want to throw away cakes which are both chocolate and ribbon, if that matters.

Most cakes freeze extremely well--especially cakes that are not iced, such as bundt cakes.

Wrap the cake in plastic wrap, then aluminum foil, and freeze.  For cupcakes or slices, you can put them in a freezer bag.

If you are going to freeze a whole cake, it is better to frost it after thawing, as the icing can be tricky.

If you have icing, you can put the cake in the freezer long enough for the icing to br firm, and then wrap and freeze--however, thawing can be tricky as you might get a bit of condensation, which can affect the texture of the frosting.

EDIT in response to question about a plastic box, and why the double layering:

Boxes consume space extra space, often at a premium in a freezer, and offer air gaps in which freezer burn is more likely.
Not all plastic is food-safe.
The food-safe plastic wrap is for direct contact with the cake but is gas permeable.  I suppose you could just go directly to foil, but things are more likely to stick to it.
The foil provides a gas and moisture barrier (and light, but that is less of a problem in the freezer).
The direct contact with the with the cake eliminates the air gaps, making freezer burn much less likely.


Tramontina lid stuck to pot Loved my tramontina 3 piece induction system from Costco until this happened.  Was boiling some eggs as I do every morning and had done for 9 days in a row with this system.  This morning I might have had the temperature a little higher but not much more. When the water came to a rolling boil I put 2 eggs in. When it was time to pull them out I shut off the cooktop and went to pull off the lid, but I couldn't because it was stuck. I thought that maybe it needed to cool down so I left it alone now 12 hours. However the lid is still stuck to the pot. I do not wish to force it. I have even held it upside down as pictured.

It seems really unlikely it somehow rusted shut or anything like that while you were boiling, so it seems most likely that there's just a partial vacuum inside. While boiling, it'd have been full of hot air and steam, and now that's all cooled down, and the steam has condensed, so it could shrink down you end up with low pressure inside sucking the lid down. It's a bit surprising that the seal is good enough to hold the pressure for this long, though!

In any case, if that's it, assuming there's still liquid in it, I'd try just heating it again. That would increase the pressure inside, hopefully back up to normal, enough to let you get the lid off. I'd also try twisting and angling it, because if that's it, all you need is a tiny opening to equalize pressure.

If this does turn out to have been the issue, you could probably avoid it in the future by opening the lid immediately when it's done.


How to get uniform sized biscotti? I follow this recipe to make biscotti and replace 1 egg with 50 gms of butter. So I end up adding 2 eggs and 50 gms of butter.It is always incredibly yummy but I have 2 issues and would be great if I could get some tips or help:

I never get uniform sized/shaped slices like in the picture on the website. They are very small on the ends and very long in the middle even though I try to make a very uniform looking logs before baking.
Some of the biscotti slices are very crumbly and break when I slice them. I do use a very good serrated knife to slice the log.

Chill this or any cookie dough once finished mixing and before baking. Make your biscotti dough into perfect rectangle logs right to the edge of your pan, with even height and width right across. Use a ruler if you have to. I suspect you have a higher height in the middle - that dough will need to go somewhere when heated, and that's sideways (creating your longer middle baked width).

Once you have these perfectly formed rectangles of dough, chill in the fridge for an hour at least. This will really help keep it's shape and reduce any uneven spreading during bake. You could also try slightly increasing your first-bake temp 10-15 degrees as this will help quick set the exterior of the biscotti logs. The only other thing I may mention is the recipe - perhaps you can just slightly scale back the baking powder to help reduce the spread of the dough during baking.

Once baked just to set (depends on size), pull from the oven and let cool just slightly. While still warm to the touch, start slicing your cookies to a consistent, even desired width - I really recommend using an electric knife if you have one to make the work a lot easier for yourself. If you don't have one, just work quickly with your best serrated knife. Doing this while still warm will definitely help with reducing breakage and crumbs.


When freezing prepared meats, is it better to freeze the meat separate from the sauce/gravy? I am making a corned beef with a glaze to be eaten next week. Is it better for me to freeze the meat + gravy together, or to freeze the meat in one container and the gravy in another?

I use two containers when possible. The meat and the sauce usually thaw at different rates, so you end up w chunks of frozen meat embedded in thawed sauce. This can be messy to work with.
Once frozen, it's OK to combine meat and sauce in a single container. Just separate when thawing.


Fermentation Brine Percentage and Tannins This is probably a 2 part question.

When determining how much salt to add to my brine... what is the best method? Is the percentage based on the weight of the veggies or is it the weight of the water into which the veggies will be fermenting?
Where the heck can I find things like grape leaves, oak leaves, etc to add tannins to keep my veggies crisp?

Edit:
So... to further clarify... would it be "advisable" to determine how much water I need to cover my X grams of "things to be fermented"... the weigh that water and calculate salt percentage... or, can I just take 1L of water... weigh that... calculate my salt... then cover what's in the vessel?

Calculate your brine percentage by dividing the weight of salt by the weight of water, then multiply by 100.  Most vegetable ferments are in the 1.5% - 5% range. It appears many people find the 2-3% range ideal.  If you can't find oak or grape, I have seen that some folks use tea leaves for added tannin.


Sticking cake in prepared pans I grease both tube & bundt pans & dust with flour.  Because I live at about 4200 altitude I cook recipes longer.  Every time the cakes stick & do not come out of the pans.  I have to do patchwork to make it look presentable.  Please give me any advise or suggestions.  Thanks JB

I find that baking spray with added flour in with the oil works a little better for me than spraying and adding flour. I think because the oil tends to collect in some places and then you get a lot of flour in that one ridge and not evenly coating the pan. If you use butter or solid shortening that tends to be easier to evenly coat, but the flour is still not going to be as even as with the baking spray, so that might help.

If you're making something like a pound cake (with lots of butter), it is likely to come out of the pan better if you let it fully cool first. If you're making a cake with vegetable oil, I think it comes out of the pan more readily when it has cooled some (about 10 minutes or so) but not completely.

I sometimes run a thin, flimsy plastic knife along the edges to loosen things. I also put a plate on  the open part of the pan (what will be the bottom of the cake) so that I am supporting the cake as I turn it over. This works best if the cake rose to fully fill the bundt pan, otherwise the middle ring will cause the cake to be suspended over the plate, which is what I'm trying to avoid. (If you're in this situation, you could roll up a clean kitchen towel or two and make a ring out of it and use that to fill the gap, but you may want to put some parchment or wax paper between the cake and the towel.) I want the cake to be fully supported first by the pan and then by the plate. I can then tap and jiggle the pan and see if it is coming loose, and if it isn't, I can abort and let it cool a little longer.

Another thought, though, is that some cakes hold up better in a bundt form than others. Pound-cake styles work really well for me and show the details of the mold very well. Light and fluffy cakes don't tend to hold themselves together as well to release as well from a highly detailed mold unless you are really careful with the pan prep and temperatures.


Should I buy steel or ceramic knives? I am soon to be moving to a house with a very nice kitchen, and so the time has come for me to buy myself a proper set of knives. I have been looking around at the various types available. There seem to be cheaper steel knives with plastic or wooden handles (e.g. from normal homeware stores), pro-range solid steel knives (e.g. Global) and also ceramic knives. As much as I'd like to buy something like the Global knives, they are quite expensive and so I've been looking at what else is out there.

While I'm pretty sure the pro-range steel knives will outperform the cheap steel knives, I have no idea how good ceramic knives are.

Are there reasons why I might want to choose ceramic over steel or vice versa?
What are the things to look out for when buying knives?

Ceramic knives:

cut
get through metal detectors at night clubs

Steel knives:

cut
smash (garlic, ginger...)
pry (potato eyes)
look good
scare burglars
stick to metallic thingies on the wall
don't scratch glass cutting boards (anyone cringing?)
don't snap when thrown dropped.
have zen-like qualities, sharpening them is pure meditation.
have good mass, more control IMO.
have rivets as a handy measurement reference for consistent length cuts
have a spine you can hammer to get through that bone (now who's cringing?)


Spearmint kinda Musky So, I recently bought some Spearmint plants, and the yield has been pretty nice. However, I've hit a bit of a snag. I've tried a few different Drying and Brewing methods, from Oven drying to Air drying, from loose leaf in a kettle to in a coffee maker (both Fresh and dried), and it seems that I just can not seem to get a good flavor out of them.
Ya, I know Spearmint has very little Menthol (if any, depending on the variety). Normally it has that spearminty leafy green flavor, but no matter what I do, I can't seem to get rid of this Musky flavor and smell. I'm working with Smooth-leaf Spearmint atm.

Anyone know what I might be doing wrong?

When processing leaves into tea, there are three important steps:

Withering: this happens in the shadow or in the sun depending on what tea you want to make. In your case, I think sun-drying is proper. The goal is to allow the leaves to dry and soften a bit.
Rolling: after withering, you can roll the leaves, to squeesh the flavor from the inside to the surface.
Fixing: after rolling, you need to intensively dry the tea, for example in the oven. This is important to stop the oxidation process and reach a water content level below 5% (otherwise mould will develop later).

So if your tea tastes off, you have to check which step wasn't properly done. Since your tea was musky, it might be that the last step of fixing, wasn't done properly.


Weird white ball/crystal like formations on RXbar I am a fan of RX bars and have been eating them for a while now, but I've never seen something like this before. After browsing through the internet, I'm wondering if this is related to 'sugar bloom' on chocolate or sugar crystals that form on old dates, since both chocolate and dates are ingredients for these bars. I am wondering if I have to throw these all out or can eat them. I unpacked two of these bars in a set of 20 bars, so I really don't want to throw them out but I don't want to eat something that will do me no good. Most of these form on the packaging and towards one of the corners only, and there are only very few that are actually attached to the bar. Here are pictures for reference:

That's most likely sugar or fat bloom which is fine to eat. It happens (most often on cheaper chocolates) when it's kept in warm conditions (like an shipping warehouse) and the sugars crystalize on the surface.  See more here: https://www.myrecipes.com/ingredients/what-is-that-white-stuff-on-chocolate


How do you split Chickpeas? I'm currently reading a South-Indian cookbook which is adamant that you only use split chickpeas in the recipes, but I can only find the unsplit variety. What does it actually mean to split chickpeas and what is the method?

The cookbook gives the following advice.

  Split Chickpeas--Chana Dal Similar to Moong dal and Urad dal, chana dal is obtained when Chickpeas are split and the skin removed.
  This dal is orange in color.

But the chickpeas I can get have no indication of being split.

Chickpeas are whole legumes commonly known as garbanzo beans. When these beans are split and husked you get split chickpeas or Chana Dal. Not really orange in color, but more like yellowish. Considered a lentil, Chana dal(Split chickpeas) is commonly used in Indian cuisine and usually sold in Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi food stores. Most supermarkets located in areas with asian population often sell this, may also be available online for example here or here.


What is the name of this dish involving fruit & sugar - blended and baked thin and flat? I don't know what it is I'm doing (IE, the name of the technique or dish) I can't research it.

I cook either rhubarb or passion fruit with a few tablespoons of sugar, blend until very smooth, spread out very thinly on a baking mat and then cook on a low temperate. (The cooking  - I assume - caramelizes the sugars.)

The desired result is a pliant thin sheet of fruit flavor (which is what I want).

I've also ended up with a gooey mess that can't be used (undercooked),  or a bitter overcooked disaster.  The issue I have with it (when I get the cooking time right) is that it is really chewy. Like a caramel or toffee, it gets stuck in your teeth which is totally undesirable.

Does any one know what the name of I'm trying to cook?

Use a dehydrator designed for fruit leather (it will have non-stick trays with very small perforations, so water can escape, but fruit pulp stays in place

Adjust sugar level to adjust chewyness


Can I save time by baking banana bread using the convection setting of my oven? I am following a banana bread recipe that calls for you to heat a conventional oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and cook the banana bread batter for one hour.

I want the bread to be done sooner then one hour. Is it possible to cook the bread faster using a convection oven, and achieve the same or better results then with a conventional oven?

Some websites (here and here) seem to imply that you should cook cakes/cookies/bread for the same amount of time as you would with a conventional oven. I believe the idea is that you can not shorten the amount of time it takes for the bread to rise.

Other websites (such as here and another website I had open but cant find now) seem to imply that you can shorten the amount of time it takes for the bread to cook.

So which is it? Can I save time, by using convection setting to bake my banana bread, or am I asking for somehow lesser quality bread if I do so?

*Note, the batter is recessed within the bread pan so the whole "wind blowing your batter over" is not an issue or concern.

When you heat something in the oven, a thin layer of vaporized water will settle around the good where it is exposed to air. This thin layer acts as a (minor) insulation. In a convection oven this thin layer will not form.

The contradicting statements result from the fact that the answer depends on how much the baked good is actually exposed to environment.

Cookies on the baking tray will need less time.
Bread on the baking tray will need less time.
Bread in a bread pan will not need (much) less time, as the pan is rather high compared to the top surface - the volume compared to the surface is too high for the convection to work efficiently.
The convection will heat the top surface better though, so you will end up with an uneven result, top done, bottom not done. You can get rid of this problem by protecting the surface with aluminum foil or by lowering the temperature. Obviously, lowering the temperature is the most widely employed solution.
Bread in a closed clay pot will need the very same time.

So, to sum it up:
A banana bread in a bread pan will only slightly benefit from the convection oven regarding baking time. I would assume the effect to be around 5-10 minutes. The more time you save though, the harder your top surface will be - so there is no way you can save time and get the same or a better result.


In this recipe, what is a possible substitute for serrano pepper? In this recipe, I enjoy the mix of spices: serrano, cilantro, mint, cinnamon...

Next time we'll cook it, we won't have serrano available. What could be a substitute for it?

Ideally this substitute is not hard to get in Europe...

Note the serrano's contribution to the dish. They're not opened. They're not eaten. They simmer with the rest of the ingredients perhaps adding some taste.

EDIT: Thanks for the suggestions. I now realize that substitute may not have been the best wording. Given the constraints, a simple s/serrano/xxxx/ replacement may not do ☺

The closest thing that's at all common in grocery stores in my experience is just a jalapeño. There might be some alternatives, but I think they'd be even harder to find than serranos. (This is based on my experience in the US, but I'm guessing it'll be true in Europe too.)

Failing that, just use green bell pepper. The flavor is similar, minus the heat, and you can make up the heat with whatever you want, like cayenne or another mostly-just-hot ground chili.


What is the difference between ice cream, gelato, and sorbet? What is the difference between ice cream, gelato, and sorbet? They look different, but are they made differently?

First of all, the names vary a bit from country to country, or the ingredients do.
I'll explain the most common names/ingredients.

The main difference is in the ingredients used. Sorbet is basically water + sugar + fruit, while ice cream and gelato is milk/cream + sugar + fruit. So the last two are more 'creamy', while sorbet is more 'icy'.

You can say that ice cream is a type of gelato, but there still is a difference. More sugar in gelato, more butterfat (the percentage of fat in the milk/cream) in ice cream.

You can read quite a lot about ice cream on wikipedia.


What is the formal definition of savory? What is the formal definition of "savory" when used in cooking?  I hear a lot about things coming in either sweet or savory forms — e.g. crepes — but in context it doesn't seem that savory is the term for all things that are not sweet.  Does it have to do with preparation methods?  Ingredients?  Taste of the final product?

I have been assuming that "sweet" means something like "sugary," as it does in common usage; please correct me if that's not the case here.

In cooking, "Savory" does generally refer to a flavor profile that is anything other than sweet.

"Sweet" doesn't have to necessarily be sugary sweet...basil, tarragon, fennel, carrots, beets, etc. have sweet flavors that are not excessively sugary sweet.

The term "neutral" is typically used for things like crepes and choux paste (eclair paste) because when made in their traditional style they are neither savory nor sweet and can work with either flavor profile.


How to properly boil egg white? I am trying to boil egg white. It's around 500gr. How to boil it properly?

In previous attempt, I boil it using a stainless steel container with no lid and put it in a pan filled with water. I screw up since the water is able to reach the egg. This method also time consuming because the container is not hot enough. It also hard to clean after I do this.

Are there better method for me to do this? The method should ensure the egg safe to eat (no salmonella). I dont want to use plastic to boil it.

You could microwave it, put the whites in a glass container with a loose lid and blast it, the texture will be very similar to a boiled egg. You might have to check from time to time for doneness.

It will harden in the shape of the container if you don't "scramble" it every 30s, and it might also explode from the steam trying to escape (hence the cover). Brush some oil in the container to make sure the whites don't stick.

Personally for that much egg I'd just cook them in a pan like an omelet, it's much less trouble.


Food Pre-Packaged in Vacuum Bags I often purchase chicken and fish that have been vacuum packed at the factory. Is the food, never having been exposed to air, susceptible to botulism or other anaerobic organisms? Is it best to sous vide these in their frozen state?

I wouldn't advice either one.

If you sous vide from frozen, your cooking times are going to be off.  You might end up with it undercooked in the middle unless you significantly increase the cooking time.

And I've only done it in the packaging once.  Never again, as there was little to no flavor to it.  (no browning, no seasoning).  The only time that I might be willing to re-try it would be if I went to the partially-prepared section, and got the ones with marinade already in the bag.